Flesh and Blood (2 page)

“Chaplain Jordan,” someone yelled.

I turned around.

It was a young female officer with toffee-colored skin, leaning over and yelling through the document tray on the back side of the control room.

I turned around.

I had been chaplain at PCI, the meanest prison in the Panhandle, since returning to North Florida from Atlanta following the breakup of my marriage and the general disintegration of my life. That had been a few years ago now, and I was beginning to settle into prison chaplaincy and the little life I was living among the least and the lowly.

Beside me, Anna stopped walking, as well.

We were inside the pedestrian sally port, having been buzzed through one gate into the holding area and now waiting to be buzzed through the next.

I walked over to the document tray, which was next to the entrance door of the security building, as other employees continued toward the front gate. Anna followed.

It was a clear day in spring, the sun was still high in the western sky. The time had changed recently, and I was looking forward to enjoying the extra light of the lengthening day after leaving the institution.

“There’s a call for you,” the officer said. “I told her you were leaving for the day, but she said it was urgent.”

She was striking in spite of the correctional officer uniform she wore, her dark, tumescent lips so full they looked nearly engorged.

“Catch her name?” I asked.

“A, ah, Sister Abigail from St. Ann’s.”

St. Ann’s Abbey was a retreat center near the coast, and Sister Abigail was a middle-aged psychologist, Catholic nun, and my sometime counselor.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

She fed the telephone and its extra-long cord through the document tray. The once white receiver was yellowish with grime and held traces of makeup.

“Hello,” I said.

“John,” Sister Abigail said, “I’m so glad I caught you.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve got a situation I need your help with,” she said. “It’s extremely important and quite delicate and requires immediate attention.”

“Name it,” I said.

“How soon can you get here?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Come as fast as you can,” she said. “I’ve got a pregnant nun who claims to be a virgin, medical evidence that confirms it, and some hysterical zealots about to turn my retreat into a circus.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

The serene, scenic drive to St. Ann’s was made more so because, having nothing more interesting to do, Anna had decided to join me.

“Whatta you think she wants you to do?” Anna asked.

“Prove we’re not about to have a virgin birth.”

“Really? A nun?”

I nodded.

We were on a long, straight, empty stretch of rural highway in the midst of hundreds of thousands of acres of pine tree forests, my small truck the only vehicle as far as I could see in either direction.

“Why?”

“I don’t think she believes in such things,” I said.

“Does she believe in
God
?”

I shrugged. “I can’t really speak for her, but if I had to guess I’d say she doesn’t believe in a supernatural deity that breaks into nature to perform miracles. I think she sees God as more imminent—more a part
of
than
from
everything. But even if she didn’t, and even if she believed that this nun was a pregnant virgin, she’d want me to disprove it if I could. It’s like exorcism, exhausting everything else—all mental disorders and other explanations before even considering that it might be possession.”

“But she’s not exhausting all other explanations because she believes it really could be a miracle, is she?”

“She’s a person of science as much as faith,” I said.

“Not easy being a person of faith these days, is it?” she asked.

“Way
too
easy for some,” I said.

She nodded. “True. I should have said it’s not easy being a modern person fully engaged in the world of suffering, fully aware of science and existentialism, and still be a person of faith.”

“But that would have taken too long,” I said.

She smiled. “How do you do it?”

“Not well,” I said. “Obviously.”

“That’s not true,” she said.

“What about you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I guess I really don’t consider myself a person of faith—not like you, or a nun.”

“But you are,” I said.

Just ahead of us, a new bridge rose high into the air above the intercoastal waterway, its peak reaching the tops of the tall pines that spread out from it in all directions.

“I believe in you,” she said. “And in what you believe in.”

“Then you’re in far worse shape than I thought,” I said.

“Seriously,” she said.

Why did all our conversations lead here, to an intense intimacy we couldn’t move beyond—at least not without her husband’s strenuous objections?

“How do I respond seriously to that?” I asked. “By saying ‘thank you?’ Thank you.”

“Thank you is fine, but you don’t have to do anything with it. It just is. It’s true and it needed to be said.”

We rode along in silence a few moments.

“Do you even believe in the virgin birth?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I did as a kid,” I said. “Now, it just doesn’t matter. It could have literally happened, or it could be a misunderstanding of an obscure verse in the Hebrew Bible, or it could have become part of the tradition because of competition with Greek and Roman sons of God who were said to have been born of virgins, or it could merely signify there was something extraordinary about the simple Jewish peasant of whom it was said.”

As the highway ended abruptly at the edge of the Gulf, we took a left and drove along the beach for a few miles, each of us mesmerized by the bright orange afternoon sun pooling on the smooth blue-green surface of the Gulf.

“Tell me again why we don’t live down here,” she said.

I thought about all the recent development, all that was on the way now that Florida’s largest landowner had closed down its paper mill and had begun building resorts and golf courses, and all the “For Sale” signs of people who had lived here their entire lives cashing in as the beginning of the end had begun. Florida’s final patch of pristine, unspoiled beauty was being sold to the highest bidder, and the only thing us locals who loved this area so much could do was stand by in our powerlessness and watch. In doing so, I felt like the Native American man in the commercial from the 1970s, standing on the side of the road, a single tear rolling down his creased face as he watched ugly European-Americans toss litter out of their large, gas-sucking cars.

“We can’t afford it,” I said. “At least I can’t. You and Chris probably can.”

We were having such a nice time. Why’d I have to mention her husband?

“If what they’re dealing with is not a miracle, whatta you think’s going on?” Anna asked.

I shrugged. “If she’s not lying, it could be because she doesn’t remember,” I said.

“Date rape?”

“Technically,” I said, “nuns don’t date, but, yeah, something like that. I would’ve also thought about the possibility of a hysterical pregnancy or a tumor or some other medical condition, but Sister said she had medical evidence to confirm that she
is
pregnant
and
a virgin.”

“What about artificial insemination?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s something we’ll have to consider, but I’m not sure she could do it and still appear to be a virgin—and it’s probably not something she could do herself, so there’d be evidence. Besides, Sister would have checked all these things out before calling me and saying she had a pregnant virgin confirmed by medical evidence.”

Located near the coastal town of Bridgeport, on a tract of land that reveals just how beautiful north Florida can be, St. Ann’s is situated on the site where once stood a Spanish mission.

Surrounding the small but ornate chapel at its center, St. Ann’s consisted of two dormitories—one on either side—a handful of cabins down by the lake, a cafeteria, a gym, an education building, and a conference center with offices.

The natural beauty of St. Ann’s was nurturing, and I found myself breathing more deeply as I tried to take it all in. The small lake was rimmed with cypress trees, Spanish moss draped from their jagged branches. Enormous, spreading oaks and tall, thick pines grew on the gently rising slope coming up from the lake, on the abbey grounds, and for acres and acres around it.

Dedicated to art, religion, and psychology, St. Ann’s was operated by Sister Abigail, a wise and witty middle-aged nun who supervised the counseling center; Father Thomas Scott, an earnest, devout middle-aged priest, in charge of religious studies and spiritual growth; and the young Kathryn Kennedy, an acclaimed novelist responsible for artistic studies and conferences.

Sister Abigail, Father Thomas, and a diminutive, slightly feminine man in a Roman collar walked out to greet us when we arrived.

In her mid-fifties, Sister Abigail’s pale skin, extra weight, and reddish-blond hair made her look older, but her wicked wit and the glimmer she often got in her eye made her seem much younger.

“John, you remember Father Thomas,” Sister Abigail said. “This is Father Jerome. He’s Sister Mary Elizabeth’s pastor.”

I assumed Mary Elizabeth was the pregnant nun, but wasn’t sure, and didn’t ask.

I hugged Sister Abigail and shook hands with the two priests.

Father Thomas Scott was a trim man with receding gray hair, neatly trimmed gray beard, and kind, brown eyes that shone with intelligence. His body, like his voice, was soft without being effeminate, and his black suit and Roman collar hung loosely on his narrow frame.

Father Jerome was small and pale with light blue eyes, and though his boyish face contradicted it, my guess was that he was as old as the other priest. He looked frail and sickly, and I could see enough of what was under his black felt fedora to know that it was covering hair loss—the result of chemotherapy, I suspected.

“This is Anna Rodden,” I said.

Sister Abigail arched an eyebrow where only I could see it. She had heard all about Anna in our sessions.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Anna,” she said.

“I hope you don’t mind me coming,” Anna said. “We were leaving work when you called and a ride along the coast to this beautiful place sounded too good to pass up.”

“I’m so glad you came,” Sister said.

“I can walk around the lake or drive into Bridgeport while you all—”

“From what John’s told me about you, we could use your help.”

Anna looked at me, her eyebrows raised, an expression not unlike the one Sister had given me a few minutes before. “You’ve been talking about me in therapy?”

“In therapy, in my sleep, in AA, in chat rooms, to strangers,” I said. “Women like you are the reason therapy was invented.”

It was spring break and the abbey was largely empty, its dorm rooms and cottages temporarily vacant. Not only were the various attendees, counselees, artists in residence, and troubled teens away, but part of the staff was, too, which meant I wouldn’t get the opportunity to meet Kathryn Kennedy, one of my favorite contemporary novelists.

St. Ann’s was so empty, in fact, that it was jarring to see a late-teens/early-twenties surfer-looking guy with wavy bleached-blond hair step out of the chapel and head toward the dining hall.

“I was just checking on Sister Mary,” he said to Sister Abigail.

It was obvious by the way he moved and spoke that he had both physical and mental impairments.

“Thank you, Tommy,” Sister said, then lowering her voice, “I believe our young Tommy Boy has a bit of a crush on the lovely Sister Mary Elizabeth.”

“We need to make sure he doesn’t bother her too much,” Father Thomas said.

“Come on,” Sister Abigail said to us. “Let’s talk in Thomas’s office. It’s big enough for us all to be comfortable.”

Father Thomas’s study was filled with scholarly texts and reference books, many on the more mystical side of his religion—miracles, exorcism, speaking in tongues. Beneath the musty smell of the dusty books and the mildew odor caused by Florida humidity, the sweet ripe-raisin aroma of pipe tobacco lingered in the still air.

Father Thomas was seated behind his desk, the rest of us on chairs scattered around him.

“I asked you here, John, to see if you can help us make sense of this before it gets official and the church gets involved,” Sister Abigail said. “Father Thomas is satisfied that we’re dealing with a miracle and believes we need to involve the church immediately.”