The Trinity (10 page)

Embarrassed by not being able to understand, Chris moves his head indistinctly, to be taken as a nod or a shake.

The driver speeds south along the A92, a four-lane highway that hugs the coast of the North Sea. Chris stares out the window and suddenly feels fulfilled.

He has traveled farther in the last forty-eight hours than he has his entire life.

Chris asks the cab driver some questions, in a forthright manner that he has never possessed; he has always felt awkward in new situations, around people he doesn’t know. An introvert to the core, he has always been quiet and not the type to ask questions, only giving answers when asked, generally in monosyllable, one-word responses.

But this travel, this distance from home, this need for some self-reliance has changed his nature, so he tries to start a conversation with the cab driver.

“How’s the weather been? I don’t see any snow.” Chris assumed it would be very cold, judging by how far up the curve of the globe Scotland lay.

“Nay, no snow, not much snow, really.”

Chris nods, not understanding the words, but understanding that snow is a rarity.

“So, you like soccer?”

“Aye, but we call it football.”

Chris gives up. The cab driver tries to talk to Chris, but he can’t understand. He just laughs when the cab driver laughs and says, “Hmm” when the cab driver glances at him through the rearview mirror.

Chris looks out the window, studying the oncoming traffic, full of many small cars driving on the opposite side of the road, rolling past gas stations with names unfamiliar to him, road signs of a different shape and colored blue instead of the green he is used to seeing in Michigan and the rest of America, and the hills with sheep standing idly about, almost to the side of the road.

They have been driving just over half an hour when the cab leaves the A92 via an exit ramp and heads west. The cab turns down a paved, unmarked road flanked by tall trees. There is a low brick wall on either side and the road goes down a long incline. Despite the leaflessness of the trees, the growth is so thick that the sky becomes nearly invisible.

After about a mile, the trees thin and the base becomes visible, first the barbed wire fence ringing the perimeter and then the drab brown and dirty green buildings, and then the quarterdeck at the entrance of the base.

The cab pulls up and Chris is disappointed. The base is a blemish on a beautiful landscape, the dreary cluster of buildings, the metal structures used as antennas, the warning signs along the fence.

The cab driver tells Chris the fare and he pulls a wad of pound notes from his front pocket. His wallet is useless in this country; the bills are too large, a third more the size of American currency.

He is not sure what he owes, and the cab driver pulls money from the wad. Chris gives him an extra five-pound note for a tip and the driver says, “Ta” and drives away, the little Lada speeding back to Aberdeen. Chris is once again alone but back in the fold of his Navy family, the only thing he has in the world to fall back on.

After the time and distance of his travel, Chris’s uniform is wrinkled and askew, and his white hat is dirty from his clutching it on the plane or whenever he has been indoors. He is also due for a haircut, the tops of his ears just barely covered in blond, wispy hair.

He enters the quarterdeck and the officer on duty is startled and confused by his appearance.

It is Christmas day. No one checks in on Christmas day.

“I’m early,” Chris explains.

The officer, a young ensign fresh from the academy and still enthusiastic about his naval career, looks with disdain at Chris, at his dirty white hat, his overgrown hair, and his rumpled uniform. He grabs the orders from Chris’s hand, a piece of computer generated paper by now quite wrinkled, and smoothes it out on the counter of the quarterdeck. He looks at Chris. “You’re several days early. Didn’t you want to be with your family for Christmas?” the ensign asks, longing to be home with his.

Chris shakes his head and stares at his shoes, embarrassed.

“All right,” the ensign says, not really wanting to hear Chris explain himself.

“The enlisted barracks are over there.” He points out the window across a small field with long-dormant grass and indicates a two-story, brown stucco building consisting of a middle and two wings, shaped in a ‘U’ with 90-degree angles. “Go in the middle door and you’ll find the lounge, and off to the right will be the barracks office. There will be a civilian on duty who will put you in a room. The base opens back up tomorrow. Be here at 0730 sharp to start checking in.” He stamps Chris’s orders, signs them, and says, “Welcome to RAF Lutherkirk” without looking at Chris.

Chris mumbles, “Thank you, sir.” He is somewhat uncomfortable and intimidated by someone with so much authority at an age not much greater than his own.

He saunters across the field, oblivious and too tired to read the prominently displayed “DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS” signs. He stares around the base and his head is constantly moving left to right and back as he scans the buildings along the narrow asphalt streets. The base is empty and he can’t see a single car driving along its streets. No one is walking along the sidewalks, and it is eerily quiet. Chris can hear his breath in quick spurts as he lugs his seabag across the field and into the barracks.

He opens the door into the barracks and finds the lounge inside to be anything but quiet. Many young sailors in civilian dress, mostly young men and a handful of young women, are sitting across several pieces of worn furniture. Chris can hear a television blaring in the corner, but no one is watching it, as most are engaged in easy conversation. There is just an instance of silence as Chris walks in. Heads turn in his direction and then the activities resume.

Chris finds the office. A portly Scottish gentleman wearing polyester pants, a shirt and a tie underneath a v-necked sweater is on duty. He is sitting at a gray steel desk and reading a paperback novel. He stares at Chris and numbly pulls bed linen from a closet and hands Chris a key, recording his name and room number in a green logbook.

“Go up the stairs and make a right. Your room will be halfway down.”

Chris only understands “up the stairs.” He shuffles off, his linen rolled under one arm, his seabag hoisted over the shoulder of the other arm. He walks up the stairs that go outside and walks along a balcony until he finds his room.

He expects his room to be orderly, as the barracks were in boot camp and in Pensacola: racks always made, the floor free of clutter, all personal belongings stowed in a locker when not in use. He opens the door and turns on the light and sees two beds, one bare and the other unmade, the sheets and blanket twisted in a haphazard way. The floor is carpeted with low, hard institutional carpet and there is a bathroom off to the side.

The room is an utter mess. Chris sees magazines and cassette tapes and food wrappers and drink containers and dirty clothes across the floor and on top of a desk that is pushed into a corner.

Chris is scared; the sight of the room makes him uncomfortable. What sort of person is his new roommate? He worries if the two of them will get along, if the other roommate is a bully. Chris has never been confrontational. He has never been one to speak up for himself if he is being slighted. He senses by the state of the room that the other occupant is inconsiderate.

Chris unpacks and stores everything in the wall locker provided, locking it with a padlock he brought with him from Pensacola, keeping the key around his neck on the chain securing his dog tags. He makes his rack and then takes a shower and pulls on his Navy sweatpants and sweatshirt. It is time for dinner, so he walks to the galley, a building a few yards from the barracks that he saw when he walked from the quarterdeck.

The crowd from the lounge transferred to the galley, as did other people in uniform going to and from duty at the communications buildings. The galley shows no signs of being a military facility; it looks more like a cafeteria that one would find in a hospital, several tables covered with red tablecloths and padded chairs without armrests.

Chris sits by himself as far away from others as possible and eats his meal. He assumes it is something special for Christmas: dry sliced turkey, dressing, and mashed potatoes with gravy. The food is as good as any that Chris has had since his Grandma was alive. He goes back for seconds and drinks several glasses of milk to wash it down.

He studies the faces in the galley, the youthful chatty faces, faces familiar with one another, with the routine of the base, of being in another country. They seem like veterans to Chris. He looks at the girls, the girls in their sweaters and jeans or their dungaree uniform, the working uniform of the Navy consisting of a light blue denim shirt with dark blue bell-bottom denim pants. He hopes to find one that appears to be solitary, perhaps a misfit like himself, a future girlfriend maybe. But he sees no one; the girls are all comfortable, surrounded by friends male and female. Chris leaves the galley with nowhere else to go but to his cluttered room.

He is afraid his roommate may be there upon his return, but he isn’t. The sky is now dark and Chris is tired, so he lies in his rack. He tries to sleep but can’t; he is waiting for the door to open, waiting for the dreaded roommate to appear. Still, despite his anxiety, he is too fatigued for insomnia, and he drifts off to sleep.

He dreams about his mother, the kind of dream that occurs only in the deepest of sleep. In this dream, she is old, heavyset and crying and destitute. She is sitting on a bed in a nearly empty room with gray walls and a gray tile floor with fluorescent lights coming from a tiled ceiling, like in a hospital or nursing home. She is apologizing to him, for wronging him for so many years. He can’t see himself in the dream, but he feels powerful, maybe wealthy, as if a word of forgiveness from him will alleviate her sadness. He is ready to forgive her; despite everything, he loves his mother. He is about to speak but the dream drifts away when the door to his room opens and the lights turn on.

“Shit, I’ve got a fuckin’ roommate.”

Chris warily opens one eye just a slit to keep out the light and to maintain the appearance of sleep. He sees a tall overweight young man with blondish hair cut the way the Marines cut their hair (almost bald on the sides, standing straight up on top), freckles, a Nebraska sweatshirt underneath a denim jacket, blue jeans and dirty white leather high-top sneakers. The smell of alcohol is obvious, the odor leaving his pores and his mouth and consuming the whole room. Chris instantly thinks of his brother. It has been a long time since he has thought about his brother, but he doesn’t recall him affectionately.

“At least it ain’t no fuckin’ nigger,” the overgrown drunk says under his breath as he turns off the light and jumps onto his very cluttered bed. He leaves his clothes on but kicks off his shoes after he lies down.

He is soon snoring and Chris lies awake, staring at the ceiling, illuminated by the lamppost in the courtyard of the barracks. The joy he felt upon coming to Scotland is now reduced by the prospect of having to share a room with someone so crude.

Chris hopes his roommate’s tour of duty is nearly complete. Eventually, he falls back to sleep.

Sitting in his office inside the chapel the morning of the day after Christmas, Father Crowley is hung over from joy. He has no problem killing those of another race, and feels no qualms about dragging others that are younger and less intelligent than he is into his private little army. He dreams the daydream of those who want power based on dogma. He imagines himself addressing a large room with a bevy of devotees becoming tearful upon receiving his words of a white utopia, of the evil and inadequacy of the lesser races. In this daydream, there are no girls or anyone past their twenties, just a homogenous bunch of handsome and athletic young men wearing uniforms of light green pants and light green shirts, a far cry from the imperfect appearance of his two current compatriots. He is frightened of this; it means something, but he doesn’t know what. He suspects his longtime fear of some sort of latent homosexuality, which is common in his profession. Rampant homosexuality in the priesthood was common knowledge while he was at the seminary, but it was never discussed.

He has never been attracted to women. When other boys in school were chasing girls on playgrounds, he would sit on a swing and pray and search the sky for angels and saints.