The Trinity (11 page)

He shakes the thought of homosexuality and contemplates a next potential target, a next action. He stares at the empty walls, walls that the previous Catholic chaplains always decorated with religious art or seminary and undergraduate diplomas. He stares at his bookcase, filled with books of catechism that he has long ignored. He displays them for the mere appearance and for the classes he must teach to the youth of the base, the children of the senior enlisted and officers who are old enough to prepare for first communion. A weekly task that he dreads.

He knows he can’t strike on base; he wants any police authority to assume his activities are that of a group of Scots. But he wants to target Americans. It is America that needs the most work. It is America that is the most corrupted.

His mind wanders until about mid-morning, when a young sailor stands at the door to his office. The sailor is bespectacled with wispy blond hair, soft in the mid-section. He has a once-poor complexion that is starting to recover.

The young sailor is clutching his service record, and it is obvious to Crowley that he must be checking in to the base, going from department to department.

The young man is not handsome or striking, and he appears to be entirely un-athletic, a far cry from the mold of Crowley’s daydream, but something in his countenance causes the priest to stir. He searches the air above the young man’s head, looking for the white lights that he believes are the angels from Valhalla. In his mind’s eye, he sees the slightest twinkling to the right of the young sailor’s head.

Crowley straightens up in his chair and produces his best insincere smile.

Chris rises early the day after Christmas and the cloudy sky is still as dark as midnight. He can hear his roommate snoring and smell his sweat, the alcohol from the night before turning stale and pungent before leaving his pores, the pungent odor saturating their room. Chris walks gingerly in the dark, taking care to silence his footfalls. He showers and dresses as quickly as possible.

As Chris is putting on his shoes, his roommate’s alarm clock goes off and Chris hears a groan full of phlegm from the bed on the other side of the room. The roommate sits up, and through the dark, Chris can see the whiteness of his vast stomach hanging over his pants and underneath his shirt, which has crept up past his belly button.

His roommate’s face turns serious, as if he’s recalling something grave. The eyes of that round face see Chris sitting on the opposite bed and stare at him first in fright and then in a sort of bemused surprise.

“This is your room, too?” the heavy young man asks Chris.

Chris nods. “Yep.”

“Aw, shit. Did you get here yesterday?” It’s clear to Chris that his roommate does not remember seeing him late the night before when he came stumbling into the room.

“Yep.”

“Shit.” The heavyset young man grabs his head as if it’s causing him much discomfort. “I kinda liked not having a roommate.”

Chris nods and goes to his locker to grab his pea coat, as he sees frost on the window against the black morning sky.

“My name’s Chris. Chris Fairbanks.” Chris politely extends his hand, which is ignored.

“Hinckley. Brad,” the other replies, head still in his hands.

“You like it here?” Chris asks.

“Nope.” Hinckley rises from the bed and puts on his dungaree uniform and working jacket without taking a shower. He puts on a baseball cap instead of the white Dixie cup that Chris is wearing with his dress blue uniform.

Chris walks out without saying anything else. He steps out into the damp morning that is still quite dark and will remain so for several more hours in this land that is so much farther north than Michigan.

In the galley, Chris is surprised to be able to have an omelet made to order. He has it made with ham and cheese, and he gets French toast on the side. He sits down at the empty end of a long table that is crowded on the other end. Moments like this make him feel especially lonely, and he hurriedly finishes his large breakfast. He feels he is being stared at, as if only the odd and the deviant eat alone.

He arrives at the quarterdeck a few minutes early, retrieves the cigarettes from his sock and smokes. Through the fence of the base, he sees the lights of a farmhouse and the silhouettes of the rolling hills that seem to continue past the horizon. Chris knows he is fortunate to be in a beautiful corner of the world. He could be on a ship out of Norfolk and see only Navy things and a metropolitan landscape no different from what he has known all his life.

As 0730 approaches, Chris enters the quarterdeck building. The base master-at-arms, the head of security, is in charge, and his office is inside this building. The master-at-arms is a chief petty officer; Wilson is his name. Chief Wilson is a career Navy man and his tour in Lutherkirk is his twilight tour, a nice and easy last tour of duty before he heads off to retirement, where he hopes to be a small-town police officer in his native western Pennsylvania. He spent much of his career at sea. The routine of being aboard a ship is much more rigorous, longer hours and weeks of seeing only the steel of the ship, the blue of the dungaree uniforms, and miles of endless ocean without another ship or sign of civilization in sight.

He has just over a year left of his three-year tour in Lutherkirk.

He is a tall and large man, muscular, his black hair graying at the temples and through his mustache. He squints at Chris and studies the shabbiness of his haircut, his scuffed shoes, his wrinkled uniform, and his lint-covered pea coat.

He hands Chris an itinerary of departments to check in to in the proper order. Tomorrow, Chris will report to his department in the smaller of the three communications sites and start to work.

“Hurry up and finish,” Chief Wilson says, indicating Chris’s itinerary, “and then get a god-damned haircut and square yourself away. If I see you looking like that tomorrow, I’ll write you up and you’ll go in front of the captain.”

Chris nods. Embarrassed, he hurriedly walks out of the building and scurries across the base to medical, dental, admin, the library, public works, the commanding officers’ office, the commissary, and the exchange. There are forms for him to fill out and questions for him to answer every step of the way. A spot on almost every form makes him pause:

State your home of record.

The home of record, the residence where you came from, where one or both parents live.

Chris has no home of record. On one form he writes “here” and on the rest he simply writes BEQ Room 11, RAF Lutherkirk, Lutherkirk, UK.

Some who read the forms at the various departments think Chris is being flippant. They raise their eyebrows and demand an explanation. He isn’t being flippant; he’s being honest. Home is where he is and wherever the Navy and the choices of his life will take him.

He realizes his father’s address is just a phone call or letter away, but he has felt so detached from his father for so many years, his father no more than a piece of furniture in the basement, sitting or lying on the couch in a v-necked white T-shirt wrapped in a tattered blanket watching the television at merely an arm’s length away for the ease of adjusting the rabbit-ear antennas, and to change the channel without losing his perch on the sagging couch.

Chris’s last destination is the chapel, a visit he is not relishing.

Chris is unfamiliar with the insides of the buildings of the holy, and he is uncomfortable upon entering. Inside, the chapel is as quiet as a tomb. Chris walks around the front hallway and glances into the chapel itself. He looks at the small stage with a small altar and enough pews to accommodate maybe seventy-five people.

He looks at the cross on the front of the podium on the stage that he doesn’t know is called an altar. He assumes the building is empty in its silence. He is about to leave when he sees an open door into an office by the main entrance. He spies a man in a khaki uniform sitting at a desk. His hands are folded and he is staring at the ceiling. Chris gently taps his knuckles on the open door. At first, the man looks irritated, but then his face lights up when he sees Chris. Chris notes the cross pinned on one collar and lieutenant’s bars on the other.

“Come in, come in,” the man says, standing up. He is a tall man, pear-shaped and red-faced with reddish hair showing signs of gray. Chris notes that he is a bit old to be a lieutenant.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Chris says while facing the floor, too introverted to look directly at someone he has apparently irritated. “I’m just checking in.” He hands the chaplain his check-in sheet, hoping for a simple signature and not the rehearsed and choreographed welcome he got from some of the other departments.

“No bother, no bother at all. I’m Chaplain Crowley, or Father Crowley, if you share my faith.” He offers Chris a firm handshake that Chris returns not nearly as vigorously.

“Sit down, sit down.” The chaplain takes the check-in sheet from Chris and places it on his desk, which is barren save a telephone and an empty Rolodex.

Chris sits upon a simple armless chair alongside the chaplain’s desk. He has no idea what a chaplain could possibly want to talk about or what he could say to a chaplain.

“So, welcome to Scotland,” the chaplain says, swinging his patent leather shoes up on the top of the desk. The posture is disarming, and Chris relaxes in his chair.

The chaplain notes the two lonely stripes on Chris’s sleeves and knows he is recently enlisted. “And welcome to the Navy. Now you’re in the fleet, as they say.” True enough, any duty station not attached to a training command was considered “in the fleet,” at sea or on shore.

“Thanks.” Chris looks around the sparse office. The walls are empty and the only companion to the desk and two chairs is a small, waist-high bookcase filled with apparently undisturbed books of uniform height and thickness.

“I’m new to the Navy, myself,” the chaplain explains. “This is my first duty station, and I’m as tender-footed as you are to the ways of the military.”

Chris nods, feeling more comfortable. No one this morning has been as friendly, as personable, as Chaplain Crowley.

“So, what religion is yours?” Crowley asks, the topic turning in the direction Chris dreads.

“I don’t have one,” Chris says.

“You don’t have one, or you don’t practice? Surely, you were baptized.”

Unsure, Chris nods his head. “I think I was baptized.”

“In which church?”

“I think Catholic.”

“Aha!” The chaplain pounds his fist on top of the desk and returns his feet to the floor. “Then you’re in my club.” Crowley beams. “But no matter, no matter, the Kingdom of God is wide open before you, and there are many paths you can choose, Catholic or otherwise. I’m not out to recruit you for Sunday Mass. I see myself here to make sure you’re okay on the inside. Where are you from?”

“Just outside of Detroit.”

“Ah,” says Crowley, unable to expand upon the topic of Michigan. “Well, my son, my door is always open, and if you need someone to talk to about anything—no subject is too remote for me—I can bullshit about anything as well as anybody, so please return. In fact, I even conduct very informal Bible studies at my own home, in case you’re interested. Just let me know ahead of time.” The priest stands and extends a hand and bids Chris farewell.

Chris decides he may take him up on the invitation as he steps back into the damp Scottish air. The sky is gray and full of clouds thick and low, causing the street lamps of the base to turn on, even though the day is still quite young.

Chris didn’t feel so alone in the presence of the priest; he felt warm inside. Maybe church is a place for him to go, as he has no place else to go except his messy room inside the sterile barracks in a country he does not yet know.

He finds the base barbershop and sets about restoring his military appearance.

December 26, 1985

Dear Wife,