The Trinity (5 page)

He made one friend shortly after his arrival in Scotland, Seaman Rodgers. Neither one worked in the communications buildings on the base, so they were sort of outcasts. Rodgers was a disbursing clerk and worked in the base personnel office, passing out and preparing paychecks. Rodgers had joined the Navy out of anger; his longtime girlfriend all the way from junior high school broke up with him at the senior prom, where it was revealed she was pregnant. He knew it wasn’t his because she told him she was saving herself for marriage. His outlook on life changed instantly. He stopped being the happy-go-lucky guy his friends and family had come to know. Rodgers had no specific plans upon leaving high school, just to work on his father’s farm and get married to his sweetheart Jane, but Jane broke his heart and he had to get away. So on the Monday after graduation, he drove the thirty miles into Cape Girardeau to find the Navy recruiter. “Sign me up,” he proclaimed upon walking into the recruiter’s office. No one tried to talk him out of anything. They quickly processed him and sent him the next day to St. Louis for a physical, and he was immediately put on a bus for Great Lakes. His parents didn’t know until he telephoned them from the bus station, telling him that his truck was in front of a parking meter in downtown Cape Girardeau and that he had left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. His mother cried and his father called him a damn fool and asked who was going to work the farm with him this summer and said when he saw him again, he wouldn’t be too big for a belt. Rodgers apologized, but he couldn’t risk the chance of seeing Jane around with anybody else. His mother understood but wished he hadn’t done something so extreme. His father called him a sissy.

Rodgers knew he made a tragic mistake when he arrived at Great Lakes and he was formed into a company and yelled at. He felt like a pig being shoved into a crowded, dirty pen. After the first night, he became very homesick. By the end of the first week, he was miserable. He was less than a marginal recruit and was forced to repeat two weeks. He longed to be outside, listening to his music, working the farm from sunrise to way past dark, watching the dust fly behind the trucks driving along the dirt road in front of his house.

He had never been around minorities before, but he didn’t like them. No one offended him or bothered him, but he and his friends in school identified with the Confederates. He even flew a Confederate flag from the back window of his truck. It fit with his image of tobacco chewing and country music listening. He felt he should hate blacks; he was a reb’.

Disbursing school was in Biloxi. Rodgers was glad to be in the South, though it still wasn’t enjoyable. His rate was mostly female, and none were attractive. Many were minorities, and he felt very out of place. He couldn’t wait to get out of the Navy and be back home. When duty stations were assigned, he hoped for and expected a ship; there would be no women, and he would at least get to travel. But his number came up for shore duty, RAF Lutherkirk. He looked on the globe and saw how far north Scotland lay and he started to shiver and curse.

Rodgers and Hinckley arrived in Scotland within a few weeks of one another. They quickly became friends, drinking buddies mainly. Neither worked in the communications department, the mission of the base. Both worked in the support side and therefore had few coworkers and were sort of looked down upon by the other sailors who worked with security clearances inside windowless buildings. They mainly worked Monday through Friday, while the rest of the base worked rotating around-the-clock shifts. They found themselves in the base club every night, drinking, Rodgers talking to Hinckley about country music, and Hinckley trying to relate every conversation to Nebraska football.

Becoming bored with the club, they had taken to wandering outside the base to drink in the pubs. At least there, they were isolated because of their nationality, not because of their job.

So this is how they came to arrive at the pub on the first floor of the Lutherkirk Hotel and to be met by Father Crowley and to find themselves drinking with a priest late on a Friday evening and early into Saturday morning.

Their gazes return to the swastika, and Hinckley has an understanding of what it represents. He’s seen many late night war movies with his grandfather and listened to him speak reverently of German order and ingenuity.

“They make the best damn cars and the best damn beer,” he would say while draining a can of beer inexpensive and domestic.

Rodgers, despite high school history and being alive in the twentieth century, really doesn’t have a clue. The swastika is recognizable, but it is just a symbol in a world full of symbols, like the blue oval on the grill of his Ford truck, the Dingo branded into the heels of his boots, or the Columbia on the boxes of his country cassettes.

Crowley smiles that nervous and disarming smile he learned in seminary for dealing with confrontation, even though he is not about to be confronted.

“Hitler wasn’t all bad,” he says abruptly. “He just tried too hard.”

Rodgers nods and sips his beer. Hinckley looks puzzled.

“I know he is thought of as a monster, but that’s not true. His was a beautiful soul, and if you know the right history, you will understand. He strived for beauty. He strived to bring calm to a chaotic world.”

“What about the Holocaust?” Hinckley asks. “All them Jews getting exterminated?”

“Lies, mostly lies. They were put into colonies to take care of themselves, and they couldn’t take care of themselves without preying upon the good German people. They destroyed themselves. You and me, and people like us, we are the foundation and keepers of this world. We make it go round.”

Rodgers nods and sips his beer, humming a tune and recalling the leanings of some of his father’s friends, talking bad about the niggers in the north, being on welfare and hard working men like them having to pay for them.

“You both appear to be intelligent men,” Crowley says to be flattering but not truthful. “Name me a country in this world that is civil and prosperous that isn’t ruled by white people.”

Hinckley searches his brain and finds nothing. Rodgers nods and sips his beer. He doesn’t know too many countries.

“Exactly!” Crowley exclaims triumphantly. “You can’t and you never will because they are inferior, the blacks, the Jews, the Asians.

“You see, people like us, Caucasians, we are chosen. We are special. I don’t want to confuse you, but we are descendants of supermen, probably from Atlantis. We need to take back what is ours and restore peace and harmony to this wretched world.”

“Aren’t you, you know, a priest? Don’t you believe in God and stuff?” Hinckley asks.

“Not the God you’re thinking of, not anymore. You and me, we were deceived. The whole of Christianity was a plot conceived by the Jews. Notice how they are the ‘chosen ones’ in the Bible? That was their way of holding sway over those vagabond tribes, and even they were surprised at how quickly it spread. Notice how all religions are scrutinized by Christianity except Judaism? Christianity was started by Jews. As for me being a priest, well, it’s a job. I don’t know how to do anything else. Except change the world. Another beer?”

Crowley quickly drains his and Hinckley does the same. Rodgers has long since finished his. In his alcoholic stupor, Crowley’s words are sinking into his brain.

Crowley returns with three more tins. “I hope I can trust you guys, you know, to keep this conversation amongst us. By the way, did either of you grow up around black people?”

Rodgers shakes his head. Hinckley nods.

“Did you like them?”

They both shake their head.

“Did they make you feel uncomfortable?”

They both nod.

Crowley beams. He silently thanks the spirits that led him to these two young men. “They shouldn’t live among you and you shouldn’t live among them.”

“So what can a fella do?” Rodgers asks, breaking his silence.

“Change the world.”

“How?”

“Separate the races. White among white and black among black and yellow among yellow. Never shall they coexist… nor want to coexist.”

“It’ll never happen. Not in your lifetime, not in mine. The niggers are everywhere, and there are even Mexicans moving into Nebraska,” Hinckley says.

“It will happen, but it will take effort,” says Crowley. “A war effort.”

“Well, shit,” says Rodgers. “I ain’t fighting no war passing out paychecks. Sign me up.”

“It’s not that easy,” says Crowley gravely. “You first need to earn my trust. If I take you in, and you join me and the armies back in the States and around the world, how do I know you won’t betray me, you know, to the Navy?”

“We’ll swear,” says Hinckley, “on a Bible or something.”

“That won’t do.” Crowley desperately wants compatriots but is rightfully cautious of two so immature and obtuse. He had hoped to find more cerebral partners, but the gods apparently don’t have that in their plans.

“Come back tomorrow, and I will find a way to test your word. If successful, we will start straight away.”

Crowley calls a cab for the two young men, to take them the five miles back to base. They finish another beer and smoke another cigarette while they wait for the taxi.

After they leave, Crowley is so excited that he nearly has an erection, a sensation he hasn’t felt since Houston. Even then, it was seldom, only occurring when he heard debauched confessions or during that awkward moment when a child would sit on his lap and squirm, shame reddening his face to a crimson hue.

He has a plan of attack. He has formulated this plan since Houston, but the opportunity to carry it out never arose there. The opportunity has now presented itself to him in Scotland, in the Navy, as he had hoped it would.

The previous week, just before the Saturday Mass, a young black couple, a sailor and his wife, had entered his office.

The sailor himself was slight and very dark, dark skinned of a hue Crowley would expect to find only in Africa. The girl was very pregnant and very light-skinned; so light-skinned that Crowley decided she was of a mixed race origin.

Crowley was disgusted at the thought of her mixed ancestry, just another example of the races intermingling. Just another example of the dilution of the white race.

He was polite to the couple. They asked him to baptize their child when it was born.

“I’d be delighted,” he said. “Please, tell me, where do you live? I would like to check up on you from time to time, and see how you’re doing, with the child and with each other. I long for the time when priests made house calls. I think the world, the parishes, were better places.”

“We live in Lutherkirk, right in the village,” the young sailor replied. “I guess you could come and visit, though the place may be messy.”

“You should see mine,” said Father Crowley, knowing that would never happen.

As the young couple left his office to take their place in the pews, Crowley called them back.

He placed his hand on the lower abdomen of the mother-to-be and blessed the unborn child.

In his mind, he said a curse.

A chartered bus takes Chris and a small number of recent graduates to Pensacola and the various “A” schools on three different bases in that city.

He was paid just before leaving boot camp and allowed to cash his first check, about eight hundred dollars, more money than he has ever seen. He has no idea how to save it or spend it.

It is his first trip in public with his uniform on. He is wearing the white uniform with a short-sleeve shirt, white pants, patent leather shoes and the typical sailor’s hat, known as a Dixie cup. As he is an E-1, the lowest possible rank, he has no stripes on his sleeves and no service ribbons on his chest. He is a swath of solid white, not unlike an ice cream man. His shaved blond hair is just starting to grow back; too short to lie down, it stands straight up out of his pink scalp.

Still, despite the blandness of his uniform, he feels special. He feels official. He wears the uniform of an organization, and he feels like a part of something solid, like a family or a fraternity. He doesn’t feel quite as alone.