To keep the world out and our attention in, the dorm windows started six feet off the floor. I stood on a chair and leaned on the cool tile sill. The butternut tree blocked most of the view, but I could just make them out through the crook of a bare branch. It took my eyes a while to adjust, but when they did I saw five or six silhouettes in the half-moon light. They were too far and too dark to make anything out, but I knew they were freshmen. There was a pause, a small splash, someone speaking, then silence. I had to hold my breath and cup my ears to hear anything. When it happened the third time, I remembered. They were being baptized tonight, and Michael Ashbury would be among them.
Aside from Romans and Christians, which everyone played, new seminarians didn’t undergo systematic hazing at Saint John the Divine. They were baptized instead. I heard another splash and remembered my own Bog baptism two years before. The ritual was always performed by sophomores and had been going on almost as long as the seminary itself. Unlike the current evening and its heat wave, that night was cool and cloudy. I stood in the muck up to my knees in almost total darkness and listened to the words—a not-so-clever send-up of the Apostles’ Creed.
“Do you believe in Saint John’s and the Spirit of the Sem?”
The kid in front of me, the one about to get pushed underwater, said, “I do.”
“Do you believe in loyalty, courage, bravery, and truth?”
He did.
“Do you believe in the sacred brotherhood in which you are about to share?”
That, too.
“Do you believe in seeking, supporting, fomenting, and aiding REDRO at all times and under all circumstances?”
He nodded.
“Then I say, Spirit of the Sem, come down on this man and make him one of us this day and forever more.” Here the initiate’s head was pushed underwater and held there while the sophomore pronounced, “I baptize you in the spirit of REDRO.” He made a counterclockwise circle in the air with his left hand as everyone answered a hushed amen.
REDRO was our call to anarchy, REDRO was the mission to pull at the loose threads wherever they were found, to resist in ways big and small, to undermine the monks’ total control. REDRO was about fighting for everything boys had a right to be. REDRO was ORDER spelled backward.
When it was my turn, I listened to the words refract underwater, the cool blackness enveloping me completely. It seemed to go on forever, and my only tie with the surface was the hand holding my head down firmly. Eventually I panicked and pushed upward, trying to reach the air. But I just sank farther into the mud. The boy at the other end of the hand was now silent, and by the time the amen finally reached my ears, he was already lifting me up by my jersey, pulling me back from the murky water an entirely new man.
“What are you doing, pervert?” Eric demanded, interrupting my recollection. He was standing behind me in his pajamas, arms folded across his chest. Jon stood behind him, rubbing his eyes.
“Baptisms tonight,” I said.
“No, freak. Why are you standing there naked?”
I wasn’t naked—I was wearing underwear—but at Saint John the Divine the absence of pajamas constituted nudity.
“You’ll get in trouble. Again.” Eric hopped onto the chair beside me and looked past the butternut tree, thinking no doubt of his own freshman baptism. Jon waited until I stepped down, then took my place on the chair with Eric to watch the last kid get dunked. But the pair soon shuffled off to bed and the dorm was quiet once again.
I heard the cellophane flap of dragonflies through the open window. It reminded me of when I was a kid chasing fireflies down at my grandfather’s house in Texas. I thought that if I could find one this far north I’d catch it, tie it to a little loop of string, and slip it glowing down Mary’s finger by the moonlit Bog. She was the kind of girl who would appreciate that sort of thing. I kept thinking of Mary, and it became impossible to sleep. To keep my hands from distraction, I clenched them in prayer.
Make me pure, oh, Lord. Make me strong. Don’t give up my seat in heaven.
THREE THE LONG WALK
The day began, as did every day, with a bell at 6:00 a.m. The student body stumbled into the communal washrooms bleary-eyed and cowlicked. It splashed water in its face, tied its tie, pulled a brush through its hair, and herded downstairs, past the classrooms, the dining halls, and the guesthouse, then through a dark, submarinelike passageway into the dimly lit cavern of the new abbey church. There it knelt and battled with unconsciousness as the monks trickled in.
The monks were in their choir stalls in the apse behind the altar, each in his own cubbyhole on two opposing sides. We called it the Rack. The abbot was always among the first to take his place. He was a misshapened little man with an island of hair in the middle of a mostly bald head, a curved spine that forced him to walk with his waist jutting ahead of his shoulders, and a cross around his neck that was two times too big for his body. Despite his diminutive stature, the other monks shrank in his presence. We liked this. Sometimes during Mass he’d yawn loudly, and occasionally he’d even snore. This morning, however, he filled the silence with the click of his fingernail clipper, which echoed through the church.
About five minutes prior to Mass one of the priests came off the Rack and passed in front of the abbot, genuflected before the central altar, and disappeared into the confessional at the far end of the church. To receive Communion with the stain of mortal sin on one’s soul wasn’t done. Venial, or minor sins, were forgiven in a prayer before one received the sacrament; peace with God was made on the spot. But a mortal sin separated man from God and man from the church. Confession was the only remedy. Heady stuff, these mortal sins. Murder, rape, and adultery were all there, but so was jerking off. Thankfully a quick Confession could right any wrong of the previous night. The road to forgiveness wasn’t long in terms of natural distance, yet it was a parade past every student, brother, and priest on the hill. It was a considerable journey. One could wait until Sunday Confession to get rid of all the other stuff, but this sin, this mortal sin, had to be snuffed out right there and then.
Michael Ashbury slid off the wooden kneeler and onto the pew, made the sign of the cross, then rose and started the long walk past us. The clap of his shoes reverberated off the tiles and up to the domed ceiling, then ricocheted around the church. He genuflected as he passed the altar and bowed his way into the shadowy recesses of the confessional. From two pews behind me someone whispered, “Looks like Mikey had a date with the Palm Sisters.”
I covered my mouth to hold the laughter in, then looked over at Eric kneeling next to me to see if he’d heard it, too. But he was staring straight ahead. Eventually he stood, waited for us to make way, then slipped out. He followed Michael Ashbury and they were forgiven.
Halfway through Mass the frog—silent for a week—decided to join in again. We all turned our attention to the back of the church, and a few people began snickering. Brother Thomas swooped down from the Rack, pulled a swift genuflection in front of the altar, and scurried to the back of the church. Frantically he searched the little fountain and pool. Then he spotted it. He flipped his scapular around his back, tucked it into his belt, rolled up his sleeve, and knelt.
A few seconds later there was a splash and then Brother Thomas straightened with a handful of dripping frog. He took the intruder to the main doors and pushed the handle down. It was locked. He marched to the side entrance and found that door locked, too. We all stared, waiting to see what he’d do next. Red-faced and fuming, Brother Thomas marched the frog past us, bowed abruptly to the altar, then continued out of the back of the church and down the hall in search of an unlocked door to the natural world.
I waited beside our table as everyone else took their places. Even after Mass finally ended, we weren’t allowed to speak. I made the mistake of talking before breakfast my very first morning at Saint John the Divine,