Brother Jesse's Lamentations

[dave]

Fire!

I remember thinking that we had nothing at Our Lady's that thieves would have valued and so I was wondering why in the middle of the night someone was holdng a pillow over my face as they tried to suffocate me. My eyes stung terribly and as I came awake an awful smell filled my senses. I tried to get up. I was going to be sick to my stomach. I heard the crackling. FIRE! The monastery was on fire! Oh, God! Don't let me be burned again! I was moving now but unable to breathe very much, choking each time I tried to inhale.

I crossed the small space to Beep’s bed and felt for him. I tried to punch him awake, but he seemed to not care, as though he would be perfectly happy to sleep through it. Fully awake now and terrifically frightened, I pulled on his arm and punched him again, but I wanted so much to be out of there I almost left him. Beep came awake and started coughing. I grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt and pulled him up and out of bed across the room and into the hall. The house lights were still on, but the smoke occluded much of what would have been visible. Beep was trying to speak, but he continued to cough and I shouted in his ear to go out the rear hall door to the fire escape. Thank God this place used to be a resort and the law required iron stairways down the outside of the building!

I had grabbed my robe in the rush from the bedroom and now I threw it over my head and let it fall down around me while I pulled the edge of the cowl across my face to breathe through. It helped a little. I could hear the other men shouting now and as one passed, he grasped my robe and towed me along down the hallway and out the door on to the fire escape platform, where I was able to gulp some air.



"Who's out?" I shouted.

"I'll do a count," said Bouncer, who had come down the hall with Beep and me.

"Get down the stairs and get them around you on the ground," I said, remembering how we used to account for everyone after a raid in Africa.

"Don't stay here, Jesse," Bouncer said.

"Get going!" I shouted in his face and pushed him toward the steps.


Eye of The Tiger

[dave]

"Don't stay here, Jesse," Bouncer said.

"Get going!" I shouted in his face and pushed him toward the steps

"Listen Up!" he shouted as he started down the iron stairs. "Harpo, let's hear you! Cat! Headless!"

A moment later he shouted up from the gound, "No Agnes! No Kickstart!"

"I'm here!" shouted Kickstart in the confusion.





I knew I had to go back in for Agnes. I could hear crackling, but still saw no fire. There were no flames showing. None I could see. Hall lights winked through the smoke so I knew we still had electricity. It was perfectly safe. But I couldn't move. I was petrified.

All I ever wanted to be was a man, but a live one. Physically I'd been a coward all my life. I proved it on the snowy afternoon of the plane crash years before. It had taken a long time, but eventually I came to accept myself and my limitations. At my age, I did not need to show myself I was something I was not and never could be. And on this horrible night, I did not need to go back in for a man who would be dead in a few months. True, I did not have a long and productive life rolling out ahead of me ... not at age 67 ... but it seemed fruitless to risk what time I had left for a dying alcoholic who couldn't find his way out of his room and down the hall to this fire escape.

So much for self-serving rationalization. I was the Abbot. Maybe Brother Jesse could justify not going back in, but as abbot I knew I had to go. It occurred to me to wonder how often the soul of a coward is moved to action by the role he has agreed to play. Pin a medal on the poor son of a bitch and he'll act like a hero. Such a concept of ennobling has probably gotten a lot of people killed.

I pulled my robe over my head and threw it in the corner of the fire escape where a drift of snow had built up. Kicking it into the icy mix and stamping the rough fabric with my feet to get it as wet as possible, I shouted down to Bouncer.

"I'm going in. DO NOT come back up." I don't know why I said that. I guess because John Wayne would have. He wore a lot of medals.


Highway To The Danger Zone

[dave]

As soon as I pulled my wet robe on and moved through the door I saw Agnes standing 30 feet down the hall. The breeze behind me cleared some of the smoke, but it was still thick. I could see flames a short distance beyond where he stood, licking out from under doors and moving along the ceiling. Agnes might be quite confused from his medicines, I thought, but I suspected this was not the case.

"Come on! This way, Agnes!" I shouted, but he did not budge. I huffed to his side and repeated myself. Tears were carving white streaks down his smoke stained face. "No," he mouthed.

"Agnes, this is no way to end it," I whined. "Follow me," and I pulled on his arm.

"Stop!" he cried. "Leave me be!"

"You know goddamn well I can't leave you here, Agnes!" I shouted in his face.

"Can't you do this one thing for me?" he said. "Can't you just leave a man in peace to die?"

"You don't really want to die this way," I said.

"YOU don't want to die this way," he shouted at me, "so Leave!"

"Agnes, I can't leave you!" I repeated.

"I know. You don't have the guts to let a man die. You've never had the guts to do anything! Goddammit, Jesse! Do the right thing!"

If I did what he asked I would spend the rest of my life agonizing in guilt, for it is a terrible thing and a mortal sin to let a man take his own life.


www.windsweptpress.com/TEMP/fire agnes.jpg[/img]


"Order me to leave you, my abbot," I said to him.

"No," he replied. "Do it yourself. Be MY abbot. Help me to die!"

How can leaving a man to his death be the right thing? I still ask myself that. I turned and ran down the hall to the fire escape. When I got to the foot of the stairs and staggered across the icy ground, Bouncer ran to me.

"You didn't find him, for chrissakes? His room is right down the hall!"

"He wouldn't come with me," I said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Bouncer turned toward the fire escape, but I grabbed his arm and stopped him.

"Stay here, Brother," I said.

"You can't just leave a man in there," he cried.

"He deserves to make his own fate," I said. "Right or wrong," I added.

Bouncer looked me in the eye and then looked away. A fireman in his rubber coat and helmet rushed up to us and screamed, "Is everyone out?"

"Yes," I said, "everyone who was able."

"What the hell does that mean?" asked the man.

"There's a dead man in the fire," I said.


Prepare Ye The Way

[dave]

Loss

Agnes did not go quietly. Five minutes after I told the fireman there was a dead man in the fire, our former abbot let out a scream I will never forget. When I dream of that snowy field on a Sunday afternoon so many years before and hear the scream, I cannot tell if it is his or mine. But he was killed by the fire and I lived. It was a horrible enough way to die, but was almost made worse when a brave fireman rushed in and searched from room to room. I don’t know where they found Afnes, evidently on the other side of the building. The firemen hauled a stretcher over there and brought back Agnes’ body to the ambulance near where we stood watching the fire. He was dead by the time they hoisted him up into the ambulance.

www.windsweptpress.com/TEMP/loss lucy.jpg[/img]

The monastery was a total loss. For a building filled with rot, it went up like a tinder box, throwing flames high into the sky and spreading to the nearby hemlock trees. The firemen worried about the possibility of a forest fire and soon were training their hoses on the nearby trees more than on the monastery. Everyone knew the building was gone.

All of our work for scholars from years past was now ashes floating in the pools of black water that ran off the steaming mass of what had been our monastery. Thousands of gallons of water were pumped from the three trucks by the local fire departments as they battled the blaze.

The flashing red lights and activity around what was now a ruin lessened considerably after two hours when the hulk that had been our monastery fell in upon itself, sparks whooshing up in a curtain of applause for its last performance. I began to see the outline of the trees against the dawning sky in the east. Soon the sun would move up from behind the Taconic Mountains and pour itself over the valley just like any other day, as if nothing was new or changed.


Morning Has Broken (nice rendition)

[dave]

"Poor Agnes, " I said to Harpo as we stood side by side and viewed the smoldering smoky ruin after the flames were subdued.

"Agnes made his choice," said Harpo.

I reflected on that for a moment, for the first time wondering if Agnes had been of sound mind. For all I knew he may not have been sober. But I could beat myself about the head for the rest of my life over "shoulda/coulda's" as Sparky used to say. It was done.

www.windsweptpress.com/TEMP/loss piano.jpg[/img]

"We've lost everything," I said.

Harpo sighed audibly. "We are blessed to have had little to lose." he said. "I lost my Timex."

"All our work and records and manuscript copies ..." I said.

"You know as well as I that we no longer had any work of great importance," he said.

"We lost our rice and beans," I said.

"Thank God," said Harpo.


Fire Escape



Fools

[dave]

I turned when I heard Sally’s voice call my name. She walked up and stood hesitantly before me, then reached up to give me a hug. I couldn’t help myself, I folded her up in my arms and gave her the kind of embrace I had not given a woman since Immy. She did not resist. I couldn’t let go. I wanted to hold on to her forever. Hold on to the feminine, the safety, the beautiful golds and pinks and blues on the horizon, to life and maybe to “a manifestation of God personalized for my feeble mind.” I don’t know what I wanted. Sally’s hands slid down my arms signaling me to release her. I let go and sobbed.





“It will be OK,” she said.

“It will never be OK,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “I am still so afraid.”

“But we’re not alone,” she said. “He is with us.”

“I want to be with you,” I said.

“You will always be with me, David, in my heart.” Gently, she continued, “I have a life to live. So do you.”

“Mine is so confused. I’ve lost the map,” I said.

“Forget the map,” she said. “Remember the dance.”

Looking up into my eyes, Sally kissed the hollow of her right hand and placed it on my chest, her eyes still holding mine. She leaned into me and pressed the flat of her hand hard on my chest. I felt my heart stop. Then she turned and walked back down the driveway, past the fire trucks, stepping lightly over the hoses that lay across the ground. The dawn broke in a bouquet of colors as Sally disappeared into the small crowd of firemen and neighbors. I never saw the young woman again, except in my mind, my fields of gold.


Fields of Gold

[dave]

POST

That was almost the end of Sally. We'll see her once more.

We said we'd cover the following:

1. The Roof

2. The Night Chapel and St. Lucy

3. Immy, Jesse's childhood girlfriend

4. Sally, woman he met in the woods, who he believes to be his guardian angel, and who becomes his real estate broker.

I had added the topic of Fathers at the last moment. But I forgot that I included a lot of Fathers stuff in Utica Boyhood, and it doesn't seem very efficient to re-post it here. So, instead, I'll post the ending of Brother Jesse's story, beginning with his thoughts on what he may have learned toward the end of his life.

We'll start in that hallowed hall of Americana, McDonalds.

[dave]

Stand

I’m glad McDonald’s no longer charges for the use of their WiFi. As I sit here with Bouncer on his second large chocolate shake and me typing away, I’m happy to be able to enter my thoughts on the laptop within an hour of my having them. That’s kind of scary and not necessarily useful to anyone reading this.



I feel moved to continue to pour out my thoughts on the theme of being a player. There came a time when I withdrew from life’s battle and it coincided with my arrival in West Saugerties. I thought I was enacting a grand sacrifice by living a life of total obedience, but what I really did was refuse to follow my unique path. Even an obedient monk has to live his own life. But I wanted to sit back and let an abbot lead me. Sparky knew how to lead a man, but he also knew I was still an adolescent in my early thirties. He died before he could finish raising me.

I think Agnes saw me for what I was, and still am on many days. Despite his own problems ... or maybe because of them ... Agnes saw a soul wasting himself well into his sixties. He did not let me get away with much, I remember. He put me in the crosshairs of situations needing action a number of times. His final act of coaxing was his plea to let him die the night of the fire. One last time he asked me to stop hiding my head deep inside the cowl atop my monk's robe and to instead just be a brother. To do what I knew to be right without anyone's approval. To stand alone and be a man.


What A Man

[dave]

Responsible


To those of you who have emailed me, please accept my heartfelt Thanks. I will try to write back to each of you as I have the time.

We lost the roof over our heads, that's for sure. And at least some of our antiquities work had indeed been important, but it wasn't exactly lost in the fire because it had been published. We held nothing valuable in our monastery except our lives. And every one of us who wanted his life kept it.



Perhaps I have been a bystander for too long. But I was made a player and I will answer for my sins as an active participant. I took years of evolution, a dance of atoms and molecules begun by a heavenly father, a part of whom no doubt evolved right along with his creation, and I ended a small part of it, just as surely as if I had shot Agnes through the heart. I stopped his cells' mitosis and meiosis and gametes and all those things and processes I learned in high school Biology class and promptly forgot ten minutes after the Regents Exam ended. I let a crazy man do himself in. I will some day stand before God and be asked if I thought I did the right thing in letting him die. I will be able to say only that I did what I thought was right when I needed to act.


At Last

[dave]

It will come as no surprise to any who have read the book or blog that shortly after the fire, Brother Jesse is killed in Utica. If you're interested in the details, you can go to the original blog at:

monkinthecellar.blogspot.com

Scroll to the bottom of the above page and read Bouncer's account, Post no. 168.

Bouncer finishes the story with the End Notes.

End Notes

I find myself the keeper of Jesse’s Legend as I ruefully call it, but I cannot explain why a man known to so few during his lifetime has generated so much interest since his death. I must get five or six calls each week from one person or another who knew him slightly or well. People often call to reminisce about a past conversation with Jesse. I’m amazed when they typically remember only being with him and laughing with him, never anything significant he might have said. A caller will spend twenty minutes describing the weather on an afternoon when he or she sat with Jesse and never mention my brother monk having said anything helpful. I suspect he may have, but more memorable to the caller was simply Jesse’s company.

We’re still listed in the phone book as Our Lady’s Monastery of West Saugerties. No more Ardent Brothers, St. Anne and M&M were shut down by a Dublin commission and now live in England. They are lucky to not be sitting in a Dublin jail. I haven’t heard from either of them and such may be part of their agreement with County Cork’s prosecution solicitor.



I do stay in touch with those who knew and loved Jesse. Sally Prendel married a man from Woodstock who stole her heart and gave her babies. He is a fairly successful musician in the area and the two manage a small recording studio while she continues to sell real estate occasionally. Sally spends a good deal of time with her children and often takes them with her on walks in the woods. Sally told me she passes by the two old stumps from time to time, but has never seen anyone seated on them since the afternoon she walked by, heard a noise and turned to find Jesse sitting there. She sometimes wonders if indeed their meeting was her dream or his, or if it in fact was a dream. For two strangers to happen upon each other in the woods and be moved to confess everything about themselves, the minute details of their joys and worries, is indeed miraculous. Sally walked back down the mountain trail that day, troubled but convinced she had met her guardian angel. She has since decided such a notion is too complicated or too simple, maybe both.

All I Need Is a Miracle. It is not true that Mike and the Mechanics are in realty Cat, Raiser, Izzy and Beep Beep, although the latter and the lead singer could be twins.

[dave]

Bouncer continues with Sally's story.

Not long ago on walk through the forest on a soft summer afternoon, as Sally passed the stumps she heard a small sound and turned to see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. She sat down on the damp surface of one stump while her little boy knelt on the forest floor twenty feet away and scooped up armfuls of leaves, tossing them into the air. Her four year old daughter climbed up on the other stump.

“Mommy, there’s a word here on the seat,” said the girl.

Sally stood, took a step and looked down.

“Where do you see it, Jessica?” she said.

“Over here, near the back,” came the answer.

Crudely dug out with a knife was one word, “Immanuel.”

“What does it say, Mommy?” asked the girl.



Sally was unable to respond for a moment. Then she said, “It says He is with us, honey.”

“Who?”

Sally said she remembered Jesse’s phrase, “a manifestation of God personalized for my feeble mind,” but told her daughter, “your guardian angel.”

Is a guardian angel real or someone we’ve made up? Maybe it is woven into the fabric of who we are to each other as humans. Or could it be a manifestation for our feeble minds? Does it matter? Maybe it’s just part of the dance.

Julio turned legitimate and joined the Xaverian Brothers, finished college and taught high school in Malden, MA for three years before joining a mission in Kenya, where he remains today. I asked him a year ago if he remembered the smell of orange jasmine. He laughed and said he tries not to.

Scent of A Woman MV (You and I) I know, I know. Pretend they're Puerto Rican.

[dave]

Bouncer finishes up the End Notes.

I was named executor of Jesse’s estate and I administer the money discovered in the accounts on the day we drove to the bank in the village. We’ve changed banks.

The final letter from Agnes arrived at the office of a local attorney wrapped in a note requesting the woman send it to Jesse after Agnes’ death. She promptly forgot it until reading of Jesse’s killing in the newspaper. She gave me the letter 3 weeks after the fateful trip to Utica.

Agnes wrote:

My dear brother in Christ, Jessica. I am not sorry for what I’ve done, despite your fretting and whining. I have harmed only myself. As for your uncomfortableness with my opinion of your behaviors, I was only the light shining on the person you had become. I am about to saddle you with more responsibility, this time financial. Perhaps you feel I should let you alone and leave you to your old age, but it’s precisely because you are coming closer to death year by year that I intend to goad you even from here, wherever I have wound up. Before you die, you need to amount to something. I’m sure that was your intention when you were a young man. It remains His intention for you to this day. I have come to believe that God requires nothing heroic of us, let alone saintly. He wants only for us to leave the sidelines and to join the dance. This may be your last invitation. Don’t refuse, as I did.

Aside from your proclivity to run and hide, a trait so remindful of myself, I thank you for being a splendid abbot to me. Your Brother in Christ’s Love, Agnes.”

The brothers decided to remain in Saugerties. We bought an old farmhouse in Blue Mountain and four of us still reside there today: Izzy, Beep Beep, Kickstart and myself. Harpo died a year after the fire and the other brothers drifted off to one mission pursuit or another. Two, Headless and Raiser, are no longer religious brothers. Both are married and have children.



Modern chemistry has saved Beep Beep in the form of effective new drugs and as long as he takes them he is fairly normal. He hasn’t taken his clothes off except for showers and bed in the past three years. He works part time at the little market in Blue Mountain.

Terd entered the Capuchin Monastery in France and was never heard from again.

And me, I’m just getting older. Sometimes I miss our monastery, but not the plumbing.

Beep drew a picture of a monk sitting on a ledge and looking out over a valley. We hung it at the foot of the stairs here in the old farmhouse. At the bottom Beep wrote the phrase, "Monk On A Journey." He shrugged his shoulders when I asked if that was Jesse. I'd say it probably is, since Tapioca lies beneath it on the cold floor most days.

Bouncer




Yes, again. It's Tapioca's favorite song.
Fields of Gold




The End
....of the Thread. Quite a lot of the story was left out of this synopsis, so you might want to view the entire tale on the blog at:

monkinthecellar.blogspot.com

or see the book on Amazon at:

www.amazon.com/Monk-Cellar-David-Griffin/dp/1463759681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317682959&sr=8-1