Brother Odd

CHAPTER 10

BY THE TIME I CHANGED INTO THERMAL LONG Johns, pulled on jeans and a crewneck sweater, got feet into ski boots, grabbed my Gore-Tex/Thermolite jacket, rushed downstairs, crossed the parlor, and pushed through the oak door into the guesthouse cloister, dawn had come.

Sullen light brushed a gray veneer over the limestone columns encircling the courtyard. Under the cloister ceiling, darkness held fast, as if the night were so unimpressed by the dreary morning that it might not retreat.

In the courtyard, without ski boots, St. Bartholomew stood in fresh powder, offering a winterized pumpkin in his outstretched hand.

On the east side of the cloister, directly across from the point at which I burst into it, was the guesthouse entrance to the abbatial church. Voices raised in prayer and a tolling bell echoed to me not from the church but instead along a passageway ahead and to my right.

Four steps led up to that barrel-vaulted stone corridor, which itself led twenty feet into the grand cloister. Here a courtyard four times larger than the first was framed by an even more impressive colonnade.

The forty-six brothers and five novices were gathered in this open courtyard in full habit, facing Abbot Bernard, who stood on the bell dais, with one hand rhythmically drawing upon the toll rope.

Matins had concluded, and near the end of Lauds, they had come out of the church for the final prayer and the abbot's address.

The prayer was the Angelus, which is beautiful in Latin, when raised with many voices.

A chanted response rose from the brothers as I arrived: "Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum." Then abbot and all said, "Ave Maria."

Two sheriff's deputies waited in the shelter of the cloister as the brothers in the courtyard finished the prayer. The cops were big men and more solemn than the monks.

They stared at me. Clearly I was not a cop, and apparently I was not a monk. My indeterminate status made me a person of interest.

Their stares were so intense that I wouldn't have been surprised if, in the bitter air, their eyes had begun to steam as did their every exhalation.

Having had much experience of police, I knew better than to approach them with the suggestion that their suspicions would best be directed at the glowering Russian, wherever he might coil at this moment. As a consequence, their interest in me would only intensify.

Although anxious to know the reason that the sheriff had been called, I resisted the urge to ask them. They would be inclined to view my ignorance as merely a pretense of ignorance, and they would regard me with greater suspicion than they did now.

Once a cop has found you of even passing interest, regarding a criminal matter, you can do nothing to remove yourself from his list of potential suspects. Only events beyond your control can clear you. Like being stabbed, shot, or strangled by the real villain.

"Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi," said the brothers, and the abbot said, "Or emus" which meant "Let us pray."

Less than half a minute later, the Angelus concluded.

Usually, after the Angelus, the abbot's address consists of a brief commentary on some sacred text and its application to monastic life. Then he does a soft-shoe number while singing "Tea for Two."

All right, I made up the soft-shoe and "Tea for Two." Abbot Bernard does resemble Fred Astaire, which is why I've never been able to get this irreverent image out of my head.

Instead of his usual address, the abbot announced a dispensation from attendance at morning Mass to all those who might be needed to assist the sheriff's deputies in a thorough search of the buildings.

The time was 6:28. Mass would begin at seven o'clock.

Those essential to the conduct of Mass were to attend and, after the service, were to make themselves available to the authorities to answer questions and to assist as needed.

Mass would be over at about 7:50. Breakfast, which is taken in silence, always begins at eight o'clock.

The abbot also excused those assisting the police from Terce, the third of seven periods of daily prayer. Terce is at 8:40 and lasts for about fifteen minutes. The fourth period in the Divine Office is Sext, at eleven-thirty, before lunch.

When most laymen learn that a monk's life is so regimented and that the same routine is followed day after day, they grimace. They think this life must be boring, even tedious.

From my months among the monks, I had learned that, quite the contrary, these men are energized by worship and meditation. During the recreation hours, between dinner and Compline, which is the night prayer, they are a lively bunch, intellectually engaging and amusing.

Well, most of them are as I've described, but a handful are shy. And a couple are too pleased by their selfless offering of their lives to make the offering seem entirely selfless.

One of them, Brother Matthias, has such encyclopedic knowledge of-and such strong opinions about-the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan that he can bore your ass off.

Monks are not necessarily holy by virtue of being monks. And they are always and entirely human.

At the end of the abbot's remarks, many brothers hurried to the deputies waiting in the shelter of the cloister, eager to assist.

I became aware of one novice lingering in the courtyard, in the descending snow. Although his face was shadowed by his hood, I could see that he was staring at me.

This was Brother Leopold, who had finished his postulancy only in October and had worn the habit of a novice less than two months. He had a wholesome Midwestern face, with freckles and a winning smile.

Of the five current novices, I distrusted only him. My reason for not trusting him eluded me. It was a gut feeling, nothing more.

Brother Knuckles approached me, stopped, shook himself rather like a dog might, and cast the clinging snow from his habit. Pushing back his hood, he said softly, "Brother Timothy is missing."

Brother Timothy, master of the mechanical systems that kept the abbey and school habitable, wasn't one to arrive late for Matins, and certainly wasn't a man who would run off for a secular adventure, in violation of his vows. His greatest weakness was Kit Kat bars.

"He must've been the one I nearly fell over last night, at the corner of the library. I have to speak to the police."

"Not yet. Walk with me," said Brother Knuckles. "We need a place don't have a hundred ears."

I glanced toward the courtyard. Brother Leopold had vanished.

With his fresh face and Midwestern directness, Leopold in no way seems calculating or sly, furtive or deceitful.

Yet he has an unsettling way of arriving and departing with a suddenness that sometimes reminds me of a ghost materializing and dematerializing. He is there, then isn't. Isn't, then is.

With Knuckles, I left the grand cloister and followed the stone passage to the guest cloister, from there through the oak door into the main parlor on the ground floor of the guesthouse.

We went to the fireplace at the north end of the room, though no fire was burning, and sat forward on armchairs, facing each other.

"After we talked last night," Knuckles said, "I did a bed check. Don't have no authority. Felt sneaky. But it seemed the right thing."

"You made an executive decision."

"That's just what I done. Even back when I was dumb muscle and lost to God, I sometimes made executive decisions. Like, the boss sends me to break a guy's legs, but the guy gets the point after I break one, so I don't do the second. Things like that."

"Sir, I'm just curious… When you presented yourself as a postulant to the Brothers of St. Bartholomew, how long did your first confession last?"

"Father Reinhart says two hours ten minutes, but it felt like a month and a half."

"I'll bet it did."

"Anyway, some brothers leave their doors part open, some don't, but no room's ever locked. I used a flashlight from each doorway to quick scope the bed. Nobody was missin'."

"Anybody awake?"

"Brother Jeremiah suffers insomnia. Brother John Anthony had a gut full of acid from yesterday's dinner."

"The chile rellenos."

"I told 'em I thought maybe I smelled somethin' burnin', I was just checkin' around to be sure there weren't no problem."

"You lied, sir," I said, just to tweak him.

"It ain't a lie that's gonna put me in the pit with Al Capone, but it's one step on a slippery slope I been down before."

His hand, so brutal-looking, invested the sign of the cross with a special poignancy, and called to mind the hymn "Amazing Grace."

The brothers arise at five o'clock, wash, dress, and line up at 5:40 in the courtyard of the grand cloister, to proceed together into the church for Matins and Lauds. At two o'clock in the morning, therefore, they're sacked out, not reading or playing a Game Boy.

"Did you go over to the novitiate wing, check on the novices?"

"No. You said the brother facedown in the yard was in black, you almost fell over him."

In some orders, the novices wear habits similar to-or the same as-those worn by the brothers who have professed their final vows, but at St. Bartholomew's, the novices wear gray, not black.

Knuckles said, "I figured the unconscious guy in the yard, he maybe came to, got up, went back to bed-or he was the abbot."

"You checked on the abbot?"

"Son, I ain't gonna try that smelled-somethin'-burnin' routine on the abbot in his private quarters, him as smart as three of me. Besides, the guy in the yard was heavy, right? You said heavy. And Abbot Bernard, you gotta tie him down in a mild wind."

"Fred Astaire."

Knuckles winced. He pinched the lumpy bridge of his mushroom nose. "Wish you never told me that 'Tea for Two' thing. Can't keep my mind on the abbot's mornin' address, just waitin' for his soft-shoe."

"When did they discover Brother Timothy was missing?"

"I seen he ain't in line for Matins. By Lauds, he still don't show, so I duck outta church to check his room. He's just pillows."

"Pillows?"

"The night before, what looked like Brother Timothy under the blanket, by flashlight from his doorway, was just extra pillows."

"Why would he do that? There's no rule about lights out. There's no bed check."

"Maybe Tim, he didn't do it himself, somebody else faked it to buy time, keep us from realizin' Tim was gone."

"Time for what?"

"Don't know. But if I'd seen he was gone last night, I would've known it was him you found in the yard, and I'd have woke the abbot."

"He's a little heavy, all right," I said.

"Kit Kat belly. If a brother was missin' when I did bed check, the cops would've been here hours ago, before the storm got so bad."

"And now the search is harder," I said. "He's… dead, isn't he?"

Knuckles looked into the fireplace, where no fire burned. "My professional opinion is, I kinda think so."

I'd had too much of Death. I'd fled from Death to this haven, but of course in running from him, I had only run into his arms.

Life you can evade; death you cannot.