The Book of Skulls

chapter twenty Ned

And now we’ve become detectives. Scouting all over Phoenix, trying to trace the skullhouse. I find it amusing: to come this far and not to be able to make the final connection. But all Eli has to go by is his newspaper clipping, which places the monastery “not far north of Phoenix.” That’s a big place, though, “not far north of Phoenix.” It covers everything between here and the Grand Canyon, say, from one side of the state to the other. We need help. After breakfast this morning Timothy took Eli’s clipping to the desk clerk, Eli feeling too shy or too eastern-looking to want to do the asking himself. The desk clerk didn’t know anything about any monastery anywhere, though, and suggested we inquire at the newspaper office, just across the street. But the newspaper, being an afternoon journal, didn’t open shop till nine, and we, still living on eastern standard time, had awakened very early this morning. It was even now only a quarter past eight. So we wandered around town to kill the forty-five minutes, peering at barber shops, at newsstands, at the windows of stores selling Indian pottery and cowboy accessories. The sun was already bright and the thermometer on a bank building announced that the temperature was seventy-nine degrees. It promised to be a stifling day. The sky was that fierce desert blue; the mountains just beyond the edge of town were pale brown. The city was silent, scarcely a car in the streets. Unrush hour in downtown Phoenix.

We hardly said a thing to one another. Oliver seemed still to be sulking over the ruckus he had started about that hitchhiker: he apparently felt embarrassed, and with good reason. Timothy acted bored and superior. He had expected Phoenix to be much livelier, the dynamic center of the dynamic Arizona economy, and the quiet here offended him. (Later we discovered that things are dynamic enough a mile or two north of downtown, where the real growth is taking place.) Eli was tense and withdrawn, no doubt wondering whether he had led us across the continent for nothing. And I? Edgy. Dry lips, dry throat. A tightness of the scrotum that comes over me only when I’m very, very, very nervous. Flexing and unflexing my gluteal muscles. What if the skullhouse doesn’t exist? Worse, what if it does? An end, then, to my elaborate oscillating dance; I would have to take sides at last, commit myself to the reality of the thing, give myself up wholly to the rites of the Keepers, or else, jeering, depart. What would I do? Always the threat of the Ninth Mystery lurked in the wings, shadowy, menacing, tempting. Eternities must be balanced by extinctions. Two live forever, two die at once. That proposition holds tender, quavering music for me; it shimmers afar; it sings seductively out of the naked hills. I fear it and yet I cannot resist the gamble it offers.

At nine we presented ourselves at the newspaper office. Again Timothy did the talking; his easy, self-assured, upper-class manners carry him smoothly through any kind of situation. The advantages of breeding. He identified us as college students doing research for a thesis on contemporary monasticism, which swept us past a receptionist and a reporter to one of the feature editors, who looked at our clipping and said that he knew nothing about any such monastery in the desert (dejection!) but that there was a man on his staff who specialized in keeping track of all the communes, cult headquarters, and similar settlements on the fringes of the town (hope!). Where was this man now? Oh, he’s on vacation, said the editor (despair!). When will be he back in town? Didn’t leave town, matter of fact (hope reborn!). Spending his holiday at home. He might be willing to talk. At our request, the editor phoned and got us invited out to the house of this specialist in crackpottery. “He lives up past Bethany Home Road, just off Central, the sixty-four hundred block. You know where that is? You just go up Central, past Camelback, past Bethany Home—”

A ten-minute drive. We left sleepy downtown behind, plunging northward through the busy uptown section, all glass skyscrapers and sprawling shopping centers, and passed through that into a district of impressive-looking modern homes half concealed by thick gardens of tropical vegetation. Beyond that a short way, into a more modest residential zone, and we came to the house of the man who had the answers. His name was Gilson. Forty, deep tan, open blue eyes, high shiny forehead. A pleasant sort. Keeping track of the lunatic fringe was plainly a hobby, not an obsession, with him; this wasn’t the sort of man who had obsessions. Yes, he knew about the Brotherhood of the Skulls, though he didn’t call it that. “The Mexican Fathers” was the term he used. Hadn’t been there himself, no, though he had talked to someone who had, visitor from Massachusetts, maybe even the same one who wrote the newspaper article. Timothy asked if Gilson could tell us where the monastery was. Gilson invited us inside: small house, clean, typical southwestern decor — Navaho rugs on the wall, half a dozen Hopi pots in cream and orange occupying the bookshelves. He produced a map of Phoenix and environs. “Here you are, now,” he said, tapping the map. “To get out of town you go over here, Black Canyon Highway, that’s a freeway, you pick it up here and ride north. Follow the signs to Prescott, though of course you don’t want to go anywhere near that far. Now, here, you see, not much past city limits, a mile, two miles, you get off the freeway — you got a map? Here, let me mark it. And you follow this road here — then you turn onto this one, see, going northeast — I guess you drive six, seven miles—” He sketched a series of zigzags on cur roadmap and finally a big X. “No,” he said “that isn’t where the monastery is. That’s where you leave your car and walk. The road becomes just a trail, there, no car could possibly get through, not even a jeep, but young fellers like you, you won’t have any problems, it’s just three, four miles straight east.”

“What if we miss it?” Timothy asked. “The monastery, not the road.”

“You won’t,” Gilson told us. “But if you come to the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation, you’ll know you’ve gone a little too far. And when you see Roosevelt Lake, you’ll know you’ve gone a whole lot too far.”

He asked us, as we left, to stop by at his house on our way back through town and tell him what we had discovered up there. “Like to keep my files up to date,” he said. “Been meaning to have a look at the place myself, only, you know how it is, lot of things to do and so little time for doing them.”

Sure, we told him. Well give you the whole story.

Into the car. Oliver driving, Eli navigating, the map spread out wide in his lap. Westward to Black Canyon Highway. A broad superhighway, frying in the midmorning heat. No traffic other than a few huge trucks. We headed north. All our questions would shortly be answered; doubtless some new ones would be asked. Our faith, or perhaps merely our naivete, would be repaid. I felt a chill in the midst of the torrid zone. I heard a brawling, surging overture rising from the pit, ominous, Wagnerian, tubas and trombones making a dark, throbbing music. The curtain was going up, though I was not sure if we were entering the last act or the first. No longer did I doubt that the skullhouse would be there. Gilson had been too matter-of-fact about it; it was no myth, just another manifestation of the urge to spirituality that this desert seemed to awaken in mankind. We would find the monastery, and it would be the right one, the lineal descendant of the one described in the Book of Skulls. Another delicious shiver: what if we came face to face with the very author of that ancient manuscript, millennial, timeless? Anything is possible, if ye have faith.

Faith. How much of my life has been shaped by that five-letter Anglo-Saxon word? Portrait of the artist as a young snot. The parochial school, its leaky roof, wind whistling through the windows so sorely in need of puttying, the pale sisters steely in their severe eyeglasses scowling at us in the hall. The catechism. The well-scrubbed little boys, white shirts, red ties. Father Burke instructing us. Plump, young, pink-faced, always beads of sweat on his upper lip, a bulge of soft flesh hanging over his clerical collar. He must have been, oh, twenty-five, twenty-six years old, a young priest, itchy in his celibacy, dong not yet withered, wondering in the dark hours whether it all was worth it. To Ned, age seven, he was the embodiment of Holy Writ, fierce, immense. Always a yardstick in his hand, and he used it, too: he’d read his Joyce, he played the role, wielding the pandybat. Asking me now to stand. I rise, trembling, wanting to shit in my pants and run. My nose running. (My nose dripped constantly until I was twelve; my image of my child-self is marred by a dark smudge, a sticky dirt-mustache. Puberty shut off the tap.) My wrist goes now to my snout: a quick wipe. “Don’t be disgusting!” from Father Burke, watery blue eyes flashing. God is love, God is love; what then is Father Burke? The yardstick whooshing through the air. The lightnings of his terrible swift sword. He gestures irritably at me. “The Apostles’ Creed, now, out with it!”

I say, stammering, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ — and in Jesus Christ—”

Faltering. From behind me, a hoarse whisper, Sandy Dolan: “His only son, our Lord.” My knees shake. My soul quakes. Last Sunday, after mass, Sandy Dolan and I went peering into windows and saw his sister changing her clothes, fifteen years old, little pink-tipped breasts, dark hair below. Dark hair. Well grow hair too, Sandy whispered. Did God see us spying on her? The Lord’s Day, and such a sin! Now the yardstick flicks warningly.

“—his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born from the Virgin Mary—” Yes. Now I’m into the heart of it, the melodramatic part that I love so much. I speak more confidently, loudly, my voice a clear fluting soprano. “—suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended to Hell, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended to the heavens — ascended to the heavens—”

I am lost again. Sandy, help me! But Father Burke is too close. Sandy does not dare speak.

“—ascended to the heavens—”

“He’s up there already, boy,” the priest snaps. “Get oa with it! Ascended to the heavens—”

My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. They all Stare at me. Can’t I sit down? Can’t Sandy continue? Seven years old, Lord, must I know the whole creed?

The yardstick — the yardstick -

Incredibly, the father himself prompts me. “Sits at the right hand—”

Blessed clue. I seize on it. “Sits on the right hand—”

“At the right hand!” And my left hand gets the pandybat. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick makes my trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain scalding tears are driven into my eyes. May I sit down, now? No, I must go on. They expect so much of me. Old Sister Mary Joseph, face a mass of wrinkles, reading one of my poems aloud in the auditorium, my ode on Easter Sunday, telling me afterward I have great gifts. Go on, now. The creed, the creed, the creed! It isn’t fair. You hit me, now I ought to be allowed to sit. “Continue,” says the inexorable father. “Sits at the right hand—”

I nod. “Sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, thence will come to judge the living and the dead.” The worst is over. Heart pounding, I rush through the rest. “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh, and eternal life.” A mumbled torrent of words. “Amen.” Should one finish with amen? I am so confused I don’t know. Father Burke smiles sourly; I tumble into my seat, drained. There’s faith for you. Faith. The Christ Child in the manger and the yardstick descending toward your knuckles. Cold hallways; scowling faces; the dry, powdery smell of the holy. One day Cardinal Cushing paid us a visit. The whole school was in terror; it couldn’t have been more frightening if the Savior Himself had stepped out of a textbook closet. The angry glances, the furious whispered warnings: stay in line, sing in tune, keep your mouth shut, show your respect. God is love, God is love. And the beads, the crucifixes, the pastel portraits of the Virgin, the Friday fish, the nightmare of first communion, the terror of stepping into the confessional — all the apparatus of faith, the debris of centuries — well, of course, I had to junk all that. Escaping from the Jesuits, from my mother, from the apostles and martyrs, St. Patrick, St. Brendan, St. Dionysius, St. Ignatius, St. Anthony, St. Theresa, St. Thais the penitent harlot, St. Kevin, St. Ned. I became a stinking accursed apostate, not the first of my family to fall away from truth. When I go to damnation I’ll meet uncles and cousins galore, turning on their spits. And now Eli Steinfeld demands new faith of me. As we all know, says Eli, God is irrelevant, an embarrassment; to admit in our modern age that you have faith in His existence is something like admitting you have pimples on your ass. We sophisticates, we who have seen everything and know it for the shuck it is, can’t bring ourselves to surrender to Him, much as we’d like to let the obsolete old bastard make all the hard decisions for us. But wait, crieth Eli! Give up your cynicism, give up your shallow mistrust of the invisible! Einstein, Bohr, and Thomas Edison have destroyed our capacity to embrace the Hereafter, but would you not gladly embrace the Here-and-Now? Believe, says Eli. Believe in the impossible. Believe because it is impossible. Believe that the received history of the world is a myth and that myth is-what survives of the true history. Believe in the Skulls, believe in their Keepers. Believe. Believe. Believe. Make an act of faith, and life eternal shall be your reward. Thus speaketh Eli. We go north, east, north, east again, zigzagging into the thorny wilderness, and we must have faith.