Copyright 1997 by R.L. Davis
Twenty years ago, this was wooded country and Simplicity Lane wandered an ancient pathway, linking a few dozen farms with each other and with the farmer's market that once filled the intersection of Simplicity Lane and Woodlawn Drive.
Then came the developers. Acres of trees were felled to feed the avaricious maws of civilization and its burgeoning population. Hills and valleys indiscriminately filled with tight- packed rows of houses and condominiums. What in the city were called row houses and provided dwelling places for millions of the inner-city poor, were built here in the country for the urban middle classes.
Here, they were called town homes, and that made all the difference.
Traveling west along Simplicity Lane, you come at one point (just about a mile before Woodlawn Drive) to a stretch of virgin woods, holding an alien watch over the teeming population surrounding it. The Lane dives down a short hill into a blanched valley, the home of Worcester's Gravel Works, and you understand why the woods are allowed to remain.
The road turns rough at the bottom, pitted and worn unevenly by the gravel trucks and their burdens of raw material needed to create the housing developments themselves. Large unpainted wooden sheds, tall forests of pipes and conduits and rusted machinery, and row on row of ancient battered dump trucks fill the area around the massive gravel pit that gave the business its reason for being.
The road climbs out of the valley almost as soon as it enters it, seemingly happy to be rid of the battering abuse of hundreds of overloaded lorries.
Just before Simplicity Lane leaves the woods, however, it makes a slight jog to the south before straightening up to lose itself back in the abyss of civilization. If you were to drive the Lane today, you could refuse to make the left-hand turn and instead drive straight ahead down a gravel road.
You could, that is, if you were undaunted by the World War I howitzer standing in the middle of the gravel trail and pointed in your direction.
The cannon, standing mutely and impotently facing away from the buildings nestled behind it, is moss-covered on the north side and rust-covered everywhere else. A permanently erect phallus, it has long since been spiked and rendered harmless, incapable of anything save a silent protest against a world that has changed so much in less than a century.
The gravel path, a bright white gift of the original Worcester, old man Herman, founder of the gravel pit below (back when he was still alive and an active member of the Simplicity Lane Post of the American Legion), forks about 20 feet in from the Lane and spreads its legs seductively around the ancient howitzer. When the two legs unite again, just beyond the field piece, (leaving a grassy vagina within which the cannon stands erect but unable to perform) the little road continues another few yards to the front door of the American Legion Post.
The main building is a large, tar-paper box with windows covered by crumpled aluminum foil. Behind this building can be seen the Main Hall, a large war-surplus Quonset hut donated by the navy soon after the Second World War ended.
Inside the front door is the bar, a massive wooden structure running the length of the building along the north wall. Dirty greenish yellow carpet (once -- long ago -- a bright gold) covers the floor and supports two dingy pool tables, a half-dozen tables with companionate chairs, two older video games, and a Nickelodeon that hasn't worked since the summer of 1957.
Directly west are large double doors leading back into the Quonset hut, where dances once were held and where dinners and business meetings still are.
Simplicity Lane American Legion Post has fallen on hard times. Founded when the area was rural, it was once the major focus for entertainment for the entire area. Now, a fading rural population and a burgeoning urban contingent hooked on "high tech" entertainment and "quality" surroundings, have left the Post down to 37 active members and struggling to stay afloat.
"What are we to do?" Post Commander Henry Burke said just last winter. "Put in a sushi bar, sponsor a karaoke night and hook up every table to the Internet?" The vote had been unanimous (by all eight members present) against such an idea, but the Post needed some way to survive. The Worcester kids were looking avariciously, from their dirty little shacks down in the valley, at the now-valuable land the Post was sitting on. Old man Worcester had deeded the land to the Post with the understanding that if it ever ceased to be an American Legion Post, the property would revert to his estate.
"The cannon," Burke once said, "is pointed in the right direction."
"Mike" McLuhan sat at the bar, staring at the foam running down the side of an empty beer mug and thought of deep matters: Why are the birds so happy in springtime? ... What is the difference between real grass and astro-turf? ...... Where in hell is that barmaid?
It suddenly occurred to Mike that he was the only person in the bar at that moment, not all that surprising at 11:30 a.m. Mike belonged to the "early crowd," the small, elite band of three or four who "opened" the place every morning, usually waking Maggie from a sound sleep in her apartment in the same building.
For a moment he considered walking behind the bar and helping himself to another mug of ale, but his natural cowardice that had served him well in Korea (What if Maggie were to return before I got back to my seat?) kept him on the barstool. He looked around and suddenly became aware of voices back in the Quonset hut.
Ah! The meeting. This was the first Thursday of the month. Time for the meeting of all officers of the Post. Maggie -- a member of the Auxiliary and Auxiliary Adjutant -- had said (he now remembered) she would be right next door, attending the meeting.
Maggie was once a beautiful woman, Mike muttered to himself for probably the millionth time in his lifetime. A tall woman with bright red hair (the best red you can buy in a bottle), "humongous" breasts (using Mike's usual vocabulary), legs that would make Rod Stewart weep and rewrite some lyrics, a face blessed with a permanent pout, and the ability to wear bluejeans and still look sexy and desirable, Maggie was starting to show some wrinkles in her face. She now wore a bra all the time, her "boobs" no longer capable of "standing at attention" unsupported under a sweater.
Of course, in the 20 years he'd known Maggie, she'd always looked that way. The wrinkles seemed always to have been there and Mike couldn't really remember ever seeing her wearing a sweater without a bra. The older members of long ago used to talk about it though. How she'd once been a beautiful woman.
Truth is, she still is a beautiful woman.
Mike got up and went toward the back room, his natural fear of "getting involved" in Post politics momentarily overcome by his desire for another cold one.
Through the doors lay the long empty dance floor, long folding tables balanced against the walls on either side, tall stacks of folding chairs stacked neatly on the small stage at the rear. Just in front of the proscenium was one standing table, with a half-dozen people lounging around it on folding chairs.
As he entered the doorway, conversation stopped and they all looked at him in silence. His knees began knocking and he felt a premonition of impending doom.
"Nah!" someone said.
"Why not?" someone else said.
"He doesn't look like a chaplain," the first person repeated.
Mike's high-topped shoes were always scuffed and he always wore a red, plaid shirt, almost as faded as his overalls. His face was almost obscured by a monstrously fluffy mustache, now specked with foam. This was the feature that earned him the nickname "Mike," for he looked the part of an Irishman on vacation from some classic dirty joke.
The Post's officers had just been discussing the latest crisis. Without a full component of officers, they faced a suspension of their charter from the American Legion. Without a charter, they could lose their property.
This morning they had gone over the entire membership. Assigned obscure positions to every member who could be arm-twisted into serving. They were to the last office -- Chaplain. Rev. Haaquist of the nearby Lutheran Church had served that position for nearly a half century, before his death a decade earlier. Out of respect for him (or so everyone liked to say), the position had remained unfilled until now.
Now it must be filled.
And everyone was looking at Mike.
Mike, he kept repeating to himself, you're an idiot!
It wasn't Henry Burke who first suggested Mike for the position. Burke, a tall stringbean of a fellow always dressed in a conservative dark suit, befitting his position as an undertaker's assistant, couldn't imagine Mike as a chaplain, and dismissed the idea immediately.
But Michael Cavanaugh, who could legitimately be called "Mike" but insisted on being called "Michael," insisted. Cavanaugh, a shoe sales clerk, was usually quiet and self-deprecating, but he was losing salary and commission this morning by being out of work. The sooner we finish this business the better, he thought, and here's a likely victim.
"What does a chaplain do, anyway?" Cavanaugh asked, straightening his thin blue tie over the sport shirt he wore without a suit.
"Well . . . " Burke thought a minute. "If we begin a meeting with prayer, the chaplain leads it . . . "
"And we ain't started a meeting with prayer since Pastor Haaquist died," Maggie said.
"And the chaplain conducts funerals."
"The last funeral we had was back in '83. And Haaquist did it."
"Then," Cavanaugh said quickly, before she could add anything, "a chaplain doesn't really do anything, right?"
The others shook their heads "no" with knowing looks. Burke saw in all their eyes they were ready to elect Mike (or the devil if need be) as chaplain.
"You want to be the Post chaplain, Mike?" Burke called across the room.
"W-well I only came in for a glass of. . . . "
"Good! I knew we could count on you. All approved?" A chorus of ayes. "Meeting adjourned!"
That is how it happened. Well, how it started anyway. Mike McLuhan became the chaplain of the Simplicity Lane American Legion Post.
(Taps)
Commander: "Sergeant-at-arms, turn on the lights."
(One rap of gavel seats membership)
Commander: "Comrade Adjutant, remove the hat."
Commander: "Sergeant-at-arms, remove the brazier and rifles."
Really confusing, he thought, not sure just what it meant.)
Though it was confusing, he loved it, especially the official Legion funeral service, which began halfway down the first page. Every time he read the copy over, his eyes would tear up, and force him to down whatever amount of beer was left in his mug in one swallow -- lest his tears dilute the ale, or give it a too salty taste.
Mike hated salty beer.
Again and again he pulled out the first page of the official funeral service:
"Chaplain: 'Let us pray,'" it began. His eyes would get moist every time he read the second paragraph he would be required to read, if ever he had the opportunity to conduct a funeral:
For again you have ordered a Legionnaire to that realm in the West, beyond the twilight and the evening star, where beauty and valor and goodness dwell forever with the unnumbered multitude.
Absolutely beautiful! he thought. How wonderful, he mused, that someone at the Pentagon (undoubtedly a ranking general) had the heart of a poet buried somewhere behind that chest full of gaudy medals. (For, Mike knew, someone capable of composing so beautiful a piece of literature must have earned lots and lots of commendations in his day.)
Mike longed to be able to deliver the entire service before the Post membership. He could see himself, dressed in a black suit, with a grey shirt and turned-around collar, reading the prescribed words while everyone in the meeting hall wept tears both of sorrow and joy -- joy at hearing such stirring words uttered in such a fine fashion.
Mike wondered if he were eligible to wear a clerical collar since he was only a chaplain and not really an ordained minister. He decided he could -- his election, after all, gave him the status of clergy -- and he determined he would, when he got a chance to.
But no one had ever done that. Most of the members spent their spare time at the bar -- drinking, shooting pool and drinking, usually in that order.
She'd mentioned the list casually to Mike, remarking that maybe the chaplain ought to pay some of them a visit. He jumped on the list as if it were purest treasure. And it was. Here was his first opportunity to really practice being a chaplain.
Being on hand at business meetings to say prayers didn't really count, after all, especially since no one ever asked him to do so. He had a really fine prayer in hand, too. It came right out of the official funeral service, and it would sound fine, he knew. Mike had it almost memorized by now:
Eternal God, Supreme Commander of us all, Lord of the farflung battle line, to whom the ranks of life report, we bow before you with reverent hearts and in sublime faith, knowing that you lead us on in death as you have in life.
He knew it would go over just great -- if only someone would ask him to give it.
Now he had a list of people he could visit.
As a handyman carpenter, Mike could take off anytime he wanted (and he usually did) so he decided to spend the very next day in visitation.
He found an old grey suit in the closet at home, one his brother-in-law left there years before while sponging on Mike and Evie, Mike's wife. He tried it on and, other than being a tad short in the arms and legs, it fit fine. He dug up an old dress shirt he hadn't worn in years and put it on backwards. Evie buttoned it in back for him. The collar was tight around his neck but luckily all the starch had long since leeched out, so it was wearable.
He topped it off with an old Legionnaire's garrison cap he found in the back of a storage closet in the Quonset hut, and he was ready to go a-visiting.
Mike hardly recognized him lying there on the bed. That morning. Two days after he'd received Maggie's "casualty" list. No one at the nursing home seemed to notice Mike's ill- fitting suit or backwards shirt or even the oil-stained cap he wore perfectly centered atop his head. Perhaps compared with the way the patients were routinely dressed, no one thought his uniform all that strange.
"Morrie" Morrison lay shriveled up on the rusty hospital bed, his arms tied loosely to the steel sides with dirty bandages. A tube came out his nose. Another out his mouth. There were other tubes all over the poor old man. A stanchion stood beside the bed with bottles of liquid hanging from it, bubbling as they forced fluids of various descriptions into the old man's veins.
Morrie's eyes were permanently open. They saw nothing. Mike stayed with the old Legionnaire for a half hour, and left visibly shaken.
He went back a week later. And a week after that. Old Man Morrison died the morning after Mike's third visit.
From the nursing home guest book, Morrie's family found Mike's name and title ("Chaplain, Simplicity Lane American Legion"). They called the Post and asked if they could arrange the funeral.
Mike was finally to do the job he'd been elected to perform!
The service was held at a local funeral home, (as it turned out, the principal competitor to Burke's employer) in what Mike felt to be an aseptic temple built to glorify the ability of American free enterprise to turn a tidy profit on death itself. Everything was hushed about the place -- the parking lot was as still as a mausoleum, cars neatly placed like caskets in neat rows. The rooms were heavily carpeted, Mike noticed, so no sound would come from shoes striking the floor.
From the outside, the mortuary was absolutely nondescript, an elongated cube of off-white stucco. Nondescript greenery -- low, flowerless and unhealthy looking -- surrounded the building. One large (but, nevertheless, "tastefully reserved") sign out front announced the building's purpose: "Smithson & Sons Funeral Chapel."
By the time the members of Simplicity Lane American Legion got into the building, they were already dazzled by mediocrity, and longed (to the person) for the comfortable eccentricity of their own little hall.
The first thing you noticed on entering the building was the overstuffed furniture, of course. Then you saw this extremely thin young person in a black suit ("Dracula after a six-month fast") looking solicitous and efficient at the same time. This was Matthew, the mortician's assistant, an intense enthusiast for the undertaking craft and a night student at the State university. Everyone assumed he was one of the Smithson boys but he wasn't related. Actually, none of old Smithson's kids ever wanted to have anything to do with the business.
Matthew knew all the one-liners about morticians, and frequently used them. Only two things were more sacred to Matthew than undertaking -- puns and Star Trek. His trekee existence he kept much to himself (though he was a member of an Internet Star Ship -- science officer, no less, complete with pointy ears) but his puns, outside work, were (in)famous:
"Did you know morticians make the best friends?" he would tell his college classmates with a deadpan expression. "They are always the last people to let you down!"
"It's a mercenary business," he would always continue. "Every time we make a buck, someone else has to go in the hole."
And, invariably, when someone would ask him his job, he would respond with "I follow the medical profession."
This afternoon, Matthew greeted most of the members of the American Legion Hall, along with eight or ten members of Dan Morrison's family. "When you live to be as old as Morrie," one of them told Matthew apologetically, "and you live so far away from where you were born, there aren't too many relatives left."
Handing each a mimeographed program (printed by Mike in the back room of the legion hall), the mortician's assistant would point each person to a small room off the side where the memorial service would be held.
Matt raised an eyebrow at Mike's uniform but, true to his hushed tradition, said not a word. He had, after all, seen stranger outfits. Only last week he'd hosted a funeral by the Little Church of Puff the Magic Dragon, whose minister (called Sri Paper) wore a long purple robe that reeked a sweet-smelling scent reminiscent of the 1960's.
Morrie's casket was covered by an American flag (of course) provided by the funeral home -- the Post not having one in condition suitable for such an occasion. Mike had the ceremony all prepared. Burke as Commander had a part to play and Mike had written out every word for him to say, laboriously copied onto 3x5 cards.
The walls of the room were covered with an off-white canvass board of some type. About 30 folding chairs filled the center of the room. Off to the right was another, smaller room protected by a curtain. Here, immediate members of the family were supposed to be seated, but since no one surviving Morrison was any closer than niece or nephew, it was unused.
The coffin stood at the far end, in the very center. In front of the coffin was a small table (actually a piano bench but it was the best Mike could do at the last minute) covered with a white hand towel. On the table were three items: an incense burner in the shape of a very fat Buddha, an old 30.06 hunting rifle, and a rusty shotgun. The sheet of paper Mike had been given called for a "brazier and rifles." He didn't have a brazier, but assumed an incense burner would do. Evie had this one among her knickknacks. And the only "rifles" he had were the hunting piece and shotgun.
Mike had informed Cavanaugh, the Post Adjutant, and Jeremy Taylor, the eternally inebriated retired butcher who served laughably as Sergeant-at-Arms, that they also had a part to play in the service. Neither had asked what that part was, after being told they didn't have to say anything. They had, however, both dressed in their Sunday best. Jeremy had his bugle along, for Taps. He'd always talked about playing Taps every evening back in Korea, though no one in the Post had ever heard him play it before now.
When the last guest was seated, and Matthew had solemnly closed the double doors leading to the room, Mike and Henry walked slowly to the front of the room and stood together behind the wood podium to the left of the casket.
"Our Sergeant-at-Arms will now play Taps," Mike said.
Jeremy stood to attention and -- well -- played Taps. Mike thought he did quite well, especially for someone who hadn't played the bugle since soon after Pork Chop Hill. A couple of sour notes, maybe. One uncomfortable screench! All in all, Mike thought, he did okay.
After Jeremy had finished, Mike nudged Henry with his elbow. "You're on!" he whispered. Henry whispered back, loud enough for the room to hear him: "What the hell does this mean?" Pointing to the first card. "Just read it!" Mike said, frustratedly sotto voce.
Henry stood up straight and in his most officerly voice read: "Sergeant-at-Arms, turn on the lights."
Jeremy jerked to attention. Looked at Henry. Then at Mike. Then at the ceiling. All the lights were on. He looked at the audience and saw everyone was looking at him. Slowly he walked toward the back of the room to the single light switch. Turned the lights off. Then turned them on again. He stood, frozen, with his hand on the switch.
"Isn't that so symbolic?" someone said from the back of the room.
"I've never seen that done before!" someone else said.
Encouraged by the murmur of support, Henry looked again at his 3x5 card. "(One rap of gavel seats membership)" it read. He had no gavel. Everyone was seated already. He hesitated a moment before rapping the podium with his fist and saying: "You may be seated."
Jeremy, the only one standing at this time, hurried over to the nearest chair.
Henry continued reading from the card: "Comrade Adjutant, remove the hat."
Michael was seated right up front. "What hat?" he thought to himself. He couldn't see a hat anywhere. He finally decided perhaps it was his own garrison cap, which now rested in his hip pocket. He pulled out the cap, put it on, walked to the casket, saluted, and then took the cap back off and held it to his breast.
Another murmur of approval from the audience. Michael wasn't sure what to do next, so for the rest of the service he stayed there, rigidly at attention.
Henry went on: "Sergeant-at-Arms, remove the brazier and rifles."
Jeremy had just taken his seat and suddenly received another strange request. He jumped to his feet and hurried to the front of the room, gesturing broadly with hands out and shoulders shrugged that he didn't understand what he was supposed to remove. Mike pointed to the Buddha and hunting weapons. Jeremy grabbed all three at once, spilling some still-red incense onto the grey carpet. He quickly scuffed out the puff of smoke, dropping the shotgun at the same time, but finally managed back to his seat with the paraphernalia.
Henry continued, reading directly from the 3x5 card: "Another Legionnaire has been called the High Command; he or she has gone to report to the Commander of us all." Mike cringed at the "he or she." He wasn't supposed to read it literally, for crissake!
Now it was Mike's turn. He stepped out from behind the pulpit and began:
"Let us pray. Eternal God, Supreme Commander of us all, Lord of the farflung battle line, to whom the ranks of life report, we bow before you with reverent hearts and in sublime faith, knowing that you lead us on in death as you have in life."
God, that's powerful stuff! he thought, and I'm reading it -- and everyone in the room has their head bowed and is listening to me! It was a heady moment, indeed, for Mike McLuhan.
"For again you have ordered a Legionnaire to that realm in the West, beyond the twilight and the evening star . . . " [Tears came to Mike's eyes, as they always did at this point in the service.] ". . .where beauty and valor and goodness dwell forever with the unnumbered multitude. Mindful of service nobly done, you have called . . . " Here, Mike hesitated. The service read "(name of deceased)" at this point. He paused to recollect Morrie's name and then continued: "...Dan Morrison to everlasting rest. You have sealed his lips. With the faded blossoms of springtime and the withered leav The official prayer went on for four more paragraphs, and Mike milked it for all it was worth, emphasizing every important phrase and pausing frequently to let the power of the words sink in on his audience. At one point he thought he heard muffled sobs from the back of the room, but they were only Jeremy's heavy breathing. The Post's Sergeant-at-Arms could fall asleep instantly, at any occasion.
Mike speeded up the final paragraph of the prayer: "Until for us also the day breaks and the shadows flee, grant us so to live that our lives may honor the Legionnaires who have gone before us. That together we may come to the city which you have prepared for those who love you and keep your commandments. For your own name's sake we pray."
"Amen."
Then he asked for a short eulogy. There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, before an old woman stood up slowly. "Cousin Danny and I used to play with dolls," she said. "He was a good boy." She sat down heavily, a sob echoing from deep inside her.
The rest of the service went quite well. They consisted only of Burke as Commander reading a few paragraphs (which he managed to stumble through quite capably) and a final prayer by the Chaplain. Not certain which religion Morrie had belonged to, he chose the Protestant prayer, which seemed to go over well. Mike almost choked on tears -- both of joy and inspiration -- on the final line, but he said it sufficiently dramatically (he thought) to make it a fitting conclusion:
So dwell with them and be their God, until the day break and the shadows flee away: Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
People seemed impressed. Even the Post membership, those who'd known Mike for many years and had related to him in the past only as just another lovable drunk, now treated him differently. There was a respectful distance, he thought, but also a certain measure of respect. Least happy with him was the "early crowd," his former cronies -- for Mike now showed up seldom for the early shift at the bar, as different -- and higher -- duties beckoned.
The next two funerals followed in rather rapid order. Mike continued his visitations, and usually within hours of his last visit, the invalid would "shuffle off this mortal coil," as Mike liked to think of it.
Norman Maglowski, the second person to be honored with a service, wasn't even a member of the Post. Brought to the city by his daughter after Alzheimer's caught up with him, he dwindled slowly to a soft shell of his former self over nearly a year in the Rainbow's End Retirement Home.
His daughter had called the Legion Hall hoping someone might pay the old man a visit -- and help assuage her creeping feelings of guilt over having abandoned her father to a strange place in a strange city. Mike had answered the call. After his second visit, the old man breathed his last.
The service, held this time at the Final Rest Mortuary Service, Commander Burke's longtime employer, went even better than the first. Mike still had not discovered the missing pages of his service so all the elements of the earlier service were kept in. Jeremy played taps with even more fervor -- if no more finesse -- and Cavanaugh again stood rigidly at attention before the casket through the entire service.
The third service was for Jimmie Dawes, an old friend of Jeremy's, and it was all the more poignant for that reason. Not a dry eye remained in the room when Mike read the final prayer -- the Catholic version this time:
The old order has passed away; welcome him now into paradise where there will be no more sorrow, no more weeping or pain, but only peace and joy with Jesus, your Son, and the Holy Spirit forever and ever . . .
But, as he kept reminding everyone all evening the night of the funeral, and all morning afterward (though, truth be told, only Maggie was present most of the morning, but with Maggie's understanding nods and reassuring comments made her fit well into the "everyone" category), "Jimmie was a good buddy of mine."
Jimmie and Jeremy were charter members of the early crowd, having instituted the practice together back in 1954, when they led a campaign among the Post membership to require the bar's opening at 7:30 each morning. Ostensibly for breakfast, of course, but the then- bartender, Jake "the Talker" Takheimer, refused to cook for anyone so the "early crowd" had to settle for beer. Which suited Jimmie and Jeremy fine.
It was about 11:30 the morning after Jimmie's burial that Jeremy finally broached the subject that obviously had been bothering him the past 24 hours. Maggie, in sympathy for his recent "loss," had ignored her own rules about how much ale to serve each customer, so Jeremy by this time was semi-comatose.
"Ain't it strange," he began, looking mournfully at another dead soldier in his hand, the foam slowly oozing down the side of the glass, "that we ain't had a single funeral in ten years and now, in less than a month, we've had three?"
"No," Maggie replied slowly, "I don't think it's strange."
"I mean," Jeremy continued. "Mike becomes Chaplain and really wants to do a funeral, right?"
Maggie nodded.
"Then he visits these old guys in the hospital and they all die right after the last day he sees 'em." He shook his head from side to side slowly. "Don't you think that's strange?"
"What are you trying to say, Jeremy? That Mike somehow caused their deaths?" Maggie looked around to make sure no one else was in the bar. This wasn't the kind of speculation she wanted to get out.
"Well, he could 'av," Jeremy slurred slowly. "Maybe he wanted to do a funeral so bad he put some strychnine" (though he pronounced it stricklin) "in their food. Maybe" (he went on quickly) "he was just tryin' to put then out of their misery. I mean, I don't think Mike would deliberately kill anyone. Maybe he was just tryin' to help out Mr. Death or something."
"You think he might have poisoned them? Listen, Jeremy, that kind of talk is dangerous and irresponsible. I don't want you going around telling people what you just told me."
"I, I won't tell anyone else," Jeremy said. "I promise. It just makes you wonder, though, don't it?"
"No it doesn't! That's enough about it, okay?" Maggie began wiping the counter and a slight chill came over her. "You haven't told anyone else about this, have you?"
"Oh no! Nobody." Jeremy twisted his face into a grimace of dedicated thought. "'Cept for Pete Worcester. I met him at the SuperGas last night and we was laughin' about it, and . . ."
Maggie let out a string of Irish profanities that Jeremy would remember to his dying day. True to his word -- and out of fear of Maggie -- he didn't tell anyone else about his thoughts.
The damage had already been done.
He and his three brothers had pretty much squandered away the old man's money, spending it on losing get-rich-quick schemes and failed marriages. Now all they owned were several acres of stripped land, mortgaged to the hilt, and an almost depleted gravel pit. The land on which the Legion Post sat was still covered with virgin forest and perched along a booming residential corridor.
It could be the solution to their financial problems.
When Burke heard from Maggie what Jeremy had said, he at first assumed this was the end of Simplicity Lane Post. If the Worcesters started a rumor campaign, it could hurt the Post's reputation enough to drive away potential members. Worse, if they called for a criminal investigation of the matter, even if the investigation were fruitless, they could use the situation as grounds for court action to expel the Legionnaires.
He'd already given up, so it was up to Maggie to (as usual) provide the way out for the Post. "Why not," she suggested, "do our own investigation?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know a priest," she explained. "He's retired from St. Sophia's and he's a distant relative of my mother's. We could ask him to look into the matter. The Worcester boys are catholic and they'd listen to a Catholic priest."
He was 85 years old, a native of a small town in southern Ireland who'd become a priest, like so many of his era, to escape hunger and abject poverty. And, like so many of those who'd joined the priesthood to find a better life, he also found a calling, and beyond that, a deep faith and a love for the Church that had given him a way out.
Over the years his faith remained unshaken, but experience had softened his theology into a gentle respect for human beings and for their emotional turmoils. He would never challenge his Church's theological positions, but he'd decided long ago that hell was a tiny place holding only a few people like Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun, and that the bulk of the human race would find a loving god and a welcome home after death.
He sat now in the middle of the large dance floor behind the hall's main building, on one side of a long collapsible table, counting the dirty brown linoleum tiles that covered the floor, and following the white paths of scuff marks that identified several paths across the old dance floor. Burke and Maggie sat on the opposite side from him, and Mike sat next to the priest, looking uncomfortable and unsure of himself. He wasn't feeling too comfortable himself.
"We have asked Father Reilly in this morning," Maggie was saying, "to get his advice about the Chaplain's position. We knew you'd like to get all the help you could." They hadn't told Mike about the real reason for the inquiry, not wanting to hurt his feelings. "Father, you can begin any way you wish."
The old priest began by asking general questions about Mike's background, in a gentle way boosting the fledgling chaplain's self-confidence. Did you ever want to grow up to help people when you were a child? Did you have respect for ministers when you were little? And... Do you feel good when you are doing things for other people?
Gradually, Mike became more at ease with this roly-poly priest. Then Father Reilly began talking about the visitations Mike made to the funeral homes. What did he do at the bedside? and What did he feel when he sat by each person's bedside?
Finally, Reilly asked the important question: "Since each person passed away soon after your last visit, do you feel you were in any way responsible for their deaths?"
Mike hesitated a moment before answering. He closed his eyes tightly, and moisture seemed to appear around them.
"I really don't know . . . " he began. "Maybe. I just don't know."
"Why do you have doubts about it?"
Mike drew himself up and straightened his shoulders. "I... Well . . . " He sighed deeply.
Finally, with tears in his eyes, he was able to speak: "When I saw how those men were living. Alone. Strapped to their beds. Large bed sores. And the smell was horrible. The screams of people down the halls. It was awful.
"They weren't even aware I was in the room. None of them. They just stared straight ahead. There was nothing back there behind their eyes. Those were just shells of human beings. Not people."
"I finally couldn't take it anymore. I'd be alone in the room. Just me and the Legionnaire."
Maggie took in a deep breath.
"I'd sit there," Mike continued, "and then I'd just start talking. I'd tell the old man that he didn't have to continue like this. That he could just let go. That probably dying would be better than going on like this. That it was okay to die."
Mike pulled out a red checkered handkerchief and blew his nose loudly, to cover up the tears that covered his cheeks. "I don't know. Maybe what I did was wrong, but every time the old man would die before the next morning. And everyone would say how merciful it was that they were dead. I just don't know."
The entire group sat in silence for a few moments. Father Reilly broke the silence.
"Young man," he said (for, after all, to an octogenarian a 50-year-old is young), "you learned in only a few short weeks something it took me a quarter century to discover! Those people might seem to be unconscious on the outside but somewhere, deep inside them, they're listening, waiting for someone to give them permission to die."
"That's one of the jobs of a priest -- or minister -- or" (the priest looked directly at Mike) "a chaplain, to let them know it's okay to give up their hold on life."
When Mike got hold of the complete American Legion document called "Post Everlasting," he was momentarily embarrassed to find out he was doing the service all wrong, but by now his inadvertent changes were expected of him. Besides, Father Reilly, who attended the fourth funeral as an immensely amused (in private, of course) guest, told him to keep the service the way it was.
And so he did.