He wracked his brain. None of it made any sense. He felt lead in his stomach as he realized that these few pieces of paper spelled the doom of his vocation and his life. Then, as he continued rummaging through the papers, he came across a record of a telephone conversation between Brother Berard and Bishop Hernandez. As recorded in the notes, Berard had written to his bishop for clarification of the reason for defrocking Murphy. The bishop’s reply stated that Bishop Rhinehart in Washington had additional confidential information on Murphy that was being retained in Washington. If divulged, the information could cause grave scandal to the Church. Bishop Hernandez said he did not need to know the details—Bishop Rhinehart’s word was good enough for him. Since Murphy was now under his authority, he would take appropriate action to remove him from the priesthood. However, he wrote that he was somewhat curious about the unusual case and on his next trip to Washington, would look further into the matter.
After looking over the file, Steve decided he had no choice but to leave the monastery. He would leave quickly. He had to stay one step ahead of formal notification that the process of defrocking him was about to begin. He was slightly comforted by the fact that the levels of approval required in the church’s bureaucracy took considerable time—ultimately requiring even Vatican approval. He decided to steal the file. If they searched for him after he left the monastery, he reasoned, why should he make it easy for them by leaving a lot of identifying material behind?
*****
It was almost three A.M. when he tapped lightly on Elmer’s door. Elmer opened it groggily as Steve slipped into the cell. “I’m leaving,” he said. “Tonight.” He told the story to Elmer who sat on his cot shaking his head in disbelief. Elmer offered him a cigarette.
“No thanks, I quit.”
“But where will you go? What on earth will you do?”
“I haven’t thought out the details but I know I have several stops to make. I’m going to see my brother. He lives near Boston. And I want to do some snooping around to find out what in hell is behind all this.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Thanks, but I have to do this alone. By the way, do you need money?” Steve asked. “I can give you a couple of hundred from the stash I had hidden in my chalice case. You may need it if you ever think of leaving this place. And when I find where my other stuff is stored—my wallet and credit cards—I’ll be in pretty good shape financially.”
“Some dough would be a big help,” Elmer said. “I doubt that I will ever leave here, but the money will keep me in cigarettes.”
“Elmer, if you ever want to get in touch, you can reach me through my brother Jonathon in Wayland, Mass., Murphy Real Estate. By the way, realizing they go only by numbers and first names here, you probably don’t know my last name. It’s Murphy. Stephen Murphy.”
“I’m Elmer Gustafson. I have a sister, Anna. She’s divorced so she goes by her maiden name. You may be able to get in touch with me through her. She lives in the family homestead—a little town called Brunswick, Maryland. Everybody knows the Gustafsons in Brunswick. But tell me, Steve, how are you going to find your way without getting lost in the desert?”
“I plan to follow that decrepit old phone line.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. The line goes west, maybe all the way to Yuma… I’m not really sure. You could spend a week traveling and God knows where you’d wind up. If you get into that hot part of the desert you could fry in the sun and if you travel at night that’s when the animals are on the prowl. I think you’d be better off heading east to Tucson. Try to go northeast towards Interstate 10. Follow the rising sun, and before long you’ll see the mountains in the distance. You’ll have some mountain passes to get through, but it will be cool at the higher elevations. Although frankly, Steve, going on foot, and trying to get to civilization from here will be difficult no matter which direction you choose. That’s why the brothers rebuilt this mission out here to begin with.”
“Thanks for the advice. I guess I’ll take a chance on Tucson. Jeremy brought me out here from Tucson on I-10. I might be able to spot some recognizable landmarks.”
The two priests then said goodbye in a friendly embrace, then, making a Sign of the Cross, gave each other a blessing: “In nomine patris, in filii, in spiritu sancti.”
“God be with you, Steve.”
“And also with you, Elmer.”
*****
Steve slipped back into his room. There was almost nothing there worth taking with him except his silver crucifix, rosary beads and some underclothes. Next he went to the supply room. It was locked. As he fiddled with the lock, a tall figure in a gray habit came out of the darkness. It limped towards him looming over his shoulder as he crouched pulling on the lock with all his might. Looking back over his shoulder startled, Steve thought he would have to fight his way out.
“Here’s the key,” a voice said. It was Brother Berard. “You can take all of your possessions with the exception of your chalice and the file you took from my office. I can’t permit you to take the chalice because you are to be defrocked. It would be too much of a temptation for you to simply continue pastoral duties. Permit me to do the charitable thing and donate it to a priest who has to borrow one to say Mass.”
Reluctantly, Steve agreed, knowing it would be difficult to lug the chalice case and his other stuff through the desert.
“And you really should leave the file with me. It contains letters addressed to me. The correspondence and the photocopies of your certificates belong to me. You may take whatever else belongs to you. I won’t stop you. You may be interested to know, I left the front gate unlocked. Who’s coming to get you? Jeremy?”
“No. I’ve had no contact with Jeremy.”
“Then how do you propose to cross the desert?”
“On foot.”
“That’s impossible,” Brother Berard said. “Only an Indian could make it and even he would be lucky to make it to Phoenix. If on the other hand, you’re going to Tucson, it is even more absurd because you have first the desert to cross, then the mountains, and then more desert. But it’s your decision. I leave it up to you.”
“Why,” Steve asked, “aren’t you trying to stop me from leaving? Aren’t you disobeying orders?”
“Perhaps I am. But I am abbot here and must act according to the best interests of the monastery. You refuse to resign and I am concerned about your remaining here. You have beaten some of my brothers. There will be less trouble with you gone.”
“You mean there may not be anyone to fight back when the brothers strong-arm the priests.”
“Murphy, let’s be frank with one another. I admire the way you have pitched in to help other priests in need, and when it came to work on the farm, you were an outstanding worker. I also don’t object to the way you interceded when some of my brothers got out of hand. They are a tough bunch. We all know that. But you should understand, we are dealing with a number of recalcitrant derelicts who call themselves priests.”
“Do you harbor some deep resentment against the priesthood?” Steve asked acidly.
“No, I do not. Years ago, I wanted to become a priest. I felt that I had a strong vocation, but I was turned down.”
“Why?”
“The hierarchy did not want a priest limping on the altar. I suppose it didn’t project the right image of the priesthood. Then, after being assigned here, I came into contact with hundreds of priests who were willingly accepted into the priesthood as having all of the qualifications. And here they reside— drunkards, pedophiles, homosexuals, thieves, heretics....”
“But they represent just a tiny percent of all priests. Remember, Christ had one bad apostle out of a total of twelve.”
“That is true. I certainly don’t condemn all priests, but I nevertheless deeply resent the way the priests sent here have repeatedly violated the sacrament of Holy Orders. They are all Judas’s. They deserve to be treated accordingly. All they merit is pressure to resign.”
br /> “I disagree. They deserve God’s mercy. They deserve some realistic effort to rehabilitate them. As a minimum, they deserve to be treated as human beings.”
Brother Berard sat down on a stool next to Steve. “If you will only follow Bishop Hernandez’ request that you resign, things would go much better for you. We would arrange transportation, money, whatever you need. The bishop is not an unreasonable man. He would give you dispensation of your vows. You would remain Catholic. You would be able to get married, have children and serve God’s church as the head of a family and still retain some lay duties in the church. If you refuse the offer, you go in disgrace from the church. You become a renegade. Carrying on priestly duties would be a sacrilege.”
“Next time you see Bishop Hernandez, thank him for the offer, but my mind is made up. I took a vow for life and will not renounce it.”
Brother Berard stood up. “Well, let’s leave it at that,” he said. “I will have to apprise Bishop Hernandez of your decision. You understand the bishop will set in motion the process to have you defrocked.”
Without replying, Steve continued rummaging through shelves of boxes in the supply room. He finally found a small box containing his wallet and his watch. He looked through the wallet. It still contained his passport, credit cards, checkbook and over six hundred dollars in cash. After wading through several racks, he found one of his black suits, Roman collar and shoes.
“You may not approve of us, but we are not thieves,” Brother Berard said watching him from his position at the door.
Steve stuffed his small items and his suit and shoes into an unused backpack he found lying in the corner. He kept his stole hidden. “Mind if I keep these work clothes I’ve got on, and may I take this backpack?” he asked. “They’re practically throwaways anyway.”
But as he turned around for an answer, he realized Brother Berard had silently left him without saying goodbye. The file and the chalice case were also gone.
Steve had planned to force his way into the kitchen, but he found the door had been left unlocked—apparently a little extra assist by Brother Berard. He packed a few sandwiches and two flasks of water in his backpack. Then he walked across the compound and found the front gate unlocked as Brother Berard said it would be. He closed the gate quietly behind him and set out on a chilly, pitch black night along the rutted dirt road in the direction of the dark shadowy mountains that rose toward the heavens in front of him.
16
Steve picked his way along the bumpy, uneven road in the dark, occasionally drifting off to the side and stumbling on a rock. It startled him whenever he put his foot out thinking it would hit solid ground only to find it descending into a hole. Losing his balance, he would fall, pick himself up and continue on until he hit another rock or another hole. In his mind there was no plan, no thought of what he would do after he reached Tucson. He wasn’t even sure he was still heading in the direction of Tucson, although he had started out from the monastery in that direction.
One step at a time. His mind was filled with the dangers that lurked on all sides. He walked in fear of a sudden strike on the leg from an unseen rattlesnake. Unlike the area around Tucson where mesquite trees and saguaro cactus often live symbiotically, in this part of the desert there were no saguaro cactus and therefore no chance of finding a long stick from a mesquite that he could tap to the left and right in front of him to scare away snakes. Failing that, he could only hope he would hear the rattle in time to freeze in his tracks. He knew there were jaguars and mountain lions in the desert that prowled at night looking for a meal. If he was the meal they were looking for, he would have to submit, having no defense. He thought of the Christians facing the lions in the Colosseum. They could huddle in groups on the ground transfixed in prayer—heroically proclaiming their faith before stands filled with bloodthirsty spectators, and die martyrs—soon to be followed by an everlasting heavenly reward. They would be honored as heroes of early Christendom, with whatever remained of their bones or half-eaten bodies secretly buried in crypts in the catacombs. Some would be canonized. He, a renegade, would face the same torture, but would die alone in the Sonora Desert without the glory of martyrdom.
Months or years later someone might find the skeletal remains of a desiccated corpse if the vultures left anything behind. As a renegade priest, he wasn’t even sure of salvation despite his lifelong devotion to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and how in the imitation of Christ he had tried to conduct his life. When these feelings came over him, he refused to believe they stemmed from self-pity. They were facts driven home by months of harsh and sometimes cruel treatment by his church.
He stopped suddenly, startled by a rustle of brush and a dark shape that moved silently across his path. Although he couldn’t see it, he felt a slight movement of air as the thing passed. He also detected a pungent odor. He waited, standing perfectly still, trying to identify a shape in the blackness. Then another went by and still another. A line of some type of animal he couldn’t identify. When one bumped into him, he stumbled backwards. The animal did not attack, it moved on, seemingly ignoring him. After a few minutes, he was satisfied that whatever line of animals had crossed his path, they were now gone. But he found he had fallen into a furry cholla bush which jabbed sharp spines into the side of his thigh. What seemed like fur was in reality a cluster of needle-sharp thorns. He was beginning to panic. He tried to recover by repeating a short prayer to himself: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph help me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph...”. He crawled backwards, then settled down in a squat and began the painful process of pulling a dozen spines out of his leg as he repeated the prayer over and over. The prayer took his mind off the pain. When he had regained his composure, he pushed on towards the dark craggy shapes high in the sky in the far distance that seemed to stand out against the starlit background. With no stars glinting in front of shapes that rose like massive inkblots into the sky, he knew they must be the mountains. What he did not know was how far away they were—two days? three days?
Almost every bush he bumped into in the dark seemed to be covered with sharp thorns. He was scratched on arms and legs through his work clothes which began to hang torn in places.
Somewhere in the hours since he had left the monastery, he had strayed from the road and was crossing open country heading towards those high ominous shapes that he knew he would eventually have to cross. The going was made tougher by the fact that the land was not flat—he always seemed to be climbing small hillocks or stumbling down into ravines. He began to berate himself over the stupidity of thinking he could traverse this kind of terrain in the dark. Maybe the whole idea of escaping on foot was a mistake. Yet he knew that if he had stayed in the monastery he would have faced the ultimate calamity— his priesthood taken away from him. Regardless of what Elmer had said about the church preferring resignations to defrocking, Steve somehow knew his case was different. They were already trying to defrock him. But the multiple approval levels of the church bureaucracy in cases of defrocking worked in his favor. His plan was to stay ahead of any formal notice.
As the hours went by, the stars grew fainter. The mountains faded from black to gray. He was buoyed up by the first light of dawn in the eastern sky and finally, sunrise. The sun came up in front of him confirming that he was heading east or northeast to Tucson. As morning came, he realized he had been walking for over three hours. The breathtaking desert sunrise produced an exhilarating euphoria almost overcoming the tiredness he felt from a night without sleep. In the far distance he could see rows of tall saguaro cactus some with crazy twisted arms, silhouetted against the pink-orange light in the eastern sky.
Walking now with renewed energy, he suddenly came upon a swarm of large hairy, iron-gray animals that looked like wild boars. He shrank back wondering if they might attack him with their small sharp upturned tusks. He remembered they were called javelinas. They frequented the Sonora Desert munching mainly on prickly pear cactus. As he studied the animals who completely ignored him, he was surp
rised to see them devouring the prickly pear—thorns and all! He realized that the line of animals that had passed him in the dark the previous night must have been javelinas.
Later, his confidence grew as the warm morning sun began to shine down on him. With lighter step, he trudged on, circling the arroyos and hillocks that dotted the great mesa. He could now clearly see the ground in front of him as he steadily made his way. Maybe things would be all right, he thought. Maybe he would make it.
*****
Brother Berard limped across the compound in the direction of his office. He had arisen early as usual to attend Mass, receive the Holy Eucharist and have breakfast in the refectory. As he crossed the compound, he glanced up at a parade of sparse white clouds drifting from the southwest across Arizona’s pale blue sky. In the distance to the north, mixed white and gray layers of clouds scraped over the craggy mountain peaks. It was late spring; the rains were long gone and the Sonora Desert had become warm and dry in the daytime, cold at night. “Today will be in the upper eighties,” he mumbled to himself, happy at the thought that the phantom pain he felt constantly in his foot near the missing toe, had let up considerably in the dry weather, although it would not disappear completely. He was more tired than usual this morning having slept only four hours instead of his usual five because of the late night incident with Father Murphy. As he approached his office, stirring up dusty brown gravel with every footstep of his dragging left foot, he heard the telephone ringing. Hurrying in, he picked up the receiver and stiffened himself for the annoying squeal he would hear due to the aging telephone, or neglected phone line coming into the monastery, he never knew which.