A very ordinary looking Chevy drove up the driveway this afternoon and parked in the circular drive. I could see the car as soon as it left the main road because I was up on the roof. Now, don’t worry. I have been going up there lately to pray. You may laugh when I tell you it’s closer to heaven, but that’s technically true. And I can see right across the valley just like I was flying.
I hurried downstairs and met with Izzy and Alfred in the front room. They each sat in a wing back chair and I sat on the piano bench, getting a little height on them. Hey, it’s an old trick I learned in Africa. Alfred might have been a twin to Izzy. They are both short and solidly built, but Alfred has longish hair, a mustache and he’s fidgety.
We didn’t talk very long. Afterward, Izzy took his brother on a tour of the monastery. They found me in the kitchen about twenty minutes later.
“Would you like a check, Brother Jesse, or shall I arrange to make a direct deposits into the monastery’s account?” said Alfred.
“A check is fine,” I said. “Things are tight for us, as you probably know. So I’ll ask you how much the check is for.”
“We like to pay in advance to cover all eventualities,” he said. The initial payment will be for $10,000. And we’ll need to have a stock of food and supplies here. If you have room, I’d like to send a truck this week. You and the brothers are welcome to use any of the food, of course. Have Izzy let us know when it needs to be re-stocked.”
“We eat in a Spartan-like manner,” I said.
“Then your guest will eat as you do,” he said. “Meat and potatoes.”
“We may eat only the vegetables,” I said.
“Whatever you want,” said Alfred. “We certainly don’t want to disturb your lifestyle.”
“I think it would be a fabulous idea for you to tell me what that was all about,” I said to Izzy when he came back out the door fifteen minutes later and we were leaving the building.
“My brother Alfred works for the United States Government,” he said.
“So does our mailman,” I said.
“Alfred is employed by an intelligence service,” came his reply.
“I would have to say that our mailman is not,” I said.
“I have identification that assures anyone in a constabulary function that I am legitimate,” he said.
“A legitimate what?” I asked. “A spy? For crying out loud!”
“Of course not,” he said as we were getting in the van. “The ID card is pretty impressive, but I’m just a relative of someone who is in the business.”
“The “business?” I asked, still shocked at this turn of events.
“Alfred needs a place for some of his … friends … to stay from time to time. Away from the City.”
“New York?”
“Yes. They’re not in the business themselves, but they are often crucial in one way or another.”
“Crucial?”
“You catch on pretty fast, don’tcha” said Izzy
“Look, Iz, I don’t know …”
“They pay well. They’re used to paying high rents.”
“How much?” I asked.
“A thousand a week is not uncommon,” he replied.
“Are they witnesses or something like that?” I asked.
Izzy gave me an exasperated look.
I laughed, “Do they like beans and rice?”
“Oh,” he said, “food is no problem. It would be trucked in. That’s true for all the safe houses.”
I guess we’re out of touch with the world. Neither Izzy or I realized how difficult it would be to find a pay phone. We drove around and parked outside a drug store, a chain grocery store and the local sports pavilion, while Izzy ran in to look for a phone. Cell technology has evidently made pay phones a losing business proposition. Finally, Izzzy told me to drive to the town hall. I walked inside with him and he asked the first worker we met to direct us to the police department.
Just inside their swinging doors, the police had a small waiting area with chairs lined up against the wall.
“Sit here and don’t go anywhere,” Izzy told me. He walked about twenty feet across the space to a window on the opposite wall, behind which sat a policeman in uniform. Izzy pulled out his wallet and opened it for the policeman to see. I could not hear their short conversation, but in a moment a buzzer sounded and Izzy turned and walked through a door on the far wall. I sat their staring after him in wonder.
Izzy came to the doorway of the office while I was on the phone arguing with St. Anne and I motioned him inside. Izzy always struck me as a steady hand and I felt he might as well know what was happening. When you live with ten other men, you get a sense of who is capable and whose judgment you can trust. I would need someone to bounce ideas off and Izzy was one person who would give an issue careful thought and yield up an honest opinion. So would Bouncer, if he were in the mood, but lately our resident plumber was dealing with the crisis in his own way by not talking about it. The denial was coming out in the smallest things as anger, which left him upset and doubting himself.
My telephone conversation with Brother Saint Anne ended without resolving my problem or his. We hung up without any agreement when I told him neither of us could afford the telephone charges.
“You want to turn the monastery into a boarding house?” said Izzy.
“Got a better idea?” I asked
“If there was a big employer in the town who provided good jobs, your idea might work,” he said, “but the only boarders we’ll get are gonna be itinerant woodchucks who won’t pay their rent after a couple of weeks.” “Woodchuck” is the local term for an unskilled young man who starts calling himself a carpenter when he’s out of work.
“We’ll just have to hope they can pay,” I said. “I really don’t have any other ideas.”
“And what about our cloister? The silence? Our way of life?” said Izzy.
“Our way life is going to change,” I said, “when all of us go out and look for work. We’re not going to be classic contemplatives working along side other store clerks and laborers.”
Izzy was silent for a moment. Then he got up from his seat and walked to the window and looked out. I turned in my chair to follow him.
“Do you think,” I asked him, “it’s worth trying to save the place and our religious life under these circumstances, Izzy? Maybe we should all just quit and head out.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“If we open a boarding house we’ll at least be able to keep the monastery. We can find ways to separate from our boarders some of the time,” I said.
“How would that work?” Izzy asked.
I chuckled. “I don’t really know,” was all I could offer.
“Look, Jesse, I have an idea,” Izzy said, “but I don’t want to lay it out until I’ve checked on a few things. Can you drive me into the village to a pay phone?”
“Why not use this phone?” I asked, pointing to the one I’d just hung up.
“What do you think? Good, huh?” I said to Harpo after I handed him the letter and waited a minute or two for him to read it.
“This is terrible,” he said. “You can’t even show up in person to speak with your younger self? Instead you deputize and send in an imaginary young woman?”
“She’s my Guardian Angel, Harpo, not a fake,” I replied.
“Well, let’s just say she’s not a verifiable entity,” he said.
“I verified her personally,” I said, knowing I was stepping out beyond the truth as well as the reasonable, a dangerous two strikes.
“Don’t you see what you did in this letter?” he asked. “You refused to speak with your old self. And you used an unrealistic notion to write a fairly innocent account of your behavior. Look, I’m not saying you should deal with Jesse if you’re not ready. Or that you’re to just pick on his faults. This shouldn’t be a guilt fest. But get the actors to play themselves before you go any farther.”
I’m not sure how long ago that took place, but I have not yet got around to trying another letter.
“Dear Brother Jesse the Younger,” she wrote. “I have to tell you that you were quite an asshole 40 years ago and although there has been slight improvement, it is not easily measured. Oh God! … literally … I was so scared when you boarded that Pan Am Super Liner for the flight to … (Sally names the place, but for publication here I’ll call it the Republic of Tangeroo. That’s not its real name, of course, but I still have friends there I don’t wish to embarrass.) I knew only that a plane crash was in the future, but I had no details, so each time you boarded an airliner, I quaked with fear for you. When we touched down in RikiRiki, I finally relaxed with a great sigh.
I knew you were not suited to this assignment. I had been listening to you speak with your spiritual director, your friends and counselor and I had even been inside your head and I couldn’t fathom why you thought it was time for you to give greatly of yourself so that others might live more abundant lives in better health. You were such a selfish young man! And naive! Need I add illogical and often downright stupid? I have to admit I came close to breaking my vow as a Guardian and letting you walk in harm’s way. I felt that some of the people you were about to meet and minister to might be safer without your help. Don’t ever expect me to choose your welfare over that of large groups of your associates. Yes, He certainly loves you, but expect a little justice along with it.
But I have come to love you over the years. You may not often make sense, but you’ve got guts. Sometimes.
I so dislike confronting people. Especially when I’m losing. One of my basic character flaws, I guess. I have many, but I tell myself they have either lessened with age or I remember less of my misdeeds as I get older. I’ve taken my concern to Harpo, my spiritual director. He suggested I get in touch with the person inside me that is leading my life. Both the current version of him and the younger version where I feel I made a lot of mistakes.
I tend to want to present a complete picture when I speak of myself. Of course, it will be inaccurate because we hardly ever see our actions in any other light than that of self-love. Have you noticed that so far in this blog I’m most often correct in my opinions and decisions? And when I am occasionally wrong, I have a good excuse for my mistake? “Good ol’ Jesse, he’s not perfect but he has a good heart,” would be what I’d want you to say about me, I suppose. The process of self-justification takes place automatically in our brains, I think. There is evidently a naturally selected advantage to thinking well of ourselves.
I haven’t said much about my experiences in Africa because every time I write about those few years and read it back I am disappointed in myself. Short of creating a fictional piece with Jessse The Great as the hero, even my majestic ego cannot find a noble protagonist in my Dark Continent story. The short of it is I just don’t like the person I see when I write about him.
Forty odd years later I can admit I was a dumb-ass kid who overestimated his physical and mental abilities, his capability of love for mankind and ability to get along with others and just about every other meager talent in his inventory. And this many years later I still cringe when I remember some of my behaviors and how they affected others. I know, I know … I’m probably overestimating my importance in the scheme of things, but although I’ve learned in recent years that some of the people whose work or plans I upset don’t even remember me, I still have to live in judgment of myself. Unless I accede to the view of my confessor and spiritual director, Harpo, who has always told me I’m wasting time thinking about myself. (I wonder what Harpo would think if he knew I was writing a blog about myself!)
“Did you ever know a Brother with whom you often disagreed and who you did not appreciate?” Harpo asked me one afternoon when I asked him to hear my confession just so we could dispense with The Silence so I might talk about myself, my favorite topic.
“Sure,” I replied, “Zipper would come close to the bottom of my list of favorite pilgrims on the path.” Zipper had been with us for five years back in the early 1980’s. He earned his nickname from his habit of reinforcing The Silence by making a protracted and dramatic gesture of zipping his lips when anyone said anything before the evening dispensation. He left us and the Order of the Holy Varlet in 1986 to attend law school.
“Did you not pray for him?” continued Harpo.
“I think so, yes,” I answered, “but I cannot bring any specific memories to mind.”
“Okay,” laughed Harpo, “did you not know you should pray for him and wish him well?”
“Yes, I knew it. I really think I might have prayed for him. Probably. Maybe. Not sure,” I said.
“But you could. So if you can pray for a brother you don’t like, why can’t you pray for that person you were 40 years ago?” he asked. “Call him Jesse The Younger. Forgive him, love him … as you should have done for Zipper.”
“Can I yell at him, too?” I interjected.
“Sure,” said Harpo. “Bare your soul to him. Let it all out. But end by forgiving him.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll do that if I ever meet Jesse The Younger again.”
“You will never “meet” him again,” said Harpo. “That’s why you should put all of this in a letter to him.”
I talk to myself all the time, but I seldom write to me. I was sure Harpo’s suggestion of a letter was meant to help me objectify my self-image so that I could better see my attributes, good and bad. However, on my first attempt, I kept mixing up Me Now and Me Then. Thinking about a realistic observation of myself, it occurred to me that a guardian angel would see the real me and would presumably care enough to be fair. And gentle, of course. Now my enthusiasm for this work began to grow as I thought of how Sally would write lovingly to me. And in the end, the imaginary Sally, the Guardian Angel, produced an imaginary account of what might be an imaginary Jesse.
