Just as he was finally finishing up, I saw the pistol.
My father was a cop in our town and he had a few guns that he normally kept in a dresser drawer next to his bed. (Another huge difference between then and today, when I have my three guns in a locked safe at all times.) But beyond his service weapons, he also had a target practice .22 revolver that he kept—unloaded to be sure, but with easily available bullets in the nearby drawer—hanging from a peg in an old-fashioned quick-draw holster down in the garage.
“What’s that doing here?” I asked.
No answer.
“Julian. Give me a break. Let me have that thing.”
He stared at me for a long time, then finally picked it up by its barrel and passed it across to me. It had one bullet in it.
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“Julian. She’s just a dumb girl with an even dumber boyfriend.”
“I know. It’s not her.”
“No? Then what else was it?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everything. Life. Like I told you.”
Much to my everlasting regret, I didn’t mention anything about the gun incident to my parents. That was the ethic among brothers with secrets—and who among us didn’t have them?—and I bought into it entirely. I must say, though, in my own defense, that even if I had gone to my parents, they probably would not have done anything. The idea of seeking professional help for psychiatric or psychological distress was not in the range of solutions my parents would have pursued.
Let’s remember, Julian had always been difficult and different… and he’d gotten progressively “better” over time. So I viewed this as a setback, certainly, but not as a true crisis, not as a warning about his future behavior.
At all-men’s Mother of Mercy, we started every school year with a two-day retreat, which was supposed to be a time for all of us young sinners to examine our lives and renew our commitment to prayer, to the Catholic Church, to spirituality, and especially to the love of Jesus Christ. These retreats were usually hosted by a priest from one of the missionary and/or teaching orders. In my sophomore year, a Maryknoll priest, Father Aloysius Hersey, was back after a truly thrilling performance the previous year, when he had talked about his own history of self-flagellation and then removed his cassock on the last day, folding it down over his waist, to reveal the scars on his back to prove that he practiced what he preached. While conceding that this form of self-torture wasn’t absolutely necessary either for salvation or for leading a holy life, Father Hersey was also unmistakably proud of the sixteen young men who came forward at the end of the second day to volunteer to take the lash—over their shirts, of course, in deference to those possibly squeamish mothers who might have objected if they found out, and if any of their sons’ skin had actually been broken.
Seven of those sixteen flagellants quit MOM before the year was out to enroll in the seminary. This was seen as further proof of Father Hersey’s charisma and power. And in truth, I must say that even among those of us who started the retreat as skeptics, Father Hersey had induced a powerful kind of religious hysteria among all of us. And this, in turn, heightened expectations about what would be in store for this year’s retreat.
Contributing exponentially to the volatile mix was an accident of history: on October 22, 1962, the Tuesday two days before the retreat was to begin, President John Kennedy had addressed the nation on television and announced the presence of offensive missile sites in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was well underway. In response to that presence, he directed U.S. military forces go to DEFCON (Defensive Condition) 3. By the next day, U.S. ships had set up a blockade of Soviet shipping headed to Cuba, to be enforced at the 800-mile perimeter. On the day the retreat began, in the face of Soviet intransigence (or ambiguity) about the blockade, the President pulled the quarantine back to 500 miles and announced DEFCON 2, the highest level in U.S. history. Driving into school in our carpool (Julian was now a freshman at MOM), we had been transfixed by the news on the radio that all of the Soviet ships en route to Cuba had slowed or turned around—except for one.
After homeroom, we all dutifully filed into the Assembly Hall, which comfortably held all four years of MOM’s students—800 young men—and the entire faculty. The stage had been cleared except for a podium front and center, where Father Hersey would address us, and in the back an altar, where Mass would be celebrated later on.
After I was at my seat in about the middle of assembly, I saw Julian enter and take a seat to my right on the aisle in one of the front rows. He was talking to some of the guys around him, which I took to be a good sign. He seemed to be fitting in well in his new school environment, and I didn’t give him any more thought.
At last, our Principal, Monsignor Tully, strode onto the stage and up to the podium and gave us the usual ground rules for general assemblies—show respect for the speaker(s), no unnecessary talking, no rough-housing, no bathroom breaks, and so on. And then he introduced, fresh from a mission to China and Indonesia, Father Aloysius Hersey.
The cleric cut a somewhat exotic figure—and not only because he’d just arrived fresh from the Far East. In contrast to the black cassocks worn by our faculty priests, he wore a brown monk’s robe, with sandals and no socks. (At MOM, our dress code forbade white socks, to give you an idea of how novel this seemed to all of us.) He also sported a shaggy beard and, pre-Beatles, hair down over his ears. From where I sat this year, I couldn’t make out his eyes, but from the year before I knew that they were a striking and intense shade of blue in an almost shockingly sunburned face. Tall and thin, with a toothy smile and a gentle manner, he seemed to exude holiness, a true ascetic for the modern world.
A consummate showman, Hersey appeared just off the wings and, stepping out into full view, stood with his hands pressed together in a prayerful gesture. As more of the students saw him and recognition kicked in, a round of applause began and grew until it had become a full-blown standing ovation of the entire student body.
When the applause died down, Hersey bowed with a show of humility, walked to the middle of the stage, bowed again, then turned back toward the altar, where he kneeled and made an elaborate sign of the cross. In a large room full of teenage testosterone, a person is lucky if they can command five seconds of quiet attention. But Hersey knelt there praying for at least a minute and there wasn’t a sound in the room. Finally, he crossed himself once more, turned, and came back up to the podium.
“God bless you,” he said. “Let us pray. Our father, who art in heaven…”
As the prayer went on, suddenly Monsignor Tully appeared again in the wings, a few steps onto the stage. As though uncertain about what he should do, he waited until the “Amen” had resounded through the room, at which time he came up next to Hersey and whispered something in his ear.
Hersey’s shoulders noticeably gave under the weight of what he’d been told.
Turning away from the podium, he went back to the altar, where he genuflected, blessed himself yet again, and hung his head.
The silence this time was profound.
Slowly, haltingly, he returned to the podium. “My brothers,” he said. “God bless you. God bless us all.”
Appearing to struggle for control, he drew a breath, raised his eyes to heaven, then settled them upon us. “As I’m sure all of you are aware, the U.S. Navy has been running a blockade on Cuba for the past couple of days. All of our ships have been on highest alert, and have been stopping Soviet ships bound for Cuba in order to enforce the blockade that President Kennedy has ordered.
“Well, this morning, just a few minutes ago really, the captain of one of these Soviet ships refused to allow one of our Navy vessels to send officers to board and search his ship. Words and radio signals were evidently exchanged and then some hothead in charge of one of the navy guns fired on the Russian ship.