I was two decades and a half in the desert when they came to me. How they found me, I do not know. Perhaps the Lord guided them. Perhaps they followed the reek of my corruption.
They too were in flight, hiding from the Romans and their lackeys in the Temple. The brother of He whose name I deserve not to speak led them. They were awed by my appearance, and I by theirs. Barely did I recognize them, so exhausted were they by their trek.
I was astounded to learn that they had brought the Mother with them.
--from the Glass scroll
Rockefeller Museum translation
FOUR
Father Dan Fitzpatrick strolled the narrow streets of his Lower East Side parish and drank in the colors flowing around him. Sure there was squalor here, and poverty and crime, all awash in litter and graffiti, but there was color here. Not like the high-rise midtown he’d visited last night, with its sterile concrete-and-marble plazas, its faceless glass-and-granite office towers.
A mere forty blocks from the Waldorf, the Lower East Side might as well be another country. No skyscrapers here. Except for aberrations like the Con-Ed station’s quartet of stacks and the dreary housing projects, the Lower East Side skyline rises to a uniform six stories. Window-studded facades of cracked and patched brick crowd together cheek by jowl for block after block, separated occasionally by a garbage-choked alley. They’re all brick of varying shades of red, sometimes brown or gray, and every so often a daring pink or yellow or blue. With no room behind or to either side, a mazework of mandatory fire escapes hangs over the sidewalks, clinging to the brick facades like spidery steel parasites, ready-made perches for the city’s winged rat, the pigeon.
Everywhere Dan looked, everything was old, with no attempt to recapture youth. Graffiti formed the decorative motif, layer upon layer until the intertwined snake squiggles and balloon letters were indecipherable even to their perpetrators. The store signs he could read advertised old bedding, fresh vegetables, used furniture, and the morning paper, offered food, candy, magazines, cashed checks, and booze, booze, booze. And some Korean and Vietnamese signs he couldn’t read. He passed pawn shops, bodegas, boys clubs, schools, churches, and playgrounds. Children still played, even here.
He looked up at the passing windows. Behind them lived young, hopeful immigrants on their way up, middle aged has-beens on their way down, and too many running like hell just to stay in place. And out here on the streets dwelt the never-weres and the never-will-bes, going nowhere, barely even sure of where they were at any given moment.
He wore his civvies this morning—faded jeans, flannel shirt, sneakers. He wasn’t here on Church business and it was easier to get around without the Roman collar. Especially in Tompkins Square. The collar drew the panhandlers like moths to a flame. And can you believe it—every single one of them a former altar boy? Simply amazing how many altar boys had become homeless.
Tompkins Square Park was big, three blocks long and running the full width between Avenues A and B. Black wrought-iron fencing guarded the perimeter. Oaks, pale green with new life, stood inside the fences but spread their branches protectively over the surrounding sidewalks. Homeless shantytowns used to spring up here every so often, and just as often the police would raze them, but closing the park between midnight and 6 a.m. every night had sent the cardboard box brigade elsewhere.
Dan walked past the stately statue of Samuel S. Cox, its gray-green drabness accentuated by the orange, red, and yellow of the swings and slides in the nearby playground, and strolled the bench-lined walks, searching for the gleaming white of Harold Gold’s bald head. They’d met years ago when Dan had audited Hal’s course on the Dead Sea scrolls. They’d got to talking after class, found they shared an abiding interest in the Jerusalem Church—Hal from the Jewish perspective, Dan from the Christian—and became fast friends. Whenever one dug up a tasty little tidbit of lore, he shared it immediately with the other. Dan was sure Hal had picked up some real goodies during his sabbatical in Israel. He was looking forward to this meeting.
He didn’t see Hal. Lunch hour was still a while off but already seats were becoming scarce around the square. Then Dan spotted someone waving from a long bench in the sunny section on the Avenue A side.
No wonder I couldn’t spot him, Dan thought as he approached Hal’s bench. He’s got a tan.
As usual, Hal was nattily dressed in a dark blue blazer, gray slacks, a pale blue Oxford button-down shirt, and a red-and-blue paisley tie. But his customary academician’s pallor had been toasted to a golden brown. His nude scalp gleamed with a richer color. He looked healthier and better rested than Dan had ever seen him.
“The Middle East seems to agree with you,” Dan said, laughing as they shook hands. He sat down next to him. “I can’t remember ever seeing you looking so fit.”
“Believe me, Fitz, getting away for a year and recharging the batteries does wonders for the mind and body. I heartily recommend it.” He looked around. “You came alone?”
“Of course. Who else would I bring?”
Dan knew perfectly well who Hal was looking for.
“I don’t know. I thought, well, maybe Sister Carrie might come along.”
“No. She’s back at St. Joe’s, working. You’ll have to come by if you want to see her.”
“Maybe I will. Been a long time since I stopped in.”
Dan knew Hal had a crush on Carrie. A strictly hands-off, unrequited, love-from-afar thing that reduced him to a stumbling, stammering twelve-year old around her. But he wasn’t alone. Everybody loved Sister Carrie.
“Do that. And bring some food. A long time since you made a contribution.”
Just then an eighth of a ton of black woman in a frayed yellow dress lumbered up and spread a large green garbage bag on the bench. She seated herself so close to Dan that one of her massive thighs rubbed against his. He smiled at her and inched away to give her some room as she settled herself.
Hal clapped Dan on the shoulder. “Saw you on TV last night, Fitz.”
“Did you. How was I?”
“You sounded good. I thought you came off very well.”
You wouldn’t think so if you’d been there, Dan thought.His herd at his heels, he’d slunk back to St. Joe’s with his tail between his legs. At least that was they way it had felt. The on-camera interview Hal had seen had been taped during the fund-raising dinner, while he and the demonstrators were all waiting for Senator Crenshaw to come out. After the senator’s exit—after he’d been sliced and diced—Dan had fielded a few questions from reporters but his answers weren’t as sharp as they might have been. They’d seemed almost...empty.
But perhaps that was just his own perception. Everyone he’d seen so far today had told him that he and the protesters had come across extremely well on the tube. Dan would have to take their word for it. He’d lacked the nerve to tune in last night.
Luckily, no one seemed to have caught Senator Crenshaw’s little diatribe on tape. Dan knew the wounded part of him within would shrivel up and die if he had listen to that again.
“What the—?”
Hal’s voice jolted Dan back to the here and now. He glanced up and saw Hal staring past him in horrified fascination at the fat black woman. She’d removed the mirrored half of a compact and a pair of tweezers from her huge purse and was now plucking at her face. Dan couldn’t see anything to pluck at but that didn’t seem to deter the woman. She was completely engrossed in the task.