Jay
My first day they say, “Surely you’re staying the night. It is well into the afternoon, certainly almost night, and I don’t know what else I would have done, not now. I am so tired after the drive that’s lasted for an entire day. The place looks so comfortable. I can see the Christmas tree in a lobby outside of the chapel, and the nativity scene is laid out in the church before the altar. When they sing the Magnificat that night, the O Antiphon is:
O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.
Michael was here. Only a few nights ago. Michael was here, listening to these words. He was here in this chapel. My heart is so bright right now. It is so bright it hurts.
I imagine going and getting him and bringing him back here to the safety of these good men, these beautiful lights, the gentle face of Mary looking at Baby Jesus. As if it’s a done deal. But it’s not a done deal.
You may never see him again.
I may never see him alive again.
After dinner the brothers invite me into their sitting room. Father Damian says Compline is in a half hour and while we sit watching TV, Brother Raymond comes to sit beside me and says, “You are the one.”
“The one?”
“You are the one that loved him so much. I told him I saw it in him. The light of God. That it was there because it was clear he had been loved so much. You are the one that loved him.”
“But where did he go?” I asked Raymond.
“Do not despair,” the old man said, touching my hand. His hand was like a fall leaf. “He said he was going to find God, and God finds those who look.”
I go to sleep listening to the radio. I heard that outside of Grand Forks a young man presumed to be in his late twenties was found dead, his car crashed in a snowdrift. He is as yet unidentified.
I turn off the radio, punch the pillow and try to sleep.
The next day when I took a car to the house and waited for him to return I did not let myself think, “A razor to the wrist or a car driven in the lake is a quicker road to God than anything else.”
I wouldn’t let myself think it, but I did, and when I thought this, next I thought of Dalton. If I came back… unsuccessful, then there was Dalton. But that was foolish. It didn’t even work. There was Michael if I found him and Michael if I didn’t. If I didn’t return with Michael Cleveland, I came back alone, and alone was what I would be.
I remember when Michael had his crack, the one that undid him for a long time. I wish I could have taken that for him, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stand beside him. Mickey Avedon, who he’d had in Kindergarten, who still came to him and called him Mr. C. four years later. I heard the stories, but I never met him, and I’m not like my mother. I can’t pretend to shock and pain I don’t have, only be present. When I got the news of what happened to the boy, what it was to me was news, terrible news. But I never saw him in the flesh, never loved him in the spirit. Michael, my Michael. What if he’s gone? What if he’s dead? What if I came too late or what if it was not mine to save him. We had so much unfinished business. I am not philosophical enough to say, well it was not God’s will for me to come back with him. God had another plan. I am not the kind of person to let go. If he is gone, if he is that dead boy in the car, then I’m dead too. I know it. He will be my Mickey Avedon. Michael Cleveland frozen in the snow is the thing I will not be able to come back from.
I wanted to be strong. The whole world tells you to be strong, that this too shall pass, that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But some things do kill you, and even though everything passes you may not be around when it does.
The radio I have feared I turn on now. It is broadcasting the monks. They are chanting and I almost wish I’d stayed there, almost wish somehow I had been able to shield myself from this fear and from this terror, from the wind that is pounding at the door.
Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are and have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore.
The slow, droning, thousand verses of the ancient hymn, contrast with the wind that howls outside. I am not quite weeping, but I am on the floor, and I am not quite making bargains with God, but I am admitting my misery. There goes everything There goes anger, there goes my strength. There goes Dalton and the hope of other men. There goes the feeling that this is only duty and however I come back from this, I come back the same having done everything I can. No, this is everything, Love is the house of God, and I pray without words that mercy lives in it.
***********
I’m sorry we had to stop because of the snow.”
“Are you crazy? We’d be dead if we kept going. Besides. All of this was my fault.”
“What were you doing out on the road anyway? Just walking around.”
“I knew there was nothing behind me, so I just kept walking forward. I kept walking hoping I wouldn’t freeze, that I’d be found. And then you found me,”
“And then we found you. The car can be ready a few days after Christmas. You’ll have to live without one tonight if that’s okay.”
“Oh, that’s okay. Everything’s okay. Everything’s more than okay.”
“Amen.”
“I’m a stupid man. I think for a long time I wanted to die, and I almost did. It was such a possibility and on the edge of it I just said Jesus let me live. Look at those stars coming out past the clouds. Look at that sky. Did the world ever seem completely new to you? Did you finally understand everything was going to be alright?
“Ah, I’m going to shut up now.”
Laughter.
“No, no talk on. I don’t meet city folks too often and when I do they always seem jumped up.”
“I never thought of myself as city folk. I just thought of myself as someone who didn’t belong.”
“Well, maybe you belong out here.”
“Maybe.”
“All sorts of things belong out here. Out here on the edge of the earth,” says the tow truck driver.
“You want the big place instead? You sure you want the cottage? With all this snow?” the driver asks.
“Yeah. Yes. I’ll be fine there.”
“Is that it? Is that the cottage?”
“Yes!”
“You left the lights on?”
“I didn’t. And there’s a car.”
“Maybe they were looking for you. Someone’s looking for you.”
“I didn’t leave the lights…. I don’t think. Or… I don’t think the monks are looking for me. But…”
But the words die as the door to the house opens, and Michael Cleveland squints and then opens his eyes, shaking his head at the impossible sight.
“It can’t be… It can’t… A miracle.”
“Who?” the driver asks.
“But… he can’t see me from in here.”
The driver laughs.
“Then you better go and let him see you.”
And still shaking his head at the impossible sight of Jay Strickland, he runs across the snow to be his miracle too.
