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Copyright © 2001 by Brian Payton
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), Toronto, Ontario.
This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, 226-2040 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 2G2. www.beachholme.bc.ca This is a Porcepic Book.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and of the British Columbia Arts Council. The publisher also acknowledges the financial assistance received from the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities.
Editor: Michael Carroll
Cover Design: Herrainco | Skipp | Herrainco
Text Design and Production: Jen Hamilton
Cover Art: © Birgit Koch/firstlight.ca
Author Photograph: rarevisionphotography.com
Printed and bound in Canada by Houghton Boston
This is a work of fiction. Fiction may or may not be informed by personal experience. The characters and setting found within are imaginary composites and do not refer to actual persons or places. Any resemblance to actual or previously imagined places, factual or legendary events, real or seemingly real people, is purely coincidental and, of course, plausibly deniable.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Payton, Brian
Hail Mary Corner
ISBN 0-88878-422-8
I. Title.
PS8581.A87H34 2001 C813’.6 C2001-911074-X
PR9199.4.P39H34 2001
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, thanks are due to past, present, and future members of the UFSWEC. Thanks are also due to Barbara Bilsland, Tia Smith, and Andrew Greenwood for reading (and rereading) the earliest drafts; Michael Carroll for his dedication and editorial vision; Jim Skipp for his sense of style; Joan Clark, Edna Alford, and Michael Winter for encouraging words; and Trisha Telep for spreading the word.
Special thanks to my father for his example of faith and determination, and to Lily—for not counting the time it took to bring this story home.
What is time, then? If nobody asks me, I know; if I have to
explain it to someone who has asked me, I do not know.
—St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.), Confessions
ONE DEDICATION
September 1982
My knees were out of shape. It happened every summer. You spent all your time swimming, biking, lounging in the grass, and the callus that built up over the school year quickly wasted away. It was only when you came back in September that you remembered kneeling was supposed to be painful.
The new abbey church was filled with the soaring angelic polyphony of the seminarians and the haunting chant of the monks—Allegri’s Miserere mei. Bowing my head and closing my eyes, I felt the presence of God. I could also feel the warmth of Jon kneeling next to me: a familiar whiff of soap and evaporating Aqua Velva.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the greasy scalps of seminarians gently bobbing in front of me, and black monks displayed in neat rows in the oak stalls to the left. Across from us in the north transept sat a cardinal and three bishops in pointy mitres, plus a pair of short Orthodox abbots with nearly identical salt-and-pepper beards. On the right a capacity crowd of regular priests, nuns, and laypeople filled the nave to overflowing. In the centre stood a massive granite altar under the curve of a dome sixty feet in the air. Late-morning sunlight streamed through stained glass, bathing the pallbearers in red, orange, and yellow as they entered the aisle in the middle of the faithful.
Four seminarians from the senior class carried a small box atop a wooden litter draped in a shawl of white with a gold cross on top. Stiff and serious, they stopped at the foot of the altar where the abbot and four monks in gold-brocade vestments waited with the cardinal, who tipped his crosier—the hooked staff of the Shepherd of Men—in solemn consent. With wizened hands the monks reached out and took the box from the boys, nodded a blessing to them, then placed it carefully under the altar.
The box contained the relics of Saint Scholastica, patroness of rain. She was invoked against childhood convulsions. Her greatest claim to fame, however, was the fact that she was the twin sister of Saint Benedict. Under every altar there should be buried some holy thing: blobs of dried blood, hair, body parts, or personal effects. In this case, we were told, it was bones. I closed my eyes again and wondered what kind of bones were in that little box. Jaw? Teeth? Skull cap? Probably her knees, I thought, feeling my own go numb.
I was late again this year, my third at the Seminary of Saint John the Divine. I had arrived just in time to jump out of my shorts and into wool pants and a navy blazer—our school uniform. The organ called out to me as I frantically changed, alone, all the way up in the juniors’ dorm. I tied my tie as I ran to the ceremony, the familiar clomp of last year’s shoes echoing through the hall.
The monks had been waiting for this “D-Day” since long before we were born. A model of the planned church had been gathering dust in the guesthouse lobby since 1957. What they ended up with looked completely different.
The new abbey church was a sprawling concrete edifice with a pointed dome. It had dozens of tall, abstract, stained-glass windows, a rainbow of cough drops melted together. From the outside it appeared as if a giant spaceship had landed from some postmodern Catholic galaxy. It took three and a half years to build—a good part of it with seminarian slave labour—and like the great churches of old, it would probably never really be finished. Father Ezekiel, our ancient, liver-spotted science teacher, said the new structure would stand at least until 2482, barring nuclear attack.
As the Miserere faded, the cardinal called for the Holy Spirit. “Come down and bless this place,” he said. “Make it a sanctuary dedicated to the worship of God from this day forward.” I closed my eyes again and imagined the Holy Spirit descending from the popcorn clouds, through the flatulent stench of the pulp-mill town. He’d see the church, the monastery, and the seminary lined up along the cliff—the bell tower like a beacon leading him in. He’d pass through the thick concrete dome and hover over the altar where the cardinal and monks raised the Blessed Sacrament to the sky. He’d breathe in the rich incense and know he was home. I opened my eyes. There was no sign of the Holy Spirit. Instead, when the organ fell silent and the cardinal stopped mumbling, we all heard a sound very much of this world.
Every head turned to the back of the church where a huge baptismal font bubbled holy water over granite rocks and into a little pool. The cardinal paused a moment more to make sure of what he heard. Crock, crock echoed again, announcing the fact that an amphibian had taken up residence in God’s newest house. The place erupted in applause.
“It sounds as if all the earth is celebrating today,” the cardinal said. “All God’s creatures are raising their voices in praise.”
When I was a child, I wanted to be a priest. I wanted to be the lightning rod for all that limitless spiritual power. I would walk down the street knowing that the saints and angels were backing me up and that I was doing the most important thing in this world: God’s Work. That was, after all, why we were here. And so