Blood on a Saint (3 page)

“Was that it?” the reporter asked.

Befanee blinked and looked down at her paper. “Yeah. Yes. But she said . . . I got the feeling that she will keep coming back. To see me. And maybe give more messages.”

The reporter bent down to the little girl and asked her name.

The child looked up at Befanee, who gave her a little nudge. The child said her name was Angelique.

“And why are you here today, Angelique?”

She looked uncertainly at Befanee, then at the ground.

“She’s shy,” said Befanee, “but she saw the Virgin too. I’m going to bring her here every day after school.”

With that, Befanee darted a look at the newcomer, Jordyn. Jordyn directed a brief smile at Angelique, then looked straight at the camera and said, “Excuse me. It’s time for me to go and give thanks again. Tomorrow I’m going to give more than that. Some of the children in my neighbourhood are making sparkly tiaras for Mary. They’re really cute and . . .” Her voice petered out as she tried perhaps to come up with an adjective appropriate to a gift made specially for the Queen of Heaven. She turned her gaze to the statue of St. Bernadette and walked towards it.

Befanee too returned to her devotions.

Chapter 2

Brennan

Brennan Burke awoke on Wednesday, September 23 and almost immediately regretted coming to consciousness. There was something aggravating about this day, he knew, even before his left brain came fully awake and confirmed that this was the day he had to appear on that man’s talk show. Whatever his name was, Pike something. So the evening would be shot. But that did not mean he could not be productive during the day. He had the early Mass at seven thirty, then a rehearsal of the Vivaldi
Gloria
at the choir school, and he was giving a lecture on Aristotle and John Duns Scotus at St. Mary’s University in the afternoon. Get up and seize the day.

Several pairs of eyes fastened on Brennan when he emerged from the choir school after the Vivaldi rehearsal. A man charged forward and stood in front of him with an expectant look on his face. The fellow was stocky and balding and had an Alexander Keith’s T-shirt stretched across an incipient beer belly. He seemed impervious to the chill in the air. Brennan had no idea what the man expected of him.

“What are you going to say to him, Father?”

“Em, say to whom?”

“That fellow. You know who I mean. Pike Podgis.”

“Ah. Him.”

“He’s got a lot of nerve coming here from Toronto.”

“Well, that’s his job, I suppose,” Brennan replied, coming to the defence of the talk show blatherer. “Something makes news; he makes it bigger news.”

“He’s coming here to laugh at us in the Maritimes. He thinks he’s better than us.”

“Well, we know he isn’t. Right? What’s your name?”

“George. He’ll say we make up stories.”

“And we do,” an older man put in. “We’re damn good at it.”

Another figure emerged from the multitudes, and he was familiar to Brennan, though Brennan didn’t know his name. Like some of the others who had migrated to the churchyard in recent weeks, this fellow was a fixture on the local scene. Brennan had noticed him in front of the library on Spring Garden Road, sometimes panhandling, sometimes just sitting on the stone wall watching the passing show. He had seen the man occasionally near the statue of St. Bernadette even before all this began, and perhaps at the church’s lunch program for the disadvantaged people in the area. Here he was now in his long, soiled beige overcoat. He had thick, dishevelled white hair and deep-set blue eyes with crinkles at the corners. He came in Brennan’s direction, and Brennan nodded to him.

“Blessings upon you, Father.”

“Thank you. Blessings upon you as well. How are you doing?”

“Father, I can’t complain. When I look at the hardship around me . . .” He shook his head in sadness.

Here was a man who, as far as Brennan could tell, was jobless, homeless, and likely without a family, and he felt he had nothing to complain about. A bit of a lesson for the rest of us.

“You are Father Burke, if I am not mistaken. Do I have that right?”

“Yes, you do. Brennan Burke. I know I’ve seen you by the statue. And do you come in to our lunch program?”

“Well, not very often, Father, as much as I appreciate what you have to offer. At that time of day I like to be out on Spring Garden Road. That’s when the lunchtime crowds are passing by. I enjoy that.”

“I don’t know your name,” Brennan said. He put his hand out and the two shook.

“I am Ignatius Boyle.”

“Well, my middle name is Xavier, so we have a couple of very illustrious Jesuits looking out for us.”

“We do, indeed, Father. And they’d better be watching out for you this most unholy night.”

“Oh?”

“This man Podgis has me concerned.”

“What has you bothered about him, Ignatius?”

“He will try to trip you up.”

“No doubt he will.”

“He’ll demand to know how we Christians can believe in something we can’t see, can’t touch, can’t hear.”

“It was ever thus.”

“Yes, you’re right. And this Podgis fellow is not the only one amongst us who is blind to the truth.”

“No, he is not.” Brennan’s curiosity got the better of him then, and he asked, “Who else are you thinking of when you say that, Ignatius?”

“The young, Father. What kind of education are they getting in today’s world? I confess that I did not go far in school myself. My own fault entirely, drinking and carrying on. But while the nuns had me, they managed to teach me reading and writing and ’rithmetic, as they say. Good English, world history, and of course the Catechism. And do you know what? The priests at St. Mary’s University, the Jesuits who ran the place back in the day, they let me do a bit of studying there! They let me sit in on some classes. I was, and am, particularly fond of the great philosophers.”

“It’s wonderful to hear that, Ignatius. Who do you like in philosophy?”

“I’m a great fan of George Berkeley. An Irishman like us. Well, not exactly like us. A Protestant. But still. He was very concerned about abandoned children, was Berkeley, so that is a mark in his favour. His philosophy is easy to attack, I know, but I love him when he says there is ‘an omnipresent eternal mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view.’ I find that beautiful, don’t you? I have always been grateful to the Jesuits for giving me so much. I wanted to be a priest, you know, Father, though I’m embarrassed to say so.”

“Why embarrassed?”

“Kind of hard to see a priest in Ignatius Boyle as he stands before you today! But, well, I’m sort of a street missionary, I guess you could say. I have taken it upon myself to work with troubled youngsters, children who have lost their way. And no wonder they lose their way, without spiritual direction! I try to impart to them the truth, that they are in the hands — in the mind! — of a loving father. But they don’t always listen to an old fellow like me! They listen to their friends, which is natural for kids, but sometimes their friends are the wrong crowd. Then there’s trouble. And the boyfriends! I see it every day: sweet young girls throwing their lives away.

“But what am I doing?” There was a touch of humour in the deep blue eyes. “I’m preaching to the choir, so to speak! I must let you be on your way. I wish you the best of luck with that Godless man tonight!”

“Thank you, Ignatius. I’ll be seeing you.”

The man shambled away, back to the statue of St. Bernadette. An intriguing sort of fellow, without a cent to his name but a mind full of mystic idealism and love for those who were young and adrift. The words of Oscar Wilde came to Brennan’s mind: “We are all in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.”

“That Podgis isn’t fit to tie your shoes!” a short, wide woman shouted to Brennan from across the parking lot. “Give him hell, Father!”

“That’s a hell of a way to talk to a priest, Ida!” another woman admonished her.

Well, however it went tonight on the talk show, Brennan knew he had a team of supporters cheering him on.

Monty

It was TV night again on Dresden Row, as Monty and Maura headed downstairs to watch the
Pike Podgis Show
on Wednesday night. Monty cracked open two beer, handed one to Maura, and they sat down side by side in front of the television.

“I’ve seen white-knuckled passengers on a plane, but never in a comfy chair in front of the tube,” he said to her.

“I know, I know, but I just can’t imagine it. Burke, of all people, on a freak show like this. Here it comes.”

They were treated to the bang-crash-smash theme music, the hyped-up introduction of Pike Podgis as the fearless voice of truth, and something about tonight’s guests going at each other’s throats, the bloody battle between the God of religion and the god of science. Then Podgis’s enormous mouth filled the screen.

“My guests this evening are Father Brennan Burke of St. Bernadette’s church here in Halifax, site of the supposedly miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary, and Professor Robert Thornhill, who teaches sociology at Dalhousie University.”

Burke was in his black clerical suit with Roman collar. Thornhill was trim and bespectacled with a close-cropped salt and pepper beard; he was dressed in a brown tweed sports jacket and dark green tie.

Podgis leaned towards the professor and thrust his head far into his personal space. “Professor Thornhill, what do you make of all this talk of visions and saints who supposedly do miracle cures?”

“Well, these claims, like the claims of religion generally, cannot be verified by science, so — ”

“So. Science! Religion! In mortal combat!”

“No, not necessarily. It’s just that science can only — ”

Podgis butted in again. “Science geeks have been looking through telescopes and microscopes for donkey’s years. It’s now 1992 and not one of them’s seen God. Am I right, Professor Thornhill?”

Podgis turned to Burke, who reared back as subtly as he could from the giant mouth that was close enough to kiss or devour him. “Way it is, Father. Sorry to tell you.”

“It’s not surprising that so many scientists are skeptical,” Burke agreed. “From something as tiny as a bottom quark to the immensity of the universe with galaxies nine billion light years away from us — ”

“Whoa! What are you talking about? Did you say ‘bottom quark’? Sure you don’t mean ‘bottom
quirk
’? Talking dirty to us, Father? That’s
next week’s
show!”

The audience squealed.

“A quark is a subatomic particle, Mr. Podgis. One of the fundamental constituents of matter. As I was saying, nobody has seen God, or at least recognized Him, through a microscope or a telescope, because God is not a material part of the material universe. ‘Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain.’”

“Well, I haven’t picked up my Bible lately, but that verse sounds like a cop-out to me.”

“Not the Bible. Poetry. By Christina Rossetti.”

“Sounds like a babe. Gimme her phone number after the show. I’m a sensitive nineties kinda guy. I can write poetry. How about this? Roses are red, violets are blue, God don’t exist, so I guess it’s F you.”

This was greeted by uncertain tittering from the audience.

“I guess it is,” said Burke.

“Huh?” Podgis’s eyes were glued to Burke. The TV man’s face betrayed him just for an instant. A hunger for approval, a look of vulnerability. Then it was gone. “Guess what?”

“Guess it’s ‘F you.’ I’d never have taken you for a moral philosopher, Mr. Podgis, but you’re right.” That needy look again on Podgis’s face. “Your poem pretty well sums up where we would be in a Godless universe.”

There were a couple of seconds of silence, then Podgis reverted to form. “All right, let’s get back on topic. Father Burke. Science and religion. Engaged in eternal combat!”

“No. Science and religion are not opposed to one another. They operate in two different spheres, and they seek to explain two different aspects of reality. Science tells us about the behaviour of matter, about the workings of the universe, about the evolutionary process — ”

“Whoa! Did you say evolution? What’s your name again? Is it Burke or is it Darwin? Are you saying you believe in evolution?”

Burke looked at the man as if he was a simpleton. “Why would I not? That’s how God’s creatures came to be. Look at the fossil record. And it may be of interest to remind ourselves of the man whose theories filled a great gap in Darwin’s work. Darwin had his theory of natural selection, but there was something missing.”

“Oh yeah? Like what? A fossil of a big hairy baboon getting it on with one of the Dallas Cowgirls in the back of a pickup truck?” Podgis grinned. Wolf whistles and the stamping of feet signified the audience’s approval of the image. “Is that it?”

There was a little smile on the lips of Robert Thornhill. He knew what was coming, whatever it was.

“What was missing,” Burke said, “was an explanation of inheritance. How were traits passed down? Darwin didn’t know, because he had not read the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel had solved the problem in the mid-1800s but his work was not rediscovered until early this century.”

“Yeah? So what did this Mendel guy do?” Podgis leaned towards his audience. “Even the name
Gregor Mendel
sounds like a brain. The guy in class who had all the answers, but never got the girl!” The audience giggled at that.

“Right on both counts, Mr. Podgis,” Burke said. “Mendel was indeed a brain, a brilliant scientist who is now recognized as the father of genetics. He discovered the
gene
, although he did not give it that name. And he didn’t get the girl because he was an Augustinian monk. A priest of the Catholic Church.”

First they had heard of it in the audience by the sound of things.

Burke continued, “There are over thirty craters on the moon named after Jesuit scientists. And it was another Catholic priest — he was a mathematician and a scientist — who came up with the Big Bang theory before anybody else. He published a paper on it in 1931. Didn’t call it the Big Bang. That was actually a sarcastic name given to it by a very prominent scientist who had not yet accepted it. It took a long time for the rest of the scientific world to catch up, to abandon the idea of a steady-state universe, to accept that there was a big bang nearly fourteen billion years ago, followed by the development of subatomic particles, then the elements and matter, and here we are today.”