Conceived Without Sin (33 page)

Yes,
Mark thought,
it was good to come here.

The speaker, a Franciscan priest Mark had never heard of, talked about the duty of fathers to lead their families in the faith. His name was Father Mick Sconland. Mark listened with a skeptic's ear. The
priest quoted from Old Testament passages that Mark had never read. Suddenly, all the good cheer from the singing ebbed right out of him.

Why am I here?

He felt itchy and sweaty. The plastic seat was tiny, sinking into the sloshy grass. He felt cramped. He didn't like standing with so many unfamiliar men behind him.

I don't belong here. These men have families.

He got up from his plastic chair,
and walked out of the tent, leaving Bill's whispered protests behind.

He set off alone on the hilly campus, praying Hail Marys to himself over and over again, heading in no direction in particular. He walked by a construction site. The sign at the site read:
Future Home of the John Paul II Library.

He found himself on a road that apparently wound around the whole campus. There was a bench next
to a gravel parking lot, with a college kid sitting alone, reading a book.

Summer student?
Mark asked himself. Bill had told him that all the students here are good Catholics…

"Hey kid," Mark asked, walking up to the bench.

"Yeah," Silvio Morales grunted without looking up from his book.

It was
The Watchers
by Dean Koontz. A horror story. Silvio was a Koontz fan. He was trying to distract himself
while waiting for the next shift in the cafeteria. He hated the job, but needed the money to save for next year's tuition. All those devout Catholic conference pilgrims with their God Bless Yous and their Praise the Lords. It was driving him nuts.

To top it all off, he was losing the analogy queen, Judy Pierce. She hadn't returned his calls in days.

Silvio looked up.

Oh great,
Silvio thought,
looking at the towering hercules.
Another hypocrite Jesus freak looking for directions to the bookstore!

"Whaddaya want?" Silvio asked Mark Johnson with a half-bored, half-petulant tone.

What a little snot,
Mark thought.

"I thought you might be a student here–" Mark started.

"What if I am?" Silvio asked.

Mark looked over Silvio's head to the trees. Taking crap was not one of his favorite pastimes.
He looked back fiercely into Silvio's eyes.

"Are you?" the FBI agent asked with a practiced interrogation tone. He saw some fear come into the kid's expression.

"Look, sorry mister. Yeah, I'm a student. Can I help you with something?"

That's better,
Mark thought.

"I don't know. I've never been here before. I'm looking for… I'm looking for a place to be alone."

Silvio closed his book. There was
something different about this big man before him. He seemed out of place.

"You here with the Men's Conference?" Silvio asked.

"Yes, but I just got here. I felt claustrophobic under the tent. I'm not sure what I'm doing here."

"I can relate to that," Silvio muttered, looking down.

"Huh?"

"I said, I can relate to that," Silvio said in a normal tone. He smiled wistfully.
Maybe I could help the guy
out.
"Look, mister–"

"Call me Mark. I'm Mark Johnson," Mark said, extending a huge meat-hook of a hand.

Silvio hesitated, and took it quickly, then let go.

Kid's got a jello-grip,
Mark thought.

Even though the sun was out, it seemed like the rays weren't cutting through the ozone.

"I'm Silvio. Look, I know a place. It's nearby. It's called the Port. It's a little church on campus. I'll take you
there if you want." Silvio felt a weight lifting from his shoulders.

Mark hesitated, and turned to look back at the tent below, filled with all those happily married men. He could see several sets of chairs outside the tent. There, five or six priests were hearing confessions, right outside on the grass.

"Sure, kid. Take me there."

Silvio put his book into his ratty knapsack, shouldered it, and
began walking down the road. "You can see it from here. It's a quiet place."

After a few minutes, they came to the large, wooden doors of the Portiuncula, a stone and mortar replica of the chapel where Jesus first asked Saint Francis of Assisi to rebuild the Church. The Port was nestled among the trees; it was quite small. It could barely seat fifteen people.

"Well, here it is," Silvio said, moving
his feet back and forth as if he needed to be somewhere else.

"You coming in?" Mark asked.

"Naw," Silvio said distantly, not looking at Mark. "You'll find who you're lookin' for in there. Jesus is in there."

Mark took the young man's arm, but with a gentle grip. "Come on in, with me, Silvio. I need help. You're a student here, maybe your prayers could help."

"I…" Silvio hesitated. "I don't go
in there."

"I see," Mark said, letting go. "Okay."

There was a sadness in Mark's voice. A sadness that Silvio related to. The sadness of being alone.

Mark reached for the door, and walked in.

"Bye," Silvio said after the door closed. He turned and walked away. He looked down at his Nikes as he walked, but he didn't see them. Instead, an image of Judy Pierce came to his mind. The night in his room.
The night they were supposed to go all the way. Ten nights ago.

The night he said no to her.

She had not spoken a word to him since. He had lost his true love because he wouldn't sleep with her. He fought back tears. He was a tough guy, too, in his own way.

"Screw it," he muttered to himself, as he walked down the hill, toward the tent.
I hate this place!

In the Port, Mark stood alone with his
Savior. He forgot about Silvio Morales. The simple bronze monstrance seemed the only thing in the chapel. The off-white wafer hiding Him floated steadily above the altar.

"I have nothing to say." Mark spoke quietly, as much to himself as to the man in the monstrance, turning his eyes to the Eucharist.

He walked up close to the altar, and fell to his knees on the stone floor. There were only a
few pews behind him.

I have nothing to say,
he repeated, feeling unworthy to even kneel.

He dropped to the floor on his stomach, and spread his arms wide, feeling the coldness of the stone on his forehead.

I have nothing to pray,
he prayed, filled with anguish, drained of inner reserves, drained of will. He tightened his clenched eyes, certain that he was wasting his time. How many of his prayers
had gone unanswered since Maggie kicked him out? Thousands? All the advice of the Kemps seemed as straw now, here in this cold, stone chapel on a hill in eastern Ohio, far from home.

Mark's eyelids became heavy, filled with fatigue. He drifted, falling, falling to somewhere…to sleep.

Grace, moved with pity for this modern centurion, came from the Heart of the Eucharist, and manifested Himself
in Mark's mind as a dream.

In Mark's dream, a lucid, clear picture of the True Cross appeared. On this cross, was Jesus. Mark stood before Him.

There were no surroundings, except for the bare, cold rock beneath Mark's feet. There was only the Cross and Jesus and Mark. No thundercloud sky above or wailing women below.

No sounds but the breathing of two men.

Jesus' breaths were strained, fluid-filled
drags.

Mark saw Him not as portrayed on twentieth century crucifixes, but as He had really and truly been: bloody, his flesh hanging off his bones in shreds.

He was amazed that a human being could suffer so much torture and remain alive.

It was near the end. The lance had not yet been driven into His side…

Mark stared wide-eyed at Jesus' feet, the long metal spike just above the top curve of each
foot, driven through them, a rough rope holding them together around the ankles. They were closer to the ground, perhaps ten or twelve inches, than portrayed in the antiseptic movies. Rocks had been jammed into a hole cut into the ground, holding the cross in place…

Mark realized that Jesus' death had been rated R.

Flies were crawling over and into the wounds on His feet. He saw the muscles and
tendons strain as Jesus made the effort to lift himself up to take a deeper breath.

Slowly, slowly, Mark felt drawn to look upwards, away from the mangled feet, and even more slowly, he raised his eyes to the God-man on the Cross.

The crossbar was fastened by rope atop the thick, brown, sticky-blooded beam, forming a T.

Jesus looked at Mark but did not focus on him. Then he brought his eyes to
the whitewashed, cloudless heavens and spoke.

"It is finished."

Lightning struck, and suddenly everything around the Cross was there. The two other crosses with their wretched prisoners were now on either side. The sky filled with clouds, and thunder roared! Cultivated fields suddenly appeared beyond the hills, illuminated by lightning, and if Mark were to turn back, he would have seen the gates
of Jerusalem.

To Mark's side, unaware of Mark's presence, was a young man named John, who was holding a sobbing woman. She too was unaware of Mark Johnson.

Mary.

Mark did and did not want to remain where he was, fascinated and horrified at the same time.

Someone is no longer here,
he realized.

Jesus was gone. His corpse hung in His place. The body of Christ, dead. The world empty. The world; dark
and cold and windy.

From behind, just a few feet away, Mark heard a deep voice. He turned to see the voice…

"Truly this man was the Son of God."

…and Mark saw a Roman soldier, a centurion.

…and woke with a shiver from his dream. Mark had been asleep. He heard the sobs, soft, yet manly, of another person in the Port, coming from a pew behind him.

Mark pushed himself up from the floor, leaving a
clear pool of–
tears!
–where his face had been.

The other person in the chapel was Silvio Morales. Mark stood up, feeling weary, still sleepy, and faced Silvio.

The young man gave Mark a plaintive look, as if to apologize, then croaked hoarsely, "I went to confession at the bottom of the hill. I didn't mean to go. I just felt drawn to sit down. I hadn't gone since, well, I don't remember. After
I was done, the priest told me to come here for my penance. As I prayed, I saw–I can't say what I saw…"

Silvio looked down.

"I saw the crucifixion," Mark offered, coming to the boy, kneeling next to him, looking back to the monstrance. "I saw Jesus die. I don't know if it was a dream or what it was."

A look of genuine shock came to Silvio's face. His eyes bugged out. Mark thought briefly of ping-pong
balls.

"I saw it too!" Silvio exclaimed in a high pitch of amazement. "Nobody knew I was there. I was alone at the Cross! Just Him and me. I had no idea…" A sob escaped.

"–I had no idea how tough He really was," Mark finished for him. "I had no idea. If He could stand that, then–"

"Then," Silvio finished, "then, we can stand anything. He did it for us, man. For everyone."

Both men looked at the
toughest of tough guys. Tough enough to wait alone in thousands of churches for millions of nights.

"What's going on, mister?" Silvio asked. "What's happening to us?"

Silvio looked at the stranger. Mark matched his gaze.

"I don't know, Silvio. It is Silvio, isn't it?"

Silvio nodded.

"I don't know. I don't know." Mark couldn't find the words.
I still don't know what to say.

But he did know the
answer to getting Maggie back. The boy had said it: If Jesus could take that kind of punishment, then Mark could take anything.

"Let's say a Rosary," Silvio suggested.

Now Mark nodded.

The two men prayed for two more hours.

Later, Mark went to confession near the tent. The priest was young, with thick, bristly red hair. Mark read "Hello, I'm Father Chet" on his name tag. He was on a stop during
a journey to Chicago. Mark was comforted by his New Jersey accent.

Silvio waited. Over dinner, he and Mark told Bill White what happened in the Port before Mark left to return to New Jersey.

+  +  +

After several phone calls and then a visit from Bill White, Maggie Johnson agreed to let Mark move back home–on certain conditions, of course.

"The girls miss you," was all she said on the first day,
when he walked up to the door with his suitcases. She refused to be pleasant to him. "They need their father. You can live here, but that's all. I don't want to have anything to do with you other than when the girls are involved. We'll see what happens." But she didn't sound hopeful.

Mark swallowed a protest for a reply. "Okay," was all he said, trying not to look down. He thought of Jesus on
the Cross.

Nothing is worse than that.
Joe Kemp's words now had weight. "The battle isn't with your wife. It's with yourself. A real man is one who can control himself."

Maggie asked him to sleep in the attic bedroom. He remained silent during dinner with the family, and he left for work before the girls had breakfast in the morning. He took the girls for walks and to the park, and played with
them in the living room after dinner, but Maggie never stayed in the same room with him. It was as if he barely existed to her.

Over the next several weeks, Mark said the following words to himself a hundred times, whenever Maggie gave him a bitter, seething look, or mocked his attempts to begin a conversation:
The only one who can make me lose my temper is myself.

"You're turning on the old Mark
Johnson charm," Maggie accused. "Well, I won't go for it."

"I know what you're doing. You're trying to show me how you've turned over a new leaf. But if I fall for it, you'll be back to the old Mark within a month."

One time, inspired, he replied with boyish sincerity, "It must have been hard living with a tyrant like me all these years. I'm sorry."