House of Gold (28 page)

"Dolores is a saint. I admit that there are probably many deacons in the church more dedicated than me; how can I step into the shoes of saints? I don't know what I'll do if Father Mark and Sister don't pull out of it."

The deacon's long confession was over. When Buzz heard him wonder how he
could step into the shoes of saints, he thought immediately of his friends–Donna, the Man, Sam. How he missed them!

Buzz sipped his water, thinking.

"Maybe we need to redefine what miracles are," Buzz said. "I guess you could say it's a miracle I'm alive. I've lost weight, and have had to scrounge for food, but somehow, I'm alive and I'm strong. It seems like every time I need something, it's
in the next town, or over the next hill."

Buzz was speaking as much to himself as to the deacon.

The deacon nodded.

Buzz wondered if the confession with Father Mark had opened within himself a new window of understanding regarding his journey.

The Man's words came back to him:
You're gonna make it to Bagpipe.

He decided to tell Samuels about the unusual confession with Father Mark...

"Maybe you
were the one who was supposed to receive healing," he told Buzz after. "She did say you would come."

"But barring a miracle, she won't recover."

"We've seen miracles. Amazing conversions. Souls subsisting on the Eucharist."

"Did she make any other prophecies–I mean, besides that I would show up?"

The deacon's eyes darkened. He lifted his glass and, against the etiquette of Scotch drinkers, finished
the Mariner with one quick throw. He cleared his throat with an exhale.

"She said war is coming," he began, his voice low, trembling. "She said the antichrist is coming, but not when, only that he would use the shortage of food to get people to give themselves to him. That's why we need to rely on the Eucharist, she said."

There was something extremely persuasive in the deacon's voice. Buzz realized
what it was.

He believes.

"I don't know what to say," Buzz responded.

"Me either," Samuels said cheerfully, his demeanor changing quickly. "Maybe she's right. Maybe not. Prophecy is not an exact kind of thing."

"Let's hope she's wrong about the antichrist. That gives me the creeps. Look at me, I didn't heal anyone," Buzz said. "At least not in a supernatural sense."

"But you're here. She said
you would come."

"Maybe I should stay here for a while? No, I have to move on. I'll stay for a day or two, until everyone who wants has been adjusted."

"We'd appreciate that."

+  +  +

That night, unable to fall asleep in the soft, cushy bed the Samuels had provided for him, Buzz threw his pillow on the carpeted floor and tried to sleep there. Still, he tossed and turned. Finally, he fell asleep,
only to wake up in a cold sweat when the recurring nightmare of the burning house with the screaming woman and baby came back.

The events since Sam Fisk had first called him about the computer problem played out before his imagination like a movie in fast-forward. The research on the Internet, when worldwide communication was a click away for anyone with a computer. The psychological burden of
fighting the rejection from his friends who had been in denial. The unfortunate croquet game that had totally alienated Mel's parents–Buzz truly regretted punching out poor Howie now. The trip to Montana to see Our Lady. The shouting matches with Mel over what to do next, even after they had decided to get out of Dodge–selling the house, denying the boys time in order to make preparations. And then,
finding that most of what they had planned for Bagpipe had been too little, too late.

The numerous trips back and forth to Bagpipe. Painting and digging and dry-walling and wiring and wood-splitting and trying vainly to plant a garden, and on and on.

Then the fall from the scaffold at the convent. Waking up to chaos in Cleveland. The quiet boat ride on Lake Erie with the Man. Waking up to a shotgun
barrel near Gerry early on. Adjusting backs–big ones, weak ones, strong ones, little ones, old ones–across Pennsylvania.

The Man. The farmhouse. The flight. The rest of that–

The hunger. Oh, the hunger which never left him. Watching with alarm as his gut shrank and his trousers got baggier and raggier as he and the Man had trudged from town to town. Wiping himself with leaves on those few occasions
when he was able to pass stool. And some of the things he had eaten with relish during this walk which he would have passed over in disgust if found in a grocery store before the collapse. How soft and comfortable he had been, fancying himself a poor man because milk was three dollars a gallon.

He had been rich, rich!

If he regretted anything now, it had been letting himself get caught up in worldly
preparations, and not spending more time just enjoying Mel, Mark, and Pascal while he had the chance. Yes, he had gone to daily Mass with Markie plenty of times in Bagpipe, and he was thankful for that, but his mind had been on water wells, greenhouses, and stone fences half the time.

A conversation with the Man came back to him. Buzz had been in a confessing mood one day on the road, and for
a change, the Man had been talkative.

The conversation had taken place as they walked on another stretch of empty road on Route 6. A particularly cold day. The grandeur of the mountains all around them had become banal. The dull scratch of their soles on the stones on the shoulder of the road their only background music. This was the only distinct detail he remembered now, besides their words–the
sound of their soles on the stones. Buzz had been holding the Ruger at the time to give the Man a respite.

"For years, I've known about Our Lady asking people to pray and fast because the tribulations were coming," Buzz had said. "Now we're in the thick of them. You and Sam fasted two or three days a week. You went to daily Mass. Me? I tried fasting a few times, but I usually broke down before
lunch. I even ate meat on Fridays.

"I went to daily Mass once, maybe twice a week. Eucharistic adoration twice a month at best. Despite my spiritual director's recommendation, I never really developed a prayer life. I read Dubay's book once, but didn't put it into practice. I noticed that your copy was dog-eared two months after I gave it to you. Yeah, Mel and I prayed the Rosary, but with the
boys jumping around, and because I'm basically pretty lazy, I never concentrated all that hard. I was a pretty slothful Catholic. Now I regret it."

"You're right. You were lazy," the Man replied.

He had expected silence from the Man, but this response surprised him, just as the last thing a woman expects from another after complaining that she is overweight is confirmation.

"That's my whole point,"
Buzz replied. "Do you think God will hold it against me? I feel like, well, that if I had actually been more serious about going the extra spiritual mile before things broke down, no pun intended, that this little joywalk we're taking would have a lot more chance of success.

"I let Mel and the boys down. I've got no excuse. I knew the faith inside out. God even gave me a second chance I didn't
deserve when I tried to commit suicide and He saved me. When Sam and Mark saved me on the jetty. I've squandered my second chance."

The Man cleared his throat.

"I don't know what God will do with you at your judgment, Buzz, I really don't. And maybe you don't know either. I think Christians sometimes forget that not only can't we judge others, but that we also aren't even capable of judging ourselves."

"No offense, Hal, but now you're sounding like a Calvinist. Is Original Sin so blinding that we can't know ourselves?"

"I'm not saying that," the Man had grunted. "I'm just saying that God will always know us a million times better than we know ourselves.

"You look at yourself and see a lazy Catholic who should have known better. After all, you even tried to kill yourself once, and by your own
lights, blew your second chance after your suicide attempt, and after God sent you the perfect wife and two perfect children–probably three by now in Bagpipe. All your friends are good Catholics, so you
should
have known better. You have no excuses.

"You had fifty daily Masses within a ten minute drive of your home in Lakewood, but you couldn't find the time to attend on most days. You look at
me and see a person who prayed two or three hours per day before the crash, and loved every minute of it.

"But for me, it's all a matter of perspective. When I look at you, I don't see a lazy Catholic. I see the man who God used as an instrument of Divine Mercy in my life. While other Catholics were off praying their Rosaries and jumping on planes to go to apparition sites all over the world,
you were on my front porch reading the Sports Section.

"When I look into the mirror I see a sinner who squandered forty years of his life in a selfish cocoon. A bitter old man who God probably wanted to be a Trappist or a Carmelite. What a waste."

Like many thoughtful, silent types, the Man was fully capable of expressing himself succinctly. Buzz realized now that Hal's rehash of Buzz's own self-evaluation
had cut pretty hard, even though Buzz had said exactly the same thing a moment earlier.

One of the nice things about the long walk, compared to before the lights went out, Buzz reflected now as he rested on the floor of the deacon's house, was that there was never a need to rush a conversation. He and the Man had taken an hour at that point to pray and ponder in silence before reeling in the fish
on the verbal hook.

"So you're saying that we aren't capable of judging ourselves?" Buzz asked.

"Not exactly. I'm saying that every person is a mystery to himself. Our judgments are imperfect because we're imperfect. Just because we're Christians doesn't give us a corner on the truth about ourselves.

"I didn't think I needed God or you or anybody else before you brought me to the sacraments. That
was an error in judgment. I'm sure I still misjudge myself. One of the reasons why I loved fasting was because it seemed to shine an internal light on my soul. It showed me how weak I really was. And how easy it is to fall into pride. I think I wasted much of my fasting just by being proud that it came so easily to me."

"Did you look down at me?" Buzz asked.

"Never."

That answer came quickly,
and like most one-word replies from the Man, seemed to end the conversation. But it was the Man who started up again, after they had conquered another hill in central Pennsylvania.

"Did I ever tell you that I knew Tom Monaghan?" the Man asked.

"The Dominos Pizza guy?"

"Yeah, that guy. You'd be surprised the kinds of people I met when I worked at the hotel. Presidents. Big businessmen. Athletes
and actresses. I once drove Bridget Fonda around Cleveland for a whole day. She insisted on me, despite my protests that I could get her the best chauffeur in town.

"Anyway, Tom and I kind of hit it off. We shared an interest in architecture."

"That's right," Buzz said. "He was a Frank Lloyd Wright junkie, wasn't he? You never told me you have an interest in architecture."

It had not struck Buzz
that he and the Man often referred to people they had known from the old world in the past tense.

"There are a lot of things about me you don't know," the Man said. "You can't understand history unless you understand architecture."

"So tell me, Hall, what does the pizza guy have to do with anything, except that he was a good Catholic? I used to deliver for Dominos, you know."

The Man made a face.

You're like everybody else. You're so quick to think of him as just the pizza guy.

The Man sighed.

"Mr. Monaghan is a devout Catholic, if he's still alive. I sure hope so," the Man continued. "He's not a big guy–about as tall as me. Looked just like any handsome Irish kid who grows up to be fifty. He wasn't the kind of guy who strikes you as a genius, which I believe he is. He's a regular guy.

"We had a few drinks, was all. He didn't put on any airs like some men with lots of money or power, and he wasn't filled with the kind of phony humility you sometimes run into. I think he had a billion dollars when he finally sold his company. In our few conversations, I felt like I was talking with the real man.

"My point is that it's very hard to judge a man like that. He had hundreds of millions
of dollars, and he supported Catholic charities all over the world. He helped build churches in impoverished countries. He started schools. Before you and I were done eating breakfast, he probably had finished his holy hour and a full Rosary in his private chapel.

"Yet, from his point of view, I'm sure he thought all his charitable works were no different than the ten percent you were tithing
last year, except as a matter of scale. I'm sure of it. He never said so. But I'm a good judge of character. He never talked about his charities, for one thing. Plus, he had to put up with all these people fawning over him, sucking up to him, asking him for money, looking at him like he was a paycheck–the rich
pizza guy."

Buzz felt the sting from the Man's last two words.

The Man continued: "I
read once that he stopped building his dream house–an architectural wonder–which he had already poured millions of dollars into, because he read a book by Saint John of the Cross–The Dark Night of the Soul–and realized that he had been living a self-indulgent life, even though by this time he had already donated millions to charity, and was a very public Catholic.

"Does God judge a man like Monaghan
and say: You haven't given enough to charity? Your Rosaries and prayers aren't enough for me? If Monaghan had sold his company and given away everything he had, in say, 1980, he wouldn't have given away nearly as much as he was able to later on by growing his company into the 1990s. Think of the implication for souls this one fact illustrates.

"And I'm sure it must have crossed his mind, or at
least that some well-meaning Catholics must have tried to lay a guilt trip on him for not liquidating early. And now, with crash, most of what he had is probably gone–completely gone.