The Trinity (3 page)

July 20, 1986

Dear Wife,

This is strange I know, but today I start to find you. Right now I’m on a plane to Orlando from Detroit, I’m on my way to boot camp for the Navy and then communications school in Pensacola. After that I hope to get a ship out of San Diego maybe, tour the Pacific. I may find you there. I don’t care what you look like, as long as you’re not my mother. I’ll explain when I can, maybe you will meet her, maybe you won’t. I’m eighteen now, I like music, rock mainly, some new wave but I don’t know how to dance, in fact I’ve never danced. I didn’t go to prom or anything like that. I don’t think I’m ugly, but I can never talk to girls and I don’t want a lot of girlfriends.  I did at one time, but now I want someone I can feel loved by (corny I know, but I want you to know how I feel about everything). 

Anyway I am very nervous, I’m not in shape at all and I know I’ll have to run and do push-ups and all that. I want to be in shape, I want to look good for you. I smoke, I think because my father does. I don’t have a lot of friends, just two really, we didn’t really do much. We drank, getting my older brother to buy beer for us so we could drink in parks on weekends, or our houses when our parents were away.  I’ll miss them, one is going to college, and the other one is working the same after- school job he had in high school. I had to get away somehow, and the Navy is my way.  I could never meet you at home. More later.

                                                                 Love,

                                                                 Christopher Fairbanks         

Chris arrives in Orlando for basic training bearing nothing save the clothes he left his house in (black t-shirt, white jeans, unlaced high top sneakers), a pack of cigarettes held dearly in his hand, and his nylon Velcro wallet, containing only his driver’s license and his life savings of forty-three dollars.

He arrives at the Orlando airport late in the evening, and is directed to a white government van that carries him and a few other arrivals from around the country fifteen miles to Recruit Training Command Orlando. Boot camp.

Outside the airport, the thrill of seeing palm trees for the first time excites him, and already he is starting to feel like a man of the world.

The first night is rough, as he is shoved into a chair behind a long table with several other tired and out of place young men. They receive a few items such as toothpaste, a toothbrush, razors, soap, and a pocket-sized New Testament edition of the Gideon Bible, a book that Chris is very unfamiliar with. He can’t ever recall seeing a Bible at home.

Chris is formed into a company of eighty or so recruits. For the first short night, they are handed sheets and a blanket and shown their barracks, a long narrow room with rows of twenty bunk beds on either side. The first night is basically sleepless, Chris and the others sleeping in the clothes they arrived in.

They are awoken well before dawn that first morning by their company commander, a tan, thin and dark-haired man in a khaki uniform just past thirty, but he seems so very old to Chris. He throws an empty aluminum trashcan down the middle of the barracks.

He yells, “Get the fuck up, recruits! On your feet now!” Chris is nervous. They are sent outside and clumsily marched to the galley for breakfast. They are given five minutes to eat mass-produced scrambled eggs and potatoes. After breakfast, they are sent to the barbershop. Chris’s semi-long, feathered blond hair is completely shorn. It will be several days before he has the courage to look in a mirror or even directly at his reflection.

The eight weeks of basic training proves as Chris imagined, push-ups and running, marching and yelling. Most of the recruits are his age, but some are in their twenties and a few are even in their thirties. They come from every region of the country and from every race. Chris finds the variety fascinating and disturbing. There were no minorities in his school, and he feels nervous around the black recruits, who seem to form a loose clique.

Chris struggles with the training at times. In the first week, running proves to be nauseating. The standard number of push-ups for punishment (everyone gets punishment) is twenty-five, and Chris’s arms initially shake at a count of ten.  Making the bed (or rack, as it is called) and folding and stowing his gear also prove troublesome; Chris has never been particularly meticulous. Not to mention shaving. All recruits are given ten minutes to shit, shower and shave every morning upon reveille, even if they have no facial hair. Chris is still hairless, with only sporadic acne decorating his face. Because of his complexion, he cuts himself badly while shaving. The multiple scars make his face look like a roadmap. Out of discipline, the company commander periodically yells at Chris during inspection, making him shave again, telling him his shave isn’t close enough and that he had better shave again. Chris returns to the bathroom (the head, it is called) and shaves and bleeds some more.

Despite the large number of people living in such a small area, Chris remains friendless, talking with others only a little in the evenings when the atmosphere is more relaxed. He has not settled into any sort of friendship or circle of friends, as the rest of his company has. Bonds are made based upon many things, Chris notices. The boys from the South tend to cluster together, as do the few fundamentalist Christians who pray and read the Bible in a quiet corner of the barracks. Friendships are also based on age, tastes in music, and again, race.

In the evening, they are allowed time to polish boots and belt buckles, iron shirts, smoke cigarettes and write and read letters. Incoming mail is passed out nightly, when one recruit is designated to pass out letters from friends and family. Chris is tense during this time; everyone receives mail except for him. The fact that no one seems to love or care enough to write to him makes him feel hollow and melancholy. He is extremely envious of the joy he witnesses on the faces of the other recruits as they read and discuss their letters, especially letters from girlfriends.

Chris creates a fictitious girlfriend for discussions, as girls appear to be the most prevalent and common topic throughout the barracks. Everyone seems to have a girl back home, waiting and writing and sending pictures.

Except for Chris.

He even writes separate letters on a few occasions to his mother and father, but there is no reply throughout his entire basic training.  He writes letters anyway, but spends more time than most smoking cigarettes, sitting on the balcony outside the barracks, staring at the palm trees swaying in the gentle and humid Florida breeze.

Chris finishes boot camp ten pounds lighter, his face and neck stained red from the Florida sun. There is a graduation ceremony of sorts, and some parents make the trip, surprising a few of the recruits by arriving unexpectedly. Chris doesn’t bother to scan the crowd; only his mother came to his high school graduation, and she was jittery then, as if she was in a hurry for the ceremony to be over. He shares his proud moment with no one. He dons for the first time the dress white polyester uniform with the wide-bottom pants and the black kerchief around his neck.

Still, he is proud of his accomplishment. His company did not remain intact throughout basic training; some recruits got sent back a few weeks, some quit, and some the Navy wisely decided to part ways with. Not everyone can finish boot camp. Chris does.

September 18, 1985

Dear Wife,

If we’re married than I am going to assume you want children. I want kids. I want them to be happy, and I want them to feel like they’re not alone. If you meet my parents you will understand why this is important to me. My parents have a weird set-up I guess, they really should be divorced, but my Mom won’t. My Dad doesn’t care, he is kind of lazy and doesn’t like things to change, and he wants to keep living in our house in Michigan. I live just outside of Detroit. My mom used to say she didn’t want to be divorced because it was against God’s word, but she hasn’t gone to church since I was a little kid, so I don’t know, maybe she is lazy too. Maybe now that I’m gone she may change. I’m the youngest kid, I have an older brother, he’s twenty-two and a partier and a stoner and he still lives at home. I had to get away. Boot camp was okay, I’m done. I leave tomorrow for Pensacola where I will go to communications school. Maybe I will meet you there. I don’t know if I’m ready, but I feel life will be better if there is someone else out there that can love me. I will be very embarrassed if anyone sees this.

                                                                         Love,

                                                                         Chris

Father Crowley chooses to live off base as opposed to the Bachelor Officer Quarters the base provides. He is given a fairly generous housing allowance to offset the cost, and after a few days of being in Scotland, he finds a large, furnished and airy stone farmhouse a few miles outside the base. The house has all the privacy he craves, a long driveway off a main road, the house hidden by ancient wide and leafy oak trees and an old stone moss covered fence.

In the back is a short, unattended garden, and beyond that, smooth rolling green hills that seem to carry on infinitely like a photograph one might expect to see on a postcard.

He decides this is better than a ship.

He purchases a 1975 Austin Allegro, a small, blue two-door car, and he quickly learns to drive on the opposite side of the road, shifting with his left hand.

His troubles in Houston and Minnesota seem very far removed from this tranquil and fresh setting.

However, he is still a priest, and that is his job for the Navy. His office is in the base chapel. Both the Protestant service and the Roman Catholic Mass are performed in this bland, American looking, one-story brown brick building with a large glass door and no windows.

His office is next to the Protestant chaplain’s, a man full of contempt for the Roman Catholic Church and for Crowley by association. He is older, gray wavy hair parted to the side, red faced and overweight. He has served in the Navy for twenty years and possesses the rank of Commander. As the senior chaplain, he is also Crowley’s supervisor. Crowley will learn to avoid him.

He is only required to perform two Masses per weekend, due to the small number of church attendees on the base, in contrast to the four Masses he had to perform in Houston for the much larger parish. The rest of the time is set aside for counseling and standing in various base ceremonies.

He will have ample free time, more than a normal sailor.

He establishes a routine after a few weeks: Monday through Friday, he sits in his office from eight until two as the odd sailor or spouse may wander in, seeking advice on some subject or another that a priest should have some expertise in. Crowley always feigns interest in the problems of others, but he always thinks their situations silly and their lives pathetic. He feels nauseated but superior when a black or Hispanic sailor or family member wanders in. For them, he shows even more interest, subconsciously not trying to betray his true emotions.

Mass is at five in the afternoon on Saturday and again on Sunday at nine in the morning. That’s it.

He goes for drives in the late afternoons and Saturday mornings, strictly in civilian clothes, driving far and often, exploring that part of Scotland—the cities of Aberdeen and Dundee and the villages in between—dotting the North Sea coastline. He is searching for bookstores that may have supremacist literature, stopping in pubs, drinking beer for basically the first time in his life, trying to get a feel for the locals, their political opinions, and their thoughts on race. He finds them provincial, mostly farmers or shop workers or pensioners of one sort or another, fanatical about soccer and hating the English (especially Margaret Thatcher) and when he is close enough to the base, hating the arrogant young Americans and their hi-fi stereos and their cars. He finds the people in that part of the country are basically poor, and the young sailors have more money than their Scottish counterparts.

He is unable to root out any white supremacist sentiment anywhere. There are few minorities in the country, maybe a few Pakistanis in Dundee, a small Jewish population in the larger cities, but none elsewhere.

He is frustrated at first, frustrated with his inability to find compatriots, and he is almost willing to resign himself to spending his three-year tour of duty in self-study and contemplation. He does find books on Norse mythology and books about the Nazis. He wants to read all he can about his true gods and the figures from history that he admires most.