The Trinity (30 page)

Anyway, you could be older than me. Maybe a lot older. I think that would be okay. You may have gotten to a point in your life where looks aren’t everything and love is more. You could look past my looks, my inexperience. I would cherish you. Maybe you have been married before and it didn’t turn out so well. I won’t ever get divorced, especially not with kids in the picture.

Well, not much else to tell you. More when I have time. Until we meet.

                                                                         Love,     

                                                                         Chris

Crowley has been collecting. During his spare evenings and early on Saturdays and late on Sundays he is rummaging through chemist shops, ironmongers and agricultural supply stores through the Tayside and Grampian regions. He is looking for and finding gunpowder, saltpeter, charcoal, fertilizer, cans of gasoline and any rag that can be used for a wick. He is saving all his empty wine bottles. He stores everything in his kitchen, in the cabinet underneath the sink or on top of the table, and what doesn’t fit, he shoves underneath his bed.

On a Monday after work, he decides to drive to Edinburgh, a little south of his usual realm. He telephones the barracks and has the Scottish man on duty fetch Hinckley and bring him to the phone. He asks Hinckley if he wants to go to Edinburgh; he does. The priest instructs Hinckley to meet him down the road a quarter of a mile from the gate, so no one will see him as he picks him up.

Crowley asks Hinckley where Chris is.

“He went to Dundee with this bitch supervisor of his. They went to eat or somethin’.”

Crowley is silent upon hearing that news. He rubs his chin as they turn onto the A92 and head south on the road that will take them most of the way to Edinburgh, an hour and a half south.

“You need to discourage that,” the priest says. “Do what you can to stop it. We don’t want him to have friends away from you and eventually me. In fact, in the future, you must stop it. As an officer in the Navy, I command you. Do what you have to do—bring him to my place, go and get him drunk, but in the future, if he talks about spending time with anyone else, you need to stop it. Do anything except tie him down. You got that?”

Hinckley nods, forgetting that the priest’s status in the Navy has absolutely nothing to do with their personal desires.

Crowley becomes somewhat cheerful. “Enough of that, enough of that. We had it wrong before, my good young man,” Crowley explains. “We were attacking the blacks, which is just what those Jew bastards wanted us to do.”

Brad looks at him, confused. It has been a while since he has seen the priest and had a conversation of this nature. The last time they talked, blacks and other minorities were the enemy, enemies he could discern at a glance. He has hated blacks since school, and it is an anger he can easily summon. But to direct his anger against the Jewish people? He has never known any, as far as he knows. He doesn’t know what they look like, and he doesn’t have any reason to hate them. The only thing he knows about the Jews is what he learned during a few visits to Sunday school as a small boy—they don’t believe in Jesus. But neither does he, not really, and neither does Father Crowley.

Crowley notes the confused look on his young colleague’s face. “To finally win a war, you don’t succeed by killing off the foot soldiers… You must get to the officers, and kill the generals. The blacks do the Jews’ dirty work. In case you didn’t notice, any neighborhood that is black used to be Jewish. The blacks follow the Jews.”

Brad has never noticed.       

As they drive south, the priest continues to talk vaguely about the evil of the Jews, how they have started the decline of the world with the creation of Israel, how they control the banks of the world and hold power over all people via a sort of economic slavery.

“Why do you think Hitler attempted the Holocaust? Which is in fact only partially true, but I’ll explain that later. Even here in Britain, in England, really, way back in the late thirteenth century, the Jews were expelled. They entered England from France and quickly set themselves up in the banking business, as they were allowed to lend money with interest and Christians were not. The lending of money for usury was considered a sin. Of course, the interest payments caused as many problems then as it does now, and much of the country experienced financial difficulties. Many went deep into debt while the Jews’ wealth increased exponentially. Rightfully so, the Jews were blamed for the financial difficulties many of the English were facing, and as a result, the King expelled them from the country. Of course, they came back—they always manage to resurface—and again, as they still do today, they wrestled control of the nation’s wealth.”

In silence, they skirt Dundee, the city of so much memory and activity of their recent months. Crowley shakes his head the entire time the city is in view, and Brad lights cigarettes, one after another, until the city disappears in the rearview mirror. Crowley had thought of Dundee first for this visit, but he doesn’t want any reason to appear in the field of vision of the Tayside Police. Edinburgh is both far enough and near enough.

The country south of Dundee is new for Brad, but he is disinterested, not caring for what the landscape has to offer or the names of towns that he has never heard of or seen.

Crowley continues his rant just as the tallest of Dundee’s tenement high rises disappears from his rearview mirror as they descend a long rise in the road. “You know, I must tell you,” he says, now more relaxed than he was when their journey started, “if one were to examine the wealth of the industrial nations of the world, and examine their banking systems, one would find that almost exclusively, Zionists are at the helm. And at whose expense? Who pays?”

Brad shakes his head, not really understanding the question.

“You do, I do, and our families do. The honest white people do.”

Brad nods, too afraid to show he doesn’t understand.

“Tell me, Brad, you grew up in Nebraska, correct?”

“Sure did.”

“Would you say you or any of the people that you grew up with were wealthy? Wasn’t your mother a waitress?”

“We were poor, but not starving. Blue-collar, I guess you would call it.”

“Right, no shame in that, no shame in that. Now tell me, were there any Jewish people in your neighborhood, or in your school or anywhere in your community?”

“No, can’t say that there was. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Jew anywhere before.”

“Exactly!” The priest slams his hand on the dashboard in triumph. “While you and your family were scraping by, making ends meet and working hard living in what I guess to be small houses or trailers or apartments, the Jews of America were living in mansions and comfort, probably owning the banks where your mother cashed her check, or the drug company where your grandfather gets his medication, or his doctor may even be Jewish, making sure he never gets well. They are in control—and the blacks do their dirty work. The Jews use the blacks to keep the whites agitated. If the good white people of America are worried about being robbed by a black man while walking down the street, they won’t worry about being robbed by a Jew the next time they go to the store, or buy property, or take out a loan. The Jew robs much more stealthily; he robs and you don’t even notice. It is time for men like you and me to lead the way, to light the path to the gods of our ancestors, and stir the Viking soul of all white people in North America and Europe, before it is too late.”

Brad understands most of that last statement, except for the references to the Norse religion, but he does understand that he is among the despised and the downtrodden. There is something about being on the underdog team that stirs up his emotions, and he suddenly understands what the priest says. The same anger that he was able to summon up in attacking blacks can now be pointed towards the Jews, especially if they were responsible for his meager upbringing.

Edinburgh approaches. The empty fields and lonely hills make way for a series of smaller towns that run together. Finally, they find themselves in traffic stuck at stoplights and fending their way through a series of roundabouts.

Crowley is not used to the traffic. He has not driven in so much congestion since Houston. Even Dundee, though it hosts over a hundred thousand souls, has very little traffic, and it doesn’t last long. Here in Edinburgh, it seems to snake for miles, leading all the way to the city center, where they eventually find themselves.

Crowley is seldom taken in by objects of beauty, but the heart of Edinburgh is indeed striking. The ancient downtown, a collection of castles and other medieval buildings, the narrow cobblestone streets all accented with a large civic park and a vast collection of people walking back and forth. They park the car in a garage and wander briefly, stopping in a pub that is obviously more cosmopolitan than any they’ve visited in Dundee or in the vicinity of the base. They sit quietly in the pub, where they are taken for father and son American tourists. They don’t offer the fact that they’re American servicemen.

However, they are not here on holiday. Crowley finishes his second glass of red wine, and as Brad finishes his pint, Crowley whispers that they must be off.

Crowley is in search of a neighborhood that hosts a small Jewish community clustered along Salisbury Road. He learned of its location during a visit to the base library. The Scottish librarian employed by the Navy recognized him, though he didn’t know her. The library was empty save a sailor’s wife and her two small children, who were behaving badly. The mother tried to read them a story in the corner of a library with a rocking chair and a small collection of toys and stuffed animals, ostensibly the children’s section of the library, a very small and drab establishment containing mostly westerns and science fiction novels, with a small reference section. Crowley found what he was looking for in a travel guide. The librarian watched him the entire time and tried to engage him in conversation, asking if the Church of Scotland was really different than the Catholic Church. He said no, not really. She inquired about the practice of exorcism and if Catholic priests really perform such feats, and if he had done one himself. He said yes they do and no he hasn’t, and he asked her to kindly leave him alone. Shocked, she sauntered off behind her desk and pretended to rifle through papers. He smiled. Seldom has he ever had the heart to annoy a middle-aged woman. He used to feign respect for those who were older than him, but these days, he doesn’t really care.

The priest summons a taxi and they are transported from the near magical heart of Edinburgh to a neighborhood that looks as unremarkable and typical as any in Scotland that he’s seen so far. They are deposited on Salisbury Road and Crowley walks with his hands in the pockets of a black leather coat he purchased before he left the States. Never before has he worn leather, and he thinks of the World War II movies he saw as a child. The Gestapo always seemed to wear black leather.

He spies a small gray building with a Star of David over the front door. He is disappointed by the size of the synagogue. The building appears to be empty. He walks around it, counting the windows and doors. There is one door in the front and one in the back, which leads to an alley that is shared with a bakery, a jeweler’s, and a small fruit market. There are only four windows, all facing the street.

This will be simple, he thinks.

He leads Brad to the front door. The priest takes a small penknife from his pocket and pricks the index finger of Brad’s left hand. He squeezes it until blood starts flowing. He takes Brad’s finger and traces the image of a swastika on the front door in blood. And then he signs: THE TRINITY.

“I suspect that will get the neighborhood talking.” Crowley laughs and Brad thinks what he has just done is very cool. “We’ll be back, my young friend. We’ll be back.” The pair walks down Salisbury Road, waiting for a taxi to come along. They return to Lutherkirk, feeling quite satisfied.

“How did you know I was going to see Father Crowley tomorrow?” Chris asks Brad on a Thursday evening, realizing that tomorrow he is going to the priest’s house. He had forgotten their nocturnal conversation of a few weeks past. So much has been on his mind, Karen and the world that is being shown to him.

Hinckley is taking off his uniform and rummaging in the bottom of his locker for his cleanest dirty sweatshirt and jeans. The galley is serving supper, and he and Chris are on their way.