Sleepaway Cramp

Sometimes the microwave wind of a nacho supreme is a comfort. It drowns out the wistful stench of booze right outside the kitchen door. The night bartenders stopped offering me a shift drink after Dylan, my non-drinking buddy, and their boss, gave them a dressing down concerning their tendency to over-pour or give away drinks. He never mentioned that I could be inches away from falling into an Irish haze that I spent 25 of my 40 years in. I am sure they already know. They can smell a drunk from a mile away. It was their bread and butter. Dylan kept me straight and I trusted him as much as I could; as much as someone who has been turned on or rejected by every family member and confidante. He was the only one in this Winter-dead resort town who knew my story. With him I enjoyed the confessional privilege that I rejected as a youth. My shriving pew was in a moldy church basement 40 miles away from here. The others at the group did not comment or judge, but they thanked me for sharing, as is custom, and went on to the next sad sack with a tale of woe and tequila. There were at least two AA groups right here in Glen Arbor, behind the Sleeping Bear, but their 12 steps, I could not stomach. Higher powers, letting go, and atonement put a repulsive taste in my mouth. That religious style hokum was partially responsible for my hugging of the bottle for so long. This group was a lot different from the “I am powerless”, maxim chanting, Saint Francis spewing, state mandated violation of the establishment clause that is Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of us were fuck-ups, but we didn't let the booze define us. I had had enough misplaced blame in my life and I was not going to beat myself up for what the world did to me and what I did to myself. Dylan was the perfect sponsor. There is nothing like a former drunk and current bar manager to inspire one to keep one's promises to himself. It had honestly never even occurred to me that he might have a problem in the two years I had worked with him. Dylan picked me out of the line-up at my first meeting. I know him as a stoic, no-bullshit guy who was surprisingly well read for the country fried hoss. Dylan was only a couple years older than me, but hard traveling and harder drinking had turned his face as gray, pitted and rut filled as the back-roads, out here in God's country. His face was as gravelly as an unimproved two-track. The very same two-tracks that contrasted the ones in our town, which were pristine blacktop for the benefit of rich invaders who acted the fool, vomited, and fought in our authentic little country bar and grill every Memorial Day. The story that I told the group was not the usual, “I got drunk and beat the wife, crashed the truck and got in jail,” variety. Mine was a little weirder and a lot more uncomfortable to retell, I imagined. Unlike the other hard luck stories that drove many of the others to drink, mine was hardly my fault. Maybe sleep-away camp was different two decades ago, with less state regulation. I am pretty sure mine was quite atypical. Our small throwback denomination rented cabins and kitchen space from a much larger Presbyterian summer camp. There was very little resemblance to the typical Meatballs or even Camp Crystal Lake. At 14 I hated it all, from volleyball to capture-the-flag. I hated 7 AM mass and 11:30 bible study. There were none of the silly camp songs or even a respectable Kumbaya. All of our music came from 19th century hymnals. We had two priests to look after our souls, who while in their robes, had the cruel eyes of angry money-changer-in-the-temple Jesus. For Contrast, In their T-shirts and shorts (or speedos at the pool, for Christ sake!) they told inappropriate jokes and gave and enjoyed back-rubs from the more eager to please, naively pious kids. And if you thought being an alter boy was embarrassing at your home congregation, being one here, although a so-called privilege, was 19 times more embarrassing. Instead of old people and extended family as parishioners, you had fifty of your peers from the extended diocese, from 9 to 19, staring at you over folded hands. Funny thing is, there was no giggling or monkey business. This was a brand of Catholicism that held the modernization of Vatican II as heresy. To say it was old fashioned is not nearly descriptive enough. The Priests faced the alter with their back to an unworthy and shameful congregation while incense, pleased God and masked the sweat of mere humans. Latin was the only language pleasing to God's ears. When I got the call I was miffed. That part of my life was so far removed from who I was now. I thought I had finally lived it down, drowned it and filed it so permanently away that I could scarcely remember the people involved, or how out of the ordinary it all seemed. But she had a kind voice and said her name was Sharon Quincy. I vaguely remembered the name as someone I had crushed on hard at camp in my unsteady, fourteen year old way. “Hi, Marshall, you probably don't..remember me?” Everything she said sounded like a question. “We met at Man-I-Too by the River...when we were kids...my little brother was the one that went missing..?” ...Long pause. The words faded in and out. My face began to burn and neck got prickly. I thought I would remember it as the best night of camp. We were free from the priests disproving, yet creepily interested gaze, with just the 18 year old counselors for guides. All of us hiked a quarter mile into the woods, to the flat by the river. The clearing was wide and tree lined. It felt a million miles from civilization, even though there was a road a hundred paces north. There was a berm in the center, piled with field stones from some abandoned farmer's field. It looked like a druid cairn or something out of Stonehenge. When the moon rose there was an otherworldly aura from mist and fireflies. I don't remember much that makes sense anymore. I was made to retell the story under duress so many times by police, and family and church officials that it seemed like someone else' memory, overheard, with the juicy parts left out. I was feeling smiling eyes on me from my peers for the first time. I swore that it was just a campfire spook story. When I acted out the ritual that I made up in my head, some kids played along and elaborated. I don't remember at all how it went. It was silly playacting and I was coming out of my shell, enjoying the attention that usually took the form of ridicule. It the goof became deflated of fun when a couple of the younger ones started crying. One of them tripped over a log and cracked his skull in all of the mayhem and silliness. A counselor helped him back to the infirmary building. It was not until morning that anyone noticed Scotty Quincy was no longer accounted for. “You remember my brother...right?” It took no seconds. The prickly feeling came back. The unearned guilt taught by Father Sagg. It was the guilt of a 14 year old who has earned eternal torment for putting his hands inside his pj's. The guilt of a 14 year old accused of being a pagan devil worshiper; someone who has called upon Azula-Whateva, from Hell. Someone who must have gifted an innocent to the demon, and who must have spirited the body away with no trace. The Devil evaded the forensics team because no one ever found a trace of her little brother. The only after effect was the inquisition that I endured, and the shunning. I was grilled by police, church officials and my own mother. I was sent North to live with my father because my Christ haunted mother saw a Diablo consorting heathen every time she looked at me. The Church officials fittingly performed the inquisition, alongside the small town cops. The torture, however, was from the other children, who may or may not have believed that I did anything to or with little Scotty, but were still willing to be righteous tormenters for this demon spawn. “Whatever happened to you?..do you remember anything?..the case reopened...no one's interested...I've made phone calls to everyone I can find, and you are the last...? please help find what's his name...Rod...? You probably don't want to hear any of this...?” I didn't and I hung up as politely as I could. Nauseous and detached, I walked into work. Dylan must have noticed how spooked I was and blockaded me in the walk-in cooler. He must have thought I was an excellent prospect for a wagon dive because he wore the look of quizzical concern he reserved for 2AM. hold-outs at his bar. “Hey Devil-boy, let me buy you a cup of coffee.” I did not want to talk about it, and would not for another week. I told the story update to my drunkie support group, and Dylan piped up that maybe I could call Shannon back. Besides, he reasoned, she might be single. When I next spoke to her, I made an uneasy promise that I would track down the last one on her list. Rodrigo had hung up on her when she tried. Rodrigo was the “son” of Father Sagg. In our form of Catholicism priests may marry, and it is conceivable for them to adopt children. Father Sagg never seemed the marrying kind, and Rodrigo, a slender olive skinned Puerto Rican, did appear to interact or respect Father as a “dad”. Roddy did not mix with the other campers, and he projected an air of entitlement with Father. He did not become a counselor like the other seventeen and eighteen-year-olds who had been attending the camp for several years, and he slept in Father's cabin, not with the rest of the boys in their two bunkhouses. When I knocked on his door, downstate, in East Lansing, he did not answer. It appeared that he had adopted his own bleach blond 18 year old Adonis”. To say that they were not happy to see me was an understatement. When Roddy slapped my face it stung just like my mother's blows. When he collapsed on the divan, head in hands, Adonis fled to the unseen rear of the smart little condominium. Roddy tearfully confirmed everything that everyone with eyes suspected about Father Sagg's relationship with him. When I mentioned the missing child, he blanched, and leaped from seat to sideboard which hid a small safe. He extracted a stack of leather bound journals, tied with golden string and wax sealed with the mark, Fr. S., above the impression of an inexplicably smiling lambs face. Roddy put them in my hand. He had sworn to never read them, and to turn them over to the Church, upon Father's death. That would not be long as it turned out. When I went to see that miserable specimen in the old clergy's home, Father was now Bishop, and Bishop was incoherent. Dementia had taken a lot of old drunks that warmed stools next to mine during my quarter decade lost weekend. Bishop Sagg showed all of the signs. He was confined to a reclining wheelchair. Cataract inflicted eyes filled with sparks when I imagined that he recognized me. Next Bishop started shrieking when I mentioned Roddy. The orderlies, two linebacker shaped nuns, hustled me out within 30 seconds. I went to my motel and broke the seal on the stack of journals. Shortly after I stopped sobbing, I found myself at the Green-n-White In-n-Out party store, eyeballing the amber bottle behind the counter. Back at the motel, I kept reading, with the bottle still sealed. I stared at the revelation. I stared at the bottle. I saw the confession. The bottle stared back. I read the description of the old sand trap in an abandoned golf course, 20 minutes from Man-I-Too-By-the-River, with a youthful eternal visitor, rudely buried. The bottle cooled my hot sweaty palms. I picked up the phone and called Sharon Quincy, after emptying my hand of the bottle, across the room, against the wall, seeping into the dirty beige carpet. When the Diocese Synod characterized the evidence in the Bishop's journals as an attempted frame-up by a debouched and disinherited son, I could not leave it alone. The police from Michigan City reluctantly opened the cold case. They only found a jawbone, but nothing more. By that time Bishop Sagg was dead anyway. He slipped in the shower. How he got there, no one knows. His legs hadn't moved in three years. A few weeks later, I received a Christmas card from my mother. A picture of a sleepy lamb with a shepherd's crook propped under it's front hoof. There was no note, but it was signed, “Many Blessings From Our Lord and Savior, Love Mom.” I crumpled it up and threw it and the addressed envelope in the fireplace.