door—”
“We save that for the seventh year,” Brother Fulton observed. “You’ll be long gone by then.” He smiledbeatifically. “You keep these things—the flagellum and the chain—under your pillows. The chain is for hurting, I promise you. You will be fastening the chain around your upper thigh, beneath your trousers, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.” He stood up, a gesture of dismissal. “You see the clasp, you figure it out. One thing, though. Tight. Clasp it tight. Nothing worse than feeling your chain sliding loosely down your leg until it rattles on the floor.” He paused in the doorway before leaving. “That happens and you’re going to feel like a real asshole. Mark my words.”
I threw myself into the business of fleshly mortification with customary determination. The chain was no joke. You put it around your thigh, cinched the links tight while it pulled the hair on your leg and pinched the flesh, and fastened it. You stood still while you put it on and adjusted the tension. That wasn’t so bad. But then you started to walk. The muscles flexed. The sharp edges bit into the meat, the welts rose and stung.
Novice MacDonald thought the whole thing was insane, shaved the hair from his thigh, and held the loose chain in place with adhesive tape. No one else would even discuss the chains. It was a private battle and you fought it alone, the best way you could.
It hurt worst of all when you had to sit down. At mass. At breakfast. In class. And the sharpened links raised the welts, then dug the trenches in the flesh. All in a good cause. My father would be proud of me.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
. God. The Society of Jesus. Saint Ignatius Loyola.
Sanctus Pater Noster
. The better to obey, to serve. I would rise above it. I’d be damned if I didn’t rise above it.
We were swimming when Vinnie Halloran spoke up. “Hey, Ben, look at your leg, man. Just look at it.” I refused to look. I’d been seeing it for a couple weeks. “You better take care of that, man. Really, that’s not right. That’s pus and green crud. Look at my leg, little red dots. MacDonald, you know he paints his little red marks on? No shit! But you, you got green stuff running …” Vinnie shivered, shrank within himself.
But I wouldn’t give in. Not to a crummy Jesuit chain. Not Ben Driskill. That was just the way it was.
It was infected and gangrene had developed. In the end Brother Fulton found me passed out in the john, lying in a puddle of my own vomit. The doctors at St. Ignatius Hospital saved the leg and I was very glad they had. Explaining a missing leg to my father would have been murder. And I was willing to live with the residual pain that flared up from time to time. But what made me feel best was the other thing. I hadn’t given in. Sometimes I lost, anybody could lose. But I never, ever gave in. Not even to the Jesuits. Not even to my father.
When I woke up there was a dim grayness at the window and I could see my breath in the cold of my bedroom. Dry snow blew along the windowsill, drifted through the open inch to wet my face. The telephone was ringing in the distance. I counted four rings and then it stopped. My watch said it was six forty-five. I next came out of the fog at eight past seven, leaving behind a dream of someone screaming.
The problem was I didn’t leave it behind. The scream was part of reality, not left over from a dream. And it wasn’t a scream, it was more of a strangled cry and it probably lasted no more than a second, maybe two, and then there was a hell of a crash, like a blind man trying to get out of a burning building.
My father lay at the bottom of the stairway. His robe was all twisted around him, his arms bent sideways, his face down, resting on the foyer floor. The moment seemed to drag on forever, and then I was kneeling beside him. He looked like someone else, an old man with one eye shut, the other staring up at me. Then the eye blinked.
“Dad? Can you hear me?” I
“We save that for the seventh year,” Brother Fulton observed. “You’ll be long gone by then.” He smiledbeatifically. “You keep these things—the flagellum and the chain—under your pillows. The chain is for hurting, I promise you. You will be fastening the chain around your upper thigh, beneath your trousers, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.” He stood up, a gesture of dismissal. “You see the clasp, you figure it out. One thing, though. Tight. Clasp it tight. Nothing worse than feeling your chain sliding loosely down your leg until it rattles on the floor.” He paused in the doorway before leaving. “That happens and you’re going to feel like a real asshole. Mark my words.”
I threw myself into the business of fleshly mortification with customary determination. The chain was no joke. You put it around your thigh, cinched the links tight while it pulled the hair on your leg and pinched the flesh, and fastened it. You stood still while you put it on and adjusted the tension. That wasn’t so bad. But then you started to walk. The muscles flexed. The sharp edges bit into the meat, the welts rose and stung.
Novice MacDonald thought the whole thing was insane, shaved the hair from his thigh, and held the loose chain in place with adhesive tape. No one else would even discuss the chains. It was a private battle and you fought it alone, the best way you could.
It hurt worst of all when you had to sit down. At mass. At breakfast. In class. And the sharpened links raised the welts, then dug the trenches in the flesh. All in a good cause. My father would be proud of me.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
. God. The Society of Jesus. Saint Ignatius Loyola.
Sanctus Pater Noster
. The better to obey, to serve. I would rise above it. I’d be damned if I didn’t rise above it.
We were swimming when Vinnie Halloran spoke up. “Hey, Ben, look at your leg, man. Just look at it.” I refused to look. I’d been seeing it for a couple weeks. “You better take care of that, man. Really, that’s not right. That’s pus and green crud. Look at my leg, little red dots. MacDonald, you know he paints his little red marks on? No shit! But you, you got green stuff running …” Vinnie shivered, shrank within himself.
But I wouldn’t give in. Not to a crummy Jesuit chain. Not Ben Driskill. That was just the way it was.
It was infected and gangrene had developed. In the end Brother Fulton found me passed out in the john, lying in a puddle of my own vomit. The doctors at St. Ignatius Hospital saved the leg and I was very glad they had. Explaining a missing leg to my father would have been murder. And I was willing to live with the residual pain that flared up from time to time. But what made me feel best was the other thing. I hadn’t given in. Sometimes I lost, anybody could lose. But I never, ever gave in. Not even to the Jesuits. Not even to my father.
When I woke up there was a dim grayness at the window and I could see my breath in the cold of my bedroom. Dry snow blew along the windowsill, drifted through the open inch to wet my face. The telephone was ringing in the distance. I counted four rings and then it stopped. My watch said it was six forty-five. I next came out of the fog at eight past seven, leaving behind a dream of someone screaming.
The problem was I didn’t leave it behind. The scream was part of reality, not left over from a dream. And it wasn’t a scream, it was more of a strangled cry and it probably lasted no more than a second, maybe two, and then there was a hell of a crash, like a blind man trying to get out of a burning building.
My father lay at the bottom of the stairway. His robe was all twisted around him, his arms bent sideways, his face down, resting on the foyer floor. The moment seemed to drag on forever, and then I was kneeling beside him. He looked like someone else, an old man with one eye shut, the other staring up at me. Then the eye blinked.
“Dad? Can you hear me?” I
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