Ascension

Ascension

Adolph Monzuer was an invalid. He’d fallen off the roof of his apartment building while chasing a balsa wood glider he’d received for his birthday. He was 10 years old at the time, he was now 84 years old and for all the promises from the medical establishment, he remained unable to walk.As he looked back over his life he realized that perhaps his handicap had been the event that changed the course of his life for the better. He sat in his wheelchair at the bus stop waiting to be scooped up and deposited near the park on Hennepin avenue. He went there as often as possible. The park was centered around a small lake that housed the only creatures that any longer provided assurance to Adolf. He watched the geese and ducks glide by on the waters glassy surface.Squirrels were busily harvesting their winters rations and burying them haphazardly throughout the park. Pigeons perused the bench areas where the remnants of uneaten lunches were left scattered about the area by industrious crows intent on rummaging through any container that may produce “the thing,” that although illusive, had to be there, their curiosity insinuated that it was so.

Adolf waited patiently as a light rain began to fall.A woman he’d noticed before strolled up to the bench, checked the seat for unwanted… materials and seated herself.“Nice day,” she said apparently oblivious of the rain. Adolf carried a rain coat in the pocket beneath his legs. He pulled it from the pouch and began to unroll it. He managed to wiggle into it as the rain began to increase in intensity. “You get off on Murray Street, across from the park. I’ve seen you there several times. What is it you do here?”

Her voice was lower than most women’s voices and the tone Adolf believed resembled that of molasses slowly moving down the inside of the jar.She was average height, he remembered seeing her standing next to the grounds keeper who he’d estimate at about 5/11.The grounds keeper didn’t like talking to anyone, so people learned to leave him alone. The woman he’d remembered as the one who jumped into the water to save an injured fish that had been mauled by the resident hawk. The fish was larger than the hawk had the capacity to carry and dropped it several feet off the shore line, and disappeared. The first lightning strike wiggled across the sky, accompanied a minute later by a clap of distant thunder.

Adolf looked down the street to see if he could see the bus, he couldn’t. The wind joined with the turbulent sky in driving the intensifying rain into a state of confusion; water was being tossed in all directions as the woman stood and walked over to him. “Would you like me to push you across the street to the café? I’m going there, and if it will help I’d be glad to. The weather doesn’t look like it’s going to let up soon. Coffee sound good?”

Adolf didn’t say anything, just nodded. She turned the chair around and headed for the crosswalk.The vehicle lights danced across the wet pavement changing colors as it picked up the rainbow shards splashed in the street. They waited for permission from the orange hand and when the countdown began she pushed him into the wind, horizontal sheets of water made seeing difficult.They made it to the curb and she slipped around in front and looked at him, “you alright?”

“Fine,” he replied as she returned to the rear of the chair and pushed him toward the door. She held the door open an Adolf wheeled himself over the threshold and into the aisle that paralleled the counter. She stepped inside behind him as a gust of wind pushed the door closed with a loud bang that sounded like a gun shot. Those at the counter flinched and looked to the door, those in the booths slid closer to the wall. “Sorry,” she yelled softly into the room as those having reacted to the “bang,” and went back to doing what they’d been doing. She smiled and pushed him toward the table by the window. She liked to watch the traffic, especially when darkness began to replace the light and the colors emanating from the windows decorated the street.

They sat for several minutes before she asked, “do I know you? You look familiar, like an old teacher.” Adolf had no idea who she was but was grateful for the reprieve from the rain.He knew he was too old to be out in bad weather, but some days after being confined to his apartment he began to feel claustrophobic. He needed to get out, smell the air, feel the light, to prove to himself he was not dead.He felt dead on some days, mostly in the winter when the snow and cold kept him inside. He was not one to complain; life is what you make of it, no matter what you get for directions.

“Aren’t you the guy that’s outside the basilica on Sunday mornings? I’ve seen you out there several times, but you never come in. I volunteer there from time to time, gives me something to do to fill up my Sundays. I don’t like football and the TV and radio is filled with conman preachers wanting me to sacrifice so they can splurge. I know I shouldn’t condemn them all; I’m sure there has to be a good one or two, I just ain’t found them yet. How come you don’t come in? It’s free, warmish in winter, coolish in summer, and in the fall and spring, just right; expectin to see Goldi Locks show up any Sunday now.” She laughed at her own joke; Adolf smiled as he felt required to.

Adolf remained silent, looking about the café. The ceiling was decorated with stamped tin panels with an intricate scalloped design, the walls were a light green, interrupted by numerous photos of ball players from the old farm team that played down the block. Many a home run had found its way onto Nicollet Avenue from there. The waitress brought two cups of steaming coffee. He hadn’t ordered anything and hadn’t noticed his companion ordering anything either, yet the coffee sat before them.

He looked at the woman across from him but hadn’t remembered talking with her before. He felt he should say something, she’d been so kind. Most people would have walked by like he wasn’t there. “I thank you for your kindness” he half whispered.She looked up from her coffee and smiled. “My pleasure…next time you come down to the cathedral you come inside. No one there bites, and it beats sitting on the walk breathing in the exhaust from the buses. Did you lose your faith? That why you ain’t coming in?”

Adolf didn’t know how to answer. He hadn’t exactly lost his faith, just misplaced it. “I forgot where I put it so long ago, don’t suppose I could find it if I wanted to. Don’t miss it none, never did much for me but confuse me about who I was. Now, I don’t think it would do me much good either, too old.God and me has kind of an agreement.I leave him alone, and he leaves me alone. Didn’t think I’d be here for so long, but the years piled up when I wasn’t paying attention.One day I woke up, looked in the mirror, and wondered who the hell the guy was looking back at me. Kind of scared me, but I got over it. Got over most things in my life one way or the other.So, that’s about it, the story of my life if’n that’s what you wanted to hear?” She returned his obligated smile.

She’d watched him the entire time he spoke about his life, but hadn’t told her anything really. She’d met a lot of people who’d misplaced their faith, or felt their faith misplaced them. Even though she felt she had enough faith for several people, she didn’t believe in preaching to the choir, or those who’d not been near a church choir in years.She felt faith was a personal thing that everyone had to find for themselves. She’d thought about helping a few people find theirs over the years, but unless you wanted to find it, it wasn’t going to be found.

“You live close? I’d be glad to help you get home. I ain’t doing much today, and I like you, find myself turning inside out if I sit in the house too long. I go to the park; I assume for the same reasons you do. It gives me a sense of peace I can’t even find in church; but don’t tell Father Adam I said that. He’s a nice man, but rather preoccupied with salvation, mainly his. You know, there are more people afraid of dying than you might think. It tells me they don’t really believe as they say they do. If you thought God was going to put you in a place with no worries, only happiness, wouldn’t you think people would be in a rush to get there, but most are just the opposite, afraid. It kind of makes me wonder what they been up to, to get that scared of accepting the present they was promised.

Faith is a funny thing, it works for some, and other’s claim it don’t work for them, but in all the years I been at the basilica I ain’t never met anyone who was not afraid to die. You afraid to die?”

She took a sip of her coffee and waited for a reply. She loved asking that question; it made people think, and that she thought was rare these days. She watched as he played with his coffee, stirring few drops of cream and several packages of sugar into a tornado that looked like it might jump out of the cup. He lifted his face and looked into her eyes, “No, can’t say that I am. Been more afraid of living than dying. Can’t see the need to be afraid of something I know nothing about. Kind of like being afraid of shadows; can’t explain why I enjoy them, but that don’t keep me from watching them dance on the ground like crazed ghosts looking for a place to go, and I anin’t got the heart to tell them there ain’t none. I think being dead is all there is. Once you are gone the earth takes you apart and puts you back together, then you keep going, you just don’t know that you walked this way before. You ever feel like that?”

She didn’t say anything at first. She continued to stare at the reflection of him in her cup.“No, can’t say that I have, but I know what you are saying. There are times when I feel like you do, and times I don’t. Can’t say my beliefs ain’t full of holes at times, but then can’t say that I’m afraid because I feel that way. Most of what this church stuff is about, is you, not God. Christ may have been here only 33 years, but people been talking about him for over two thousand. And after all that talk, they still don’t seem to know what he was getting at. If all you believe in is the words, that ain’t even your words, or His words, you kind of missed the boat. I believe what He was telling us is how to be a good person and forgive those who don’t seem to know how to be good, cause they are too wrapped up in themselves to know they don’t know what they think they know. That seems crazy, but that’s how I feel. Oh, and my name is Clara. Hope I didn’t scare you with my questions.”

“I don’t frighten easily; I’ve witnessed too much to be tempted to join the chaos when I’ve seen where it leads. Hate and cruelty exist only when people allow it to. They are afraid, and the only recourse is to find someone or something to blame, allowing them to escape their own involvement, their own condoning of something they don’t or can’t understand. It is no excuse for allowing the entire building to burn so that you can have a hot meal. I watch history unfold time and time again because we allow people to change the outcome by changing the input. The lessons there for the picking, are discarded when they no longer agree with the idealism being pushed to anesthetize our morals and ethics.Power allows those who are the weakest morally, to promote themselves as the greatest thing since sliced white bread, which has no nutritional value, but it fills a need that we find missing in ourselves.”

The last rays of sun focus on a face etched on the colored glass of one window. Adolf found himself drawn to the focus of the light, and realizes what he’s looking at is the image of the woman sitting next to him. He begins to recall the times he’s been the focus of kindness and realizes that he could count them on one hand. He turns to look at the woman who brought him to this place to ask why?She is no longer there. Adolf turns to face the back; the basilica remains empty. The only sound is that of votive candles, their flames, like snapping fingers to differing beats, bring a sense of urgency to his search.

Adolf is used to being alone. He has no family or friends; they are all gone. His collapsed chair a reminder of who he could have been.

When you outlive your friends you have outlived yourself. We are all only a collection of memories, and when the sources for those memories is gone, all we have is the trust that they were real, or will we accept the concept that our lives have been an illusion of tomorrows that are no longer available?

“You! what are you doing in here? How’d you get in?” A man dressed in a black floor length cassock partially obscured by a black rain coat slowly walks toward Adolf; Adolf does not respond. Adolf has decided to stop responding, his responses have done little but annoy people over the years. Truth he’d decided is for those that accept the fact that they are not, nor will ever be perfect, and therefore it gives them permission to lie. Lying allows you to escape the confines of reality and create an existence, your own environment, your own morals, and your own god.

The priest stops, not so much out of fear, but curiosity.His beliefs do not afford him the luxury of assumptions; his faith is written on his soul. This man before him in a raincoat and hat, still damp from the earlier rains, no matter his trespass remains one of God’s subjects.“Can I do something for you… are you alright?” His questions seek to confirm his obligations, and yet the law and his responsibilities to others in the congregation demand he choose between the individual needs of one, and the collective needs of many.

The priest looks at the man covered in fractured light, his chin resting on his chest, his hands folded in his lap, an image of contentment.The priest allows his eyes to follow the streaming ray of color from the silent man, to the face of “Mother Mary,” that now rests like a transparent shadow on the man’s chest. The priest is afraid to ask his savior for help in understanding why he is reluctant to pray for this man. The light disappears, the glass reflection is gone, and the man remains a vision of indecision in the priests eyes.

He walks closer and slides into the pew and seats himself next to the man; he’ll wait for the authorities. He looks for signs the man is alive. His eyes are closed and there is no sign of breathing. He reaches to touch the side of the man’s face, but stops.He pulls the kneeling board from beneath the pew in front of him and slides onto it. He straightens his back, folds his hands, and finds he cannot look at the man impaled on the cross in front of him; confused, ashamed, he asks for forgiveness.

“Faith,” he whispers into the silence as the doors behind him are pushed open, a question…an answer? He turns to watch two police officers slowly make their way toward him and his friend; he having alerted the authorities of a possible break in when finding the door ajar. Their footsteps echo off the tiled floor and attempt to escape to the frescoed ceiling.“Stand, and turn around,” the voice like a knife cutting through the silence, through his faith. The priest rises as Adolf awakens and reaches for the pew before him. The sound of the bullet leaving the gun shatters the stillness; the priest slumps over the pew in front of him, an answer he’d not expected. Adolf raises his hands and turns slowly to find two police officers, their eyes wide and glowing with confusion; Adolf disappears into the echo and smoke embracing the darkness, abandoning his need.

If it is true that dreams release the essence of who we are, I should have been on death row decades ago. Although retribution is futile, it provides solace to the man who perceives he has been wronged, and belief that is uncertain whether to serve its followers, or itself . I am what I am, and do not apologize for not meeting arguable standards, I have a difficult time meeting my own. We often get what we deserve, but not nearly as often as we should.