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Wulfe N Straat - Short Story

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"Do you believe in angels, my son?" the old priest asked while looking up at the soot-encrusted ceiling and listening to the first rounds of thunder
rumble far-off beyond the mountains.

Wondering how the conversation had veered so suddenly from his last drunken, off-color joke to theology, Radford quaffed the final gulp from his
wineglass. Sliding the goblet across the roughly adzed oaken table towards the two bottles, he cocked an eyebrow for more. When the priest took
his meaning and reached for one of the bottles ~ then, finding that one empty, the other ~ Radford answered in the French patois of the Dengan
colonial, "I’ve seen things that cannot be explained by science, that conflict with the laws of nature: demon possession, for instance." He paused,
hoping to swerve the conversation from angelology, where he stood little chance of advantage, to one where he had some personal knowledge.

Père Girard strangled the necks of both bottles up against one of the candles to show there was nothing but lees. "Among the BaUtuu, then, you
have seen possession?"

"What I took to be possession," he rejoined, remaining noncommittal until he knew the priest’s position on the subject. To hint at another round of
drinks, he glanced at the wine rack next to the fireplace, crackling with chimney-drawn flames, casting long shadows throughout the stone-walled
kitchen.

Understanding him full well, Père Girard stretched an arm out behind him for another time-worn bottle, chipped and scratched of all sheen, corked
and recorked too many years. "And, if demons can possess a man, cannot angels?"

Amused that Père Girard refused to be sidetracked into discussing the perennially intriguing subject of demonology, Radford slid the corkscrew
across the rough tabletop then looked to the low ceiling, supported by rough-hewn beams heavy in cobwebs. "If there are angels, Father, I
suppose."

The old priest wrapped a speckled hand around the wooden handle of the corkscrew. "Oh, there are angels. And they work through human beings
to perform miracles." Holding the bottle between his legs, he fitted the point of the corkscrew into the cork and twisted the coil deep into the bottle.
"While science may argue that a mother who lifts an automobile off her child receives her strength from a rush of adrenaline, we believe an angel
has walked into her and performed the miracle."

Trying for humor, Radford chided him with a wry smile, "Surely, you’re not discounting the effect of adrenaline, Father?"
"When man has exhausted all hope, when his own powers prove inadequate, adrenaline greases the wheel for the reception of angels, so that the
man may attain impossible heights." He smiled. "Adrenaline acts as a lubricant, much like good wine lubricates conversation to new heights, making
a man more receptive to new ideas." He pulled the cork out with a pop and, holding the bottle up in exultation, offered, "More port?"

Radford chuckled at the priest’s unusual twist of scientific fact, fitting it comfortably in a subordinate position within church dogma. "And which of us
tonight will wine lubricate to a new understanding."
"Neither of us, both of us," He poured each of them another full glass. "Who is to say? But the conversation will be enlivened and entertaining, if
nothing else."

"As it usually is," Radford swirled the wine then breathed its bouquet, finding it barely affected by the heat from the fire. He held his goblet up,
waiting for the priest to clink his own glass against it in toast. "I’d forgotten how good your wine is, truly extraordinary."

"To extraordinary men, then, in extraordinary times," Père Girard clinked the glass and raising it in further salute, took a sip. Wiping his lips on the
back of his hand, he leaned in, his elbow on the table in a puddle of wax, and posed a leading question: "You agree, we live in extraordinary times,
my son?"

Radford swashed a huge mouthful of wine across his tongue, puffing out his cheeks, and then swallowed it whole. He put the glass down, his
fingers still around the stem. "You mean: evil times, Father?"

Shaking his head at having been misunderstood, the gray-haired, paunch-heavy pastor tried to clarify his meaning: "Not all evil, my son. Many
good things are happening all over the world. There are many good people, though you may not hear of them, people who do God’s work quietly in
the shadows." Before Radford could wrongly assume he was speaking of himself, lauding himself, Père Girard added, "Do you remember the
Miracle-Priest of the BaUtuu?"

In the process of drawing the glass to his lips again, Radford stopped midway. "You’re not serious." He paused for response while staring at the
priest’s eyes over the edge of his goblet. "You’re not suggesting that he was possessed by an angel?"

Père Girard clasped both hands around the stem of his own goblet. "Possessed has such negative connotations. I prefer ‘inspired.’"

Radford put his glass down without drinking. "Beaulyn deFaux was a charlatan, plain and simple. He took credit or was given credit for whatever so-
called miracles happened, a series of coincidences, if anything. Call it ‘turns of fate,’ but don’t call it miracles. They would have happened,
regardless of whether he was there or not."

"There are those who will argue that there are no coincidences, that everything has an initial cause for there to be an effect. Père Valmont and I
have often argued the point." He clasped his hands tighter around the crystal stem, his fingers growing white at the knuckles. "When the Z’Ombiz
epidemic ravaged the BaUtuu some years ago, he was there among them. He prayed over the dead and dying, knowing his lack of faith had made
him powerless to help. In deep depression, unable to bear the grief and panic among his people, he sought solace in tatter, drugging himself into
oblivion." Hearing a noise at the window, Radford glanced in that direction, seeing one of the lepers peering over the ledge, with another deformed
face soon appearing over the other. "A man of little character then, not extraordinary."

"One day, the mohjo priestess came to him and convinced him ~ in whatever words they shared, since he spoke hardly any KiUtuu ~ that blood
sacrifice was necessary to rid the tribe of the plague. Some say he pierced his own heart with the ancient spear of the ManiUtuu; others ~ and, I
subscribe to this version myself, in direct contradiction of the Isaiah Jones gospel ~ that she herself speared him in the heart. In any case, he
dragged himself up the blue mountains of the Karemoudi...there to die; but, forty days later, he returned, a changed man."

"Inspired of an angel? No. If anything, he was possessed of a more virulent demon than he had known before. When the Church reassigned him to
Pointe Blanche from BuUtuu, he seduced the workers’ wives and molested their daughters. Did you know that? Does that sound like an angel?" He
stared for a moment at the flickering flame on one of the candles, dripping wax in lava flows across the heavy base of the pewter candlestick and
caking against the sleeve of the priest’s white frock. "No, Father. Beaulyn deFaux was black-hearted before he became a cult deity; and he was
more evil afterwards."

"Père deFaux was a lazy man before, lacking in faith, ungenerous in character, but not evil. He was an ordinary man, hiding from reality...until his
forty days and forty nights on the mountains of the Karemoudi. There, I believe, he was inspired of an angel, who worked through him to
accomplish great miracles among the BaUtuu."

"You’re wrong, Father. DeFaux is an evil man ~ was and is. The Holy See investigated him after repeated complaints about his ministry, mostly from
a Protestant minister, whose widow is now in your company. The Inquisitors recognized that he was dangerous, warped in soul. But I didn’t need
them to tell me that." He pushed his glass away. "No, you don’t know him as I do."

"Not as you do, but I know him. I was there. I accompanied the Inquistors to BuUtuu, translating KiUtuu for them. Late at night, on my own, because
they would never have allowed it, I spoke with him. I spent long hours at his bedside after his last miracle, which was casting demons out of a poor
sinner, whom you may know as Mark-Matthew. The good father raved madness, as if one of the demons had possessed him. You have seen
possession; you know what I mean. Yet, there were aspects of the divine still about him, an inexplicable aura that the doctors dismissed as the
effect of malaria and addiction to tatter. He had been sick, you see. That is the reason the Inquisitors ultimately chose to reassign him. It was not
the real reason but a political expedient. Yes, I can say I knew him...as few other white men have known him."

"Then you know deFaux is a child-molester, not a god, not god-like, not ‘inspired.’" Hearing the shuffling of feet across the dusty grounds in the
courtyard, Radford glanced again to the kitchen window, seeing many more of the decaying faces staring in while others continued to crop up
between them, all of them drawn out of the darkness to the priest’s words, moths to the light. Realizing that he was speaking to an audience, he
returned to the argument with greater vigor. "We found him out at Pointe Blanche. We had witnesses. He was tried by the courts for his perversion."

"Yes, he was tried. Christ himself was tried by the civil authorities."
"Not just the civil authorities." He reached for one of the black twisted cigars in his breast pocket and chewed off the end. "His so-called miracles
were proven to be hoaxes. He should have been defrocked then and there, saved us all a lot of trouble."

"The Board of Inquisitors investigated only one of the miracles that Père deFaux performed, which was feeding the multitudes with fish and loaves
of bread the way Jesus did during the Sermon on the Mount. They suggested that it was not a divine act. But there was nothing ordinary in having
people open their hearts to their fellow men."

"You assume that was his intention." He straightened his leg alongside the rickety chair to accommodate his hand into the hip pocket of his shorts;
he pulled out a card of matches. "I believe it was a calculated hoax to make himself larger than life."

"It is a good priest who knows his flock," the old priest countered weakly, growing tired. Realizing that Radford would not be swayed, that he had a
vested interest in disparaging Père deFaux, he fell back upon the the Inquistors’ own assessment of the miracle, paraphrasing it well enough to
husband his own energies for the greater argument. "The BaUtuu professed poverty near to starvation, but they had secretly brought enough food
to feed themselves. When Père deFaux shamed them for their lack of charity, they took nothing from what was offered but added some of their own
fish and bread before passing the baskets along. That is the miracle."

Radford scratched a match to fire. "That is the cleverness of the man, the perfidy of him." He lit the cigar and blew out the match with a puff of
smoke. "He knew he was minimizing Christ’s miracle by duplicating it in sleight of hand."

"Who can say that that is not how Christ himself performed that miracle. After all, any magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat...or fish and bread out
of a basket. Isn’t changing the core values of a human being a greater miracle than making fish and bread magically appear?"

Radford blew a thick gray smoke across the table. "You go too far, Father. What you’re saying is heresy."

"Like you, the Inquisitors were more interested in explaining away Père deFaux’s miracles, as if that were the more important aspect to understand.
But in comparison to what Père deFaux taught, what he knew, the miracles were nothing, just manifestations of truths he proclaimed to those who
would listen, that he made the simple people of BuUtuu understand."

"Which were?" He took another long draw, waiting for response and then prodded further, "What, Father?"

"As hard as I might try to restate any of these divine truths ~ because he made it all very simple, easy to grasp, easy to center the core of your
being around ~ I cannot anymore. I can’t tell you how these truths worked inside my mind and heart either, making me a better man, a better priest.
If I were to try, all I could relate is our relationship during those few nights or short stories I’ve heard about Père deFaux, which culminated in
miracles time and again, where the truth of what he said, what he knew, blossomed into the impossible on the physical plane."

"That’s the myth that’s grown around him. It grows larger with every telling." Finding the ash bothersome, he scanned the table for a receptacle.
"What do you know for fact? You must remember at least one of his divine truths?"

"I can’t tell you. I’ve backslid from perfect understanding. I no longer live from the inner core of my soul...as I did for weeks after I met him, when my
soul still resonated with his. Life has dragged me down into the muck of daily existence; but I remember how it felt to be in touch with God, with
perfect understanding." He looked to the faces staring in and addressed them directly. "Up there on the mountain, something happened to him,
something that changed him that remade him. I believe he encountered universal truth, or God, as all men do when they die. I believe it was then
he was inspired by an angel."

"You disappoint me, Father." He knocked the ash into his goblet, tainting the wine. "You of all people...."
Père Girard shook his head, preferring not to be elevated above other men, even though he knew what shaming remark would follow.
"...Should know better."

His back now bent under the weight of supporting his position, the old priest breathed deeply, bracing himself for the next round of argument, which
he would invite with his next utterance. He lifted a hand, palm up, towards the lepers at the kitchen window. "All of these people here, every one of
them, belong to his cult, believe in him. Père Valmont and I have questioned many of them who witnessed his miracles; and we cannot dispute that
they were miracles ~ not coincidences, not sleight of hand. We hold masses, but no one comes. The pews are empty. Instead, they wait outside the
doors of the church, praying to Père deFaux during the entire mass...or they follow me around, asking me to tell them of Père deFaux, as if I were
one of his disciples."

"And still they’re lepers." He let the cigar hang from his mouth. Using both hands, he pushed himself back from the table, indicating that he was
finished with the conversation. "That’s what they get for believing in a false god."

The priest fidgetted in his seat, unwilling to let that statement stand yet unable to carry the argument to its original conclusion, which he had
planned throughout their earlier camaraderie over two bottles of wine. "You don’t understand."

"Like them, Père Girard, you wish to believe." After his fourth and last draw, he dunked his cigar into the wine, extinguishing it to the smell of burnt
grapes. "Your faith requires you to believe in the innate goodness of man, in the possibility of impossible things. But deFaux is not a good man.
The Church says so. The civil authorities...."

"...Never convicted him," he said, preempting Radford’s statement before it could bloom into a complete denunciation. "He was never convicted."

"Regardless, DeFaux is a child-molester, employing the most despicable perversion to corrupt...."

"Stop! Stop now!" Finished with trying to enlighten his guest, he pushed his own glass aside, still untouched, and stood up. "With all of our children
here, you brought us this woman, who herself is a child-molester. I saw it in her eyes in BuUtuu, the way she looks at them, hungering for them. Do
you really care for children that you would jeopardize our innocents in this way?" Intent now only in changing Radford to the core of him, he leaned
over the table, supporting his weight on his knuckles, fixing Radford eye to eye, "I see the same perverse nature in your own eyes, my son. What
have you not done...that you can judge this man?"

December 2007