BDP54
Father Allen arrived promptly at 0900 Wednesday. It was the morning after the request had come across his desk. Normally he waited a few days after sending his acceptance reply before arriving, just because of the time things took to get through channels. But there had been something about the wording on the form that had made him uneasy.
He had given his entire day over to this, not knowing what to expect, but prepared for the worst. The fact that the small room set aside for hearing confessions looked remarkably like an interrogation chamber did nothing to soothe his nerves. The walls were bare white, with a slight change of hue along one wall that denoted a viewing window to the trained eye.
Father Allen had done his best to change the mood of the room. He pushed the metal table to the wall and moved the chairs so they were closer together and facing each other. He laid his Bible and a spare rosary over the table, trying to soften the harsh look of the metal in the overly bright lights. It wasn't much, but it was all he'd had to work with.
Allen been a little worried about the image it presented, and hoped that it wouldn't keep his new parishioners from speaking freely. If he was right, they needed to be able to tell him everything that was bothering them. By the time the second man had come to him, the 'feel' of the room was the least of his concerns. The next several hours tested his faith in ways he had not expected. The padre felt like he'd been put through a wringer by the time the last soldier on his list departed.
The four men he had seen were sick to their souls, and it had taken everything he had to listen calmly as variations of the same story were told over and over. To a man they spoke of their actions as if they had been possessed, although they blamed it on the treatments instead of Satan. He kept hearing how they had felt out of control, and that something took them over. They complained of memory loss, but said it felt like they had lost time, not memory. Helplessness punctuated their posture as they spoke, clearly demoralized by what they had done.
Despite the growing horror in his own soul at what he heard, Father Allen knew he had to be strong for them. If they knew how upset he was, they might stop talking, and they needed to talk or they wouldn't be here. The traditional confessional kept a certain amount of distance between sinner and priest for the benefit of both. The padre found himself missing the barrier. He'd had more practice schooling his voice than his face.
It should not have been that difficult. The Father was not unfamiliar with the extremes the military was willing to go to in the name of national security. After all, he hadn't always been a priest. Yet this was different somehow. Perhaps it was because the men had to live with what they had become forever. They were the weapons; there was no way to set aside what had been laid into them. To a man they were afraid of what they would do next, and the padre didn't blame them at all.
When Allen had been sixteen, he'd lied about his age so he could join the Army. He wanted to go to Vietnam like his two older brothers. He'd always been big for his age, a life of farm labor saw to that. If the recruiters suspected anything, it was that he was just under draft age and didn't want to wait for his birthday. With all the draft dodging going on, they were pleased to take someone eager to join, and looked no closer.
At the time, Allen had been elated. Full of his grandfather's stories from the First and Second World Wars, he saw himself becoming a hero. He was going to liberate the oppressed Vietnamese people like his grandfather had done in France and England.
But Vietnam had been a very different war from the nostalgic tales of his grandpa. There was no glory to be had, only horror and the struggle to survive. The deep and abiding resentment from the people they were supposed to be 'saving' was clear in every face. They wanted the Americans gone badly enough to booby trap their dead and turn their own children into human bombs.
These were the people that they were being told to bleed and even die for. It became easier to believe they deserved to have entire villages bombed and their women taken against their will when faced with such ingratitude. The boy he had been came to resent the Vietnamese as much as they had resented him.
Not even the children begging in the streets with napalm scars summoned any pity after seeing the remains of less fortunate comrades. The soldiers had been tortured to death and left hanging like obscene yard ornaments.
Instead of seeing each person as a person, they all became gooks or Charlies. The fact that to Western eyes they all looked very similar helped with the illusion that they were all the same. It was even easier to hate them that way, it made them less than human. Allen had watched men become monsters, had almost become one himself.
He had been teetering on the edge of the Abyss, his heart the only cold thing in that humid little slice of Hell, when he'd been bitten by a Krait. The snakes were nocturnal, sleeping during the day. Soldier and gook alike were frequently bitten when stepping on one during its daytime rest, as he had just done. Without antivenom, most died.
Their unit had no antivenom. Myers had been carrying the snakebite kit when he'd stepped on a mine. Allen remembered the horrible cramps as he laid praying to live, and then praying to die. In his delirium God touched him, and offered him a choice. Allen had refused, to full of hate to accept. Everything faded to black.
He woke up in an American hospital three months later; with the duty nurse telling him he had been very lucky. Turns out, he'd been in a coma. While he'd been out, the war had ended. Allen could go home.
But home wasn't home anymore. Allen had changed too much in the bush to ever fit in again. He didn't like to be touched, found the city too loud, civilians rude, and had nearly broken his mother's arm when she came in to wake him one morning. He wasn't the only one having difficulty adjusting.
The suicide rate climbed among veterans who could not leave their experiences behind or could not deal with the hostile homecoming. Public sentiment had been in violent opposition of America in Vietnam, and that attitude extended to the soldiers who had served there. Even talking with his two elder brothers, who had also served, did not help him. They had similar memories and experiences, but no better idea how to deal than he did.
In his isolation God called to him again. This time he listened. God lead him out of the darkness and his experiences helped him to bring back other tormented souls. Today he had done his best for four more such men. Somehow the Father had been able to give them guidance without letting his emotions run away with him. He was as angry as he could ever remember being, but not with the Dragons.
No, the blame for this rightfully belonged to the ones who had brought them to this state. The Father did his best to set the troubled soldiers on the road to self-forgiveness. God, he knew, had already forgiven them.
Father Allen also knew however, that many who came to him did not feel that a confession alone would grant absolution. It just seemed too easy. The priest had discovered that if they had to work an earthly atonement, they found peace with God much easier. Rather like a small child trying to glue back together something they had broken, there was tangible evidence of their repentance. It was something they could see and measure against. An actual labor seemed to comfort them more than sore knees from praying ever did.
So instead of assigning a score of 'Hail Marys' or 'Our Fathers' he had told them to spend time examining their actions and to find ways to keep such things from happening again. He also asked them to spend their first leave doing charitable work as part of their penance. Volunteers were never turned away; almost every shelter in town was understaffed. Father Allen had not specified where they should volunteer, but he rather hoped they would make their way to one of the battered women shelters. There would be certain symmetry to such an end.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been an eternity since my last confession."
The priest looked up from his Bible as the rich voice filled the room. A very tall black man stood in the door, his face composed but his dark eyes haunted. "Come in and have a seat, you look like you need it."
"My apologies, but I cannot," Mobius ignored the proffered seat. The only outlet for his rage and self-loathing was motion. He paced the small room like a panther marking off the confines of its cage.
"If motion will give freedom to your voice, then I am hardly inclined to protest." Father Allen gestured with his hand as if saying 'do whatever you must'.
For several moments Mobius simply paced. He was obviously uncertain where to begin. The tall soldier was clearly gathering his thoughts. He stopped suddenly in front of the still-seated priest and began to speak in the resonating tones of one used to giving orders.
"I have never believed in the Devil as such. What is evil varies from culture to culture and age to age. It always seemed to me that such was an attempt to take an abstract idea and turn it into something concrete. Now I find myself in the uncomfortable position of revising my beliefs. There is something inside me that is alien, evil." Mobius beat his breast once, hard, with a closed fist.
Father Allen laid aside his book. He had been trying to find some comfort in its pages while waiting to see if anyone else would grace his door, but something told him that his need paled in comparison to that of the man in front of him.
Father Allen arrived promptly at 0900 Wednesday. It was the morning after the request had come across his desk. Normally he waited a few days after sending his acceptance reply before arriving, just because of the time things took to get through channels. But there had been something about the wording on the form that had made him uneasy.
He had given his entire day over to this, not knowing what to expect, but prepared for the worst. The fact that the small room set aside for hearing confessions looked remarkably like an interrogation chamber did nothing to soothe his nerves. The walls were bare white, with a slight change of hue along one wall that denoted a viewing window to the trained eye.
Father Allen had done his best to change the mood of the room. He pushed the metal table to the wall and moved the chairs so they were closer together and facing each other. He laid his Bible and a spare rosary over the table, trying to soften the harsh look of the metal in the overly bright lights. It wasn't much, but it was all he'd had to work with.
Allen been a little worried about the image it presented, and hoped that it wouldn't keep his new parishioners from speaking freely. If he was right, they needed to be able to tell him everything that was bothering them. By the time the second man had come to him, the 'feel' of the room was the least of his concerns. The next several hours tested his faith in ways he had not expected. The padre felt like he'd been put through a wringer by the time the last soldier on his list departed.
The four men he had seen were sick to their souls, and it had taken everything he had to listen calmly as variations of the same story were told over and over. To a man they spoke of their actions as if they had been possessed, although they blamed it on the treatments instead of Satan. He kept hearing how they had felt out of control, and that something took them over. They complained of memory loss, but said it felt like they had lost time, not memory. Helplessness punctuated their posture as they spoke, clearly demoralized by what they had done.
Despite the growing horror in his own soul at what he heard, Father Allen knew he had to be strong for them. If they knew how upset he was, they might stop talking, and they needed to talk or they wouldn't be here. The traditional confessional kept a certain amount of distance between sinner and priest for the benefit of both. The padre found himself missing the barrier. He'd had more practice schooling his voice than his face.
It should not have been that difficult. The Father was not unfamiliar with the extremes the military was willing to go to in the name of national security. After all, he hadn't always been a priest. Yet this was different somehow. Perhaps it was because the men had to live with what they had become forever. They were the weapons; there was no way to set aside what had been laid into them. To a man they were afraid of what they would do next, and the padre didn't blame them at all.
When Allen had been sixteen, he'd lied about his age so he could join the Army. He wanted to go to Vietnam like his two older brothers. He'd always been big for his age, a life of farm labor saw to that. If the recruiters suspected anything, it was that he was just under draft age and didn't want to wait for his birthday. With all the draft dodging going on, they were pleased to take someone eager to join, and looked no closer.
At the time, Allen had been elated. Full of his grandfather's stories from the First and Second World Wars, he saw himself becoming a hero. He was going to liberate the oppressed Vietnamese people like his grandfather had done in France and England.
But Vietnam had been a very different war from the nostalgic tales of his grandpa. There was no glory to be had, only horror and the struggle to survive. The deep and abiding resentment from the people they were supposed to be 'saving' was clear in every face. They wanted the Americans gone badly enough to booby trap their dead and turn their own children into human bombs.
These were the people that they were being told to bleed and even die for. It became easier to believe they deserved to have entire villages bombed and their women taken against their will when faced with such ingratitude. The boy he had been came to resent the Vietnamese as much as they had resented him.
Not even the children begging in the streets with napalm scars summoned any pity after seeing the remains of less fortunate comrades. The soldiers had been tortured to death and left hanging like obscene yard ornaments.
Instead of seeing each person as a person, they all became gooks or Charlies. The fact that to Western eyes they all looked very similar helped with the illusion that they were all the same. It was even easier to hate them that way, it made them less than human. Allen had watched men become monsters, had almost become one himself.
He had been teetering on the edge of the Abyss, his heart the only cold thing in that humid little slice of Hell, when he'd been bitten by a Krait. The snakes were nocturnal, sleeping during the day. Soldier and gook alike were frequently bitten when stepping on one during its daytime rest, as he had just done. Without antivenom, most died.
Their unit had no antivenom. Myers had been carrying the snakebite kit when he'd stepped on a mine. Allen remembered the horrible cramps as he laid praying to live, and then praying to die. In his delirium God touched him, and offered him a choice. Allen had refused, to full of hate to accept. Everything faded to black.
He woke up in an American hospital three months later; with the duty nurse telling him he had been very lucky. Turns out, he'd been in a coma. While he'd been out, the war had ended. Allen could go home.
But home wasn't home anymore. Allen had changed too much in the bush to ever fit in again. He didn't like to be touched, found the city too loud, civilians rude, and had nearly broken his mother's arm when she came in to wake him one morning. He wasn't the only one having difficulty adjusting.
The suicide rate climbed among veterans who could not leave their experiences behind or could not deal with the hostile homecoming. Public sentiment had been in violent opposition of America in Vietnam, and that attitude extended to the soldiers who had served there. Even talking with his two elder brothers, who had also served, did not help him. They had similar memories and experiences, but no better idea how to deal than he did.
In his isolation God called to him again. This time he listened. God lead him out of the darkness and his experiences helped him to bring back other tormented souls. Today he had done his best for four more such men. Somehow the Father had been able to give them guidance without letting his emotions run away with him. He was as angry as he could ever remember being, but not with the Dragons.
No, the blame for this rightfully belonged to the ones who had brought them to this state. The Father did his best to set the troubled soldiers on the road to self-forgiveness. God, he knew, had already forgiven them.
Father Allen also knew however, that many who came to him did not feel that a confession alone would grant absolution. It just seemed too easy. The priest had discovered that if they had to work an earthly atonement, they found peace with God much easier. Rather like a small child trying to glue back together something they had broken, there was tangible evidence of their repentance. It was something they could see and measure against. An actual labor seemed to comfort them more than sore knees from praying ever did.
So instead of assigning a score of 'Hail Marys' or 'Our Fathers' he had told them to spend time examining their actions and to find ways to keep such things from happening again. He also asked them to spend their first leave doing charitable work as part of their penance. Volunteers were never turned away; almost every shelter in town was understaffed. Father Allen had not specified where they should volunteer, but he rather hoped they would make their way to one of the battered women shelters. There would be certain symmetry to such an end.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been an eternity since my last confession."
The priest looked up from his Bible as the rich voice filled the room. A very tall black man stood in the door, his face composed but his dark eyes haunted. "Come in and have a seat, you look like you need it."
"My apologies, but I cannot," Mobius ignored the proffered seat. The only outlet for his rage and self-loathing was motion. He paced the small room like a panther marking off the confines of its cage.
"If motion will give freedom to your voice, then I am hardly inclined to protest." Father Allen gestured with his hand as if saying 'do whatever you must'.
For several moments Mobius simply paced. He was obviously uncertain where to begin. The tall soldier was clearly gathering his thoughts. He stopped suddenly in front of the still-seated priest and began to speak in the resonating tones of one used to giving orders.
"I have never believed in the Devil as such. What is evil varies from culture to culture and age to age. It always seemed to me that such was an attempt to take an abstract idea and turn it into something concrete. Now I find myself in the uncomfortable position of revising my beliefs. There is something inside me that is alien, evil." Mobius beat his breast once, hard, with a closed fist.
Father Allen laid aside his book. He had been trying to find some comfort in its pages while waiting to see if anyone else would grace his door, but something told him that his need paled in comparison to that of the man in front of him.
