A story by William L. Smutko
Other people’s problems rub off on Father Len Martin like skid marks on the pavement. After nine months in-country one can barely see the concrete of his psyche. The skid marks left by his flock’s trials are weighing him down.
“Father, I want to marry My Le. She lives in Ben Tre,” says Specialist four Tim Welch.
The chaplain rubs his chin, then makes a tent in front of his chin with the fingers of both hands. “Ok … is she Buddhist or Catholic?”
“I don’t know, never thought about asking.”
“Does her family approve of the marriage?”
“We haven’t asked them yet.”
The priest lets out another sigh. “Have you asked your CO for permission? Where are you going to live after the wedding?”
“She’ll stay where she is for now. When I get back to the states, I’ll send for her.”
“What will your family think of this? Where is home?”
“Pangburn, Arkansas. A little town north of Little Rock.”
“You better start with both sets of parents giving their blessing. Then go to your company commander and get his permission and then start the paperwork the company clerk can get for you. When you get all that done, come see me.”
Martin’s stomach knots up thinking about the frustration and future hurt the soldier is in for.
The field telephone on his desk rings. “Chaplain, this is Fred Kerry, CO of C Company, Seven O Ninth Maintenance Battalion. I just heard from the Red Cross that the father of one of my troops died suddenly of a heart attack. Could you run up here to Ben Luc and be here when I give the kid the bad news?”
“I can be there in about an hour.”
Another patch of rubber.
* * *
The dripping red, white, and blue can of Pabst sits, along with three empties, in a pool of condensation on the table in front of Martin.
“I had to tell a kid today that his father back home died. Not one of my favorite things to do,” Father Martin says to Captain Bob Werther, the Engineer Battalion’s adjutant.
“Not something I’ve ever had to do and hope I never have to. We caught a couple of our young NCOs smoking pot today. They’ll lose a stripe and position, which is bad for us because they’re good at their jobs.”
“Drugs are becoming an increasingly larger problem. It used to be just booze.”
“I’m seeing more and more soldiers using drugs. Here’s something sort of up your alley. Our B Company commander called me yesterday. He has a soldier who wants to marry a local woman from Ben Tre. It turns out the woman is a prostitute.”
* * *
“Father, thanks for seeing me,” the sergeant says in a cracking voice while rubbing his hand across the stubble of his hair. “I want you to hear my confession.”
“Do you want to go to the chapel and use the confessional, or we can do it right here?”
“Here.”
Father Martin pulls his stole out of the cargo pocket of his jungle fatigues, kisses the cross in the center, puts it around his neck, then turns so he is looking to the right of the sergeant. “You may start now.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was about six months ago. Since that time, I’ve slept with prostitutes several times, gotten dead drunk many times. Last week I killed three unarmed Vietnamese, revenge for the death of my best friend in an ambush near their village. We’d been together since basic training. He died in my arms.”
Martin sits in stunned silence, his stomach churning. He grabs and holds his stole tightly to ward off the bludgeoning by the sergeant’s words. A full two minutes later, he is finally able to collect himself and says, “Tell me what happened.”
“The company was advancing on the village of My An. We’d been told some Viet Cong were holed up there. We were about four hundred yards from the village when all hell breaks loose. They had an ambush waiting for us. The first fifteen guys went down. Mortar rounds started falling and one went off near my best friend, Scott. I crawled over to him. His guts were spilling out through his shirt. I tried to push them back in, but he screamed. So, I stopped and just held him ʼtil he died. Artillery and gun ships were called in and we were able to squash the ambush. The dead and wounded were air-lifted out and we continued to the village. Three people ran out and in the heat of vengeance, Scott’s blood covering the front of my jungle fatigues, I emptied a whole clip, full auto, into them. They had no weapons on them. I don’t know how I’ll live with what I did.”
“Say three rosaries.”
The sergeant leaves and the phone rings. “Father, can you come to the hospital? One of your flock is in intensive care and not going to make it.”
* * *
The double clubbing of the confessional and the hospital has sent Father Martin retreating to the Officers Club after supper to see if whiskey will peel off the rubber laid down today.
“What are you drinking?” his friend Bob Werther asks.
“Cutty Sark and soda. The word is that President Johnson drinks a bottle of this every day. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. This is my second, by the way. So, I’ve got a ways to go if I’m going to finish this bottle today.”
“Bad day, huh?”
“It’s one I’d rather forget. We’ll see if the scotch helps. But it’s bad enough, it’ll probably come back to haunt me ʼtil I die. How was your day?”
* * *
After Mass in the company mess tent, a kid with anguish all over his face, like grape jelly on a two-year-old, comes up to Father Martin and asks, “Could I talk with you about a problem I have?”
“Let’s go over to that corner. It’s a little more private. Specialist…?”
“Larry Harder, sir.” The kid’s almost in tears. “I got a letter from my sister yesterday. She said my wife was cheating on me. She’s even letting her boyfriend drive my car around town. I saved all my money for four years to buy that car.” Tears flow. He swipes the arm of his fatigue shirt across his face.
The kid’s grief is getting to Martin, another streak. He composes himself and asks, “How long have you been married?”
“About seven months. We got married a month before I was sent over here. I met her at a car show three months before we got married. She was really impressed with my car.”
“Would it help for me to say a prayer for you?”
“Yes, Father, please.”
“Merciful Father, look with pity upon the sorrows of Larry. Remember him, O Lord, in mercy, nourish his soul with patience, comfort him with a sense of Thy goodness, let Your face shine upon him, and give him peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Father Martin stands up to gesture the young man out and says, “I suggest you make an appointment with a JAG lawyer to find out what your legal options are.”
* * *
“Father, thank you for taking the time to talk with me,” the nurse says to Father Martin as she enters his office.
“Please sit down, Lieutenant. How can I help you?”
She sits down in the chair in front of his desk and says, “I feel strongly that I have received a call to become a nun.”
“I see,” he says, making a tent in front of his chin with the fingers of both hands. “How long have you felt this way?”
The nurse fidgets a bit and says, “It was at my first duty station at Madigan Army Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, a year ago that I felt I received the call. I come from a family of very faithful Irish Catholics, so I wasn’t surprised.”
He drops his hands to the desktop and asks, “Have you seen any signs or had any visions to back up this feeling?”
The young woman sits up straight in the chair and says, “It was a Saturday night. I had been to Mass that evening because I was going to be on duty on Sunday. I was in bed in that gray zone between wakefulness and sleep. I saw myself in a nun’s habit. It wasn’t really a dream as such. I don’t know what to call it. A vision maybe?”
“A vision’s a good possibility. How have you been praying about it?”
“I’ve been saying Matins, Vespers, and Compline every day since I’ve been here and asking for guidance after each. But I’ve met this boy. It’s not what you might think, Father. He’s only three years old and an orphan, but I can’t seem to get him out of my mind. I think I might want to adopt him.”
“Lieutenant, the Holy Spirit will give you the answer eventually. Keep praying and it will come to you.”
* * *
“Still trying to keep up with the president?” Werther asks.
“Not today. It was somewhat of a good day. I had a talk with a young woman, a nurse actually, who is seriously thinking about becoming a nun.”
“That should be reason for elation, not depression.”
“She was only a small part of the day.”
“Len, you need to find a way to pass on all the stuff that’s dumped in your lap, not to let it become part of you. Find a way to evade ownership of their problems. Things are really starting to get to you.”
* * *
“Father, my girlfriend wrote to me that she’s pregnant. Is there a way for us to get married?”
Martin makes a tent with his hands and asks, “How long have you been seeing each other?”
“We’ve been going together since our freshman year in high school. She’s not only my girlfriend, she’s my best friend.”
“I’ll work with her priest back home and see if we can work out a way for you to be married on a ham radio call. This could take a month or two with the speed of the mail.”
* * *
Father Martin hears boots on the concrete floor steadily approaching the plywood box of the confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” A quivering voice comes through the dim confines. “My last confession was over two months ago. Since then, I’ve been with prostitutes several times, gotten drunk ten times, and killed fifty-six people.”
A minute of uncomfortable silence, then Martin seated behind the screen says, “My son, in the heat of battle, how can you possibly know how many people you’ve killed?”
“I’m a sniper, Father,” the voice snaps back. “When I pull the trigger, I see them go down. I see the surprise on their faces when the bullet hits.”
Father Martin brings a shaky hand to his forehead, the other clutching his stomach, and says, “For your penance, say one rosary and ten Acts of Contrition.”
I hope the ten Acts of Contrition will relieve him of his guilt. Maybe ten Acts of Contrition will make me feel better.
* * *
Bob Werther is on R&R with his wife in Hawaii, so Father Martin is sitting alone in the Officers Club. After his fifth scotch and soda, he gets up from his chair a bit unsteadily. “I believe this is called gait ataxia,” he slurs to no one in particular, then navigates his way back to his quarters. He sheds his clothes and lies down on the narrow bed. The world starts to spin, so he puts his left foot on the floor to establish a sense of place in the universe and the spinning stops as he drifts toward sleep.
He feels a presence and envisions a hazy being dressed in shining white. “God’s peace be with you, Leonard,” says the voice in his head.
Martin rolls out of bed and kneels next to the vision, shaking.
“I’m concerned for you. You have been accepting responsibility for things that are not yours to accept. Taking on their pain is not doing anything for the people you are trying to help, and it has harmed you greatly. Shalom, I give you God’s peace.”
Martin, still kneeling beside his bed and trying to think through the fog to understand what’s just happened, realizes he’s wet himself.
The scotch has left him with a pounding headache as he walks to the shower at the far end of his building. In the mess hall, his stomach turns over when he looks at the sausage gravy coagulating in the warming tray on the chow line, so he takes only the biscuits and coconut-flavored milk, which eases his stomach better than coffee would.
* * *
Father Martin feels a presence on the other side of the confessional screen. He doesn’t hear the person approach the confessional and the sound of the breathing opposite is almost not there.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was four months ago. In that time, my men and I massacred an entire village, fifty people, in a capture mission gone bad. We were in Cambodia looking for a particular Viet Cong commander. We were seen. If anyone in the village had lived, we would have been hunted down and killed.”
The words flowing from the man’s mouth charge at Father Martin with the force of a fighting bull. Freed from the weight of the skid marks, his psyche executes a perfect veronica, a slight turn to the right to avoid the charge while gracefully dragging his stole across the face of it.
His anger and frustration gone, he calmly asks, “Are you sorry for your actions?”
this work was featured in issue #15a