Flesh and Blood (30 page)

I was sitting in Milton Warner’s office on Grace Avenue in downtown Panama City. A former Episcopal Priest, he was now a licensed counselor with a private practice in a small converted house. A fellow recovering alcoholic and sometime skeptic, Milton and I had a lot in common, and I always felt better for having talked to him—which made me wonder why I didn’t do it more often.

“In one sense, I’m not sure,” I said. “In another, almost certainly.”

“Explain.”

Clear, empathic blue eyes beneath thick gray hair, Milton was kind and soft-spoken, but often very direct. The spider web of lines on his face speaking to his experience and explaining the wisdom that issued forth from his mouth.

“Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be doing this at all,” I said. “That it’s ridiculous to even consider.”

“That would be the skeptical side,” he said with a smile.

I nodded, flashing a smile of my own.

“The other side of me says anything’s possible, and at this stage in her, life false hope is better than no hope at all.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Obviously I’m conflicted,” I said. “It’s why I’m here.”

He smiled. “Conflicted, huh?”

“I think her time could be spent much better than looking for a miracle,” I said.

“How?”

“Preparing,” I said.

“To die?”

His question hit me harder than I would have thought, and all I could do was nod.

“How do you feel about that?”

“What?” I asked, stalling, my voice sounding trapped inside my constricting throat.

“Your mom dying,” he said.

“We haven’t been very close,” I said. “Since I was in my early teens—but the closer we get to her death, the more I feel, the more it bothers me.”

“Have you talked to her about how you feel?”

“Some,” I said. “Not much.”

“Is it possible it’s not just her time that could be better spent?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s why I’m here,” I said.

“So where’s the conflict?”

“I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” I said, “but there’s something so compelling about the Shroud.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

“You becoming a believer?”

I shook my head. “At this point, all I can say is that I’m still open,” I said, “and that really surprises me.”

“Could it be that you’re looking for a little hope, too?”

“False hope?”

“Any kind,” he said. “You still questioning what you’re doing at the prison?”

I nodded.

“Are you planning on leaving?”

“Got no plans at the moment,” I said. “Just trying to figure things out.”

“Good luck with that,” he said, smiling.

“Okay, not things,” I said. “Me. I’m trying to figure out why I’m feeling the way I do.”

“Which is?”

“Empty,” I said. “Lonely—in an existential way.”

“Like there’s no God?”

“Like there might not be,” I said. “I sure don’t feel her like I once did.”

“Yet you’re open to the possibility that the Shroud of Turin could be genuine?”

I thought about it, then nodded slowly.

“Then you’re not too far gone, are you?”

When I couldn’t sleep, which was most nights, I found various ways to occupy my time—most often reading in a booth at Rudy’s Diner.

I was seated in the last booth in the back corner next to the humidity-covered plate-glass window that looked out onto the dark night. The night sky was filled with clouds, their thick gray masses shrouding the moon and stars. Beneath them, the empty rural highway and the oyster shell parking lot were damp from a shower earlier in the evening.

On the table in front of me, I had arranged all the books and articles I had found on the Shroud of Turin, a pad on which I made notes, and a large glass of Cherry Coke.

“You want another Coke?” Carla asked.

“Thanks,” I said.

Carla was Rudy’s teenage daughter, and while he sat in front of the television drinking and watching reruns of old sitcoms, she worked all night in the diner. In the mornings, while he slept it off, she served breakfast and rushed off to school and made mostly A’s.

Rudy’s wasn’t busy late at night, and after she had done her homework, Carla would lay her head down on the counter and steal brief snatches of restless sleep.

She set the Cherry Coke on the table in front of me, and I looked up at her. She was strikingly beautiful, the way her mother was before she ran off and left them. Even with a soiled apron and strands of blond hair falling down around her face she was stun-ning—the fact that at seventeen she wore a soiled apron and a tired face beneath falling hair, made her all the more so.

She slid into the seat across from me.

“Whatta you studying?” she asked.

“The Shroud of Turin.”

“How can you stand the excitement?” she asked with a cute, slightly mischievous smile.

“I’m a trained professional,” I said.

Carla’s beauty wasn’t model beauty, and it certainly wasn’t Miss Teen USA beauty. It was a wise and tough beauty that had been forged on her face in the cauldron of hardship and pain.

“Don’t grow up and marry an alcoholic,” I said.

“Wait, wait, I know this one,” she said. “Because being the child of one and all, I’m far more likely to?”

I smiled. “I’ve mentioned this before?”

“A few times,” she said.

“Has it sunk in yet?”

“A couple more thousand times should do it.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She shook her head. “I appreciate the concern.”

We grew silent a moment. She looked out the window into the night. I watched her, then followed her gaze.

As usual, the diner was cold. I could feel the frigid laminate seat beneath me through my jeans and the moisture on the glass resembled a glacier beginning to thaw.

“My mom married an alcoholic,” she said, still staring out into the darkness. “But she remedied it.”

“But at what cost?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, turning toward me. “Not much to her.” Suddenly, her demeanor turned as icy as the diner. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that to my kids.”

“Have you thought anymore about that ACOA group?”

“And when exactly would I go to it?” she asked, glancing around at the diner.

“I can line somebody up to watch the diner,” I said. “You can ride with me. I’ll take care of everything.”

She smiled.

“What?”

“You try,” she said.

“What is it?”

“To take care of everything—of everyone. But you can’t, you know. Hasn’t your sponsor told you that?”

I laughed at how obvious I was, even to a seventeen-year-old with far more important things on her mind. “A time or two,” I said.

The heavy pungent scent of old grease and stale cigarette smoke—even though people only smoked in the bathrooms since the law changed—still hung in the air, its presence like a dingy olfactory film on everything. In the corner, a drooping potted plant was turning brown, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the arctic climate or the thick smog. It wasn’t just the customers Rudy was killing.

“They call that caretaking, don’t they?” she asked with another smile. “Or is it just a messiah-complex?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“There a cure?”

“Getting a life,” I said. “Or just getting laid.”

She smiled.

We were quiet another moment, and I watched as her gaze followed a passing car, its headlights shimmering on the wet pavement of the empty highway out front.

“Wonder where they’re going,” she said.

Within a moment, the night had swallowed up the tiny lights of the car into its black void again, but she continued to stare down the dark highway.

Eventually, she turned back toward me.

“So, is that thing for real?” she asked, nodding toward a picture of the Shroud on the cover of one of the books.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why does it matter?”

I shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t,” I said. “At least not to me, but it’s real important to my mom.”

“Taking care of her, too?”

“Yes, Dr. Fraud, I guess I’m trying to,” I said.

She scratched her nose slowly, a subtle way of giving me the finger.

“You considering becoming a shrink?” I asked.

“I’ve been leaning toward exotic dancer,” she said. “But I’m keeping all my options open.”

She slid out of the seat and walked back behind the counter. “I’ll let you get back to saving the world,” she said. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

I returned to my books while she straightened up, the loud clatter of plates and glasses directed toward Rudy in the back, though I was sure he had already passed out.

Previously, it had been believed that the Jewish burial custom was to wash a body prior to its burial. And this had been confirmed for me by several sources, both ancient and modern. That being the case, the body of Jesus wouldn’t have had blood on it to deposit onto the Shroud.

However, there was and still is an exception to this custom found in Maurice Lamm’s,
The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning
:

“The blood that flows at the time of death may not be washed away. When there is other blood on the body that flowed during lifetime, from wounds or as a result of an operation, the washing and taharah [purification] are performed in the usual manner.

Where the deceased died instantaneously through violence or accident, and his body and garments are completely spattered with blood, no washing or taharah is performed. The blood is part of the body and may not be separated from it in death.

Where blood flows continually after death, the source of the flow is covered and not washed. The clothes which contain the blood that flowed after death are placed in the casket at the feet.”

So Jesus was buried in the traditional Jewish custom and his body was covered in blood. But was that what stained the Shroud of Turin?

When Carla had finished straightening up, she put in a load of dishes to wash, brushed her teeth, and sat down and put her head on the counter.

“Goodnight,” she said without opening her eyes.

“Good night, sweet princess,” I said.

She smiled. “I know this one,” she said. “Hamlet, right?”

“With a minor change.”

“Minor?” she asked. “If Hamlet had been a princess rather than a prince, none of that shit would’ve happened.”

“So the greatest tragedy ever written is the result of testosterone?”

“Nearly all tragedies are,” she said with a smile.

She then closed her eyes, and I went back to work. A few minutes later, she lifted her head up slightly and said, “Thanks for being here.”

“Thanks for having me.”

As I continued to read, I found an argument put forth by a number of Shroud researchers concerning the dust and debris covering the surface of the Shroud. They contended that the constituents coating the Shroud would be indicative of the environments it had been in before its discovery. For example, if it were exposed to a modern industrial area, it might have fly ash from power stations and lead from the exhausts of engines still operating on leaded fuel.

Dr. Matt Frey was the first to take sticky-tape samples from the Shroud and search for pollen. He was followed by the STURP What they found was amazing. In addition to finding pollen that seemed to confirm the shrouds authenticity, they also discovered another explanation for the presence of the various sprinklings of paint particles on the shroud.

Without ever having been touched by the hand of an artist, the Shroud could have acquired its faint residue of pigment or paint from its home in Turin. In virtually every room of the Royal Palace in Turin where the team examined the shroud, the ceilings were richly decorated with frescoes from which tiny paint fragments would fall like confetti as they worked below.

Before his death, Dr. Frey had identified pollen from fifty-eight different plant species, many of which corresponded with the Shroud’s documented travels around Western Europe. However, the most startling of his discoveries were those of plant pollens that are indicative of Near East environs, most notably the Dead Sea and Jerusalem. This is significant, since the Shroud has only a documented history dating back to the fourteenth century and only in Western Europe.