The Last Western (5 page)

“Willie,” said Sister Gabriela, “who is God?”

Willie smiled as he always did when he did not know the answer.

“Willie,” said Sister Gabriela, “do you remember what it said in the catechism?”

“No Sister,” said Willie.

“Willie, you know the answer,” his mother said encouragingly.

Willie shifted a little in the big chair. He looked at the picture of the Lord in the garden.

“He is the one who made his son die,” said Willie.

Sister Gabriela turned to Willie’s mother as if to say, I told you so.

Willie’s mother bent down to her son and took his hands into her hands.

“Willie,” she said, “say the Lord’s Prayer.”

Willie said the Lord’s Prayer slowly and perfectly without missing a word.

Willie’s mother turned to the Sister.

“There, you see, he does know.”

“But that is only the Lord’s Prayer,” said Sister Gabriela. “That is not the catechism.”

Willie’s mother again turned to her son.

“Willie, who is Jesus?”

“The one who died on the cross.”

“And why did he die on the cross?”

“Because his father made him.”

“But why?” said Sister Gabriela.

“I don’t know, Sister,” said Willie.

“To atone for the sins of man,” Sister Gabriela said. “Surely you can remember how often we went over that in class.”

“I remember,” Willie said, “but I do not understand.” He squirmed in his chair, smiling.

“You don’t have to understand, Willie,” said Sister Gabriela, “you only have to believe.”

What Willie said then shocked both the Sister and his mother.

“I do not believe it then,” he said.

The next day Willie was sent to see Father Simpson, who sometimes taught religion to the older boys and girls.

“Well now,” said Father Simpson, “what is this about not believing God sent his son into the world to atone for the sins of man?”

Willie smiled.

Father Simpson opened his catechism. “It is right here in the catechism. Don’t you believe in the catechism?”

Willie said, “I am a slow learner.” He had heard Sister Gabriela use this expression the day before.

Father Simpson put his hand on Willie’s shoulder.

“Ah well, my boy, that is all right. There are many slow learners in the world. Still, you can believe?”

“Yes,” Willie said.

“But what is it you do not believe in the catechism?”

“About God killing his son.”

“But God did not kill his son. Men killed Jesus. Men and their sins.”

“But he could have stopped it,” said Willie.

“That would have spoiled everything,” the priest said, looking a little startled. “If he had stopped it, then the gates of heaven would have remained closed.”

Willie smiled.

“You remember the story of Adam and Eve?”

Willie nodded.

“And how they sinned in the Garden of Eden?”

“Yes.”

“Their sin was an infinite one—that is, a very large one. It was so big they couldn’t make up for it. So God had pity on men. He sent his son, who was God, into the world to make up for it.”

Willie looked blank.

“What is it you do not understand?” the priest asked, seeing the blank look.

“Why God did not take pity on Jesus.”

“Jesus didn’t want pity,” the priest said quickly. “If you had learned your catechism you would know that.”

“He wanted a drink on the cross.”

“Ah,” said the priest. “I see you remember your Scripture. But when the Lord said ‘I thirst,’ he wasn’t talking about the way you and I thirst. He was thirsting for the souls of men.”

The priest stopped for a moment. He bit his lip and looked at Willie in a curious way. There was something sad about his gaze.

“What then, my boy?”

“Why did not God give him the souls of men and a drink, too?”

“He gave him the souls of men, my son. When Jesus rose from the dead, he won the souls of all men.”

“Still he did not get the drink.”

“He was dying.”

“But his father could have given him a drink.”

The priest picked up the catechism.

“My son, you must learn what is in this little book. What you are saying has nothing to do with Holy Communion. Don’t you want to receive our Lord in Communion? Do you want to wait another year?”

Willie said he did not want to wait.

“Then you must learn your catechism,” Father Simpson said. “That is the rule.”

When Willie went home, his mother and Cool Dawn were talking in the living room.

“It is the English. He does not understand what is told him,” said Willie’s mother.

“It is what they teach,” Cool Dawn said.

Willie came in and kissed them both. He told them what had happened at Father Simpson’s.

“Oh Willie, can’t you just say what is in the book?” his mother said. She was almost crying, and it grieved Willie to see her this way.

He went down to the courtyard to talk with Carolyn.

She was sketching the back of the William McKinley Arms tenement on a square sheet of brown paper.

“It’s good, Carolyn. It looks just like it.”

“You going to make Communion?”

“No.”

“Why are you so stubborn?”

“I don’t understand it.”

Her hair was thicker all the time now and she was taller, and he looked at the way her face set itself as she sketched.

“Nobody else understands it. Why don’t you just say what they want?”

Her upturned nose made him smile.

He wanted to touch her hair—to put his hand on her hair.

“What good does it do to be so stubborn?”

She looked up at him, frowning. When she frowned, her overturned V eyebrows made her look pretty, he thought.

“You draw good, Carolyn.”

“Why don’t you just give the answers like everybody else? You act dumb but you’re not.”

When he went back up the stairs, Mrs. Sarto called out to him, “Colombo, I forgive you. Pray the rosary with me.”

So he prayed the rosary with Mrs. Sarto until the third Sorrowful Mystery when Mrs. Sarto said he had tricked her once again. She threatened to call the police. Willie went back to the flat.

That night after his mother went off to work in the Rib N Rum Room, Cool Dawn told Willie a story. They sat together on the little sofa Willie’s mother had bought at the Salvation Army store and looked down on the darkening city of Houston.

Across the street from their tenement building, there was a magic flashing sign, made up of red and blue and white lights, that fascinated Willie.

The sign was brand new. It had been put up outside a tavern that had been opened the day before in a building where the welfare office had once operated.

The lights would pop on in sequence, spelling out two words Willie could not understand. The lights would begin at the top of the long vertical sign and go downward until at the very end they would explode in a special light that looked like a starburst.

The words were NAGASAKI ZERO!

Willie never forgot the story Cool Dawn told him that night. And whenever he remembered it, he would think of the popping red, white and blue lights and the mysterious word Nagasaki.

Once upon a time
the Great Spirit said, “Now men have everything they want—trees, beautiful flowers, animals, rocks, waterfalls, mountains. Still they are unhappy. They do not love. They do not share with one another. So I will show them how to love.”

Then the Great Spirit made a special man—a beautiful noble man—and sent him into the world with a great secret. No one knew what this secret meant, not even the special man who carried it in his heart.

Now, when the special man came into the world, there was great suffering everywhere.

The babies did not have enough food.

The tribes were at war.

A few people had cattle, fine harvests of great, delicious fruit, but most people were starving. Disease and pestilence were everywhere.

The man with the secret looked upon the world and said, “Why should men fight one another? Are not all men brothers? The village with cattle and crops should share with the village that has none. There is enough food in the land for each child.”

The people had never heard this teaching before. They found it strange, even insane.

The man with the secret himself did not know why he felt as he did.

One day there was a great contest among the tribes. The men were jumping from high cliffs into a river that ran at the base of the great mountain.

The contest would determine who could jump from the highest point of the mountain and still survive. The brave man who could leap from the highest place would be the king of the nation for one year.

All day the people watched as the braves jumped from the cliffs. Many men died as they leaped from the mountain. There were jagged rocks sticking out from the side of the mountain. There were boulders in the river. The higher one climbed, the harder it was to avoid hitting the rocks on the mountain and the great stones in the river.

At sunset the contest was nearly over. One brave had jumped from a place halfway up the mountain. Cut and bruised, he was yet alive. It appeared that this man would be king of the nation.

Then the man with the secret climbed to the top of the mountain. At first, no one noticed him standing there. He was a dot on the sky just at the place where the mountain went into the clouds.

Then someone in the crowd saw the man standing at the edge of a stone platform that jutted out from the very tip of the mountain.

No man had ever jumped from that place—no man had ever even climbed so high.

For a moment the man stood there and stretched out his arms. The people gasped. Many jeered and laughed. It was certain that this man would die.

But as the man stood there, glinting in the sun, a hush came over the people.

The man lifted up his arms in a strange way, then stepped forward and dived out into the air.

He seemed to hang there for a moment in the sun, like an eagle with its wings spread against the sky.

The people gasped at the wonderful sight.

Then swiftly the man fell down, down, down—diving like an arrow into the deepest part of the river.

In a moment he pushed up through the waves and swam to shore. He was not cut or bruised in any way.

The people were amazed. They fell upon their knees and immediately proclaimed this man their king.

Because of the way he soared through the sky, they gave him the name of Eagle King; some called him simply the Eagle.

The Eagle assembled all the people that night. He told them what he had earlier told the people of his native village. He told them that though he was their king, there was another king still mightier who ruled all things, who ruled the world and the sun and the stars, who kept watch over the seasons, who caused the plants to grow.

“This great king,” said the Eagle, “loves all the people of earth as a father loves his sons, as a mother loves her daughters.

“I speak of the Great Spirit,” the Eagle told his people, “and it is he who is your true king, not the wind which some of you now worship, not the moon which others of you worship. The Great Spirit is above all the things we have worshipped all these years.

“I am glad to be your ruler, to look after the things a man can look after, but remember, it is the Great Spirit who is the real king, not I.”

The people had never heard such talk from a man.

“What does the Great Spirit ask of us?” the people asked. “Shall we burn the oxen to him?”

“No,” said the Eagle. “The Great Spirit doesn’t care anything about burning oxen. What the Great Spirit wants is something that our tribes do not do very well. He wants us to love one another.”

The Eagle paused just a moment here, a little surprised at his own words. Sometimes he said things that he really didn’t know out of his own thoughts. He would say them because he felt he had to say them—only later figuring out what they meant.

Now came one of those moments. Before he really knew what he was saying, some instinct in the Eagle’s heart caused him to say these words: “The Great Spirit wants us to love not just the members of our own tribe, but members of all tribes. He wants us to love even our enemies just as he loves all of us.”

When the Eagle said this, the people were even more amazed, and the warriors of the tribe were the most amazed of all. Some of them were angry. They had spent so many years fighting and killing that they did not know any other occupation.

“How does a warrior love his enemy?” the general of the tribal warriors asked.

“By going to the enemy and extending the hand of peace,” the Eagle answered. “We must stop all wars at once, we must feed the children of the enemies and all the people who are hungry, and we must enter into peace with all the tribes of earth.”

The warriors scoffed at this. They were too proud to go to an enemy and make peace.

Then the father of the tribe, a man who was one hundred years old and who had once been king himself, asked to speak.

This old man was very feeble. He had to be carried by younger men to the stone platform where the new king stood.

“This man,” the old man said in his cracking voice, “is our king. He has won the trial by his great dive into the river. By our ancient custom we must follow him and obey his law.”

Then with great effort the old man knelt at the Eagle King’s feet and kissed them.

The Eagle raised the old man up.

“Thank you, old father,” he said. “But do not kneel at my feet. One must kneel only for the Great Spirit.”

“It is our custom,” said the old king.

“But now we have a new custom: one worships the Great Spirit and one loves all other men.”

There was still much bickering among the people. They had never heard a man speak like this before. Besides, the people were anxious to begin their feast, for it was the custom that on the night of the trial, the people had the greatest feast of the year.

The Eagle himself did not understand the things he had been saying. He only knew that his heart had asked him to say them.

“The feast will begin now,” he said. “At the end of the feast I myself will show you how to love an enemy.”