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Overview
A 2018 Catholic Press Association Book Award winner.
The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781632531650 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Franciscan Media |
| Publication date: | 09/05/2017 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 896,089 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Illuminos
One child held onto my left pinky finger everywhere we went. Never any other finger and never the right pinky but only the left pinky and never my whole hand. My finger misses her hand this morning. It has been many years since she held my finger. To this day sometimes in the morning when I dress I stare at my left pinky and suddenly I am in the playground, or on the beach, or in a thrumming crowd, and there is a person weighing forty pounds holding onto my left pinky so tightly that I am tacking slightly to port. I miss tacking slightly to port.
Another child held onto my left trouser leg most of the time but he would, if he deemed it necessary, hold either of my hands, and one time both of my hands, when we were shuffling in the surf, and the water was up to my knees but up to his waist, and I walked along towing him like a small grinning chortling dinghy all the way from the sea cave where we thought there might be sea lions sleeping off a salmon bender to the tide pools where you could find starfish and crabs and anemones and mussels the size of your shoes.
The third child held hands happily all the time, either hand, any hand, my hands, his mother's hands, his brother's hands, his sister's hands, his friends, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and teachers, dogs and trees, neighbors and bushes, he would hold hands with any living creature whatsoever, without the slightest trepidation or self-consciousness, and to this day I admire that boy's open genuine eager unadorned verve. He once held hands with his best friend during an entire soccer game when they were five years old, the two of them running in tandem, or one starting in one direction unbeknownst to the other and down they both went giggling in the sprawl of the grass. It seems to me that angels and bodhisattvas are everywhere available for consultation if only we can see them clear; they are unadorned, and joyous, and patient, and radiant, and luminous, and not disguised or hidden or filtered in any way whatsoever, so that if you see them clearly, which happens occasionally even to the most blinkered and frightened of us, you realize immediately who they are, beings of great and humble illumination dressed in the skins of new and dewy beings, and you realize, with a catch in your throat, that they are your teachers, and they are agents of an unimaginable love, and they are your cousins and companions in awe, and they are miracles and prayers and songs of inexplicable beauty whom no one can explain and no one own or claim or trammel, and that simply to perceive them is to be blessed beyond the reach of language, and that to be the one appointed to tow them along a beach, or a crowd, or home through the brilliant morning from the muddy hilarious peewee soccer game, is to be graced beyond measure or understanding; which is what I was, and I am, and I will be, until the day I die, and change form from this one to another, in ways miraculous and mysterious, never to be plumbed by the mind or measures of man.
CHAPTER 2
100th Street
By chance I was in New York City seven months after September 11, and I saw a moment that I still turn over and over in my mind like a puzzle, like a koan, like a prism.
I had spent the day at a conference crammed with uninformed opinions and droning speeches and stern lectures, and by the evening I was weary of it all, weary of being sermonized by pompous authority, weary of the cocksure and the arrogant and the tin-eared, weary of what sold itself as deeply religious but was actually grim moral policing with not the slightest hint of mercy or humility in the air, and I slipped out and away from the prescribed state dinner, which promised only more speeches and lectures.
I was way up on the upper west side of the Island of the Manhattoes, near the ephemeral border of Harlem, and as I was in the mood to walk off steam, I walked far and wide; down to the Sailors and Soldiers Monument, by the vast Hudson River, and up to Joan of Arc Park, with Joan on her rearing charger, and up to the Firemen's Memorial, on 100th Street. I thought about wandering up to the great old castle church of Saint John the Divine on 111th Street but by now I was footsore and yearning for beer and I stepped into a bar.
It was that russet hour between evening and night and the bar was populous but not crowded. Most of the people seemed to have stopped by for a beer after work. One table of men in the corner wore the faded coveralls of telephone linemen or public utility workers. Another table of mature women were in the bland dark uniforms of corporate staff. Interestingly there was a young Marine in glittering full dress uniform at the bar, with two older men I took to be his father and uncle, perhaps; they were laughing and resting their hands affectionately on his shoulders and he was smiling and savoring their hands like they were pet birds he had not had on his shoulders for a long time.
I got a beer and sat in the corner and watched as the bartender, who wore a lovely old-style long bowtie, set a beer in front of the Marine and waved off the uncle's offer to pay, and his little cheerful gesture made me happy, and I concluded that this would be the gentle tender respectful highlight of a day in which there had been very little respect and tenderness, but then the door opened, and two young firemen walked in. They were not in full dress uniform but they had their FDNY shirts on, and I noticed their sturdy work boots, and somehow you could tell that they were firemen and not just guys who happened to be wearing FDNY shirts.
They took a few steps toward the bar, and then something happened that I will never forget. Everyone in the bar stood up, silently. The table of women stood up first, I noticed, and then everyone else stood up, including me. I thought perhaps someone would start to applaud but no one made a sound. The men standing at the bar turned and faced the firemen, and then the young Marine drew himself up straight as a tree and saluted the firemen, and then his father and uncle saluted too, and then everyone else in the bar saluted the firemen. I tell you that there wasn't a sound in the place, not the clink of a glass or the shuffle of feet or a cough or anything.
After a few seconds one of the firemen nodded to everyone, and the other fireman made a slight gesture of acknowledgement with his right hand, and the bartender set two beers on the bar, and everyone sat down again, and everything went on as before; but not.
CHAPTER 3
A Sprawl of Brothers
Sometimes we would all be sprawled on the floor, and for once there would be no grappling and wrassling, and we would be peaceful, with legs here and arms there and one brother using another for a pillow. If you lay flat you could imagine that you were surrounded by mountains and foothills of brothers, ridges and ranges of brothers, a burly wilderness of brothers. One would twitch and the others would rustle and shuffle and then we would recompose for a while. Maybe we were watching television or listening to the murmur of uncles. Our sister would stalk through like a heron sometimes, lifting her feet gingerly. Sometimes you would doze off for a few minutes and startle awake and everything was the same except for the conversation overhead. Their legs were like logs and their arms were like branches. Here and there you could see a grumble of hair. Somewhere in the pile there might be a cousin. Sometimes the fire was lit and we would sprawl by the fire like bears. The fire would warm half a brother and then he would roll away and another brother would slide in and so on and so on. Sometimes the smaller brothers would fall asleep in the pile and our dad would eventually step in and with a mere glance part the waters and reach down like Zeus and elevate the child so gently that he never awoke until the next morning when he was startled to find himself in bed and not on the raft of his brothers.
Sometimes there would be wrestling and grappling and jockeying and edging and pinning and elbowing, and occasionally there would be fisticuffs, and Mom would grow grim about the mouth, but that is not what I want to remember this morning. I want to remember when we were scattered on the floor like stalks and husks, like sticks and poles, like skitter and duff. I want to remember the indolent sandy sneakery scent of my brothers heaped around me like piers and jetties and beams. It didn't happen that much. It needed an occasion. The cousins are visiting in flocks and gaggles. The neighbors are stopping by in sheaves and delegations. Jesus is just born and wrapped in rough cloth or just arisen and bound in the finest linen. It is a late summer afternoon and we have been at the beach all day and we are lazy and weary and salted with sand and we smell like sunlight and mustard and somewhere among us is a moist towel. One of us is telling a story and the others are half-listening and I am trying to listen but the story begins to ripple and fade, and soon we will shower, and then it will be dinner, and soon our sister will stalk through the wrack and drift of her brothers, looking silently for that wet towel, and she will snatch it suddenly like a heron snatches a minnow, the towel wriggling desperately as it is hauled to its doom, but that will not be for a while, and I have my legs flopped over one brother and my head propped against another, and somewhere in the pile a brother is telling a story about something green and liquid-fast, a fish or a car or a bird, and you would think that such seemingly slight moments as these would fade over the years, crowded and jostled as they are by facts and pain and love and loss; but your body remembers what your mind cannot. Your body forgets nothing.
CHAPTER 4
God: a Note
Had a brief chat with God the other day. This was at the United States Post Office. God was manning the counter from one to five, as he does every blessed day. He actually says every blessed day and he means it. You never saw a more patient being. He never loses his cool and believe me he could. I would. I have been on line behind crazies at his window and heard vituperative abuse and vulgar character assassination and scurrilous insinuation and never once did I witness any flash of temper in response to this on his part. I have asked him how he could maintain his cool and he says things like I try to put myself in their position and Witnessing catharsis is part of the job and All storms blow over and It's only frustration and There are so many much more serious things and We are all neighbors in the end. I am impressed by these sentiments, in large part because I share them consistently only in theory and not always in practice. God, however, does not waver nor does he fluctuate in his equanimity. He stands there quietly as people bang their fists on his counter and offer rude remarks and stomp away muttering darkly. He does not smile when someone gets upset. He says he has learned that some people get more upset if you smile when they are upset. He listens to what they say and often, I notice, he makes a note on a pad as they leave. I make a note if I think they have a good point we should discuss with management, he says. Often what is couched as a complaint is actually a good point about how we could be of better service. He remembers pretty much every regular who comes to his window and he greets them politely by name. Sometimes he will inquire after children and animals. Dogs adore God and will sometimes rear up on his counter to see him better. He greets them politely by name surprisingly often. I would guess I know a hundred dogs by name, he says. Hardly any cats. People don't take their cats with them when they go to the Post Office. I make a joke about how cats are the children of Lucifer and he does not smile and I realize later that probably Lucifer is still a deeply sad and touchy subject for him. How would you feel if one of your best friends, one of your most trusted companions, tried to steal everything you had and were and did, and for this breathtaking betrayal he was cast shrieking into the darkness, no longer the Shining One, the Morning Star, but the very essence of squirming withered despair, until the end of time? Wouldn't you be haunted and sad about that ever after? I would. I felt bad and told God I was sorry about making a stupid joke. I said I made stupid jokes all the time even though I was now an older citizen and ought to have learned by now to not be so flippant. And God said, No worries, and Better a poor joke than something worse, and Did I want to use the book rate for my package, which would save me about five bucks, and I said yes, sir, and thank you, and I walked out of the Post Office thinking that if we cannot see God in the vessels into which the electricity of astonishing life is poured by a profligate creation, vessels like this wonderfully and eternally gracious gentleman at the Post Office, then we are very bad at the religion we claim to practice, which says forthrightly that God is everywhere available, if only we remove the beam from our eyes, and bow in humility and gratitude for the miraculous, which falleth even as the light from the sun, which touches all beings, and is withheld from none. So it is that I have seen God at the United States Post Office, and spoken to him, and been edified and elevated by his grace, which slakes all those who thirst; which is each of us, which is all of us.
CHAPTER 5
The Kid Brother
Yes, we tossed him like a football when he was two years old. We did. And yes, we folded him like a smiling gangly awkward puppet into a kitchen cabinet. We did that. Yes, we painted his face blue once, and sent him roaring into our teenage sister's room to wake her up on a Saturday. We did that. Yes, we stood in the hospital parking lot with our dad and waved up at the room where our mom stood in the window brandishing our new kid brother who looked from where we stood like a bundle of laundry more than a kid brother. Yes, we gawped at him with disappointment when he came home and was placed proudly on the couch like a mewling prize and we muttered later quietly in our room that he seemed totally useless, brotherwise. We kept checking on him the rest of the day and he never did do anything interesting that we noticed, not even wail or bellow like babies did in the movies and on television, even when you poked him with a surreptitious finger. He just sprawled there looking perfect and after a while we lost interest and we went upstairs to plot against our sister.
As he grew he remained the most cheerful compliant complaisant child you ever saw, never complaining in the least when we tossed him or decked him or chose him last for football games or sent him in first as lonely assault force in conflicts of all sorts, and we were always half-forgetting him when we dashed off on adventures and expeditions, and we were always half-absorbed by and half-annoyed with his littlebrotherness, happy to defend him adamantly against the taunts and shoves of others but not at all averse to burling him around like a puppy ourselves. We buried him in the sand up to his jaw at the beach. We spoke to him curtly and cuttingly when we felt that he was the apple of the grandmotherly eye and we were the peach pits, the shriveled potato skins, the sad brown pelts of dead pears. We did that.
And never once that I remember did he hit back, or assault us, or issue snide and sneering remarks, or rat on us to the authorities, or shriek with rage, or abandon us exasperated for the refuge of his friends. Never once that I can remember, and I am ferociously memorious, can I remember him sad or angry or bitter or furious. When I think of him I see his smile, and never any other look on his face, and isn't that amazing? Of how many of our friends and family can that be said? Not many, not many; nor can I say it of myself.
But I can say it of my kid brother, and this morning I suggest that those of us with kid brothers are immensely lucky in life, and those of us without kid brothers missed a great gentle gift unlike any other; for older brothers are stern and heroic and parental, lodestars to steer by or steer against, but kid brothers, at least in their opening chapters, are open books, eager and trusting, innocent and gentle; in some deep subtle way they are the best of you, the way you were, the way you hope some part of you will always be; in some odd way, at least for a while, they were the best of your family, too, the essence of what was good and true and holy about the blood that bound you each to each.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Brian Doyle.
Excerpted by permission of Franciscan Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Illuminos, 1,
100th Street, 3,
A Sprawl of Brothers, 6,
God: a Note, 8,
The Kid Brother, 11,
Is That Your Real Nose?, 14,
Your First Rosary, 17,
Those Few Minutes, 22,
A Tangle of Bearberry, 25,
A Note on Martin Luther, 27,
Our Daily Murder, 30,
The Viewing, 33,
The Game, 36,
Bunt, 39,
Eight Whopping Lies, 42,
Pull-up Pants, 45,
Death of a Grocery Store, 48,
The Four Gospels, 51,
The Old Typewriter in the Basement, 54,
Have Ye Here Any Meat?, 57,
Bird to Bird, 61,
Mea Culpa, 64,
Fishing in the Pacific Northwest, 67,
On Not Giving the Kids Rides in the Car Anymore, 70,
Keeping Vigil, 73,
The Bullet, 76,
The Courage of His Convictions, 79,
The Daoine Sídhe, 182,
Chessay, 85,
Laurel Street, 87,
The Deceased, 91,
In Queens, 94,
The Sisters, 97,
The Missing, 100,
A Mohawk in the House, 102,
Selections from Letters and Comments on My Writing, 105,
The Third Order of Saint Francis: a Note, 107,
To the Beach, 110,
Huddle, 114,
Dressing for Mass, 117,
A Note on Scapulars, 120,
Our Rough Uncles, 123,
Infans Lepus, 126,
Because It's Hard, 129,
Were You Lonely When You Were a Freshman?, 132,
Death of a Velociraptor, 135,
Angeline, 137,
The Way We Do Not Say What We MeanWhen We Say What We Say, 140,
The Children of Sandler O'Neill, 143,
Notes from a Wedding, 147,
The Hills and Dales of Their Father, 150,
On the Bus, 153,
Hawk Words, 155,
What Were Once Pebbles Are Now Cliffs, 157,
The Final Frontier, 160,
Except Ye See Signs and Wonders, 164,
An Open Letter to Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 167,
A Prayer for You and Yours, 170,
A Note of Thanks, 176,
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