Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes: A Novel

By Jan David Blais

Overcoming disabling injuries, Vietnam vet Paul Bernard becomes an award-winning journalist and television newsman. Known for holding a mirror to American society and long critical of the radical right, after 9-11 Bernard attacks the Bush administration for Osama bin Laden's escape and leading the nation into a disastrous war. On assignment in Iraq, Bernard is killed under suspicious circumstances. Interwoven with the account of his life is an interview of his mentor, Professor Augustus F.X. Flynn, by a magazine writer profiling him. Frustrated by Washington's inaction, the two set out to find the truth about the killing.

Book One tells of Paul Bernard's coming of age, his Canadian immigrant roots, the patriotic and religious intensity of the early years. Then through the devastation of Vietnam to recovery and return, immersion in the New York newspaper scene, his family life. Twentieth Century Limited Book Two - Age of Reckoning, continues and completes the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781623463557

Book preview

Sea.

PROLOGUE

Prologue

SOMESVILLE, MT. DESERT ISLAND, MAINE. SEPTEMBER 2003. The old man replays the tape for what, the tenth time? The twentieth? Bright sky and desert plain, blue and beige, plumes of dense smoke in the distance. Pan left to a reporter holding a microphone. In khaki pants and open shirt, he is hatless in the brutal mid-day sun. As the camera closes in the viewer is drawn to the eyes, dark as the behind.

To wrap up, he is saying, another insurgent attack. How many fill-ups did the desert take back today? How many SUVs will run dry? Not long ago George Bush assured us a rejuvenated Iraq would pay for this trillion-dollar adventure of his, but like many of his promises, this one’s fading fast and will be forgotten unless we ask the tough questions. The reporter’s head and shoulders now fill the screen, a faint smile crossing the familiar face. Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, we will continue to ask them. Paul Bernard, ETVN News, reporting from the desert outside Basra, Iraq. So long for now.

The man jabs the remote and the VCR whirs to a stop. He slips in a second cassette and the screen fills. Vehicles at crazy angles, the smoldering carcass of a Humvee, a light truck with a red cross, an SUV, more Humvees, a med-evac helicopter. Uniformed personnel stand around. Two choppers hover above the scene, heavy with dust.

All but one person in the Humvee were killed, a voice is saying, airlifted out within minutes of the attack. DOA on arrival at the medical facility in the Green Zone. Paul Bernard was one of them. Unbelievable. I can’t find the words. ETVN’s Middle East Bureau Chief survived but is in critical condition with burns over eighty percent of his body. They say he has a remote chance of pulling through. An officer riding in the lead vehicle told ABC News the attack came from over that hill, the screen shows a rise behind the road. Most likely a rocket-propelled grenade commonly used by the insurgents, it made a direct hit on the third Humvee in line. Military personnel spotted a vehicle taking off and gave chase. Choppers were called in but the attackers had too big a lead. At last word, there’s been no contact. From the Baghdad Airport Road, Ed Barkley, ABC News.

The man tosses the remote at the sofa. It bounces off and clatters to the floor. Leave it, he says, cursing softly. He shuffles across the darkened room and bumps against the desk at the far wall. He snaps on a lamp. The study is cluttered – books, awards, diplomas, photographs, residue of a life of scholarship. He settles heavily into his chair, shiny, creased leather, impetuous purchase the day of his appointment a half a century ago to the History faculty. The desk is cluttered – books, folders, work in progress, work abandoned. Looking around the room, his gaze settles on the television, now dark, and he begins to weep. These next days, he whispers, must rally, must make it through.

ST. ANN’S CEMETERY, CRANSTON, RHODE ISLAND, TWO DAYS LATER. The storm didn’t rate a name, yet how the heavens opened. The second I get out of the car, up comes the wind, people wrestling with their umbrellas and now it’s coming down in buckets. Invitation only. TV trucks outside the gate here, police keeping them out. But for the weather, those damned news choppers would be following us around, too. The memorial next month in New York, that’ll be big, but you won’t find me there.

Climbing a small rise I hear the ropes groan, the canvas flap. Inside the tent, rain drowns out the priest as he commits Paul to the earth whence he came. Dust thou art and so on and so forth – more like mud today. Cronkite is here, Peter Jennings too, Dave Carney who I greeted earlier. Next come the pallbearers – his son Peter, spitting image of his father, old friend Pat, others I don’t recognize, maybe from the newspaper or the network. No sign of Hamid, or of the French woman either, a class act, that one. My eyes are full as they take hold of the tape. Hand over hand, down it goes. Now the daughter has the shovel and the wife comes forward, former wife that is. Have as little as possible to do with her. Others go up but not me. Need to know your place – all too rare, these days.

Now the group is breaking up. There’s a reception at the sister’s but I won’t be going. Volvo’s letting me know it wants to go north and I couldn’t agree more. All of a sudden I feel this tap on my arm – a young man, at least under that stupid hat he looks young.

Professor Flynn? he says.

None other, I reply.

He sticks out his hand. Jonathan Bernstein.

By now, I am getting soaked trying to put my umbrella back up. He reaches for it. Here, let me give you a hand.

I pull it back. "The day I can’t put my umbrella up they’ll be putting me in the ground." I am thinking water’s gotten in the works, with the wind and all. Finally, he gets it up. The name is familiar but I’m still trying to place him.

"Jonathan Bernstein, The New Yorker. We’re on for Thursday, your place – right?"

Well he doesn’t have to belabor the point, of course I know who he is now. I wonder how he managed to get an invitation. Everyone is leaving so I cut this short.

SOMEHOW I MAKE IT THROUGH TO THURSDAY. With all that’s happened, the last thing I need is a visitor, but I did agree to this. First impression, he seems all right, though I do not feature that little recorder he carries around. Never liked the damn things. Way I see it, if you can’t write fast enough to get something down it isn’t worth getting down, plus they sap the memory. It is mid-afternoon by the time we settle down and a bit cool on the deck, but he says he wants to start out here. Joseph, my able helper, has cleared the remains from a late lunch. Ready to begin? I say.

He is sitting back in the chair, looking pensive. Everything’s changed. I’m not sure how I deal with it.

What do you mean?

He shakes his head. I was counting on interviewing Paul, but now...

My face suddenly feels hot. Don’t tell me your problems! Paul did you a favor. You’ve got a better story than you did a week ago.

He looks kind of sheepish. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just, the job I have to do just got a lot harder.

I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Young man, that is the least of my concerns. Deal with it.

He is quiet for a moment. You’re right.

I swallow hard, trying to be civil. I’m here to help. Ask me questions. Do something.

He opens a notebook, folds it flat and stares at it a moment. There’ll certainly be an investigation. You were in the military, you know about investigations.

Indeed I do. And count on the Army keeping it close to the vest.

I can’t understand how that could happen, not with all that security. They’re saying it was random. Do you believe that?

How do I know? All I know is Washington’s deluding itself. There is still a war going on over there.

Obviously somebody dropped the ball, he mutters. All right, let’s begin. He thumbs the recorder on. When did you and Paul first meet?

That’s better, I say, more sequential. Sixty-three. He took a room for a year. He was starting a program in Political Science.

Your field is History.

You’ve got that right.

Describe the scene for me.

We kept a very sociable house, Akiko and I, somebody always coming or going, and those discussions! Many an evening we talked right through the night, no two opinions the same, and Paul always right in the middle of things. Passionate young people caught up in great events. Amazing combination. Civil War’s my field, mainly the slavery aspect, but I wrote a fair amount about the Sixties too. The war, turmoil on the campuses, people at each other’s throats, worst shock to the nation since the Depression. Until now, that is.

You think we’re heading for something like that again?

Too soon to say. Even in hindsight Vietnam is tough to read. I’ve been meaning to ask, if I’m not mistaken you’re a New Yorker.

Is it so obvious?

No offense but yes. What I’m getting at, we had plenty of students from New York but Paul was one of the few Rhode Islanders I knew, which made for a special bond, my being from Boston and all. Even after he left we stayed in touch, letters, cards, the occasional visit, and when I moved back East we really caught up.

Is it true you two were sometimes on the outs?

Not at all. Paul and I were friends and friends we remained, despite anything you might have heard. At any event, one day I had this idea of organizing his papers. Someday they’ll be worth something, I thought to myself.

Tell me more about the papers.

I have some here and there’s a batch in New York I’ve never seen.

Jonathan brightens. They’ll help me fill in the gaps.

That’s the whole idea, plus what I can contribute. I’d advise you to take a fast run through them, get a feel for what’s there. I’ve spent a fair amount of time organizing, indexing even. What shape the New York material’s in, I have no idea.

I’ll look through them tonight.

You’ll find it pretty rough in spots, and don’t expect perfect accuracy. Some of it Paul set down in a hurry – it’s remarkable they’re as good as they are. But back to Paul, I say. Twenty-one he was, a serious young man, steady, reliable to a fault. I used to tell him, lighten up, take up surfing – something! Of course right away everybody noticed the eyes. Dark, almost black. Felt like they were boring right through you, as if he saw things nobody else did. Excellent quality for a journalist, though in those days he had these awful glasses. At first I thought he was Mediterranean stock, the olive complexion, black hair and all. As it turns out, the Bernard line can be traced back to southern France.

Jonathan nods. The Nice area, possibly Marseilles. That’s what I’ve found.

And on the mother’s side Irish, of course, but don’t get me started on them! You seem restless – here, take the wicker. It’s more comfortable.

I’m fine, he says, crossing his legs. Tell me something about yourself.

You don’t really want to talk about me.

I need to understand how you two fit together, your influence on him.

Well, all right – if you insist. I am starting to feel better. For starters, let me say I surprised a lot of people when I left Berkeley, but it made perfect sense. For me this is where the world started. Not here, precisely – down past Portland and Kennebunkport, all the way to Boston. Southie to be precise. I look out across the water. Here, I say, handing him my binoculars. Have a look. That’s where the sun comes up, over the shoulder of Cadillac mountain across there.

Quite a hill, he says, looking through the binoculars.

Hill! You try climbing that hill! I used to do it every week until my knees gave out. First comes the aura then the sun appears over the ridge. You can’t always count on seeing it, what with the fog we have, but it’ll be clear tomorrow. Five-thirty should about do it.

Five-thirty! You’re joking.

Best part of the day, Jon. But if you walk the shore, take a flashlight – those steps can be slick. On a hook inside the back door, can’t miss it.

Actually I prefer Jonathan.

You don’t impress me as a Jonathan, but as you wish. You’re doing one of those long articles, I take it, four parts?

Three, but we may go to four now.

What’s your deadline?

Everything’s in flux at the moment, and as you said I’ve got to work around what happened. That makes you even more crucial. By the way what should I call you?

Professor Flynn will do, or Gus – I answer to either. By the way, we need to cut it short tonight – Pedro goes against the Yankees. They’d be your team, I take it.

Hardly. I grew up in College Point, next to Shea.

Ah. We have an unhappy history there as well.

People forget there was a Game Seven. I was there with my father.

I beg your pardon, some of us remember, I say. But I often wonder, what would happen if we ever won it all? That delicious frustration, it’s kept our brotherhood of misery warm for many winters. Well, enough. Tomorrow we begin. As I believe I mentioned, my memory is a finely tuned instrument, so when you leave here, Jonathan, you’ll have Paul Bernard’s story, in his words, just as he told it.

PART ONE

FAITH AND WORKS

1. Patriotism: An End, A Beginning

THERE’S A LOT IN THOSE PAPERS, Jonathan says. You did quite a job pulling it all together.

I’ve only been doing it for fifty years, I say. As I lift the desk blotter several papers sail to the floor, but at least the key’s where it belongs. Sliding the drawer open I pull out a folder and extract several papers from it. The first, on heavy bond, is a letter in blue ink, in a regular hand. Here, I say, passing it over, take a look.

August 7, 2000

My Dear Gus,

I’m finally sorting through this pile of junk you’ve been nagging me for. If things continue as they are with Latimer I may soon have a lot more time for you. I admit my journal-keeping wasn’t up to par so I’ve had to create a narrative to tie things together. If I come anywhere close to the mark you can thank my powers of recall, which for some unaccountable reason have always been exceptional.

You’re right, of course, I should have been more systematic. Ironic, a man of words spending so few of them on himself, though at least I was consistent, in abandoning the written word for the wonderful world of television.

Only my regard for you leads me to undertake this effort which will take many months, with no sure outcome other than the pain it will cause me and, may I dare to hope, certain others. At any event, here’s the first batch.

As always,

Paul

Anything else?

Here’s another one, barely a year later but a world apart.

Everyman TeleVision Network

419 West 13th Street

New York City, NY 10014

September 17, 2001

Gus,

You cannot believe what it’s like here. Television can’t even come close. This is not about aluminum and plastic and paper, Gus, these were human beings! Alive one minute, vaporized the next.

Grasping for straws, let me say, terrible as it is, could it be something has finally shaken up this tired, selfish old country? Perhaps we’ll learn from it and come back strong, but that will all be about leadership, which I fear we sorely lack. We have plenty of leaders but they’re all the wrong kind. Giuliani’s the same old publicity hound. Any mayor or governor with half an ounce of humanity could do what he’s doing or better. Picking up the pieces is the easy part. Putting them back together will be the trick. As for George Bush, what can I say?

Obviously our project is on hold, my part of it, but I’ve given you enough to get started. I’ll pick it up again when I can. Susan is very good, she’ll give you a hand. I’m around for now, but for a change my time is limited.

I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t felt so exhilarated in years. In the morning I hit the floor running. This is one hell of a story and I am privileged to be able to report it. Yes, I said report – I’m back in the field. I’ll be in the studio more than I want, but mostly I’ll be out there where I belong. I hope my rusty craft is up to the task. If the American people don’t get the story from the likes of us they won’t get it at all. Powerful forces would like nothing better. Sad experience tells us that.

God bless you, Gus. Keep me in your prayers.

Paul

Jonathan nods. Good, he says, giving me back the letters.

I go around to my big table and take a seat behind a stack of papers. Strong enough for you? I ask, raising my cup.

Just the way I like it. He looks out the window. Where’d all this rain come from?

The weatherman really failed me this summer. I hand him a stack of papers, the first of Paul’s papers. All right, I say, let’s get started. Take a look at this – it’s from the first journal Paul put together for me.

* * * * * * *

ALL RIGHT, AUGUSTUS, WHERE TO BEGIN? It’s appropriate, isn’t it, my first memory is of a military scene. I had other fragments, of course, my brother’s face, our front yard, but my first full recollection is that scorching Sunday, the cicadas so loud you could practically see their song in the heat rising from the pavement. The year was 1945, I learned later, and I was three going on four. Needless to say others contributed some of this detail to my memory, and I filled in some later, like with the rest of what I’ll be giving you.

At the head of my block several streets met to form a broad asphalt square. The turnaround, as we called it, was next to a weedy field with a big rock at one end. When I was older my friends and I played ball and hung around when there was nothing to do which was most of the time. We’d circle the turnaround endlessly on our bikes, but this afternoon, the day of my first real memory, it was crowded with people.

A couple dozen wood folding chairs were set up in the turnaround, under the big tree in front of Omer Arsenault’s house. Sawhorses marked POLICE kept cars out. Omer was my best friend. He lived on the third floor of a yellow tenement overlooking the turnaround. As if chairs in the street weren’t strange enough, who was sitting in the front row but Mr. and Mrs. D’Andrea, and my other best friend Angelo and his sisters. Angelo lived the next street up and his birthday was the same month as mine, June, but a week earlier. When Angelo spotted me he started making faces until his father saw him and gave him a whack on the ear.

A number of soldiers with musical instruments stood in the street, one with a huge drum hanging from a strap around his neck. Then everybody sat down and they started to play. I was so close, my throat and chest pounded like it was me being played, not the drum. When the music stopped a soldier with shiny metal on his collar got up. He said something in Italian then the name of Angelo’s brother Cosmo. The soldier was tall and serious and said how brave Cosmo was. Then he went over to Mrs. D’Andrea and placed the flag in her lap. I had never seen a flag folded. I didn’t know they let you do that. She crossed herself, pulled her veil down and placed her hands on the flag. I could tell she’d been crying.

Then some man in a suit came to the microphone. My mother’s hand tightened on mine and she gave my father a look. The man stood right at the microphone, so close it looked like he had it in his mouth. PUHH! PUHH! PUHH! His words exploded on me! You could even hear him breathing. He kept looking over at Mr. and Mrs. D’Andrea. The man’s face was very sad, he was crying or sweating, maybe both. Councilman Napolitano, my mother told me that’s who it was, he went on and on and finally he stepped across to the telephone pole next to Omer’s tree. I hadn’t noticed the cloth on it before. He yanked a cord and the cloth fell away and you could see a piece of dark wood with gold letters and two little crossed flags, also some flowers.

A few people started clapping but my mother grabbed my hand tighter. Now she was crying too but I figured I’d better not say anything. Then Father Maloney from St. Teresa’s came forward. He was wearing a black suit and said some prayers in Latin which I came to know a lot about later, let me tell you, and finished by spraying everybody with holy water from this stick with a ball on the end but I only got a few drops which was too bad, it was so hot. He sat down, then the soldier with the trumpet started playing a slow sad song all by himself. I sneaked a look around, now everybody’s crying, but soon it was over and the band marched off down the street, drumming as they went.

We went back to my house and had Sunday afternoon dinner as we always did, my brother Jim, Catherine and me. My parents were quiet, which for my mother was very unusual.

2. The Home Front

YOU WERE TELLING ME about yourself – the early years, Berkeley.

The rain has stopped but the deck is still soaked, and with the wind leaves are everywhere. Have to get Joseph to do some picking up. I’ll keep this short, I say. I was the first, then came nine more. It wasn’t for nothing our name was Flynn, if you follow me. Stevie was killed in France, he was Ma’s favorite, only nineteen, she took it very hard. Two others and I, we made it through.

Quite a record. Didn’t you feel lost in such a big family?

Being the oldest helped. That little machine of his is on the whole time. Why do you need that thing? I say.

The recorder? What’s wrong with it?

Just another damned gadget. I’m for cultivating the memory – otherwise where is it when you need it? There are even exercises you can do.

I’ll take that into consideration. If I remember, that is.

Now where was I? I say. Oh, yes, in Berkeley I had a mountain, too. Tamalpais, it was called, in Marin across the Bay. Those days I was a night person but being eighty-four now, I celebrate the dawn. Coming back here I see as a completion of the course, maybe a preview of the next act. I have a bet with myself there is a next act. Nobody knows, of course, but every year goes by I am more interested in the question, I’ll tell you. For me faith always was the problem, but my desire to believe never wavered, in fact these days it’s stronger than ever, as if bit by bit hope moved in and took over the place faith once was, or was supposed to be.

Tell me more about California.

We bought the house in forty-nine, a rambling one-story, eucalyptus everywhere, fragrant but a very dirty tree. Looking forward, we were, we had such plans. There was a stand of redwoods, new growth. I’ve thought about this a lot – wouldn’t you know those trees growing up and the students coming through, they turned out to be our family, our only family. Nowadays, all this technology, miracles in biology. Not so, then. Ah well, timing is everything. My friends said I lost it when Akiko passed and they were right. I was damned low, miserable – nobody you’d want to be around.

I take it Paul was a special person for you.

For both of us. I have to pause to collect myself. Well, enough of this.

Keep going. This is good!

I put my hand up. No, though I do appreciate the attention. Closest I’ll ever come to a four-part article. After all, what do you say about a teacher? A teacher’s glory is of the reflected variety – the doing’s more interesting than the telling.

* * * * * * *

I’M NOT TELLING YOU ANYTHING NEW, GUS, but the war was all anybody ever talked about. The doorbell was an instrument of torture. That next ring could be the one telling you a brother, a son, a father wasn’t coming back. My Uncle Antoine’s oldest son Maurice didn’t come home. I knew him from the pictures in the place of honor on the mantle above our fireplace, and from the stories. The photo on the left has Maurice in the cockpit of his RCAF Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. In the other he leans against the wing of his P-38, his cap at a jaunty angle, a big grin on his face. It was in the P-38 he made those screaming low passes over our house before zooming straight up into the sky and away. My mother told me she asked him if that wouldn’t that get him in trouble. Maurice just shrugged. Hell, what more can they do to me? The next week he left for North Africa to fight the Nazis. Six months later he was dead.

Others from the family were also away in France and Germany and the Pacific, but Maurice was the family hero, the legend. Maurice also had a square named after him, another gold-lettered thank-you on a phone pole, this one near their home off Manton Avenue going toward North Providence. I thought about these things a lot.

Late afternoons I listened for the thud on our front step, pouncing on the smooth roll of the Evening Bulletin with its front-page maps and lines and arrows showing the Allies advancing across Europe, daggers aimed at the black heart of the Axis. The Pacific War was more complicated, vast areas with dots for islands, but the outcome would be the same, for bullies and murderers dumb enough to tangle with our country.

The war had theaters but nobody could tell me why they were called that. What did my sister making like she was a Christmas angel have to do with the war? Nor was the war anything like the clippings my mother kept in the folder with the green ribbon in her top drawer that she pulled out when she was feeling sad. She’d show us her original name, Fiona Kelley, under the picture of a pretty woman in some pose with men in suits smoking cigarettes. At such times she’d go on it seemed like hours, reciting from memory some play or other she’d been in before she quit to get married and have us. So, you see, to call the war a theater made no sense at all.

My real love were the comic strips. On darkearly winter afternoons, I would unfurl the Bulletin and sprawl over it, digging my elbows into the living room carpet. With Terry and the Pirates I flew the Hump, matching wits with the mysterious Dragon Lady and her band of wily, pinch-faced Orientals. I was Buzz Sawyer’s wingman on a carrier in mid-Pacific, our Wildcats tangling with the nimble Jap Zero. After supper, it was scrapbook time. My scrapbook was big to start with, eight strips to a page, and by now it bulged impressively. On close inspection you could see some of the ack-ack pounding Buzz or Terry were dried glue spots, but never mind, I lived for my heroes’ exploits against the little yellow people halfway across the world – strange, unfathomable creatures, more ominous even than the German or Italian prisoners you’d see pictures of. After all, that kind of person lived in our own neighborhood, the American kind, of course, not the enemy.

There were five of us. My father and mother, my brother Jim, four years older than me, and Catherine. Two years older, she possessed my mother’s fair skin and freckles, a wide mouth and a nose turned up at the end. Her red hair was a copy of my mother’s, only longer. My mother spent hours brushing it, this far-off look coming over her. Caitlin, Caitlin, she’d go on in a sing-song voice, my little Caitlin, putting it up one way, say in braids, then brushing it out and starting over again. To me this seemed a great waste of time, though Catherine loved it.

Most days after work my father played ball with Jim and me in our backyard. Summer was baseball, pitching and catching after supper on the long, still evenings. In the fall it was dark when he came home but we threw the football around, slipping and sliding on the leaves my mother would always say how about you people raking for a change. My father could really hum a football, he and Jim outdoing each other until somebody’d catch one wrong and jam a finger. He always took something off it for me because my hands were small but Jim would fire it so hard I had to turn sideways so when it slipped through my hands it wouldn’t raise a welt on my chest. When Jim was off with his friends, it was just Dad and me. Sometimes he’d return to his shop after dinner so I went looking for Omer or Angelo and we’d end up in the lot near the turnaround where there was more room and not as many windows.

The shop is what everybody called my father’s work, a big factory building down Manton Avenue beyond St. Teresa’s, almost to Olneyville. Julien Bernard, that was his name, he and my Uncle Antoine started the business, making tools and parts they sold to the mills. One New Year’s I remember them talking about how good business was during the war but Uncle Antoine’s face told me it was Maurice he was really thinking of.

We lived in this nice house and I, ti-Paul, had my own room. Most of my friends lived in tenements and shared a room with their brothers, or in the case of one person who I better not mention, a sister. The stairwells smelled of cooking, a stew of stale aromas, mostly cabbage. Some of them had linoleum floors and not just in the kitchen either, but living rooms and bedrooms too. The long hallways were great for sliding on those little rugs they don’t tack down. I didn’t think about my room and house and yard were better than my friends’. They were, well, different. If they happened to be better, that’s just the way things were. No big deal.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t love books. I remember trailing behind my mother to the library, a squat red-brick building quite far from our house, poring through the children’s books while she looked at the kind with no pictures. At night she often read to me. My father didn’t read much, not that he couldn’t, but he read the Bulletin and the French paper, also Life that came every Thursday, but he had no patience for anything else. In fact, sometimes he’d find me reading and would snatch the book away. Paul, he’d say, turning the book over and frowning, such a waste of time, your nose always in a book. In life there are many useful things and none of them will you find in a book.

The exception was Le Petit Prince, which he brought home to even the score with my mother who had given it to me in English. This was the one book he read to me, in French, of course, and as a joke between the two of us he called the hero "ti-Prince." One day he showed me the author’s picture in the paper, an aviator who died like Maurice. The round face and snub nose, he looked just like me! Was this my future? When I grew up is that what I would look like?

I owned other books, mostly birthday or Christmas presents, which were a lot better than the handkerchiefs Tante Héloise always gave us. You didn’t have to unwrap her long flat gift to know what was it was. At this time my particular favorite was a small book you could read the regular way if you wanted, but with your thumb you could fold the pages back then riffle them forward and watch Commander Don Winslow of the U.S. Navy sink a U-Boat, the explosion and all!

Catherine’s Bobbsey Twins and Little Maidas books had small print and she always had them lined up super neat on her shelf. She brought home tests with excellent or 100, and gold stars my mother would ooh and ah at. Not so Jim, who my mother called a project and once in a while had to see the nuns about. Between talking back and getting into fights Jim didn’t have much time left for studying. Jacques was his real name and everyone said he was big for his age. He was nearly as tall as my father and weighed a hundred pounds. One time my father bought him a set of weights which he spent a lot of time lifting in our garage. Jim made St. Teresa’s baseball and basketball teams the first time he tried out. He also had to repeat fourth grade.

At night I overheard my mother and father arguing about some scrape Jim had gotten himself into. I hope we survive until he’s old enough for La Salle, she would say, I can’t wait to hand him over to the Brothers. They know how to handle boys even if you don’t. When she talked like that my father would get mad but before long he’d break out laughing. He always took Jim’s side. When my mother was giving Jim a hard time about this or that, my father would put his arm around him and wink, which drove my mother wild.

Wait til you’re on the football team at La Salle, Jacques! he’d say. "Then they’ll see what a Bernard’s made of."

My brother just sat there grinning, lapping it up. Then my father would turn to me. "As for you, ti-Paul, you’re never any trouble, are you?" Again he’d laugh, but it wasn’t the same, not the same at all.

Sometimes after one of their arguments my mother would storm out, crying, and head for her mother’s the next street over, on the bottom floor of a three-decker, she lived. I’d wait in my room, alert for her step, worried she might never come back. But she always did.

Jim was my father’s prize, though his temper was actually more like my mother’s when she got her Irish up, as my father called it. As a girl, Catherine belonged more to my mother. So where did this leave me? My mother said she saw in me the finer qualities, whatever that meant. You’re destined for great things, Paul, she would say, but later I came to see I was her foil to get back at my father’s coarse and grimy trade, at his roughhouse Canadian clan who cut and banged and shaped metal for a living, those that weren’t still on the farms up north, that is, or working in the mills.

If Jim was hearty and big for his age, I was just the opposite – undersized and, for the most part, compliant and unobtrusive. Even my face was a compromise, an average of my father’s swarthy round face and my mother’s sharp features, though my slender frame was clearly the Kelley side of the family. Each morning in the mirror I observed those large dark eyes staring back as I fought with my cowlicks, the only unruly part of me. At least I wasn’t frail or sickly, though once a year I’d come down with something and be forced to bed, staring out the window through coldsodden eyes. Later, though, when I was in school and this happened, after the fever wore off I enjoyed pleasant days reading and listening to the radio. I was a sociable boy with many friends, but also enjoyed being alone. Winter afternoons, stretched out on the smooth hardwood floor of my bedroom, meant Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Captain Midnight’s secret messages which when they were longest and most crucial, you knew the call for supper was sure to interrupt your decoding. Before bedtime it was the Green Hornet and the Shadow. As darkness fell I listened, entranced and terrified, compacting myself into the space between my bureau and the closet door, hoping somehow to escape the forces of evil.

It was on this floor I heard a solemn voice announce that a great man, FDR, had died, and some time later, heard the crowds cheering the end of the war. What a night that was! My parents took me downtown to see the jubilant throngs. Parades welcomed our men back, but wonderful as this was, I was troubled. What would become of Buzz and Terry? The war won, what would they do now? Fortunately, events would overtake my fears, as I awaited my own first great adventure – school.

3. First Impressions Count

JONATHAN SLIDES OPEN THE DOOR to the deck. It has dried out enough to work outside. I just got off the phone with my editor, he says. Peter Jennings has a segment on Paul tomorrow night. Six-thirty.

I like Jennings but I always watched Paul. Though I switched channels as soon as he was finished.

Couldn’t take all that right-wing talk?

What got to me was the arrogance and ignorance – no, not ignorance, distortion. Those people aren’t dumb, they know exactly what they’re doing.

‘All Points of View, Fairly Presented.’

Horseshit.

Agreed. Let’s push ahead.

Later in the day Jonathan is poking around the study, which is fine, I am happy to share my library with him. That your wife? He points to a picture on the credenza.

I pick up the picture. Akiko and I on the deck, house in the background. That was about seventy-five. The campus had pretty well settled down by then.

He moves to a series of pictures hanging nearby. Your boarders?

Every year we took a group shot. I bend forward toward one. Sixty-four, I point to the legend. That’s Paul in the middle next to Akiko.

What are those, may I ask? He points to a shelf full of video cassettes.

I smile. I recorded all of Paul’s big broadcasts. The John Paul II interviews, the Berlin Wall, Colin Powell after the Gulf War. They’re all here.

I know how I’ll be spending my evenings. He runs his finger along the spines, neatly hand-lettered with topic and date. Yeltsin, 10-16-92 – the Yeltsin debate?

It didn’t start out that way but things got out of hand...

...and they end up shouting at each other.

Then the apologies, the hugs, all on camera. Ever hear what happened after they left Yeltsin’s office that night? Not many people know about that.

Jonathan shook his head.

As Paul told it, it involved a considerable amount of vodka and the worst hangover he ever had. Remind me, I’ll tell you later.

Jonathan puts the cassette back. Paul Bernard was a hero to my generation of journalists. Some say he was a more effective Secretary of State than the real one.

"I don’t know about that, but he told me he’d get calls from the White House asking him to carry a message. Or telling him to back off, depending. Everybody respected him, those who didn’t hate his guts, that is. Then came the Iraq business – very ugly, that.

My sense is the harder people beat on him the more he dug his heels in.

You got that exactly right.

* * * * * * *

GUS, WHY IS IT SOME OF OUR EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS are the most vivid? Because the child isn’t yet burdened with the baggage of reason? Or is it the drama of seeing, hearing, touching for the first time? To this day a singular sound or scent or color can summon those first experiences to mind. Proust had his madeleines, I offer you my first-grade schoolroom.

Sunlight streaming through the patched brown shades, a long hooked pole for raising and lowering. Tree shadows stirring, a movie screen where nothing happens and everything happens. Above the blackboards, maps of the United States, the Holy Land, Ireland, Rome. Saints’ pictures, Christ Child on a ledge, his plaster gown falling in folds from a raised arm, faint smile beneath the gold leaf crown. Our teacher’s face, ruddy above the shapeless habit which provokes the curious or, some said, filthy minds of her charges. What is black and white and red all over? Most amazing, the triple chin forced by her high collar, and that starched white bib. Does she take it off to eat? Does she eat at all? None of us has ever seen this. If not, she wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom. For all we know she doesn’t!

The long day proceeded into afternoon and her robes were covered with chalk dust from filling the blackboard with incredibly precise handwriting, example to us all, every letter identically inclined, every loop the same, every line parallel. Piece, receive, neighbor, weigh. The sound of young minds being stretched. Ssstamargramary, for that was her name, peered over the small faces, some attentive, some not, continuous motion, sunflowers in a breeze. This afternoon her face had attained a new hue.

The rule in this case, what is the rule! Not a hand. Someone must know! She cracked her pointer against the blackboard. Omer Arsenault!

Omer and I sat side-by-side in the middle of the room. His face was a triangle, slanting down to a severely pointed chin. His ears were adult-size, cupped forward like handles, which is how some of the older kids treated them during recess. This feature accounted for his nickname, Dumbo, which was unfair, for Omer was plenty smart, though he did often panic. At this moment his face was frozen in the downward position, as if the surface of his desk was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. The boy behind him whispered but too late. Omer looked up, shaking his head.

I knew it yesterday, I really did, but I can’t remember it.

I shrank in my seat until my eyes were at inkwell level. I wouldn’t put my hand up against Omer, not for anything would I do that. I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them Ssstamargramary had me in her sights. Well, class, luckily there is one person we can always count on. Paul, give us the answer, please.

I stood, swallowing hard. ’I’ before ‘e’... I began inaudibly, except after ‘c.’

Louder! Everyone wants to hear you!

Sure they did. ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’, I mumbled and sat down quickly.

And... and... on your feet again. The rest, please.

Andinwordssoundedaylikeneighborandweigh. Score one for the class brain.

"Thank the Lord somebody in here pays attention! Her mocking voice enveloped us. Class, what would we ever do without Paul?"

I sat down, ears burning. After a minute I snuck a look at Omer. His chin was trembling and a thin, wet trail tracked down his cheek. In front of him, Tony Marino was applauding, a smug grin on his pudgy face. Next row, Tommy Clark was making four-eyes at me. Look who’s talking, I thought loudly, don’t need eyes to tell when you’re around. Not for nothing did we call him Skunkweed.

I was the youngest kid in first grade and the only one with glasses, not counting two girls. The girls had their own separate classroom and teacher. Bad enough I was one of the shortest and, I say reluctantly, smartest boys, but those glasses were a killer. Pink horn-rims, the kind that turn amber after a few months. I was already on my second pair! This first classroom was the crucible for that insatiable desire to please adults which bedeviled my young life. I longed to be ordinary and fit in, but as I learned and absorbed I distanced myself from others, others whose offhand attitude I admired, carefree spirits who might have been my friends but were not.

I could read, and pretty hard stuff too, before I ever set foot in St. Teresa’s. This alone was enough to make me a freak or, as Ssstamargramary put it, an outstanding pupil. Same difference. I also shone in Deportment, was never kept after, never confined to that cool, dank cellar room with the cartons of milk and Coca-Cola stored for lunch. Sadistic grown-ups had conspired to set me apart, designing not a child but an adult in a child suit. It was like they needed a small, compliant version of themselves as pathetic reassurance of who knows what.

A lot of what we learned was interesting. I loved geography. Augusta, Maine on the Kennebec River. Hartford, Connecticut on the Connecticut River. The Grand Canyon. Teak floating down the Irrawaddy. Australia’s peculiar animals. But nothing could top a book about the Panama Canal that a well-traveled friend had given my mother. There was one page, actually this one particular picture, where two dark-skinned women look straight at you and the only thing they have on is... grass skirts! This astonishing sight prompted me to approach my father.

Who are these people? And what are those... things hanging off them?

"Those are natives, ti-Paul," he stammered. That’s how... how God makes natives. The truth came out later, but Panama fueled my curiosity about what might lie over the horizon. Or under, as the case may be.

Religion occupied much of our time. First time I peeked into the thick, soft-covered catechism book I thought, neat! A question-answer game, page after page. How wrong I was! Every night, twenty sets of questions to memorize. Spelling and arithmetic mattered, but in the most solemn tone Ssstamargramary said this little book was something far, far greater, our guidebook to eternal life. Even the music we studied, most of it, was for Church. Chant, with little square notes.

So all right, why was I put on this earth? Why did God make me? What kind of person does He want me to be? All of a sudden I had answers to questions I had never asked. My world, the only world I knew, to which I was attached with a mostly pleasant bond, was a stepping stone to something else, and a slippery step at that, a place of sorrow and danger for piling up credits for the next life. Disobey the commandments of God or His Church? Better you had never been born! Heaven! Hell! Eternity! More than forever, if you can imagine, which you can’t, so don’t even try.

I was astonished to learn the dismal legacy of our first parents which somehow led straight to me. It was unsettling to learn about my evil tendencies, worse yet, that they were about to erupt. I had shown some limited talent for getting into trouble, but never had I felt evil or ashamed. Yet there it was in writing and the person of Ssstamargramary. All God’s children are connected to each other under Him, but what was supposed to be a beautiful and happy time had turned to ashes. Literally.

O God I am not worthy, that Thou shouldst come to me.

But speak the words of comfort, my spirit healed shall be!

Not worthy? That made no sense. Punished for things that happened long before I was born or my parents or my grandparents. But I was reminded of certain indisputable facts. I had the dark hair and eyes of my father, didn’t I? A fact. Some unfortunates were deformed or sightless from birth, I was not. A fact, though I’d never met anybody like that. Some people were rich men’s sons but I was not. A fact. The Divine Plan touches every one of us, and just because I had nothing to say about it doesn’t make it unfair. God is the Creator, I am the creature. Big difference. If God had wanted my opinion, He would have asked. But to my vast relief, I discovered our weak human condition is not the end of the story, not by a long shot.

I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord... crucified, died and was buried... rose from the dead... seated at the right hand of the Father... will come again to judge the living and the dead...

The God of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses and David, the one with long gray hair and flowing robes, He turns out to be the only true God. And astonishingly, He so loved the world He sent His only Son to heal our sin and help us to heaven. God acts, we conform. The try counts but results do too, and there’d better be plenty of those or He’ll know you’re faking. He knows everything. Even before it happens, He knows.

What a world! How wonderful to be part of it!

TRAINING INTENSIFIED as we prepared for our First Holy Communion. Sister Perpetua, our second grade teacher, looked on as the pastor questioned, prodded, explained. Father Donnelly was tall, with a shock of thick white hair. His voice was low and chalky but Sundays when he wound up you had no trouble hearing him, even in back. He wasn’t gloomy like Father Maloney, but sometimes he exploded for no particular reason. My mother said he talked too much about money. Here also began my acquaintance with Latin, the mumbling from the altar I had only a foggy idea about. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam...in remissionem peccatorum.

I finally figured out what it meant to believe. If people you know really well tell you something it must be true, especially if they’re all saying the same thing. Your parents, the nuns, the priests, especially the priests. Things written in books can be believed, but you don’t know the people who wrote them so better you listen to who you know. This belief thing is complicated, but fortunately there are people whose job it is to steer us straight.

Never was I asked whether I believed. It never entered my mind I might choose not to believe. The nuns and priests expected what they told us to stick, and with me it certainly did. Saints and angels, the Blessed Virgin, bells and candles, I believed in them the same way I believed in the air I breathed. Later, I was surprised to meet normal people who disagreed with what to me was so obvious. Back then I didn’t know anybody like that, having heard only vaguely about such people. From my haven I felt sorry for them, whoever they were, missing out on the joy of my wonderful world. No wonder they were lost. I’d have been lost too, without the divine roadmap it was my privilege to inherit. I figured, if God wanted their opinion, He would have asked.

With the big day nearing, arithmetic, geography, all worldly concerns were set aside. How does the Sacrament of Penance remit sin and restore to the soul the friendship of God? What is the Holy Eucharist? Why did Christ institute it? And the question that bothered me most – how can the wafer look so different from what it has become? Father Donnelly had the answer to that one, too – it is a mystery. If we could see God, there’d be no need for faith, would there? If we knew everything God knows, we would ourselves be God, which deserves no comment. I closed my eyes. What is mystery? Does it have color? Is it like the sun that helps you see but if you stare at it you go blind? No, mystery can’t be like that because light reveals things. Mystery must be dark. Black.

Once when I was small, I bought a vanilla cone from the truck that drove down our street ringing a bell. It was a hot day and my cone began to leak. I licked so hard the scoop fell off and onto the sidewalk. I put it back on the cone but now there was this little puddle on the sidewalk. Here’s what I could never understand. To this very day, through rain, snow and countless feet, there exists a chalky white patch in that very spot on the sidewalk in front of Malloy’s house. Was this a mystery? Or is mystery tied up only with religion? I thought of asking Father Donnelly but didn’t have the nerve.

With so much at stake I couldn’t fail, I wouldn’t fail. How much time we spent in church I don’t know, but we were there early and late, rising, sitting, kneeling in the cavernous space, dark except for a few lights and candles and the red lamp telling us Jesus was present in the tabernacle. The radiators clanged against the chill, and sweet incense hung in the air. Wooden pews that turn sticky in the heat of summer were cool and smooth, grooved from generations of fingernails, wads of gum under the benches.

The girls whispered and giggled and my friends fooled around, but that ended when our teacher came up the aisle with her weapon, two pieces of hard wood hinged with a rubber band she’d snap to warn of a rap on the ear or across the knuckles. Tall, sandy-haired Father McAdam was in charge. He was the only one of our priests you dared talk to. Younger than the others, he helped with the CYO. It was strange seeing a priest shooting baskets, though he always wore black pants in the gym, I guess that was a rule. When they weren’t snapping those knuckle killers, the nuns fussed over Father McAdam, especially the girls’ teacher, who was kind of pretty, which I also thought odd.

I was fifth in line as our class lined up in the center aisle. The girl beside me was quite a bit taller, which would have been embarrassing except my attention was on the back of Margaret Foley’s head. I was taller than Margaret, which was fortunate, because I was in love with her. When she walked, her banana curls swayed side to side and even from behind I could picture the freckles on her face. I’d never really spoken to her because we didn’t see the girls much and you wouldn’t be caught dead at recess talking to one. My brother Jim was big enough to get away with talking to girls. My only chance would have been at dismissal when everyone filed out to the march music from the loudspeaker on the side of the school building.

Sometimes I could have walked near or even beside (but not with!) Margaret since she lived up my way. But I didn’t. Most days Father Donnelly paced up and down Pope Street in his black windbreaker, hands behind his back, making sure our lines were straight and nobody got run over, but really looking for crimes to write in his notebook. Walking a girl home was serious because it set in motion a whole chain of events, none of them pleasant. No one knew of my crush on Margaret and I wasn’t about to ruin my sweet, sad secret by doing anything dumb like talking to her. Anyway, what would I say? Girls were strange, unfathomable creatures (not my sister, that was different) and Margaret Foley the most mysterious of all.

Shuffling toward the altar I watched Margaret return, her eyes fixed prayerfully on the tips of her fingers pointed to heaven, palms together. So perfect, she was. I held my breath... our shoulders nearly touched. She smelled beautiful, like soap. Now it was my turn to kneel on the hard rubber pad. My chin barely reached the rail. For this final rehearsal, Father McAdam was giving out wafers, unconsecrated, of course. The hum grew louder. Omer, then Eugene Sullivan who always whined he was taller so should be behind me. Finished with Eugene, Father McAdam’s server jammed the cold, hard, plate against my Adam’s apple. Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi... he traced the sign of the cross with the small white host...custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam.

Amen, I replied. May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto life everlasting. I opened wide and stuck out my tongue. What a letdown! It was a piece of... cardboard! Oh well, maybe tomorrow it will be different. This was only practice, after all.

At confession I went through my catalogue of sins, then it was five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, say a good Act of Contrition. The Fourth Commandment came in for special attention, also the time I took Jim’s baseball after mine went down the sewer and didn’t give it back until he found it in my closet. For all the mean things he did to me, I wasn’t sorry at all, which as you know creates a whole new problem on top of the first one.

At home, preparations were well along for the celebration. The kitchen was fragrant with apple and cinnamon. Aunt Moira was sitting at the table drinking coffee. My favorite aunt, always had a nice word and a smile, dark as my mother was fair, and taller. She lived up Chalkstone Avenue past the golf course. Her husband, Uncle Eddie the policeman, told great jokes but people said he drank too much and had an awful temper when he did. One time I rode my bike to their house to deliver something and through the window I saw Aunt Moira crying, sweeping up a mess of broken dishes. I left whatever it was on the step and took off. Uncle Eddie was a sergeant. He used to be a lieutenant but they said he got into some kind of trouble at work.

How did it go, my mother asked, your confession.

I hope you had something interesting to tell, Aunt Moira laughed, tapping her cigarette against the ashtray.

I shrugged. I don’t feel any different.

Aunt Moira nodded, I never do either.

You’re not supposed to feel different! My mother wiped her hands on her apron. What’s different is how your soul looks to God.

I opened the fridge for a look but there was a gaping hole where the shelves usually were. Looking around I saw why, a giant ham, thick, round and tapered to a stub, sitting on top of the stove in one of those heavy blue speckled baking pans. The skin was x’d all over with little brown things sticking out of it. As soon as the pies are done, in it goes. Baking into the evening, then a warm-up for tomorrow’s feast. Low and slow where pork is concerned. If my mother said that once, she said it a thousand times.

Grandmother Kelley would be at the party but not Grandfather Kelley who died before