The End

By John Crawley

Your final act in life is to ask your estranged brother – your only next of kin – to do one last thing for you — let you die in peace. But he refuses. He can’t fulfill your requests because God and the Catholic Church are standing in the way. He is a priest and his faith and duty to his calling won’t allow it. And you do not share his theology. And he doesn’t approve your lifestyle. After all, you are lesbian and he is God’s pious servant. You haven’t talked in twenty years. And here it is on your deathbed he holds all the power over you. The fight over Death with Dignity comes front and center on the stage of The End.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483441238

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Crawley

Copyright © 2015 John L. Crawley.

Cover Design: Meredith Crawley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

The works of this book are fiction. Except where historical figures appear, all characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No product endorsement is implied with the use of a product name or brand within this work.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4123-8 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/9/2015

Contents

Book One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Book Two

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Post Script

Five years later

Author’s Acknowledgments:

Other books by John Crawley

Among the Aspen

Baby Change Everything

The House Next Door

Under the Radar

The Uncivil War

Between Sunday’s Columns

The Man on the Grassy Knoll

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (a novella)

Stuff

Dream Chaser (a serial novel)

The Myth Makers

Fishing Lessons


Letters from Paris

The Perfect Food

Dedicated to Sam.

His death taught me so much.

It’s the end of the world, as we know it…

It’s the end of the world, as we know it…

It’s the end of the world, as we know it…

And I feel fine.

Lyrics by REM

Book One

Chapter 1

He didn’t trust the evangelicals.

He thought they were too vocal. Too harsh. Many were down right vulgar. He told the Monsignor that their vocabulary was laced too fragrantly with hatred, rather than with the Christian love that he tried to preach; and even though they walked the same picket line, protesting the community’s last remaining women’s clinic offering on-demand abortions, he didn’t have much empathy for the radical views of irreverent born-againers. They wear their faith on their sleeves.

And you, on your collar, said the Monsignor.

There’s not an ounce of Christ in their message of hate and mistrust, he said, ignoring the quip from the Monsignor. They caused it all to happen. Their hate fueled the fire.

The elder pastor, with his road mapped face studied the young priest. "Yet, they marshal hundreds to join our cause to repudiate Satan’s clinic. As much as you dislike the foul odor of their base theology and their shallow politics, you must admit

and congratulate them on their success of building a movement for us. And I wouldn’t be all too hasty to lay blame for the fire at their feet."

Good Catholics don’t march, reasoned the young priest aloud.

But they would if we offered wine and scotch. Perhaps a beer or too, as well. The older priest laughed at his own humor.

Take me seriously, if you can, for a moment. I dislike these radicals. I detest their volume. They yell and rant and call the other side all kinds of vile names.

I am sure the other side, as you put them, do likewise. The Monsignor lit a filtered cigarette and exhaled blue smoke into the already hazy air of the book-lined office. The darkened hardwood shelves strained at holding the weight of the printed material the elder priest had collected over a lifetime of service to the mother church. Remember, the other side, as you put them, are the ones we are trying to stop in their tracks for committing a mortal sin.

But we are supposed to be taking the higher ground. The moral ground. God’s ground.

Saint Paul called man’s sin a dung heap. That is a friendly translation of the original: a pile of shit. We have all been lowered into the name-calling. It appears, even St. Paul. It comes with the territory — with the fighting of sin, I am afraid; especially a sin so evil as the taking of an innocent unborn life. So, I must give a huge nod of spectacular thanks to those uncouth barbarians, as you call them— the evangelicals — for their ability to muster the troops for battle. I wish we had such loyal comrades in our pews. Give it to the Baptists and the non-denominationalists and even the Pentecostals, they can bring a crowd.

Yes. I agree. And to have them marching helps our numbers, but I am not sure it steadies our cause. Especially after today.

You dislike the association with them on the grounds you don’t like their mean and abhorrent spirit. Then change them. Show them by example. He blew smoke into the air of the stuffy office. Rise above their din of misguided hearts and tongues and give them something for which to aspire. Show them the Catholic mind. Educate them with your actions. Let them see your love, and let them feel your resolve to stop this horrible plague, which has stained our land with innocent blood. Be strong for them. Be loving for them. Be a symbol of another way in which to fight the good fight. Let them see Christ through you and your actions.

Father Walter Brooks had no argument. Monsignor Pathlymas was right, of course. His argument was always show the sinner the better way through your own actions. Even when the sin is that of a foul-mouthed, fellow Christian attacking a common enemy in the heated battle of demolishing abortion in the county.

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Father Brooks returned to his small study and slumped in an uncomfortably hard chair. He had long thought that the chair was there as part of his penance — to get off his ass and get out into the world and spread the Good News of Jesus. But that afternoon, he simply sank down and rested his boney chin on his chest, his starched white collar, the badge of his priestly calling, almost choking him.

In his mind the tapes played of the insults hurled from Christians at young women, crossing the invisible line of right and wrong and entering the clinic to indulge their sin nature in the act of abomination and death. As horrible an act as he saw them doing, he also saw lost souls who had gotten into trouble — into predicaments, as his sister, Lucy called it — he saw the young women as people. And you didn’t yell the kind of insults at other human beings that these so-called right-wing Christians were spewing forth from their lips, no matter the degree of their sin. Instead, in his heart he prayed for each of them to find their way to the saving grace of the Savior and his blessed bride, the church. He longed for them to find their way into the church so they might find peace. That is, after all, why he had been placed on this Earth: to minister to the downtrodden and the lost. Not to curse them. Not to call them revolting and disrespectful names. But to reach out to them and show them a better way. And now Father Pathlymas was asking him to do the same to his fellow believers, even the ones whose necks bulged with hate-swollen veins as the poison rolled off their profane tongues.

Some days, Father Brooks hated his calling.

Why on Earth had the all-knowing, all powerful God reached down and plucked him out of the massive pool of humanity to lead him into the priesthood? There were times when it was almost too much for him to suffer. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back to simpler days. Back to Clemson, South Carolina, where for two years he played baseball for the university, before succumbing to the calling and following it, leading to his orders. He was a fine baseball player. Tall and lanky for a shortstop, but he had range and a swell arm. He hit rather well from both sides of the plate. He was a leader on the team, even as a freshman. Others looked to him. He had a moral compass that they admired. Oh to be sure, there was a minority that eschewed his straightness as being a bit of a Pollyanna, but down deep they all saw a man they would follow into battle or into an ACC title game.

His brother, Harry, had played for South Carolina. He had gone on to the Dodgers’ farm system in Albuquerque and on to Kansas City and then, just three years previously he had been traded to the Astros in Houston, who sent him into the majors — his brother there in a major league uniform. It was almost too good to be true. And the sportswriters were saying that Walter had even more potential than Harry had. Walter was the real thing. Scouts were at every practice and certainly every game. Draft day was approaching and many wondered if Brooks would come out of college and go in the draft.

Come out of college he did, but instead of entering the draft, he entered seminary and secluded himself behind the tall brick walls with their thick ivy camouflage and immersed himself into Latin, Greek and Hebrew of the holy scriptures. He studied the Mass and the saints and the history of the great Mother Church. He was no longer a shortstop. He was a man of God. And every day it caused him a bit of heartburn. Not about what could have been. No. Walter was fine with that. The indigestion came from his own view that he never lived up to the promise he made to the Creator. I will use the gifts you gave me — the talents you bestowed upon me for the greater good of all men. And I will be the best man I can be for you, Lord. At all times. He had said that publically in front of other seminarians during a devotion time. There were snickers in the small gathering. For others knew that such a promise was hard to make and even harder to fulfill. Getting by was what most of them wished for. Just making it long enough to see the glory of the Kingdom. But not Walter. He wanted to excel for the Church and for Christ.

After all, he had given up Beverly Scoggins for the calling. He had to make good on his promise, just to make that one sacrifice worth the effort. He had given her up and turned his back on that lifestyle. Sworn to celibacy and sobriety, he was a new man. A man with a mission. A man with a burden.

And days like the protest day made him wonder if he would ever get anywhere near his mark of perfection.

It had started out so fine. The skies that day were perfectly blue. The wind was gentle, which kept a slight coolness guarding the spring afternoon. They had gathered in the parking lot of a church not far from the Giant-Mart super store. Giant -Mart would not let them use their parking lot as an assembly point. The store’s management claimed it would disrupt shopping. The truth was they didn’t want anything controversial on their grounds. Controversy was good for the evening news, not for pre-Easter shopping. So the demonstrators met at the Fellowship Baptist Church and parked on their lot and on their grass and around their building wherever a car would go. Three hundred and fifty-two people. The largest crowd so far in the campaign — Walter beamed with pride. The army of the Lord had gathered and were marching to uphold truth. Signs were passed out. Cardboard, hand lettered and nailed to pine pickets, they proclaimed : Abortion kills. Abortion is against the Laws of God and Man. Abortion — Shame on you. Save a Life, Stop the Abortion. And as lame as the language of the signs were, the voices carrying those signs became impassioned and agitated. They rose with a furor and a heated attack. Liars. Murderers Baby Killers, Death to the killers, Fuck you killers, Faggot lovers. (He wasn’t sure about that one, what it was supposed to mean and when you consider it, it was just the thing that worried him. The mixing of right-wing undereducated political ideology with flimsy, thin theology that led to people picking up bricks and rocks and beginning to hurl them toward the young women who were trying to get into cars or who raced back to the protection of the small clinic.) No don’t, he yelled, Be calm. Don’t hurt them. We come in peace. We are doing the Lord’s work. He encouraged many to sing and to pray, but the violence had started and it consumed the masses — it was like a drug that raced through the veins of the protestors as they marched and then ran and finally delivered a full frontal assault. There was nothing he could do to quell the rebellion in the ranks. It had been promised to be a non-violent day of prayer and demonstration. By the end of the day three girls had been severely injured, one actually lost her child due to the attacks, while one other was close to dying at a local hospital. Seventeen arrested. Two journalists were hospitalized. A policeman lost an eye from the picket handle of a swinging sign and the clinic was smoldering in ashes.

Then there was the meeting in the church rectory’s office. It had gone as poorly as the demonstration had. You let it get out of hand, scolded the Monsignor.

I think God had a hand in this miscarriage of free speech. God and Satan alike. So don’t blame me. And where were you? Where were you when the shouting and name-calling and the bricks and stones were thrown about? Where were you when the crowd rushed the clinic and nearly destroyed those young girls’ lives? He was furious at the elder priest for blaming him.

Watch your tongue, Father Brooks. You are close to stepping over a very thin line. And they had separated for a short time to let each cool off. But the damage was done. The young Catholic priest had called out the older priest and pointed a figurative finger in his face. Where were you, old man? When the shit hit the fan, where were you?

Father Brooks, in the growing darkness of the stone rectory, could smell the cigarettes from the Monsignor’s office. The foul odor turned his stomach. He walked outside into the last minutes of a glorious fading sunset. He began walking down the hill, away from Saint Thomas Church and toward the east end of the community. From atop the hill he could still make out the flashing red and blue lights of the police cruisers and fire trucks parked along Bingham Drive that ran past the smoldering women’s clinic. It had burned to the ground in the melee. God’s will.

Chapter 2

She saw Thomas Elder cheating as she re-entered the classroom. He was taking his eyes off the desk of Sandra Kemishee, the brightest girl in the class. As soon as she walked in, he looked up and knew he had been caught. Lucy motioned quietly and with little fanfare for Thomas to follow her into the hallway.

Tell me the truth, Thomas. Were you getting answers from Sandra’s paper?

Yes. Number four.

That’s all?

Yes. Just that one. Number four. His purple and gold letter jacket representing three years of athletic endeavor for the school was almost too little for his bulk. His head looked too small for his enlarged neck, which came at a price of weight training and steroids.

You don’t understand number four?

No. Not at all.

It was on the study guide. Did you study?"

He shrugged.

It was on the study guide. You could have learned it. It was easy. The entire problem was set up and explained for you.

I didn’t get it. I still don’t.

So, if you were to write it down, to copy Sandra’s answer, assuming she got it right, neither could you defend it nor could you reproduce it on your own. Am I right?

Yes ma’am.

She hated the ma’am. She thought of herself as but a few years older than these high school, snot-nosed, kids as it were and she didn’t want to be hauled too terribly far into the abyss of adulthood just yet. You have two choices. First, use the answer you got from Sandra and you will have to explain your actions to Principal Wyatt. We will leave it to his discretion as to what he will have you do. But I might add good luck if you choose that path. Or two, leave number four blank and finish the rest of the exam with eyes focused solely on your own paper and desk.

I’ll choose number two.

That is a wise choice, Thomas. A very wise choice. Now return to your desk and do as you have said. Eyes on your paper. Your paper only.

At just that instant, fire trucks and emergency crews raced by the school, sirens stirring a cacophony into the still spring air and headed toward the town’s east side along Bingham Drive. Someone from within the classroom yelled, Miss Brooks, the clinic. It’s on fire. From their windows, the students and Lucy Brooks Alexander, who no longer used her estranged husband’s last name at school or in the community, could see the smoke and flames rising into the blue sky. She immediately thought of her brother who was supposed to be leading a protest there that very afternoon. She fought the temptation to say a prayer, for she no longer believed in a supreme being, let alone all the rigmarole associated with the worship of that said mythical individual as prescribed by her brother’s church. But just the same, she wished him luck and safety and good council all in one gulp of air. Stay safe, Walter. She said it to herself, but was almost sure it had escaped her lips in more than a barely audible form as well.

Several students stared at her until she nodded for them to return to their seats and complete the exam.

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Lucy had been teaching school for less than three years, after a stint with an investment-banking firm. She didn’t like the good old boy’s club of the bankers. And she liked even less their condescending looks and quips as her investment strategies, created from higher mathematical models she devised on paper late at night in her cramped apartment out paced their old formulaic puffery week after week, month after month. She didn’t like the fact that she got little to no credit for her accomplishments, while her male counterparts soared to the top on mediocre results.

She longed to do something to help people. She decided to teach. She was very good at it. Had a knack for turning high school kids into scholars of sorts. Math was her area of specialty. And to be even more precise, geometry, which was the class she was overseeing when the fire trucks wailed past the two-story red-brick school on their way to the East Meadows Women’s Clinic. She also had a writing class in the English department, but that was because another teacher had become ill and had to miss the better part of the spring semester. Lucy, having written several articles for a local magazine, was tapped to fill in and add nouns and adverbs to her tangents and acute angles. It is said, she did a marvelous job in both subject areas.

Lucy had been the dark and brooding child of the three Brooks children. Harry and Walter were athletes of some renown, but Lucy never quite seemed to find her way in team sports or other organizations where joining in was essential. She took a swing at softball, but it wasn’t her thing and neither was volleyball. She tried her hand at cheerleading, but to no avail. Lucy chalked it up to not being pretty enough to compete with the other girls. Looking at her some ten years past high school, one would laugh, because she had become a beautiful young woman. If one dared to say so, and certainly not in public for she was a single teacher, Lucy was down right sexy. And men noticed. Men like Professor Charles Alexander.

Lucy liked to run.

It was a singular undertaking. An individual accomplishment, not shared with teammates. It was all hers. And it was time spent where she could withdraw and think. She spent countless hours in cross-country training, running and thinking. As it turned out she was a fine runner and an even better thinker.

Lucy entered a small private college in North Carolina after graduating from high school with a partial track scholarship paying for some of her fees her first year. It was there she met a professor named Alexander who immediately had a thing for the young runner. He used to sit in the concrete stands and watch her stretch and practice for hours. He even volunteered to help drive the runners to their meets, just to be near her. It was all handled very subtly by the chemistry professor— so subtly that even Lucy did not notice at first. But by the end of the first year at college, Lucy was deeply in the grasp of Charles Alexander, PhD. She later admitted it was as much a revolt against her own mother as it was anything sexual, although the affair was hot and torrid.

Then came an offer for her to come to Georgia State and take part in a larger track and field program. The athletic department stipend paid for more schooling and more books and better room and board. And the education was on a grander scale than the small private college. Her parents, while never giving their children any edicts in their lives, did encourage her to go to Atlanta and try the bigger school. So, too did Harry and Walter. Yes. Yes. Go. Stretch yourself. The pun, along with the encouragement, was not lost on Lucy. Their coaxing was enough to settle matters. She enrolled at Georgia State and began a major in mathematics. Her sophomore and most of her junior years were wonderful, but an injury in the late spring of her junior season sent her to the sidelines and she never ran competitively again. That was fine with her. Education was now the driving force in her life. Education and the return of Dr. Alexander who had landed a professor’s job at a neighboring institution in Atlanta — Georgia Tech. The affair that once was thought to be dead, was rekindled and the two fell passionately in lust, for there was a growing concern that love had little to do with the relationship at all.

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The phone rang and a voice answered. Is Walter Brooks there? She asked.

Walter! The voice yelled down a hall that echoed back. Just a minute. I’ll find him. With that she heard the receiver being placed down and footsteps along the seminary’s polished rock corridor disappeared in the distance. In a matter of moments running footsteps could be made out as they approached the phone.

Breathlessly he answered. Walter Brooks.

Walter, it’s Lucy.

Lucy. How are you?

Great. Truly great. I hope I’m not keeping you from anything."

No. I was talking with a professor. I have been asked to deliver a homily in the student chapel on Sunday. It is quite an honor.

Swell. Listen, I’ve got some news.

What kind of news? He asked. Lucy rarely contacted him. They were separated by five years in age and by a great chasm of theological differences. He believed. She did not. He lived with faith — she, with logic. And they kept their differences separated by great distances, even when sitting together at family occasions. They had been so very close as children. When he was twelve she was seven, he took her under his wing and made her a part of the neighborhood kids. She

was accepted because she was Walter’s kid sister. Never on her own merit, she remembered, but always as a gift from Walter. A family gift. But the two grew close and when he went away to Clemson, she was left alone in the house and she brooded and was sullen and lonely. She had never really gotten to know her older brother, Harry.

Harry the star of the diamond. Harry the all-state this and the all-district that. He was always about with high school girls hanging onto him making silly commotion and coaches and scouts were always visiting the house and carrying on about his skills. Their father was of little use in this matter, for he himself had dreamed of a baseball career only to see it vanish. Now as an insurance salesman in a small town, he could relive his lost youth through his sons. But the daughter, she was there for what? The outcome of unprotected sex with their mother. And the mother — dear God — an alcoholic and a pill abuser. The mother could barely recognize her own daughter. And when she did, it was through hateful, sodden eyes. She despised what she saw in Lucy. She was reminded of what she once had and had lost. And when she could stand upright, she was ever so aggressive towards her own daughter, yelling and beating her with a hairbrush. It’s for your own good, you little whore. You tramp. And so it went. Her best defense was in solitude. And her favorite solitude was running. So running had become more than a sport, it was truly an escape for Lucy.

Walter had been aware of the trials Lucy endured. It was in some small part why he took her under his wing to protect her. He was a favorite of their mother, and with his presence, she left Lucy alone for the most part. But once Clemson called and Walter jettisoned the small town in South Carolina the Brooks called home, Lucy’s life was a living hell.

I have finally found love.

Lucy. This is great. Wonderful news. Yes. Yes, tell me.

It’s him again. Alex. She called Dr. Alexander, as did all his friends, simply Alex. He has asked me to marry him.

She remembered the emptiness of the phone that day. How silent Walter was. The excuses he quickly made to have to get back to his studies and prepare for the Sunday mass, which would be a milestone in his young ecclesiastical career. And with little encouragement (for he didn’t care one iota for the professor) Walter began the great drift away from his sister.

If you were to press Lucy about the matter she would say it had begun when she first confessed that she was sleeping with a college professor. A married one at that. Adultery. It was one of those red-letter sins. A biggie. It rocked Walter. He wouldn’t even consider the possibility of his kid sister doing such. Then he met the man. It was a weekend trip to Atlanta and he got to meet Dr. Alexander, ‘you can call me Alex’. He didn’t like anything about him, especially his smug demeanor, his self-righteous and pompous attitude of a highly educated man who used his power to sway young, unsuspecting girls over to him and into his trap. The whole matter turned Walter’s stomach. He wasn’t prepared for his sister to be living so loosely, so carnally. The drift started there. But on the phone the day Lucy called to share her excitement, Walter turned his back on her. And the chasm became wide.

The marriage was a total disaster. (Walter had predicted as much.) It could not have been worse. And to make matters more unbearable, Lucy’s mother had taken to Alex and swooned over him. He was the proper son she had never had. The one she could get her claws into and hold onto. Not a baseball player. Not a priest but an educated man. He was a man with airs and with sophistication. Grace and an elegant simplicity flowed from his gentle conversations. He aroused a passion in Lucy’s mother. And when Lucy untied the marital knot, what little relationship she had with her parents ended as abruptly as the divorce ended the marriage. Her mother called her a whore — a bitch. Her father said little other than to say, Lucy, Lucy how could you? As if the whole problem surrounding the failed union was her fault. No matter how bad it is, work together and fix it, Lucy. Fix it. He was a good Baptist and in the 1960’s you didn’t divorce. And while the year was some twenty past that decade, the attitudes of the Brooks and their small community was firmly rooted in the decade of civil rights unrest and men on the moon. The past was present with them. They had not moved on. That meant in marriage, you sucked it up and continued on.

No matter how bad it seems, the church does not condone divorce. It was the first offering of advice she had received after soliciting inspiration from Walter