Coming Home to Mother
by Robert Tucker Harrell
How long has it been this time? Except for a week’s respite in July and a week in October, I have been stoned every day since last February. But it is different now. . . The party ended a long time ago, and I cannot even recall what the party was like. From Journal, 1984
He woke up with a cough that took five minutes to calm down. Deep and dry, charred lungs pumped and sucked to get enough breath to dispel the dizziness. Next stop the toilet, just a few unsteady steps away. “Ralph, you’re an asshole,” he muttered to himself, sitting solidly on the toilet. He lit the roach from last night’s final smoke, just within reach. First hit, his lungs recoiled with a single sustained cough as he exhaled, but then immediately with a long inhalation he took a massive second hit. It held; it took. Two hits worth of stout Columbian sent the warm buzz into back of neck, shoulders, and arms. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he groaned as he exhaled again. The stench of last night’s calf fries and slaw rose gently with the swirling cloud of smoke. Three more strong tokes and the day was off to the gentlest of starts. After a couple of long minutes, he cleaned up and rose from his throne to turn on the shower. Steam. Liquid warmth. Outside it was -3 degrees on the thermometer; -8 wind chill. High plains in the Texas panhandle could be brutal. He did not know the temperature in the house. Naked, alone, he stared back at himself from the waist up in the bathroom mirror. All he wore was a long shaggy beard with tobacco stains in the middle of his mustache.
In the kitchen, his thoughts resumed as the water in the teakettle screamed. Two bags of Earl Gray waited in the mug to contribute their dose of caffeine to the chemical balancing act that made it possible to function simultaneously as a dope head and a parish priest. He reasoned that if he could get wide awake enough, whiten up the eyes with drops, and smell like Camel cigarettes, no one could figure out what was actually happening in his head and body. The tea turned coal black. The toaster clanked. Had he made toast? “Let’s eat!” he laughed. Hot tea chased dry toast into his gut. The mix was warm and reassuring. The physical saturation of being stoned and fed helped switch his thoughts off again. When the voices were silenced, the day could go on. Alone with his thoughts was the gateway to an abyss from which return was never certain. He hooked the front of his clerical collar into place, checked his pockets and walked out to the garage. The blast of chill stunned and stung as the garage door went up. He grabbed his jacket frrom the from seat and lurched into the driver’s seat. “Fr. Ralph against the demons! Here. We. Go!”
He slowly drove the few blocks to the parish office. New glass packs on his old Chevy suburban gut-belched white exhaust plumes. Scraped bare by last night’s snowplow, empty neighborhood streets outlined the glare of a hefty layer of fresh snow. Two little boys, poorly dressed for such cold weather, stood knee deep in the snow peering in the side window of St. Ninian’s Episcopal Church. “Hey, how are you boys doing?” asked Fr. Ralph, flipping his cigarette into the snow at the curb. His first two fingers had a greenish stain from the filterless cigarettes that he smoked through most of his day. “What are you looking for?”
“We want to see the candles!”
“Well come on in and let me show you! Don’t you guys have jackets?”
“No, mister,” they shivered. “We don’t got one.”
They entered and passed by the office and into the interior of the church. To the right hung a 2 ft. X 3ft icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help with a brass oil lamp hanging from chains in front of her face, and a votive candle stand with mostly burnt out candles sat before her on an oriental rug. An antique prayer desk with a purple velvet kneeler stood in from of that. Three candles flamed up bright in their last flickers of carbon residue and pulsed tufts of black smoke. The boys stood very still as they stared silently, not even blinking.
“Have you ever been in a church before? Fr. Ralph asked.
“No, mister,” said the younger one of them.
“This is the first time anyone ever let us into one,” added the older and taller of the two.
They smelled bad, the kind of thick organic stink that forms on unwashed skin and clothes when it becomes fixed with the body’s oil. They looked hungry.
“Do you know who this is in the picture?” Ralph watched them as they paused and stared, looking at the Virgin intently but not at each other or at him.
Finally, the younger one spoke suddenly and with conviction. “It’s Mother Mary!”
“How do you know that?” Ralph asked him quite seriously.
“I don’t know, mister! But I’m sure that’s who she is!”
“The older boy hesitated, wrinkled his brow, stared at her carefully and added, “I think everyone knows her . . .” His voice drifted and he kept on looking at her.
“What do you want to do?” Ralph asked, not quite sure what to do with his first meeting of the day.
“Can we light a candle?”
“Of course, You can each light one. Let me show you how.”
They approached the holy icon. Fr. Ralph showed them how to take the wooden stick from the sand box on the side of the votive rack and light the tip from one of the other candles. Each boy in turn carefully lit one of the candles. They all three stepped back a step and just looked.
“Now, guys, I want you to think about what you need her to help you with. Ask her in your heart to do it, and then we’ll pray together.” All three of them, the wretched priest and the two ragged cold little boys, stood together in a long silence. The Blessed Mother beheld the three of them standing there in the candlelight, the gray sky of early morning and snow softly illuminating them through the window behind them. Fr. Ralph asked her in his interior heart, “Please, Blessed Mother, protect these little men! Please bring them to Jesus!” They all said, “Amen!” and Ralph showed them how to make the sign of the cross on themselves. They stood still another full minute to watch the three guttering candles finally die out with in a plume of smoke. The boys’ candles burned golden bright.
After that, it only took five minutes to teach them the “Hail Mary” prayer, which they each then recited individually and then all three of them together. “You can say that prayer whenever you want to remember Mother Mary, and she’ll stop whatever she’s doing to listen just to you, whatever you need.”
“OK mister,” they smiled. “We gotta go! Thanks for letting us light the candles and letting us meet the Lady!” At that they ran out the door, across the long yard and across the street. Ralph watched their tracks in the drifting snow start to disappear as the wind picked up.
Realizing he had not turned up the heat and that it was quite cold in the office, he flipped the switch and turned up the thermostat. The furnace roared to life in the attic above him. Flopping heavily in his office chair, he lit up a cigarette and drew on it deeply to fill his lungs. Slowly the smoke drifted out of his nose and mouth. “Did that really just happen?” he wondered to himself. Walking back into the church, he stood for a while before the icon watching their two candles burn as if they would never go out.