Bless Me, Ultima(80)

“It would never finish,” June shook her head sadly. “Just in a bucket of sand there must be a million grains, and to move that would take thousands of years. But to move the whole mountain of sand—” She ended her sentence in despair. Horse whinnied and began to bolt in his pew, and Bones had latched his teeth to the back of the pew and was viciously tearing at it, his eyes rolling wildly all the time and the white froth came foaming from his mouth. Even Abel and Lloyd, and the girls, seemed nervous with the impending conclusion of the story.

“Is that how long eternity is?” Agnes asked bravely. “Is that how long the souls have to burn?”

“No,” Father Byrnes said softly, and we looked to him for help, but instead he finished by saying, “when the little bird has moved that mountain of sand across the ocean, that is only the first day of eternity!”

We gasped and fell back in our seats, shuddering at the thought of spending eternity in hell. The story made a great impression on us. Nobody moved. The wind whistled around the church, and as the sun sank in the west one penetrating ray of light gathered the colors of the stained glass window and softly laid them, like flowers, around the Virgin’s altar. The old woman who had been praying there was gone. In the dark aisle of the church Florence stood, his numbed arms outstretched, unafraid of eternity.





Dieciocho


Ash Wednesday. There is no other day like Ash Wednesday. The proud and the meek, the arrogant and the humble are all made equal on Ash Wednesday. The healthy and the sick, the assured and the sick in spirit, all make their way to church in the gray morning or in the dusty afternoon. They line up silently, eyes downcast, bony fingers counting the beads of the rosary, lips mumbling prayers. All are repentant, all are preparing themselves for the shock of the laying of the ashes on the forehead and the priest’s agonizing words, “Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

The anointment is done, and the priest moves on, only the dull feeling of helplessness remains. The body is not important. It is made of dust; it is made of ashes. It is food for the worms. The winds and the waters dissolve it and scatter it to the four corners of the earth. In the end, what we care most for lasts only a brief lifetime, then there is eternity. Time forever. Millions of worlds are born, evolve, and pass away into nebulous, unmeasured skies; and there is still eternity. Time always. The body becomes dust and trees and exploding fire, it becomes gaseous and disappears, and still there is eternity. Silent, unopposed, brooding, forever…

But the soul survives. The soul lives on forever. It is the soul that must be saved, because the soul endures. And so when the burden of being nothing lifts from one’s thoughts the idea of the immortality of the soul is like a light in a blinding storm. Dear God! the spirit cries out, my soul will live forever!

And so we hurried to catechism! The trying forty days of Lent lay ahead of us, then the shining goal, Easter Sunday and first holy communion  ! Very little else mattered in my life. School work was dull and uninspiring compared to the mysteries of religion. Each new question, each new catechism chapter, each new story seemed to open up a thousand facets concerning the salvation of my soul. I saw very little of Ultima, or even of my mother and father. I was concerned with myself. I knew that eternity lasted forever, and a soul because of one mistake could spend that eternity in hell.

The knowledge of this was frightful. I had many dreams in which I saw myself or different people burning in the fires of hell. One person especially continually haunted my nightmares. It was Florence. Inevitably it was he whom I saw burning in the roaring inferno of eternal damnation.

But why? I questioned the hissing fires, Florence knows all the answers!

But he does not accept, the flames lisped back.

“Florence,” I begged him that afternoon, “try to answer.”

He smiled. “And lie to myself,” he answered.

“Don’t lie! Just answer!” I shouted with impatience.

“You mean, when the priest asks where is God, I am to say God is everywhere: He is the worms that await the summer heat to eat Narciso. He shares the bed with Tenorio and his evil daughters—”

“Oh, God!” I cried in despair.

Samuel came up and touched me on the shoulder. “Perhaps things would not be so difficult if he believed in the golden carp,” he said softly.

“Does Florence know?” I asked.

“This summer he shall know,” Samuel answered wisely.

“What’s that all about?” Ernie asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Come on!” Abel shouted, “bell’s ringing—”