Pierced by a Sword (6 page)

Or was it I didn't
let
myself like them? The Wojtals. Jeeze, I can't remember doing anything with them but eat dinner. They both worked all the time. No kids. Back to the depressing part of The Life of Nathan Feel the Pain
Payne.

He never really found friends in the public grade school he attended in the Chicago suburbs.
I was the invisible kid.

Before moving to Chicago, he had practically lived at the Sullivan home, eating dinner there a couple of times a week and generally getting into harmless trouble playing pranks with Chet. His grades didn't reflect it, but the teachers knew Nathan was smart and treated him
kindly. Especially the nuns.

Although he considered himself an agnostic and carefully avoided setting foot in church after his Babsie died (except for required Masses at Our Lady of Lourdes Grammar School), it always bothered Nathan when comedians made jokes about cruel, heartless nuns.

Old Sister Lardo used to look at me with such gentleness, and seemed to sense I was troubled. She never pushed
me, but always told me how intelligent I was. Most of the other nuns were the same way. Next to Chet's family, nuns were the nicest people I ever knew.

One day in fifth grade, Sister Leonardo held Nathan after school. She was now the principal of Our Lady of Lourdes. She threw him for a loop that day:
"You know, Nathan, you've always been my favorite student. Don't look so surprised young man!
I know you and the Sullivan boy called me Sister Lardo in first grade. The elephant never forgets."
The big woman laughed cheerfully, letting him know that the joke was okay in a strangely adult way. He was particularly confused after the elephant crack.

Sister Lardo had continued:
"Nevertheless, I'm entering you in the diocesan math contest. I know you can do better at math, much better. We have
tests."

God! She must have been referring to IQ tests!
Nathan now realized.

"I have a feeling that you'll do quite well if you consider math a game. I'm going to help you after school. Don't look so long-faced, young man. Just fifteen minutes a day. Then you can run along to the Sullivans' house and play. The elephant has spoken, young man, and you shall obey."

The gigantic nun did tutor him–every
day for two years. And Nathan won every math contest he ever entered. Nathan was doing college level calculus by the end of eighth grade. In Chicago, his math skills earned him a full scholarship to Fenwick High School. The scholarship was sponsored by a math-whiz alumnus who had made millions manufacturing drinking straws. It was called the Straw Man Scholarship by Fenwick students. Nathan aced
his SATs (in both Math and Verbal) and won a full ride to the University of Illinois.

Chet got into Notre Dame, and the two friends made a ritual of meeting in Chicago on weekends a few times a semester. Chet had been a faithful pen pal since the move. Only now did Nathan consider that Chet might have been deeply saddened when he moved away.
I was so selfish that I shut everybody out–and I almost
shut out Chetmeister. Chet used to write to me four times before I ever wrote him back.
By the time they got into college, both young men were more interested in partying than anything else.

We were a killer team until old Chetmeister got religion. Ten years ago. Funny, I never came to visit Chet here at Notre Dame. Not even once. Was I avoiding this place?

If a stranger could see Nathan sitting
in the Mustang with the sleeping woman next to him, it would seem like he was having a telepathic discussion with the statue of Mary on the dome.

Yeah, I used to love you, Mary. Babsie said you knew Mom and I would get to see you both together someday. Babsie would never tell me when someday would come. Well, there you are. Where's Mom?

He tasted salt.

Have I been crying?

He looked over at Joanie.
She was wide awake. For a brief moment Nathan saw empathy in her eyes. It disappeared quickly.

"Hi Joanie," he said softly, awkwardly. He looked down at his lap, embarrassed by his tears. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and looked back to the pretty, silent woman next to him. This was his first sober look into her eyes.

Nathan Payne fell in love. Just like that–much in the same way Chet had
decided to be Nathan's best friend on the first day of school so many years before.

"I want to get as far away from you as I can as soon as I can!" Joanie Wheat came down on each word slowly and distinctly, as if she had practiced them. "And I'm going to start right now. Thanks for the ride, Mister."

She didn't even open the door. She hopped over it instead and stormed away, toward a brown statue
of a guy who was wearing a funny hat.

6

Sunday Morning
8 October
Notre Dame, Indiana

Professor Thomas Wheat finished collecting his lecture notes and left his office in O'Shaughnessy Hall–known as O'Shag to students and teachers. He had come in on Sunday to gather the notes so he could review them for his class the next day. He had a crew cut, was average height, with rough good looks. He looked
more like an NFL quarterback than a History professor, except for his typical professorial uniform of khaki pants, oxford shirt, and herringbone jacket. One month past his sixty-first birthday, coeds still seemed to get infatuated with him. Their crushes barely registered on Tom–he was a happily married man and a father of seven.

He had eight grandchildren already. His wife Anne got a kick out
of his tradition of making grandchild projections at the family Christmas gatherings. Last Christmas, he had predicted two more grandkids–and was thrilled when three were born. Tom and Anne lived in a modestly large farmhouse in Mishawaka, ten miles from campus.

Unlike his politically correct and research-oriented peers, Wheat taught for the sheer love of it. He was deeply satisfied when his students
finally grasped that history was more than a recitation of facts. Most of his peers considered him a relic for the simple reason that he believed one could discover objective truth in history. Surely he would never have gotten tenure in this day and age of Political Correctness. As for his students, they loved the way Wheat told stories.

He had an avocation outside of academia. Fourteen years
earlier, he had become entranced by William Thomas Walsh's book,
Our Lady of Fatima.
He had dedicated his spare time and research to finding out all he could about the alleged apparitions of Mary, the Mother of God. These apparitions had multiplied around the world in recent decades. Soon he was giving talks on the subject at local parishes. His natural storytelling ability and his flair for the
dramatic had made him famous in a small subspecies of the huge body of Catholics in the United States: Catholics who actually believed that Jesus had the power to send His Mother to the world as a prophetess–just as Yahweh had sent Noah to warn the world before the Great Flood.

Joe Jackson, an enterprising member of the local Knights of Immaculata group recorded one of Wheat's talks and–against
Tom's mild protests–started distributing the audio CDs freely to anyone who asked for them. Jackson never charged for the recordings, but free will donations seemed to cover the costs.

That had been almost five years ago. Millions of tapes and CDs had been distributed by Jackson's Kolbe Foundation in the meantime. Now Wheat was considered the foremost English-speaking expert on Marian apparitions–but
only by those few Catholics who were willing to hear him. There were almost sixty million Catholics in the United States. Relatively few–perhaps several million–knew of the reported messages from the Mother of God in any detail.

His colleagues, had they known about his secret career, would have laughed. "There goes that old dinosaur Wheat–on and on about superstitious and deluded children seeing
the Mother of God!" Wheat wouldn't have bothered to point out to his learned colleagues that Mary had predicted at Fatima the rise of Communist Russia before the Revolution in 1917. She had also predicted when World War II would start–thirty years before it began.

Not to mention her predictions to children in Rwanda of the wholesale decapitations in 1994–ten years before they occurred,
Tom mused
darkly.

Professors at Catholic colleges like Notre Dame had dropped Marian devotion decades ago. Wheat's colleagues were a microcosm of Catholics in general. Wheat knew the statistics well. Less than forty percent of Catholics attended Sunday Mass. Of those who did attend, less than twenty percent actually believed the teachings of their own Church. This meant only seven percent or so of the entire
Catholic population were like Whea–true believers. It was not uncommon for the remaining seven percent of orthodox Catholics to fight with each other over the authenticity of particular Marian apparitions. Some of the more traditional Catholics, who were understandably embittered by the
de facto
prohibition of the beautiful Tridentine Mass, considered adherents to Marian apparitions to be End
Times fanatics. Of course Tom Wheat didn't consider himself a fanatic. He considered himself a sober reporter. If the Mother of God and her Son were saying that the world was about to undergo a period of unprecedented tribulations, who was he to ignore their words?

The whole situation is one giant mess,
Wheat thought dejectedly.
It was my generation that dropped the ball. Twenty centuries of faith
stopped cold by one generation of baby boomers. Martyrs spilled their blood so my generation could skip Sunday Mass to watch pro football. Communion of Saints exchanged for the New Orleans Saints.

The majority of Wheat's students were so poorly educated in matters of the faith that they would have had trouble reciting the Ten Commandments.

Ninety-three percent of baptized Catholics rejected part
or all of the ageless teachings of Catholicism. This vast majority got divorced, contracepted, aborted, and generally acted like everyone else in nominally Christian America. To Wheat's liberal Catholic friends, these same statistics meant seven percent were still following the "superstitions of Rome."

Liberal Catholics didn't disturb Wheat's equilibrium. He avoided arguing with them–their minds
were pretty much closed to the facts. Wheat was secure in his love for the Catholic Church, which he loved more than teaching and more than his wonderful wife, Anne. The Catholic Church was the Mystical Body of Christ. To love the Church was to love Jesus. It wasn't complicated.

Wheat also believed for a logical reason: the Catholic Church was unique in all of history. It was the very measuring
stick of history. He could not deny any of its teachings, which he knew with the precision of a dedicated scholar, nor the beauty these truths brought into his life.

More than that, Tom Wheat believed because his prayers were answered, which had been the case since he was a boy. He had experienced first hand what the famous French convert Pascal was driving at when he challenged atheists and agnostics
with his famous Wager. Blaise Pascal believed that if a person sincerely acts
as if
he had faith with devotion for a period of one year, the gift of faith will be given to him. After all, if God doesn't exist, you've lost little. If He does exist, then you've gained an eternity filled with infinite reward by making a finite wager of a part of your life. Tom Wheat was well aware of the fact that
thousands had converted to the faith after taking up Pascal's Wager. By this stage in his life, he was a lot more worried about his family and friends choosing to forego those rewards than missing them himself.

As Tom studied the apparitions of Mary, he started to respond to what Mary was saying.
My colleagues would say I've internalized it,
he thought with a grin.

He took the Queen of Heaven's
advice and began to fast on bread and water twice a week. He made a concerted effort to love his wife and children in the little things. Wheat offered up the small inconveniences in his life for the conversion of sinners. He enlisted in Mary's humble army by joining the Knights of Immaculata. In short, Tom was becoming a saint. He was a preacher who practiced what he preached–a rarity.

Wheat looked
at his Longines wristwatch.
Time for Mass.

For some reason, as he left O'Shag, Tom decided to walk down the South Quad toward Sacred Heart Basilica instead of his usual path by Zahm Hall via the North Quad. Such is the prompting of chance–or grace. For this little detour would bring him into contact with Nathan Payne–and would change the fates of countless people.

Chapter Three

1

One Month Earlier
Hilton Hotel
Los Angeles, California

Lee's mother was really starting to get on his nerves.

Doesn't Mama know I'm doing this for her? God, I'm going to have to cut her off like I used to cut off my junkies when they couldn't pay. She's addicted to clothes, furniture, and lottery tickets! Amazing.

He snorted up another line of coke off the small mirror he had placed
on the expansive desk.

What about you? Gonna cut yourself off, boy?

He ignored himself.

A beautiful black woman, a relatively famous rap singer named Raja X, lay sleeping in the bed. It was a king-size bed with fine mahogany posts.

Time to check my email.

The irony, of course, was that Lee would never have done coke while selling it in the Woodland Section of Cleveland. That would have been bad
for business. Back then, he held addicts in contempt. He preferred alcohol as his drug of choice. But Cleveland was in another universe altogether.

Lee was now in what he considered a much more desirable universe. In less than three months he had parlayed his minor fortune from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation deal into much, much more. After moving to Los Angeles with his mom, he quickly began
to study the landscape for deals similar to the one he pulled off in Cleveland. For a home, he bought a modest two-bedroom split-level in El Segundo–as close to the airport runways as he could find–to take advantage of the lower property values. He quickly moved in with his mother and their few meager belongings. He gave her four thousand dollars and told her to buy some clothes and furniture. It
took her less than one day to spend it. Lee leased a new Cadillac Escalade–with practically no money down, of course.

Lee was so impressed with the results from the real estate course that he spent days at the local library studying everything he could find on the subject. He also bought a book on dressing for success (to Lee this meant dressing white).

A clerk at a bookstore recommended a few
titles in the Human Potential Movement section. Lee bought a few of those books on a whim and really dug them. Soon he was regularly purchasing audio seminars at the Scientology bookstore after reading in
People
magazine that John Travolta was a big-time member.

He watched CNI and practiced pronouncing words like the white folks. His mother laughed at him but Lee paid little attention. After a
few weeks he had to buy Shawna her own separate television set for her game shows and Oprah.

Lee knew instinctively that it was a white world and that he owed his Clinic deal to no small measure of luck.

He spent another five grand on a new wardrobe, relying on the advice of a homosexual clothier named Fabian who got a kick out of Lee's request to help him dress "like a honky lawyer."

Lee doubted
Fabian was the homosexual's real name. He suggested in a slightly lisping voice that Lee should visit a certain hair dresser who could supply Lee with a honky haircut. A friendship began. Fabian invited him to a party a few days later and Lee did not decline.

He kept his mouth shut at the party out of fear of embarrassing himself with his ghetto speech, and partly to observe carefully the new
world of upper and middle class whites, blacks, and gays of both colors.

So this is where all the money is,
he thought.

He was struck by two things. First, (and this was hard for him to admit to himself) he was as smart or smarter than most of the people he met. This was especially true despite his lack of reading and writing skills. He had been sizing people up his whole life, as a survival instinct,
and he knew that he could out-think most of the people in the room except, curiously, the gay haberdasher Fabian.

The second thing Lee noticed was a complete revelation. For the first time in his life, he could not smell fear on the skin of whites when they looked at him.

Standing in the corner of Fabian's apartment, Lee put down his glass of watery light beer and looked at himself in the mirror
that covered the entire wall of the smoky living room.

I look more like Denzel Washington than any of the homeboys back in the Woodland Section. I didn't have to move to LA to get away from Woodland. All I had to do was shop at Tower City!
Tower City was an upscale mall in the center of the business district of downtown Cleveland.

These two revelations, namely, that he could disguise his poor
background with clothing, money, and manners; and that he was more intelligent than most other people–even white people–added up in Lee's mind more quickly than he added profit margins during his deals:
I'm going to be rich!

All his Personal Power CDs assured him basically the same thing.

Lee turned down two offers for cocaine that evening, excused himself early, and made sure he got Fabian's
cell phone number before leaving. He drove his Escalade back to El Segundo. Instead of going to bed, Lee stayed up until two in the morning studying.

One week later, he convinced Fabian and two of his gay friends to take options on land in Oxnard near a hospital that was slated to receive huge federal grants for AIDS research.

Then Fabian introduced Lee to a gay soap opera actor. The actor happened
to be black and was originally from Akron, Ohio. The two transplants hit it off. Lee discovered the actor was in the market for a condominium in Inglewood. Four days later, Lee passed the California real estate exam by one point and sold the actor a condominium the next day.

Three days after that, he rented a prime piece of office space in downtown Los Angeles across from the Hilton. Lee considered
the office in the same category as his wardrobe–a disguise to fool whites and middle class blacks. He also hired a white secretary from a temp firm, and Fabian's accountant to do his books. Then he hired another one of Fabian's friends to resell the smaller properties in El Segundo that Lee had begun to buy. He called his company Washington Properties. Washington Properties broke even or made
a few thousand on most of the smaller deals. Lee was so engrossed with his work that he barely noticed he was working eighteen hours a day. Shawna Washington began to complain that her son was too busy and started nagging him for more money.

Lee was investing almost all his Clinic Deal fortune, consciously betting on his own ability, bolstered by the human potential CDs and books he was reading.
Financially, he seemed to be a good horse to bet on. When he made Fabian and his friends fifty grand each (and pocketed as much for himself, plus a cut) on the Oxnard properties, word quickly spread about the Boy Wonder from Cleveland.

In the hip and hyped world of Los Angeles, Lee gave halting, low-key presentations, delivered with his calm, quiet voice. His presentations were always augmented
by impressive research neatly inscribed on yellow pads in his tiny, childlike handwriting. He was tough, fair, and even generous. Little did his investors realize that this was his practical and relentless way of investing in them. They were more valuable to him than any property.

Lee secretly relished the fact that he had maneuvered himself into a glorious position for any businessman:
Now I'm
risking and investing other people's money, just like it says in all the books.

He began to chant to himself over and over:
I will have a million dollars before the end of the year. And after two years I'll have ten million dollars. By the end of ten years I'll own the Lakers!

He put the team photo of the Lakers on his desk, just as the gurus advised him, so he could visualize owning the sports
franchise.

Fabian had made a pass at Lee several weeks earlier, and he didn't seem insulted when Lee turned him down. Lee decided that if he didn't want to collapse from exhaustion, he had better take a few hours off to relax with a woman. He was pleasantly surprised when the white women he met at the parties were willing to sleep with him. They were even willing to be seen with him at restaurants
and nightclubs.

When Raja X took him to the bathroom at one of Fabian's endless parties and offered him a line of white powder, Lee decided one snort might help keep him awake.

One line was all Lee took at that party. After all, he was in control of himself and in total control of his own destiny. He was
creating
himself. He could handle one line. Besides, if all these rich folks could handle
it–and afford it–couldn't he?

Just one line.

Raja was far more beautiful and insatiable than old Tawana. Lee had to admit that Tawana was a little fat in the thighs and not as, well,
cosmopolitan
, as Raja.

Unlike Tawana, Raja came from a middle class family and was well spoken. The rap singer had gone to a local community college before striking out into the music world. Raja worked out to stay
in shape. She affected ghetto slang as part of her stage persona. Lee had a good laugh when she told him that.

Raja X laughed harder when he confided to her that he affected his whitebread pronunciation by watching TV. They shared ambition and belief in creating themselves and more recently, their drug bills. Raja's real name was Ellen Snow.

A year ago I didn't even know the word cosmopolitan,
much less understand it.

Lee eventually began to get high before sleeping with Raja. To relax. One night he bought ten thousand dollars worth of coke.

Ten grand? That's a few hours of work on my deal in Oxnard. That's like ten bucks back in Woodland. No sweat. I'll have a million before the end of the year...

Lee shook himself from his thoughts and focused his eyes on his email inbox. He decided
to put off answering them until morning. The drug was quickly taking effect. He climbed off the chair and onto the bed, kissing Raja on the cheek. She opened her eyes and looked at him, smiling warmly. Then she noticed his Miraculous Medal. She remembered a question which she had always wanted to ask him.

"Why do you wear that around your neck?" she nodded at his Miraculous Medal. "What's it called?"

"Oh this?" A puzzled look came to his face as he held the medal in his hand. "I don't know what it's called. Found it in a dump when I was a kid. It's my lucky charm. It helped me find you." Still looking down, Lee smiled awkwardly at his corny, romantic innocence.

He looked up and saw that Raja had raised her eyebrows, showing him her "I'm gonna have an Ambiance night" look. Curiosity about his
medal had left her mind as quickly as it came. Lee forgot about his good luck charm.

"Come here, City Boy," she purred.

2

Sunday Morning
8 October
Notre Dame, Indiana

Nathan watched Joanie Wheat storm away toward the statue of the guy with the funny hat. During his short adult life he had always been the one to walk away, usually sneaking out of bedrooms after one night stands. He
never
allowed
himself to get emotionally involved with women–even those he slept with more than once. When they realized this, they left him soon enough.

Now Nathan felt pulled in two directions. He had always prided himself on his detachment. He had little use for feelings and despised men who let women trap them emotionally. All his experience since losing his mother had taught him to feel relieved when women
deserted him, or vice versa.

Yet Joanie was somehow different. As she walked briskly away, not looking back, he felt that she was taking something with her that was
his.
He felt, no, he knew, that this was a moment of great importance. It was like the microsecond before he took a gamble on buying or selling a stock.

It was the time for a decision. Nathan decided.

What do I care? She's not even
number forty-eight.

He took his eyes off the auburn-haired girl and put his fingers on the key in the ignition.

The hell with her.

+  +  +

At precisely the same moment in Chicago, the Reverend William Chester "Chet" Sullivan was patiently waiting for Becky Macadam to show up at a coffee shop. Thinking of her brought his friend Nathan to mind.

After all, it was at Nathan's party where Chet met
Becky. Chet–out of long habit–decided to say a prayer for Nathan, as he had a thousand times before in spare moments over the years. Just a simple, short prayer.

Dear Jesus, help Nathan find his way to your mother's Immaculate Heart, like you helped me. He's my friend.

Father Chet quickly forgot his little prayer when he saw the stunningly beautiful Becky Macadam walking up the sidewalk toward
the cafe.

A song from a New Jersey group called the Smithereens popped into the priest's mind:
"Beauty and Sadness."

Then, a line from the Gospel of Luke:
"A sign of contradiction"–like the Pieta in Saint Peter's in Rome. What's more beautiful and sad than the Mother of God cradling her dead Son?

+  +  +

As Nathan began turning the key to start the Mustang, he heard a woman's voice inside his
head:
"Beauty and sadness, young man. Joanie is a sign of contradiction and so are you."

"Is that you, Sister Lardo?" Nathan asked aloud, confused.

He looked to the back seat, half-expecting to see his first grade teacher sitting there as if transported through some kind of surreal time warp. The convertible's back seat was empty. He spun quickly to look out the windshield.

Then the voice came
again. One word:
"Go."

Even though he was wide awake, Nathan suddenly felt as if he had woken up from a dream.

One word echoed in his mind.
Go.

Go,
Nathan thought, rather disoriented.
Go where? Leave Notre Dame? Go after her, you stupid moron. Run!

Nathan turned the car off and jumped out without opening the door. He sprinted toward Joanie.

What are you going to say to her, track star?

He caught
up with her at precisely the moment she reached the strange statue.

"Joanie," Nathan called softly, out of breath.

She turned to look at him. Her blue eyes iced over with anger. His stomach pitched like a boat on a wave when he looked at her. He was breathing hard.