CHAPTER ONE
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.
—Book of Joel 2:28
Chicago
Father Raymond Kera glanced around the bar with men cheering a baseball game on the television. He focused on the priest, Garcia, sitting opposite him in the darkened booth, their gin glasses brimmed with ice and thin lemon slices. Raymond cleared his throat and said the words he had never spoken aloud.
“‘The road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests.’”
The words twisted on his tongue. The old quote had hammered him for years. He didn’t even like reading the words in books. Raymond downed a third of the gin in one gulp. The slick felt good slipping over his tongue. “I read that there’s been a lot of debate that the word skulls was misread for the term souls.”
Garcia gave him a shrug.
“Some authorities claimed that St. John Chrysostom never even wrote it. Maybe the quote is faulty.” Raymond waited for his friend’s response, and seeing none, he sloshed in another mouthful of gin. “So? You’ve got nothing to say about this?”
“I’d say, don’t take it so literally, faulty or not,” Garcia said in his smooth accent. “Everybody sins, even priests. Let it go. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
Let it go? Raymond wished he could be so casual. “Not entirely. There’s something else. Who named you Garcia the Prophet?”
“I’m no prophet.”
“That’s not how I hear it. Who proclaimed you a prophet?”
“Genuine prophets are not proclaimed. They just are. And humble as heaven too. They feel their souls right beneath their skin. It’s like a living presence always upon you. Except, it moves first, before you can even think. Scary as all hell. Nobody wants to be a prophet. I certainly don’t.”
“You get revelations of impending events?”
“Never.”
“You can see ahead though, can’t you?”
“Not really.”
“You see within?”
Garcia blinked, added a smirk. “Sometimes. Take off your clerical collar.”
Raymond unsnapped the white circle around his neck, tossed it on the table. “Why don’t I ever see you wearing one of these?”
“Because it’s a noose.”
Raymond bit the inside of his cheek. “Garcia,” he glanced to the television. Cubs were down by three runs. “Things are worse.”
Garcia slugged his gin. “Yeah? That old bitch still complaining about you?”
“She is, but that’s not the worse part. My review was a complete meltdown.”
“Again? Not that crap about your lacking drive, was it?”
“That and my dull homilies. You have no skills to inspire, Father Kera,” he said proud of his acid imitation of Monsignor. “You have a reedy voice. You misrepresent the gospels.” He swallowed hard. “I’m failing, Garcia.”
“Failing? You’ve got big fucking rocks in your head, man. Listen, what has all your obedience brought you? What has your precious chastity accomplished? Aren’t you the guy who’s dazzled every chick this side of Chicago?” Garcia made a dirty laugh. “Listen to me, Fireball Kera, what you need is some good healthy fucking.”
“The day I was ordained, I vowed not to dazzle anybody.”
“Not even Layla? What a woman you tossed away. Jesus, Kera, did you really expect to scour out your sex drive just because you became a priest?”
Maybe he did. Raymond leaned in and whispered. “It’s more than that. There’s no voice. No touch. Nothing of His presence anymore.”
“Be still. It’ll pass.” Garcia sucked an ice cube.
“It’s not passing. I wake up at four a.m., sweaty, my heart pounding, my legs shaking.” He succumbed to the gin that loosened him up. “In the corner of my room I see hooked shadows.”
Garcia shook his head. “It’s just fear, man. Abandonment, death, damnation—who doesn’t have fears?”
“This shadow, it has twisted hair, claws, moldy breath.”
Garcia’s face dropped.
“I turn on the lights. Open my Bible. I might as well be reading the newspaper for all the comfort it brings.”
“Raymondo, you’ve got to get a grip, man.”
“I cannot pray,” he whispered fiercely. “All I have are empty repetitions.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea it was this … dark for you. I knew you felt, well, I knew you were in a struggle but, for Christ’s sake, we all struggle. How long has this been happening?”
Raymond couldn’t admit to Garcia that he’d had these visions since childhood. What a stupid scared little kid he was—repeatedly waking up in the middle of the night, terrified something evil occupied his room. When he became a priest, the images stopped. Now they’d returned. “Garcia, have you ever felt anything like this?”
Garcia shook his head.
“Never?”
“Honestly, no.”
Garcia said it with such an apologetic face; it had to be true. “Not even a fleeting moment of doubt or abandonment in all your fifteen years of service? Was your calling so certain?”
Garcia huffed. “My calling? And God created priests,” he said in a dramatic voice. “Callings are self-important bullshit. All that surrender crap. No, I was never called.”
“Then why become a priest?”
Garcia chewed a lemon slice dripping with gin. “I was asked.”
“What do you mean, asked?”
Garcia had big bulging black eyes that gave him a starved little-boy-look. Most of the time, people couldn’t resist this forty-year-old man with hair buzzed down to the scalp and a scruffy beard, barely five-foot-six, and his powerful smile.
A roar broke from the bar. “Cubs scored a grand slam. Look at that,” Garcia said.
“Come on, tell me. Who asked—”
“Garcia!” A young girl ran into the bar with her arms waving.
Garcia sucked in his breath with surprise, then frowned. “What are you doing here?”
She ignored him and put her hand out to Raymond. “Chop Suey Sammie. I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.”
Raymond shook her hand. She looked about ten years old, a real cutie, with tiny almond eyes and the longest pigtails in the world, right down to her hips. “My pleasure. Father Raymond Kera, St. John’s Parish.” Her smile broke open, and she pumped his hand with amazing vigor. Chop Suey Sammie sat down next to him in the booth. It was silly, but he felt entirely flattered.
“What do you think you’re doing, Sammie?” Garcia said none too gently. “This is a bar full of rowdy men. You can’t stay here. Go home. And how did you know I was here?”
“Nico said you hang here.”
“Nico? Didn’t I tell you to stay away from him?”
“Nico thinks you’re a muthafucka.”
“Don’t use that word. Yeah, I know what Nico thinks.”
She crinkled up her nose. “You think I should kick him in the nuts for saying that?”
Cringing, Raymond hid a laugh.
“I think you should go home,” Garcia said.
“Garcia, I came to invite you.” She tossed him a crumpled up yellow ball of paper.
Amused, he caught it, opened the paper ball and read it. “Variety show at your school? You in it?”
Sammie jumped up. “Want a sneak peek?” She cleared her throat, put both hands on her hips and began singing “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.” She animated every lyric with winks and giggles, curled up her shoulders, hugging herself with “coo-chi, coo-chi, coo-chi-coo”—which were not the actual lyrics of could she woo.
Garcia burst out laughing. Raymond couldn’t resist either.
Sammie spun around, tapped her toes, threw kisses dramatically, and bowed on the last high note. Her little mistake couldn’t have been more charming. The guys in the next booth applauded. She hammed it up with another bow, than balled her fists up a
t her face and nearly screamed with excitement. “They’re going to give me a microphone!”
“De verdad!” Garcia laughed.
“You’ll come next Tuesday?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. Now go home, Sammie. Don’t you have homework to do?”
“Dios Mio! Si,” she imitated him and scooted out.
“Where’d you find Chop Suey Sammie?” Raymond asked.
“She’s my little sugar cake from heaven. Found her on the street. Eleven years old and she’s carrying a Ninja blade and doing lookout runs for Nico. Her mother’s a cokehead and the boyfriend is in racketeering. I got Sammie into Child Services and a foster home. But she’ll never give up her street name. That little fucker, Nico, won’t leave her alone. He promised her when she grows breasts, he’ll teach her to do tricks.”
“Sounds like you better get Nico arrested fast.”
“Did that. D.A. kicked the case. Insufficient evidence.”
“You’re working with the Narcotics Task Force officially now?”
Garcia cupped his hand over his mouth. “Confidential Informant. We think Nico’s getting into black ice from Mexico. He’s barely eighteen and building himself quite a little empire. Stupid little shit watches gangster movies all day. Thinks he’s some kind of Al Pacino prince of power or something. But next time we’ll nail him, with the goods.”
“What’s black ice?”
“Cocaine, heroin, PCP, all jazzed up. He gets Sammie started on that crap, I’ll kill him.”
Raymond admired Garcia’s tough-love ministry on the southwest side. Garcia was famous for his hip-hop Liturgies in Odinn Park. Multitudes of the faithful streamed in—street disciples, he liked to call them. Raymond attended one time and couldn’t get over the kids’ enthusiasm to beat boxes and rap to Psalm Twenty-Three. In the battle of saving souls among Chicago’s teen gangs, Garcia fought like a lion. All were welcome to his street altars. Even Nico. Especially Nico, Garcia would say. Every day Garcia’s flock grew larger. And he never even wore a cross over his black tee-shirts and blue jeans.
Save me from the sin of envy, Lord. Raymond tried again. “So, why do they call you Garcia the Prophet? What did you do to earn that title?”
Garcia toyed with his gin glass. “It’s just an expression.”
“Who started it?”
“Bishop Cage. He gets obsessive sometimes and goes overboard.”
“And was it Cage who asked you to be a priest?”
Garcia took a long slug of his gin. Those big eyes hit the television screen. “We’ve got to go to a live game some time.”
“So it wasn’t Cage? Who then?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does.”
Garcia looked around the bar for a second.
“Come on, Garcia, my soul’s on the floor here. Who asked you to become a priest?”
“It’s not what you think, man.”
“Good then. Tell me something I don’t know.”
He crunched an ice cube. “It happened at Guardalavaca Beach.”
Raymond sat deeper into the cushions, signaled the waiter for another round, and focused on the man’s blackball eyes, already sparkling.
“I got up at dawn, snuck out, and ran the shore. The sea was so clear, just like turquoise. Palm trees bending with the wind and the Sierra Maestra Mountains behind me. Someday, Raymondo, you’ve got to see my Cuba. I stopped to watch the waves. I swear if all the stars had fallen during the night, every single one was shimmering on the surface of the sea that morning. Far out, a man was swimming. His strokes were in perfect rhythm. I watched him for five minutes. What precision.”
Raymond filtered out the noises from the bar and finished off his gin.
“He was the fastest swimmer I ever saw. Kicking up like a motorboat. In seconds he was up on the sand, walking toward me. What a body. Tall, shoulders as wide as a wooden beam and muscles thick like ropes on his neck. He said to me, ‘Have you ever seen the sea so full?’ I couldn’t even answer, I was so taken with him. Big face, cheekbones like hammerheads. Skin tanned gold. And his eyes, deep-set and bluer than the sky. ‘Have you seen the coral reefs on the east end? The fish there are magnificent. Come. Do you want to swim with the fishes?’ he said.”
“Swim with the fishes? Doesn’t that mean you’re dead?”
Garcia shrugged. “Does it?”
“Maybe only in the movies. So, what did you do?”
“We dove in. I followed him out. He sliced through the waves like an athlete. I had a hell of a time keeping up. The ‘east end’ he said, but I didn’t have a clue how far out that was. So, I just kept swimming after him. Then all of a sudden, he grabbed me. I didn’t even have time to take a breath. With one arm he dragged me straight down.”
“Jesus,” Raymond said.
“I fought like hell. Tried to surface, but he had me so tight with those big hands. I was running out of air fast. My chest started to collapse. Kind of a burning sensation. And the adrenaline must have been surging because I felt like my head was going to explode. My stomach cramped. My throat squeezed shut.”
“Oh, God.”
“I went into spasms. He saw I was in trouble. He grabbed my head with both hands. We were eye to eye.” Garcia’s voice grew low and tense. “I heard voices, high pitched, like whales or something. Everything went black. All I could see was his amazing face shining in the water.”
Raymond noticed Garcia fighting back tears.
“I was ready to give up, let the water invade.” Another slug of gin smoothed his voice. “Raymondo, this man … he pressed his forehead against mine and held it there … and … and then he inhaled the sea water.”
Raymond blinked.
Garcia clamped his lips.
“Impossible, Garcia.”
“Not for this guy. He took in a deep streaming breath of the water.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying he breathed the water and when he exhaled, he broke the water apart into wavelets. They rolled over me clear as air.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“So then what did you do?”
“What else could I do? I followed him. I inhaled the water with him. Ohh, I could breathe again. Dios Mio. The salt burned in my ears at first, but then it grew warm. And sweet, kind of milky. I could see the reefs now. Walls high with yellow coral. Goose barnacles, starfish, and enormous green rockweeds.
“He threw a net over me. Fish swam into it. Bronze and copper colors. I could see through some of themtheir bones looked like silver threads. I saw a few sharks too. They swam past me with those ragged teeth. Hawkfish, eels, red snappers. There I was, with this swimmer, all caught inside his big net. I kept hearing this loud drumming. Thought maybe it was my heart. Not sure it wasn’t actually. Thrum, thrum, thrum. It pulsed me up to the surface and out of the net.
“When I got to the shore, the swimmer was already there. He put on a white robe, flapped the hood up. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Garcia, do you want to swim with my fishes again?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. Just told me his name and ran off. Next thing I knew I was sitting up in my bed.”
Raymond let out a short gasp. “In your bed? So this was what, a dream?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Sea water soaked the sheets. I had a mess of rockweeds, shells, and sand on my legs. Even my fingers tasted of salt.”
“Hold it. Are you saying you had a vision?”
“A vision is witnessing something. I fully participated. I was there, man. Some kind of door opened and I had this experience. If it was a dream, it was fully alive. And in this world.”
Raymond sat forward in his seat, his hands firmly round the gin glass. Carefully, he examined Garcia’s face, went deep into his eyes. He hadn’t known Garcia to lie to him, not ever. In fact, their friendship was probably the truest Raymond had ever known. Sure the man was full of drama, but no one lived life more passionately than Garcia. He
was solid as a rock. Raymond asked, “Did you go back to swim with his fishes again?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s this man’s name?”
Garcia killed the last of his gin. “Calls himself Yeshua.”
—end of Chapter One—
Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural is also available at other booksellers and at https://paulacappa.wordpress.com/author/.
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