The Fever

"I take whomever I please," said the god of chaos as Quentin stared down at the shell of his lovely wife, Gwinny's fire red hair in contrast to her pale, ashen face. "You should have helped her, but you failed," said the spirit of doubt. Together, they began to laugh at Quentin. "She would have saved you," said doubt, snorting and clutching his belly. "You failed, and now she's mine," said the god of chaos. Their laughter pounded in Quentin's ears, building to a cacophony that shook the floor and rattled the empty medicine bottles surrounding Gwinny's body....

He woke with a start, nearly kicking over the bucket at the foot of the bed. The little girl's mother stirred, then settled back into the fitful sleep that a wooden chair and a heavy heart afford. They both must have fallen asleep when the seizures stopped. He walked softly around the bed and placed his hands on her cheeks and forehead. She was burning up, and his touches brought a wave of tremors through her little body. Her time was approaching. "She is already mine," whispered the god of chaos. Quentin shook his head hard, unable to fully emerge from his nightmare. 

"We are intervening, little one," he said quietly, stroking her sweat soaked hair. 

"You can't save her," whispered the spirit of doubt.

 Crossing the room to the hearth where the honey was still simmering, he inhaled the vapors. It was the first batch of the year when the most potent flowers were in bloom in the fields of Arkady, and the moons passed over the sun. Gwinny had run them both ragged each year harvesting that first batch of wild honey. Collecting it was no easy task. Gwinny always seemed to dance right through the gates, gracefully waving her smoldering sage and lavender as though it were a high art form. Indeed it must have been, because Quentin always raised every alarm. The little bastard defenders were always prepared to throw themselves at him in buzzing waves, while she sauntered away with the goods. It was tough, painful work, not to mention the long nights preparing and preserving the salves and poultices, so it was no wonder that they always fetched a good price from the farming folk across the lake in Raven's church, or down the haunted forest road in Eileen Moor, or any of the villages that dotted the base of the Griffon's Vein. Even the memories of those hard days of work made him ache with longing.                      

"You failed," said the spirit of doubt.

Gwinny's recipes were famous for treating wounds and ailments, and Quentin had done his best to carry on her work, though the spirit of doubt constantly reminded him that he was really only good at making strong drinks and growing pipeweed. This, however,  was something entirely different. This little girl had been brought here to die. Quentin had known from the desperate look on the mother's face that he had to do something, even if it was only to ease the child's suffering and give them a warm place to spend their last few hours together. It was what Gwinny would have done. 

No, she would have fought; Gwinny respectfully went to war with the gods. The god of chaos had chosen this child to die, and instead of soothing herbs and warm cider, Quentin had made the instinctual decision to go to war with that god, despite what chaos and doubt had to say on the matter. "At war with a war god," he thought with a jaded and bitter smirk, the god of chaos that seemed to always hold sway over the land, and ruin any semblance of order and justice in the world. The god of chaos was indeed a god worth going to war with, when the winds of conflict carried off the men of the levies, and the womenfolk were left to work the fields while the children played unattended. 

Quentin measured out the crushed herbs in pinches and palms. The apothecaries in the city used finely crafted instruments to precisely measure each ingredient, but Gwinny always said that healing came from one soul to another. You had to touch certain flowers and bond with them before they became medicine. "A little extra pinch won't hurt," she would say and toss a bit of pepper at him. "But you must concentrate!" 

Quentin unrolled two of the broad leaves of the Wyvernswood tree, and carefully spread the steaming poultice over each in turn. He walked back to the bed and drew down the woolen blanket from the little girl's trembling body, and slowly peeled the spent leaves away from the angry, weeping wound. As he delicately applied the new leaves, he imagined the corruption as though it were a tangible enemy to be drawn out, ambushed, and destroyed. Meanwhile, the spirit of doubt that haunted his every move whispered in his ear, "You are fighting a losing battle."

He had known, almost from the beginning, that this child's death would crush him. He could try to steel himself all he wanted, but it wouldn't work. They would load her tiny body back on the cart and send her back to whichever village she came from, and Quentin would be alone with his failures, left to answer once again to the spirit of doubt and the god of chaos. He would try to escape them, and he would fail. He would gather up the mead and apple spirits. He would pack his pipe and take up his traveling hat. He would run as fast as he could across the meadow, never gaining a step on the voices that hovered next to his ears. He would stumble through the haunted forest drinking, challenging the ghosts to show themselves, always to no avail. He would climb the Griffon's Vein and stand on the ridge, shaking his fist and cursing the gods in the shadow of their moons. He would cry and moan, then piss on the sacred stones.  He would drink and smoke away the anger and bitterness until the voices were silent, and the warmth of oblivion became medicine. 

The little girl's mother gasped awake as Quentin applied the final dressing. She took a moment  to catch her breath, then asked weakly, "Is there something I can do?" He pointed at the bucket next to the bed. "You can wipe her down with cool water." He nodded toward a cup on the table, "And drink that....and pray." The last part came out awkwardly, but she seized on it. "I will, I will sir. May the gods bless you, sir, for trying to help my baby." She was crying now, holding the cup in both hands and sipping between sobs. He felt a small knot in his stomach as he walked back to his chair. There was nothing left to do but wait. He took a long swallow of spiced cider that had cooled on the table. "You failed," whispered the spirit of doubt harshly. Another swallow and he was quieter. "She's mine," whispered the god of chaos quietly. Another swallow and he was gone....

A Circle of Stones

Just like my Scottish ancestors. A circle of stones. 

I still remember that day my dad opened the car door and introduced me to the paradise of Superior Township. Dad busted his butt twelve hours a day in the dirt for decades and finally got his nice house in the country. My family is baptized in Michigan soil. The gift my parents had given me was invaluable, they set my body and spirit free to roam the forests and fields of rural Michigan. I fell in love. I've always felt in tune with the earth, like the very stones of my hometown call out to me almost audibly. It's found throughout my poetry and songs, and I've never been able to shake it.

People often think of me as some kind of adventurer, I admit to fostering this perception a bit, so cut me some slack. The truth is, I spent most of my time away wishing I was back home in Plymouth, or Wolverine, where even the scrub pines call out to my soul. I saw the world in its raw form, and I needed Michigan dirt like medicine.

I hope everyone gets the chance to feel real satisfaction with their lives at least once. It's an amazing feeling, and I've found that it helps in the dying process. Yes, I can define that time. I had a little condo in downtown Plymouth. I was deeply in love with a beautiful girl who worked buying and selling stones, another rockhound. She moonlighted as a barista in a coffee shop in town where the mochas were fantastic, and people would crowd in to listen to me pick lousy guitar and sing gospel and blue-collar tunes. She made that beautiful town turn into magic. I was working sixty hours a week in Michigan dirt, and we struggled to make ends meet, yet life was beautiful, simple, and vibrant. It was genuine happiness, and we both knew it. Then I got sick.

Life hasn't ended. I was given a death sentence in 2011. I asked the neurologist at U of M what I should do, and she looked me right in the eye and said, "Start getting your affairs in order." I thought for a while about what that meant. I had to tell my beautiful Kate that I was dying, and set her free to go live the rest of her life while I wasted and died
.
She didn't go. Instead, she became my rock. I set my compass by her; she gave me purpose and direction. So together we got my affairs in order.  We rode our bikes to the little Baptist church and got married. We bought a house. We had a beautiful baby girl, followed by a beautiful baby boy. I've long surpassed my expiration date, and God continues to give me time with my family. Nobody lives forever, though.

I've never been a cemetery kind of guy. I wonder how many people actually consider how they want to be treated after they pass. I have the opportunity to make my own arrangements. I don't want my family, in the midst of grief, scrambling to decide what I would have wanted. I certainly don't want to end up as taxidermy, stuffed in a fancy box that costs more than any pickup I ever owned. That's not me. I'm not the polished marble kind of guy, either. I'm a Michigan boulder, rolled in dirt and snow. I want my resting place to reflect my life; simple, grounded, and covered in Michigan dirt. Besides, who doesn't want to design and build their own monument?

I'll go up to Wolverine in August, to the land my great grandparents farmed. Just like my ancestors in Scotland, with the help of my family I will build a circle of native stones. Eight stones, each one a point on the compass rose, and a stone in the center. It will align seven degrees west of magnetic north, to follow the stars instead of the compass. People who are dear to me will place the stones, and when I cross the Jordan, my ashes will go behind the true north stone, to wait for my lover and soulmate.

Frankie and Penn with my stones.

Thought That I'd Be Lonesome Without You

A
Thought that I'd be lonesome without you,

D  A

turns out that wasn't really true.

D  A

I couldn't weave my world around you

E

wondering if you ever found a clue.

Thought that I might die without your touch,

turns out it doesn't hurt so much.

I'm the bigger man for knowing

I can stand without you as a crutch.

D  A  D  A

You might find it awkward, me saying this to you,

D  A  E

but I've got no one else to say it to,

D  A

but I've got a ghost in the basement, and a raccoon in the attic,

D A

and a banker who keeps telling me I'm bad at mathematics.

D  A  E

I don't play a very good guitar, but I'm not as lousy as I used to be.

E

Wouldn't you agree?

D  A

I don't believe our story is complete.

D  A

I do believe that again we shall meet

D  A  E

when the Irish pubs vomit their patrons back out on the street.

A
Thought that I'd be lonesome without you.

Thought that things would never be the same,

turns out things never really change.

It just becomes a new fixture,

a picture in someone else's frame.

But the evening sun's still setting over Traverse Bay.

A Michigan breeze just blew my cares away

You may think I'm crazy, that may be a fact.

The answer just depends on who you ask.

Ask the ghost in the basement, or the raccoon in the attic,

the banker who keeps telling me I'm bad at mathematics.

The skeletons in my closet that rattle their bones at night when I try to sleep,

giving me the creeps.

I don't believe that our story is complete.

I do believe that again we shall meet

when the Irish pubs vomit their patrons back out on the street.

Tony Lollio 2007

Orinoco Monster Hunt

Craig and I cleaning piranhas for dinner. I ended up cutting my hand,
 which made the teenagers laugh at how inept I was with a knife.

"Hey Tone!" Steve yelled as he launched my shampoo bottle into the middle of the Orinoco River, closer to the Colombian side than the Venezuelan. Manuel, the native kid on our work crew immediately started across after it, and I was right behind him.

Now, there are some popular myths around piranhas that aren't exactly true. Every now and then, when the rainy season dries out, sections of the river get cut off from the main flow. Schools of piranha get trapped in these oxbows, and the lack of food turns them into the bloodthirsty monsters of lore. The vast majority of the time though, they are perfectly harmless, like a bluegill with dinosaur teeth. If you knew how many of them we ate with socialist rice and tobasco sauce, you'd see it was a one-sided affair.

Still though, doing a hundred meter freestyle to the middle of a river in the Amazon is a daunting task; maybe it was fifty..it was a long swim. Plus I had to beat the native kid, because even though I was just under a year out of the Army, I still felt like Uncle Sam was always judging me. Fear must have been propelling me forward, giving me the edge I needed to beat Manuel. I also might have grabbed his ankle just before the turn, that part's fuzzy.  I emerged victorious though, hoisting my shampoo bottle over my head like it was the Grail. I do whatever it takes to win, sue me.

Building schools and churches in Venezuela was hard work..hot, sweaty, spidery, rash in the, spend a day on the dirt floor of the latrine kind of work. Steve and I had spent the day digging a trench down a hillside. We laid PVC pipe in the trench and connected a rainwater cistern to the school teacher's house. The family was delighted with the dribble that finally emerged from the tiny hand valve, it was going to save them a half-mile slog to the community well with five-gallon buckets. We were proud of our work, and we'd finished with a couple hours of daylight left.

The school

Fishing was absolutely on my mind every time I saw the beautiful landscapes of the Amazon River system, but I was in Venezuela to work, not fish. Plus, the thirty-pound weight limit on the rickety prop plane prevented any extra equipment. I will never forget that landing on the dirt runway, the pilot in his tank top and bare feet, and my dad next to him with a headset; two pilots from different worlds. It was a great adventure. You have to understand this about me, I'll work my butt off for a chance to cast a line out in a new location, but I would have to suppress the urge, or so I thought.

Bob Holloway, the missionary who organized the project, was given a transportation stipend from the Church. He was supposed to buy a car, which isn't so useful in the Amazon. Instead, he bought a flat-bottom johnboat with twin Mercury outboard motors called La Provacadora, which needed no translation. Ed Anders, the retired builder who supervised us, had brought in rods and reels by boat with the construction equipment. They were practical philanthropists, I guess; if you're going to dedicate your life to improving living conditions in South America, you should at least have a fast boat and fishing tackle. They also both knew that I was a lunatic about fishing.

So with daylight fading, and these crazy low storm clouds rolling in, Bob decided to take us on a monster hunt.

In Michigan, a sudden rain squall usually sends people running for cover. In the Amazon, it's like a warm shower that you're always ready for, and badly in need of. Still though, when raindrops the size of your pinky nail are coming in sideways because you're full throttle down the middle of the Orinoco River, it stings quite a bit. I was keeping low, huddled over one of the tackle boxes. I was a couple thousand miles from home, fishing on a completely foreign River, with someone else's gear. A little more time to prepare and strategize would have been great. I had my eye on a seven-foot rod with one of those Penn spinning reels that looked like it came off a Detroit assembly line in the 70's. I gave a tug on the line,  and the well-oiled spool began to feed me line at just the right tension. Ed took care of his equipment...game on. I tied on a five-inch balsa wood minnow, black on top with gold sides. It would mimic a wounded baitfish anywhere on earth. Bob eased off the throttle as La rovacadora's flat belly slid to a stop on a gigantic smooth boulder in the middle of the river.

The Colombian military used these little things to patrol the river
La Provacadora .was bigger and faster, so they often "borrowed"
her to chase smugglers and guerillas.

We were on the largest of a series of boulders stretched from one side of the river. The water rushed between them, forming a series of rapids with plunge pools behind each boulder. Those pools were my target. I fired a cast upstream of the closest boulder, allowing the minnow to tumble through the rapids. As it reached the edge of a pool, I started my retrieve, each sweep of my rod tip sending the wooden minnow on a frantic surge towards the bottom.

I felt weight on the end of the line. It was not the pulse of something living, but the steady, unrelenting resistance that means you've snagged an obstruction. I was hopelessly hung up on the bottom, and I didn't have a lot of time to mess around, so I pulled out my knife To cut the line. A quick slap on my wrist let me know Manuel wasn't pleased with my decision. Back home,  a five dollar lure can be easily replaced, not quite so in the Amazon. So, for the second time in one day, Manuel jumped into the Orinoco to retrieve something of mine. He swam out into the current with his legs and one free arm, holding my line with the other hand to guide him to the snag. He disappeared beneath the surface until I felt the lure pop free.  After hoisting Manuel back onto the boulder, I handed him the pocket knife I'd carried since the Army. He'd obviously earned today's trophy...almost.

 I shot a cast upstream of the furthest boulder and snapped my wrist to send the minnow darting side to side like a wounded baitfish. Once...twice...WHAM! The swirling water let me know he'd struck just beneath the surface. I set the hook hard and felt the head shake before he made for the deep water of the main river channel, stripping line off the reel as he ran. After tiring from the run, he Turned to come straight back at me. I struggled to take in the slack and dropped the rod tip just in time for his first jump. He spent the next five minutes in a  series of runs and rushes, dives and aerial acrobatics. He was a worthy opponent, everything I expected from a place this wild and raw.

He finally ran out of steam, and I took a knee to land him as he rolled onto his silvery side and slid over the edge of the boulder. He looked to me like the love child of a salmon and a catfish, and he had the spirit of both. I reached down to grab him behind the gill plate, but Manuel slapped my wrist, shaking his head. He was standing over me with half of a broomstick...a club. I guess you don't catch and release in a place where food is scarce, I felt silly. He gave it a quick, sharp blow to the head, and it's mouth opened to reveal two giant two-inch fangs protruding from the lower jaw. Manuel had saved me that time, the day was his.....but not before I got the shot. I pulled out my digital camera and tossed it to my friend Craig. "Make sure it's a good one, please..."

8lb 2oz Payara, myself, and La Provacadora. Even in this grainy pic you can see those
teeth! Turns out this one was dinky, they get four times his size!

The Pied Piper

Nestled in the enchanted forests of Lower Saxony is the town of Hamelin. The town has kept a ledger, a log of events in the town, for centuries. If you go all the way back to the beginning of this record, you'll find an entry from 1384, as heartbreaking as it is enigmatic:

"It has been one hundred years since our children vanished."

So begins the true story of the Pied Piper. The historical record gives nothing more.

The Pied Piper Acrylic by Kate Lollio 

Like the plagues in the Holy Scriptures, the horde of rats fell upon Hamelin. This was no simple nuisance, it was a catastrophe. The food supply was threatened, and death and disease always seemed to follow the vermin horde.  Try as they may, the town's officials could not solve the problem, until a mysterious stranger appeared offering a solution...for a price.

One day, a colorfully clothed piper arrived in Hamelin and offered to rid the town of rats for a hefty sum of gold. Desperate, the officials agreed to pay. The piper played as he marched through the streets of the town. Entranced by his music, the horde of rats followed the piper out of town and into the countryside, to the river Weser where they were drowned.

Finally free of the rats, however, the town officials went back on their word, and refused to pay. Angry and bitter, the piper left Hamelin, vowing to return to have his revenge on the townspeople for their treachery.

Woe unto those who forsake the oaths to which they are foresworn.

"In the year 1284 on the feast day of St. John and St. Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hamelin were led away by a piper clothed in many colors, to their Calvary hill where they were lost." - Luneberg Manuscript, 1440

So, while the people of Hamelin feasted during the Saints day, the piper again marched through the town. This time, it was the children entranced by his melodies. The piper led 130 children through the streets, and out into the countryside, never to be seen again. Of all the children of Hamelin, only three remained. The first child, crippled, could not follow. The second child, deaf, could not hear the piper's music. The third child, blind, could not see where the rest were going.

The clock tower, one of many monuments in the city depicting the legend.

This is my version of the story, immortalized in western tradition, and told by the Brothers Grimm in their 19th-century collection of fairy tales. They were elaborating on an actual event that had occurred centuries earlier, already obscured by hundreds of years of oral tradition.

I walked the streets of Hamelin during my time living in Germany. It was amazing to stand in a fairy tale town, but what really fascinated me was that the story of the Pied Piper had an actual root in reality, a place and time in history you could put your finger on. The details of the event, however, are almost nonexistent. What remains is a skeleton, the framework of a story which the mind rushes to fill with detail. I needed to know more, and there was no more to be found, so my imagination spun with possibilities. I realized that this was the process that created myths and legends.

A tragedy befell the town of Hamelin, an event so traumatizing that it still grips our collective consciousness almost a thousand years later, this we know for certain. In a world filled with massacres and genocide, this story is intimate, one town and it's calamity. The story taps one of our most primal fears, the loss of our kids. It endures, ironically, as a fairy tale we tell our children when we tuck them in safely at night.

The importance of myths and legends to a culture can't be underestimated, a true storyteller understands this. The human mind longs to find meaning in even the most random event, and this process helps in the formation of our philosophies and worldview. Has the modern digital age replaced oral tradition, and if so, can we still find meaning in the events unfolding around us? With these questions in mind, perhaps the simple bedtime story becomes far more important than we ever imagined.

A story without an allegory is a waste of breath.

I Need Someone To Tell Her

Photo by Kate Lollio

4/4 G      C      G

I just need someone to tell her that I love her.

G      C      G

I'm not sure if she wants to hear it from me now.

C      D

Michigan chills me to the core.

G      C

All these sunsets are cold copper ore.

Am

Anymore I can't find my true north,

C      D

and I'd tell her if I knew how.

C   Bm  Am

I'd search the world and never discover

C   Bm  Am

a feeling that touches the essence of her.

C   Bm  Am

I could fill this notebook cover to cover,

C     D    G

but I need someone to tell her that I love her.

I just need someone to tell her that I want her.

Every night I lay my head down on a stone.

Reach out and hold her once for me,

I guess my arms ain't what they used to be,

and I would be the one to tell her,

if she'd pick up the telephone.

Does the ghost of what might have been still taunt her?

Does the host standing in the way still daunt her?

Am I close to resembling the memories that still haunt her?

I just need someone to tell her that I want her.

No Man's Land

Vespers, the evening prayer, Chalk by Kate Lollio

 "Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina." Father Toby's voice boomed the first line of Vespers into the cold air, each syllable an explosion of frost. It was a trick the Reverend O'Flaherty had taught him, a way of focusing on something you knew in a time of crisis. "You truly do have an exquisite singing voice, Tobias," he had said, waving a trembling finger back and forth as though conducting some sort of nightmarish orchestra. "Just try to stay with the beat."

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

"Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto." The whole thing had seemed absurd at the time, but now, in his own time of crisis, he clinged to it desperately. He loved singing in Latin, and he had done it incessantly. Even as a boy, the liturgical language had fascinated him. His parents had known early on that he was bound for the clergy.  It was as though the soaring verses transcended time and space, and took one to a place where angels sang, bathed in colored light. The suffering could never reach that place, and God's presence was always near. Now there was only this profound sense of abandonment.

 He had asked the Reverend which one of the liturgies to sing. The man had simply smiled and answered, "Oh, any one will do." Father Toby wiped the dirt from the face of his watch. Evening was upon them.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

"Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum." He sang louder now, as if each word were a plea, even a challenge to God. If he could only sing loud enough, perhaps God would hear him over all the madness, and really return the ones he'd lost. Every part of him longed to see the lame actually walk, and the blind actually see. He needed it now, as though his very sanity hinged on the possibility of the miraculous.

 Thump, thump.

What happens when those miracles never come? What happens when all around you are the lame, the blind, and the dying? When they are reaching out to you, but you have nothing left to give? What do you do when the grief and the loss take root, and your soul cries out for rescue? Why then the loneliness, and the silence? The questions were relentless, and robbed Father Toby of what little rest there was to find here. Every time he closed his eyes, the grain fields of Iowa turned to churned up mud. Every time he thought of the Mass, the beautiful faces of his parishioners melted away, replaced by the faces of boys with hollow eyes.

thump, thump.

His hands trembled like Reverend O'Flaherty's, and he remembered the old man's answer. "Whatever else is there to do, Tobias? You sing. Sing angry, sing bitter, but never stop singing. Sing about God's goodness when your world's gone bad. Sing about love and life in the midst of hatred and death. Sing of God's peace even as chaos erupts. Pray every day as though the Almighty could arrive just then, and should he not, for heaven's sake man, get out there and do his work until he comes!"

"Amen." Thump.

So Father Toby sang out from no man's land. As he sang, his soul cried out from the wilderness.

"Alleluia." Thump, THUMP!

The shells pounded their rhythm; the final shot fell close. He felt the great heave, as though his chest would turn inside out, and his eardrums would burst. He drew his knees to his chest, tightly gathering as much of himself as possible beneath the meager protection of his helmet, and waited for the inevitable shower of earth and wood, metal and gore. The Hunn artillerymen were making the most of their last barrage of the afternoon, and he certainly didn't envy the boys of C Company, currently being raked by cannon fire a couple of hundred yards away.

The ringing in his ears had only just begun to clear when he saw a figure emerge from the smoke, and stumble out alone into no man's land. He had no rifle or helmet, and he was completely covered in mud. Father Toby watched in horror as the man vanished into a shell crater, only to reemerge from the other edge and continue towards the middle of the killing field. Father Toby had been pinned down there all day, and he began waving a timid hand, trying to get the man's attention, while hoping to avoid drawing fire himself. The overturned carriage he sat against was really no cover at all. A well-placed volley of rifle fire could have torn it to bits at any moment.

He cringed at a rifle shot, followed by another, dull pops in the wake of the ear-splitting salvo. A small plume of dirt erupted at the man's feet as he continued aimlessly, oblivious to his surroundings. "Run!" Father Toby shouted, "Run, man, go back!" The man stopped suddenly and looked in Father Toby's directions who was now waving frantically. "Run! Run, man, or get d...."

A rifle shot rang out. The man suddenly jerked, as though punched by some invisible hand, and collapsed into a motionless heap in the mud. Father Toby gasped, exhaling another explosion of frost as he dropped back against the carriage. He again drew his knees to his chest, and buried his face between them. One boy too many, and the last strings began to unravel. Father Toby rocked himself softly, as his tears mixed with French mud.

Movement caught his attention; the heap in the mud was beginning to stir. The man slowly rolled himself over, and reached out a hand above him, grasping at something only he could see. Father Toby's heart began to pound, but he never hesitated. There, in the midst of his own crisis, as the world crumbled around him, he fell back on what he knew best, his calling....God's work. Out there a man lay wounded, perhaps dying. Out there in the open, a man's soul stood at the precipice of eternity, and he was all alone.

Father Toby clenched his rosary tightly as he crawled out into no man's land, its crucifix hanging from his dirty fist, inches from his face as he crept forward on his elbows. The distance seemed overwhelming, but every time he raised his head to check his bearings, there was Jesus, suffering on the Cross. It was then that he remembered that all of the suffering, the pain and loss, were not separating him from God, they were drawing him closer.

Thump, thump, thump, thump

Every scrape and cut became a privilege as he dragged himself across the ground. Each drop of blood a rose for the Blessed Mother, and his broken heart an offering at the foot of the Cross. It was Christ at the edge of every shell hole. It was Christ in front of every wire obstacle. It was Christ guiding him forward. Father Toby prayed as he crawled, and the loneliness vanished as he felt God join him the mud.

"Alleluia." Thump, THUMP!

1916 U.S. Army issued Rosary

"O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Alleluia."- From Vespers, the evening prayer.

- From May of 1917 - November 1918, 2,300 American clergymen served as Chaplains in the American Expeditionary Force during World War 1. Father Tobias is my work of fiction, the Reverend O'Flaherty is not. Colman O'Flaherty was an Irish born American, ordained by the Roman Catholic Church in Sioux Falls, Iowa in 1909. He was killed while ministering to the wounded and dying in an artillery barrage on October 3, 1918, one month before the war's end. He didn't carry a rifle, only a sword of the Spirit, still he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in combat.

This story is dedicated to the Payne family.

Ex