The Red Jacket

THE RED JACKET

The Red Jacket can be downloaded to your Kindle reader at Amazon.com for $3.99. ISBN # 978-148-256-9933. The softcover version sells for $12.56.  Or buy an autographed copy here direct from the author for the same price.

CHAPTER I

B

right morning sun pierced the gothic stained-glass windows of the old Episcopal Church throwing cobalt blue, blood red and royal violet shafts of light bouncing off the slick ebony surface of the granite altar. The colors twinkled as if they were precious jewels spilled carelessly across black velvet; flickering candles nearby cast shadows of dancing ghosts across the walls and pews.

Solemn basso profundo notes rumbled deep within the church organ’s copper and brass pipes, as if God himself stood nearby mumbling peevishly what a shame it was to have to bury the poor young man in the casket.

Twenty years ago I almost was that young man. But I had miraculously escaped death and now, here I was wearing my white vestments with black funeral sash, about to consign someone else to the grave.

 Altar kids and lay people followed me in the processional to the altar.  When we reached our destination my wife Ronnie smiled encouragement at me from one of the front-row pews. I turned to the congregation and announced that I would be performing The Burial of the Dead, Rite One.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” I intoned, raising my arms to bless Saint Paul’s flock.

“And also with you,” the congregation responded.

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

“O God, whose beloved Son did take children into his arms and bless them: Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust this young man to thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingdom; through thy Son Jesus Christ Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.”

How many times had I performed this ritual since becoming a priest? Hundreds I guessed.

Leading a Burial Mass was not one of my favorite things to do, but I felt an obligation to do it well. After all, if I hadn’t survived blood poisoning, rheumatic fever and nearly drowning in the MacKenzie River, I would be dead.

Actually, Francis Albert Forsyth (that’s me) did die, but God, in his infinite grace, allowed me to come back to life.

I remember that time as clearly as if it happened only yesterday. Sometimes though, it still feels like it’s all just a figment of my imagination . . .

“Francis! Francis!”

“What?”

“Wake up!”

“Wake up?” Why?

“You’re dreaming again,” my mom said. “Turn that noisy radio off.”

Dreaming? Again?

Well what else was a sixteen-year-old invalid nearly killed by blood poisoning then laid up for a whole year by the rheumatic fever supposed to do? It wasn’t like my mom, who was trying to bring me back from near unconsciousness, was going to let me run outside and play baseball. I was so bored and frustrated by lack of physical activity I had to dream to keep from sinking into total depression.

Lately, my life felt like one huge disaster. A recurring dream I’d been having quite frequently was one where I was desperately trying to swim upstream against a flooding river, but the river kept clutching at me, sucking me down, drowning me in its mucky brown filth. It was a pretty scary dream. Little did I know at the time that I was having a serious attack of clairvoyance. If I had known, I might have begged out of that Christmas trip to my grandparent’s house in Oregon. 

People kept trying to encourage me, “Have faith Francis. You’ll be your old self again before you know it. Maybe getting sick was a blessing in disguise. You never know how God might use something like this to focus your life.”

Man, I hated it when they said that. I figured if God was real; if he cared about me at all, it was time to give up already on the focusing and just let me have my life back the way it was before I got sick.

“Let me do things again God!” I would pray. I want to become a professional baseball player. I might as well pack it in if I can’t play baseball.”

Thanks, however, to rheumatic fever my shot at becoming the next Mickey Mantle seemed to be schlupping away faster than a plate of linguini at a Sons of Italy dinner (I made that up. Pretty good huh?)

Anyway, I didn’t feel sick anymore. After six months at the hospital and six months flat on my back at home my heart felt fine. At my last checkup, my doctor said, “You’re practically as healthy as a horse again. It should be safe for you to resume normal activity as long as you don’t overdo it.”

My mom, Mary Catherine McKenna, being the most stubborn and irritating Italian mother in the world, however, only heard part of what the doc said.

My mom was convinced I would croak if she let me engage in any activity that required much physical exertion; especially if that activity involved the outdoors and especially when it had been pouring buckets of rain for days on end, like it was doing right now.

“You’ve got to be careful not to overdo,” My mom reminded me. She had always been too strict, but since my illness, she acted like she was the warden of Alcatraz.

Yeah, I know McKenna isn’t an Italian name, but trust me, my mom was Italian and she had the Latin temperament to prove it. She only got McKenna from marrying my stepfather Web. Granatelli was my mom’s maiden name and she was as olive-skinned, doe-eyed-and dark-haired as Sophia Loren; only shorter, chubbier and not nearly as pretty.

My mom did have beautiful long black hair and a soprano voice that rivaled any star of the opera (not that I liked opera). When my mom sang in church other people would shut up just to listen to her. Trouble is, most of the time my mom exercised her voice by yelling, not singing.

Being the oldest of eight kids I was usually the first one my mom yelled at. In fact, when my mom cut loose on me, her voice was so powerful you could hear her from one end of the block to the other. You know that saying, “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings?” Well, the saying should go, “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady yells.” When my mom cranked her voice up to its full potential and yelled “Francis!” trust me, it was over.

She really ticked me off sometimes! I’m ashamed to say it, but I spent a lot of my hours in solitary confinement daydreaming of bad things happening to her so I could escape this prison I was in.

Ever since I started recovering from my illness, I’d start to ask her if I could do something fun and she’d say, “No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I’d protest.

“Go ahead then ask,” she’d say.                                                                   

“Can I go outside and play baseball?” I’d say.

“No.”

“Can I go over to Jimmy Foster’s house?”

“No.”

“Can I . . .?”

“No.”

“But mom . . .!”

“The answer’s no. Now quit asking.”

“But you just said . . .”

“Never mind what I just said.”

Her voice would be pegging at least eighty decibels on the Ear Drum Damage Meter at this point and I would be conjuring up a vision of a one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater (like in that song) dangling my mom in front of his huge stiletto teeth preparing to rip her apart for lunch. I liked that image a lot.

“If you eat her you have to keep her down,” I warned the dragon. “No upchucking allowed.”

My mom was flailing at the dragon with her fists and yelling at me, “You’re not taking one step out of this house until I know you’re not going to have a relapse.”

“I’m not in danger anymore,” I argued. “The doctor said I was fine.”

“The doctor said not to overdo it. What about not overdoing it did you not get Mr. Smarty Pants? I’m your mother and I say you’re not fine ‘til the doctor isn’t worried about you overdoing it.”

She’d be hitting ninety decibels on the Ear Drum Shatter Meter now and I’d be visualizing her tied to a train track while Old Smokey Number 99 bore down on her hard and fast.

 Or I might conjure up an image of her jamming on the car brakes while rounding a sharp curve on a steep hill, and the brakes didn’t work . . .

“I might as well die and get it over with,” I’d grumble.

“Francis Albert Forsyth, it’s a miracle from God that you are still alive and you blaspheme like that! You know we can’t be too careful.”

Where’d she get that we stuff? This was my life she was talking about. But her voice was pushing against the top end of the Ear Drum Damage Meter now, threatening to bust the red bulb at the end wide open. At the very least she might seriously strain something vital. Even though I had now conjured up a gleefully wicked scenario about stuffing her into a Safeway shopping cart and pushing it onto a major highway, I decided to back off. I couldn’t beat her.

When I wasn’t daydreaming of bad things happening to me or my mom I was daydreaming of good things happening; good things like me hitting the winning home run in the World Series, and a pretty girl calling me her hero – cool stuff like that.

Trouble is, the good dreams were coming less and less frequently. They were being replaced by too many bad dreams – like drowning and other nightmares.

“If my heart has to quit on me why can’t it quit while I’m doing what I want to do?” I asked looking skyward.

Instead here I was sitting around on my rear end waiting for God to focus me, and I was handcuffed to Gina Lola Grumpida the Italian Mother Hun. I was locked in purgatory or that Inferno place or wherever the heck I was, because I had been unlucky enough to come down with rheumatic fever. Lucky for my mom I was practically a saint - loving, kind, obedient  . . . (you buying this?) or I might have dreamed up something really despicable happening to her.

Besides daydreaming, the only other avenue of escape from my dull boring life and my suffocating mom, until God answered my prayer or a nuclear Armageddon occurred - whichever came first - was to lose myself in reading a book.

Fortunately, I liked to read and my mom had surprised me earlier in the week by checking ‘Round the Bend out of the library for me.

‘Round the Bend was a novel by Nevil Shute, one of my favorite authors. Mr. Shute quoted Emily Dickinson on the inside flap of his book. “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.”

If only that were so! I felt like I was on a slow boat to nowhere - with violent squalls on the horizon.

Nevil Shute also had written a book titled On the Beach, which I read while I was in the hospital. On the Beach was a really scary story about these Australian people trying to cope with the after-effects of a nuclear war. The Australian people knew they were doomed to die from all the radioactive fallout circling the globe, but they carried on as if they didn’t have a worry in the world.

“We’re none of us going to have time to do all that we planned,” one of the characters said. “But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”

I felt like I was doomed to die without even having the chance to do what I wanted to as long as I could.

A movie of On the Beach had starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. The movie was a pretty big hit.  In ‘Round the Bend” an Englishman named Tom Cutter realized, while watching members of a flying circus perform aerial stunts, that aviation was his life’s ambition.  The story took place between World War I and World War II and followed Tom’s adventures as he progressed from fledgling pilot and mechanic, to owner of a successful air freighting business.

Like I said before, my big ambition was to become a famous baseball player. I wanted to play centerfield for the New York Yankees, like Mickey Mantle, and hit home runs and be famous. My mom wanted me to become president of the United States (like I had a chance at that). Worse yet, my grandma Granatelli wanted me to become a priest. Grandma figured since God had saved me from the rheumatic fever, I owed it to him.

“I can just see you in a Cardinal’s red vestment,” grandma would say.

Grandma’s eyes would moisten up and she would thank the Virgin Mary and kiss her rosary beads. Then she would look at me and sigh hopefully, like I personally could open the pearly gate to heaven for her if I became a priest.

The nurses at the hospital, other family members and friends, even people I didn’t know, annoyed the heck out of me too by constantly reminding me of the debt I supposedly owed to God. It was like a religious conspiracy. The scary thing was, deep down in my heart, I was afraid maybe my grandma and all those other people might actually be right. Then what? I was pretty conflicted.

Cardinal Francis Albert Forsyth did sound pretty cool. And I had said more than once that I was willing to do anything if my life would change. But I also wanted to enjoy life. I didn’t want to take the vows of a priest if I didn’t have to.

My sister Loretta once mistakenly called a Cardinal’s red vestment a red jacket. I was afraid the Cardinal’s vestment might become a red straight jacket if I ever put it on.

No way could I hope to be good enough to bring honor to the priesthood. I didn’t want to be that good; especially good enough to become a cardinal. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even stop wishing bad things would happen to my mom.

I struggled to picture myself walking around in a Cardinal’s vestment, swinging one of those incense thingies, being all holy and blessing poor unfortunate souls. But I usually lost that struggle.

Besides, what about girls? I read that Roman Catholic priests had to be celibate. I knew what celibate meant and I didn’t like it one bit. If you were celibate you didn’t get to kiss girls and fall in love.  That was a hard and fast rule. 

Sure, priests helped poor people and prayed for their salvation and performed good deeds among savages in the jungles, and really, who could aspire to a better life than that?  But, no girls? No falling in love? Not for me thanks! I liked girls.

To tell the truth, I fleetingly considered becoming a millionaire playboy if baseball player or cowboy actor (my other career choice) didn’t work out. Millionaire playboys had lots of girlfriends. I could picture myself as a sophisticated man of the world; driver of fast cars; lover of beautiful women; daredevil adventurer.

I overheard Sally Bastion, one of Loretta’s friends, say to Loretta one time, “I hope Francis didn’t come down with romantic fever because of me; instead of rheumatic fever. But maybe Sally had something there. Maybe I possessed a little Casanova blood in my veins. I could see me giving that famous Latin lover a run for his money.

Lucky for me, my mom had rebelled against Roman Catholicism and had married the son of a Baptist preacher (that’s why my last name was Forsyth). She didn’t stick with my real dad very long and I didn’t even remember him, but because he was Baptist, I was supposed to be Baptist too or at least some kind of Protestant, certainly not Roman Catholic and certainly not a Roman Catholic priest.

“I am adamantly opposed to Francis taking the vows of a Roman Catholic priest,” my mother told my grandma. And that was the end of that argument.

Even if I struck out as a major league baseball player, or didn’t possess enough machismo to succeed as a millionaire playboy or couldn’t sit a horse well enough to ride off into the sunset like Roy Rogers or Gene Autry, I figured I could think of something better to do with my life than taking the vows of a priest.

The only thing worse than dedicating my life to poverty and celibacy and no girls would be selling my soul to a sawmill like my stepfather Web.

“You don’t want to wind up working in a saw mill like me,” Web had once warned me, and as far as I was concerned, he was right.

Worst-case scenario – I might conceivably be overcome by the Holy Spirit and turn into a Bible-thumping, fire and brimstone evangelist or something totally weird. But at least I wouldn’t have to become a priest and take a vow of celibacy and give up girls. Ever since that wonderful night at the eighth-grade graduation dance with Candace Reulmann I was pretty sure I couldn’t resist falling in love.

One thing concerned me about girls and falling in love though. I hadn’t felt anything physical happen to my heart when I was struck down by rheumatic fever. It just sneaked up on me and wham! One day I was walking around school looking cool in my new Florsheim wingtip shoes, the next day I was carted off to the hospital.

If falling in love was like rock-and-roll singers and famous novelists described it, it was like being struck by lightning or being whacked in the head by a high, hard fastball. In theory, love shouldn’t be able to sneak up on a guy. But was that true?

I sure didn’t want to end up like poor Tom Cutter.  He started a successful aviation business and was living fat, dumb and happy, then pow! He didn’t see love coming, it nailed him, next thing you know, he fell for a girl and got married. Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last. After a few years, Tom’s wife dumped him and ran off with another man.  Poor Tom didn’t see that coming either. Tom blamed himself for the divorce.

“You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love,” he said. “You may do it over and over again afterwards, but it’s never the same. When you chuck away what’s given to you that first time, it’s chucked away for good.”

When I really thought about it, I had to admit that taking the vows of priesthood might be safer than falling in love. I had to acknowledge that possibility. Still, I couldn’t help reasoning, “If rheumatic fever is the worst thing that could happen to me, and it hasn’t killed me, falling in love can’t either.”

If I ever was allowed to live normally again I intended to prove it. I had absolutely no intention of becoming a priest.

CHAPTER II

N

ear the end of my first semester as a freshman at Portola Union High School – November to be exact – was when the rheumatic fever nailed me. The way it happened was so weird.

Usually every summer, before a new school year started, my mom would take all of us kids to the shoe store and buy each of us a new pair of shoes. Those shoes were expected to last the entire school year. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. But Web was laid off from his job right after my graduation from eighth grade.

“There’s no money for new shoes,” right now, my mom said. So I started high school without new shoes.

There was no money until October when Web finally was called back to work. I’d had to skip turning out for JV football because we couldn’t even afford the five dollar fee for athletic insurance. That had been a bitter pill to swallow, but it wasn’t Web’s fault. I knew that and I just had to buck up and face facts. In October, my mom said, “I think I can squeeze enough money out of the family budget to buy you a pair of those black Converse sneakers if you want.”

“I don’t want sneakers mom!” I protested. “Kids who wear sneakers to school are poor.”

I did not want my classmates to think I was poor. No doubt they already knew, but I didn’t know that they knew and I wanted to keep everybody in the dark as long as I could; including myself. So I refused the new sneakers and held out for a pair of wingtips, which my mom promised me she could buy in November.

The first week of November, as soon as Web’s paycheck was deposited in the bank, mom took me to Jordan’s Fine Bootery in downtown Fortuna and bought me Florsheim black wingtips, size twelve triple E.

“My gosh,” she told Web afterward, “The boy has the feet of a full-grown man already and he’s not even fifteen years old. How big you think his feet will get before he’s done growing?”

Web said he didn’t know the answer to that. Pretty big though, was all he would hazard to guess.

“Those shoes cost twenty five dollars,” my mom said. “His hooves are so huge it cost more than two dollars a foot to shoe him. Might as well be a horse.”

“Big horse,” Web said. “All that leather. Clydesdale maybe.”

I was somewhat embarrassed about the fact that it cost so much money to buy my new shoes. I did know times were tough for the McKenna family and that money didn’t grow on trees and I couldn’t help feeling just a little selfish. Still, I couldn’t resist strutting around some in my new twenty-five dollar shoes. They sure were a lot higher quality than ten-dollar Converse sneakers.  My shoes even cost more than Loretta’s shoes. Life didn’t get much better than that. Anytime you could lord something over on your little sister it was worth the price.

My shoes had genuine leather soles with little triangular wedges of hard rubber in each heel. I guessed that was to keep the heels from wearing down too fast. I considered asking my mom if I could have taps put on the heels to protect them further, but decided I would make too much noise walking down the school hallways. I did not want to attract a lot of attention to myself as a lowly freshman.

So, first thing next Monday morning, I strutted off to high school wearing my new wingtip shoes. Even though they were brand new, I had shined them until they nearly blinded me to look at them. I might not want to be noticed, but I sure wanted my new shoes to be noticed. Unfortunately, about halfway through the school day my right shoe started to rub a blister on my heel. By the end of the day, I was sporting a painful, angry, pussy red blister and I still had to walk home.

I limped home, took my shoes off, popped the blister and ran outside barefoot to play baseball with the neighbor kids. But I didn’t last long. Before my mom even called me in for dinner, my right leg got all hot and achy and it looked like there were red streaks running up it almost to my knee. 

I suspected I might have a problem, but boy! I did not want to tell Web and my mom. If we didn’t have money for a new pair of shoes, we sure didn’t have money to take me to a doctor. I was going to tough it out and hope my little problem would go away. Too bad I made the mistake of confiding in Loretta that I was worried about my leg. I knew better.

How many times had I told myself, and anyone else who would listen, “Never tell Loretta anything; she is nothing but a big blabber mouth and your secret will be spread all over kingdom come before you know it?” No sooner had I confided in Loretta than she told my mom, “There’s something wrong with Francis’ leg.”

Sure enough, my mom came after me wanting to know what was wrong with my leg. I probably owed my survival to Loretta, but I’d be darned if I’d ever admit it. I also reserved the right to be ticked off at her the rest of my life if I wanted. Anyway, as soon as my mom saw my leg she said, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got blood poisoning.”

“Is blood poisoning serious?” I asked stupidly as mom dialed the telephone to call a doctor.

Of course it was serious. The doctor told my mom to bring me to his office right away. By the time we arrived at his office I was feeling really bad. I could tell I had a temperature, and a pretty high one. In fact, I felt like I was burning up.

The doctor gave me a shot of something and sent me home with adamant and worried instructions to my mom.

“Pack his whole body in ice and don’t waste time doing it,” the doctor said. “You’ve got to get his temperature down as quickly as you can. If he goes into convulsions, it’ll be touch and go.”

I don’t remember much after that, but my mom told me later that I did indeed go into convulsions shortly after we arrived back home. She and Web had packed my body in ice as instructed, but my temperature shot up to a hundred and six.

You nearly died Francis,” my mom told me. “Me and some people who came from church prayed all night and laid hands on you and everything.”

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I’d been run through the ringer, but judging from the look on my mom’s face, I knew I had dodged a bullet. When she told me she and Web would be taking me back to the doctor that afternoon, I didn’t sweat it. I figured I would just get another shot of magic drugs and a warning to be more careful about blisters.

Boy was I wrong! After taking my temperature – yeah, with a rectal thermometer (sliding that greasy thing up my backside) - thumping my chest and looking down my throat, the doctor pulled mom and Web outside the examining room for a whispered conference.

When they all came back in the room, they looked at me real serious like and the doctor told me, “We need to send you to the hospital for some tests Francis.”

Tests didn’t bother me. I figured that was pretty routine. I’d submit to a few tests then I’d go home. Wrong again!

At the hospital, after submitting to chest x-rays, more chest thumping, more looking down my throat – and yes, another Vaseline-greased rectal thermometer – I was informed by a nurse, “We’re going to have to keep you at the hospital overnight.”

I didn’t like that idea at all, but mom and Web gave me no choice. Then they lied to me and promised me they would pick me up in the morning and take me home. The nurse ordered me to take a couple of white pills the doctor at the hospital prescribed for me. Next thing I knew I had drifted off to la-la land. Oh, what a weird dream I had that night! I dreamed I was crawling around the walls of the hospital like a giant scaly lizard. Only I wasn’t a lizard, I was me. I thought it was pretty neat to be able to stick to the walls like that though.

The only drawback was that I was wearing one of those nightgowns they always make you wear in hospitals; you know, the ones that gap open about four inches in the back so your naked behind is hanging out there for the all the world to see? I’m pretty sure mine was hanging out.

Anyway, I was crawling around the hospital walls and I was pretty scared because I heard someone moaning, obviously in serious pain.

“Oh-h-h. Oh-h-h.”

At first I thought the moans were coming from ghosts, because the wind blowing through an open hospital window moved the curtains in a way that they looked like ghosts. When I realized the moans were coming from me I figured I was dead or dying and the ghosts were coming to take me away. I wasn’t ready to pal around with ghosts yet so I said, “I’m outa’ here,” and slipped out the window.

Next thing I knew I was tripping down this long, long, long spirally tunnel, kind of like the one in Alice in Wonderland. After several minutes of alternately walking a few steps, falling down, drooling and giggling, I landed on my knees in a dark mossy place. Then a thought occurred to me.

            There might be snakes in the here!” I was afraid of snakes.

I felt like upchucking my dinner. Then, through glassy, unfocused eyes, I noticed a light, way, way, way down at the end of the tunnel and I started crawling towards it.

I don’t know how long I crawled. I was so dizzy and nauseous, it seemed like forever. I even considered just laying down up and going to sleep and never getting up again, but something compelled me forward. Eventually, I arrived at what appeared to be the end of the tunnel. I say that because I was looking at a thick oak door –at least I guess it was oak – with a big brass knocker on it.

I managed to pull myself upright and searched for a handle to open the door, but there didn’t appear to be a handle, just the knocker.

I took hold of the knocker, feeling very weak in the knees, pulled myself up a little straighter and banged loudly. “Help! Let me in,” I croaked.

Then the knocker turned into one of those bells you see on motel desks. Weird. Just as I was about to hit the bell with the palm of my hand to make it ring, it turned into a frog that croaked “ribit.” For a minute nothing else happened. Then, just as I was getting ready to pass out, the door slowly creaked open.  A bright shaft of light spotlighted a path in a forest. The forest looked a lot like the forest at South Fork Mountain where Web and I used to hunt deer. But I didn’t see any deer. What I saw was Jesus.

I’m not kidding!

There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the man seated on a large redwood stump in the forest clearing was Jesus. I figured this was it, the jig was up. I had been summoned to judgment for all my sins. That straightened me up real fast!

Jesus looked just like the guy in the picture hanging over my grandma’s bed. He was lean and muscular like a carpenter alright. He was wearing brown leather sandals, a glowing white robe, a red cape and a crown of thorns. I could see nail holes in his hands. He searched my eyes as if he were looking straight into my heart, then suddenly I could read his thoughts.

“You’re tired, come rest your head in my lap,” he said.

Let me tell you, I really, really wanted to rest my head in Jesus’ lap. I felt more tired than I’d ever felt in my life and I knew somehow that laying my head in Jesus’ lap would be the most relaxing, soothing thing I could ever do. My legs felt as heavy as lead weights though. And my head throbbed. I had absolutely no strength to move any part of my body.

Jesus beckoned me again. “Come,” he said.

Next thing I knew I was floating toward him. I think I was having one of those out-of-body experiences. It was then that I noticed my hospital gown had turned into a pure white robe – just like the fleece of a lamb.

“Am I dead?” I asked Jesus. I admit I was a little bit afraid.

“Are you ready to come live with me and my father in heaven?” Jesus asked.

“Boy, I don’t know,” I said, figuring I better tell the truth. I mean, Jesus would know if I was lying, right?

“You don’t have to come,” Jesus said. “You can go back if you want.”

               Now I was in a quandary. I really wanted to lay my head on Jesus’ lap. The desire to feel his comforting caress, to have him pat me tenderly on the back was so-o-o tempting. All the things I’d learned in Protestant churches about heaven – streets of gold, a castle for my home - that sort of thing - made me really want to give in to the temptation.  Still . . .

“It’s okay if you want to go back,” Jesus said again.

I should have known he could read my mind too.

“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” I said.

“Not at all,” Jesus said. “We’re giving you the option. The decision is strictly up to you.”

“I’m only fourteen and I would like to play professional baseball and get married someday,” I explained. “I might even become a priest, you never know.”

“You shall do what our Father has planned for you,” Jesus said. Maybe baseball is your calling, maybe the priesthood. Remember, faith is the assurance of things hoped for . . .”

“And the conviction of things not seen,” I said.  “I know. You sure it’s okay to go back?”

“It’s okay,” he said.

A breeze came up then. It was a cold breeze. It felt like it was going to rain and I shivered.

“Just like the weather in the mountains to change so quickly,” I thought. “I should have brought a jacket.”

Jesus untied his red cape and threw it around my shoulders.

“Wear this,” he said. “It will warm you, protect you and give you courage.”

            I suddenly had this weird feeling I was wearing a red cardinal’s vestment, but I also felt a new wholeness course through my veins. I was going to be okay!

“Wow thanks!” I said, feeling a little spooked and wondering if I was showing enough gratitude.

“Bless you Francis Albert Forsyth,” Jesus said. “Because you believe in me my father’s holy spirit is with you.”

Then he was gone and I was back on my knees in the tunnel.

The oak door had closed behind me and the light was fading. I felt an urgency to run somewhere because my legs suddenly became wondrously strong – but to where?

Back to the hospital as it turned out. When I woke up in the morning my mom and Web and a doctor stood at my bedside.

“Can I go home now?” I asked. “I feel great.”

No, I couldn’t go home.

“You have rheumatic fever Francis and you’re going to have to spend some time in a children’s hospital in Santa Rosa,” my mom said.

 “How much time?” I asked fearfully. Santa Rosa’s nearly three hundred miles south of here.”

“We don’t know,” mom said.

“Is rheumatic fever like polio?” I asked. “Will I be crippled?”

I didn’t say anything about Jesus telling me in my dream that the Holy Spirit would protect me. My mom wouldn’t have believed me and my dream probably was drug-induced anyway. I noticed that I wasn’t wearing the red cape Jesus gave me, so obviously, I had been dreaming

“Rheumatic fever affects your heart,” the doctor explained. “The blister on your heel broke open and was infected by bacteria – streptococcus we call them – which led to septicemia or blood poisoning. The bacteria are on your skin all the time. Blood poisoning resulted in the streptococcus flowing into your heart. You may have a damaged valve, which could seriously affect your future health, but with the right care, you should eventually be as good as new.

Eventually? How long was eventually? I might as well have been given a death sentence.

“You said you were going to take me home this morning,” I wailed at my mom.

I looked at Web, accusing him of betrayal too. I didn’t dare look at my mom that way because she would have whacked me, rheumatic fever or no rheumatic fever.

“We can’t take you home just yet Francis,” mom said.

Wailing didn’t work, so I tried anger.

L yelled as loud as I could, “This is totally unfair! I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

I tried cajoling. I promised I would be on my best behavior if I could just convalesce at home. I tried crying. Nothing worked. I was bundled up, driven to Santa Rosa and dumped at the children’s hospital - abandoned. I would spend the next six months in that hospital wondering what was going to become of me.  

  

  

CHAPTER III

I

t was now December twenty first, nineteen sixty four, four days before Christmas. Since my mom made me turn the radio off and I didn’t have anything else to do, I curled up on the living room couch, turned my back on the wet gloom outside and tried to read another chapter of ‘Round the Bend. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t concentrate. I really wanted to go to Oregon to visit my grandma and grandpa Granatelli for the holidays, but the weather was not cooperating.

Nineteen sixty four was a season of massive flooding in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It had been pouring rain almost non-stop for thirty days and thirty nights. Rampaging rivers and creeks had already killed five people and left several others missing. The dead included a sixteen-year old girl in Medford, Oregon, who fell into a swollen creek and was swept away. The girl’s father was killed when he jumped into the creek in a futile attempt to save her. Two old ladies met their maker when their car plunged into a river near Sandpoint, Idaho. And a man had drowned while trying to dynamite a log jam on a rural Washington state river.

I even read a story in the newspaper about a bunch of dairy cows that were killed when flood waters swamped their barn. The people who owned the farm camped out in the hay loft of the barn for a couple of days trying to stay above the water.

“We had to listen to our cows drowning all night long,” they told a newspaper reporter.

I had always thought cows could swim, like horses, but maybe not. Maybe the barn was locked and the cows couldn’t get out even if they did swim. I could only imagine how horrible knowing they were going to drown must have been for those cows. I imagined them straining to keep their noses above the rising water as long as they could, mooing frantically for help that never came. If they could swim, they probably swam around in useless circles until they ran out of strength.

If the farmers listened to their cows all night long, some of the cows must have lasted a long time - only to perish in the end.

I was convinced that drowning would be a terrible way to die; straining to catch your breath while water flooded into your mouth and down your throat, choking the life out of you. It certainly seemed like a worse way to go than dying from convulsions brought on by blood poisoning. At least when I had blood poisoning I didn’t know I was dying. I just had a weird dream.

“I would probably panic like most people if I were drowning,” I thought.

I preferred to die displaying a little more dignity. All in all blood poisoning didn’t seem like such a bad way to go. Rheumatic fever might be an even better way to go. One day your heart just stopped working . . .

But I didn’t really want to die, at least not yet. I had been given a reprieve and I wanted to make the best of my opportunity; if I ever got the chance.

A little after noon, my mom prepared to drive Web to the sawmill. He worked the swing shift.

“I’ll decide when I come home from work, if we should risk the six-hour drive to grandpa and grandma Granatelli’s,” he told us kids.

If the flooding hadn’t worsened by the time Web arrived home around 10:30 p.m. he might - “might,” he emphasized - be willing to make the long dark drive to grandpa and grandmas so the McKenna family would arrive there early the next morning.

“You kids better pack your suitcases and be ready to go,” mom told us. “If daddy comes home and says he is willing to risk the trip, we could be driving to Oregon at a moments’ notice. 

We started packing around three p.m. while our mother finished ironing a stack of dress shirts for one of her housecleaning customers.  All afternoon, while the rain outside continued its downpour, us kids argued about what clothing we should take with us, what toys the younger kids should bring along and how much stuff we would have to leave behind so we could cram all of our Christmas presents, the baby’s playpen, snow chains, emergency roadside kit and other necessities into the car, not to mention two adults and eight children. 

As we packed, we kept our ears glued to the radio or the television and our eyes focused on the gloom outside.  Shortly after dark the electricity went out and the lights flicked off and we were plunged into total darkness.  The effect might not have been so devastating if the Christmas tree lights had somehow miraculously stayed on, but when the Christmas tree lights blinked off too the McKenna household mood turned from festive to worrisome.

“What if the lights don’t come back on,” I asked my mom.

“They’ll come back on,” she said.

“If we don’t go to grandma and grandpa’s can we open our presents tonight?” my sister Loretta asked.

Just like Loretta, I thought. She never wanted to wait for anything.  Loretta looked just like our mom and was a year younger than me less four days.  Four days every year she was the same age as me, which she loved and I hated.  Loretta was a favorite of my aunts, another fact I resented.  They always talked about how cute Loretta was, but I did not see her as being the least bit cute.

As far as I was concerned all Loretta did was throw “hizzy fits” (that’s what my mom called her tantrums) when she didn’t get her own way. I figured my aunts thought Loretta was cute because they were just girls sticking up for a girl.  Still, I did actually love my sister.  She and I were born of our mother’s first marriage and the bond between us was forged of the knowledge that we were second-class citizens in a family where there were six newer half-sisters and brothers.

What made life especially difficult for me personally was the knowledge that Web did not consider me to be his real son. I felt incredibly resentful about that.  Web often said before Michael and Georgie (my two half-brothers) were born, “I’d like a son of my own someday and I have no intention of giving up trying to have one until I succeed.” 

More than once, when I overheard Web making this statement, I choked back the urge to scream, “What am I, chopped liver?” I’d heard that term “chopped liver” somewhere before; most likely read it in one of the library books I regularly devoured. I didn’t care much for liver and I figured most people felt the same, ergo, chopped liver was not a very good thing. Nor was I - at least in Web’s eyes.

I tried to be a real son to Web. Before I came down with rheumatic fever, I hunted and fished with him and I loathed fishing. I played football and basketball and baseball in junior high school and thought I was athletic enough and tough enough that I could do well at sports in high school and make Web proud. 

“Despite the name Francis, you are no weenie,” Web acknowledged.  

In fact, I insisted on my friends calling me Francis rather than Frank or Frankie, because I was determined to prove the point that this particular Francis didn’t care two cents what kind of sissy image his name conjured up. I also had carried a B-plus average in my school studies, and worked odd jobs when I could find them during the summers. 

Still, I knew Web did not consider me to be his real son. Too bad it took him so long to accomplish his goal of getting his own son, because I wound up with four more sisters (in addition to Loretta) before Web finally made good on his promise. Then, of course, he overdid it and produced not one son but two. Now there were eight kids in our family – five girls and three boys. Consequently, we were broke all the time, with barely enough food to go around, and I often found myself selfishly wishing I were an only child. 

Half an hour after the electricity went off it came back on. 

“Hooray!” we kids shouted. 

“Good, now I can finish my ironing,” my mom said. 

Packing for the trip to Oregon resumed.  Around six o’clock, mom announced she was finished with her ironing and needed to deliver it to the owner. 

“I’ll take Goldie and Ariane with me,” she told me, indicating my eleven-year old and nine-year old sisters.  “You stay here with Loretta and the rest of the kids.”

Loretta and the rest of the kids.  That meant I would be responsible for Loretta, eight-year old Grace, six-year old Margaret and the two boys, Michael and Georgie, who were three and two, respectively. 

“I hope Georgie doesn’t crap in his diapers while mom’s gone,” I thought to myself. “I’m not changing him if he does,” I vowed.

As soon as mom drove off in the darkness to deliver her ironing Loretta began cajoling me to help her figure out what was in our Christmas packages.

“Don’t you want to know what you’re getting?” she asked peevishly. 

“No! I don’t,” I said, attempting to explain to her for what I believed was the umpteenth time that I preferred being surprised.

“Oh, pooh!” Loretta said, flopping down on the floor in front of the Christmas tree and picking up a small, gaily wrapped present with her name on it. 

“You never want to do anything I want to do,” she said, shaking her package vigorously. It made a rattling sound inside and then there was a faint ding, like something had struck a small bell.

“Oh, I bet this is that charm bracelet I wanted,” she exclaimed excitedly.

“It’s probably a cat bell to put around your neck,” I teased.

“Is not,” Loretta retorted.

“Maybe it’s just a box of old pennies.”

“Why are you so contrary?” Loretta asked.

“I’m not contrary,” I insisted.  “I just don’t want to know what my presents are before Christmas. If I knew, Christmas morning wouldn’t be special. It’d just be another day.”

“Well, I’d like to know,” Loretta said. “Then I could savor the knowledge that I was getting what I wanted all the way up to Christmas.”

“But what if it turned out you guessed wrong and you didn’t get what you wanted?”

“Unggg! You make me so mad sometimes I could just swear,” Loretta said.  “But momma says we shouldn’t swear, and anyway, I’m not going to do it in front of the little ones.”

“Crap.” I said.

“Francis!  I’m going to tell momma!”

“You better not.”

“Oh? Are you threatening me big man?  I’m not afraid of you.”

“Ah, what’s the use of talking to you?  You haven’t got the brain God gave a goose.”

“Have too. Quack. Quack. Quack.”

“Geese don’t quack, you know.”

“Quack. Quack. Quack.

“Shut up!”

“Make me. Quack. Quack. Quack.”

Realizing that this conversation was going nowhere, I stalked off to my room and slammed the door. 

“You can’t leave me alone out here.” Loretta screamed at the closed door.

“Oh yeah!” I retorted. “That’s what I’m doing.”

Having my own room in a family of eight children was an absolute luxury. I understood that and appreciated it.  I also appreciated the fact that Web, in spite of all his shortcomings, had actually stuck up for me when I asked to have my own room.

“He’s a teenage boy,” Web told my mom, “he needs his own space.”

Being sick didn’t hurt my cause either. I figured what the heck - take the breaks when you get ‘em. The next house we rented, one with four bedrooms rather than three, I got my wish for my own room.

The girls all slept together in one room, which bugged Loretta to no end, the baby boys slept in another room, Web and my mom had their bedroom and I had mine. Mine wasn’t much bigger than an oversized coat closet, but it was mine.

I worked out for a few minutes on the weight set in my room; two reps of arm curls for each arm, two reps of leg squats. The weight set had been a surprise present from my grandparents, to help me regain my strength. As soon as my doctor gave me permission, I had started pumping iron. I still had a long way to go before my legs were as strong as they used to be, but my arms were shaping up pretty nicely. 

Finally, I flopped down on my bed and tuned my transistor radio to a station in San Francisco. The radio had been an eighth-grade graduation present from my aunt Jeannie.

“You deserve a big surprise for graduating,” Jeannie had told me.

I loved her for making me feel so special.

It amazed me that I could listen to music coming from San Francisco, three-hundred some odd miles from my home in the redwoods, on a little plastic doohickey that I could hold in one hand. 

The Temptations hit Smoke Gets in Your Eyes came on. I thought back to my eighth-grade graduation dance when I’d spent most of the evening dancing with Candace Reulmann. Candy we called her at school. 

“Cause she’s sweet like candy,” one of my classmates had drooled.

Candy and I hadn’t paid much attention to each other previously, but we began making frequent eye contact in eighth-grade.  I knew it didn’t hurt that I’d played sports. Candy was a cheerleader, tall and blonde and graceful. She wore her hair in a pony tail most of the time, and I was a sucker for pony tails. She had big blue eyes and spoke in a voice that was somewhat shy and childish, yet at the same time very forthright and mature. I admired Candy because she spoke her mind to our teacher or in a crowd of our classmates even when she was obviously nervous. 

But it wasn’t until the night of graduation, during the sock hop in the gymnasium, that I actually spend any real time with Candy, actually held a real conservation with her and actually touched her. We danced to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. She walked all the way across the gymnasium from where she’d been talking with other girls to ask me to dance. 

“Would you do me the honor Francis?” she asked.

Do her the honor? I felt like I was the one being honored. My heart nearly leaped into my throat, my knees suddenly took to trembling and my palms got sweaty, but I managed to croak, “Okay.”

I never held a girl who was physically attractive to me in my arms before. I’d hugged my sister - but only when I had to. I’d hugged my mother, my grandmother and my aunts, but that wasn’t the same. Candy was not a relative or a family friend. She was, you know, a real girl – with a body, a body that possibly rivaled many of the ones I’d seen in Web’s Playboy magazines.

Of course, I tried not to think of Candy the same way I thought of the women in Playboy. God probably wouldn’t approve of that. No, it was safer, and I approved of myself more, if I thought of Candy as chaste and wholesome. As far as I knew she was.

Candy was so soft though, and she smelled fantastic. Her perfume was Desert Flower, she said. As she floated around the dance floor with me, I kept my right hand rigidly light on the small of her back, like she was precious china, and my sweaty left hand securely inserted into her palm.

 I felt tingly and electrified by Candy’s smile. Her lithe, responsive, physical presence moved in perfect rhythm and harmony with my own physical presence. I wanted to touch Candy more, but that thought probably was evil too. If I couldn’t touch her more, I wished with all my heart that this moment would last forever. 

But then Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ended and Candy suddenly melted away to the other side of the gym again.  Some fast rock and roll came on, Elvis Presley, Chubby Checkers and the Twist, Bill Haley and Rock Around the Clock, Chuck Berry. I wanted to ask Candy to continue dancing with me, but I didn’t know how to fast dance. I agonized about what to do.

Three more songs played. Then, blessed event!  Smoke Gets in Your Eyes came on again. I hurried across the dance floor before some other guy could beat me to Candy, like there was a hand pushing me from behind.  About halfway across the floor, I noticed Greg Lupin headed her way too.

Greg was the quarterback of our football team. I thought I was going to miss my chance.  But then, good grief! Candy was walking right past Greg, to me, putting her hands out to me, tugging me out onto the dance floor. I didn’t even have to say anything! 

Through the entire song, neither one of us said anything. But I felt us inching closer to each other, telegraphing our feelings to one another. My lungs tightened up until I wondered if I’d be able to keep on breathing. I hoped my palms weren’t sweating too much. I felt an unfamiliar yet pleasant stirring in my soul. When the song ended, I nearly panicked.  How was I going to keep Candy from leaving me again? I needn’t have worried as it turned out. 

“Do you want to get some punch?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I wheezed appreciatively.  “It’s really warm in here.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

We wandered over to the refreshment table. I noticed with extreme gratefulness that Candy had not let go of my hand. Of course she had to let go of it when I handed her a glass of punch. 

We stood with our punch for a minute, looking for a place to sit down.

“Would you like to sit down outside and catch some fresh air,” I asked?

“That’d be great,” she said. 

We strolled outside, but just as we found a picnic table on the grass by the gym, where we could sit down, Carl Reinhardt, one of the tackles on the football team walked up to me and totally without warning, slugged me in the stomach as hard as he could!

The air whistled out of me like I was a tire suddenly going flat. I dropped my cup of punch. I held tight to my composure, in spite of my sudden discomfort, so as not to let Carl or Candy see my pain and looked at Carl as steely-eyed as I could.

I told him then through clenched teeth, with as much controlled anger as I could muster up, ”Don’t ever hit me again Carl, ever.”

I wanted him to believe that I would kill him if he did. He appeared to buy it.

“It isn’t right for you to steal Greg’s girl,” Carl muttered, but he stalked off and left me alone.

Greg happened to come along just then and apologized to me.

“I saw what happened, Francis,” Greg said. “Carl’s crazy. I sure hope you don’t think I put him up to that. Sorry Candace.”

“No harm done,” I said through still-clenched teeth, keeping up the pretense that I was okay. “Just keep him away from me or he’s going to get hurt.”

“No problem,” Greg said. “Hey, you going to play football in high school next year?”

“That’s my plan,” I said.

We didn’t have much else to talk about. Candy suggested Greg bring me another glass of punch, which he actually did. Then Greg took his leave of us, looking envious of me, but not so envious that he wanted to slug me too.

When I finally regained my breath and composure Candy and I sat down at the picnic table and took up where we’d left off.  As we talked, I recalled all the times I’d sat at that very table, eating lunch, talking with my friends. Next fall I was heading off to high school. Things would change.  I wondered how much.

I looked at Candy and thought I would like to have a girlfriend like her in high school. Candy herself would be my first choice. I almost turned giddy with that idea. I’d never dared hope such a thing before. Having a girlfriend was infinitely better than wondering what might be wrapped up in a Christmas package, especially having a girlfriend like Candy. A girlfriend like Candy, versus a new shirt was no contest.

As if she were reading my mind, Candy asked me, “What are your hopes for high school, Francis?” 

I didn’t tell her I was hoping she would be my girlfriend.

“I’d like to make the varsity football and baseball squads my sophomore year and be voted All-County my junior and senior years,” I said confidently. “Other than that I’m not sure.  ‘Course I’m hoping to get good grades so I can go to college.”

“I want to go to college too,” Candace sighed.

I began to imagine what it would be like to attend college with Candace.

After graduating maybe we’d get married and start careers. She’d be a famous model for a few years. Then, maybe we’d have a family. One thing for sure, I thought. We wouldn’t have eight kids. No way! Two at the most. Then Candace blew my dream away like she had waved an evil magic wand in front of me. 

“My only regret,” she was saying, “is that I’m not going to be able to attend high school here. My dad got a job transfer and we’re moving to Michigan next week.”

“What?” I desperately wanted not to believe my ears.

“Next week!”

“I’m afraid so.”

We looked into each other’s eyes longingly.

I suddenly was tempted to tell Candy I loved her. But I didn’t know her well enough to tell her I loved her. Besides, my mom told me I couldn’t even date until I was sixteen. That was still two years away. How could I love someone I couldn’t even date? If Candace left I would never be able to date her.  My night was ruined.

“Oh Francis,” Candace said.  “I wish I could stay here and go to high school with you. I really do.  We could have so much fun together.  But I guess it’s not meant to be.”

“I guess not,” I mumbled bleakly, wondering why it wasn’t meant to be, suddenly wanting not to look at her anymore. How could she do this to me? How could God do this to me? I felt totally betrayed. 

“Francis, what are you thinking?” Candace asked.

“I - I - I hope everything works out for you,” I lied.

“Maybe we better go back inside now.”

“Francis?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry!”

“Me too Candy. Me too,” I groaned.

Candace set her punch cup down on the picnic table, reached out to me and took my free hand in her lap.

“Her hands are so beautiful!” I thought. “And I’ll never hold them again.”

Then Candace bent forward and softly kissed me on the cheek. I would never forget the warm caress of her breath on my face, the moist tenderness of her lips as they pressed against my skin. I could feel them even now.  Something stirred in me again. My heart suddenly felt tight. It probably wasn’t good for my health to be thinking of Candace.

I leaped from my bed and bolted back out to the living room.