Brother Odd

funny name? You mean you're the kid was a hero at the Green Moon Mall summer before last? How come trouble follows you, or is it maybe you yourself are trouble?"
        He was playing the devil's advocate.
        I half believed I could feel the carpet dragon squirming under my foot.
        "I don't really have much to tell them that would be helpful," I relented. "I guess we could wait until they find the body."
        "They won't find it," Brother Knuckles said. "They ain't lookin' for a Brother Tim who's been murdered, the body hidden. What they're lookin' for is a Brother Tim somewhere who slashed his wrists or hung himself from a rafter."
        I stared at him, not fully comprehending.
        "It's only two years since Brother Constantine committed suicide," he reminded me.
        Constantine is the dead monk who lingers in this world, and sometimes manifests as an energetic poltergeist in unexpected ways.
        For reasons no one understands, he climbed into the church tower one night, while his brothers slept, tied one end of a rope around the mechanism that turns the three-bell carillon, knotted the other end around his neck, climbed onto the tower parapet, and jumped, ringing awake the entire community of St. Bartholomew's.
        Among men of faith, perhaps self-destruction is the most damning of all transgressions. The effect on the brothers had been profound; time had not diminished it.
        Knuckles said, "Sheriff thinks we're a rough crew, he can't trust us. He's the kind believes albino-monk assassins live here in secret catacombs, goin' out to murder in the night, all that old Ku Klux Klan anti-Catholic stuff, though maybe he don't know it's from the KKK. Funny how people that don't believe in nothin' are so quick to believe every crazy story about people like us."
        "So they expect that Brother Timothy killed himself."
        "Sheriff probably thinks we'll all kill ourselves before we're done. Like those Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinkers."
        I thought wistfully of Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. "Saw an old movie the other night-Going My Way."
        "That wasn't just another time, son. That was another planet."
        The outer door of the parlor opened. A sheriff's deputy and four monks entered. They had come to search the guesthouse, though it was not likely that a suicidal brother would have repaired to this wing to drink a quart of Clorox.
        Brother Knuckles recited the last few lines of a prayer and made the sign of the cross, and I followed his example, as though we had retreated here to pray together for Brother Timothy's safe return.
        I don't know if this deception qualified as a half-step down the slippery slope. I had no sensation of sliding. But of course we never notice the descent until we're rocketing along at high velocity.
        Knuckles had convinced me that I would find no friends among these authorities, that I must remain a free agent to discover the nature of the looming violence that drew the bodachs. Consequently, I preferred to avoid the deputies without appearing to be dodging them.
        Brother Fletcher, the monastery's cantor and music director, one of the four monks with the deputy, asked for permission to search my suite. I gave it without hesitation.
        For the benefit of the deputy, whose eyes were compressed to slits by the weight of his suspicion, Knuckles asked me to help search the pantries and storerooms that were his domain, as cellarer.
        When we stepped out of the parlor, into the guesthouse cloister, where wind blustered among the columns, Elvis was waiting for me.
        In my previous two manuscripts, I have recounted my experiences with the lingering spirit of Elvis Presley in Pico Mundo. When I left that desert town for a mountain monastery, he had come with me.
        Instead of haunting a place, especially an appropriate place like Graceland, he haunts me. He thinks that, through me, he will in time find the courage to move on to a higher place.
        I suppose I should be glad that I'm being haunted by Elvis instead of, say, by a punker like Sid Vicious. The King is an easy spirit with a sense of humor and with concern for me, though once in a while he weeps uncontrollably. Silently, of course, but copiously.
        Because the dead don't talk or even carry text-messaging devices, I needed a long time to learn why Elvis hangs around our troubled world. At first I thought