Sky lantern

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014
The Weekly Screed (#660)

Sky lantern

by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — When I look back, my friendship with Paul Keeffe seemed to spring up almost instantaneously.

On first sight, there was a glint of mischief in his eyes that told me he was One of Us. He was a new kid in school, popping up in tenth grade after a year in the seminary. Although he seemed the unlikeliest candidate for the priesthood who ever set foot in the sacristy, I understood the delusion that led him there.

Paul and I were both doomed to apostasy in an organized faith that couldn’t accommodate our penchant for chaos. But at some point both of us had imagined ourselves serving the Church. The attraction was more romantic than theological. We thought being a priest was like being Jesus — helping people, lifting their spirits, forgiving their petty trespasses and giving them hope in a hopeless world.

Soon enough, however, Paul and I both saw that — for the Church — helping people was mere pastime. The jeweled princes of Rome, with their red beanies and satin cinctures, had a thousand priorities that had nothing to do with Jesus.

The priests at the seminary probably figured out Paul’s problem long before he did. Not only was there too much Jesus in him, there was too much Holden Caulfield, Mick Jagger and Che Guevara. And then, of course, there were the girls he kept sneaking into the dormitory.

So, they banished him to public school, like B’rer Rabbit booted skyward by B’rer Bear, cartwheeling lazily into the briar patch.

I found in Paul a blood brother. He was infinitely curious, dubious of every authority, insistent for the evidence behind very platitude. He was innately trusting — not of this one or of that one — but afflicted by a mad faith that all of us together are far more good than we are bad.
Of course, I saw danger there, too — a cliff’s edge where Paul would fling his arms wide, throw his golden head back and dance the Russian saber dance. My part was to watch, while I backed away and did my own steps, slower and safer, shirt still tucked, shoes on my feet, eyes in their sockets. But always a little envious.

My favorite Paul moment was one of our joint evenings, early in tenth grade, at Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) class — weekly religious instructions for Catholic kids who attended public school. Paul smiled at the absurdity of having to attend CCD after a year of the most intensive Catholicism possible, up on the hill at the seminary. Having spent six years at St. Mary’s School myself, I had little need — and no reverence — for the grammar-school Bible-stories crap dispensed by CCD volunteers. So, as soon as we ambled together into Mr. Rotter’s class at Immaculate Heart School, we were a team, the Groucho and Chico of CCD.

Barely had the hapless Mr. Rotter chalked his name on the blackboard before Paul rendered the mimeographed lesson plan moot, asking one of those unanswerable questions unique to puckish Catholic kids in catechism class.

“Mr. Rotter, ever since the Ecumenical Council, it’s not a sin to eat meat on Friday any more, right?” (A cautious nod from Mr. Rotter.) “OK, so, you got all these people who’ve been sent straight to Hell — I mean millions of ‘em, right? — ‘cause they ate meat on Friday, ‘cause it used to be a mortal sin. But now, it’s not even a sin at all. The Ecumenical Council said, ‘Oh, well. Never mind.’ So what does God do with all those poor sinners who’re roasting down there in the burning pit of Hell? I mean, they aren’t actually sinners any more, right? The sin’s been cancelled! I mean, does he give ‘em all a pardon and a clean suit? Does he just sort of quietly say, ‘Oops, sorry’ and send ‘em up to Heaven? Or does he keep ‘em in Hell, ‘cause he doesn’t want to admit a mistake? I mean, is it fair that for centuries people went to Hell ‘cause they ate a burger on Friday, and then, suddenly, burgers are OK and nobody has to go to Hell?”

Of course, Mr. Rotter, was stumped. He was a rookie, who walked into the room thinking this would be like Sunday school in a Gary Cooper movie.

I was next. “For that matter, Mr. Rotter,” I said, “what about limbo?”

“Limbo?”

“Yeah, you know, where babies go if they die before they’re baptized. I mean, do they grow up there, in limbo? Or do they stay babies? And if they stay babies, who’s there to take care of ‘em — change their diapers and stuff? Angels? And if the babies grow up, who tells ‘em they’re stuck there in limbo, forever, even though its not their fault, and — ”

Normally, kids did their best to just sleep through CCD class. But as the other boys in the room watched Mr. Rotter squirm under this two-barreled onslaught from Paul and me, they roused from their torpor.

“Yeah,” said one kid two rows over, “what if you’re, like, a converted Catholic, and you die in a car crash on the way to your baptism? Do they send you to limbo, too, with all those babies?”

“Yeah,” came another voice. “And if they do, do ya have to change diapers?”

“Yeah, Mr. Roto-Rooter!” Kids were sitting up, shouting questions as the teacher shrank into a corner. “If you’re a dead baby, do you even need diapers?” “What about pagan babies?” “What about pagan adults? What about — ”

After that night, Mr. Rotter retired from CCD. After a few weeks, Paul and I — our work done — also retired, from the Church.

Over the next few years, I had too little time with Paul, mainly because he was poached by girls. He was, after all, smart, glib, handsome and charming beyond his years. He could talk a beauty queen off the Homecoming float.

Our main contacts, in those three years of chance encounters in the halls of LaFollette High, consisted of extemporaneous bursts of vaudeville dialog, like recitations from S.J. Perelman’s secret journal. Whether it was five minutes or five hours, you parted from Paul wishing for more.

And then we graduated. Neither of us did so with any academic distinction, despite our widely recognized status as the leading smartasses in the Class of ’67.

Sadly for me, that was the last of Paul Keeffe. Like most classmates, even the closest among us, we turned in different directions and lost each other’s thread. I’ve restored some of those friendships, but never Paul. And now I can’t.

Sometime after Commencement, Paul danced over the cliff’s edge — following, with pure abandon, the worst tunes of the psychedelic Sixties, ‘til he couldn’t hear them anymore, couldn’t dance, couldn’t remember and couldn’t even charm the nurses in the little sanitarium not far from here, where he spent the last years of his life.

His brother, Pat, who was one of my high-school heroes, sent me a note that Paul had died on the fifth of January. Pat has spent his life — a little like me — in prose and exposition, so different from the tumultuous free verse that was Paul’s firefly existence. Pat — like me — envied Paul, his beauty, his vivacity, his fearlessness. We’re both regretful now, that we had too little time with him, to enjoy him, to emulate him, to save him.

I wrote to Pat that Paul was, all too briefly, absolutely wonderful. Afterwards, I thought of a sky lantern — this glowing handful of rice-paper, paraffin and fire that you set loose into the air. Miraculously, it floats upward into the night until, so far away that you’ll never reach it again, it blends into a firmament of stars.