Every fall, I would patronise the local thrift store: a bag of clothes for a dollar at the Blessed Sacrament, run by the nuns of the local convent in Sorrento, Maine. For me, it was my school shopping, and it was there that I would find the best soft suede vintage coats, and go-go boots, and weathered blue jeans with paisley patches; there hidden in the white plastic - yet untied - donated garbage bags full of used clothes lying on the dusty gray cemented floors, redolent with mothballs.
I could have afforded more fashionable wear from our local boutiques, and I carried this quiet guilt with me as I meticulously fingered through the aisles of clothes like an intrepid felon, yet to be exonerated. It was my secret addiction; and I would walk home with my overflowing paper bags against the chilling wind and falling fluorescent leaves of autumn, collecting in the gutters that lined the dampened streets of our lonesome, aloof New England town.
It was here, and then, where I first swallowed my first cow shit tasting hallucinogenic mushrooms, and dropped my first sheet of blotter acid; following the seagulls to the shore, ready to dive into the foreboding Atlantic sea - riddled with seaweed, heavy with salt, brutally slapping the rocky coast in gusts with the approaching tide. I watched the local fishermen returning from the vast void of the Eastern shore, emptying their nets of slithering beheaded fishes onto the pier. The stench was nauseating, and I suffered a vertigo inspired syncopal event, and fainted onto the oil slickened pier, surrounded by sea gulls, and footprints, and sand, and chastising tourists. I awoke, and they asked me, " are you pregnant?" and " what is your name?" and " where do you live?" and discussed privately whether or nor they should call an ambulance. I declined, and vomited into the sea.
It wasn't until the next day that the newspapers had announced the bludgeoning murder of the two nuns of the Blessed Sacrament; not but a few hours after I had left the store. Apparently, a man named Frank Bechard, 38, had killed the two Nuns working in the convent store using the statue of the Virgin Mary as a weapon.
Bechard, 38, was found not guilty of murder or attempted murder by reason of mental disorder or defect and was ordered confined for treatment indefinitely at the Augusta Mental Health Institute, now Riverview Psychiatric Center, in Augusta. He was determined to be insane and not criminally responsible for his actions.
I panicked in my trip, scared that it had been me that had murdered the nuns. I paced the house, and the dogs barked, and I thought that my head was going to split in half. The whole of the evening I stayed awake, imagining the nuns walking the streets, and Jesus appearing amidst the clouds. My bed seemed to sink into the floor, and I ran down the spiraling stairs into my sisters bed for safety. Eventually, I fell asleep in her consoling embrace, shivering with fear, with my hands held firmly on the top of my head.
To this day, I dream of the nuns and the fishermen in the sea, and I awake in a clammy sweat and pounding heart, mortified and vigilant. They call it post -traumatic stress disorder, and I often wondered what might have been, had I visited the store two hours later. What sort of a possessed demon beats a pair of old nuns in a convent with a statue of the Virgin Mary? Bloody Mary! All for a couple of dollars in cash and a paper bag full of dusty old clothes? Proof of evil in residence, or a penance to God for his absence within the homogenously white and repressively righteous Puritanical town that once possessed these abandoned summer homes by the swallowing sea.
It was 10 years past, that I braved the return to the lugubrious store; employed by the timid nuns, and barren walls. One paper bag of full of clothes for a dollar was the price for a few of hours of rummaging through the vintage shirts and rosary beads reeking of ash and incense.
I thought I might have visions of death or feel the arthritic, decrepit hand of Sister Marie Lucette tickling the curve of my neck as I surveyed the humble store.
There were elderly men with walkers stinking of urine and portly middle aged mothers in sweatpants; scolding their impatient young boys and big blue eyed little girls with tangled braids sheepishly begging for the naked one eyed baby doll they'd found hidden in a bag of shoes.I felt like an intruder, attempting to steal the coins from the donation basket on Christmas Eve. It was no longer a playground and my eyes widened to the plights of poverty and ageing in America.
I felt a sudden chilling draft emerge from the opening door that now announced its visitors with a jingle bell. Two elderly women appeared - arms locked – politely aiding each other down the three shallow stairs into the store. They were smiling and speaking in French and bayed me good morning as we passed.
Yet the violent murder of the nuns lie hidden in the suffering images that line the stain glassed windows of antiquity. Senseless and Demonic. They linger like the repressive sins we carry and hide, but recall in the hour of our deaths with regret and fear. Or we die with them, content and absolute.
I left the store that autumn so many years ago, a gullible and spontaneous child; and I return now an embittered cynic – barren and sad. And the Holy Ghosts of the Blessed Sacrament whisper in the staggering winds of Maine, on that island by the sea, so desolate and sullen.
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