Saint Christopher
In 1958 I had this friend
named Christopher Moribundi
He was the first Catholic kid
I'd ever known personally,
which made him rare and exotic to me,
like a glass of bird's milk,
or a fur sink.
Christopher was as pale
as butter-less grits
and so thin and bony
he looked like white silk
stretched over a jumble of
coat hangers. The kid was
delicate, fragile, as if he'd
been formed out of blown
glass-all the detail was there,
the appropriate volume
was displaced by his body,
but he was form filled with air,
empty of everything that could have
sustained the shell of his frail-Self.
I remember once he told our teacher
that he would miss the Friday
spelling test because he
wasn't coming to school.
"Why" she asked him.
"Because I'm going
into the hospital," he said.
Christopher had something
around his neck.
It looked like a Chiclet,
or a Scrabble tile,
and it dangled from a green
piece of twine.
There was something
scrimshawed on the surface,
engraved and filled with green ink,
an image of a robed man
with a walking staff.
"It is Saint Christopher,"
Christopher explained to me.
"I was named for him."
"Why do you wear it all the time?"
I asked.
"He's my saint.
The patron saint of travelers."
"Are you traveling?" I asked.
"I'm on a journey."
"But you're here,"
I said. "You're not on a journey."
"It's not that kind of journey,"
he explained,
although, at the time,
it explained nothing.
Christopher came to school
less and less, and then
not at all.
My mother found his name
in the Dallas Morning News.
Leukemia.
I hadn't realized that he was dying,
and suddenly he was dead.
He was just this kid
in the third grade,smart,
and small,
slight, and, as it turned out,
brave.
And now he was dead.
I asked my father to take me
down to Good Shepherd Funeral Home
to view the body.
I was eight years old,
and curious about such things.
"It's sad," said my dad.
"It's really, very, very sad.
But you don't need to go down
there. You're much too young."
"He was my best friend!"
I said, doing my best to sound
adamant. But was he?
I'd never claimed a best friend before,
never in all my life?
We drove down to the funeral home
after supper. I quizzed my father
on the ride.
"Will Chris go to heaven?" I asked.
"I'm sorry to say it's likely he will not,"
my father said, but he didn't sound
sorry at all. It was clear to me
that I had opened the door to a father/son
talk he'd been hoping and rehearsing for,
and he began in earnest:
"You see," he began, "if Chris had reached
the Age of Accountability
then he would have had to be baptized
in the Church of Christ,
in order to be saved. And Chris was Catholic.
All Catholics go to hell."
"But Chris was nice," I said.
"Nice people go to hell every day,"
my father said.
"Why? It doesn't make any sense.
If they are good, then why would God
send them to hell?"
"Because good is not enough.
Unless you obey the Truth
and go to the Church of Christ,
you can't go to heaven.
It's in the Bible,
and the Bible is perfect."
It sounded perfectly stupid to me.
"Maybe you made a mistake," I said.
It was said, but I made it sound like a question.
"There are no mistakes in the Bible.
God wrote the Bible."
"I thought guys like Moses and Paul wrote it."
God made their hands move.
They just sat there and God moved the pen
and when their hand stopped,
there was the Bible.
It's sad," he said, "I know, but that's
the way it is. God's ways
are higher than man's ways,
and God's thoughts are higher
than man's thoughts."
It didn't seem to me like God
had thought this whole hell thing through.
"I thought God was love,"
I said. "If God is love, well,
hell doesn't seem like something He would do."
"It's a sin to question God," my father warned.
"God is love,
and that's why he sent Jesus,
His only son, to die for us.
But if we reject Jesus,
well, God has no choice
but to send us to hell."
"Don't Catholics believe in God?" I asked?
"Don't they believe in Jesus too?"
"I guess they do,"
said my father. "But they also believe in Popes,
and they pray to Mary,
and they make stuff up,
that's not in the Bible.
And they believe in idols.
In Life magazine they showed a picture
of people lined up to kiss the toe
on a bronze statue of some Saint.
So many people kissed that toe that
they wore the toe plumb off.
Some artist had to weld a new toe on.
That's true. It was in Life magazine!
People who do dumb stuff, like that,
aren't smart enough to understand God's Word."
"You mean, you have to be smart to be saved?
Dumb people, and retards, and Pollokes
won't get saved because
they didn't understand something?"
"If you're retarded then you're mind
is like a baby's, and God saves babies,
so God saves retards too.
And if you're really crazy,
then maybe God would let them in too.
But if you have any sort of mind
at all then the only way to be saved
is to obey the Bible. That's why
it is so important
that we teach people the truth.
If we don't tell people
what they must do to be saved-
well, then, not only will they go to hell,
but we will go there too, because we
could have taught them
the Plan of Salvation, but didn't."
I tried to remember if I had ever tried
to teach Chris the Plan of Salvation.
I was wondering if my friend
was roasting in hell that very second
because I didn't try to save him
from the Catholics.
Good Shepherd was open,
but there weren't many cars
in the parking lot.
It was lonely there,
and when I stepped inside
there was a sick sweet smell
I didn't recognize.
"If this gets to be too much for you-"
my father said,
but I cut him off.
"It won't,"
I said sounding sure,
but not feeling sure.
"Let's just go."
I was sad wondering was my friend
screaming in hell while I was standing there
looking at his dead body.
A creepy guy lead us to
a Viewing Room, bright with yellow light,
and softly there was the sound of hymns
being played on an organ.
I wanted to see if Chris was really dead.
I thought right off
there was some sort of mistake.
Chris Moribundi was this thin,
delicate little guy.
You could see the individual bones
in his wrists and hands.
The kid in the coffin was swollen.
I wondered if they'd pumped him
too full of mummy juice.
His skin was warm looking,
not pale the way he had looked in school.
"Why would God send Chris to hell?"
I asked.
"Well," explained my father,
"You said he was smart, didn't you?"
I nodded yes.
"Well, then he was smart enough to read the Bible,
so he could have known the truth if he'd wanted to.
If he could have known the truth,
and didn't do what the Bible says you have to do
to be saved, well, then, you can't be saved."
I wished Chris had been dumber, but he had
straight hundreds on his spelling papers.
I prayed he had been dumb enough.
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