Lumen Christi
A Short Story
January nights in Riverside were damn cold. Frank Wozniak shivered at what would await him when he walked out the door. He buttoned up his coat, grabbed his bottle of vodka, his pack of cigarettes, and his lighter. He took one last look around the place – the light green wallpaper that had started peeling a couple years back, the old wooden barstools and tables were near their breaking point, and all the liquor bottles lay in glass shards on the floor. It was all too far gone to be saved, Frank thought to himself, and then, nodding as if needing to show himself that his mind really was made up. Then, having convinced himself of his conviction, he walked out the door. January nights in Riverside were damn cold, but that would soon change.
Frank meandered along Hertel, trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t be second-guessing his decision. There was no other way for it all to end; even if he could change, the neighborhood couldn’t. No, even if he could save himself, he couldn’t save the tavern. Now that everybody had cars, nobody thought twice about driving up to North Tonawanda – or even across the Peace Bridge to Fort Erie – just to have a drink. Business was as dry as laundry sitting in the hot, summer sun for days on end, even if Frank didn’t feel that he personally had much hope of ever drying out. He took another swig of vodka and lit a cigarette.
Smoke swirled around his mouth and the sweet smell of tobacco found its way up his nose. He stumbled and nearly fell on the icy sidewalk and decided that he would take a seat on the snowbank. Not as if the cold would last too much longer. He took another drag on the cigarette and then watched the embers glow and he found himself smiling. Whether it was the time of night, his own guilt, the liquor, or the tobacco, he found himself momentarily lost in the land of memory.
Outside St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, it was nearing eight o’clock on Holy Saturday and little Frankie’s heart raced and his hands quivered as he tied the ceinture around his alb. It was the first time he’d ever served at the Easter Vigil and his whole family was going to be there. Everyone kept telling him he’d be fine because he was always so good at everything – smartest kid in his class, starting pitcher on the little league team – and was always at his best in front of a crowd. Aunt Barbara giving him a nasty, wet kiss on the cheek and telling him that this was the night he would surely discover his vocation to the priesthood, well that didn’t help much either. Frankie was sure he’d confuse some of those Latin responses, or that he’d drop his candle, or that he’d forget to do something with the mandible or ring the bells at the wrong time, or commit some error the equivalent of mortal sin that he couldn’t even imagine. He was lost in his own thoughts as the priest intoned, “Dominus vobiscum.” Thankfully, Frankie caught his train of thought before it became a runaway and was able to respond, “Et cum spiritu tuo.” That was a close call. He took nice, long, deep breaths as the priest said the next prayer and they started doing something with the paschal candle. There was a pretty girl standing just a few feet away from Frankie and seeing her sent him wandering into a forest of forbidden thought when he heard something that immediately drew him back into reality:
“Niech światło Chrystusa chwalebnie zmartwychwstałego rozproszy ciemności serca i umysłu naszego.”
Polish? If he’d heard it anywhere else other than in the Mass, his mother tongue would be music to his ears, but here? Wasn’t everything supposed to be in Latin? A panic set in as little Frankie’s heart raced faster than it ever had before, so that he flat out missed the next “Et cum spiritu tuo” that he was supposed to say. No matter, don’t worry about it, it’s going to be ok, he tried to tell himself, even though something in his heart told him that he was almost certainly going to screw this up somehow. The Church was pitch black, except for that burning candle that the deacon carried, every so often stopping to chant “Lumen Christi” while Frankie struggled to remember, “Deo gratias.” They got through that once, they got through that a second time, and Frankie was sure that they had already gotten through it a third time when he heard a hiss from behind him and looked back, finding that the procession had stopped. Embarrassed, Frankie stopped swinging the censer and tried to hurry back to his place in the procession, only he tripped over his own two feet and fell right on the marble floor, spilling incense everywhere and putting a sizable black stain on his alb, in a rather embarrassing place that would surely kill his chances with the cute girl he’d already decided to talk to after Mass.
Unable to contain his embarrassment, the little boy bolted out of the church as fast as he could. The fire was still going outside and he curled up next to it and cried, before walking home alone. He didn’t come out of his room for two days after that and could never did bring himself to go back into the church. How often he’d wanted to – how often he’d wish that he could have just thrown his embarrassment, thrown his guilt, thrown that stupid white alb with the embarrassing incense stain on it, thrown all of it into that paschal fire and let it burn away. Instead, every time he’d hear Oma muttering her prayers – … swieta Mario, Matko Boza, módl sie za nami grzesznymi teraz i w godzine Smierci naszej – it only branded that shameful night ever more deeply into his soul.
Reliving the memory, Frank widened his smile, spinning joy out of anguish in the way that only a drunkard can. Yes, now he was convinced. He checked his watch – it was time. As he walked back down Hertel towards the tavern he’d owned, he walked with dignity, something he never thought he had very much of. He made a mental inventory of all the things that he wanted to throw into that paschal fire – the embarrassment of that night so many years ago, his own drinking habit, the times he’d crept out on his wife to see that beautiful Irish woman with her dark blue eyes, the rampage he’d gone on inside the tavern earlier that night, and what he was about to do right now. He arrived back at the tavern and checked his watch again – surely he’d left the gas on long enough – walked up to the door, threw his cigarette but inside, and ran for the cover of the snow bank.
With the bottle of vodka as his only friend, Frank sat on the snowbank and watched the fire. Maybe this time that sacred fire really would burn it all away and he’d start over again. Or maybe, like everything else in this town, he was just too far gone to be saved.