The wind on Wacker was picking up force as the December afternoon drew to a close. The handful of stores that were open on Sunday had shut. The street was empty except for two bundled shopgirls hurrying home and a solitary sailor walking slowly along the river.
It was even too cold for the shopgirls to flirt. They walked past without a glance. Seaman Ted Stanley drew his Navy pea coat closer and fastened the top button around his neck. The temperature was dropping quickly as the sun slipped behind the tall buildings. Despite the cold, he was in no hurry to see his liberty end and duty begin again. Three hours stood between him and the last bus to the Great Lakes Naval Base.
He thought of what was happening that Sunday evening in that little house on the bluff above the Mississippi in Dubuque, where the sun was still shining. Ma would be in the kitchen putting potatoes on to boil. Pa would be in the parlor listening to “The Shadow.” Grandma Stanley would be rocking, pretending to listen to the radio but actually lost in a world of sounds that had long become inaudible to anyone but her. His kid sister would be upstairs, reading.
Ted reached the corner where a newsstand stood shuttered for the night. The wind coming down Congress from the lake pushed at him with surprising strength and pulled at the newspapers tacked on the side of the little wooden booth. He glanced at the sheet posted with the headline for December 13. It flapped back and forth in the wind, alternately revealing and covering something about Stalingrad. Aware that it was even colder there, the sailor shivered and hurried across the street. The streetlights came on in the quickening dark.
Walking into the dusk with no real goal, he wondered whether he should have gone with Skip and the gang down to the bars and burlesque houses where they always spent liberty. More than once he had gone along, thrilling at the aggressive bargirls and displays of flesh. But in the end, the experience left him unsatisfied and he had started using his free time to visit museums and the huge public library downtown. The selection of books there amazed him and he had begun to read about subjects he had never even heard about at home. It was a lonely but comfortable way to spend his free time. He wished that he could take books back to the base, but library rules didn’t permit him obtain a resident’s library card and Navy regulations didn’t allow personal items in his storage locker anyway.
His numbing feet carried him out of the business district into an area of apartment buildings and houses. Even wartime austerity had not prevented wreaths and lights from appearing with Christmas less than two weeks away. A few people appeared on the street, heading in the same direction. It gave him pleasure to be walking with others. It was quickly apparent that most were headed to a small stone building with a tall spire. A sign on the wall announced, “Trinity Episcopal Church.”
Back in Dubuque, his Methodist family would never attend an Episcopalian service. “Like as much Catholic as Protestant,” his father had proclaimed with satisfied contempt. Methodists might co-sponsor the Armistice Day dinner with the Presbyterians, but that was as far as any mixing went.
Snowflakes began to fall into the light of the streetlamp. For a moment, he was in his hometown, on Christmas Eve. He remembered how the Catholic church on Bluff Street glowed during the Christmas Eve service; how the strange Latin singing caught his ear and made him stop to listen despite arms filled with packages from last minute errands. He always lingered when passing St. Raphael’s on Christmas Eve, hoping to catch sight of Maureen Shannon’s red hair.
In the Chicago street, the sound of organ music escaped gently into the night from Trinity Church. A warm glow showed through the stained glass windows. A sandwichboard sign on the sidewalk announced, “Evensong – 6 p.m. – All Welcome.”
He had no idea what “evensong” meant but he was getting colder by the minute, his shoulders starting to shake involuntarily. He looked at his watch. The last bus to base was still more than two hours away. A young couple brushed past him, on their way into church. The man wore the uniform of a Navy ensign but hadn’t noticed Ted and hadn’t expected a salute. When they opened the large wooden doors, light and music spilled out onto the street
The voice of his late Grandpa Stanley rose from his memory, growling about papists and idolatry. The winter wind cut through his jacket; his feet throbbed from hours of walking. The snow grew heavier.
A white-haired Army colonel walked up the steps, shooting an investigating look at the sailor as he passed. The colonel acted as if he had expected a salute from the sailor on the sidewalk but was in too much of a hurry to stop and correct him. Stanley had the impression that his face had been filed away in the colonel’s memory in case they ever met again. By the time Stanley’s right hand came out of his pocket to make the salute, the door was closing behind the colonel, cutting off the light and muffling the music.
Three WACs came down the street, woolen scarves and bulky military coats unable to obscure the slim vigor of their bodies. Snowflakes were beginning to cling to their shoulders. The shortest of the three told her friends, “Hurry up! It’s six!” Another replied, “It’s what?” in a shocked voice and all three laughed at some private joke. They pushed through the church doors in a flurry of energy and anticipation.
That was enough to propel him from the cold darkness of the street into the warm light of the church. He took the three front steps in one jump and pulled open the door. It was heavier than he had expected and he was off balance when he entered the vestibule, bumping into two elderly men standing near the door. One of them steadied himself on a nearby table and the other looked sharply at the cap still on Ted’s head. Ted quickly snatched it off with an apologetic smile. The first man patted him on the shoulder, said “welcome, son” and pointed to the pews.
Ted had never been in a church like this. It was a world away from the simple white room that was his family’s church. He looked around. His grandpa was right. There were statues, candlesticks and old religious paintings. Even the large cross above the altar held a statue of the suffering Christ. The candles gave the room a soft glow, especially at the front where an elaborately carved table stood behind a low, elegant metal fence. He hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful. Against the wall on either side of the table were rows of tall wooden chairs, carved into leaves and other shapes. Engraved memorials hung along the walls. There was a sense that he had stepped through the doorway into a different time: as if he had left behind the modern city with its up-to-date 1942 styles and industry, and entered another world.
The church was not large. The rows of dark wooden pews had room for perhaps 200 worshipers. Forty or fifty people were scattered around the seats. The Army colonel had entered a front pew and was removing his heavy coat. With his hat off, his thick white hair made him look very distinguished and reminded Stanley of some Old Testament patriarch. The three WACs were seated halfway down on the right, close together and whispering. A third of the people were in uniform, most of the civilians were elderly.
The organ stopped for a moment, then began again. The congregation stood. Ted quickly slid into the back pew.
A door at the right front of the church opened. Out came a man dressed in an old-fashioned robe, a black robe like in schoolbook pictures of monks, except that he wore a smaller, white robe over it. The white garment was trimmed with lace. He carried a tall golden cross that was so heavy that he used both hands to carry it.
Behind him came a column of men and women in similar garments. The procession moved down a side aisle to the back of the church, turned and came up the center aisle toward the front. Each person in the procession held a black folder – he guessed they were a choir. Behind the row of singers came a young boy swinging what looked like a round lantern on a chain. Smoke, but no light, came out of it; a sweet smell began to fill the room. Ted wondered if this was the incense his grandfather used to snarl about. Last in the procession was an elderly man in an elaborate robe, trimmed in gold and held together by a large clasp at his neck. He carried a heavy book, which the sailor assumed to be a Bible.
The atmosphere was so different from the preaching services with which he was familiar, Ted felt a nervous thrill run through his body, similar to the tremor he felt the first time he saw a naked woman on the stage. As much as that burlesque would have offended his grandmother, this ritual would have offended his grandfather. Ted found this ceremony in this old church as secretly exciting as that other ceremony in the smoky theater.
A gentle, stately melody rolled out from the organ, filling the room as the procession slowly made its way up the aisle. Two pews ahead of him, the young Navy ensign turned to his wife and quietly said, “Elgar.” Ted wondered what the word meant.
The choir reached the front of the church, moved through the opening in the little fence, and filed into the wooden chairs. The organist finished the tune. The choir opened their folders. With a flourish, the organist began a new song and the choir began to sing, “Father eternal, ruler of creation…” It was not a hymn Ted recognized.
As the song unfolded, the young sailor began to look around the room. The night outside left the stained glass dark but the large statue of Jesus on the cross over the altar drew his attention. It was far different that the plain wooden cross he was used to. The face of the Christ was in anguish, the crown of thorns cutting into his flesh and blood running down into his eyes. It was an unsettling image for the young sailor.
As he stared at the face of the crucified Jesus, a line from the song came to him clearly: “…his saving cross no nation yet will bear.” His thoughts went out into a world at war that night: to that Russian city where corpses were freezing into twisted statues and Pacific beaches where bloated bodies turned black in the heat. He looked at the image of Christ and his head swam with the smell of incense and melting wax.
Maybe it was being away from home, maybe it was being in a church that was so alien, but he found troubling questions rising in his mind. He had always accepted the beliefs of his family, saved by the blood of Jesus and all that, but he had never really thought much about it. Even when Grandpa Stanley had died two years ago, it seemed a natural thing for an old man to die. Everyone had said so at the time. He had felt sorry for his grandmother and father, and assumed his grandfather was in heaven, but the event hadn’t disturbed his accepted view of things.
Yet, this night, the tormented face of Christ unsettled him. The image moved him in a way that all those words over the years hadn’t. Did Christ die for me? Why? What did I do that was so bad? The image of a naked dancer came to mind but he couldn’t believe that anyone deserved eternal torment for something like that. Maybe it was the war drawing closer every week that made him see faces of young men like him in that bleeding face above the altar.
Why did Jesus have to suffer? If Jesus suffered, why should millions of ordinary people living ordinary lives be condemned to a suffering that – if old Pastor Wilson’s sermons were to be believed – must be worse than that of their unfortunate Savior?
Ted was shocked to find himself thinking that way. He thought of thousands of young men just like him, far from their homes, dying somewhere out on the cold, dark earth even as the choir finished the song. Were souls being sent from the snows of Stalingrad to the flames of Hell? It didn’t make sense.
A member of the choir stood and began to pray aloud: “O Lord, open thou our lips.” The rest of the choir responded in unison: “And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.” Seaman Ted Stanley found his thoughts unsettling. “O God, make speed to save us,” the soloist intoned. “O Lord, make haste to help us,” responded the choir. The organist began to play and the choir sang, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…”
The sailor thought about himself and his buddies. Soon training would be over and they would be shipped out to the Pacific or Africa or the North Atlantic. He had always loved the Mississippi and joined the Navy to see the ocean. He was still eager for that first sight of the sea and smell of salt air, but what if it were him out on the North Atlantic tonight? What if a Nazi submarine were watching his ship through a periscope, preparing a torpedo? Would this suffering Jesus protect him? If the ship sank and he died, did that mean Jesus didn’t care? A lifetime of assumptions were unraveling within him as the choir sang, “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.”
If the beliefs he had been taught were wrong, what about other things he thought to be true? He knew Hitler persecuted Jews and invaded Poland, but the books he was reading had revealed that Americans lynched Negroes and drove the Indians out of Iowa. The choir sang, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.”
In the front row, the Army colonel sat upright. Stanley looked at the WACs. One of them had bright copper hair like Maureen Shannon. A few rows behind them, a young Army lieutenant knelt. He was the only person in the church on his knees. His hands were folded; his eyes were closed.
The music ended, the choir sat. One of the elderly men Ted had bumped by the door walked to the front and opened the large Bible on the bookstand. Ted’s eyes wandered along the complex memorials on the wall of the church. “The First Lesson, a reading from the Book of Micah,” intoned the old man. “In the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains.”
The memorials on the wall celebrated dead members of the church, many from the previous century. Ted’s eyes were drawn to a very old memorial. He squinted, trying to make out the engraved words on the wall. With a start he recognized his own name.
Theodore Stanley
Died to Save the Union
Battle of Fredericksburg
December 13, 1862
“For the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” the reader’s voice was frail but distinct, “And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
In the front row, the white-haired colonel appeared impatient. An old woman sitting alone in the back of the church took a small handkerchief from a large purse and wiped her eyes.
“But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid,” the reader concluded, “for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.” He closed the book and walked past the colonel. The colonel cleared his throat in a disapproving way.
Once again music burst forth and the choir rose. Two rows ahead, the ensign turned to his wife and said quietly, “The Magnificat.” The song was joyous, “My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior…” but the sailor paid no attention. He was transfixed on the memorial bearing his name and that day’s date, exactly eighty years before.
Voices swelled through the little church: “For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” In this unfamiliar place filled with unfamiliar sounds and smells, the young sailor was seeing the most familiar thing in his life. His name, but not really his: that of another young man in another time, fighting another war.
“He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” Voices blended in complex harmonies, “He hath put down the mighty from their seats…”
The sailor found it hard to focus on the ceremony. The choir was sitting now and a woman was at the pulpit reading something about asking and receiving. He remembered the promise: whatever you asked of God, He would grant. He knew that was an empty promise. He had known that since his dog died. How many other teachings were false? How many prayers from mothers and widows had already gone unanswered during this war? They couldn’t all be unworthy sinners. If they were, what chance did any person have?
Once again the music came. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Ted Stanley began to feel angry. Images flashed in and out of his mind. His mother reading the Oz books to him when he was a little boy; the American Legion guys at the barbershop insisting President Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened; the intent look on his kid sister’s face when she read one of her books that never had any pictures; Skip mocking religion in the barracks, claiming “they just want your money, pal, they just want your money.”
The elderly minister in the fancy robe stood for the first time. He walked slowly and carefully, as if the journey from his chair to the pulpit was something he had to consider carefully. He reminded Ted of old Mr. Bradley, the last Civil War veteran in Dubuque.
Ted had spoken to Mr. Bradley the week before the old veteran had died. The boy was then in his early teens, the man in his late eighties. Mr. Bradley had been sitting on the porch of his large old house when Ted tossed The Telegraph on the porch steps.
“Young man!” Mr. Bradley called sharply. “Bring that paper here. I’m not going to fetch it like a dog.” Mortified, the boy had gone back, retrieved the paper and brought to where the old man sat in a wicker chair. Mr. Bradley accepted the paper with a nod. “You’re the Stanley boy, aren’t you? How is your grandfather?”
Ted muttered a response. Everyone knew the old veteran couldn’t hear anymore.
“You tell him Randolph Bradley remembers him. Remembers what he did in Cuba. You tell him that, boy.”
Ted nodded and retreated. He was surprised that this town notable knew his grandfather and knew about his having served in Cuba. A week later, when a neighbor brought the news that Mr. Bradley had died in his sleep, Ted remembered that he had never given his grandfather the message.
Grandpa had been upset about the old man’s death. “I didn’t know you knew him, Papa,” his mother said. “Oh, we weren’t friends or anything…” Grandpa Stanley’s voice trailed off.
The old minister slowly climbed into the pulpit. He wasn’t carrying a Bible, just a piece of paper. When he reached the pulpit, he carefully laid the paper on the stand and smoothed it with both hands. His hands looked dry and frail, just like Mr. Bradley’s.
Ted’s thoughts remained on old Mr. Bradley. Could he have known the other Theodore Stanley? Could they have been together at the Battle of Fredericksburg? Why was his otherwise unsentimental grandfather upset to learn of the old man’s death? Once his grandfather was as young as he was now; once even Mr. Bradley must had been nineteen. The image of a young Randolph Bradley and a young Theodore Stanley sitting together by a campfire came to him, followed by a picture of his grandfather in Cuba writing letters to the fifteen year old girl who now spent her silent days in the rocking chair in the parlor. He felt like crying. The suffering face above the altar seemed closer.
From the pulpit, the old minister’s voice rang with unexpected strength. “A Prayer for the Armed Forces,” he stated, not looking at the paper. “O Lord,” he began and for the first time in his life the young sailor felt himself following the words of a prayer as if they were being said for him and for him alone. When the prayer asked for protection from “trials and temptations,” he realized that this old man knew something of which he spoke.
After his “Amen” there was a moment of silence. Ted sat in the back row, keenly waiting for what was to come next.
The minister again smoothed the sheet of paper on the stand. “In closing,” he said, “I want to read an excerpt from an oration by Pericles, given in Athens in 431 BC.” The young Army lieutenant who had knelt throughout the service looked up.
“So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth,” the minister read, his voice soft yet clear, “and received praise that will never die, and a home in the minds of men. Their story lives on, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives. So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth, and received praise that will never die.”
Without visible symbol, Ted thought, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives. These words had come across three thousand miles and two thousands years, to be remembered and read aloud in this little church in Chicago. The life of the other Theodore Stanley who had died in the war against slavery didn’t seem senseless. He was dead but not without reason or impact. Perhaps my life will not be without reason or impact, the living Theodore Stanley thought. Old Mr. Bradley, his grandfather, the soldiers in this room, the sailors at the base and in the bars – even this crucified Savior – all seemed to be part of this.
The Army colonel stood as the organ began to play. The young lieutenant stood. Then the Navy officer and his wife stood. The three WACs and entire congregation stood for the final song.
“Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.”
The choir and others filed back down the aisles, singing the last song, and disappeared through the door. When the music finished, there was a moment of silence during which no one moved. Then there was a slow wave of motion. People stood and wrestled themselves back into coats.
The three WACs were among the first through the door, the white haired colonel among the last. Ted avoided his gaze and waited for a few moments until the only people left in the church were him and the Army lieutenant, who was still praying.
The sailor rose, buttoned his coat, and walked out. The snow was beginning to stick, covering the porches and roofs of this strange neighborhood. From the steps, the city shone in the cold night. He looked at his watch. The last bus wouldn’t leave for over an hour but, if he hurried, he might catch the 7:30 bus.
The young sailor walked toward the bus stop. On both sides of the street, lights inside apartments and houses revealed the stuff of other lives. He walked more quickly and then began to run, throwing himself through winter darkness into the coming unknown.