The Way of a Gardener. Des Kennedy
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alone.
The penalty one paid for sexual obsession, however sanctified it may have been behind transparent prayer, was exacted on Saturday afternoon in the darkened confines of the confessional. Never one to lie or steal, cheat or blaspheme, I began creating a smokescreen of imaginary sins behind which I could tuck in a quick mention of the “impure thoughts” that had been my only genuine transgression. “I disobeyed my parents three times,” I’d exaggerate, “and I lost my temper twice and”—(quieter, almost a whisper)—“I had impure thoughts five times and”—(louder again)—“I was jealous of my brother once.” There’d be an ominous pause from the other side of the screen. I’d see the darkened outline of the priest’s head hover closer.
“What kind of thoughts?” he’d ask, and I knew I was sunk.
I mean, what did he expect me to say? That when I saw lovely Mary walking home from school ahead of me, her pert little bum swaying like lyric poetry, her gorgeous long brown legs, her dark hair cascading down her back in maddening ringlets, that I wanted to take her by the hand to some charmed and private place where we’d kiss and fondle one another until, until, until. . . Oh, God!
Of course not. Instead I fibbed and obfuscated as best I could and the priest pried and prodded as best he could. A confession of impure thoughts invariably aroused the priest’s attention in a way that theft, dishonesty, or blasphemy seldom did. Perhaps even murder wouldn’t. This didn’t strike me as the least bit strange because I knew that the ejaculations that impure thoughts produced were mortal sins that, if left unconfessed, would doom me to Hell forever. I would never have imagined at the time that the priest might have been indulging his own prurient interest. Priests were holy men, the holiest and most admirable men we knew. Only years later, after the outrages of widespread priestly sexual predation were exposed, did the penny drop. Imagine living a life of lonely abstinence while having all these innocent young children whispering to you in the dark the most intimate details of their first confused experiences of sexual desire.
Released from the tortures of the confessional at last, you knelt to say your penance, then burst thankfully out of the church washed clean of all stain of sin and fired with a firm purpose never to sin again. But you did sin again. And again. Erotic dreams, infernal “nocturnal emissions,” and that most catastrophic of all iniquities: to take upon your tongue the Body of Christ while the vile wickedness of impure thoughts and actions was still blackening your soul—oh, here was an abomination, a mortal sin of such magnitude that you would be condemned forever to Hell were you to die with it still on your conscience.
The God of Eucharist and confessional, of redemption and damnation, existed entirely within the fundamental virtue of faith. The spiritual apprehension of divine truths not available to intellect alone. Credo—I believe. Faith was a precious gift, vastly superior to any earthly wisdom. From the outset, we were pressed repeatedly by parents, priests, and nuns to guard our faith against transgression, to be constantly vigilant against its loss. This was why girls were to be avoided, lest a fascination with what was called “the flesh” erode and corrupt the fundament of faith. To lose your faith was to lose everything, a catastrophe worse than death.
THE UNRULY IMPULSES of “the flesh” were frequently described in incendiary terms, “the flames of lust.” For me the hearthside flames of childhood had been comforting rather than ravenous, but I’d largely lost touch with fire after our great immigration to Canada. Our house in Weston had no fireplace, being centrally heated by an oil furnace in the basement. The only fire to be found—other than the pungent piles of leaves smoking throughout the neighborhood each autumn—was the fire of disaster. An old wooden church alongside the Saint John’s schoolyard burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. Even more spectacularly, a whole lumberyard in town shot massive flames into the sky one night. Arson was again suspected. The occasional wail of a fire engine’s siren promised the excitement of fire as spectacle.
Though in the process of becoming engulfed by booming postwar Toronto, the town of Weston back in those days was still a relatively easy bike ride away from open countryside of fields, farms, and woodlands. Often in the summertime several pals and I would plan an all-day bike hike out to the Credit River country or up to the Caledon Hills. I loved these long meanderings through the countryside, until the final one on which I received my baptism in the terrifying fury of fire.
After a hard morning’s cycling, my pals and I had stopped to have our picnic lunch in a field through which a little brook meandered. Four boys sprawled languidly in golden grass, an idyllic summer scene. John, who was older than the rest of us by virtue of having failed a couple of grades but wise in our eyes with the wisdom of age, took out a box of wooden matches. He began striking matches and flipping them at each of us in turn. The instant it hit the dry grass, each match would ignite a small fire that one of us had to jump up and stamp out. We told John to quit it but he just laughed and flicked another burning match. Then another. After a bit I warned him that I wasn’t going to stamp out any more fires. He laughed again and threw another match, perhaps thinking that whatever power was in play here lay somewhere between himself and me, rather than in the flame. As mistaken myself, I refused to stamp out the fire it ignited, and so did the other guys.
Within moments the fire crept out in a malignant circle and we all jumped up and began stamping frantically at it. But too late. The circle swept outward through the parched grass and within moments was beyond our control. Suddenly all was shouting and panic and swirling smoke. I dashed across the field and up the hill to where some cabins stood. I hammered desperately on the door of one, then another, then another. Nobody answered. The cabins were all unoccupied. I looked back down the hill and saw that the circle of fire had grown enormously, engulfing much of the field. The guys were running around frantically, trying to rescue our bikes and get away. I ran back down to them and we shouted incoherently at one another as to whether we should go get help or make our escape before we got caught.
By now the ring of fire was dancing field-wide and menacing some nearby woods. Before we could decide what to do, truckloads of people came roaring up the country road and charged into the field wielding brooms and shovels. They quickly formed a long line at the fire’s advancing edge and methodically beat the flames out.
We had no hope of escaping the scene before being caught because our bike tires had melted in the fire, and we could hardly make a clean getaway on foot, pushing our disabled bikes along the road. A policeman appeared and asked us what had happened. John, as our elder, acted as spokesman and fibbed unconvincingly about how our little campfire had gotten away on us. The rest of us could have told the truth and sacrificed John to appease the authorities, but this would have been to break a solemn and unspoken code among grade 7 boys. The cop took our names and addresses—we hadn’t the jam to lie—and told us we’d have to appear in court in a few weeks’ time.
My God, that was a trail of tears we trod on the long journey home, pushing our pathetic bikes, sniping at one another over who was to blame for this calamity. Police, courts, fines, disgrace, the wrath of parents—unimaginable! Unbearable!
I told my mother the truth about what had happened and suffered no more than her chastisement that I’d be better off not associating with the fools I chose for friends. John’s mother—an enormous and intimidating woman who always reminded me of an ill-humored hippopotamus—gave me a far worse tongue-lashing. She brought out John’s precious Boston Bruins windbreaker, a gift from a cousin who played on the team. “Look at that!” she dangled the stupid jacket in front of my face. “Look at these burn holes. It’s ruined.” Only later did it occur to me that John, in total violation of the solemn and unspoken code sacred to grade 7 boys, might have told her that I was to blame for the fire. We were never contacted by the police and no more came of it, but even as a foolish lad I knew that far more than a field of grass had gone up in smoke that day. I had felt a first lick of the dragon’s tongue and had lost whatever it is that dragons devour.
AMONG THE WORST of my days at Saint Bernard’s school was the morning I brought our little brother Vincent for his first day at elementary school. Within a few minutes I was called from my classroom. The poor little guy was screaming and sobbing uncontrollably— he’d been suddenly plunged into a situation he’d found strange and