Robbed Blind by Gerry Boyle

Author:Gerry Boyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Islandport Press
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

I woke up at five, no alarm needed. Eased clothes from the drawers, padded out of the room to the sound of Roxanne’s soft breathing. I paused at the door to Sophie’s room and listened. Heard nothing, so I eased it open, walked in, stood by her bed. Her hair was dark against the pillow and there were stuffed animals strewn about the bed like there had been a wild party. Twelve going on sixteen, but sometimes twelve going on eight. I leaned over her and gave her an air kiss, told myself I’d leave Clarkston by twelve thirty, be home before two. I thought of leaving her a note, but then she’d be disappointed if I were late.

I took a shower, dressed in the bathroom. Went downstairs and restarted the fire in the kitchen stove, ate four slices of peanut-butter toast and drank a cup of tea as I watched it catch. I put another log in, damped the draft. Went to my desk, picked up the laptop. My notebook. Flipped the pages back.

Joseph Loyola, Bo Taranto, Hugh Payns.

It didn’t seem like a variation on the spelling of the Canadian city.

I searched for Loyola, got the latest score for the university basketball team. Was Mumbo a fan? I tried Ignatius and got the saint and my old church. Taranto pulled up the city in Italy. Bo Taranto pulled up lighting fixtures. Hugh Payns hit pay dirt.

Hugues de Payens lived in France in the eleventh century. Among other things, he rounded up some buddies and founded the Knights Templar to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. The Templar part came from the place they first laid out their bedrolls: a temple to Solomon in the palace of Baldwin II in Jerusalem. Like Mumbo, the famous crusader had different names. Hugo de Paganis, Hugh Payns.

Another search: Bohemond of Taranto was a leader of the First Crusade. My old friend Ignatius Loyola came around four hundred years later. The one-time soldier went on to found the Order of the Jesuits.

Mumbo, recently released from the custody of the State of Maine, knew his history. Maybe a modern-day crusader had found a training ground in the backwoods of Prosperity, Maine.

I was still mulling it over as I went out the door at quarter past six, tires crunching on the frozen gravel. Could the consortium of antigovernment militants include far-right Catholics? What battle did Mumbo have in mind? A war with leftist priests? What did this have to do with anything, other than that both Mumbo and Raymond were old-school Catholics?

My focus shifted back to Raymond. I drove east to the turnoff at Freedom Road, pulled over. Picked up my phone and went to Spotify, searched for Gregorian chants. Selected Gregorian Requiem, Chants of the Requiem Mass, and the Latin came over the speakers in the dark, cold, and deserted morning like Raymond’s ghost.

“Vade in pace, Raymond,” I said aloud.

I sat there for a moment, startled at the words. Another fragment of my Catholic past, risen to the surface like a buried bone heaved up by the frost.

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