2012

Not ready to abandon the comfort of his twin bed, Jason Ferris tucked the sheet and light blanket around his neck and inhaled deeply. After living here with the Brothers of the Eleventh Hour for five years, a far cry from his days as a priest on the faculty of St. Victor College, this was the only time of day he noticed the scent of malt permeating the defunct brewery. He savored the faint sweetness that he had found mildly repellent when he first moved in.

The timid light behind the brown burlap curtains foretold another gray day as mourning doves cooed against a backdrop of raindrops pattering on the roof. Flipping the covers back and swinging his feet to the cool plank floor, Jason stripped off his t-shirt. A violin medallion, a gift he’d received from a girl when he was fourteen, dangled on a chain around his neck. Cradling the medallion in his hand, he gazed at it for a moment before bringing it to his lips.

He stood up and parted the coarse curtains on the window. Flat roofs of commercial buildings, many of them vacant, some occupied after years of empty neglect, stretched into the distance. Overcast the color of dread formed a lid over Landover, a city hunkered in a shallow valley at the near convergence of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. June was in the process of setting a record for rain.

Turning, he crossed over to the six-foot aluminum crucifix anchored to the timbered south wall. An old brass Army bugle hung from the spike impaling Christ’s right hand. He removed the bugle and pressed it against his chest. The cool metal brought into sharp focus an image of his father, a gentle, fun-loving man who didn’t deserve his fate. Jason returned the bugle to the spike.

A small metallic crucifix, its head missing, hung from a nail next to the large crucifix. He touched the jagged edges of the neck with his right index finger, while with his left he traced the scar that angled across his forehead from just above his right eye to the hairline at his left temple.

Having completed his daily ritual to acknowledge the painful events that had informed his life, he snatched a white towel from a black plastic hook on the wall and headed down the narrow hallway to the community shower.

Twenty minutes later, dressed and the bed made, he sat at a narrow steel and Formica desk, aware of his strong heartbeat and the pleasurable anxiety causing it. He stroked his beard several times with trembling fingers and briefly closed his eyes before opening the middle desk drawer. He took out a single sheet of paper. Printed on the paper was an email he’d read at least twenty times since receiving it two days ago.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two