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Granite Jesus (Extramarital Iconography)

Todd K. Denick

    Jesus hangs from a granite cross where the village ends. Two hundred years ago, inhabitants used a slash-and-burn technique to clear acres upon acres of woodland, allowing the villagers to give the town a very matter-of-fact name, Burned. The creek running through town is a mudslide, only carrying water when heavy rains have soaked the water table, forcing the water to find an escape rather than a place to hide. Jesus has his back turned to the creek. He faces south, never blinded by the setting or rising sun, even if his eyes are permanently closed, kept shut with chiseled folds of granite. He will be there forever; it must be a lonely existence.
    A large oak tree, a plaque dedicated to Schiller at its base, protects Jesus from any weather coming in from the North. A nice fort has grown around him over the years, protecting him from mother nature, protecting him from the sight of most people who pass by without giving him recognition. Cars fly past over the speed limit, walkers ignore the covered path to his right and follow a wide, easier trail to take a walk, but only when the sun is out.
    I was caught off guard one morning as I had my morning coffee, to see an older woman, fighting a walker and disrupting traffic, stand before the granite Jesus. She stood in the street, her walker on the graveled shoulder, just wide enough to fit her walking aide. She stared upon Jesus while cars whizzed by her, disregarding oncoming traffic, disregarding her life by maintaining reckless speeds. If it bothered her, it didn’t show. I was amazed at her inherent faith, but more captivated by her not-give-a-shit attitude, impeding traffic and ignoring blaring horns and curses hurled at her, under a hanging Jesus.
    Burned is a stop on the Jacob’s Way, a wandering, well-traveled pilgrimage route that ends in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The remains of Saint James are buried there. Every one is free to walk any of the various routes for penance or fun. It is tradition that a pilgrim leaves from their home, and even though a few routes are named, all roads lead to Santiago de Compostela. You don’t see many pilgrims take any risks to visit out of the way sights, even if the scallop shells directed the faithful to walk into the statue.
    The old lady stood there before Jesus. She wore a long-flowered dress with a sky-blue background, dotted with marigolds, gladioli and sunflowers. The dress swayed with the gentle western breeze like a parachute; three other women could have fit under the dress with her. She wore her hair short and dense, a white helmet that wouldn’t protect her from oncoming traffic. I stopped staring at her. She wasn’t moving and seemed content in her moments alone with Jesus. When I went to the window to check on her again, she was gone.
    The next morning, I noticed a familiar shape crawling along a sidewalk away from the center of Burned. The helmeted hair and flowing blue dress with mis-matched flowers stopped. Another statue of Jesus, just off the sidewalk, captured her. She stood there, solemn and reserved, head bowed, just as she did when paying homage to granite Jesus. I imagined that she spent her days pushing her walker through the village, stopping here and there, wherever Jesus was represented, and paid her respects. Maybe it kept her fit and agile, maybe it kept her humble, maybe she had nothing else to do.
    It became common to see her, plodding along, a silver walker reflecting any light that she came across, stopping at any religious iconography she saw. She must have prayed; a devout woman living out her loneliness in the presence of her savior. I saw her regularly and took to waving at her when I saw her. Even if she stopped to rest, sitting on the seat of her walker, she would pay very little attention to me; she never waved back. I felt compelled to make some kind of connection with her. If she was gone one day, I would miss her and regret not trying to connect with her. She would stare over the road, Jesus crucified behind her, and gather her breath before visiting the next static Jesus that marked her personal pilgrimage route.
    I found myself, week in and week out, tailoring my schedule to hers. She became part of my daily ritual. I would see her on her walk. I would see her when she stopped, pulling her walker off the edge of the sidewalk to stare over the street. I would wave. She would ignore me.
    One morning, I saw her walker at rest under the granite Jesus.
I didn’t see her. I understood that one day she would be gone. She would die in her sleep, alone, or she would be too weak to pretend to be a pilgrim anymore. Jesuses, cast in stone or wood, would understand. As she aged, her faith became more refined, more detailed, more severe in its rituals.
    Her walker hadn’t moved when I finished my coffee. I couldn’t contain my curiosity or concern. I closed the house door behind me quite hard, ensuring that it made a resounding snap, and echoed through the small valley that housed the muddy creek bed. Really, it was a warning sound. I wanted to alert her that I was coming. I didn’t know how else to make her aware.
    From across the street, I could see the handbrakes on the walker were set and locked. Cars flew by at perilous speeds, unaware of the walker, Jesus, or the barely breathing body of a devout woman. She was in repose when I saw her on her hands and knees, her head tilted to the back of Jesus’ head, gasping as she recited a series of devotional phrases in Latin. She didn’t pay any attention to me; her face was streaked with tears, her hands dug at the soft soil. She was digging so ferociously that the statue could have toppled, crushing her beneath the granite weight of Jesus and his cross.
    Sprawled before her, buried under handfuls of dirt, were dirty Kleenexes, a ceramic cup precisely decorated with blue flowers displayed on a tight weave of vines. A few old pictures were scattered in front of her. She kept digging when I stopped, and stood next to her. I cleared my throat in an attempt to announce my presence. Dark fingers and broken fingernails continued to dig into the soft earth. I looked at the wares spread before her, expecting to see Rosary Beads, small wooden crosses and six votive candles, blessed by a priest, spread out before her. Instead a few old photographs were carefully set against the base of Jesus’ granite resting place. I thought carefully about slowly turning and leaving, letting her go about her business. But I felt that over the past few months, a connection had formed between us. Surely, she would remember me as the person who would wave at her every morning at the exact same time. If she did, she didn’t let me know. She remained out of breath as she dug away into the soil. I could swear that with every handful of dirt she threw off to the side, the granite Jesus would shift under his own weight.
    Since she didn’t seem to notice me, I knelt next to her, reached out and took one of the photographs. I looked at the image. It was old and grainy. Sprawled underneath the image of a handsome priest, was a name, Father Harold. It looked like his name was written by a toddler, scrawled into the picture before being placed into a chemical bath that would create his likeness. I looked at her. She continued to dig. I looked at the other photograph. I didn’t take this one. It was also a graven image of Father Harold in a tie, his face static, his eyes wide open, a straight line where a smile should be. I replaced the first photograph. She continued digging.
    I knew the story about the martyred Father Harold, a young man who was murdered in the church on a Saturday night, July 25, after a late mass. His body was found the next morning. His head wasn’t. There had been a lot of abnormal activity in the village starting in April of ’45. American tanks had come through town as the war came to an end. With the tanks and American soldiers came refugees, those lost in the erratic waves of war. The Americans had left piles of rubble behind. The tanks, too large to fit between the medieval gates of Burned, instead plowed through. The gates fell behind the tanks. In a way, it was a welcome sign for those forlorn souls traveling behind the American forces. Strangers now stood on the street corners where before, there were only the residents. Villagers grew increasingly suspicious of the new foreigners, even though they were German, their dialect and mannerisms were different. They had nowhere to go, so the church, under Father Harold’s guidance, opened the doors. Men, women, and children spread themselves on the hard, oak pews and stone floor, dazzling burgundies and gold-plated saints looked down upon them as they milled about until it was time to sleep.
    It was during one of these Saturday night masses that Father Harold urged the visitors to move on. He said that in the morning a golden light will crest the hills in the east. When they follow these rays of light, a voice will come to them and direct them to their next location. God, he insinuated, wanted them to move on. After the mass, under the guidance of a few American troops and Father Harold, the church was left empty. The only sign that anyone had been here was the lingering odors of exasperation and loss.
    The next morning, the refugees had moved east and Father Harold was found decapitated, his body lying under shimmering sunlight reflected by the golden altar. The case closed, the villagers imagined that desperation turned to anger and murder, when the refugees were asked to leave the comfort and safety of Burned.
    The old woman, helmeted gray hair hiding her face, continued to scratch and claw at the dirt. She was making progress, but kept digging further under the statue’s base. She stopped for a moment and looked at her hands. The fingernails that weren’t broken were chipped, her knuckles bled and a soft silver ring hung from the bony ring finger of her right hand. She continued her prayers, gazing deep into the hole she continued to dig, throwing fistfuls of dirt to her left and right and on top of my feet.
    She stopped when her fingernails scraped across light colored stones. She peered deep into the hole and with a renewed vigor, continued digging, tossing dirt, mud and stones every which way until she revealed a skull, so brown it looked like it had taken a nicotine and coffee bath for the last seventy-five years. She placed the skull off to the side, and began refilling the hole, making sure to collect her used tissues, assorted candy wrappers and pictures of Father Harold as she worked. I moved out of her way when she finished, allowing her room to collect the skull, mud still caked in its eye sockets, other wares and photographs. She walked past me. I might as well have been invisible.
    She crawled to her walker, and using the secured walking aide, pulled herself to her feet. She reached down to the pile of stuff she had carried with her and placed each item carefully in the mesh basket of her walker. Releasing the brakes, she stepped into the racing traffic. Her body careened and floated like the car had run over an empty plastic bag.
    The next week, under the article describing the accident and the search for the hit-and-run culprit, I found her funeral announcement. Greta was quite young when her husband disappeared. One day he walked out of the door in his uniform and never returned. His body or his whereabouts were never learned. She was informed there was an accident, the article read. Greta never remarried.
    I wasn’t sure why they added that last bit of information. I didn’t realize how much it mattered until I walked through the iron-wrought church cemetery gates, only to be greeted by a handful of people and a young woman. It looked as though they accompanied a nurse who cleared out a wing of the retirement home for the occasion.
    When coffee and cake was served at the reception hall outside of the churchyard walls, the nurse must have returned the patients to their ward; I attended with one other person. Even the priest who had presided over the burial left.
    The other woman sat alone at one of the seven tables set up for the occasion.
She had hair of silver, shaped in the form of a helmet and just as sturdy. It was the only table decorated with flowers. After a few awkward moments, I joined her.
    She looked up at me. “How do you know Greta?”
    “I was the last to see her alive.” I didn’t know what else to say.
    She looked at me, her eyebrows creased, her hands swelled around her coffee cup. “No, no-no!” I said. “I didn’t. I mean. I wasn’t driving.” This seemed to relax her. She blew gently on her coffee. “How do you know my Greta?”
    “Old, old friends, dear.”
    I looked at her. I thought if they were old, old friends, then she would have, at least, joined Greta on one of her daily pilgrimages. “I had seen her around town. She would stroll about with her walker. She always stopped at the Jesus displays and seemed to pray. Was she religious?”
    “She was at one point, dear.”
    “I was with her when she died. I watched her dig and dig behind a stone statue of Jesus. I thought,” I laughed a little despite myself, “that it would topple and fall on her. I should have stopped her.”
    “You couldn’t have, dear.” She stopped to test her coffee. “It’s shit,” she said to the cup and saucer. She pulled out a little bottle of bourbon and poured the contents in her drink. She tapped out the last drop before turning to me: “sorry, dear.” The little glass bottle looked old, like it had been drained and refilled many times over the years. There wasn’t even a label on it.
    A quick slug of the drink calmed her. “She was married, you know, dear? Lost her husband when she was too young. They were married right before he was sent to defend the nation in Africa. A few days later, he was on a train headed south for Munich. The conductor was in too much of a hurry, and maybe had a few of these,” she dangled the empty bourbon bottle in front of me. “The conductor, a veteran conductor, was going to fast around a wicked turn. They used to refer to it as the ‘Quick as Lightnin’’ turn, because that’s how quickly you’d find yourself in Heaven if you screwed up.” She smiled to herself in a way that most people do when recollecting. She wiped a tear from her eye in the way that most people do when recollecting. “The entire train derailed. He was one of thirty-one who died instantly, she was told. 141 others survived and went to war in Africa. I was there with her during those first few days. There was no consoling her. She introduced me to this, then.” She winked at me and took another drink of her helmeted, gray-haired, high ball.
    “That’s terrible. Is that why she was walking around visiting religious sites?”
    “No.” I was shocked at her curt response; she seemed to be finished with me and my ignorance. The following words seemed to pull themselves from her lips: “Had more to do with love, dear.” For a moment, I appreciate the sentiment.
    “Her husband?” I asked, like an innocent fool.
    “No, he would never be her husband.” She must have seen the confusion on my face; I was never good at hiding my curiosity, or my ignorance. “Sure, she turned to the church after Bernhard died. Bernhard, that’s her husband.” I nodded in agreement. “The church, in turn, turned to her as well.” She blushed like a toddler telling her first lie.
    “I’m missing something.”
    “You sure as hell are.”
    “You mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “Should you be telling me this?”
    She took another drink, wincing just a bit less than she did after the first. “She swore me to secrecy in life; in death, all is fair.” She took another little bottle from her pocket.
She gave it to me. “She fell in love with a young priest.”
    “Father Harold?”
    “Yes,” she looked at me a bit amused but not surprised. “They had a brief affair. It was intense and brief. I think she only told me a portion of what happened.”
    I thought of asking her name.
    “She fell in love. He didn’t. He couldn’t. That’s what I know; even information is limited when it comes to best friends. She couldn’t take it anymore. After an intense bereavement, she was ready for an intense love. She chose the wrong man; after choosing the wrong man.” The bourbon allowed herself self-entertainment. “When she told me she killed him, I didn’t believe her. She said he was warned. He denied that he was in any danger.”
    I could tell where the story was going. I let her continue: “The Americans came through. We knew the war was ending even though they destroyed, Burned, our little village. She helped Father Harold with the refugees. She stole for him to help feed the visitors. She gave into his every wish.” The old lady, with the gray helmet hair, Greta’s best friend, sighed. “She was in the crowd when he instructed the refugees to leave. He wasn’t talking to the refugees; he was speaking directly at her. That evening, she refused to leave with the others. She confronted him. He refused her advances. Their affair had run its course; she was ‘causing confusion in his relationship with God.’”
    “Should you really be telling me this?”
    “There’s no one else to tell.” I looked around the room. She was right. We were still alone.
    There wasn’t a lull in her story. I became more aware of my surroundings: Deep blood red burgundy curtains fell over a worn, oak stage, probably used to present the Passion of the Christ, once a year, for the past seventy years; the acrid, sharp smell of boxed cake from the plate in front of me; the husky, oaken smell of bourbon and decaying leaf odor of cheap coffee. Every scent and sight danced along my tongue.
    “She killed him that night.”
    “What?” I must have dozed off when she revealed the whole story.
    “Like the story, she beheaded him. I didn’t know that at first. I only believed that she murdered him. Much later, I found out that she took his head and buried it under the statue of Jesus. In a way it was the perfect crime. There were so many possible culprits and not a single witness. Who would have thought to bury a lover’s head under a statue of Jesus?”
    I recalled my biblical knowledge with the accuracy of an atheist.
    “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Galicia, Jacob, Saint James,” she responded.
I nodded like a moron who knew no better. I had a buzz from a diet of yesterday’s cake and today’s airplane bourbon.

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