To announce and celebrate the release of my novel, The Violent Season, in paperback, I offer this excerpt from Chapter 2, “Soldiers of Christ.”

A paper copy of the book is available from the publisher, Unlimited Publishing, LLC, at  http://www.unlimitedpublishing.com/gleason/. Soon to be available in paper from Amazon.

 

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VII

Father Peters came into the church from the sacristy still dressed in his alb and cincture. He gestured to one of the nuns.

“You’re Sister Agnes, are you not? You have the eighth grade at the school,” he asked?

“Yes, Father,” she responded.

“Sister, two of your boys, they were sitting in the second pew next to that negro boy, they were talking and carrying on during my entire sermon!”

Sister Agnes’ face reddened. “Oh… that is probably Joseph Simon and Michael Dwyer. We have more trouble with those two…”

“I want you to speak to them, Sister. Deal with them. They were most disrespectful. And, with Jesus right there on the altar in front of them! What have you been teaching these young hooligans for the last eight years?”

Sister Agnes’ face was now burning. “I shall take care of them, Father. Oh, yes, I shall!”

 

 

VIII

An hour later, Joey Simon and Mickey Dwyer finally emerged from the church onto Crescent Street. Under the close supervision of Sister Agnes Immaculata, they had spent an hour on their knees, on an unpadded kneeler in the side chapel, praying all fifteen decades of the Rosary, five decades for each of three, the “Joyous” the “Sorrowful” and the “Glorious” mysteries, a hundred fifty Hail Mary’s, fifteen Our Father’s, one Apostles Creed and an Act of Contrition thrown in for good measure.

Before releasing them, Sister Agnes had made both boys promise to go to confession the very next Saturday afternoon and confess to Fr. Peters that they had disrespected the Blessed Sacrament, the Mass, and him by talking and carrying on during his sermon. So, the boys could look forward all week to another thorough tongue lashing and another hour or so on their knees begging God for forgiveness.

The good news, as far as the boys were concerned, was that they didn’t have to take a beating from the nun. Sister Agnes rarely raised her hand to her students, but she had other more subtle ways of getting her point across, as the boys’ aching knees bore witness. Now, if they could figure some way of explaining to their parents why they were over an hour late getting back from church, they were home free.

“I never saw old Aggie Mac so pissed off! Her face was so red I thought she was going to explode,” said Joey.

“Christ! How am I going to explain this one to my Ma,” responded Mickey, “I was supposed to bring the rolls home from the bakery for my old man’s coffee.”

“Just tell her you were over my house,” said Joey, “I’m sure as hell going to tell my mom I was over yours. They never check anymore.”

“I just wish you wouldn’t pull that shit in church, Joe!” said Mickey. “We only got a couple more months of this shit and we’re sprung.”

“That’s a fine way to show your gratitude,” sniffed Joey, pretending to be insulted.

“Gratitude! What the fuck are you talking about? Gratitude for what? I just got reamed out by Aggie Mac, my knees hurt so bad I may never be able to walk right, and I got more of this shit to look forward to Saturday!”

“Ah, my child,” quipped Joey, “Had the good sister not kept you after church, you would have sought out the fair-haired and lovely Lori McShea right after mass. Then, right after having received the sinless and immaculate body of Christ, you would have filled your perverted and twisted guy-mind with sinful and lecherous thoughts. And, as the good sisters have often taught us, even to think such dirty things is in itself a mortal sin. So, this morning, I have saved my best friend’s soul from an eternity in hell. Or, at least from a bad case of blue ball.”

“You’ve got one twisted mind, Father Joe,” answered Mick, “One really twisted mind.”

“Come, my dear fellow soldier of Christ,” said Joey, grandly gesturing down Crescent Street, “There is no time for girls when we must dedicate ourselves even unto death to the holy crusade against the curse of Godless communism.”

In the evening of the tenth day of our march, we crossed the River Clevis and limped into a small hostel a few miles east of Verona. Most of the tirones were dragging and even our veterani were beginning to show a bit of fatigue. All day, dark, grey clouds had lowered over us and a cold, biting wind, smelling of snow, blew down off the mountains in the north. As we settled down into our cots in the common dormitory, after our cena, the main meal of the day, Strabo announced that if we got an early start the next morning, we might be able to make up some of the time that Molis’ flat feet had lost us. None of us were excited by the prospect… especially Molis.

When we awoke the next morning, we discovered that the world had been swallowed by an opaque white cloud of swirling snow and freezing winds. Even Strabo, despite his extensive army training and august rank, could neither see through this mess nor order it to cease. Even he had to surrender to the god of weather and call a halt to our advance. Sic dicta Iove! Thus decreed Iove, the god of storms and the protector of road weary soldiers! We had a day of rest.

After ientaculum, a light morning meal of watered wine, flat wheat bread and salt, we returned to the dormitory and mostly napped throughout the day. One of the veterani in our group announced that the one thing a pedes, a leg, a Roman infantryman, had to learn was to sleep wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself. Strabo stirred long enough to snort in assent and then started snoring again.

Around the fifth hour, I realized that I wasn’t yet a good infantryman; I couldn’t sleep any more. I went over to the common room of the inn and opened the door wide enough to confirm the weather hadn’t changed. I wouldn’t put it past Strabo to try to get a couple of miles down the road if the storm broke. I sat down at one of the trestle tables, comfortably close to the fire.

The landlord came over and asked, “What can I get yas, soldier?”

I was going to say nothing. Only Strabo was authorized to make purchases. Then I remembered I had a few coins of my own in my marsupium.

While I was figuring this out, the landlord offered, “I got some posca… fresh… just cooked it up… it’s cooling outside… could I interest yas in a pitcher?”

“Posca,” I heard a voice say! “Bring it on!”

One of our veterani had decided that he had had enough of being a good Roman pedes and sleeping the day away. He joined me at the table and dropped a few bronze coins down. “That should cover it!”

He looked at me and winked, “I can afford to be generous now that Rome is paying my bills again. Whatta  you called again?”

“Gaius Marius,” I answered and offered a hand. “Please, just call me Gai.”

He took it. “Bantus… Lucius Bantus…” he offered, “Recently a landed gentleman and the leading drunk of Acerrae on the right bank of the beautiful, pristine river Adda! Now, a humble Roman mulus, a poor soldier of the august and celebrated 10th Legion.” He inclined his head toward me.

“What made you get back in…” I started to ask when the landlord arrived with our pitcher and a couple of clay cups.

“You might want to bring a couple more cups,” Bantus said. “I’m sure some of the other lads will be along in just a bit.”

The landlord swept up one of Bantus’ coins and nodded.

Bantus poured the posca into our cups and, without waiting, took a deep draft of his. He actually grimaced, then smacked his lips, saying, “Ah! That’s posca! The much-loved drink of the legions! Drink up, boy,” he urged me!

I did. And immediately regretted it! It tasted like vinegar with an aftertaste of honey. The back of my throat began to burn, my eyes bulged as my jaw locked. And, that was the only think that prevented me from gagging.

Bantus laughed, “Nothing like your first swig of posca! Now you’re a Roman soldier!” He took another swig from his cup.

“Something wrong with my posca,” the landlord asked as he placed a couple more clay cups on our table?

“Nah,” Bantus said! “It’s the boy’s first shot at it.” They both laughed.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as the landlord retreated, then he asked, “So, what brings you to the army?”

I didn’t think I should confide in Bantus that I was one step ahead of the Consul’s lictors. “I’m a younger son. I need to do something with my life. Army’s as good a choice as any,” I offered. “What about you? Why’d you get back in?”

Bantus shrugged. “When I got out last time, they gave me some land. Not cut out to be a farmer… couldn’t make rocks grow. Sold the place; drank the proceeds. Money ran out. Here I am.”

He poured himself more posca. Then he noticed I hadn’t touched my cup since almost poisoning myself with my first drink. “Drink up, Gai,” he urged! “It gets better with every swallow. Grows on you in a way.” Then he chuckled.

Strabo wandered out of the dormitory, stretching and yawning. First, he spotted us, then the pitcher. “That what I think it is,” he said rubbing his hands together and taking a seat.

“Posca,” Bantus confirmed and filled another cup! “Mother’s milk of the Roman soldier… get enough sleep, Strabo?”

“Fuck! There’s never enough sleep” Strabo countered, emptying half of the cup and belching. “It’s not like you can store it up and carry it around in your pack for when you need it.”

Both veterani nodded together and chuckled. Then Strabo noticed me. “What’s a matter… don’t like your drink, tiro,” he asked?

I was just about to attempt some manly, soldierly sounding  answer to that, when Bantus said, “Hey! Buyer’s rules. I paid. Let’s just be three guys having a drink… you’re scaring the shit outta the kid.”

Strabo nodded, but, regardless of Bantus’ “buyer’s rules,” I decided to keep my mouth shut unless spoken to.

“So… you headed back to the Eighth,” he asked Strabo?

Strabo nodded. “Supposed to be on leave until the Calends of Martis, but the new governor’s really stirring up the shit. They say the tribes are moving again north of the Provincia. Even heard the krauts are over the Rhenus in Gallia again. I’m hoping my unit’s still in Aquileia, but they may have already moved north before the passes closed in November. I may get stuck with you guys in the Tenth. Ninth’s supposed to be in camp with them too.”

“Cacat,” Bantus exclaimed! “That’s a lot of manpower in one place. Who’d they leave to keep a lid on things over in Hispania?”

Strabo shrugged. “Shit like that’s way beyond my pay grade! Governor’s assembling an army, that’s for sure. Must expect some real shit up in Gallia.”

I noticed the pitcher was empty. I reached into my marsupium, laid a couple of bronze minervae on the table and signaled the landlord. I figured as long as I had money on the table, I was covered under buyer’s rules.

Bantus was nodding, “Yeah… I heard that too… we haven’t seen anything like this in what… forty years… way back when Crassus was a corporal? Makin’ some people nervous… guess the governor wants to stop it before it really gets going.”

Strabo agreed, “Army’s offering top price for recruits. Even this skinny specimen here’s worth a silver quadrata or two… that what that fuckin’ thief Dalmatius got for you,” he asked me?

“Hey! The kid just bought you a drink,” he cautioned Strabo. “Some respect for a man who stands his round, eh?” He winked at me and held up his cup in a toast. I took another sip of the posca. Bantus was right; it did seem to be tasting better.

“I’m pretty sure that lazy podex got three for me,” Bantus continued, “And I heard him telling that creepy, little dwarf that works for him that they’re authorized to recruit non-citizens for some new legions the governor’s raising in Aquileia. Never heard of the army doing anything like that. This new governor… what’s his name… Caesar… this new governor must think he’s Gaius Fuckin’ Marius himself back from the underworld. Fuckin’ Senate’s gonna have a fit when it hears he’s recruiting long-haired Gauls into the legions.”

“Rome’s a long way from here,” Strabo said. “And the day those rich viles landicae, those worthless pussies, down in Rome, had a clue about what the army needs to get a job done up here is the day I start carrying the mule instead of the mule carrying me.”

Bantus nodded at that. “If only they were landicae, we’d know where to stick…” he started, then we were joined by the other veterani in our group.

“Thought I smelled a pot of posca,” he announced grabbing the pitcher and pouring himself a cup.

“Thank our tiro… Gai… here,” Bantus told him. “He sprung for it.”

“Thanks, kid,” he said raising his cup to me. “Tullius Norbanus… just call me Tulli.”

I returned his salute and took another drink. “Gaius Marius…” I started, when Strabo interrupted.

“Are the other tirones stirring back there,” he asked Tulli.

“Nah,” he answered. “They’ll sleep for a week if you let them.”

Strabo grimaced. “I wanna get back on the road… playing nursemaid to a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears recruits is not why I came back from leave.”

“Quit ya bitchin’, Strabo,” Bantus told him. “There are worse details… besides… what’s your skim on this job… a bronze ass for every quadrata?”

Strabo was just about to say something, when Bantus asked Tulli, “What was your last posting?”

“I was with the Third in Asia…” he started.

I interrupted, “The Third! You know an optio named Macro?”

All three men stared at me blankly. I had just pushed the limit of the buyer’s rules. The posca must have been getting to me. All of a sudden, it didn’t taste so bad.

Tulli didn’t seem to mind. “Macro… no… never met the guy… heard of ‘im though… had a good rep with the squaddies… good man.”

Bantus pitched in, “So, what brings you back to the Eagles.”

“Bored, I guess,” Tulli started, “Broke for sure… this new nob coming up from Rome sounds like he’s gonna stir things up… could make some money out of this.”

“There is that,” Bantus agreed.

“Yeah,” Tulli continued. “Living with civilians was driving me crazy… their shit’s so petty… potholes in the street… the furnace in the bath getting clogged… a major fuckin’ crisis for them… wonder what they’d do if they saw a phalanx of Greek hoplites or a mob of screaming krauts charging down on them…”

“Shit their pants…” Strabo interrupted.

“Shit their pants and run…” Bantus added.

All three clunked their cups together. I didn’t think I was expected to participate, so wisely I did not.

We drank through most of my minervae. Around the seventh hour, Strabo got up, stretched and said something about taking a nap before we ate dinner. The rest of us got up to follow. I was about the snatch up the last remnant of my money, two bronze asses, when Bantus stopped me.

“Leave it for the landlord,” he said. “You never want to piss off someone who could spit in your stew.” Then, he winked.

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Read more about Gaius Marius Insubrecus’ adventures this summer in Ray Gleason’s The Helvetian Affair.

Pat Green has one more batter to face. At least that’s what he hopes. If he can get this guy out, his school, the St. Xavier Academy for Boys, wins the game and wins back the Bishop’s Cup.

It doesn’t matter that their regular season was mediocre at best… why not just call it what it is… their season sucked. They have a seven and sixteen record and this is their last game. But, any season they beat their arch-rivals, St. Agnes High School, is a good season. Besides, this is Pat’s last game in high school. He’s going to Fordham in the Fall, the Engineering Program. Still, he’d like to end his high school baseball career on a high note, a win over St. Agnes.

Traditionally, there always has been bad blood between the schools… why not just call it what it is… the schools hate each other.

The St. Francis Xavier Academy for Boys is a Jesuit school on the upper west-side of Manhattan that’s strictly college prep; a student has to have at least a B average just to get in. Tuition’s high, fifty dollars a month, and mandatory. Most of its grads go on to college, hopefully, to a good Catholic University like St. John’s in Queens or Fordham up in the Bronx. Even a city college would do in a pinch. Every year, one or two of their more gifted boys actually achieve Irish-Catholic, academic nirvana and is accepted to Notre Dame, way out in some distant and mysterious place west of New Jersey, called South Bend, Indiana. Such a wondrous occurrence is always mentioned by Father Rector during his graduation remarks.

Of course, there is always the fond hope that one, or maybe two, should Jesus be so kind, of St. Xavier’s graduates will decide to enter the priesthood, and go on to the seminary, preferably a Jesuit one. In order to nurture the vocations of the chosen few, and good academics for the rest of the boys because the good fathers know that teenage girls make teenage boys stupid, the school does not encourage their charges to socialize with members of the opposite sex. Being caught in a “public display of affection” with a girl within two blocks of the school gets a student a week of detention. Of course, then, there are no school dances, and, during the summer, the boys are encouraged to avoid mixed company, as well as other occasions of sin, and to attend mass every morning.

St. Agnes is a more “working class” institution. It’s a Marist Brothers school in mid-town near Grand Central whose goal is to give any Catholic boy, who desires it, a good, Catholic education despite any disadvantages, financially and academically. Their goals are as modest as the clay with which they work. The good brothers prepare their students to go on to one of the better jobs open to Catholics in New York City: the cops, fire department, sanitation, the subway, the buses, the trades or, for a lucky few, a white-collar with the city. In recent years, some of St. Agnes’ more promising grads actually got jobs with the phone company as messengers and frame men, demonstrating how liberal the city had become since the war. The school happily takes boys whose academic disabilities prevent them from getting into any of the better Catholic schools, even the recently arrived Puerto Ricans from the West Side and the Cubans from over in Corona, good traditional, Catholic cultures both, whose conduct and English are, shall we say, challenging. Tuition is nominally set at twenty-five a month, or whatever a family can afford.

The good brothers of St. Agnes have no delusions concerning the academic and social potential of their graduates. They assume that their boys’ most hopeful contribution to the future of Holy Mother Church is the begetting and nurturing of the next generation of Catholics. This, of course, requires an early marriage with a good Catholic girl, before the boys can become distracted by the alluring wiles of sinfully unfecund and extra-marital sexuality with some non-Catholic or, even worse, non-Christian. In order to facilitate this holy mission, the school organizes frequent mixers with the Catholic girls’ schools around the diocese, even going as far afield at times as the Diocese of Brooklyn, just across the river. A student can of course bring a date, as long as the girl is Catholic and is in good standing at some high school, even a public one; calls have been known to be made concerning this. Of course, these dances are carefully chaperoned and the behavior of the children carefully scrutinized by the brothers of St. Agnes and the teaching sisters of the guest school. Although the good brothers look forward to the next generation of Catholics, there’s no hurry to get it started. Slow dancing too closely merits a warning; a second offense means being thrown out of the dance, boy and girl separately of course, and one week of detention for the boy. Being caught making out with a girl on school premises is good for four weeks of the “Big D” and being banned from dances for a semester.

So, the boys of St. Agnes consider the boys of St. Xavier a bunch of spoiled, lace-curtain pansies, while the boys at St. Xavier consider St. Agnes boys a bunch of ignorant, shanty-Irish losers. That is the polite way of expressing the rivalry. If one were to ask one of the boys what they thought about their opposite numbers, out of the hearing of any of the Marist brothers or Jesuit priests of course, the most common answer heard would be, “They’re a bunch of assholes!”

To make matters worse, sometime back in the early forties, some Marists and Jesuits got together, probably over a sacramental bottle or two of twelve-year-old Irish, good Catholic stuff, not that Prot swill from the north. After a prodigious sharing out of the water of life amongst themselves, and a long, heated argument over which baseball team truly represented the spirit of New York, Irish Catholicism, the Yankees, Giants or even the lowly Brooklyn Dodgers, they came up with the grand idea for an annual baseball competition between the two schools. Although most ideas are “grand” after a few belts of the gargle, the Archbishop of New York, Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman himself, may His Excellency be loved for as long as he lives and live as long as he’s loved, liked the idea so much that he donated a large sterling-silver cup, which forever after would be called the “Bishop’s Cup.” The winner of each year’s game was awarded the cup at their graduation ceremony in June by the Cardinal himself, may His Excellency be loved for as long as he lives and live as long as he’s loved, and got to display it in the center of their trophy cabinet. It was also rumored, at least among the boys, that the Cardinal himself, may His Excellency be loved for as long as he lives and live as long as he’s loved, gave the faculty of the winning school enough of the sacramental, twelve-year-old Irish, good Catholic stuff, not that Prot swill from the north, to fill the cup to the brim. Up the Republic!

So, boys, priests and brothers all took the game seriously. On the day of the game, all classes were of course cancelled. The entire congregation of each school, students and faculty, even the alumni, attended a special mass at nine a.m., St. Xavier in its auditorium, St Agnes in the parish church next to the school. There, each school asked Jesus, the Blessed Virgin and all the saints, especially Saints Patrick and Michael the Archangel, to intercede for them, to give them victory, and to smite their cross-town, cross-cultural rivals, who on that day were no better than a bunch of snotty-nosed, shifty-eyed Prots and heretics. After mass, faculty, students and alumni en masse got on the subway, the Eastside IRT for St. Agnes, the Independent Line for St. Xavier, and traveled to a ball field up in the Bronx for the annual game between the two Manhattan schools. The Bishop’s Cup itself was carried up by the previous year’s winner, and prominently displayed behind home plate on a table, covered in rich, shining, red fabric, bordered in gold, for that year’s winners to take back to their school in triumph after the game. The crowd, after a few nips of the sacramental water of life from silver flasks on the St. Xavier side, and pint bottles in brown paper bags on the St. Agnes side, got quite vociferously involved in the game. Even a few fights were known to break out, now and again. But, with a crowd full of cops, firemen, city politicians, and clergy, the fights never lasted long or amounted to much of anything more than some mussed hair, a rug or two askew, a torn shirt or an occasional bloody-nose. After all, the day was for the boys, baseball and the greater glory of God.