Mercy Is The House of God

Dalton McBrayer, who has never accused himself of being clever, can tell when he comes back into the living room that the mood has changed. He is drying his chest and his wet honey colored hair is sticking up.

“What happened?” he asks Jay who is holding the flip phone in his hand.

“It was Michael’s mother. I just got a call from her. He’s missing.”

Dalton knows who Michael is by now. He asked. Jay does not believe in telling a man who is beside him in bed about another man who was beside him before, and will be in this bed again. It was Dalton who asked about his other loves, and so he learned about Michael.

“I have got to go and find him. First I have to go to his mother,” Jay stands up in his housecoat, “and I’ve got to get the information I can, and then I’ve got to go to North Dakota and find him.”

“North Da…”

“He’s in North Dakota.”  

“It’s almost Christmas. It’s cold as shit there.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

Dalton’s face changes. He slides into his Jockeys and he sits on the edge of the bed. He touches Jay’s hand.

“Yes?”

“Has it ever occurred to you…?” Dalton begins, and starts over again.

“Look, I know you love this Michael. But… had you ever thought that maybe… you could love… me?”

Whatever the intended effect Jay’s eyes flash and he rounds on Dalton.

“You son of a bitch!”

Dalton’s mouth hangs open.

“In the—what?—three years you’ve been fucking me on again off again you never said a goddamn thing about love. You never told me you loved me or you would move to Lassador for me or you wanted me  to follow you somewhere. You came here when it suited you and left when you wanted and today, when the person I am most bonded to is missing, and I am fretting, and I am getting everything together to go and find him, you have the nerve to say that to me?”

Dalton still looked surprised. He was white faced, but not hurt.

“It’s just…” Dalton explained, “No one’s ever loved me like that… Like how you love him.”

“Because no one has ever loved me the way he loves me!” Jay almost shouted. “That kind of love isn’t something you just replace with someone else’s, not even yours, Sergeant McBrayer.”

“Alright,” Dalton said, trying to calm Jay down. “Alright.”

Dalton reached for his jeans and pulled them on, and then he reached for his tee shirt.

“I tell you what? I’ll take you to Michael’s mom’s house. I’ll help you do this? Okay?”

Jay looked at him, shocked. But then Dalton always was a surprise.

“I may not be the love of your life, and I may not even be worth being the love of your life, but I think I am a love of your life, and I think you need my help right now.”

Almost apropos to nothing, as Dalton combs his hair, always buzzed and always with a side part, Jay wonders if he’s a Republican.

“You’re right,” Jay says. “Let’s go.”

With the grace of a desperate woman who is welcoming any help, Kate Cleveland greets Dalton. For a moment, Jay sees Dalton through Kate’s eyes: tall, military, decent, American, together, duffel bag back in the car, a shy and gentle lover, defender of America who occasionally himself needs to be defended. He knows he only shouted at Dalton because they are, in a sense, already together, and he’s not going away. His only flaw is that he doesn’t always brush his teeth the way he should before they kiss and then his mouth is kind of sour. This is not a flaw. This is a cause for chewing gum. In a world of reason Jay should go find Michael, say goodbye, and then make a life with Sergeant Dalton McBrayer. They could even find a nice Episcopalian church and go to mass on Sundays.

His mind is straying into fantasy.

Kate says, “It’s called the Monastery of the Clouds.”

“Is it Christian or something Buddhist?”

It sounds like it might be pagan. What the hell does it matter? Jay gets the number Kate and calls.

“Oh, yes,” a brother answers the phone. He doesn’t sound like a Buddhist, whatever that means. “He left a forwarding address. It’s about ten miles south of here. But he hasn’t come back. He said he would. Said he’d say goodbye. He’s a good person. You know, there are nice people, but good people are something different.”

Jay makes plans to be there at the monastery. One of the brothers will drive him to the house where Michael’s staying. He is leaving today. Leaving this afternoon on a Greyhound from the bus station in Lassador that will connect him in Chicago.

“Don’t do that,” Dalton says.

Jay looks at Dalton.

“I can drive you to Chicago. I want to.”

In a less desperate time, Jay would tell Dalton that Chicago is a good three hours away. At another time Jay would be leery of the Greyhound bus station. While traveling, he decides on Amtrak instead.

When they reach Chicago there is no chance of traveling until tomorrow. Dalton says he’ll take him to the train in the morning. They get a motel room outside of town where it’s cheap.

“I get you completely,” Dalton says. “The first rule in the military is you don’t leave a man down, and your man is down. You’ve got to get him. But just remember I drove you here.”

Jay opens his mouth.

“I drove you here because of what you mean to me. Remember that when you get back from North Dakota.”

Michael

There was an afternoon when neither of us was going to work. Jay had started working at the Pennysaver, the little newspaper his uncle ran, and I was thinking of getting back into teaching, but was still at the store. But, like I said, this didn’t matter because neither of us was at work and the day was warm and his apartment was full of sunlight and we were together and I said, pressing closer against him, wrapping my leg tighter around Jay,

“The thing is, I don’t love a lot. I feel like the only thing in the world I really love is you.”

“That’s not right,” Jay said simply. “You’ll always be unhappy if you’re heart’s that small.”

That surprised me and he said, “The heart is big. There shouldn’t be only one person in it.”

 He turned to me said, “Try to learn to love the whole world.”

I was going to ask him to come back to me. In bed he sat up a little straighter and pulled his knees to his stomach so I saw all of him, brown and soft, smooth and thoughtful and he said, “Don’t come to me unless you have a full heart. I’m trying to get a full heart. That’s all I’m interested in. You have to love things. You have to love this world. It is worth loving. You know?”

That’s the whole reason I left and went to North Dakota. I did love the whole world, for a little bit. There were moments when it began to look so beautiful and I did love people. I used to love all of those kids. I can say it now. I can’t believe what they did to Mickey. I can’t believe someone found my Mickey and he was naked and he was covered in blood and he was ten years old. And, alright, there are fourth and fifth graders who are little assholes. But Mickey wasn’t. And it just seems like it’s the good people, the sweet people who fall first. I…..

I say all this to Jay. That night is the first time I’ve stayed with him in two years. When I say the way they found him it’s Jay who adds, ‘Naked and covered in blood,” as if he knew I needed to hear that, hear all of it. My face is hot and my eyes burn for a long time before I’m able to cry. In all the time I was depressed, in all the times I went to Morelton I didn’t cry not once. And even with Jay until we broke up, I didn’t, but he’s a safe place for it. He cries too, never moans, just you see the tears and it feels alright to cry for Mickey. I feel like it’s doing something. It’s not, but I feel like it is.

I don’t want anyone who doesn’t love things, who doesn’t have a full heart.

I have a cousin who went to a monastery, and so I pick the Monastery of the Clouds because it seems like that’s the place where I’ll find God. I have decided to give God a chance. Mind you, it wasn’t that I hadn’t given him a chance or didn’t believe in him or anything. It was more like Thai food. I know that restaurant’s down the street. Lots of people like it, but I haven’t been yet. I plan to when I get around to it. That was how I felt about God. I hadn’t even made the big leap to why was God so great if he couldn’t keep the world right or save kids like Mickey. Somehow I never thought it was God’s job to keep people from being bad. I thought, why couldn’t’ the cops have saved Mickey or why was his father an evil asshole? It never occurred to me to blame God. Maybe I should have. I don’t know.

When I drove out there I didn’t expect to be told anything. I wasn’t thinking some monk would have any wisdom for me. I don’t know that I was looking for anything Christian. I had tried to read the Bible a few times before, and I wasn’t that impressed by it. But when I left I took one of Jay’s Bibles. It had been with me for years and he didn’t seem to miss it, or at least he wasn’t asking for it back. It was called 1611, and I read it now and again as I stopped on my way to Chicago before heading further west.

Uerily, verily I say vnto you, He that entreth not by þe doore into the sheepefold, but climeth vp some other way, the same is a theefe, and a robber.

But hee that entreth in by the doore, is the shepherd of the sheepe.

To him the porter openeth, and the sheepe heare his voyce, and he calleth his owne sheepe by name, and leadeth them out.

And when he putteth foorth his owne sheepe, he goeth before them, and the sheepe follow him: for they know his voyce.

It was obscure as fuck, and misspelled and I loved it. Not knowing exactly what I was reading was a great comfort. I remember one night we sat up smoking cigarettes and other things. Neither one of us had clothes on, and neither one of us cared. I can’t remember if I was in Jay’s arms or he was in mine. We weren’t quite passed out and I said, “You know, there is this world just beyond the world. There’s what we see and hear, and then there’s what it’s pointing to, and that’s the real stuff. There’s the stuff we say, and then there’s what we’re actually saying that’s underneath it. That’s the truth.”

And this is how I felt reading that Bible and heading to the Monastery of the Clouds.