He had never before seen an adult cry. “Maybe you could teach again, Brother Luke,” he said, trying to comfort him. “I like you. If I were a kid, I’d like to be taught by you,” and the brother smiled a bit at him and stroked his hair and said it didn’t work like that, that he’d have to get licensed by the state, and it was a long and complicated process.
He thought and thought. And then he remembered: “Brother Luke,” he said, “I could help—I could get a job. I could help earn money.”
“No, Jude,” said the brother. “I can’t let you do that.”
“But I want to,” he said. He remembered Brother Michael telling him how much he cost for the monastery to maintain, and felt guilty and frightened, both. Brother Luke had done so much for him, and he had done nothing in return. He not only wanted to help earn money; he had to.
At last he was able to convince the brother, who hugged him. “You really are one in a million, you know that?” Luke asked him. “You really are special.” And he smiled into the brother’s sweater.
The next day they had classes as usual, and then the brother left again, this time, he said, to find him a good job: something he could do that would help them earn money so they could buy the land and build the cabin. And this time Luke returned smiling, excited even, and seeing this, he was excited as well.
“Jude,” said the brother, “I met someone who wants to give you some work; he’s waiting right outside and you can start now.”
He smiled back at the brother. “What am I going to do?” he asked. At the monastery, he had been taught to sweep, and dust, and mop. He could wax a floor so well that even Brother Matthew had been impressed. He knew how to polish silver, and brass, and wood. He knew how to clean between tiles and how to scrub a toilet. He knew how to clean leaves out of gutters and clean and reset a mousetrap. He knew how to wash windows and do laundry by hand. He knew how to iron, he knew how to sew on buttons, he knew how to make stitches so even and fine that they looked as if they had been done by machine.
He knew how to cook. He could only make a dozen or so dishes from start to finish, but he knew how to clean and peel potatoes, carrots, rutabaga. He could chop hills of onions and never cry. He could debone a fish and knew how to pluck and clean a chicken. He knew how to make dough, he knew how to make bread. He knew how to whip egg whites until they transformed from liquid to solid to something better than solid: something like air given form.
And he knew how to garden. He knew which plants craved sun and which shied from it. He knew how to determine whether a plant was parched or drowning in too much water. He knew when a tree or bush needed to be repotted, and when it was hardy enough to be transferred into the earth. He knew which plants needed to be protected from cold, and how to protect them. He knew how to make a clipping and how to make the clipping grow. He knew how to mix fertilizer, how to add eggshells into the soil for extra protein, how to crush an aphid without destroying the leaf it was perched on. He could do all of these things, although he was hoping he would get to garden, because he wanted to work outside, and on his morning runs, he could feel that summer was coming, and on their drives to the track, he had seen fields in bloom with wildflowers, and he wanted to be among them.
Brother Luke knelt by him. “You’re going to do what you did with Father Gabriel and a couple of the brothers,” he said, and then, slowly, he understood what Luke was saying, and he stepped back toward the bed, everything within him seizing with fear. “Jude, it’s going to be different now,” Luke said, before he could say anything. “It’ll be over so fast, I promise you. And you’re so good at it. And I’ll be waiting in the bathroom to make sure nothing goes wrong, all right?” He stroked his hair. “Come here,” he said, and held him. “You are a wonderful kid,” he said. “It’s because of you and what you’re doing that we’re going to have our cabin, all right?” Brother Luke had talked and talked, and finally, he had nodded.
The man had come in (many years later, his would be one of the very few of their faces he would remember, and sometimes, he would see men on the street and they would look familiar, and he would think: How do I know him? Is he someone I was in court with? Was he the opposing counsel on that case last year? And then he would remember: he looks like the first of them, the first of the clients) and Luke had gone to the bathroom, which was just behind his bed, and he and the man had had sex and then the man had left.
That night he was very quiet, and Luke was gentle and tender with him. He had even brought him a cookie—a gingersnap—and he had tried to smile at Luke, and tried to eat it, but he couldn’t, and when Luke wasn’t looking, he wrapped it in a piece of paper and threw it away. The next day he hadn’t wanted to go to the track in the morning, but Luke had said he’d feel better with some exercise, and so they had gone and he had tried to run, but it was too painful and he had eventually sat down and waited until Luke said they could leave.
Now their routine was different: they still had classes in the mornings and afternoons, but now, some evenings, Brother Luke brought back men, his clients. Sometimes there was just one; sometimes there were several. The men brought their own towels and their own sheets, which they fitted over the bed before they began and unpeeled and took with them when they left.