Chapter 3 #7
After they crossed into Nebraska, Brother Luke stopped at the edge of a wheat field and beckoned him out of the car.
It was still dark, but he could hear the birds stirring, hear them talk back to a sun they couldn’t yet see.
He took the brother’s hand and they skulked from the car and to a large tree, where Luke explained that the other brothers would be looking for them, and they would have to change their appearance.
He took off the hated tunic, and put on the clothes Brother Luke held out for him: a sweatshirt with a hood and a pair of jeans.
Before he did, though, he stood still as Luke cut off his hair with an electric razor.
The brothers rarely cut his hair, and it was long, past his ears, and Brother Luke made sad noises as he removed it.
“Your beautiful hair,” he said, and carefully wrapped the length of it in his tunic and then stuffed it into a garbage bag.
“You look like every other boy now, Jude. But later, when we’re safe, you can grow it back, all right?
” and he nodded, although really, he liked the idea of looking like every other boy.
And then Brother Luke changed clothes himself, and he turned away to give the brother privacy.
“You can look, Jude,” said Luke, laughing, but he shook his head.
When he turned back, the brother was unrecognizable, in a plaid shirt and jeans of his own, and he smiled at him before shaving off his beard, the silvery bristles falling from him like splinters of metal.
There were baseball caps for both of them, although the inside of Brother Luke’s was fitted with a yellowish wig, which covered his balding head completely.
There were pairs of glasses for both of them as well: his were black and round and fitted with just glass, not real lenses, but Brother Luke’s were square and large and brown and had the same thick lenses as his real glasses, which he put into the bag.
He could take them off when they were safe, Brother Luke told him.
They were on their way to Texas, which is where they’d build their cabin.
He had always imagined Texas as flat land, just dust and sky and road, which Brother Luke said was mostly true, but there were parts of the state—like in east Texas, where he was from—that were forested with spruce and cedars.
It took them nineteen hours to reach Texas.
It would have been less time, but at one point Brother Luke pulled off the side of the highway and said he needed to nap for a while, and the two of them slept for several hours.
Brother Luke had packed them something to eat as well—peanut butter sandwiches—and in Oklahoma they stopped again in the parking lot of a rest stop to eat them.
The Texas of his mind had, with just a few descriptions from Brother Luke, transformed from a landscape of tumbleweeds and sod into one of pines, so tall and fragrant that they cottoned out all other sound, all other life, so when Brother Luke announced that they were now, officially, in Texas, he looked out the window, disappointed.
“Where are the forests?” he asked.
Brother Luke laughed. “Patience, Jude.”
They would need to stay in a motel for a few days, Brother Luke explained, both to make sure the other brothers weren’t following them and so he could begin scouting for the perfect place to build their cabin.
The motel was called The Golden Hand, and their room had two beds—real beds—and Brother Luke let him choose which one he wanted.
He took the one near the bathroom, and Brother Luke took the one near the window, with a view of their car.
“Why don’t you take a shower, and I’m going to go to the store and get us some supplies,” said the brother, and he was suddenly frightened. “What’s wrong, Jude?”
“Are you going to come back?” he asked, hating how scared he sounded.
“Of course I’ll come back, Jude,” said the brother, hugging him. “Of course I will.”
When he did, he had a loaf of sliced bread, and a jar of peanut butter, and a hand of bananas, and a quart of milk, and a bag of almonds, and some onions and peppers and chicken breasts.
That evening, Brother Luke set up the small hibachi he’d brought in the parking lot and they grilled the onions and peppers and chicken, and Brother Luke gave him a glass of milk.
Brother Luke established their routine. They woke early, before the sun was up, and Brother Luke made himself a pot of coffee with the coffeemaker he’d brought, and then they drove into town, to the high school’s track, where Luke let him run around for an hour as he sat in the bleachers, drinking his coffee and watching him.
Then they returned to the motel room, where the brother gave him lessons.
Brother Luke had been a math professor before he came to the monastery, but he had wanted to work with children, and so he had later taught sixth grade.
But he knew about other subjects as well: history and books and music and languages.
He knew so much more than the other brothers, and he wondered why Luke had never taught him when they lived at the monastery.
They ate lunch—peanut butter sandwiches again—and then had more classes until three p.m., when he was allowed outside again to run around the parking lot, or to take a walk with the brother down the highway.
The motel faced the interstate, and the whoosh of the passing cars provided a constant soundtrack.
“It’s like living by the sea,” Brother Luke always said.
After this, Brother Luke made a third pot of coffee and then drove off to look for locations where they’d build their cabin, and he stayed behind in their motel room.
The brother always locked him into the room for his safety.
“Don’t open the door for anyone, do you hear me?
” asked the brother. “Not for anyone. I have a key and I’ll let myself in.
And don’t open the curtains; I don’t want anyone to see you’re in here alone.
There are dangerous people out there in the world; I don’t want you to get hurt.
” It was for this same reason that he wasn’t to use Brother Luke’s computer, which he took with him anyway whenever he left the room.
“You don’t know who’s out there,” Brother Luke would say.
“I want you to be safe, Jude. Promise me.” He promised.
He would lie on his bed and read. The television was forbidden to him: Luke would feel it when he came back to the room, to see if it was warm, and he didn’t want to displease him, he didn’t want to get in trouble.
Brother Luke had brought a piano keyboard in his car, and he practiced on it; the brother was never mean to him, but he did take lessons seriously.
As the sky grew dark, though, he would find himself sitting on the edge of Brother Luke’s bed, pinching back the curtain and scanning the parking lot for Brother Luke’s car; some part of him was always worried that Brother Luke wouldn’t return for him after all, that he was growing tired of him, that he would be left alone.
There was so much he didn’t know about the world, and the world was a scary place.
He tried to remind himself that there were things he could do, that he knew how to work, that maybe he could get a job cleaning the motel, but he was always anxious until he saw the station wagon pulling toward him, and then he would be relieved, and would promise himself that he would do better the next day, that he would never give Brother Luke a reason to not return to him.
One evening the brother came back to the room looking tired.
A few days ago, he had returned excited: he had found the perfect piece of land, he said.
He described a clearing surrounded by cedars and pines, a little stream nearby busy with fish, the air so cool and quiet that you could hear every pinecone as it fell to the soft ground.
He had even shown him a picture, all dark greens and shadows, and had explained where their cabin would go, and how he could help build it, and where they would make a sleeping loft, a secret fort, just for him.
“What’s wrong, Brother Luke?” he asked him, after the brother had been silent so long that he could no longer stand it.
“Oh, Jude,” said the brother, “I’ve failed.” He told him how he had tried and tried to buy the land, but he just didn’t have the money. “I’m sorry, Jude, I’m sorry,” he said, and then, to his amazement, the brother began to cry.
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.