Novel: The Sword, The Book, And The Bone (Chapter 2)

   Shep played his last tennis match at the Farm that very day. The Farm, the faculty club for the University of North Carolina, was not far from campus off of Raleigh Road. It had modest facilities, including swimming, tennis, and a grill room. The tennis courts were all clay and Shep’s favorite was closest to his usual spot in the gravel parking lot where he parked his Ford Taurus nearly every afternoon. His last match was against the Rev. Dr. Thad Jameson, Rector of Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church adjacent to campus.

    Shep was tall and lean, bearing in his person the evidence of an old man who’d exercised all his life. He had an intimidating presence in his eyes and limbs. Conversely, his opponent that day, the priest, was not at all tall. Jameson was middle-aged with the look of general health, and though coordinated with a racquet, he was no athlete, competitor, or killer.

    Shep hated losing. So his tennis game was treacherous. His ability to run or cover the court lost by age, met with his desire to win at all costs, meant he used every evil trick in the tennis player’s handbook. As well, he was no respecter of persons on the court, whether child, friend or priest. His array of weapons included drop shots, quick-toss serves, and such incredible spin that his balls would bounce in every direction other than the one you as his opponent predicted.

    When I was a little boy, and we were engaged in what purported to be a friendly family contest, Shep hit a shot over the net to me, which then dropped fairly short, bounced backward, and returned to him back over the net. He would laugh like a jackal at such points, no matter whom he was playing, all while quickly calling out the score and tossing up his service ball to initiate the next point. “Ready tennis,” he called it. Which meant, “You better be ready.”

    All this is to say that though 81 years old Shep gave the priest a wicked match and won it in straight sets. Father Jameson, flustered off his best tennis by Shep’s gamesmanship and lust for victory, shook Shep’s hand, and offered to buy him a ‘half-and-half,’ (lemonade mixed with iced tea.) Of course Shep accepted, saying, “Thank you Thaddeus. After a quick shower, let’s drink half-and-halfs and settle up.”

    Now for Shep, quick was quick. Even at his age, he could cold shower and dress in less than ten minutes. It was always disconcerting to whomever he played tennis with, who would usually still be twiddling with his locker combination, while Shep was combing his cold-wet hair and thinking disdainfully of his partner’s sloth. He’d be seated in the grill room, several pages into the Raleigh News & Observer, (“a decent paper” he often said,) with a half-finished glass of ice-water, before looking up at his ‘late’ arriving opponent with a palm outstretched for payment of whatever wager had been made. He rarely had to give money over, but always hated it when he did.

    But on this occasion, (as Father Jameson would later tell me), when he got to the grill room, already a bit agitated that he had lost to the old bastard, and further worried that he’d be judged for having taken too long in the showers, he was very surprised that Shep was not there. He waited just a minute before going back to the locker room, where, on the floor of the shower, the cold water running cold still, lay Shep unmoving.

    Jameson cut off the water, checked his pulse and ran to the front desk. An ambulance was called, but he was pronounced dead on the scene. Jameson first called Shep’s house, spoke to the second wife about meeting her at the hospital quickly, and then helped to pull Shep’s clothes and things together. Since Shep didn’t rent a locker, and always kept his stuff in one of the free cubbies, it was easy for the priest to find it. His fresh clothes hung on the hook, and his tennis clothes rumpled on the floor, Shep’s old wooden TAD Imperial tennis-racquet was already back in its frame. Upon seeing it, the priest later told me he felt intensely guilty for thinking: “I can’t believe I just lost to an 81-year-old man who played with that racket, and then died.”

    As he gathered up Shep’s stuff, Jameson noticed the diary on the shelf in the cubby, with a pen folded into it, so it fell open at the last entry page, in which both temperature and weather had been duly chronicled, along with the final score of the match just completed! He noticed that a number of recent pages were written in a familiar looking script.

    Shep’s funeral was on Maundy Thursday, the holy day when the Last Supper and Jesus’ betrayal, arrest and abandonment are remembered. As if this weren’t unusual enough, seven large black wreaths were delivered mysteriously to the church, and an all-black banner was placed in the entrance area to the church with the numeral 7 on it. Interestingly, the sexton of the church didn’t see who had brought these things or set them up, and nobody knew how they entered the building either.

    (Anyone who has ever visited Charlottesville where Shep went to college in the late 1920s will have noticed the cryptic symbols painted on steps and the sides of fraternity houses. Here is a ‘Z,’ there the letters ‘IMP,’ and so forth. These secret societies are a venerable tradition at U.Va. From what I’ve heard, the top of the heap is the Seven Society. Except in rare cases Sevens are only known to the world beyond their temple when they die. I knew Shep went to the University of Virginia, but I certainly had no idea he was a Seven.)

    Beyond these two somewhat exotic facts, the funeral was standard Episcopalian fair, straight out of the Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal. It was dignified and solemn. Just the way we like it. We sang “Eternal Father Strong to Save”, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, and “Lift High the Cross”. We heard from Romans and John. We stood, kneeled and sat. We crossed ourselves. We reverenced the cross in procession. We did not howl in grief and nobody fell down. My dad sat emotionally frozen, and my mom, though divorced from dad, sat with Shep’s widow and held her hand.

    But the crowd was small, maybe a hundred. While he’d accumulated friendly colleagues at the university, Shep had few old friends left by this time and fewer who could travel. Moreover, he was of that age when people are saddened not grief-stricken by death’s visitation.

     I thought Father Jameson preached well. He celebrated Shep enough but did not idolize the man. He thanked Jesus for His saving love. And he finished with a cute joke, saying “Right now Shep is probably making questionable line calls, and fast-serving St. Peter in the cerulean tennis courts of eternity.” Funeral crowds being what they are, nobody chuckled.

     Except for an old foreigner. I turned around to look at him, and he locked his gaze on me in such a way that gave me the strangest feeling. When I looked back at him, he smiled at me again.

     After the burial rite, when the congregation retired to the parish hall for lemonade and cookies, I looked around to see who the old man was. I asked Dad and he had no idea. I asked mom, and neither did she. Salomé said he was an old friend of Shep’s from his overseas days in the State Department.

     Father Jameson approached and wished me well. Then, he said, “I didn’t know Shep knew Grabar?”

     I said, “Who’s that?”

     “Grabar? Oh sorry, I’m just showing off. That’s Old Armenian,” the priest said.

     “Oh. I’m not surprised. He knew all sorts of strange things didn’t he? Why?”

     He said, “Well, I noticed his pocket diary the other day when I gathered his belongings from the club, and I happened to see some things written in Old Armenian characters. I studied illuminated Armenian manuscripts for my doctorate.”

     “No kidding? Are you Armenian?” I asked.

     “Half,” he said. “My mother’s side.”

      I said, “Well, Shep’s dad was an Episcopal missionary murdered by the Turks while helping the Armenians.”

     He said, “That’s right, now I see the connection. Of course, I do recall him telling me that once.”

     But I immediately stopped listening to Father Jameson because I started thinking about Shep’s diaries. Maybe they could help me figure this all out.

Continued Reading—The Sword, The Book, And The Bone—Chapter 3 (Tuesday 10/25/2011)

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