Chapter Eight

“Lily?” Professor Weaver asked after I’d remained slack-jawed on my side of the telephone line for a couple breaths too long.

I didn’t have a huge problem with meeting him privately to discuss happenings at the church; it was too dangerous for me to be lingering after class, especially with Ryan’s sudden chumminess. But I wasn’t going to alter my plans. It was a silly request when I couldn’t possibly gather more information before Saturday, and Weaver knew that. Did he have an ulterior motive?

“Like a date?” I blurted out before realizing I’d said it. Now it was my turn to receive the silent treatment.

“That would be inappropriate. Maybe next week would work better since you’ll have had another session at the church. When is the best time for you?”

We set an appointment for next Thursday at eight, and I’d meet him in his office. The niggling feeling remained with me, but I brushed it aside. The professor only wanted my findings. I was the one being inappropriate.

The next few days were normal with a few minor exceptions. Mad Max now greeted me if he was at a stopping point in his spiel whenever I walked past him in the Meadow, and Ryan sat beside me in Sociology prattling on about how he was looking forward to our date. The professor seemed to be over whatever issue had been bothering him, and he was back to his typical verbose self and his theatrics in the classroom.

The week flew by, and here I stood in the lobby of the Snow Lion restaurant staring into Harrison Ford’s eyes. I turned my gaze to another photo hanging on the wall--this one a picture of the Dalai Lama, the owner’s uncle. I wondered if I could swipe the photos off the wall and carry them to the table with me and say that I might have been stood up by Ryan, but managed to score a date with the movie star and the religious leader instead.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ryan said as the door’s chimes jingled behind him. “Kirkwood is hopping tonight.”

Kirkwood was almost always bustling, but on weekend nights, it was jam-packed with college students flocking to its bars and high-schoolers cruising the strip to find someone willing to buy alcohol. I still made it on time, and I didn’t smell like I’d stopped at a bar along the way.

The hostess led us through a maze of tables to a dimly lit section of booths in the restaurant’s far corner. We took our seats and looked through the menu, Ryan voicing his displeasure at the restaurant’s lack of pizza or anything American.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t have met up at Mother Bear’s or another pizza place,” he said after ordering a Cajun noodle dish after I pointed out that Cajun was in fact American.

I sighed. “I work there. I don’t even want to look at pizza on my days off.” I needed to change the subject before I pointed out his absurdity. “Have you changed your mind regarding church?”

“Hell no. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. Are you going back?”

“Yeah. I think they’re probably just misunderstood,” I lied as the waitress set our food in front of us.

“So do you and Weaver have something going on?” Ryan asked as I forked some curry into my mouth.

“Do you and he have something going on?” I retorted, not caring that he’d most likely take offense by my insinuation. His jaw clenched and I continued, “He’s our professor. That’s it.”

“With as much as he calls on you, one might think there was something between you.” I rolled my eyes. “Look, I was just joking.”

“Then I’d suggest you not quit college to become a comedian.” I rifled through my purse for money to cover my portion of the meal and handed it to the waitress when she returned with another soda. “Can you bring me a carryout box?”

Her eyes widened as she looked at my barely-eaten entrée. She started to say something, but stopped once she saw the pleading in my eyes and realized the problem did not originate with the chef. “I’ll be right back with it.”

“You’re leaving me here?” Ryan said with a mouth of food garbling his words.

My shoulders shrugged as I scraped the curry into the container. “If you eat quickly enough, you’ll probably catch your friends before they hit the next bar.”

*                                              *                                           *

I waited patiently for the other prospective members to file out of the discussion room, thankful that Ryan had stayed true to his word. Neither he nor his cronies had attended church this morning. I figured that most likely their stint as possible greenies was some sort of hazing ritual inflicted upon them by their fraternity.

Ericka and I were the only ones who had returned from last week, and she was speaking in hushed tones to Father Xavier as I tried to appreciate the flower garden painting on the wall. I was not a connoisseur of anything artistic and was trying to be inconspicuous with my eavesdropping. They weren’t making it easy for me.

“How may I help you, Lily?” Father Xavier asked as Ericka said bye to me and I gulped a goodbye to her.

I sighed, then straightened my back and hoped I wasn’t overcompensating. “You mentioned last week that to become a member, we have to go through classes. I was wondering how we sign up for them.”

The burly man smiled as he pushed his wireframes onto the bridge of his nose. He thumbed through a folder until he arrived to the right section, removed some stapled papers, and handed them to me. “I’m glad you want to join us. All you need to do is fill out this paperwork, and we’ll contact you to set up your classes. We like to offer them to a group, and Ericka has let me know she is interested as well, so you may begin classes sooner rather than later.”

“Could I return this in a couple days?” I flipped through the pages and didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary in this room. From the looks of it, I had an hour of paperwork ahead of me.

“That’s not a problem. Just try to return it early in the week so we can coordinate times for the classes.”

*                                    *                                    *

On Thursday night, the professor peeked over a stack of papers—tests from this week, I presumed—as I walked into his office a couple minutes before schedule. I removed my jacket and slung it over the cushioned chair in front of his mahogany desk.

“So what can you tell me?” He marked his spot on the test with a post-it note and looked up at me. I felt my cheeks redden under his scrutinous stare and was annoyed that I felt like putty in his hands.

“They’re strange, and I can’t put my finger on it, but something is off with them,” I answered. “I can’t say they’re plotting to take over the world, but I’m going to dig further. I submitted one behemoth of an application to join them; they asked for everything but my sister’s bra size in it.”

“That detailed?” He laughed and his smile melted the coldness from outside that I still lingered in my body. “And you actually gave them the information?”

I hadn’t been completely forthcoming on the application, and provided truthful answers only to the easily researchable questions. They had my home phone number, my parents’ names and address, and Rosie’s name and address. I’d given them the contact information of my personal references, and explained how much the church meant to me, and what I could offer to it. Pretty much everything was a fabrication, and I could only hope they wouldn’t follow up on my answers.

I pulled a copy of the application and handed it to the professor. “This should count as my paper. I think there are enough words here to meet your requirements for it.”

“That would be entirely too easy.” He chuckled before perusing it. “You want to join the Order because you feel that they’ve been persecuted against and you can help better their public image through volunteering and spreading their word like Max does? You were really stretching it, weren’t you?”

“It was the only thing I could come up with, and it worked. I have a session on Monday morning, and three per week once we return from Thanksgiving.”

“You weren’t lying about how detailed this application was. Why does a religion need to have your work and class schedules—and why do they need references?” he asked after he finished reading through the remainder of the paperwork. “I don’t know that I would have handed this information to them.”

He set the papers atop his desk and looked me in the eye. “Are you sure you want to go through with this, Lily? If you want to back out, it would be understandable, and you could easily write your paper on what you have up to this point.”

I could back out now—when they already had my information? For some reason, I didn’t think rejecting the church would be as simple as discontinuing the assignment. The research would continue. Had he told me this before I practically signed my life away with the paperwork, I probably wouldn’t be so resolute in my stance, but what was another foot deeper when I was possibly already in over my head?

“I won’t back out, Professor.”

He did not attempt to dissuade me further, though he encouraged vigilance with every step forward. We would meet again after the Thanksgiving holiday, and I was to call his cell phone number should the need arise.

*                                                *                                                *

I learned the church’s history while sitting in the classes over the next few weeks.

Sigmund Dietrich, the man who brought the Order over from Europe, had been imprisoned at Dauchau for his radical religious beliefs. After Mr. Dietrich was liberated from the labor camp, the Americans immediately offered him sanctuary once they became aware of his scientific background. In the United States, he began working on biological weapons for his new country.

But his true passion was his religion, and he devoted much of his remaining years focused on spreading his faith. At the time of his death in 1987, Dietrich had overseen the opening of seventy churches up and down the East Coast, and had witnessed its membership increase to five thousand active souls working at his behest. He hoped that his church would persevere long after his last breath had been taken, that he had led them well.

As I thumbed through The Songs of the Earth, the Order’s version of the Bible written by Dietrich himself, I closed my eyes, straining them so Father Xavier wouldn’t catch me drifting off during his monotonous reading of today’s passage.

“A shallow breeze does life begin

Growth a leaf swaying in the wind

Shriveled, against nature we have sinned

Forever dead should greenery end.”

Blech. I attempted to make some sense of the words, but analyzing poetry was not my forte, and a great poet Mr. Dietrich was not.

“Lily, what do you think this passage means?” The priest asked to my chagrin. A look of relief crossed Ericka’s face at the same moment a frown curled onto mine.

“I’m not sure, Father. Can you read it again? It may help me to hear it one more time.” I doubted it, but if it bought me a couple more seconds, I’d try it.

Fortunately, Father Xavier repeated the passage, adding that it wasn’t complicated to determine the meaning behind it.

What would Mad Max say? “Okay, I think it means that we have to respect the earth and that the destruction we cause will bring forth our own demise.”

“Very good, Lily. We are leaves blowing in the wind. Our only destination is to where the wind carries us. Who, or what, is the wind? Where does it lead us? If we aren’t careful with our beliefs and choices, the wind could easily lead us to a path of destruction.

“These are things to ponder each day during your meditations and especially while you read your Songs. You must completely open and free your mind if you truly wish to become the wind, rather than the leaf being controlled by the wind. It’s always up to you.

The vast majority of the classes were conducted in the same fashion. We had a history lesson, followed by a reading of a Song, and then a discussion of the reading in which I left feeling completely inept. I would seize onto a few of the nature words and pretty much regurgitate what had been previously spewed at me. Father Xavier was always patient with Ericka and me as he led us through the Church’s lessons.

Although the classes nearly bored me to death, I thoroughly enjoyed the uptick in time spent with Professor Weaver. He’d been very supportive as I raved about these annoying little passages and how Father Xavier wanted us to invite guests to attend church. Weaver offered whatever advice he could, and I looked forward to each of our meetings. This meeting, however, I was dreading since it would most certainly be our last.

“I apologize for the disarray, Lily. I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of having final papers. Six hundred papers to comb through in the next week, to be replaced by another six hundred exams.” He placed the paper he had been grading onto the stack to his right, and then looked up at me. “How were your classes this week?”

“Father Xavier thinks I’m ready for Rebirth.” I gulped. “It’s set for the last weekend of winter break. I go in on Thursday and will officially be classified as Reborn on Sunday.”

“Are you nervous about it?”

“Nervous isn’t quite the word. I think scared shitless might be the better way to say it,” I answered. “I mean, other than them, you’re the only one that even knows I’m doing this. If I’ve been compromised, this will be the perfect opportunity to eliminate me. And what if they forget me in there?”

“You haven’t told anyone else you’re doing this?”

Who was I going to tell? My family would be adamantly opposed to me joining this church for any reason, and what friends I had here on campus would share that same sentiment. It was risky to virtually drop off the face of the earth for three days, but I couldn’t have my family resenting me for this choice, especially when it didn’t reflect what was in my heart.

“Do you regret doing this as a research project?” he asked after my whining had stopped.

“I don’t know. My curiosity is definitely piqued. I want to know what’s going on behind their closed doors, but a part of me wonders if it’s anything more than a bunch of kooks being kooky. A part of me wants to call it quits, but I have to find out.”

“You do realize that once you take your final, I won’t be able to ask you to continue your research? I hope that you’ll continue by your own volition and that you'll still report to me because I believe you are close to being able to expose whatever is going on there, but that is at your discretion. I hope that Ryan hasn’t become too frustrated with me for dominating so much of your time.” He pulled a paper off the stack to his left and flipped it open.

I snorted as he mentioned Ryan. “Well, Ryan and I are not an item, so he has no right to be upset with anyone for taking up any of my time. He ended up being an ass, but even if we were together, I’d continue the research.”

“Hmm. I thought you were still dating. Why does he still sit by you in class? Has he been harrassing you?”

Ryan hadn’t liked my dramatic exit from our date, but he had apologized as he followed me into sociology class. I wasn’t having it and told him as much. He made sure to sit beside me in each class, and I was cordial to him, but that was all that remained between a couple that never was. But the professor wasn’t aware of what had or had not transpired between the two of us.

“I don’t know why he sits by me, other than to copy my notes and annoy me. He hasn't outright harrassed me though, and he hasn't been attending church.”

“You said you’re returning on the twelfth? Would you be able to meet me when you come back?” I nodded. “Call me when you come back to town. I’d like to see you before you go through Rebirth if that’s not a problem for you.”

Even more time with the professor? That wouldn’t be a problem.