It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 40: Chapter XIV

Coarse and Offensive Language. Reader Discretion Advised.

The thing that establishes the dominance of the human species is not opposable thumbs, and has never been the ability to discern right from wrong. The thing that establishes dominance is a question. 

One word:

Why?

The greatest gift God ever bestowed upon His children was the ability to question. The greatest evil the Devil ever inflicted was the notion of certainty. The notion that the question doesn't matter.

At ten years old, Bud Carr couldn't quite comprehend why things happened, let alone for what reasons, but he knew the importance of names. Names elicit passion and response. A name of merit, or celebrity, or even infamy can unite an enemy in fond recollection, or split friends apart. 

It is all in what the names means to the individual you.

As entrenched in their ignorance as St. Gregorites were, there were names that Bud and his friends knew very well. The most significant names of their generation.

Kennedy, (the parents, the brothers, the spouses, and one or two of the sisters), and Johnson.

Malcolm X and King.

King!

'Don't let anybody tell you different,' the old man warned the Author. 'He was as close to a true prophet as this country will ever have. Today, he's been turned into a fucking saint, which is as unfair as it is harmful. The world has too many saints, too many sanctified and white-washed 'heroes of God'. No! He was a prophet, who's message and zealot like words were derided in life, and have been butchered into platitudes and banal slogans in death.'

The last remaining Carrs and Malones sat in Apt. 33 that night, and watched with horror as the country burned. Every city from Boston to Los Angeles was on fire. Images flashed thick and fast across the television set. Images of neighborhoods with smashed windows and infernos raging through rooftops. Images of men and women and children in the streets, lost and filled with centuries of resentment, with no outlet left to turn to, save that of violence. Black faces in burning, black neighborhoods, confirming what every righteously, disgusted white family had been promised was true.

These are savages! Not humans, not equals, and no pretense will ever make it so. These are beasts, and beasts who ape and aspire to humanity will always be beasts.

St. Gregory's—White America—wouldn't turn their cheek now. Their eyes were fully open, and they saw what they wanted.

'Ah,' said the white newscaster, 'this is just terrible to watch. I'm sure this is not what Dr. King would have wanted...' He let out a long exhale, and Bud expected his erudite facade to break then and there, expected the newscaster to mutter, 'animals!'

'But why?' Niamh was asking of her father, 'I mean, I get bein' angry and all, but this is their home! Why'd ya burn yer home—It's stupid!' It was a sentiment that spread all too easily through White America.

How could They burn their home?

Stupid!

Your case can't be so worthwhile, Your hurt so pungent as to lose all sense of common sense!

Animals!

These are the people We are supposed to be replaced with? We, the shrinking, white, inner-city, may be violent and vile by circumstance, but We have a respect for what We've built.

'You don't shit where you eat!' proclaimed Mrs. Fitzgerald at O'Toole's that Saturday, strangely enough, not in her usual position under the bar. The replay of the James Brown concert on the TV had riled something in her. She was more alive that night than anyone could remember having seen her in years, but her words were treated with a rousing cheer.