Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

“Oh my…will you look at that!” Trinity ran toward the ruins of a single-story commercial building. The cinderblock structure was still in one piece, but the glass double-doors and all the windows were gone, and the sign was smashed. “You see?” he said. “This proves it.”

Daniel looked to where he was pointing, to the smashed sign above the entrance.

T__ TRIN__Y WORD OF GOD MIN_______ NUTRIT_____ CENTER

The sign jolted his memory, and he recognized the place from a photograph he’d seen on Trinity’s website. It was his uncle’s old soup kitchen.

Nothing tonight happened by accident…

Trinity sat on the curb. “Now I can see it clearly.”

Daniel sat beside him. “Tell me.”

“OK…all my life I was a grifter, religion just a con, I didn’t even believe in God. But I did build schools and clean-water wells in Africa and a medical clinic in Haiti, and I did fund the largest soup kitchen in Louisiana. Sure, I did it just to keep the IRS off my back, but that’s not the point, just like my lack of belief wasn’t the point. The point is I was doing good works, whatever the reason. But after Katrina, I abandoned the very people who made me rich. When this city desperately needed some good works, I ran off to Atlanta and revved up the money machine again. And then the voices started. And the tongues.” Trinity looked back to the sign. “Remember that last sermon, before the bomb went off? I thought God left me up on stage looking like an idiot with nothing to say, but I was wrong. He said everything. It was the only time he’s ever spoken through me clearly, no backwards tongues, just straight out. And he said: Faith without works is dead .”

“But you’re saying more than that. You’re saying faith is irrelevant.”

“Of course faith is irrelevant. God brought together a Catholic priest, a Voodoo mambo, and a total unbeliever. I don’t think He cares what the hell we believe—or even if we believe—as long as we live the word. Think of it this way: In my dream, Mama Anne said, ‘There’s only one God—everything else is metaphor.’ Now, strip away all the metaphors, and what is the one single commandment common to every decent religion ever known?”

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

“Exactly. Every religion in human history has had a variation of it, but why do so few people live by it? Because of all the other crap, because of the metaphors. Jew or Muslim or Christian or Hindu or Voodoo, everybody’s trying to connect to the same fundamental truth, but they’re confusing themselves, taking the metaphors literally. They’ve all got their checklists— I don’t work on the Sabbath, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I don’t eat pork, I don’t drink, I don’t commit murder, whatever —but in the meantime, they treat each other like shit. Taking the metaphors literally gives them a free pass to duck out of the real heavy lifting. Hell, look around.” Trinity gestured to the street. “And I don’t just mean this, I mean look at the state of the whole world. People do the easy stuff, they run around bragging about their faith in God and their love of their fellow man…but easy to say ain’t easy to do. And love is a verb. It carries obligation.”

Love is a verb. The weight of it hit Daniel with an almost physical force. It was the very foundation of Jesus’s message to the world . I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another . It was also the Catholic prayer for the holy day of Corpus Christi…now just two days away.

Daniel stood and faced the old soup kitchen. “I’ve spent the last fourteen years searching for a miracle,” he said, “searching for evidence that God is present in the world. But you know, I think what I was really looking for was that feeling I had as a kid…when you were God’s messenger and I was His messenger’s companion. The feeling that I was living in a state of grace.”

“That feeling came from your belief that we were helping people,” said his uncle. “I think you’ve spent the last fourteen years looking in the wrong places, son. It isn’t about miracles or proof or having God on speed dial. You want to be close to God? Reach down and help your neighbor. Faith without works is dead…and maybe in the end, works is all that matters.” Trinity stood and put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It is God’s only commandment.”

Daniel danced around the heavy bag, snapping off left jabs and pounding home right hooks, left uppercuts, the bag rattling its chains, sweat pouring down his brow.

The Saint Sebastian’s Boys Athletic Club hadn’t changed a bit. When Daniel rang the doorbell just after sunrise, Father Henri had welcomed him with a hug and a pat on the head. The old priest set up a couple of cots for Daniel and Trinity in the back rooms and then handed Daniel a key to the front door. No questions asked.

Daniel reversed his footwork and pounded the bag with another newly remembered combination, amazed by how being in the old gym melted the years away, brought it all back.

Trinity had his brisk walks, Daniel had this.

It wasn’t just the boxing exercises flooding back. He remembered himself as eighteen-year-old Danny Byrne, remembered how it felt to be that kid. Soon-to-be New Orleans Golden Gloves Welterweight Champion. Living with the fathers and more than a little relieved that these particular priests in this particular parish didn’t seem to have a thing for teenage boys. Good student, and street-smart as hell, courtesy of a childhood spent with the Reverend Tim Trinity, grifter-at-large. Enough swagger to carry on a relationship with a beautiful and smart college grad and drink with her friends in bars that catered to grownups.

But scheduled to enter the seminary after his next birthday. Scheduled to become a priest. On a mission to find a miracle.

He had told himself that it was a great way to get a free university education. He had told himself he’d find a miracle before his twenty-sixth birthday and still be a young man with his whole life ahead of him, an advanced degree on his resume, and the stain of the con man washed clean.

He had told himself a lot of things. He had even told himself that, if it was meant to be , he might still end up with Julia.

He was a smart kid. He could rationalize anything.

But he couldn’t face the truth. Truth was, Daniel was an angry young man, and more than just angry. Trinity’s betrayal of his boyhood trust had provided a perfect channel for it, but truth was, the anger had always been with him, a deep rage that rushed like ocean currents far below the surface calm. Rage for a mother who died in childbirth and, worse, a father who chose to kill himself rather than stay and raise his newborn son.

And rage for himself. Because, underneath it all, in the silent stillness of his innermost self, this thought was always waiting for him: I killed my parents.

At the seminary, Daniel had worked on it with church therapists, and in time he came to accept his personal history with not much more emotional baggage than most people carry through life. And he had learned to be honest with himself, most of the time, which he figured was about as much as anyone can ask for.

He shuffled his feet, switched to southpaw, right jabs and left hooks.