~ by Linda Lyons
“All things have I seen in the days of my vanity; there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in wickedness” – Ecclesiastics 7:15
It was a hot June afternoon in 1956. Loud horns honked in the traffic amid the Bronx smog. The streets were busy and packed and it seemed as though the midday heat simmered off the sidewalks. The residential red-brick buildings shone brightly in the sunlight.
Nineteen-year-old John Folan leaned against a brick wall. He had a reddish-brown crew cut, freckles, and was dressed in blue jeans and a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, displaying taut biceps. His muscular arms were crossed and he had a perpetual scowl on his face, and an intimidating stare. As he stood there, he felt the vibrant energy of the huge city, the populous masses moving like ants, and a slight tension running beneath its surface – barely trembling beneath the sidewalks. Soon, a gang of boys walked up to him and then stood around him, smoking cigarettes.
“Are we on for tonight?” John asked, in a heavy Bronx accent.
“Yeah… they’ll be there,” Sammy Petropoulos, an olive-skinned kid of about 19, who wore a slick black pompadour and sideburns, replied.
John squinted across the street. There was the rival gang sitting outside the cafe, staring back at them. Doo wop music came from the jukebox inside the cafe. The two groups were involved in a bitter turf war, simple as that. A moment later, John saw his younger brother, 18-year-old Liam, heading in his direction. John turned and put his arm around him.
“You’re gonna prove yourself tonight, kid. You ready?”
“Yup,” Liam said as he sipped a bottle of Coca-Cola. He wasn’t as tall as John, but he had the same reddish-brown hair and freckles as his older brother. A cowlick at the back of his head gave him a more innocent look.
“Good. You’ll do well,” John said as he playfully put his brother in a headlock, rubbing his hair with a fist.
They all walked away as the rival gang continued to stare at them across the busy street.
***
A screaming black mass came out of the fog as the Folan gang stood nervously on the docks. Savage shouts and yells sounded in the night. Some of the oncoming mass had chains, lead pipes, and planks of wood – swinging them at John and his gang. Each gang consisted of about an even eight young men. Soon the two sides engaged in a savage melee. Fists and weapons flew, while the fog swirled ominously around them.
Eventually the other gang began to back up and give way. John and the others raised their bleeding fists in triumph and yelled in victory as the other gang broke and ran. The boys began hugging and patting each other on the back.
After celebrating, the Folan gang dispersed into the dark night. The brothers walked away, Liam nursing his bleeding eye. John was leading him to St. Francis Hospital to get the wound treated.
“I don’t understand why you never get hurt. I thought I saw a guy stick you,” Liam said.
“I told ya, kid. You need one of these,” John said as he rapped on the aluminum protective vest hidden underneath his shirt, although he wasn’t completely unscathed – his left eye was beginning to swell from a punch he had taken. “That cut on your eye is bad. You gotta get over there.”
But Liam stopped and shook his head as he held his eye, refusing to go.
“I’ll only be a minute…,” Liam said, turning towards a church that stood solemnly in the night.
“You gotta get that looked at right away It’s a bad cut!” John shouted across the street, but he was only greeted by the ghostly silence of the night as Liam began to run up the cathedral steps. John only stood there; he wasn’t going in any damn church.
“Hurry up!” he yelled after his little brother.
As John paced in the shadows smoking a cigarette, his left eye smarting, he saw Liam step into the light of the church… and it occurred to him then that they stood at a sort of symbolic crossroads.
***
In the darkened hospital room, John sat at Liam’s bedside where his brother lay with a bandage on his head, covering his left eye; he was also struggling with a fever.
“Didn’t you feel a certain peace when we were altar boys?” Liam asked suddenly, strangely out of the blue.
“Yeah, I guess. Why?”
“I spoke to Father Mahoney.”
“He came here?”
Liam nodded.
“What did he say?”
“He thinks this was a warning – a wake-up call from God. I might not recover sight in this eye, John.”
“Well, how come I didn’t feel this ‘warning’ then?”
“I don’t know.” A train rattled in the distance and, after a long silence, Liam finally said: “I’m thinking of becoming a priest.”
John only looked at him in surprise, leaning over in his chair, elbows on his legs. “Ya know you can’t have no sex with broads… ya know that, right?”
“Yeah… I know. I guess being closer to God is more important to me.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Liam? Did Aunt Sally get a hold of you?” John asked, as she was the very religious one in the family.
“No, no… I want to do this on my own. I prayed to God, and he said he’d restore my sight if I follow Him.”
John shook his head. “I think one of those boards knocked your noggin loose during the brawl.”
Liam only looked down at the starched bed sheets.
“Alright, kid. I’ll be back later… think about this…” John said as he got up and ruffled his brother’s hair.
John lit a cigarette as he walked outside the hospital, shaking his head in disbelief and wonder. He thought the kid would come around in time.
Soon the city night swallowed him with shadows.
***
It was a hot summer night some fourteen years later. Brothers John and Liam Folan were sitting outside on the steps of a Bronx apartment building. Some of John’s friends were playing cards on top of an overturned wooden crate. Some wore straw skimmer hats, and had unsmoked cigarettes behind their ears. They began to sing ‘Dawn’ by the Four Seasons in a nice, perfect harmony as a mysterious full moon began to climb the sky.
“It’s nice to see you again, Liam. It’s been awhile,” John said to his younger brother.
“Yeah, I loved Rome,” Liam said. He was now Father Folan, dressed in a clerical black suit with Roman collar. He was slender and pale, his hair close-cropped, and he wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He sat on the steps calmly, hands clasped in his lap. Yes… Liam Folan had indeed become a Catholic priest, enrolling at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, and he’d never looked back, fervently pursuing the vocation which he believed he had been called to. He’d learned to speak Latin and Italian as well, and had recently traveled to the Vatican.
“Hey, baby brother…you can pray for me,” John joked in his Bronx accent, and the rest of the gang laughed. Father Folan only smiled serenely.
They conversed and laughed more into the sweltering night, and soon a blue Plymouth Roadrunner came by, tyres screeching as an orange shotgun blast roared out of it. John hit the pavement; he knew the drill by now. He pulled his own pistol and ran down the street, firing at the car as the sinister, red tail-lights disappeared into the night. He leaned on the wrought iron fence and garbage cans, catching his breath, then turned and saw his younger brother lying in a pool of blood. The others were gathering around Liam as John ran back.
Lucille, the mother of the two Folan brothers, looked outside of the third storey window, and began screaming when she saw below her beloved Liam lying in a pool of blood.
John looked up at the wicked moon and gave a loud vengeful yell in the night, his pale face now a fiery-red, purple veins bulging from his freckled complexion… slowly going insane.
***
Over the years, it never made much sense to John. Apparently, the drive-by shooters were from a rival gang, looking for John – who by then had developed a fearsome reputation on the Bronx streets. Instead, they got his baby brother. To John it was fate – dark twisted fate – it had no mercy, no qualms about who it came for. It only came when the Grim Reaper called; this was John Folan’s grim view of life on the gritty streets.
John had recently been released from prison; he’d done a five year stretch after knifing a man whom he thought might have been involved in the murder of his brother. One night, he walked by a tall, soaring cathedral; he remembered that it was the same church that Liam had walked into that night after the brawl all those years ago. Something called him in – a strange, pulling sensation. He climbed the steps and walked inside.
Standing in the knave, he looked around, gazing with awe at the vast size and height of the arches. The church had a holy air and smell about it; inside, the grit of the street seemed to be slowly washed away from him – John began to feel what Liam had found so appealing about it. A peace came over him.
He heard an echoing noise and looked down, seeing Father Mahoney in the distance, holding what appeared to be a wick trimmer. John approached him and they began talking about Liam.
Father Mahoney was in his sixties now, bald, with thick glasses and a paunch.
“Ya know, Father, it was fate that got him… I’ve seen fate stalk these streets for years….”
The priest shook his head. “No, not Fate.”
John stood with his arms crossed; he looked up at the priest, surprised at what the man had said.
“Father, that bullet was meant for me….”
“I think it was meant for your brother, actually.”
“What?! But Father, I’m the one who deserved it… Liam was a damned saint.”
“God doesn’t leave things to Fate, John.”
“Then why Liam?”
There was a pause as Father Mahoney looked off into the vast space of the dark church, as though pondering the mysteries of God’s will in the Universe.
“Christians must suffer when doing God’s work,” he said in a whispered tone, barely audible. “Christians have to suffer… the weight, the burden of sin.”
Then Father Mahoney looked down, his mystical state of thought seemingly broken. He patted John on the shoulder, thanking him, and then left him to ponder those cryptic words.
Over the years the guilt had eaten away at John Folan. He thought that perhaps Liam had come to talk him out of the gang life during his last visit on that fateful night. This theory was somewhat confirmed later by John’s mother, who said Liam had mentioned as much to her.
Over time John slowly changed his ways, becoming a father and getting a position as a foreman on construction sites, eventually owning his own carpentry business. He started going to Mass, and began wearing a huge Celtic Cross around his neck – the circle around the cross was to never let him forget his violent past amid the Irish gang wars. To never let him forget where he came from, the blood he had spilled, and the crucifix itself was to symbolize his new life – his slow transformation into the Light – to signify his growing devotion to Christ… who he now tried to walk with in the shining, luminous glory and righteousness.