Was, Is, and Ever Shall Be, Chapter 1

Finished with Morning Prayer, Cale shut the breviary and put it back in his pack. He had spent the night at the edge of a small pond and a light fog surrounded him in the early autumn morning. The sun had just risen over the edge of the plain, but it had not yet penetrated the thick copse of rusty trees that concealed the pond. Cale had chosen this spot to remain concealed.

Arising from the half-rotten stump that served as a stool, the young deacon grabbed his empty plastic water bottle and knelt by the edge of the pond. He scanned the area around the pond, from the edge of the water to the line of trees, and then submerged the bottle in the murky water to fill it. Clean water was difficult to find in the Wilderness. Ingesting bad water this far from any sort of medical aid would be fatal, making proper drinking water crucial. After filling the bottle nearly to the neck, Cale returned to his sack and extracted another small plastic bottle of commercial household bleach and a roll of duct tape. Just a drop of the bleach would purify water to proper drinking standards. Who would have thought bleach would have become so essential?

Screwing on the cap, Cale laced his worn boots and wrapped a sizeable length of the duct tape around the boot’s toe and sole, wrapping the two together. The left boot had long ago come apart at this spot and the right boot was not far behind. This finished, Cale donned his dirty-white cowboy hat, picked up his pack, and headed for the edge of the copse.

The copse was only a few trees thick, but it had fulfilled its purpose of hiding the light of his small evening campfire from others. Although this area was largely deserted, some farms were still inhabited, and the residents might not have taken kindly to squatters on their land. Cale, however, was only passing through, and in a few steps, he emerged from the tree line and beyond.

The sun was now well above the perfectly flat, barren landscape about him. Corn had once grown on these rich plains, but the land now lies fallow and untilled. It had been some years since man had nurtured this area. The rains fell and the still sun shone on this beautiful land, now overgrown with high grass and some smaller trees. The earth here had mostly forgotten man’s past husbandry, now a fading memory of its youth that becomes more difficult to recall with each passing year.

Still, the paved highway remained cutting across the untended lands. A scar down the length of the open landscape, this was the most difficult memory for the land to suppress. Great fissures had formed in the asphalt, from which courageous shoots of the high grass had arisen. The bright painted lines were now all by sun bleached and gone. The surface eroded, little by little with the passing rains and occasional flood waters, but a highway, it continued to be. It was empty of any vehicles though. Neither car nor truck had driven on this road for some time, and with the circumstances of the state government, repairs were out of the question.

It was this highway that was Cale’s practical guide. He only possessed a road map and a compass, as this area had not yet been mapped for travel by foot. The map was simple enough to read; simply follow the roads and you will reach your destination. This had always concerned Cale, however. He had grown fond of following natural dirt roads and paths, and the idea of leaving himself exposed on such an open, though deserted, landscape while following a government-made road was unsettling. Therefore, Cale located the road and walked alongside it, close enough to the high grass should the need for a hiding place arise. But no one would see him here.

Cale used the sun to get his bearings and ascertain his direction. Then, adjusting the pack on his shoulder and tipping his hat forward, he headed north, in the direction of the destitute city of Chicago.

Within an arms length of the high grass, the going was fairly easy for Cale.   The earthy sloped up to the level of the pavement of the highway, creating a shallow trough for the traveler to carry on in. He not only had the high grass close enough to use for cover, but anyone traveling on the highway would have difficult spotting him. The only thing visible was his lean torso, his broad, but skinny shoulders and his pack, the rest of him hidden behind the trench wall.

Cale stood taller than most men. However, men were not as tall now as they had been, so he had heard. It appears that the lack of organized nutrition made proper growth a difficult thing, and though he was counted among the tallest of the remaining population, he amply moved through doorways and buildings constructed by mankind in previous times.

His shoulders, though wide in build, were lean and a bit scrawny.  Cale’s body had suffered greatly  from the effects of starvation only two years previous, and he was still on the road to recovery. Thus, his naturally large frame was left covered with only sparse muscle tissue and even less body fat. However, despite his lean appearance, Cale possessed a dangerous, frantic strength that derived from his unbreakable will of iron.

His curly, dark brown hair crowned his face, accented by his forceful green eyes beneath thick eyebrows. His nose lacked both prominence and distinction, but his chin and jaw compensated imposingly with an impressively square characteristic. He was mostly clean shaven, the typical appearance for members of the clergy, and only a short stubble dotted that angular jaw line. This, he scratched at thoughtfully, as he peered over his shoulder to check the road behind him.

He had only one pair of boots which he tried to keep in the best condition possible. Once those wore out, his ability to travel would be greatly diminished, unless he opted to proceed barefoot. Certainly, this was a mortification he would gladly undertake for the salvation of souls.  However, it would slow his progress and, if carried on for too long, could result in some hapless injury, rendering him unable to walk at all.

On his back, he wore a short, black leather jacket, provided to him by the diocese. Scuffed and beaten in outward appearance, it kept the warmth in and the damp out well enough. Beneath it, he had on a brown, moth-eaten sweater that smelled musty, but was enough to supplement the jacket. His jeans were faded and well-worn, ragged at the hemming and devoid of much of their original color. The white hat he wore completed the picture of something akin to a modern day cowboy, full of swagger and adventurously dusty, but beneath this visage trudged a scrawny young man, struggling just to put one foot in front of the other.

Yet each step he took brought him closer to his assignment. The Diocese of Southern Illinois had sent him on a missionary trip to the long starving city of Chicago, in which the Church had no formal presence. Since the earliest affronts against her, the Church had found it increasingly difficult to maintain established dioceses in the cities. The state government, now only an extension of the national government, used legislation and taxes to bend the Church to its will by compromising her beliefs or else destroy her. Unwilling to bend to tyranny and unable to die, the Church was outlawed, resulting in the diocesan authority’s exodus into the countryside to avoid arrest and criminal punishment for defiance of state law. From there, they continued to lead the remaining faithful while still sending missionaries in an attempt to reclaim souls within the cities. The Archdiocese of Chicago was now the Diocese of Southern Illinois, and due to a very sparse Catholic population in Illinois, the wilderness diocese had its hands full with all the land between Missouri and Indiana.

Cale had travelled from Centrum, the headquarters of the wilderness diocese, and there resided the bishop, The Most Reverend Patrick Grayson. The community was the largest in the state and was still growing. To maintain the secrecy of diocesan capital’s location, Bishop Grayson appointed some of the more experienced priests to establish parish communities elsewhere in the nearby wilderness to keep Centrum’s population at a manageable level. The bishop also held a strong desire to return lost souls in the large towns and cities, especially Chicago, and to this end, he assigned able missionaries to the task. Travelling in pairs, they usually consisted of priests or deacons accompanied by a willing layman. Women were not allowed to aid in these assignments, due to the dangerous and morally depraved conditions of souls in the cities and the harm they could inflict.

After a quick drink from his water bottle, Cale checked the road map again. The flat terrain had begun to dip, and before him the highway descended into a thick wood of brown and yellow autumnal color. Somewhere within the wood was the settlement of Occulta. To maintain secrecy, there were no markings on the road map to indicate its location, but a large amount of preparation for the priesthood and deaconate was spent memorizing the locations of the various wilderness parishes. Therefore, Cale knew well enough where to find it, though he had never been there himself.

Replacing the map back into his pack, he hoisted the pack over his shoulder once more and descended into the wood.