HUMILITY

K. P. Fagan

Copyright © 2021 K.P. Fagan

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9851923-0-8

ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9851923-1-5

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For my Mom and Dad.

Et gloriam praecedit humilitas.

– Proverbs 15:33

PROLOGUE

This was in 1978.

He was an old man sitting in a shed. As the sunlight crept in through the gaps in the greyed wood, the stifled air inside was hot and his nostrils stung from the smell of petroleum products and old lumber. Rhythmic creaking coming from a stool made by his own hands was timed to the sharpening stone working on the blades of his reel mower. Besides his own breathing, the scraping and screels were the only sounds he noticed; his ears weren’t what they used to be.

The task was taking longer than he wanted it to and his mind rebelled against the monotony. It wandered back to a time when he watched his own father work on some piece of metal. He couldn’t remember what it was for or even how old he had been back then. All he really remembered was the way the oil glistened on his father’s cracked hands and the sounds. He drifted into a reverie. The path of his memories ran to later days and he followed it. There were good times playing in the summer with his friends, birthday parties as a boy and holidays with his family. The first weeks and months of his marriage and the birth of his firstborn came into view. But then, quite suddenly, the memories took a different turn. They took him down dark roads and into the troubled times in his life: the hardships his family had suffered when he was out of work, the times he had been hurt by his friends and the times when he was the one who did the hurting, his estrangement from his father and mother. The struggles of his own making were the worst.

Too many times.

He was working the metal harder now as he tried to push those memories away from his mind, but they had a hold of him and they wouldn’t let go. His scowl came with the desperate wish that his past could have been different when suddenly an often-repeated admonishment from his wife echoed: pray to God for help, but never sit idle. So instead of focusing on his past, he turned his attention to the real thing in his hands and began to wonder. Perhaps with a bit more money, he could make life a little easier for himself and his family. As the blades of the reel mower were slowly sharpened to his satisfaction, he thought that it might be possible to earn a few extra dollars cutting the lawns of his even more elderly neighbors in the small Maryland town where they lived. And perhaps with only a few dollars more a week, he could scrape together some kind of better life than what they had.

But probably not unless you get one of those new power mowers or a tractor. You need money to make money.

The darkness came upon him again. With only this push-reel that he had, who would hire him? And at his age? They would likely just hire some kid from one of the new neighborhoods across the way, anyhow. It was an old tormentor that returned to visit him once again, as it had many times over the years and he knew it well. He had worked to provide for his family for so long, yet to this day they were still just as poor as they had always been and they surely would always be. Deep down, he accepted that he would die exactly as he lived. After all, wasn’t he still bent over and sharpening the worn blades of an old reel mower? He put the stone on his knee and rubbed his eyes as if to scrape these burrs from his mind.

And at your age.

Out the doorway of the shed, the bright blue sky let a few clouds drift by. At other moments like this one, his wife of thirty-eight years might appear as if summoned by magic to reassure him and herself that they had what they needed after all and plenty more than others: a half-acre with their trailer sitting in the front, their daughter grown and with a healthy family of her own, their grandkids, their love, their faith. Often her words and her touch would soften his bitterness considerably, though not always.

But it wasn’t his wife who came into the shed this time. It was his youngest grandson, also named Kenny. He held a new comic book in his hands and asked to be read to. At six, Kenny could use the pictures and some of the words that he could read to make up his own narratives. Other times, he wanted to be read the real stories and that is what he asked his grandfather to do now. The old man bent back down over his work before answering him, reluctant to leave his task unfinished.

What’s your grandma doing?

She’s lying down again.

The old man put his tool on the workbench and pulled the boy up onto his knee. This comic that the boy wanted read concerned a team of garishly costumed superheroes mostly fighting with outlandish weapons. Despite comprehending every word, the old man didn’t understand the story much better than his grandson did. There was a kidnapped woman and gruesome villains, but it was obvious that the heroes were more interested in gratuitous violence than rescuing the woman. Within a few pages, it was clear the story was not suitable for a boy of Kenny’s age.

I don’t think you should be looking at this, Kenny.

Why not?

Don’t you have any other comic books you can read?

I left them at home.

Well… maybe your grandma will buy you a new one when she goes out later.

Why is this one bad?

It’s just a little old for you.

Uh-huh.

It’s too…

He paused. He wanted to tell the boy the story was too violent, but that wasn’t the only reason.

It’s bunk.

What’s bunk?

Not good.

Oh.

Not real. It’s not real and it’s not good. You just go play.

Okay.

He could see disappointment on the boy’s face as he turned to leave the shed, but the old man felt satisfied that he was doing the right thing… except.

You could tell him.

He looked at his grandson as he lingered by the shed door still turning the pages of his comic book.

It’s what he wants, isn’t it?

The old man pushed the mower aside with his boot. He considered the August heat. It wasn’t even eleven-thirty yet and he was already hungry for his lunch, having worked off his breakfast hours ago.

All right. Let’s go sit at the table. There’s something I want to…

He walked the boy into the home. The boy’s grandpa placed a phonebook on one of the kitchen chairs for him to sit on. He poured out a glass of milk and gave him a handful of pretzels from a turned wooden bowl on the counter. Then the old man sat down at the table and put his hands on his knees. He looked directly in the boy’s eyes, snorted a little, opened his mouth and said something to his grandson just as a heavy truck passed by the property out front.

The boy, who knew his grandfather liked to tell jokes sometimes, looked down at his pretzels and started playing with them. The old man feared the truck may have drowned out his words.

Did you hear what I said?

Mm-hmm.

Well. What do you think?

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

Look at me: those characters you read about are just made up. These funny books are trying to be exciting, but they don’t tell you about real people. Do you understand that?

He shrugged again.

Here. Let me tell you.

The boy sighed a little bit and looked up at his grandfather. He wanted to go outside and play by himself and hoped the story wouldn’t last long.

THE NIGHT VIGILANTE

Dominic the Hammer Hammaluski stepped

into the darkened hallway from apartment 3F of the Kensington apartment building at 1:17 a.m. and closed the door quietly behind him. The smell of cordite wafted out into the hallway with him and the building was quiet, at least for the moment. Not wanting to wait around for it to start, he walked briskly down the hall to the stairs and headed down two, then three steps at a time. At the second floor, he began to hear the sounds of residents moving around and talking on the floor above him. By the last level, his enormous and long legs were jumping the stairs half-a-flight at a time. He paused at the stairwell door before opening it, listening. The residents hadn’t fully raised an alarm just yet. He imagined them peering out their doors fearfully, each one hoping another would be the first to come out into their hallway to investigate. But as it didn’t sound as though anyone was following him down to the ground floor, he composed himself, opened the door and calmly walked out into the foyer. He quickly strode out the front door of the apartment building, but he wasn’t running. He wasn’t nervous or scared. He was just alert. He had had this feeling before many times and always after he completed one of his jobs. He felt excited, powerful and unstoppable. His car was parked a short block away and the street was empty, but the wind had picked up considerably. It felt like a storm could break at any time. At that moment, he realized that he had forgotten to lock the door to 3F behind him. It was possible that by now one or two of the Kensington residents may have gone in. It was a foolish mistake, one that could cost him several minutes, maybe even hours, of getaway time, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He mentally brushed off his self-reproach and kept walking to his car without looking back.

He held his head up proudly, unafraid that someone might see his face and be able to identify him later, although there was no one out at that time of night and no cars were approaching on the street. Regardless, even if someone did look out a window or a doorway to see him, Dom was sure that they would never testify. His previous experiences with the criminal justice system had taught him that much. And so what if they did testify? Dom would do his time like a man. Doing a stretch would be better than hanging his head down low like some street punk trying to get away with something, anyway. Getting away with it wouldn’t mean anything to Dom if he didn’t keep his self-respect. That was the difference between being a gangster and being an ordinary criminal. Criminals snuck around like rats. Gangsters held their heads up like men.

All of this went running through his mind at a thousand miles an hour during his short, fast walk to his car. Lost in his thoughts and with the wind roaring past his ears, he never noticed the man coming up behind him, although to be fair, the sounds of the man’s footfalls were strangely quiet. Just as he reached the driver’s side door of his car, Dom suddenly became aware of the man’s hard breathing. But it was already too late.

Dom spun around, but before his eyes could focus, there was a sharp blow across his face from something hard that knocked him off-balance. Dom stumbled and raised his hands as the attacker struck him again and again, this time across his forearms and the side of the head. He had no time to square himself for the fight to follow. Nor did he have time to reach for the pistol that was still hot in his coat pocket. He didn’t even cry out from the pain, but only grunted when the next blow caught him in the gut. He doubled over and tried to turn away and his attacker hesitated for a moment. Dom took the opportunity to strike back by delivering a severe uppercut that would have leveled most men. But the punch was lost in the folds of the man’s heavy topcoat, so instead Hammaluski grabbed at the shirt inside, as the man continued to rain a series of mostly ineffectual blows down on him with the billy club. Dom managed to get a solid hold on his assailant and tried to lift him off the ground for a throw. But just then, the man stuck his free hand into Dom’s face and tried to gouge his right eye out with his thumb. As Dom grabbed the man’s wrist, his attacker settled back to his feet with a jolt and reared back to break free from Dom’s grasp. Dom held on tightly to the wrist, but clasped his free hand to his face. It left him utterly vulnerable to one massive crack from the club. And the fight was over. Dom stumbled back a step as the attacker smacked him again across the head one more time and then he went down for good. This dark shadow of a man stood over him as Dom lay on the ground next to his own car unconscious and concussed. Then he hit Dom two more times across the face and skull to make sure he was staying down. The entire altercation lasted a little under one minute. Dom never figured out who the man was or how he had come to be in the shadows of that night perfectly positioned to deliver justice for the woman Dom had just murdered. The figure panted in the night as he stood over him for a few seconds more, but never said a word.

This was the Night Vigilante.

The boy was out of his chair and pantomiming the fight right there in the kitchen area of the trailer, pretending he was the Night Vigilante fighting with Dom the Hammer. His grandfather had to calm him back to his seat with the threat that he would stop telling the story if he didn’t settle down. He sat down quickly and folded his hands above the table to indicate that he was ready to hear more.

So was the Hammer dead?

Wait-wait-wait. I haven’t told you the other part yet.

What other part?

About the other guy in Dom’s car.

THE BOY

In 1875, George Pennington emigrated

from Lancashire, England to a farm near Ste. Genevieve, Missouri to raise a family. His youngest son Samuel left the farm at 17 and began working in a general goods store in St. Louis; eventually purchasing it from the owner and expanding it into the city’s first department store shortly before the turn of the century. After he died, his son Henry took over and began opening additional department stores in Missouri and Illinois.

As his business prospered, Henry built a large house just outside St. Louis in University City in 1927. His wife Joan was pregnant at the time and the couple hoped to fill the home with many children, but it was not to be. The healthy son born to them soon thereafter would not see any siblings. Growing up on the family estate, the boy was mostly well-behaved and even somewhat shy. He was most often found playing by himself in the woods behind the home. He had few friends even into his adolescent years.

As the Great Depression began, Henry and Joan took special interest in raising their only child with the true and reliable values of faith, hard work, reverence, and most of all, the importance of a good education. So when he was fourteen, his parents sent him away to attend a school near New Haven, Connecticut. This particular school had a reputation for turning out fine and successful young men bound for elite universities across the country. The Penningtons loved their son very much and expected him to excel at the school. Without the distractions of living at home, they believed it would give their son the best education that their money could buy. Privately, they feared that the young Pennington boy would become corrupted by what they saw as an increasingly immoral world. They hoped that by sending him to such a prestigious institution far away, he would be inoculated against the temptations they saw around them in their native city.

Sadly, he did not adjust well to the change and did not much like the school any more than most of the boys his age. Previously a bright and capable student, his study habits suffered immediately and he found making friends at the school difficult. On his first week there, one of the older students convinced him that all classroom assignments were optional. The older student told the boy that the teachers at the school were there to act as servants and that they were terrified of negative reports about the school to parents who paid the bills. As could be expected, his very first classroom experiences were disastrous and teachers immediately labeled him a troublemaker in private records.

From there, it only got worse. In October, he began accumulating demerits for repeatedly raising his voice in class during the reading hour and back-sassing his teacher while being reprimanded. The following month he was caught fighting with another student. In fairness, the boys’ fight hadn’t progressed any further than shoving, but it was recorded as fighting and the administrator wrote down both boys’ names for the infraction, as she considered it a violent episode. His parents received many letters that year concerning his misbehavior and the tactics the school was taking to correct his disposition. None of them were effective. Because of the school’s prestige, his parents persisted in their belief that he would straighten himself out soon enough and placed their faith in the school to provide the discipline he needed. On his summer break at home, he dutifully told his parents that he was prepared to turn over a new leaf when he returned to the school that fall. But he was lying. In truth, he yearned to stay at his home and return to his previous school, but lacked the courage to say so and feared their disapproval. After a short time back in his second year, his previous troubles resumed. More letters were sent back to St. Louis regarding his behavior.

At Christmas time the boy apologized to his parents, but this time instead of reassuring them with promises of improvement, he found the strength to ask to be allowed to return home. He claimed that he would do better at the local school where some of his few friends still attended. His parents declined and lectured him on the importance of obedience and tenacity. They told him that he would have to prove he was capable of succeeding at the school before they would even consider letting him return to live with them. For their part, they believed that if his behavior improved, his outlook on the institution would also likewise improve. Although it was not their intention, their position had the effect on his mind of associating the school with punishment and resentment grew in his heart towards his parents. Two weeks after returning to school, he and another boy were caught lighting a fire on the school grounds behind the library. They offered no explanation for their behavior and neither boy seemed to understand the severity of the act. Later that year, he was also caught defacing a school sign with a jack-knife. Letters were sent again. By the summer break, he believed that he would never be allowed to return home for good and he resigned himself to having to finish his education there.

He was, it should be said again, a bright boy. He tended to do well on his tests despite being chronically late with his assignments (when he bothered to do them at all). In fact, the only positive mentions his parents got from the school administrators were descriptions of their son as a smart boy who possessed a significant potential. All of his teachers labeled him as highly intelligent, but obstinate and were frustrated with his lack of motivation.

The only instructor who did show sympathy for the boy was a mathematics teacher named Dr. Barks. He had taught at the school for almost three decades and had seen this type of situation before. The teacher and student got along well and he correctly deduced that the boy’s misdeeds were directly attributable to his homesickness; a fact that he included in a short personal letter to the boy’s mother. It pained Joan Pennington especially to read this appraisal, but she stood by the decision to send him back to the school. She and her husband both believed that those yearnings would pass and their son would straighten up, as most boys do. But that did not happen.

In late September of the following year, he attempted to convince a newly hired school secretary to allow him to enter the private records room by posing as a student who had previously been given permission to enter. Unfortunately, a maintenance man who happened to know the other student personally was in the room at the time and immediately recognized the deception. The boy claimed that he only wanted to see what was in the room and that he had no intention of fraud. Nonetheless, the headmaster of the school suspected he was intent on altering his marks. The suspicion could never be proven, however, since he was caught before he could access the room. The boy behaved himself for a while after that close call.

More incidents followed. In the spring of that year, school employees began noticing suspicious activity occurring after lights out. Rooms that were known to be locked in the evenings were being found unlocked in the morning. Items were being moved or went missing. There was a pervasive sense that someone was moving about the facility after hours. The school began to suspect that a student or students were sneaking out of the dormitory and having their run of the place. Of course, the Pennington boy was the one who was caught. A custodian who had been asked to watch the student dormitory saw him sneak out into the main hallway. The custodian observed him for a short while and then sprang out and caught the boy by the arm. No other students were caught with him – he was either alone during all of these activities or the other boys involved were simply too stealthy to be apprehended.

First thing the next morning, he was taken by the custodian to the headmaster’s office. Before the boy was brought in, though, the headmaster demanded a full accounting of the previous night from the employee. However, even the custodian was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation. He said that he observed the boy exit his room and aimlessly wander down the hall without seeming to know where he was going. He felt it was especially strange as the boy was still wearing his bedclothes. At first, the janitor thought that he might have actually been sleepwalking, as the boy also appeared to be muttering to himself. He then stopped at the window at the end of the hall, opened it and began looking over the grounds. The custodian feared the boy was planning to leap to the grounds below; a sizable drop that would have resulted in a serious injury if not necessarily a fatal one. Not knowing anything else to do, he quietly crept up behind him and grabbed him forcefully by the arm. The boy reacted as one would expect; jumping slightly and trying to pull away which proved that he was not sleepwalking and had been awake the whole time. But he would provide no explanation for his activities to the custodian, who returned him to his room, admonished him not to exit again and informed him that he would have to go before the headmaster in the morning. After receiving the custodian’s report, he dismissed the employee from his office and brought the student inside. He asked for no further details or explanation for the night before and simply informed the boy that all of the previous trespasses would be attributed to him. The boy apologized and accepted his punishment without complaint or even disputing the accusation. He also never mentioned any other students who might have also engaged in these nocturnal excursions. It’s entirely possible that he was sneaking out at night by himself. Even after being there for so long, he had not made any real friends at the school. There were no further incidents that year and he went back to St. Louis to pretend to listen to the lectures from his father regarding his behavior.

When he returned to the school from the summer break for his senior year, the boy learned that his lone supporter on the faculty, Dr. Barks, had decided to take early retirement and would not be teaching at the school again. Another student casually mentioned this bit of news to him as he unpacked his belongings in his room. The Pennington boy was stunned. He immediately ran to the school office where he asked the secretary to the headmaster if Dr. Barks had left a note or a letter addressed to him to explain his decision. The secretary, now well acquainted with the boy because of his misconduct, at first looked at him with obvious suspicion and puzzlement. When she finally did speak, the sole word of her response was terse and mocking.

No.

There was no word of explanation specifically addressed to him. The teacher had simply decided it was time to retire.

The boy’s feelings of isolation became unbearable and he withdrew completely into himself. He had no more outbursts, but he spoke even less in class. He stopped attempting to eat his meals at the tables with the other boys and spent most of his free time in his room alone, daydreaming and reading adventure novels, which by then, were the only things that interested him. His only other activity seemed to be wandering the grounds by himself. If his study habits did not deteriorate any further, it was only because by then they were already nonexistent. On the day the boy was to travel to St. Louis for the Christmas holidays, the announcement was made: Dr. Barks had passed away after a brief illness. He never spoke to his parents about the death of his teacher, but they noticed that he was more subdued during that break than he had ever been before. His father confided to his mother that he thought the boy’s nature was changing for the better. His mother was less hopeful.

And then there was the final incident. It occurred after the boy returned to the school from his holiday and a few weeks into the term. One night after lights out, someone broke into the school chapel, cracked into a locked cabinet, drank a large amount of the communion wine and soiled the altar. It appeared that whomever was responsible was not alone, but it was never definitively determined how many boys took