HARDLY HEATHENS

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Hardly Heathens

         Their teacher was late. Ricky Doucette leaned back in his chair; his gaze fixed upon shimmering dust particles adrift within a shaft of sunlight angling into the room— like billions of stars of a micro-cosmos, he mused. Ricky slipped deeper into supernal thought when another notion pervaded his mind.

         Why is Mr. Alvarez teaching this religion class, he wondered; a layman who doubles as the school’s Spanish teacher when the parochial faculty is filled with so many Marist Brothers?

         Ricky was a sophomore at Sainte-Beuve Academe, part of an old and stately Cathedral complex in Quebec City renowned as a prestigious boarding school for high school boys. Though grateful for the opportunity, he knew his scholarship wasn’t offered as a charitable gesture for the poor. Nor was the agenda intended to introduce ‘his kind’ to pious enlightenment, but rather his parents were cajoled into accepting the amenity after it became public knowledge the Montreal Canadiens had secured his future contract when only thirteen at the time. No doubt the faculty relished the publicity, let alone of having landed this budding superstar for its varsity team.

         Sure wish I could be living at home instead of here, he sighed. Thoughts digressed to his parents whom he adored and respected despite their humble lot in life. His father was a sawmill laborer with only a grade-school education, but what he may have lacked in academics, he was long on common sense and moral fiber. His father was especially proud of his roots tracing to one of the original French settlers, and like many of them, he chose to ignore the social stigmas that came with taking an ‘injun squaw’, an ignorant heathen for a wife. Few knew or even cared that she was a Royenah, the most revered matriarch within the Souriquois tribe of northern New Brunswick.

         Ricky's pensive mood shifted toward the more insolent times of when he and his family had been the target of public derision, often ridiculed as ‘low-lifes’ or ‘rural riffraff’ living like squatters in a four-room shanty in far-eastern Quebec. Ricky also recalled several incidents of when his temperamental resolve had been tested during his freshman year at the Academe

         Whether out of jealousy or juvenile mean-spiritedness, a clique of preppy schoolmates had resorted to snubbing him as ‘the half-breed from Chaleur Bay.’ Yet despite such personal affronts, and though a rugged lad and aptly capable of handling himself, he chose to ignore them as pride of his Acadian heritage prevailed, amplified by his family’s strong bonding and unwavering self-esteem that was beyond the reach of callous tongues.

         Ricky found comfort recalling poignant moments of home, especially during blustery winter nights when he and his father relished listening to his mother’s tribal stories handed down through several generations. He cherished the closeness as they sat by the warming hearth in silence, captivated by her dignified features aglow in the firelight as she recounted tales of when the first settlers came ashore.

         “White men came as strangers,” she said, “yet my people welcomed them in peace under the Tree of the Great Long Leaves.” She referred to the sovereign symbol of the Iroquois League of Nations, a vast and powerful confederacy bound by its Book of the Great Law that had flourished for centuries before European settlers first set foot in North America.

         “If not for my peoples’ compassion who willingly shared their food and shelter, the invaders would surely have perished during the first winter.” She’d then recall how the Jesuits soon followed, “hell-bent on converting the ‘New World pagans’ to their way of life, as they called us.”

         “Humph, they did more harm than good,” she emphasized. “Soon, the white man corrupted tribal customs and ignited much fighting. My people were used and despised, even murdered for no more reason than being labeled ‘a primitive heathen.’ Ha, and they called us primitive.” Her posture would stiffen with dignity when citing: “our Book of the Great Law may be no more, but our ‘primitive’ wisdom has never faltered. It shall always survive, kept silent by the nemgayo dyan ju— those of the higher will who keep its secrets.”

         Ricky’s genteel grin remained, trusting primal instincts that opened his heart to her words. Though born Catholic by paternal default, he and his father also embraced many of her Native ideologies as insightful, undeniable truths. They were convinced much of her traditional lore mirrored fundamental constants fostered by ancient creeds as well as the more modern world theosophy’s.

         Though his family had always maintained a firm belief in the precept of “live and let live” as well as to respect one's personal freedoms to choose and rely on the verity of indigenous customs, the printed word, and rituals as of their respective faiths, but Ricky also firmly believed in his mother’s contention that to achieve piety, one need not convene at a communal place— a building or a shrine where many go to worship, although he’s seen how many followers seem to attend if for only a public display of righteousness, or to curry approval from like-minded neighbors or local ministries.

         ‘Mahog ga kootchik na ho tah,’ he reflected upon her teachings, that by virtue of birth man is already a divine being; a sacred state of existence that segregates him from other life-forms… infused with a soul, an intuitive intellect with an ability to reason and the will to know right from wrong. She also professed that all man needs do to preserve his divine harmony with the “Great Creator” is to ‘be it.’ Pure and simple.

         Ricky’s deepened mindset was abruptly displaced when Mr. Alvarez rushed into the room.

         “Sorry I’m late, boys. I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said, dropping his briefcase atop his desk. “Open your textbooks to Chapter Twelve, the lesson on Parables,” needing a minute to straighten a stack of test papers hastily collected from a previous Spanish class.

         “Okay fellas, before we begin today’s lesson, let me tell you about a funny thing that happened to me over the weekend. A couple of Jehovah Witness dudes rang my doorbell and tried preaching how they were the only ones to be saved. What a bunch of brainwashed nit-wits, heh, heh,” he embellished with false laughter.

         “You’d think by now they’d get a clue, wouldn't ya? Well, I set those misguided fools straight. You should have seen the look on their faces when I booted their butts down my driveway, heh, heh. How can they be so deaf, dumb, and blind? Everyone knows that it’s only Catholics who’ll be saved.”

         All but one applauded with nods and scattered laughter. Although Ricky respected Mr. Alvarez as a worthy Spanish teacher with a good and well-intentioned personality, his face remained expressionless watching Mr. Alvarez strut his stuff in this class, dismissing him to be nothing more than a Papal parrot plying his own discipline’s tune on student lemmings.

         How is he any different than the ‘misguided fools’ he sent scurrying down his driveway?

         And saved? Saved from what, Ricky challenged. On what basis does Alvarez presume privileged exclusion over the planet’s diverse billions? Each likely a devotee of some form of “ism” nurtured in Gnostic ground they consider just as sacred as his, many of which had been cultivated for millenniums before the word Catholic was even invented.

         His mother’s ancestral principles seemed all the more absolute when recalling yet another profound, but simplistic maxim she had taught him. “Ki choonah quahog nah hotay,” he mumbled to himself— there can be no religion higher than truth.

         I guess that must make me a dumb misguided heathen as well then, right Mr. Alvarez? Hardly, he scoffed. Ricky remained respectfully attentive but quietly closed his book for the duration of class— and then his mind to Mr. Alvarez forever..



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