The Black Mass of Brother Springer Read Online Free PDF Page A

did not stop the exercising or the counting. There was something odd about the man I could not fathom for a moment, and then I noticed that his eyebrows were also shaved away, and there was a silver medal (a pair of crossed rifles and a cross-bar labeled Expert Rifleman) pinned to the cassock above his left breast. Shaved eyebrows are unusual, and not every man of God wears a shooting medal, and this combination, I decided, accounted for the strangeness.
           "Good morning," I said. "Are you Abbott Dover?"
           "One—!" he screamed with a rising inflection. "Two, three, four!" And he stopped at the position of a soldier at Attention, breathing heavily. "These burpies are rough, boy! Ever try any?"
           "Not since I got out of the Army," I laughed.
           "I am a soldier of the Lord," he said easily. "Had your breakfast yet?"
           "No, sir," I replied. "Just a Coca-Cola down the road."
           "Come on in then, and we'll whomp up something."
           I followed the Abbott into his cabin, sat down at the table, and slid the overnight bag under my chair. Before I had a chance to look around the room, the Abbott questioned me as he broke eggs into a large frying pan on the electric stove.
           "Are you a pilgrim, boy? Or are you interested in a little real estate? Or are you just a bum looking for a handout?"
           "I'm a little of each, I suppose," I answered warily. "I'm a writer and I read in the Miami paper about your monastery closing, and thought there might be an article in it."
           "There might be at that, but I don't want any publicity. There's been too much already, and a dead dog knows enough to lie down. Do you want some grits with your eggs?"
           "Yes, sir."
           The room was much larger inside than one would suspect from looking at the outside, and the arrangement of the furniture had been planned to give as much space as possible to the center of the cell. An apartment-sized refrigerator sat in one corner; next to it was a four-unit electric stove, and there was a doorway leading to a separate bathroom. A studio couch, covered with rumpled sheets, was alongside one wall, and the table where we ate breakfast was beneath the window. In a sort of an alcove by the bathroom door there was a disordered desk piled high with books and papers, and on a narrow shelf above the desk there were more books, most of them Bibles. The terrazo floor was bare and the furniture, including an easy chair and its flanking end table and lamp, was Sears-modern.
           I sat down to breakfast and ate hungrily. The Abbott set a good early morning table. We ate four fried eggs apiece, a pile of grits, a heaping plateful of hoe cake dripping with melted margarine and orange marmalade, and then we talked over coffee, taking turns on the filling of pottery cups from a huge gray enamel pot on the stove.
           "I'll tell you about the Church of God's Flock monastery, Brother Springer, and then you'll know for yourself why it isn't worth an article in a newspaper or magazine." Abbott Dover took a large bit out of a plug of Brown Mule, chewed contemplatively for a moment, and then spat into a pot containing a giant philodendron.
           "You'll let me be the judge, then?"
           "No. I won't okay anything you write, and if you do write anything I'll issue a denial."
           "That doesn't sound fair—"
           "Of course it isn't fair! Who said it was? Now," he pointed to a framed eight-by-ten-inch photograph of a Negro thumb-tacked to the wall, "take a good look at that nigger's face."
           I got up from my chair and examined the photograph. The Negro in the photograph was very old, and his eyes seemed to return my inquisitive stare. The photo had been taken full face, and beneath a square chin the Negro wore an old-fashioned Herbert Hoover collar and a black string tie. His hair was a thick, white