The Mayor's three-car motorcade rolled up to the front of Saint Michael's Catholic Church at a quarter to nine. The Mayor himself rode in the middle car, a long black Lincoln sedan with a spotless finish, polished chrome and deeply tinted windows in the back. The smaller but no less official-looking cars which brought up the front and rear of the motorcade served little purpose other than to enlarge the profile of the procession and to insure that the Mayor's arrival was properly noticed and dignified. The Mayor did not normally move about town so ostentatiously. On most outings he preferred to simply drive himself and to use his own car, for he did not wish to appear haughty to his fellow citizens, but this event was different. This morning he would be on display, not just to his local constituents, but to the voters of the entire state. This morning he was not simply the mayor of a mid-sized city on a routine outing among the townspeople; for the next two hours he would be The Serious Candidate, and he had to look the part. For the benefit of the viewing audience at home, he knew, he would have to put on airs this morning, and a three-car entourage was a gesture in that direction.
The Mayor smiled with satisfaction on the approach to the church as he observed the large collection of people who were gathered around the front of the building. Too numerous to remain confined to the sidewalk, a fair portion of the crowd spilled over onto the carefully tended grass of the front lawn, and a long line of others stretched halfway down the block. The Mayor recognized many of the faces. Some were longtime supporters who had worked for him as far back as his first campaign for mayor. Others were more recent loyalists who had signed up to help him only after he had announced his intentions to seek the governor's office. Most of the rest were simply curious onlookers who apparently could not resist the opportunity to experience firsthand the excitement generated by their hometown political hero as he came out to do battle with the big boys from the other side of the state.
The Mayor noticed too the bevy of press people who had embedded themselves among the crowd. A number of television cameras floated around the periphery of the gathered group, and several reporters with microphones in hand roamed about the scene, recording the thoughts and opinions of any who would talk to them.
"Good job, Mort," the Mayor said approvingly to his campaign manager, who sat on the seat next to him. "The turnout looks to be as good as I'd hoped."
"Yes," the man replied. "We cranked it up to full volume for this one. All of the troops were told to be here for this, and every news organization in the state was notified, twice. We wanted the church to feel full."
"Well, it seems to have worked," the Mayor said, slapping his campaign manager firmly on the knee. "We'll get good coverage for this, no doubt. Now all I have to do is give them the message we want conveyed."
"I have faith in you, sir," the manager said.
The Mayor looked at him cheerfully, clearly excited at the prospect of speaking to such a large, supportive audience. He was all smiles. "Don't we all, Mort," he said as he reached for the door handle to let himself out of the car. "Don't we all."
The Mayor pushed open the door and stepped out into the fresh morning air. The crowd immediately took notice of his appearance, and all conversation among them ceased. The Mayor's most ardent supporters pushed forward toward him and extended their hands in greeting. The Mayor smiled broadly and shook their hands in rapid succession, as if he were pressed for time but was nonetheless unwilling to leave any hand untouched. Between handshakes he waved overtly to others in the gathering who were not sufficiently aggressive to get within an arm's length of him. The press people maneuvered as best as they could to cover the scene, positioning their cameras strategically to capture the Mayor's approach to the building and moving their microphones into place to record whatever extemporaneous comments he might utter as he made his way toward the church.
Father Andrew stood at the top of the steps before the church's front entrance, uneasily observing the excitement of the crowd which attended the Mayor's arrival. Alone above the commotion, the priest waited patiently for the Mayor to work his way through the crowd. Despite his misgivings concerning the Mayor's use of the church and its sacraments for his own devices, Andrew had decided after much deliberation that he could not remain absent from their occurrence. They were sacred rituals, after all; sanctioned, regardless of his personal objections, by his superiors. If the sacraments were going to take place in his church, he told himself, he would not allow anyone else to preside over them. He would do what he was obligated to do by virtue of his holy vows, and in so doing he would try to enforce some measure of respect for the morning's events upon the partisan gathering. He would do his best to maintain the solemnity of the proceedings which were to be held that morning, and he hoped that by his presence he would be able to ferry the assembled witnesses through the ceremony with a minimum of offense to the true purposes for which they were intended.
The Mayor emerged at length from the throng of people who swarmed to greet him, and he climbed energetically up the steps to the place where Father Andrew stood. The Mayor offered his hand to the priest, and Andrew shook it politely.
"Good morning, Father," the Mayor said enthusiastically.
"Good morning," the priest replied.
"Everything is in order, I take it?"
"Yes," Andrew said passively. "The church is ready, as am I. There really wasn't much to be done."
"Indeed," the Mayor said. "My people are very efficient. I believe you will see that we've prepared for this service quite thoroughly. I hope you'll be pleased." The Mayor made a sweeping gesture with his left hand toward the church door, as if he were inviting the priest into his own home. "Shall we?" he said.
"As you wish," said Andrew.
With that the two men turned and walked into the church together, and the multitude of people who were now packed tightly onto the grounds below shuffled forward in unison to follow them in.
* * *
The services began precisely at nine o'clock. The seemingly endless line of attendees had filed into the church in orderly fashion and squeezed themselves ever more compactly into the pews. When no more sitting room remained, the unseated took up whatever places they could find along the walls and in the vestibule. The overflowing assembly was restive and unsettled and they chattered with nervous agitation amongst themselves as they waited for the services to begin. Then the first powerful chords sounded from the church's organ, and they brought the crowd to silence. The organist played a slow, somber dirge as the ceremony's participants made their way down the center aisle of the church to the dais at the front. At the head of the procession walked two altar boys, each carrying a lighted candle atop a four-foot candleholder. Immediately behind them came the church deacon and the Mayor side by side, each dressed in a mournfully dark suit, and behind them followed Father Andrew. After this group had taken their places behind the altar, two small white caskets, each no larger than a milk crate, came into view at the rear of the church and were pushed on raised trolleys slowly down the aisle by two young men, also in dark suits. The caskets were positioned carefully before the congregation at the foot of the dais, occupying the space in front of the pews through which the participants had just passed, and the young men who wheeled them there turned and withdrew themselves back up the aisle. The organ continued its heavy refrain for another minute or so, and then the church became silent.
Father Andrew began the services by welcoming the audience and by offering a few words of explanation regarding the unorthodox combination of sacraments that were to be performed that day. He would not go into details concerning the reasons for this atypical occurrence. Suffice it to say, he explained, that the Lord's work was adaptable to what might seem extraordinary circumstances. And they were to be forgiven, he told them, if they felt confused or conflicted in their emotions on this day, for he himself shared these feelings with them. In all his years as a priest, he confessed, he had never presided over an unhappy baptism.
"But a baptism we shall have today," he said, "and it shall not be a cause for celebration. For today, we baptize not the living, but the dead. We baptize not in joy, but in sorrow. And in our sorrow we seek above all else to maintain our sense of hope. We hope that our actions here today shall not be in vain. We hope that our efforts will find favor with the Lord. And we pray that a day shall come when all souls, both the living and the departed, shall find peace with God and with their fellow man."
With these words, Father Andrew walked around the altar and approached the two caskets. The deacon retrieved a small flask of water from a tabernacle on one side of the altar and followed the priest forward. The Mayor and the two altar boys joined them next to the caskets.
The deacon held the flask out before the priest, and Andrew blessed the water silently. The Mayor stepped forward and laid his right hand on the lid of one of the caskets, then he slowly lifted it open. Andrew held the flask aloft a few inches above the casket and said aloud, "I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." As he spoke, he poured a short, delicate stream of water into the body of the casket. The water disappeared below the rim of the box, the object of its intention visible only to those who stood near it. The Mayor then brought the lid carefully down again and removed his hand without a sound.
The men moved to the other casket, and the sequence of actions was repeated exactly as it was done the first time. As the Mayor lowered the lid to the second box, however, the edge of the cover clipped the flask in Andrew's hand before he had drawn it away, and a small amount of water spilled from the container onto the top of the casket. From there it ran easily toward either side of the polished surface and dripped onto the floor, but a few shiny beads refused to run. They remained in place atop the moist tracks that were cut by the rest of the water, glimmering in the church lights like small jewels.
The assembled observers noticed the slight accident, but they remained politely silent as it occurred and did not allow it to greatly disrupt the ceremony. Soon all of the participants save for Father Andrew himself had returned to their seats. Andrew paused for a few moments, then he spoke again.
"Lord, we commit these souls into your eternal grace. May they know the salvation that You offer to all of Your children, through Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ. And may we be reunited with them on that glorious day when You take all of Your family to live with You in heaven, where You reign forever and ever, Amen."
When Father Andrew had concluded his portion of the service and had returned to his seat behind the altar, the church fell into a deep silence. A long interlude ensued in which no one on the dais moved and during which the audience maintained a respectful quietude. The sanctity of the proceedings that they had just witnessed, it seemed, had had a proper effect on them. An anticipation, nevertheless, ran through the hushed air of the chapel, and the audience seemed to soundlessly prepare itself for the part of the ceremony which was to follow.
Presently, and without cue, the Mayor rose from his chair and moved purposefully to the lectern at one side of the altar. Every part of his appearance was tailored to minute perfection. His full head of gray hair was cut with an exacting precision, and each strand was combed carefully into place. His black patent leather shoes were meticulously shined, and they caught the light visibly as he walked. His navy blue necktie, set against the bright background of a crisply bleached white shirt, and that, in turn, framed by the sharp lapels of his freshly pressed dark suit, lent him the august aspect of a man who had something very important to say. Every eye in the audience followed him as he moved, and the array of television cameras lined up on tripods along the rear wall of the church focused tightly in on him as well. The Mayor stepped confidently onto the podium behind the lectern, turned the microphone upward ever so slightly toward his mouth, and with only a brief pause to engage his audience fully with his eyes, he began to speak.
"When I was a young boy," the Mayor said, "I had an uncle—my father's older brother—who was a member of the merchant marine. He was an adventurous man who never married, for he was not one to stay in one place and settle down. He was always traveling to some distant corner of the world, visiting exotic lands and meeting all kinds of different people and seeing all sorts of strange things. I didn't see a lot of him in my youth because of his frequent travels, but once a year or so he would return home to see his parents and his brothers and sisters, and to rest up and prepare himself for his next voyage.
"It was always a special day for me when he came to visit my family. He was like a big brother to me, and I admired him greatly. He would always arrive at our house bearing presents for us which he had acquired on his distant journeys. The presents he brought us were never expensive or elaborate, but each item came with a marvelous story which leant great meaning and significance to it. I remember one year in particular when I was seven years old, and my uncle brought me a most wonderful gift. He took me to his side and he gave me a small cloth sack that was tied closed at the top with a thin leather strap. When I untied the strap and opened the sack, I could see that it contained many small, dark seeds. My uncle explained to me that the seeds came from a tree known as a banyan tree. It grew in many places around the world, but there was one particular banyan tree that grew in a place called Calcutta, which was in a land called India. I had never heard of this tree before, and I asked my uncle to tell me all he knew about it. He told me that the banyan tree which grew in Calcutta was larger than any other tree in the entire world and that the seeds he had given me had come from that tree. This one tree was as big as a forest, he said, with many trunks that came up from the ground and many branches that extended out as far as the eye could see. From a distance the tree was shaped like a wide and sprawling mountain, with a peak at the center and a gently descending canopy that sloped down toward the edges.
"My uncle told me that many people from the local villages would spend their days under this tree. Farmers would bring food in from the fields and sell it to the villagers in the cavernous spaces between its trunks. Musicians would sit in the shade of its leaves and play their instruments and sing songs that had been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Children would attend school in small classes under the branches, and later, after the teacher had dismissed them, they would climb up into those branches and swing from limb to limb on vines just like the monkeys did.
"My uncle told me such wonderful stories about this banyan tree that I wanted with all my heart to see one for myself. I begged him to take me along with him on his next trip, so that I could climb into one of those trees and play among the branches with the other children. But my uncle told me that banyan trees grew very far away and that it would not be possible for me to travel there with him.
"I was very sad to hear this, for I wanted to see one of those trees more than anything else in the world. My hopes brightened immediately, however, when my uncle explained to me that I could grow my own banyan trees right here where I lived. 'You hold a hundred banyan trees right there in the palm of your hand,' he said to me, pointing at the small white sack which I held before me. 'If you spread them properly, one day you'll have more trees than you can climb in a lifetime.'
"My friends, I cannot tell you the sense of wonder and excitement that came over me at that moment. It was as if the world had suddenly become a magical place full of incredible possibilities. Imagine—a young boy growing his own trees! Trees as big as a forest! Trees like mountains! My uncle had truly given me the most miraculous gift I had ever received.
"I could hardly wait to get started. I don't believe I slept a wink that entire night. As soon as the first light of dawn came through my bedroom window the next morning, I was up and out of the house, and was soon pedaling my bicycle feverishly across town. I steered the bike with one hand as I clutched in my other a small hand trough that I had retrieved from our garden shed, along with that little sack of seeds that my uncle had given me. I had thought about my plan all night long. I would go around to every vacant lot and every patch of open land in town and I would plant some seeds on each of them. If a piece of ground was relatively small, I would plant only one or two seeds there, but larger spaces might get six or eight seeds, or even more. I remember there was one huge open field down below the south end of town, far down beyond the bend in the river. I planted twenty seeds in that one field alone.
"There were a lot of open spaces around town in those days, and it took me all day to ride around on my bicycle and plant my seeds. I didn't eat anything or talk to anybody that whole day while I went about my work; I just rode my bike from one field to the next and planted those seeds as methodically as I could. Meticulously I would dig a small hole in the ground with my trough at each spot I had chosen, drop a seed into the center of the hole and carefully cover it over. By the time I had emptied my sack of seeds it was late in the afternoon, and I rode home in the fading sunlight, hungry and tired, but very satisfied with my efforts.
"For many days and nights thereafter I dreamed of the enormous trees that would grow from the seeds I had planted. I saw visions of my schoolmates and me happily climbing the countless trunks. We would build tree houses there and play hide-and-go-seek and all sorts of other games. We would swing fearlessly on ropes from one branch to another and call out tribally across our newly grown domain, like tiny Tarzans in our glory. My trees would be the greatest playgrounds that any kid ever knew!"
The Mayor paused for a moment, his thoughts overtaken by that distant memory from his youth that still sparkled in his mind's eye. A slight smile curled his lips—a smile which reflected the sweet nostalgic sadness of a childhood dream that had never really died.
"But, of course," the Mayor continued, coming back to reality, "these were just the whimsical wishes of an imaginative little boy. Occasionally I would go out on my bike and scout some of the places where I had planted, hoping fervently to see even one small seedling pushing its way up through the soil, but each time I pedaled home with my hopes dragging behind me like a great weight. After a few months, when nothing sprouted in any of the places I looked, my dreams of the great banyan trees faded sadly from my thoughts, and I turned my energies toward other boyish pursuits. Five years passed, then ten, then fifteen. The world changed greatly during that time, and I did as well. I grew from a young boy into a young man, and I forgot all about the banyan trees. Over the years, virtually all of the land on which I had sown my seeds was platted out and built upon. That great green field beyond the river bend was completely developed, now covered with shops and houses and roads. For a long time it seemed that all of my effort had been in vain and all of my hopes had been nothing more than fantasies.
"Then, one day soon after I returned home from college, one of my neighbors mentioned to me that there was a tree growing in a small field near the center of town that he found to be most peculiar. He said that he had been observing the tree for over a year because it was like no other tree he had ever seen. What made this particular tree so unusual, he said, was that it seemed to be growing a second trunk from one of its branches. At first he had assumed that the dangling limb he saw was just a deformed branch that would eventually wither and die. But each time he went back to inspect it he saw that the limb was not dying at all. Instead the limb continued to grow. Soon it reached all the way to the ground, but even then it did not stop. It penetrated into the soil and began to send out new roots. Every time my neighbor went back to check on the tree he saw that this vertical limb had grown thicker and stronger, until eventually it became clear to him what was happening: the tree was actually growing a second trunk! Then he noticed other thin limbs hanging down from other branches, and he believed that they too would eventually take root in the soil and grow into still more trunks. He said it was the strangest tree he had ever seen.
"Well, I don't have to tell you how excited I was to hear this news! Immediately I drove over to the center of town and found the place that my neighbor had described and, sure enough, there was a tree there, about two stories tall at the center, with a new trunk growing into the ground from a branch about twenty feet away from the main trunk. Quickly I looked around and surveyed the land surrounding the tree. 'Yes', I said to myself. 'Yes, I do believe that I planted a seed in this field.' It was coming back clearly to me now. I remembered seeing the hospital over there to the west across Main Street, and the water tower was still there directly to the north, just as it had been when I was a boy. I could not understand how I had failed to check this spot in the months after I had planted my seeds. What a foolish child I had been!—not thinking to keep a list of the places I had planted. But that was all in the past, I consoled myself. Here at last was a tree, a strange, exotic-looking tree, come to me finally across all those years.
"To be absolutely sure that I wasn't jumping to the wrong conclusion, I ran to the library to look for a book that might have a picture of a banyan tree in it. I have to confess that, despite my boyhood enthusiasm for these trees, I had never before made the effort to find a photograph of one. I did not really know what one of them looked like; my impressions of the tree were formed solely from my uncle's description of them. Happily I found a book with pictures of various species of trees, including a banyan tree. I brought the book back to the field immediately and stood there comparing the photograph to the tree which stood before me. Yes, I thought. Yes, indeed. There was no mistake. This tree was not quite as large as the one in the photograph, and it did not have as many trunks, but otherwise the two trees looked exactly the same.
"Oh, my friends, I cannot put into words the happiness that I felt at that moment. I was so elated that I jumped for joy and pumped my fists in the air, more ecstatic than any athlete in his moment of victory. I sat down on the grass with tears in my eyes and admired my tree for the longest time. Like a proud father upon seeing his newborn child for the first time, I could not take my eyes off of that marvelous creation. It was such a beautiful tree, with serpentine limbs that grew out in gracious curves and pillar roots that seemed to flow over the branches and hang toward the ground like waterfalls suspended in time. The broad leaves were so thick and green, and they provided a shade beneath them which was unbroken, with no dapple of sunlight able to penetrate.
"I turned my eyes toward the top of the tree and I could see clusters of small red fruit poking out from between the leaves. I noticed too that the book I had borrowed also contained photographs of the banyan tree's fruit. One picture showed a magnified view of the inside of the fruit, with the seed pattern clearly visible.
"My curiosity got the better of me, and I decided that I had to see the inside of one of these fruits for myself. Tentatively I approached the main trunk of this fabulous tree and placed one hand on its bark. I patted the tree gently, as if it could feel and understand my touch, as one might pat a dog to reassure her that you meant her no harm. I reached up to a low branch and grabbed on to it with both hands, then I lifted my legs off the ground and wrapped them around the limb. I pulled myself up with my arms and hoisted my upper body up and around the branch, then twisted my legs around until I was laying fully stretched along the top of the limb. I stood up from there and continued climbing higher into the tree. And as I grabbed onto each new limb and lifted myself higher and higher into the canopy, a thousand discarded images, faded and dull from years of neglect, came back clearly and vividly to me from my childhood. All my earlier dreams instantly became visible again before my eyes. I was twenty-two years old that day I climbed a banyan tree for the first time in my life, but suddenly I was a boy again. I could see a dozen places in this tree where swings and ropes would fly cleanly between the branches, and one or two sturdy limbs which would support the base of a nicely-sized tree house.
"As I approached the top of the tree, several clusters of fruit came within my reach. I reached out and took hold of one particularly red fruit and plucked it from its stem. I rolled the fruit around carefully in my hand. The skin was smooth and shiny and the body was perfectly round. When I squeezed the fruit gently I found that it was firm but not hard. The flesh yielded ever so slightly to the pressure of my thumb, but no visible indentation remained when I released my grip. I did not dare to take a bite of this fruit, for I was not sure that it was edible. Instead, I stuffed the fruit into my pocket and scampered back down the tree to the ground.
"With an old pocketknife that I carried with me I cut the fruit in half and compared the inside of it to the photograph in the book. Again I saw that the images matched precisely. A great number of tiny seeds were packed densely together at the core of the fruit, just like in the photo, and a thin, pulpy layer of flesh of lighter color surrounded the seeds and buffered them inside the darker skin.
"The seeds looked exactly as I had remembered them from so many years earlier, so small and fragile-looking. My eyes glanced repeatedly from the seeds of that humble little fruit to the great splendor of the tree from which it came, and then back to the seeds again. My God, what awe life inspires in me! What grand and marvelous designs You conceal in the tiniest particles which are passed from one generation to the next! I stood there for the longest time amid the knotted weeds and scattered stones of that forgotten field, amazed at His ability to create upon such infertile soil so large and lovely a thing from so small a beginning.
"And, I am so happy to say, that tree lives on to this very day in the middle of what is now Banyan Park in the middle of our fair city. And what a wonderful centerpiece it is, for the park and for our entire town. Little children climb on that tree and play around it every day, just as I had envisioned myself doing at their age so long ago. On weekends you see adults spreading blankets on the ground beneath its leaves, eating picnic lunches with their families and reading books in the shade. The tree is several times larger today than it was when I first beheld it. It has twelve fully mature trunks now, two for every decade of its life. That tree and I have grown up together, and I know that it will continue to live and grow long after I am gone."
The Mayor stopped speaking for a moment, seemingly choked up by his words. He then took a long, deep breath, and he continued in a voice that was saddened and subdued.
"But one thing perplexes me about that tree to this very day. One particular question has followed me through the years, and I have never come to a satisfying answer. And that question is this: Why just this one tree? Why no others? Of all those hundreds of seeds that I planted when I was a boy, only this one tree ever grew. Why should that be? I ask myself, but I have no answer. I may never know what made this one seed so different from all the others. I suppose most of them died before they could ever take root. Perhaps they lacked sufficient water or sunlight, or perhaps the soil I chose to plant them in was simply not fertile enough. I don't know. But whatever the reasons, I find it sad to think that those other seeds never grew the way I had hoped they would.
"But as sad as that thought is, there is another thought that makes me sadder still, and that is the possibility that perhaps some of those seeds actually did take root in the soil and did begin to grow into mature trees. I will never know for certain if any of those seeds ever sprouted into seedlings, but if some of them did, how sad it is to think that they were ripped indifferently from the ground in their infancy for some trifling reason—some bulldozer clearing the land for one more building, or some steamroller paving the way for one more road. If I had known that such a thing was happening, even as a small boy, I would have done everything in my power to stop it. I would have gone out there with my shovel and held up every bulldozer in sight while I dug up each of those seedlings, no matter their size, and transplanted them onto safer ground. How many marvelous trees could have been saved? That is something we will never know. But I think it would have been nice for us to have had many more such trees in our town, wouldn't you agree?"
The Mayor stepped away from the lectern and walked over once again to the two caskets at the front of the dais, placing a hand atop each small white box.
"And if it pains me so to think that we may have lost a few trees from our town, imagine how much greater is the grief that I feel at the loss of our unborn children. These little lives were the seedlings of ourselves—our hope for the future. It could have been a future filled with love and laughter. A future they deserved to have, but one which was taken away from them. How dare we stand by and do nothing.
"To those who do not agree with me I say this: Go down to the center of town and stand next to that banyan tree. See the children climbing among its branches. Hear their happy laughter as they scamper around between its trunks. Try to find the words to tell them that they might not have been born to see this day; that their lives might have been snuffed out on a whim, just like these two whom we lay to rest today.
"And then turn yourself about and look across the street and see the cold, hard face of that building within which this sin is licensed to occur. Hear the silence of death which echoes within those walls. Feel the sorrow of possibilities never realized, of lives never lived."
The Mayor bowed his head momentarily to collect his final thoughts, then he looked up at his audience again with mournful eyes.
"When a eulogy is given, we all know that it is customary to tell some story from the life of the deceased. It is a way we have of reassuring ourselves that God's purpose has been served, that God's plan for the lives He engenders has been fulfilled. But I cannot do that for you today. I have instead told you a story from my own life because these two little lives to whom we say farewell this day have left us no stories to be told. Their lives have been left null and void. Today, this one day, is their alpha and their omega—their beginning and their end. All of their stories, like so many seedlings ripped from the earth, must remain forever untold.
"But these children did not have to die so soon. God grieves for them today, and we share in that grief. And through our grief God calls us to take action—to do something to end this sin, wherever and whenever we may find it.
"Our choice is before us just as surely as these two tiny coffins lay here before us. We may choose either the living tree of life, or the silent specter of death. No choice has ever been clearer; no purpose has ever been more just. And I swear by all the souls whose lives have been taken prematurely from us, I will do all that I must to ensure that we who see the truth make our voices heard."