Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church was a handsome, well-cared-for red brick Romanesque building east of Pittsfield’s downtown on Fenn Street near the post office. It had a religious education center attached on one side and a modest Eisenhower-era rectory across the street. The Astroturf on the church’s front steps lacked Giotto-like grace but probably kept a lot of the older parishioners from breaking their necks.
The weather on Monday was cool and bright. When Timmy and I arrived at nine thirty, freshly waxed funeral cars were already dropping off mourners and then queuing down the street for the post-funeral-mass procession to the cemetery in Pittsfield’s North End.
We parked on Third Street, which runs north off Fenn across from the church, in front of a row of dilapidated frame houses. David Murano had taken the day off from school and met us at the corner. He explained that this old Italian neighborhood had become more Hispanic in recent years, but that a lot of the old Italo-American families that had made money and moved to nicer neighborhoods still supported Mount Carmel.
For our purposes, the arrival of Reverend Felson and his gang was well-timed. The hearse carrying Jim Sturdivant’s remains, to be followed by family members in limos, had not yet arrived at the church when the Felsons marched down Fenn past the post office, holding up their signs. There were eighteen or twenty in the flock, the reverend at the head of the ragtag column. A couple of the protesters couldn’t have been older than twelve. The signs they waved were the famous ones we had seen in the news: God Hates Fags. Homos Burn in Hell. Satan Loves Sodomy. Most of the banners looked well worn, but two special signs had been created for this occasion: Benjamin Krider Will Die of AIDS, and Jim Sturdivant Is Going to Homo Hell.
The single Pittsfield uniformed police officer stationed in front of the church spotted the Felson gang, and as they approached him, he instructed them to move across the street to the rectory for their protest. This was not far from where Timmy, David and I stood. As shocked mourners entering the church either fell back and gawked in horror or, in a few cases, began groping for their cell phones, the reverend and his crew crossed Fenn and formed a circle in front of the rectory. They stood a few feet from us, beady-eyed and scowling, some of them muttering to others in their group, a few with their eyes squinched shut and apparently praying.
I walked over to a likely-looking couple in their late forties. The man had Barry Fields’ radiant blue eyes, and the woman had his ample red lips. It was she who carried the sign that read Benjamin Krider Will Die of AIDS.
I said to them, “Your son is well. Or will be well as soon as you get out of town and let him live his good life.”
The two stared at me as if Lucifer himself had ambled up to them on the sidewalk.
I said, “You’d be smart to leave here now. Really. Some bad people – people even worse than you are in their old fashioned ways – are going to be plenty mad that you’re here.”
The woman yelled in my face, “The Lord your God is preparing to smite you!”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
“Are you a pervert?” the blue-eyed man demanded to know.
“Yeah, I am. Of course, now we say gay. Though younger people seem to prefer the more all-encompassing queer as a label. That term is looser than gay or lesbian, and also it has a defiant edge to it, owing to its origins as a brutal insult. Hey, who knows? Maybe pervert will be the next politically correct way we homos describe ourselves. And you’ll go around screaming ‘pervert! pervert!’ and people will just respond, ‘Hey, bro, gimme five!’”
The woman with hate in her eyes yelled, “This is a nation of perverts! Judgment is upon you! Massachusetts is in Satan’s maw!”
Timmy and Murano had walked over and stood listening to this exchange, and Reverend Felson was headed our way too. I wondered if Timmy might attempt to engage the Felson-Kriders in Socratic dialogue, an admirable habit of his in situations where conflicting opinions seem to have hardened hopelessly.
Instead, Timmy looked at the couple, and at Reverend Felson as he approached, and he said, “You morons would be smart to run for your lives. I’m not kidding either. You just don’t know what this pervert here – that’s Donald Strachey, the love of my life – you have no idea what this particular pervert has arranged for you.”
The crowd in front of the church was growing now, with dozens of men in their funeral suits and ladies in their dark finery, and they glanced around nervously, apparently anticipating some type of intervention by the authorities. Some mourners were gesticulating to the cop, who seemed to be urging calm. Down the street, the workers at an auto-parts store had come outside to watch, and cars kept slowing down on busy Fenn Street so drivers could catch a glimpse of an unusual drama in the making.
Reverend Felson himself now addressed Timmy. He screeched, “The Lord is on the rampage! The fags are on the run!”
Timmy said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, pastor. Well, if this is the way you want it, what can I tell you?”
Just then the hearse pulled up in front of the church, followed by two limousines with flags, as if they carried the French ambassador and his chief of protocol. But the first man out of the head limo was no diplomat, for Murano said, “That’s Michael.”
Michael Sturdivant, both burly and sleek, quickly surveyed the scene, including the sign that read Jim Sturdivant is Going to Homo Hell, and yanked his cell phone out of the breast pocket of his well-cut black suit. He turned back toward the limo he had just exited, but by then a small lady in a lacy black dress and a hat with a veil had climbed out the other side of the car and was peering over at us and at Reverend Felson’s gang. Michael spoke quickly into his phone and then went around and all but dragged his aged mother up the church steps and through the front door. The pallbearers had the casket out of the hearse now, and they headed for the Astroturfed steps, too, glancing our way and shooting us the evil eye from time to time, as they grunted and maneuvered.
Then the press arrived. Murano said, “Here comes the Eagle,” as two young women trotted up the street, the one with the camera already snapping pictures.
The Felson gang, unembarrassed to illustrate the vanity of evil, posed for pictures eagerly, baring their fangs and hurling crude epithets at non-fundamentalists, at sodomites, and at the “media perverts” themselves.
The funeral was to start at ten, and we could see the cop across the street and a young priest ushering the gawkers into the church now. Some wished to linger, apparently, to see what would happen next, and who could blame them? They thought the show was far from over, and they were right.
At ten o’clock, the bell in Mount Carmel’s tall brick tower tolled reverently, and soon after the church doors closed. The doors opened briefly a few minutes later, however, and Michael Sturdivant stepped outside and stood hulking on the top step. He glared over at the Felson gang and at Timmy and me. I thought, He knows who we are.
Sturdivant’s cell phone must have rung, and he spoke into it and then peered off to the right, down Fenn Street past the auto-parts store. Two dark SUVs rounded a corner a block east of us. They moved quickly up Fenn and pulled over in front of the rectory. I recognized the New York state license plate on the second vehicle. Five men wielding baseball bats got out of the two SUVs and went after the Felsons. The reverend took a blow to his right shoulder and went down, and the Kriders raised their arms to absorb the blows, but they were hit too. I saw Michael Sturdivant crossing the street and pointing at Timmy, David and me, and I thought, Where the hell are they?
Then the door to the Mount Carmel rectory opened, and a combined Pittsfield and State Police SWAT team of thirty or more officers poured out, their guns drawn, and began subduing and cuffing the thugs. The vehicle with the New York tags still had a driver behind the wheel, and he made a break for it. But police vehicles had rapidly blocked both ends of Fenn, and Third Street, too, and the driver was soon out on the pavement, down and cuffed.
Michael Sturdivant had begun to back away from the melee, but Joe Toomey, who brought up the rear of the fast-moving SWAT team, spotted Sturdivant and directed two officers to bring him back and hold him, too. He sputtered with indignation, but Toomey ignored him.
It was Toomey who led the search of the two SUVs. He was there when the glove compartment of the Explorer from New York State yielded up a Glock-9 which was, it would soon be established, the gun that had killed Jim Sturdivant.
All this commotion brought some of the mourners out of the church and onto the sidewalk, and crowds were gathering up by the post office and outside the taverns farther down Fenn. Reverend Felson was lying on the sidewalk, moaning and clutching his shoulder, and others in his flock had been bloodied. The Felson children had not been hit, but they were crying and looked dazed. I could hear ambulances approaching from up Fenn Street.
Joe Toomey walked over to me. He said, “I talked to Thorny. He’s releasing Barry Fields, withdrawing the charges. Myra Greene is in the clear, too.”
“Never too late,” I said.
“No, sometimes it is too late. But not in this case. Barry’ll recover.”
“What about this bunch?” I said, indicating the Felsons, as three ambulances cruised down Fenn and pulled in near us.
“What about them?” Toomey said.
“What can you charge them with? We’ve got to get them out of here if Barry is going to be able to stay in the Berkshires.”
“I can’t charge them with anything,” Toomey said. “They’re victims. As I think you can plainly see. In fact, they’ll need to be around here to testify against the people who attacked them.”
“Hell.”
“Hey, you got the guys who killed Jim Sturdivant, and you cleared your client. What do you want? You can’t have everything, Strachey. And I’ll bet you’re a strong believer in First Amendment rights, which these folks from the great American heartland were out here today exercising.” Toomey looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher.
As Michael Sturdivant and his marauders were carted off and the throngs of onlookers began to edge in closer for a glimpse of the lurid scene, I noticed an old priest walk out of the rectory, pick up the sign that read Jim Sturdivant is Going to Homo Hell, and carry the placard inside the building. I saw Timmy and David Murano take note of this, too. They came over, and Timmy said, “Old Pittsfield takes care of its own.”
Murano just laughed.