Archangel of Sedona Read online

  I tried the door. Someone had locked it.

  “What the fuck is this?” Dan asked. “Nobody locks a church.”

  “Yeah, it’s locked, all right,” I said, as I rattled the big door.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Pilgrims in need of spiritual succor and they lock us out? My immortal soul is in peril and I can’t get no satisfaction,” Dan sang off-key, trying to mimic Mick Jagger.

  Dan was pissed. He spent five minutes railing against the bishop of Gallup, New Mexico, who had dominion over the chapel in those days. I’d been drinking with Dan on the way north. I had a mild buzz. Dan’s tirade cracked me up.

  “Dan, I doubt that the bishop in New Mexico locked the chapel to spite you. I’m sure that he doesn’t know what the local priest does around here.”

  “I wanted to see this Christus,” Dan said.

  “Why?”

  “You said it was grotesque and controversial, right?”

  “It is.”

  “Some people think it’s an abomination, correct?”

  “Yep—my dad’s lawyer-buddy, for example.”

  “I want to experience it,” Dan said, with more passion than I expected.

  “Dan, look through this window. You can see the whole thing. It’s a little hard to focus, ’cause the sun is setting behind it and there’s glare through the west-facing windows,” I said, pressing my face against the window that bordered the big chapel door.

  Dan went over to the window on the door’s other side. He got as close to the glass as possible, shading his eyes with his right hand. He stared at the Christus for several minutes without speaking. He pulled back, gathering his thoughts.

  “You’re right. That’s gross. It’s not Christ-like at all. It’s dark—like it suffered in flames. Is it screaming in agony? It doesn’t look human. The arms are way too long. The legs are too long and skinny. The trunk is too narrow. It resembles a praying mantis that fell into a fire. I can see why no one likes it.”

  “I didn’t say no one liked it. I said a lot of people don’t. I think it’s spiritual and conveys the sculptor’s impression of suffering from torture.”

  “Jeez, Tony, you get that crap in Art Appreciation 101? The only way that thing could depict Christ is if the Romans stretched him on a rack, burned him at the stake, and then crucified him. That doesn’t fit with the story in the New Testament or the concept of His resurrection. That thing is horrible.”

  “Sacrilege is in the mind of the beholder,” I said. “I saw a crucifix at the Newman Center at ASU. It had a varnished, mahogany cross. They dressed the Christus in colorful robes. The figure held a scepter in his left hand and gave a blessing with his right. It represented Christ as prophet and king, ignoring the gruesome nature of crucifixion. That sanitized crucifix in Tempe was plain wrong.”

  “Enough. I don’t want to talk about religion. I want to get laid. Let’s have a beer, watch the sunset, and head up to Flagstaff,” Dan said, as we walked away from the chapel to fetch our beer and chicken.

  After Dan and I settled in on the retaining wall, the sun had begun to drop behind the western mountains. Arizona is renowned for its remarkable sunsets. The one I saw that night could have eclipsed any in recorded history.

  Fat, bulbous cumulus clouds drifted from the northwest across the upper Verde Valley. As the sun’s waning rays ricocheted off the stratosphere and pierced the clouds, brilliant colors burst across the dark blue-black sky in an explosion of scarlet, rose, mauve, emerald, sapphire, and gold. Every tone and shade in the band of light made an appearance in that evening sky. The sunset alone was worth the trip.

  While we sipped beer and watched the light show, I noticed that a small family had made their way up from the parking lot—a young man, a pretty woman with a toddler, and a dog of mixed pedigree, showing some German shepherd.

  By their conversation, the sunset had impressed them too. The mother, carrying her toddler on her hip, walked over to us. She saw that we had beer. “Are you guys old enough to be drinking that beer?”

  Before I could respond with a wise-ass remark, Dan reached over, grabbed a fresh can of Coors, pulled out the church key, made two openings in the top of the can, and—without comment—extended the beer to the woman.

  Faced with the moral dilemma of becoming an accessory-after-the-fact to underage drinking or adhering to a higher moral standard, the lady reached for the beer with her free hand, held the opened can to her lips, and took a healthy swig.

  I opened a second beer and handed it to the husband. The guy was fortunate. His wife had a sensuality that I could feel from ten feet away.

  The couple stood behind us sipping their beers, as the sunset bled from the sky and the dark blue evolved into an inky black. Ten minutes later it was black as pitch.

  At that altitude, the crystal clear air and the lack of ambient light meant we could see a gazillion stars—even though the clouds continued to pass overhead. I don’t remember a moon.

  The husband moved so that he could put his arm around his wife. Dan opened two more beers for them and passed them up. They accepted. They ignored us to engage in a private banter that implied intimacy in their future.

  As I opened another beer, a shooting star fired out of the clouds in the north above the Mogollon Rim. It shot at a terrific speed to the south-southwest.

  “Bob, isn’t that beautiful?” the wife asked. “What a perfect end to a beautiful evening.”

  It would have been, had the light been a shooting star. Both Dan and I had seen the light. We followed its long diagonal track across the valley.

  With no warning, the star stopped on a celestial dime, high above the valley to the southwest. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I’d taken physics. It was impossible for a meteorite burning through the stratosphere to stop in midair. The current position of that body violated the law of gravity.

  “What the hell!” Dan said as we watched the bright light hover in the distance. “What in the fuck is that?”

  “That’s no shooting star,” the husband said.

  I said nothing. I watched, mesmerized.

  The light hung in the sky for several seconds. Without warning, the light exploded to the northeast at an unfathomable speed. It disappeared over the buttes behind us.

  “Jesus, what was that?” Dan asked, as he dropped his can of beer. Two seconds later, I could hear it careening off the rocks below.

  “I have no fucking idea,” I said.

  “Bob, are we OK here?” The woman asked, her voice quaking.

  “Whatever that was, it’s gone,” Bob said.

  The light rematerialized, flashing to the south and seeming to gain altitude until it passed Bell Rock, three or four miles south of the chapel.

  “Holy shit!” Dan shouted. “There it goes again.”

  “There’s one thing I’m sure of,” I said. “That’s no meteor.”

  “But what is it? No airplane or helicopter could fly so fast, hover, and fly again without making a sound,” Dan said.

  “Exactly.” Bob said. “What machine on earth could do that?”

  The light made a right-angle turn and shot west across the valley. Before we lost sight of it, the light flipped in an impossible 180-degree turn. It headed for the chapel.

  Everyone, save the toddler, uttered an expletive. The little boy whined and hid his face in his mother’s shoulder. The dog bared his teeth and growled after inserting himself between the oncoming light and his family.

  As the light neared the chapel, it executed a series of right-angle turns, figure eights, and aerial maneuvers so complex that I can’t describe them. The light continued its behavior for several minutes. We watched in awe.

  The light stopped, moved over the chapel, and descended until it hovered over us, revealing a blurry round disk. It emitted a pale light twice the intensity of a full harvest moon. The disk illuminated the courtyard, the family, Dan, and me.

  “Bob, get Rom
mel,” his wife said, referring to the dog that had been running all over the courtyard, barking at the disk above us.

  It took three days of running this incident over in my mind for me to realize that the woman had named her shepherd after the notorious German Field Marshal. Bob picked up the dog and held him tight in his arms. Carrying the child and the dog, the couple disappeared down the ramp, heading toward the parking lot below.

  Dan and I remained in the courtyard, though we’d gotten up from our perch on the wall. We looked up, gaping at the spectacle.

  I remember being apprehensive, but not frightened. I later became a Paratrooper and served in Vietnam. I know fear. I experienced no fear that night.

  After many minutes, the light gained altitude. It blasted across the valley to the northwest. After it cleared the mountains, the disk turned north. I watched it until it faded into the blackness. We waited in silence for another 30 minutes. The disk did not return.

  Dan and I cleaned up the garbage around us. We walked down to the parking lot without discussion. After we settled into my Corvair, I pulled out of the lot and headed north toward State Road 89A, which intersects with SR 179 south of Uptown Sedona. SR 89A continues north, up Oak Creek Canyon, and clears the lip of the Mogollon Rim 15 miles outside of town.

  During the day, the ride up or down Oak Creek Canyon is a delight. It’s a beautiful, tree-lined passage that includes ponderosa pines, oaks, and aspens along with the other species from the valley below. It parallels the creek. There are places where the view is beyond picturesque. The canyon loses much of this ambiance in the dark.

  After the unexplained phenomenon, neither Dan nor I appreciated the canyon’s beauty. We’d become lost in the metaphysical moment.

  “Dan, we’ve got to tell someone.” I said, as we passed Slide Rock.

  “Tell who about what?” Dan asked, with an angry tone.

  “Come on. You know what I’m talking about. The lights over the chapel.”

  “I didn’t see any lights. I didn’t see anything tonight. If you say you did, I’ll tell them you were drunk.”

  “What the fuck is the matter with you, Dan?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t see a thing.”

  “Why are you being so obtuse?”

  “Tony, what are you going to do? Go to the Sheriff? Stop a Highway Patrolman? Would you tell them that you saw a fucking UFO?”

  “Sure, why not?” I asked, though I knew I wouldn’t.

  “Then you’re as stupid as you look. Do you remember what happened to those folks in Michigan, who saw the UFO last March?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “A couple of cops and several citizens claimed that they saw a UFO. It was on the national news. Everybody thinks they’re crazy. The Air Force investigated and concluded that it was swamp gas.”

  “Dan, we’re in the high desert on the border of the Mogollon Rim and a huge forest. There’s no swamp gas around here.”

  “Tony, who cares? We’ve been drinking all afternoon. We’re 19 years old. No one will take us seriously. The Sheriff of this hick county will conclude that you’re drunk, driving a car, and delusional. That’ll look great on your record. Might even get you tossed out of ASU. You’ll lose your draft deferment. They’ll send your crazy ass to Vietnam. You’re an idiot. I didn’t see a fucking thing.”

  Dan’s tirade pissed me off. We passed the next 20 miles in silence as we drove to Flagstaff. When we got to town, we found the small hotel where John worked.

  As promised, he’d gotten us a room. Despite his efforts, no beautiful coeds materialized. The three of us got trashed in the hotel room. Neither Dan nor I spoke of the incident at the chapel then—or at any other time.

  After we returned to ASU, Dan and I saw little of each other over the next two semesters. I kept the event to myself. I didn’t speak of it with anyone for over three decades.

  Chapter Two

  May 15, 1968, 0710 Hours

  Southern Perimeter (Green Line)

  E Co., Spt. Btn., 173rd Airborne Brigade (Sep)

  Camp Radcliffe Basecamp, North of An Khe Village

  II Corps, Republic of Vietnam

  A year after the chapel incident, I dropped out of ASU. My friends labeled me as self-destructive.

  My parents thought that I’d failed to clear the low academic bar that I’d set for myself. My decision reinforced their belief that I should follow a trade.

  Though I rejected all criticism, my irresponsible behavior in my sophomore year in college gave weight to their views. During the months that followed the incident at the chapel—while still in school—I’d had two close flirtations with the grim reaper. I felt fortunate to be alive.

  In the late fall of 1966, my roommate and I ran off a 40-foot cliff at the edge of a desert mesa near where the Salt and Verde Rivers meet. Eric and I weren’t suicidal, but we were drunk and careless.

  We were hauling a keg of beer away from a bonfire. We attempted to hide it from the state Alcohol and Beverage Control fascists, who’d raided our Saturday night frat party in the desert.

  Imagine our surprise when the ground went out from under us. In the pitch dark, we plunged from the top of the mesa onto the rocks and rubble five stories below. Though I sustained a concussion, broke my right hand, and lost 16 gallons of cold beer, I survived. Eric broke an ankle. It was a bona fide miracle that we lived.

  An hour later, my roommate and I managed to limp and crawl back up to the top of the mesa. We looked like hell, broken and bleeding from our near death experience. My fraternity big brother—Randy—walked up to me out of earshot of the ABC cops.

  “You gonna be OK?” Randy asked.

  “I think so,” I said, cradling my fractured right hand with my left.

  “You know you’re a pussy!”

  “What?” I said, not believing what I’d heard.

  “Going over that cliff, a real man would’ve yelled: Banzai!” Randy said, emphasizing the last word with a terrible Japanese accent and a high pitched drunken screech.

  If I hadn’t broken my hand, I would’ve busted his silly grin.

  In the spring of 1967—my hand and wrist freed from the cast—another frat brother, Jerry, and I travelled to Tucson late on a Friday. We wanted to visit girlfriends at the University of Arizona. Jerry drove. I fell asleep in the front seat of his Plymouth Lark, as he negotiated the interstate south of Chandler.

  I slept through a horrific accident. I woke up pinned inside the vehicle. Jerry had lost control of the compact car on the highway north of Picacho Peak. We’d left the interstate at over 80 miles per hour.

  After swerving off the right lane and clearing the embankment next to the highway, the Lark sailed over two fences and the access road before we landed in the desert and rolled twice. Trapped for half an hour and covered in gasoline, I suffered only minor cuts and bruises. Later that day, Jerry, his father, and I viewed what was left of the vehicle at the accident scene.

  “You two idiots are lucky to be alive,” Jerry’s dad said, as we examined the wreck.

  “Yes, sir,” I responded.

  “Look at this mess!” Jerry’s Dad said. “The roof’s compressed to the window line. The engine broke through the firewall and covers the front seat. The gas tank ruptured. God, Tony, you’re damned fortunate that this pile of shit didn’t explode. Jerry, if you’d been wearing the seat belt, you’d have been crushed. Your guardian angels were sure working overtime.”

  Amen. I thought.

  In that remote part of the Northern Sonoran Desert, I’d experienced another miracle. In my ignorance, I chalked it up to happenstance.

  After the accident, majoring in Sociology at ASU seemed like an absurd waste. When the semester ended, I enlisted in the Army Airborne, knowing it was a ticket to Vietnam. Something in me had changed. Some powerful, irresistible force compelled me to abandon the safety of college and embark on a dangerous adventure.

  After Basic, Advanced
Infantry Training, and Jump School, the Army gave me leave before deployment to Southeast Asia. During this furlough, my family and I spent a few days in Sedona.

  I’d not gone back to the Verde Valley since the incident with the unexplained lights. I felt wary, but our time in Sedona proved to be placid and spiritual. I visited the chapel every day. I prayed that I’d do my duty in Vietnam and return home in one piece.

  I took solace from the grim visage of the Christus. I saw compelling qualities in the gruesome portrayal. I gained equilibrium in the shadow of that great crucifix. Praying in the chapel gave me confidence in the future.

  After Sedona, I left Phoenix. I traveled to McChord Air Force Base to catch a chartered flight to the war. I landed at Cam Rahn Bay in transit to the 173rd Airborne Brigade on the fifth day of the Tet Offensive of 1968.

  I had close calls in Vietnam. I shouldn’t have survived. Somebody or something looked out for me.

  By May of 1968, I’d transferred from the Fourth Battalion of the 503rd Infantry to a billet in the Support Battalion at our basecamp near the Vietnamese village of An Khe. Though it was safer at An Khe than the area assigned to my old battalion, we often absorbed serious mortar, rocket, and sapper attacks.

  The North Vietnamese sappers were a tough, brave, and determined bunch. Their tactics required a squad-sized unit to rush a weak point on our perimeter in the middle of the night and overwhelm it—killing the Americans entrenched in the targeted position. Once inside our defenses, they would scatter through the basecamp causing as much mayhem, destruction, and death as possible.

  Each sapper would carry several Chicom grenades and an AK-47 assault rifle. Some would also carry explosive charges in webbed satchels. As they ran through our camp, the sappers would toss grenades, plant the satchel charges on targets of opportunity, and shoot at anything that moved. Most sappers died in these bold, disruptive, and damaging attacks.

  Though their casualties were high, a lucky few might make it to the other side of the camp. If they did, they hoped to find our soldiers manning the perimeter to be facing away from them and out into no man’s land. The surviving sappers would attack the weakest point they could locate from the inside.