Father Anthony J. Fitzgerald, S.j., Jurisprudential Wizard, Vol. 4, Hunkering Down In The Windriver Range

FATHER ANTHONY J. FITZGERALD, S.J., JURISPRUDENTIAL WIZARD VOLUME FOUR

HUNKERING DOWN IN THE WINDRIVER RANGE

BY ANTHONY J. FEJFAR, ESQ., COIF MEMBER, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT BAR © COPYRIGHT 2004 BY ANTHONY J. FEJFAR, ESQ., COIF

THIS BOOK, AND THE ENTIRE FATHER FITZGERALD SERIES IS FICTION, ANY RESEMBLENCE OR PARALLEL TO A REAL PERSON, PLACE, OR THING, IS PURELY A COINCIDENCE.

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CHAPTER ONE

We were hiking across an Alpine Valley, following a deer trail, when we heard the shot. Suddenly, a puff of dirt kicked up about a yard in front of me, and a “thirty od six” slug ricocheted off a boulder about thirty feet away. “Hit the dirt,” I, Father Tony Fitzgerald said. And we did.

“Jesus, what’s going on?” said Dan. “I think that someone doesn’t like us,” said Father Stan. Another shot chipped a piece of rock off a small boulder about ten feet away. “Quick, get behind that boulder over to the right.” I said. We quickly got up, which was tough with our backpacks, and serpentined over to a string of eight foot high boulders over to our right. Another shot chipped rock, and the shards covered my arm. Damn, I thought, now what? “I think that we should take our packs off and get our BAM’s ready for action.” said Father Stan Fitzhugh.

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We pulled our packs off and untied our BAM’s. The BAM, was of course the “Best Air-rifle Made, that is BAM. We each had 177 caliber BAM high powered air rifles which had a range of approximately one mile. Instead of using pellets, we used bb gut ammo. It was a home made concoction of Crossman Copperhead bb’s, 10 w 30 motor oil, axel grease, and of course, the spit of the creator of the concoction. Father Tony made it best. If you used just ordinary bb’s they just rolled down the barrel of the rifle onto the ground before you could even fully cock the break barrel air rifle. With gut bb’s, the friction caused by the grease-oil, kept the bb from rolling down the barrel. It also kept the barrel lubricated to help ensure a long life for the weapon. Finally, of course the lubricant in the barrel helped to create a better seal and the range and velocity of the air rifle increased substantially.

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These rifles were accurate as hell. People said that Father Tony could shoot the eye out of a crow one mile away. None of us used telescopic scopes to shoot, instead we used the ordinary rifle sights found on the barrel of the air gun. Once you got used to it, it worked better without a scope. Less adjustments, and essentially, you remote viewed your target down the end of the barrel of the air rifle. This brought the target, “in frame,” relative to the shooter, avoiding the problem of multiple frame shifts between the shooter and the target.

We spread out, picking boulders to hide behind that were about 30 yards apart. I looked in the direction of the shots and saw a flash of metal off his gun barrel in a stand of boulders about 500 yards away. “He’s in those boulders, about 500 clicks away,” Father Tony said. I shifted to the other side of the boulder so that my torso would be hidden and so that I could rest my left arm and the rifle against the boulder. I lined up for my first shot. The clip sight was a good one, with a tube sight containing a ridge site at the end of the barrel. I waited.

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Another shot came in our direction, chipping rock off of the boulder that Father Stan was hiding behind. I saw the barrel of the hitter’s rifle. I inhaled air slowly into my lower abdomen, I closed my left eye, sighting down the barrel with my right eye. I lined up the sights on the area immediately behind the rifle barrel, slowly exhaled and gently squeezed the trigger as if it were the side of an aluminum pop can. My rifle jerked, and the back force of the air forced the stock of the rifle into my shoulder. I heard a scream. “Eayyyaeee.” Well, I must have hit something. “We had better wait it out awhile guys, he might be faking it.” I said. We waited about 20 minutes without hearing a shot.

“Stan, can you work your way down the valley about a mile, and then come up on him from the right, Dan, you do the same thing on the left. I keep plinking away here to keep him down, just in case he’s still alive and thinking about chicanery.” I said. “Sounds good” said Stan and Dan. It took about an hour. The I heard Father Stan yell, “Yo, Tony, he’ deader than a doornail.” “You got him right through the left eye” yelled Dan. “Alright, I’m coming across,” said Father Tony.

I knew this guy. He was on the law faculty at Lewistown. “This guy is

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an adjunct professor in the law school at Lewistown,” I said. “You know, he is at that,” said Father Stan. “Well,” said Dan, “from what you have told me, we either have Father Leon Andrev to thank for this, or perhaps, Sister Joan.” “You know, you’re probably right,” said Stan. “I don’t know,” I said. Let’s form a circle around the body and open up our channels and see if we can find anything out.” “I’m kind of new at this,” said Dan. “That’s right, we had better work with Dan first,” I said.

“Alright Dan, Stan and I are going to each imagine that our spiritual energy is in

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your body and mind and try to form a quantum linkage. O.K.?” “Alright,” said Dan. We each sat down around the body, as if we were the three points of a triangle. “Aw, shit, we’re ressurecting the guy.” said Stan. “Well, I guess, we’ll have to heal him.” said Tony. “Concentrate your energy in his head and eye.” The guy sat up. “Shit, what happened?” he asked. “You got shot and we just ressurected you,” said Father Tony. ‘Now, either you swear allegiance to God, and vow to become a Critical Thomist, and acknowledge that you owe each of us a life debt, or we’ll have to execute you.” He continued.

“Well, I, can’t I’m KGB, SMERSH, I can’t do that.” He said. “Why not go

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KIAO, counter terrorism?” asked Tony. The guy spit in Tony’s face. “Alright, I’m giving you a death warrant on my Coif, under the National Security Act,” said Father Tony, “may God have mercy on your soul, because I’m certainly not going to.” With that, Father Tony reloaded his BAM, aimed into the eye of the SMERSH hitter at point blank range, and fired. The hitter slumped over. This time there was no scream. “Well, what do we do with the body?” asked Father Stan. “I think there is a cliff just over that ridge,” said Dan, “we could dump the body off the cliff. I’ll go look.” “Stan, why don’t you search the body, and I’ll go see if he’s got a backpack hidden in the trees.” “Alright,” said Stan.

CHAPTER TWO

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We hiked three more miles down the Alpine Valley and then stopped for the night around four in the afternoon. As usual, a small afternoon shower drifted by, but we only got a sprinking. “After we get the tents set up, why don’t you guys scout down the valley a bit, and I’ll do a little trout fishing in the stream, here.” I said. “Sounds good Tony,” said Stan, “I guess we’ll take our BAM’s with us, just in case.” “Jesu, I have to take a shit,” said Dan Corgill, “how do you do it out here?” “Just get a roll toliet paper out of your pack,” said Stan, “move away from the camp site and the creek, use your poop shovel to dig a hole, pull down your drawers, and squat shit into the hole, use the toliet paper, and then cover over the shit and paper with the dirt that you dug, otherwise the deer will eat the shit and get sick.”

“Father Tony, remember to use the ceramic water pump/filter get the water from the pond. We have to be careful of getting the shits from Gehardia.” said Dan.

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“Thanks Dan, I’ll make sure and remember.” We spent the next half hour putting up our tents. It was pretty easy. First you put out tarp for a ground cloth, and then you laid out the tent flat on the top of it. You then set up the external frame tent poles which are held together on the inside with bungee cords, on each end, and then connect them with the horizontal cross pole.” My tent was a Timberline 8' by 6', and I loved it. It didn’t weigh more than a smaller tent, it was easy to assemble and disassemble, and there was plenty of room for me to roll around on the inside without hitting the tent sides, and , plenty of room for me to snore, sleeping by myself.

I was glad that the gay movement in the Jesuits of the 1970's was over. For awhile there not only were gays not discriminated against, in fact, the opposite was

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the case. You had to be gay in order to get into the novitiate, or at least to stay. Then, all of a sudden there was an influx of special forces guys from Nam, who entered the Society. They were all as strait as an arrow and were all martial arts experts, including tae kwon do, karate, judo, and tai chi. Suddenly everyone in the novitiates was getting anti gay training. It was really quite simple. You put everybody with no clothes on in the shower room together and waited to see if anybody got an erection. If they did, then the other participants in the training excercise shot at the erect cock of the gay guy with a rubber band gun. Soon, the erection was gone. It was right out of the Pavlovian training manual.

Another technique was self primogeniture. You had the guy jack off to Playmate magazine, then bless the cum after he orgasmed, and then had him stick it

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up his own butt with his right fock finger. In addition to being a ritual, there was some evidence that there was an actual positive physiological effect of having your anus absorb you own semen rather than that of another person. The combination of the two techniques had a virtual 100% transformative effect, changing a gay guy to a strait guy.

CHAPTER THREE

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After the guys headed down the valley, I unloaded my backpack, taking out my fishing rig.

It was of course possible to take along a pack rod and a lot of

fishing equipment, but I gave up trying to be a sophisticated pack fisherman. Instead I just brought along a throw rig, a few hooks, salmon eggs, small marshmellows, a dozen Caddis Nymph flies, and a half dozen Mepps Spinners. Most places prohit the use of live bait for trout fishing, so I didn’t even bother trying to take along some night crawlers. I usually had my best luck using a number ten hook and covering the hook with a one inch long piece of night crawler that looked like a grub. Instead, here I thought that I would try a marshmellow first.

My fishing rig was basically a one by four inch piece of wood, about a foot long loaded with heavy duty cotton twine, about the same thickness as you would use in a plumb line. The twine was an orange color and I had about 100 feet wrapped

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around my slotted wood, wrapping board. This was essentially the kind of rig that people used in the middle ages in Europe. In fact, under canon law, most religious were required to take such a fishing rig with them when traveling so that they could catch fish rather than having to beg alms.

At the end of the twine I had a three foot steel thirty pound test leader attached, with a swivel latch on the end. I put a number ten hook attached to a nylon leader onto the longer steel leader. I put the marshmellow on the hook, and then put

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a small weight on the latch swivel, and then a red and white plastic bobber on the twine line, about two feet up the twine line. I played out about twenty feet of twine line on the ground, with the leader off to the side. I then grabbed the twine line about four feet above the bobber and began to twirl the rig on an angle not unlike the technique that cowboy would use to twirl a lariat.

After I built up some momentum

with four or five passes, I let go of the twine, and let fly the end rig. The twine line snaked out about 20 feet from where I was standing on the shore.

The weight and the leader with the marshmellow hit first, as of course it should have, and then came the bobber.

Bubbles came up from below the surface

as the weight and marshmellow sank into the depths of the pond. I sat down on a rock boulder and relaxed, keeping an eye on the bobber which was floating lazily on

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the surface of the pond. I was just yawning when suddenly the bobber plunged under the surface. Suddenly, there was a jerk on my ankle, where I had wrapped one turn of twine around, so that the wood twine wrapper wouldn’t get pulled into the water and disappear.

I unwrapped the twine from around my ankle and stood up. I held the twine board in my hands and wrapped the stretched twine line around my right wrist and hand and tugged a little bit. The twine line into the water remained taut. I began to pull in the line, hand over hand. Soon, I could see the bobber about eight feet out

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into the water. I put my foot on the twine line into the water and wrapped up some of the slack onto the twine board and then began retrieving anew. I grabbed my little oak laminated fishing net off my hip and kept pulling with my other hand. Soon I could see a 14 inch rainbow trout in the water. I squatted down, pulling the trout closer to shore while positioning the net, “Gotcha,” I said to the trout. And so I did.

I caught four more trout by the time Stan and Dan returned. They had nothing to report. I got a can of pond water and we walked down the valley about two hundred yards before stopping. I cleaned the fish there, partially burying the guts. We then went back to camp. I got out my Coleman propane backpacking

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stove and went to work with the olive oil, the trout, a little garlic powder, and of course, the frying pan. I cooked the fish in a spot about 100 yards away from camp. Bears are really attracted to the smell of trout. By doing the fish cleaning and cooking so far away from camp, I hoped that this little misdirection play would fool the bears.

We broke the typical back pack rules and brought along some can goods. For supper we had the trout, some bread, and some cream corn, with a Hershey’s chocolate bar for dessert. . It was a good meal.

CHAPTER FOUR

I woke up with a start in the pitch black tent. I looked at my watch which was hanging from my backpacking gig around my neck. I kept a 30 inch stainless

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steel chain with saints medals and backpacking type stuff around my neck. I of course had Saint John the Apostle/Evangelist, reputed to be an immortal, sequestered to the Island of Potmos (Guam) until the second coming of Jesus. Next was Saint Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas, Patron saint of Critical Thomism, and arguable “apostate” saint for questioning whether or not the ressurection of Jesus was real or not. Next, Saint Anthony and the Christ Child, representing Saint Anthony the Praetorian Legate, that is, God the Father, or in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, God the Grandfather. The wife of Saint Anthony, Saint Anne, with the Mary child, Saint Anne being the mother of the Virgin Mary and Grandmother of Jesus of Nazareth. Finally, my Christ medal, with Saint Anne and the Christ Child on the back, with Saint Anne representing the Holy Spirit of Divine Wisdom. And, finally, minimaglite flashlight, my waterproof special forces watch, my Master Mechanic mini tape measure, and my shrade special forces pen knife.

I rotated my TMX watch face so that I could see it, and pressed the display light, reading the watch with a time of 3:00 a.m.

I sat quietly and listened. I heard

a snorting and squealing outside. I got my ammo pouch and my BAM, carefully opened the tent from the bottom up using the zipper, and then crawled outside. Stan and Dan had just gotten up too. “Well, it looks like Smoky the Bear has found the

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fish scraps,” said Stan. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” I said, “Maybe we should stay up for awhile and then go back to sleep later, toward dawn.” “Sounds good,” said Dan. I got out the Coleman Camping Lantern which fitted snugly onto the propane tank, and started the lantern. Soon the entire area was bathed in golden light from the lantern.

“Well, we might as well tell some stories, or something,” said Dan. “Sounds good to me” I said. “Well, Tony, how about one of your World War Two stories,” said Father Stan. “Alright,” I said. “Now remember, this is just a story, treat it as an allegory at best, not as scientific fact, OK?” “Alright,” said Stan and Dan simultaneously. “Alright, first of all, remember how the American tank commander General Patton was forced to run around southern England with a cardboard army so that the Germans would think that the invasion of

France would take place in Calais, instead of Normandy? At least that was the official story. What really happened was that Patton was reequipted with light tanks and half tracks, and a lot of jeeps. An allied expeditionary force put to sea and landed in a deep water fjord in Denmark. I wasn’t really even a port, just a fishing village. They landed on the first week in May, one month before D Day in France.

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G2, intelligence and the Danish underground indicated that the ground in Denmark was for the most part frozen peat, that is, permafrost. In the Spring and Summer, it becomes very spongy and virtually impossible to drive in. The problem for the Germans was that they had put two Waffen SS Panzer divisions with Tiger tanks as the only defense in Denmark. The Tiger was a huge battle tank, which weighed a hell of a lot. Additionally, Patton’s armorer made the observation in the war against Rommel in Tunisia, North Africa, that the Tiger had no turrent. That is, the gun barrel was stationary and the only way that you could rotate and re-aim the gun was to reverse synchronize the tank treads. What this spelled for the Germans in Denmark, was, MUD.

“Patton picked the ground very carefully, but the botton line was this, the Americans were able to stay very mobile and were able to keep to the small country roads and highways, while the Germans stayed in entrenched postions in forested areas. Patton had orders to Blitzkrieg, that is, to blow right by the Germans as soon as possible, leaving them mired in the mud. If you look at a map of Europe, you

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might notice that it is a fairly straight shot from Denmark to Berlin, the capital of Germany.” “On the way of course, after zipping through Schleswig Holstein, Patton also occupied the German port of Hamburg and Eisenhower soon had the entire American Expeditionary Force landing in Hamburg, rather than Normandy. Next the 101st Airborne dropped into Berlin right after Patton got there courtesy of the German railroad industry. Patton set up armored trains and troop trains, used German speakers, and rolled right into Berlin’s central railroad yard completely unnoticed.”

“Of course D Day in France happened. The Germans refused to send their troops east to fight the Russians. We used a lot of troops on D Day who were avowed communists or nazi’s against the nazi’s. The reason we were so short of men on the Battle of the Bulge was that we were already occupying Berlin. Ironically, our troops fought so heroically against the nazi’s on D Day that the

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invasion in France was also a success. We had to pull Patton out of Berlin and move his armored division to southern France.”

“ Operation Market Garden with Monty, British Field Marshal Montgomery, was meant to hook up our troops in France with those occupying Schleswig Holtstein. Unfortunately, the Waffen SS armored Divisions from Denmark were able to fight their way through and stop Market Garden in Holland. Fortunately before that happened, Patton was able to liberate five German concentration camps which were chocked full of Jesuit Priest from the major European Universities. They were able to get out through Hamburg, and then made it to Canada, courtesy of the United States Navy.” “Remarkably, it wasn’t the Jews who went into the camps first in Nazi Germany, it was the Jesuits. Apparently Rome was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.”

“Now, you might think that the story is about over, but there is a little bit more to it” said Father Tony. “Now, the problem was that there were a fair number of German’s caught in central France, and, also, since the German’s decided not to make peace with the Americans, they again thought about their socialist brothers and sisters, the Russians. Von Ribbentropp, the German Foreign Minister was sent to

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Yalta, where he met with Kruschev. They agreed to an armistice, on the condition that the Germans would allow Russian troops free passage through central Germany into France, to attack the American Army during the Battle of the Bulge. You would be surprised how many good, loyal American troops were put into the stockage, and some into mental institutions, because they kept telling everyone that they kept hearing the troops in German uniforms during the Bulge, speaking Russian.” “In any event, from the troops point of view, let’s consider this from the vantage point of the American’s in combat at the time. The Germans had pretty much surrounded the village of Bastogne. Most of the American troops were hunkered down in fox holes in a wooded area of the Ardenne Forest north of Bastogne. “

” For awhile the fight went north to south, Germans on the North and American’s on the South. The object was to keep control of an east-west road which was supplying the German forces from the east. The American ran low on ammunition and the German’s captured the road. This is when the German commander demanded the Americans to surrender, and the American Commander,

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McCauliff, told the German commander, “Nuts” in reply.”

Soon there were large amounts of “German” troops walking down the road to the west in front of the American lines. The Americans sent three scouts, all Native American, to the east along road to see if they could tell what was happening. The scouts returned, reporting that there was a north-south river about two miles to the east and that the German’s were starting to move armor across the bridge. They then told McCauliff, much to his surprise, that the Germans seemed to be Russian, at least they were speaking Russian, and, that immediately behind a stalled column of German-Russian armor, was an armored unit with American Sherman tanks, apparently Russian lend lease material, and Russian T-54 tanks.”

“McCauliff, just about shit bricks when he heard the report, and didn’t know what to do. He called in his G2 intel officer and asked him what he thought. “Blow the bridge sir. We don’t need it, and regardless who they are they are hostile to us and it can’t hurt us to stop their armor at the river.” “How the hell are we going to do it?’ asked McCauliff.

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“Well,” said G2, “there is an east-west farm road about 100 yards behind us and we have one artillery piece that works, and have three rounds of ammunition. Let’s hook the arty piece up to a jeep in low gear and pull it down to the river south of the German lines. Then make our way north till we have a straight shot to the bridge. Lower the tradjectory on the artillery piece and shoot point blank at the bridge and knock it out.” “Alright, Colonel Winter this baby is yours, if you blow it, we’ve lost the war.” So Winter led a hand picked company of troops with the jeep and arty piece along the road until they got close the river, and then turned north. The recon patrol they sent out killed all of the German pickets without firing a shot.

Winter had the men line up the arty piece point blank aimed at the bridge which was crawling with German and or Russian troops. Just then the first German Panzer tank gunned its engine and started across the bridge. Winter and his men had to literally put the yoke of the artillery piece onto the driver’s seat of the jeep in order to keep it propped up at the right angle. The Panzer was half way across

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when we fired the first shot. The round hit the stone railing on the south side of the bridge, obliterating it. The next round hit the bridge itself at the level of the road bed and blew a hole in the bed of the bridge about eight feet by eight feet, stopping the Panzer. Just as the Panzer was about the reverse itself, back up, an attempt to go around, the last shell hit the tank exactly in the midpoint of the tank in between the treads blowing a hole right through to the magazine and the gasoline tank, blowing the Panzer tank and the bridge to smithereens.”

“The German advance soon ground to a halt. Men, supplies, armor, and ammo, were all coming across that one bridge, and it was no more. When the guys were debriefed after the battle, the Americans told the G2 interrogators that there were Russians fighting with the Germans. Soon the word came down from Headquarters that regardless of what we may have seen, in fact officially, there were

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no Russians in the Battle of the Bulge. Some of the guys rebelled at this, and soon they were sent to mental health facilities for “combat fatigue.” Most came back with sort of blank looks on their faces. One man, a Jesuit chaplain, however, remembered what happened. The American high command “educated” the American troops through the use of hypnosis and electroshock, and in a few cases, frontal lobotomies, in order to ensure that the troops told the right story, that is, that there were no Russian troops.”

“Well, how is that for a Windriver yarn,” asked Father Tony. Stan gulped, Dan looked sort of blanked out. “Well, is it true, or isn’t it,” asked Dan. “I’m sure that someplace, somewhere, at a certain level of probability it is true,” said Father Tony. “Most myths and legends are, or we wouldn’t keep telling them” he continued. Just treat it as a tall tale, or as an allegory, as something that may or may

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not be literally true. That’s the ticket.”

“Why couldn’t the American army allow the guys to tell the truth?” asked Dan. “Because,” said Father Stan, “politically, if it turned out that American equipment was being used against American service men, the American government would have looked very stupid. Believe it or not, in some situations, political correctness, and political correctness alone, is enough to put people into concentration camps, or mental hospitals. Once you are in, you are just another number. You are treated as if you are subhuman.” “In America we hope that things like this don’t happen too often, and, more than that, we work hard to make sure that they don’t. But in other regimes, nazi, communist, even nominally democratic regimes, such terroristic practices are common.” “Well, with that kind of story to keep me awake, I don’t think any Ghost stories are necessary” said Dan.

After awhile the bear went away and we went back to sleep, with visions of Tiger Tanks glowing in our heads. For breakfast we had instant maple syrup oatmeal with powdered milk. We sat around on little camping prop stools and shot the breeze for awhile.

Dan and Stan then went fishing, and I, Father Tony

Fitzgerald, went back to sleep.” And so it went.

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(To be continued).

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