Free Amballore House by Jose Thekkumthala Page A

the tree top,” Mathettan shouted at Thoma and started running to the scene to restrain Thoma from the dangerous mission he was after with a religious fervor, but it was too late. Thoma managed to shake his sixth son off the palm tree before Mathettan arrived.
    At the same time when Number-Six took the fall, Thoma collapsed due to exhaustion. Ann and Mathettan carried the distraught Thoma to his chair. He was still shaking violently.
    Thoma turned back while being carried away from the crime scene and shouted to his son, “You are not my son, you son of a bitch.” The voice that came out of him was garbled because of the raging anger and because of his previous stroke that made his pronunciation less articulate.
    Ann was surprised to hear Thoma’s declaration to her son and realized how true it was.
    Number-Six, fortunately, did not die, even though he could very well have, having taken a giant fall. He fell inside the outhouse. An ambulance was called. Paramedics came, accompanied by fire fighters who hauled Number-Six out of the outhouse with a crane. He was lucky he did not drown in the brown stuff. The scene of Number-Six covered in shit was enough to trigger a wisecrack from Thoma, who told his son, in spite of the gravity of the situation, “You have now proven that you are full of shit, just as I have always suspected.”
    The crane lifted Number-Six up and set him on the ground. He was hosed down with an industrial-strength water jet. Only after thorough cleaning did the paramedics dare approach him to take him to the emergency division of Amballore Hospital. Number-Six broke his right leg, which had to be amputated. He became one-legged ever since.

5THE MARCH OF OWLS
    Ann’s ceaseless efforts to steer Thoma to the ways of God and church are the talk of Amballore even today. She even went to the extent of vowing to Saint Joseph that Thoma would carry the cross during the church’s Good Friday function called “Way of the Cross,” a procession conducted through Amballore’s streets. She vowed to the saint that Thoma would be the cross bearer if their firstborn was a boy.
    This happened in 1941 in Amballore when the couple was staying there in their ancestral home, before their departure to the rental house in Mannuthy.
    Her prayers were sanctioned. Their firstborn was indeed a son. They named him George after Thoma’s father, Vareed. After George was born, Thoma was obligated to walk through Amballore’s streets carrying the cross throughout the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross. This was a tiring and humiliating experience for Thoma, who had shied away from church activities as far as anyone could remember.
    The spectators of this religious function, including kids in the street, laughed loudly to see an atheist carrying the cross. The contrast between his way of life and the ideals underpinning cross-carrying, which included supreme sacrifice and selfless love was stark. Little girls giggled during the solemn ceremony. The priest had to hush them up to preserve the sanctity of the function. The men and women admired the courage and strength of Thoma to carry the heavy cross. However, they agreed among themselves that Thoma was hardly the man to emulate Jesus. If he were a church-attending, God-fearing, exemplary citizen, they would have appreciated his gesture. But this was a far cry from such a situation; his walk was nothing but a caricature of the legendary fourteen-station trek of Christ, etched in people’s memories.
    His picture appeared in the Amballore Times with the caption “Atheist Carrying Cross.” He became an instant celebrity.After this remarkable incident in their younger days, Thoma forbade Ann from submitting any vows to be performed by him in private or especially in public. That memorable Good Friday was his last straw.
    “Next time, you will be the one carrying the cross,” he warned Ann.
    ***
    Ann’s prescription for Thoma’s malady of being a disaster of a man was