Bishop's Man (23 page)

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Authors: Linden Macintyre

BOOK: Bishop's Man
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I accepted one, raised it among the others, realizing that she was still there beside me and that we probably looked a lot like the other couples except for my clothes, black suit, stock and collar. Man and woman standing together among other men and women.
Donald thanked me when I presented the envelope. He told them that he only hoped he could live up to their expectations and asked for their prayers to help him in the struggles ahead.
Amen, I thought.
And when he finished, he turned and nodded and I imagined that there was, in the momentary glance that passed between us, a transfer of knowledge and understanding, and maybe even trust.
I turned to find Archie, the young fiddle player, standing nearby, arms folded. I winked and he picked up the instrument by the neck and plucked at a string with his thumb, a signal for the celebration to resume.
 
Beyond that clear moment my memory is imprecise. It seems I was alone, leaning comfortably against a wall. The drink I held was almost superfluous because I realized that I was already high on the music and the weather and a surprising sense, perhaps for the first time, that I belonged there. That life, thanks to these good people, and maybe for the first time since Honduras, had a purpose. In that moment I composed, in my imagination, a brief note to the bishop, thanking him for this assignment.
I closed my eyes briefly and let the music wash past. Is this how it is supposed to be?
There was a pause in the music. Someone replaced Donald at the piano and he was walking in my general direction, smiling. Then he stopped to speak to Sally. Her eyes were animated. She was nodding. He held her hand and they began moving toward the centre of the floor, presumably to dance.
Suddenly Danny was standing there with them. In retrospect, I’m sure I was the only one conscious of the tension. Some deep defensive instinct flashed a warning and I moved toward them.
Danny’s hand was gripping Donald’s arm. He was smiling.
I heard “ … another fucking faggot …”
“Danny,” I said, perhaps more sharply than I intended, and caught him by the wrist.
I never saw the move. I only know there was an instant loss of light. A blackness full of tiny flashes filled my skull. No feeling.
Then I could see his face near mine, unnaturally flushed, eyes bulging. But there seemed to be a sinewed, hairy arm across his throat, and his hands were clutching at it. And then another face, and it was speaking silent words in Danny’s ear. And I could have sworn that it was Sandy Gillis. I tried reaching out. Sandy? But then they were all gone again into a speckled darkness.
My father is speaking now: Go ahead. Take your best shot. See what kind of a man you are.
Sandy Gillis is studying the barn floor, silently.
Come on, my father says, emboldened by his silence. God damn you. Let’s settle it right here.
And then he’s on his knees, head hanging, blood dripping, Sandy Gillis standing over him, saying nothing, arms hanging by his side.
I never saw it happen, only heard the sickening whack.
Stella was kneeling beside me, a look of horror on her face. Danny Ban was holding his son from behind in a tight embrace, struggling in a knot of people stumbling toward the open door. Young Danny suddenly stopped resisting and they walked out together. Sally ran after them, carrying the cane.
Stella pressed a towel-wrapped ice pack against my forehead, just above and to the right of my eye, where the flesh had become thick and tender. Something, perhaps the ice, sent deep cold probes into my brain. I took the pack away. Stella’s face was grey, with a slightly yellow tinge. I looked around, desperately scanning faces. Sandy Gillis? Did I see dead Sandy Gillis? Was I dreaming? Then I saw young O’Brian hovering nearby, his face pale.
“That was a bit extreme,” he said, vainly attempting to smile, but I could feel the disapproval in his tone.
“Really?” I said.
“You people didn’t have to get involved. It wasn’t necessary. I could have handled it.”
“What people?”
“You and that other fellow.”
“What other fellow?”
“It was my problem … you didn’t have to …”
“Maybe we can talk about this another time.”
“Right,” he said.
“I can only guess what that was about,” Stella said.
 
The Gospel the next morning was the tale of the Pharisee and the publican who went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee thanks God for his virtue and his piety. The poor publican is too ashamed of himself to do anything but ask for mercy. It seemed to fit the moment.
It was a small crowd. Near the back, big Danny Ban and his son were standing conspicuously, arms folded, watching me intently. The boy looked miserable and angry, as big and broad as his father now, I noted with my one good eye.
I considered breaking the rules and skipping the homily altogether, but looking at them in the back I realized they were waiting to hear something remotely relevant. I stared at them for a while, conscious mostly of the throbbing in my temple. No words came, so I just walked back to the altar and resumed the function that came automatically, without reflection.
“I believe in one God …”
At the door after almost everyone was gone, Danny Ban approached me. “The young fella has something to say.”
“Sure,” I said.
Young Danny hung back, arms folded, studying the ground.
“How are you?” I asked.
“All right.” His voice was hoarse. There was a conspicuous redness on his throat. Then he raised his gaze to confront my face. The pain in his was unmistakable.
The words rose in me. “Let’s just put it behind us.”
“I didn’t mean for that,” he said.
His father’s voice was unexpectedly harsh. “We didn’t come up here for you to say that. We came up here for you to say what you have to say.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry too,” I said.
He seemed surprised.
“No, dammit,” said his father. “You got nothing to feel sorry for. I told him he was lucky we live when we do. Not so long ago he’d probably be excommunicated by now. Or worse. The hand rotting off of him with gangrene.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said.
There was a long silence.
“I understand,” I said finally. “I understand, and I don’t need apologies. But there’s a young fellow who probably doesn’t understand.”
Young Danny was shaking his head. “No. I’m not going to.”
“If you really want this thing closed off,” I said, “I suggest you go over to O’Brians’ place right now. That’s where you have some tidying up to do.”
“I can’t.”
I looked at his father, appealing.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said, raising a hand and looking away. “Hittin’ a priest is one thing. The other thing is between themselves.”
Their expressions were identical. Eyes steady, mouths thin, firm lines.
“Then there’s nothing left to talk about,” I said.
{13}
I
think of Mullins often. For priests like him and others I could name, the Gospels are rich with insights to be applied to the human condition. They even find logic in the superstition. They can trace a clear path through all the infantile promises of literal salvation and arrive at an objective truth that they carry in their pockets like a smooth, warm stone. What is it about them?
Why, really, did I become a priest? The answer smacks me in the face: I needed an out. I needed an escape.
Early the next week a young Mountie came by and told me that I should consider laying a charge of assault. “Young MacKay is a menace to himself and others,” he said. “Maybe he needs a wake-up call.” I figured the policeman was no more than a few years older than Danny.
“I think he knows what he’s done,” I said. “He’s going through a phase. We all do.” I smiled, doubting that the young man before me had ever known but one long proper phase.
He spoke again, but I wasn’t really listening to the words, just the tone. The flat, learned politeness that isn’t politeness at all, just a sterile formality. I wanted to say: “You sound like a robot. Did you learn to talk like that in Regina?” But didn’t, realizing that he was probably a decent enough boy. And that it’s the tone I hear from almost everyone.
I heard from Stella weeks later that O’Brian was talking about moving to Japan. About going there to teach English, deferring his plans for priesthood indefinitely. Get a little time and distance between himself and everything, was how she put it.
“It’s probably just speculation,” I said. “People love jumping to conclusions.”
“He’s changed. I tried to discuss it with him.”
“And did he tell you he was going to Japan?”
“No. Not in so many words.”
“I think he’ll be a good priest someday.”
“You really do?”
“Yes.”
“Poor Danny. It wasn’t all his fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She searched my face for evidence of knowledge, then she placed her soft hand on the back of mine. “Someday we should talk.”
“I’d really like that,” I said.
 
The boat became an escape for me, but not a particularly healthy one. The original purity of the experience faded and I realized it was becoming a deep seduction, a place to hide.
“Going to do a bit of jiggin’, are you, Father,” they’d say as I lifted my cooler down from the dock, careful to avoid the telltale clank of bottles in the rattle of the ice cubes.
“You know me,” I’d say back. “The fish have their own technology. The ‘fisherman-finder.’ Soon as I show up, they’re gone.”
That’s a good one, they’d laugh.
There was an American, a writer from the
New York Times,
who kept a boat near mine. We’d exchange mild pleasantries from time to time.
“I hear you spent some time in Central America,” he said once.
“Ah, yes. You know the place?”
“Covered the trouble there in the eighties. Nicaragua. Salvador.”
“I was in Honduras.”
“Aha. Among the Contras,” he said.
“That was after my time.”
A blonde woman in shorts and a loose tank top lounged in a deck chair at the back of his boat, studying me with an expression that revealed the remnants of some earlier disclosure, perhaps that I was A Priest. Our eyes engaged and I smiled. She quickly looked away.
 
Late in August, I saw Danny on the far side of the harbour, his boat hauled up in the mobile cradle. He was working in the shade under it, painting the hull with a long-handled roller. I could hear music. Straining to listen, I recognized a song from my university days. “Desperado.”
The boy really is old-fashioned, I thought.
I decided to go over, to talk. About the Eagles. Don Henley. Cash in some of the currency acquired from living for so long in close quarters with the young. Then I noticed that occasionally he’d reach down to pick up a beer bottle, raise it to his mouth then stand there, head back, as if to drain it all in one swallow.
The next day the boat seemed abandoned in the slipway, and after two days fishermen were grumbling on the wharf.
“Danny’s gone to sea with Captain Morgan,” one of them told me wryly.
After three days I noticed a crew around the boat one morning, half-tons hauled up close to it. Four men were finishing the painting. When the paint was dry, they relaunched and floated the boat across the harbour and tied it up behind mine.
“Has anyone heard anything lately?” I asked.
“Oooh, yes,” the man said, snapping half hitches around a post.
“Where is he keeping himself these days?”
“He’s around. Under the weather, though. That old Bacardi flu, he caught.”
He quickly tied a knot and left.
 
Unannounced, young O’Brian came to see me. He stood at the door looking nervous. I asked him to come in for a cup of tea or a cold beer. We hadn’t spoken since the incident at the hall.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I have something for you.” He handed me an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“I have to give you back the money. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it.”
I feigned confusion.
“You can explain to them.”
“Explain what?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m not ready. Not now, anyway. I’m going to take a year and just travel. Think things through. Maybe after that. But I can’t. Not now.”

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