Bishop's Man (42 page)

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Authors: Linden Macintyre

BOOK: Bishop's Man
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The dog barked twice more.
“Shuddup,” Danny said sharply. “Go lie down.”
The dog looked at him apologetically.
Danny leaned toward the window, moved the curtain again. “Oh. Looks like he’s leaving. It must have been your car. He’d figure if you were here, Jessie’d be here too.” He watched. “Yeah, he’s gone. Willie’s been on a little toot. Went up to Toronto last month. First time off the island. Hasn’t been the same since he got back.” He chuckled. “Jessie can’t stand poor Willie. Jessie or the dog. They get right hostile when he shows up. Women and dogs think they know when a man doesn’t like them. Claim to have an instinct. She says Willie doesn’t like women or kids or dogs, and they all sense that right away.”
“You hear that,” I said.
“Instinct is great. But I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.”
“Actually, I saw Willie in Toronto. I was staying at my sister’s after Braecrest and he was there.”
“And how was he?”
“Seemed fine to me.”
“Ah, well. He’s been on the sauce since he got back.”
“Jessie and Willie are first cousins, aren’t they?”
“Yes. You know, back somewhere in the woodpile, you might be related to him yourself.”
“Oh?”
“I just figured that out lately. Thinking back to your old man. Old Angus.”
“When was it you worked with him?”
“It was shortly after I came home. Around ’70. Not long before he died, actually. I heard about it afterward. Didn’t he freeze to death?”
“Yes.”
“An awful thing, that, but they say it isn’t a bad way to go.”
“I suppose,” I said. “If we get to choose.” And instantly regretted it.
He looked away for a while, studying a spot on the floor. Then he stood and stretched. “I guess your dad had a hard time in the war. He never talked much about it, but you could tell. You can usually tell, when they won’t talk about it, that there’s probably something to talk about.”
“There was something. Some incident, late in the war. We never really talked about it either. When you’re young, you aren’t usually interested.”
“Well, isn’t that the way. The things I’d like to ask the old man now. When it’s too late.” He was shaking his head slowly. “Oops. There it goes again. The old bladder. Sorry about this. I’ll be wearing frigging diapers before you know it.” And he headed for the hallway, lurching slightly.
When he came back, he said, “I’d offer you a drink, but I imagine, after all the trouble you went to getting off of it, you wouldn’t be interested.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “My sister mentioned once that we might be related to Willie.”
“Ah, yes. How did it go? Through the Gillises out here. There was a family. All died out now. Jessie’s grandfather and Willie’s mother were brother and sister. And I gather there was a close relative. A cousin, I believe, who went away young then kind of dropped out of the picture. Your dad said that might have been his mother. I gather he never knew his real mother and father.”
“So I understand.”
“Wouldn’t that be something. All of us related.”
I laughed.
“Poor Willie,” he said. “There’s no harm in Willie.”
 
Jude was struggling inside his memory.
“I think we’re a little bit related. Brendan and me. If I have it right, my grandfather’s mother was a Bell. Anyway, we come from the same place. A little village round the bay. I’m sure you never heard of it. He was only a little fellow when I left.”
“When did you last have contact?”
“Oh, I can’t remember. It would have been around the time I left. But I was getting news all along, when my folks were still alive. It was the second-biggest thing that ever happened to the village. Him going off to be a priest. I, of course, was the first big deal.” He sighed. “It’s hard to explain what it used to be like when a young fellow from a place like that ended up in the priesthood. It was like you belonged to everybody.”
“I can imagine.”
“So it’s bad news for everybody when it doesn’t work out. Right? A huge disappointment.”
“So Brendan didn’t work out?”
“Well, you might have heard yourself. He left. Went into business. Did well for himself, but it wasn’t the same thing.”
“Did anybody ever figure out why he left?”
“I guess so. But it isn’t something anybody would want to talk about. Not openly.”
“I understand. You wouldn’t by any chance know how to get in touch with Brendan?”
He looked at me in surprise.
“Some friends of mine,” I said, staring off toward the flanks of the escarpment. “They were close. I think they’d like to know where he got to.”
“I think I have a phone number somewhere. A Toronto number. It might be in my book. Somebody from home gave it to me … in case I was ever in Toronto.”
We retreated back into our silences. Somewhere nearby someone laughed.
“That’s encouraging,” he said. “The sound of happiness.”
“So, Jude, if you don’t mind my asking—what brings you here?”
He sighed. “I’m a thief.”
The word just sits there between us.
Thief.
He’s smiling. “And what about yourself? What brings you here?”
“That’s a complicated question,” I say.
“You don’t strike me as one of the usual run of addicts.”
“I’m not. But I’m curious about you. I’ve known a lot of priests.”
He stared at me. “How do you react to a priest being a thief?”
“I’m assuming that you’re speaking metaphorically,” I said.
“No,” he said cheerfully. “I’m a plain, unvarnished rip-off artist. Stole from the parish where I was an assistant. Knew how to fix the books so it wouldn’t show. Then, of course, there was an audit.”
“But why?”
“I had the absolute worst addiction there is. I’m a gambler who loses. Then I became a thief.”
“Gambling?”
“It started with lotto tickets. Before I knew it, I was back and forth to the casino in Montreal every chance I got and then some, getting deeper and deeper in the hole, until finally …” He shrugged. “And then, as so often happens, I picked up another addiction to cover the disgust I felt. I found that there are pills. Legal pills. In the drugstore. All you need is a sympathetic doc. And hey, when you wear the collar, everybody is sympathetic to your screw-ups. Makes them feel better about their own when the clergyman goes down. Especially a doctor. They love fallen priests.” He laughed then. “I’m not being bitter about it. It’s all my own fault. From the get-go.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I said.
He held up his hand. “Say nothing. It’s all behind me now. It’s history. No more addiction. Except for the smokes. I tell them all that, but it’s like they’re waiting for more. Waiting for the big one.”
“The big one?”
“The sexual stuff.”
I shrugged, hoping he would stop there.
“But when you have my kinds of addictions, celibacy is a snap. Sex couldn’t possibly match the ecstasies I’ve experienced. Sex is for the uninspired as far as I’m concerned.”
“I suppose you’re lucky,” I said. And I realized he was watching, waiting for my disclosure. “I’ve never had the problem,” I said finally.
He stared at me and the look said, You can talk to me, and I believed him.
“I have to admit,” he said, and I assumed it was to change the subject, “now that I’ve given up on the military and the classroom, I can’t begin to imagine what your calling could be.”
“My father was a soldier once,” I said.
“There you go. I wasn’t entirely wrong. You were perhaps
ordained
to be a military man.”
 
On my second visit to Dr. Shaw, he asked me: “Have you ever had … self-destructive fantasies?”
I hesitated, then I said: “Yes.”
“But you’ve never acted on them.”
“Obviously not.”
He laughed. “I mean … no false starts, or …”
“No.”
“And do you recall the circumstances that might have inspired these … fantasies?”
“Very clearly.”
He waited. I cleared my throat.
“I struck my father once,” I said.
“You struck … ?”
“With my fist. I hit him. And he fell.” I know the trembling is obvious.
“Would you like a drink of water?” says Dr. Shaw.
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Try to go on.”
 
“I don’t think your father was ever out here,” Danny said. “He didn’t know anything about his connections. Seemed to me to be something else he didn’t want to talk about.” He laughed.
“So, what did you two manage to talk about to pass the time?”
“Well,” said Danny, scratching his chin. “He talked an awful lot about yourself. The sun rose and set on you. Yourself and your sister.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I think your father only mentioned Effie the once. In a roundabout way. Something about her being away, for a long time, not having much contact. Whatever.”
“Yes. Effie. So he didn’t talk about her?”
“No. Not that I remember.”
 
When I look back now, it seems that Dr. Shaw and I sat staring at each other for an hour, but it might have only been a minute.
“There was a misunderstanding,” I said finally.
He raised an eyebrow, professionally puzzled.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “We’ve reached the crux of my problem.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“He was fixated on my sister. I misunderstood.”
 
The panic swells until I must struggle to squeeze breath into my lungs. And discover I am sitting on a hard wooden chair at the kitchen table, face drooling on the pages of a book. A philosophy textbook. It is called
The General Science of Nature
.
A sip of water helps. Dawn is not far off.
“The incident itself was nothing. It was tied into larger matters, many of them mysteries, before my time. Something from the war.” I shrugged, hoping I’d deflected him.
I hear a floorboard creak. I just sit. Waiting. The moment has finally arrived. The shadow pauses near her bedroom door. A match flares briefly. I catch a waft of hellfire. His eye sockets appear empty as he leans into the cigarette. He draws deeply, the ember revealing a face I barely recognize. He turns toward the door.
Dr. Shaw was waiting.
“Look,” I said. “You have to understand the family situation. There was my father, my sister and me, just the three of us, no mom. Our father was damaged by something that happened during World War Two. In Holland. There was an incident. A girl was killed. The details were never very clear. But it had a lasting impact on my father and a friend who was with him at the time.”
The doctor made a note, briefly. “How was she killed, the girl?”
“A knife.”
“And your father never explained?”
“Only cryptically. Apparently she shot his friend and was about to kill him. It seems he got her first.”
“Did he ever mention why … she was … ?”
“No.”
I move quickly, grab a shoulder, slam it to the wall. Our faces are close. His face, my face. The same face. I choke on the reek of yeast and sulphur and old sweat.
What do you think you’re doing?
He is looking past me. Were it not for the cigarette, I could believe that he was sleepwalking.
He seems limp but then makes a sudden squirming move, and I feel a jolt. The anticipation of being struck. That’s how it is. I feel the blow before it happens. A gift, they said in town. I could have been a boxer. I have anticipation. I hit the closest part of the face that is his face, our face, on the jawline, and he slumps to his knees. I hear a clatter, then I see the knife near his hand and I step back, shocked in the rush of satisfied awareness. The swiftness of it. A flash.
He is making an odd gasping sound between the coughing and sobbing. I think he is going to gag. Now feeling calm, I squat beside him and carefully move the knife.
I didn’t know it was you, he says, breathing hard.
He reaches through the darkness, lays a trembling hand on my temple, fingers searching through my hair.
I see my sister standing in her doorway, hands concealing most of her face.
He sees her and jerks back.

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