“How about if somebody told him?”
“But who could . . .” Koesler did not complete the sentence. There was only one who could have told. “Rid.” Even as Koesler pronounced the name he had difficulty believing it was true. “Ridley?”
“Rid!”
“Are you sure? How can you be sure?”
Mitchell closed the suitcase and snapped the lock. “We’ve already had it out. After Cronyn pronounced sentence on me, Beth . . . oh, hell, Beth got dressed and left. Cronyn didn’t say who did it, but I was pretty sure. I found Rid in the rec hall listening to his goddam classical music. We had it out. It was Rid, all right.”
“But why? Why would he do a thing like that? I can’t believe it!”
“Why did he do it?” Mitchell obviously was fighting back tears and, as time passed, having a harder and harder time of it. “Okay. I’ll tell you . . . but you have to promise to keep it a secret.”
Koesler nodded. Briefly, he reflected that he was becoming the receptacle of a lot of secrets. He knew he would have lots of secrets to keep if he ever became a priest. He hadn’t known he would have to warm up in advance so often.
“It’s got to do with the contest,” Mitchell explained. “You probably know that I entered a play.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“And you know that Rid also submitted a play?”
Koesler thought for a moment. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay. So we both entered plays. But, the poor slob was afraid he couldn’t beat me. So he stole a play that had been written about fifteen years ago. He didn’t even bother changing very much of it.”
“He plagiarized!”
“Uh-huh. And when we exchanged plays and read each other’s I recognized the work he stole. So I confronted him and finally got him to admit it.”
“So where’s the problem?”
“He wouldn’t withdraw it from the competition.”
“They’ll discover him!”
“He doesn’t think so. Anyway he said he was going to go through with it. And I wouldn’t promise him I’d keep quiet.”
“But he was going to keep your secret today.”
“That’s the way he looked at it too. But it’s not the same thing.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he was afraid I was going to turn him in. So he decided to cut me off at the pass: If I were caught this afternoon, I wouldn’t be around to turn him in.”
“But . . . what’s the point? You could still turn him in.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. But he guessed right—at least part right. I’ll take my medicine. I gambled—and I knew it was a gamble—and I lost. Of course I wasn’t figuring on a betrayal. But you’ve got to plan for everything.” He shook his head. “I was stupid. I should’ve realized that once I was a threat to him, he might try something. It just never entered my head that . . . well, he’s won this round.
“But I’m keeping a copy of his manuscript, his plagiarism. Someday, who knows? Someday it may hurt him as much as this hurts me—to have people know that he stooped to plagiarism to try to beat me in a contest.”
“Mitch,” Koesler said, “if you don’t mind my bringing this up, your plan pretty much lowers you to Rid’s level. This sort of thing—where you hold on to revenge for what might be a lot of years—can take a lot out of your character, too. I’d rather see you turn him in now or just forget about it.”
Mitchell shook his head. “This is the way it’s going to be, Bobby. It’s the way Rid wants to play the game. These are practically his rules. I’d like him to spend the rest of his life waiting for the other shoe to fall. And I don’t plan to drop the other shoe until or unless it will hurt him the way I’ve been hurt.
“I know, I know . . .” Mitchell waved away the objection Koesler was about to make. “. . . it’s not the Christian thing to do. But sometimes you have to go back to the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. This is one of those times.
“Now, Bobby, by official decree, I’ve got just a few minutes before I’ve got to get out of here. Cronyn said by vespers. I’ll have to come back sometime and pick up my books and the rest of my stuff. But this may be the last time I’ll see you for a while.”
Mitchell offered his hand and Koesler grasped it. If they had not been schooled in the macho lifestyle they might have wept on each other’s shoulder.
It was not the first time, nor would it be the last in Koesler’s experience, that a talented young man would leave the seminary. In each case, it would cast grave doubt on his own vocation. But somehow, in some way, he would remain even as others left.
Koesler blinked several times and returned to the present. He looked around the church and again fixed on Carroll Mitchell. Beth had banked on landing him by becoming his first sexual experience. She had been mistaken.
Instead, she had become the personification of his disgrace. For, as far as Mitchell’s family was concerned, his expulsion was an unmitigated disgrace.
Ridley Groendal won first place in the contest. He had calculated correctly that no one on the faculty would tumble onto the fact that he had stolen the play. But, until the scholastic year was completed, he figuratively held his breath waiting for Carroll Mitchell to denounce him. It did not happen. But in a certain sense, Groendal never again completely exhaled. Always, somewhere in the wings, Carroll Mitchell held the proof that in the queen of arts, Ridley C. Groendal was a thief.
9
Peter Harison had just begun the second Scripture reading.
In this rather large congregation, he was just about alone in feeling a sense of loss at the death of Ridley Groendal. Thus it was not unexpected that Harison had a difficult time controlling his emotions as he read. It was one thing to sit passively while a loved one was being buried and quite another to, in a sense, have to perform. But, all in all, he was doing rather well in reading an excerpt from the Letter to the Romans.
“At the appointed time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for us godless men. It is rare that anyone should lay down his life for a just man, though it is barely possible that for a good man someone may have the courage to die. It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now that we have been justifled by His blood, it is all the more certain that we shall be saved by Him from God’s wrath.”
Father Koesler had spent considerable time selecting the three Scripture readings for this service. Brought together, as he would attempt to do in his homily, they should convey exactly the message he wished to leave with this congregation.
He could not bring himself to consider this present group as mourners. Ridley Groendal appeared to have one genuine mourner. Perhaps, counting himself, two. The others? Most of them merely the curious, though some were faithful parishioners with nothing better to do, and a few were victims of Rid’s acerbic pen who wanted to make sure their antagonist was truly dead and buried.
Finally, there were the special four, singularly selected by Groendal as targets of his distinctive venom. Koesler wondered about their present state of mind. Koesler wondered about them a lot.
Though she was extremely diminutive, Koesler was able to spot Valerie Walsh seated near the rear of the church. Locating her was really more difficult, since she was not accompanied by her pro basketball-size husband, “Red.”
In Ridley Groendal’s adolescent and adult life, there had been six pivotal characters. Five of them—Peter Harison, David Palmer, Carroll Mitchell, Charlie Hogan, and Valerie Walsh—were here. Of these, the one who seemed entirely out of place was Valerie.
Harison was what was euphemistically referred to as Groendal’s “significant other.” Beyond that, the two were fast friends. Between Groendal and the others was a free-flowing stream of enmity. Palmer, Mitchell, and Hogan had clashed with Groendal in their younger lives and ever since had figuratively been at war. But the much younger Valerie had not been a participant in any similar relationship.