“Struck ’im out!”
To a standing ovation from the all-too-loyal but ever-fair Bosox fans, he left the mound, returned the ball to its can of nails, and red of hand and face, dripping sweat, he passed through the kitchen, by the refrigerator (still pouring it on), through the study (“My!”), into the bathroom. Here he, now the aging champ surrounded by handlers, press, police, and other well-wishers (“Had the little wife make a novena for you, Father”), stripped down to nothing (“Sorry, boys, no pix”), urinated—anything to make the weight — and stepped on the scale. Something wrong with it? He turned on the bathwater full blast and sat down in it to save time (people spent what otherwise might have been the best part of their lives waiting for bathtubs to fill) and to get the benefits, if any, of hydrotherapy. He turned off the water with his toes to exercise the muscles and joints he might need to climb trees if civilization broke down completely, if there were any trees then and he was still around — the last man on earth a priest, Apostle to the Insects, if any, or business as usual. He used Dial soap, wishing everybody did, and emerged from the tub pink. He dried himself thoroughly — it was the weight of water that had kept the oceans, thank God, a mystery to man — and stepped on the scale. Something wrong with it? No, a man had a chance spiritually — it was more or less up to him — but physically, after a point, no. Still, he did feel better after he’d pitched an inning or two, enough to give him that old afterglow that only athletes know.
And so, deodorized, pink, immaculate in black and white, carrying his breviary, he passed through the study again (“Well!”), through the kitchen, and went over to the church. He chose a pew at random, knelt, and prayed. First for his parishioners, his first concern as pastor, then for his friends and relations living and dead, his enemies, if any, and then for, well, peace. The trouble was he believed that light would have to come first, that light even more than love was what was needed in the world today — light and the guts to act from it, the grace to gamble on it. Before people in general, including himself, and not just the assholes in high places (who know what people are like and profit by that sad knowledge) could lift up their minds and hearts there would have to be light. “Let there be light.” So it was simple-minded, and not just simple-hearted, to pray for peace. But since that was the form — God knew he knew better — he prayed for peace. Then he sat back in the pew and read his office. If the text suggested a line of thought, he went along with it for a bit, not counting the time entirely lost. But he no longer hoped for a breakthrough, no longer forced himself to meditate, lest God and he both be bored.
He got on with the job, but not in unseemly haste, and when he finished, he’d leave the church, but not in unseemly haste, not breaking into a run, though headed for the kitchen, the refrigerator. He’d pick up a tray of ice and carry it through the study (“Well, well”), into the bathroom, his bar, where the hard stuff was kept in the same drawer with the shoe polish (and thus kept in its place). He’d make a couple of drinks — not undoing all he’d done that afternoon to deny himself but striking a balance. (You could laugh at the old via media, but it was still the best way — it had to be watched, though, or you’d end up in a rut.) After another drink or two, after their very tasty seafood dinner, he’d drive the monk to his bus. “See you Saturday, Father.” “Okey-doke, Joe.” And that would be it for another week.
That evening, after a surprise visit—“Just a social call, we live in Silverstream, you know”—from Earl, his wife, and two of their children, Joe washed the glasses in which he’d served them all 7UP, finished the Sunday paper, read the Catholic Worker (and wrote it a check), switched the TV on and off at intervals, had a drink, two, touched it up once, twice — and all the time the likelihood that the curate would soon return got likelier and likelier.
Joe still hadn’t written off the evening when, at eighteen after eleven, the curate returned. The door to the study was open, and the pastor was clearly visible within, in his BarcaLounger, but the curate passed by without a word of greeting or explanation and could soon be heard taking a shower. When the drumming stopped, the pastor tried to get up, only to find his left foot asleep. While waiting for service to be resumed, he changed his mind about inviting the curate in for a nightcap. It was the curate’s move. The hour, though late, was not too late, and the pastor’s door was open.
To judge by the silence, though, the curate had gone to bed.
The pastor got up, shut his door, made himself a nightcap, switched on the TV, returned to his BarcaLounger.
In some respects, with the pastor sitting alone, watching an old movie, it was like all those nights he’d known before he had a curate.
In one respect, though, it would be different: the pastor, not wishing to be heard foraging in the kitchen, would go to bed hungry.
13. MONDAY
JOE HAD THE eight o’clock Mass, the curate the nine, and so they had breakfast at different times, Joe then going down to his office, the curate where?
Joe gave him a call. “Good morning. The time is ten past ten, the temperature is seventy-one, and the sun is shining.”
“That you, Father?”
“That’s right. Hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“No, I was just reading my office.”
“Read it in your office, Father, or in church. That’s what I do.”
“Where you calling from, Father?”
“I’m calling from my office. You should be in yours.”
“What’s up?”—no immediate response—“I’ll be right down.”
Joe got a nasty shock, but concealed it, when the curate appeared before him in overalls and T-shirt, saying, “What’s up?”
“What d’ya mean ‘What’s up?’? We open at nine-thirty.”
“We do?”
“As a rule. There’ll be days when you have a wedding or funeral, but as a rule you should be in your office by ten when you have the nine o’clock Mass, by nine-thirty when you have the eight. I was down here at nine today, but we open at nine- thirty.”
“For what?” said the curate.
Joe looked at him hard. “You thought your office was just a place to see people in?”
“More or less.”
“Well, it’s not, Father. That’ll become clear to you as time goes on. Meanwhile, I don’t want to see you got up like that.”
“Around the house, I thought…”
“No good, Father. No overalls.”
“Overalls? You mean jeans.”
Joe did, but wouldn’t use the word, hating the phony-cozy sound of it. “Look, Father. You may not be able to brighten the corner where you are, but why crumb it up? Why go out of your way to look bad? Everybody’s doing it, sure, but you’re not everybody, Father. You’re not an old cowhand and you’re not the boy next door. You’re a priest, and that means, among other things, you dress like one. If you’re traveling, say, and don’t want to be bothered by people, that’s different. But otherwise people have a right to know what you are. Don’t be a snake in the grass, Father. Your feet sweat, or what?”