“Yes, well.” Until then Joe, who’d had two Martinis (Bill only one) and more than his share of the bottle of wine, might have done without a postprandial gin and bitters. The waitress, taking his order, looked unhappy (probably a Catholic or a non-Catholic), and Bill made it worse by abstaining and was obviously waiting to hear Joe’s confession.
“Yes, well. It’s customary for a pastor to be notified when he gets a curate, or change of curates. That wasn’t done in your case — not properly. Toohey called up and said I was getting a curate, but didn’t say who. ‘Letter follows,’ he said, and I haven’t heard from him since. No letter. Nothing.”
“That’s funny.”
“Yes, but that’s how Toohey plays the game, and not just with me, though that may have something to do with it — that it’s me. So I didn’t know who you were when you showed up, and you didn’t say — you didn’t get a chance to, as it happened, which was my fault. For days, though, I’d been under a terrific strain, not knowing who was coming, or when, and that being so I couldn’t tell anybody — Mrs P., Steve, Father Felix, the parishioners (in the bulletin). A hell of a situation.”
“You should’ve called the Chancery.”
“In the beginning, yes, but I was expecting the letter from Toohey. I was also expecting you to get in touch with me. All right. I was always out when you called. But if I’d called the Chancery, you might’ve been in trouble there.”
Did Bill, drawing on his baby cigar, see, as he hadn’t before, that Joe had protected him?
“A hell of a situation, Bill, and even worse after you came. I figured you’d introduced yourself to Mrs P., and Steve, and Father Felix, because none of ’em asked me your name. I hoped to hear one of ’em mention it, but I didn’t. A hell of a situation, as I say, and it went on and on.”
“You should’ve called the Chancery, Father.”
“I told you why I didn’t.”
“After I came, I mean.”
Slowly, Joe brought the glass down from his mouth. “You mean that?”
Bill looked as though he did.
“Use your nut, Bill. Put yourself in my place. Would you call up the Chancery to find out your curate’s name—after you’d met him?” Joe shook his head, trying to understand what Bill could have been thinking. “You think just because it was all Toohey’s fault, he wouldn’t talk? It’d be all over the diocese and beyond. Father Felix would hear about it at the monastery. ‘Hear the one about Joe Hackett?’ The joke would be on me. On us. So, for God’s sake, keep this thing under your hat.”
“You should’ve just asked me.”
“Yeah? When? A couple of hours after we met? The next day? This morning? What would you have thought if I had?”
“I don’t know, but it would’ve been better than this.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know it would be like this. I was trying to save us both embarrassment. I didn’t want you to think what you would’ve — of me, of the Church, of yourself. I didn’t want you to think you didn’t matter, Bill. And I don’t want you to think that now. So don’t. This is all Toohey’s fault. God help the diocese if they don’t make a bishop of him pretty soon. He’s doing untold harm where he is now. But I guess I don’t have to tell you that, now.”
“You think he’ll be a bishop?”
“Odds on. Oh, not here. Some two-bit see. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before this. I don’t think the Arch likes him.”
“So what did you do?”
Joe was silent, thinking. They were back where they’d started, back to the phone call — it seemed unimportant now, after the embarrassing revelations. “I called someone.”
“Who?”
The waitress moved in with the check and was, for some reason, about to drop it on Bill’s side of the table.
“I’ll take that,” Joe said, annoyed with her.
“Who?”
“Look, Bill,” Joe said, annoyed with him. “I’ve told you what I can—why and how this thing happened. Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
“I realize that, Father.”
“I’m damned glad to know your name, but I’m not about to say who told me. It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I did, but to me it would. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t blame you, Father.”
“You don’t? Well, thanks. I can see how you might.” Joe dropped some bills on the check, leaving more of a tip than he might have, in case the waitress was a Catholic or a non-Catholic, and swiftly departed, Bill following him.
15. THEREAFTER
JOE STILL HAD to do practically everything — all the accounts and correspondence — and he also had to think of jobs that Bill could do, quite a job. The future looked brighter, though, with Bill making good progress in his typing. Well, fairly good progress. He had turned against his manual, his records, even his phonograph — which at first, at the end of the business day, he’d lugged up to his room to play folk (in Joe’s lexicon, “folks”), work, and protest songs on, but now, thank God, left down in his office. Bill was sweating it out these days, but so was Joe, and, really, Bill couldn’t complain. It wasn’t all business in the office area. With the door open between them, pastor and curate could carry on desk-to-desk conversation, and if the flow was more one way than the other, that was because there was so much Bill didn’t know about practically everything — procedure and policy, the parish and the community, and the world in general. Here too, Joe did what he could for Bill, mining a dozen periodicals that crossed his desk and passing them on with articles marked “Read” or “Skip.” Sometimes Joe would go over to Bill’s house just to smoke a baby cigar with him. And sometimes, Joe would put on his hat and say in the cawing voice of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (to whom Joe knew he bore a growing resemblance), “Knock it off, kid.” Bill would cover his typewriter (Joe was strict about that, as he was about not leaving the toilet seat up in Bill’s lavatory) and off they’d go in Joe’s car, the radio tuned to an FM music station for Bill. They had called at a number of rectories on business that could have been handled over the phone but wasn’t because Joe enjoyed being seen with his curate — a pleasure he’d had to deny himself until he learned his curate’s name. They had dropped in on a few parishioners, including the Gurriers — Bill enjoyed small talk, Joe didn’t. At first, maybe after a visit to the hospital or the garage (in Bill’s little car to bail out Joe’s car, a habitual offender), they’d had a meal somewhere and gone on to box seats at the stadium — until it became clear to Joe that Bill, though he’d played in the outfield on his high school team and pitched in relief, was not greatly interested in the national game. One evening, at Bill’s instigation, they had taken in a lousy foreign movie, after which Joe had stopped at a drugstore for aspirin and then, with the idea of keeping in shape, had bought a couple of catcher’s mitts and a regulation ball. Now, when free in the evenings, they went out in the yard and pitched to each other. Bill had a honey of a fast ball, but Joe could hold him — better than Bill could hold Joe, who threw what is known as a heavy ball and was rather wild. Joe’s change-up too was deceptive — as it was at such times in conversation. “You can say what you like about the Redemptorists, Bill, but don’t forget St Alphonsus Liguori is a Doctor of the Church. You wouldn’t remember Gomez. Tall like you, but frail. World of speed. With the Yanks.” Sometimes the ball, streaking back and forth between them, going pop