by James A Ross
If Tom did poorly on a test, Sister Judith sent him to the rectory to review it with the new priest. Any nonsense in the schoolyard and she sent him straight to the rectory, where the new priest would have him sweep the parking lot after school, write an essay and then walk home. Nor did the special attention end when Tom left for the local public high school a few years later. Every few months, Father Gauss would invite him to stop by the rectory and give him a book he thought Tom should read, or invite him to see a play or classical music concert in the city. Over time, Tom came to appreciate the priest’s thoughtful reflections on the world around him and to enjoy his company. Father Gauss was a genuine intellectual, the first and only in Tom’s life until he entered the orbit of the Pearce family a few years later.
It never occurred to Tom to ask what Father Gauss might be getting out of the association, as his mother once did, in a strained and convoluted conversation with the priest one Sunday after Mass when Tom was thirteen. Tom got the story from his mother’s friend, Dorothy Ryan, years later.
One of the truths of parochial education, Gauss had told Tom’s mother, was that the curriculum was designed to impart basic academic and religious ABCs to the student of average intelligence. For someone as bright as her son, the glacial pace and lack of substance could be suffocating. The sad result, was that once out of the church’s academic classrooms, many of the brighter students abandoned the church itself. What he was trying to do, Gauss explained, was expose her son to a world of ideas and culture that might compete for his attention with the sex, drugs and other temptations he would soon encounter in the larger world. The same had been done for him when he was Tom’s age, and it had made an important and timely difference.
Mary undoubtedly felt she had little choice but to accept the priest’s explanation and, if true, to be grateful. But she had heard the unkind rumors, and she kept a close watch.
Luke broke into Tom’s nostalgic reverie by waving his fishing pole at a rowboat coming around the point. A hollow faced man with thin white hair sat in the middle of the boat, pulling on sun bleached oars. A solemn-faced passenger sat in the back, staring fixedly toward Pocket Island. Sensing that an intrusion might not be welcome, Tom hustled Luke up to the church and waited on the steps. From there, they could see the boat pull alongside the dock, and a slim youth with wispy sideburns jump out and stride up the hill. When the boy disappeared behind the school, Tom and Luke walked back to the dock and Tom introduced his newest friend to his oldest.
“Hello,” said the priest. “Are you a fisherman, too? Should we see if they’re biting?” Luke nodded sharply. “Thanks for making yourself scarce, Tommy. Some of my penitents are shy about being seen.”
“It might be easier if you saw them in the rectory.”
“That wouldn’t be wise in some cases. Besides, water seems to have a soothing effect on troubled minds. The stubborn ones have no choice but to sit still and listen to what I have to say, unless they want to swim home.”
The priest surrendered the oars and took the slat bench in the stern. Luke sat beside him and let the fishing lure skip behind the boat.
“So how’s your soul, Tommy?”
Tom laughed. “Restless. Though I’ve just been told it’s supposed to be.” He recounted his recent conversation with Susan Pearce and her new twist on Darwin’s old theory.
“I’ve heard that one before,” said the priest. “But it really doesn’t get at the heart of things, does it? Misses it entirely, if you ask me.”
“Go on,” said Tom, pulling at the oars. “I can’t escape.”
“All right, then. The theory, if I understand it correctly, is that temptation is nothing more than the normal operation of healthy brain chemistry.”
“So I’m told.”
“And I say, so what? It’s still temptation. We still have free will to fight it. And that’s what the whole game is about, as I’m sure you remember.”
Tom laughed. “I haven’t had time to give it much thought, Father. But speaking for myself, I find it comforting that my lust for coffee ice cream may not be an inherent flaw in my character.”
“Ah but it is! And if Miss Pearce is correct, it’s hardwired right into our brains. Imagine that! Original sin may actually exist after all.”
“They’ll burn you at the stake, if you talk like that from the pulpit.” It had been years before Tom had come to appreciate how much of a renegade Father Gauss was in his chosen field, and to understand what that must have cost him.
“Yes, that would be imprudent. But it’s interesting, don’t you think? That the devil may be with us all the time. Only he’s hidden in our genes!”
“I’ll have to ask Miss Pearce what she thinks of your twist on her research.”
“I’m sure you’ll have that chance.”
Tom smiled. “You don’t miss much.”
“And you hide very little, Tommy.” Gauss leaned forward and placed a calloused hand on Tom’s where it rested on the oar. “Now why are we out here in this boat, when we could be up in the rectory having a sip of scotch?”
Tom gestured at Luke. “Got a serious fisherman on my hands.”
“So I’ve heard. Jack Thompson’s telling your ‘one that got away’ story all over town. But you didn’t come here to go fishing. Not in this leaky tub.”
Tom saw no point in evasion. “My little brother wants to know where you were on Saturday night.”
“On my knees praying for skirt-chasers in Smokey the Bear hats.”
Tom looked at Luke, whose attention was fixed on the rod tip and the line trailing in the water. “So I can tell him to take you off his list?”
Gauss lifted his face as if seeking guidance in the wispy clouds that drifted overhead. “Does your brother’s curiosity have anything to do with the dead man fished out of this cove the other day?”
Tom nodded. “He’s checking up on everyone who was at the funeral. You didn’t go in, but you were seen outside in the parking lot.”
Gauss remained silent.
“I’m sorry, father, but there’s not much else to go on. Anything you know about the deceased could be helpful.”
Gauss leaned back and rested his forearms against the thwarts. “There may be things I know about Mr. Pearce that your brother doesn’t. But nothing that would be useful to your brother’s inquiries. Idle gossip, on the other hand, has a way of harming the innocent.”
Tom wasn’t sure what to make of the comment. “But you knew Billy Pearce,” he pressed.
“Oh, yes. His name had a habit of coming up in the conversation of certain parishioners who came to me for counseling over the years. I always suggested that they drop him. Mr. Pearce took umbrage at that advice when he heard about it.”
“What did he do?”
“Showed up at the rectory one evening… to ‘seek counsel,’ he said, ‘on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance.’ But what he really had in mind, and got, was an opportunity to come on to me in private and then make trouble.”
Tom opened his mouth and left it open.
“Oh, don’t be naïve, Tommy. It’s an occupational hazard. Comes with the territory. Pearce should just have headed into the big city and found his way there. He was too smart for the crowd he hung out with here. The pack always knows when you’re not one of them. In his pack, that could be dangerous.”
“What happened after he took offense?”
“A little trouble with His Eminence. Nothing more.”
“Did you hear from Pearce after that?”
“Nothing from him… a little about him from time to time. Tittle-tattle, mostly.”
“Like what? If you can say.”
“Like that he murdered his parents and made it look like an accident, and that he was terrorizing his sister to try to get her to agree to sell the family estate. That sort of thing.”
CHAPTER 10
Father Gauss wondered if he should have told Tommy Morgan the rest, just to be done with it. Better than having him f
igure it out for himself; and he would, with God knows what consequences. Gauss paced the Bishop’s conference room, stifling the urge to light a cigarette and blow the smoke under one of the tapestries. The Bishop’s assistant had given no reason for the summons. But it wasn’t hard to imagine what it might be. Gauss read the newspapers, and he knew he wasn’t the first to get the call.
The last time he’d been inside the Chancery had been thirty years ago on a tour for recent graduates of the diocesan seminary. It looked much the same now as it had then, except for the pox of don’t do this and don’t do that signs and the absence of ashtrays—heavy mahogany furniture, ancient oil paintings of ancient prelates, clunky metal candlesticks and cut glass bowls crammed with wilting flowers. The décor was largely unaltered since the Edwardian period of the Chancery’s construction, and the atmosphere was even older. It was feudal.
Gauss fingered a pack of menthol cigarettes and eyed a dusty umbrella stand near the framed oil of Pope Pius XII. It would have to do. Vacuuming the minty smoke into his lungs and tapping the ashes into the umbrella stand, the distracted priest sought to clear his mind. But it was an hour before anyone entered the room. A plain young woman in non-ecclesiastical black—boots, jacket, hair and lipstick—came in first. They call it Goth, he reminded himself. She dragged a luggage trolley with a couple of machines strapped to it, also black, and plugged them into an outlet beneath the conference table.
“Got a card?” she mumbled, fumbling with wires and knobs.
“A what?”
“A business card,” she elaborated.
Gauss made an impatient gesture toward his roman collar, which was as much as a card might have said had he had one.
A young man in a navy blue Brooks Brothers suit came in next and introduced himself as Francis Dolan, Special Counsel for the Diocese. Gauss wondered if “special” was a euphemism for “junior”, as the young lawyer seemed hardly old enough to vote. “Has your attorney arrived yet?” he asked.
“My what?” Gauss blurted for the second time.
Dolan allowed the question to speak for itself.
“Monsignor Marchetti didn’t say anything about bringing an attorney,” Gauss grumbled. “He didn’t say anything about a meeting with one, either.”
The lawyer folded pencil arms over a narrow torso made gaunt by the vertical piping of his shirt and suit jacket. “The Diocese is investigating allegations of priest misconduct,” he said. “You’ve been asked to appear here today to respond to several that concern you.”
“Christ!” Gauss muttered.
“Would you like to have an attorney present to represent you?”
“No.”
“Would you like to speak with Monsignor Marchetti before we start?”
“About what?”
The lawyer shrugged and turned to the girl in black. “We’ll start then, Miss Kelly.”
The Goth flexed her lacquered nails over the keys of the steno-machine. The lawyer removed a thick accordion folder from the briefcase at his feet. “I’m going to start with some background questions,” he began. “Your education, parish postings and so on.”
Gauss looked toward the open window and caught a whiff of burning leaves. He wondered what would happen if he got up and lit a cigarette. Offer it up for the souls in Purgatory, if there is such a place.
While the young attorney cross-checked dates and degrees, Gauss stifled a mounting urge to get up and walk out. He understood why they had to do it, but there was a miasma of witch-hunt about the whole procedure that made the remains of his breakfast churn.
When the legal inquisitor had finished with the brown folder, he picked up a yellow one. Gauss wondered whether the distant smell of burning leaves had anything to do with the cigarette he’d flicked out the window earlier.
“I’d like to take you back to the time you were at St. Agnes,” Dolan said.
“My first parish,” said Gauss. “I taught Philosophy at the Seminary before that.”
“Do you remember a parishioner there named Francis Anderson?”
“No.”
“He would have been about eleven years old back then.”
“What year was that?”
“Nineteen sixty-eight.”
“That was a busy year. I did a lot of draft counseling back then. Miraculous how pious some of my parishioners became once they turned eighteen and got their draft numbers.”
“Mr. Anderson says that you touched him in the sacristy.”
Gauss rolled his eyes. “My anatomy is a little rusty, Counselor. Is that above or below the belt?”
The Goth giggled.
Dolan snapped, “This isn’t a joke, Mr. Gauss.”
“Father Gauss,” Gauss snapped back. He lifted his chin toward the handwritten document beneath the lawyer’s folded hands. “Is that a letter from Mr. Anderson?”
“It is.”
“Looks like it was painted by Van Gogh. It’s recent, I take it.”
The lawyer ignored the probe.
“Thought so,” said Gauss. “With a psychiatric hospital for a return address?”
“The protocol here, is that I ask the questions,” said Dolan, “and that you answer them.” He turned a page in the yellow folder and squared another document. “Do you recall a Kevin Burke? St. Bartholomew’s, nineteen seventy-one.”
“No.”
“He says you molested him on a camping trip.”
“I’m a city boy, Counselor. I’ve never been camping in my life. Perhaps Mr. Burke’s troubled mind has confused me with a scout master.”
Dolan turned another document. “Timothy Ruark. St. Francis, nineteen seventy-nine.”
“Him, I remember. But it was the father who was the wacko.”
“He says you molested him, too.”
“Says?”
“Yes.”
“Then someone’s pulling your leg. Timothy Ruark took his own life twenty-five years ago. I said the funeral service. The father pitched a fit that it wasn’t a High Mass.”
The attorney fumbled the next few papers but continued doggedly. “Kevin McCarthy? Saint Francis, nineteen eighty-two?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Patrick O’Hara, Saint Agnes, nineteen sixty-nine?”
“Another wacko. Mr. O’Hara asked me to go with him to his draft board hearing. When the board didn’t buy his cockamamie pacifist act, he seemed to think it was my fault.”
“He says you molested him, too.”
“A prison letter I suppose.”
“You know that?”
“Mr. O’Hara’s habit of fabricating grievances didn’t stop when he got drafted. Unless the army has started paroling pacifists who shoot their officers, I assume he’s still there.”
“And if he is?” Dolan pressed. “Does incarceration mean his accusations are unreliable? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It means he reads the newspapers. And that he keeps bad company.”
Dolan continued to turn pages and documents, but Gauss’ answers were all of a piece.? Either he didn’t recall, the evidence was suspect or the accuser nuts. But it took nearly an hour for the diocesan lawyer to work through the entire file, and Gauss could sense that the young man found it unlikely that they could all be making it up. But he waited until the session was over and the lawyer had begun to pack away his files before launching his counter.
“Are you a criminal lawyer?” he asked when Dolan paused in his packing.
“Insurance defense.”
“Ah, yes. I can see how the church must be needing your services these days. But you’re a member of the bar, are you not?”
“All practicing attorneys are required to be.”
“And there’s an attorney disciplinary body that hears complaints from disgruntled clients?”
“There is.”
“And would you happen to know if that disciplinary body receives more complaints, say, from clients of criminal defense attorneys, than it does from clients of insura
nce lawyers?”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“Any guess?”
“No.”
“But you see the point.”
Dolan snapped his briefcase closed. “I didn’t know you were making one.”
Gauss’s gray-flecked brows compressed into one. “Then let me make it clear for you, Counselor. Specialist practices attract special clients and troubles. You with me so far?”
The church attorney moved his head from side to side like a bobble-head doll.
“Your friend, Bishop Mczynski, has what you might call a fund-raising practice. His clients are well-heeled contributors and their troubles, if any, are financial. They don’t become his. Your colleagues in criminal defense, on the other hand, have clients that are not only morally challenged, but emotionally damaged as well. My point is that the criminal defense lawyers who serve such troubled people no doubt have complaint files a lot thicker than the ones for their peers in insurance defense.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Dolan.
“But you see the sense of it.”
Dolan shrugged.
“I don’t have Bishop Mczynski’s gift for fund-raising,” Gauss persisted. “My specialty is counseling troubled teenagers. They come with problems, not cash; and their problems aren’t spiritual. Their lives are messed-up. They come from broken homes. They’re depressed or schizophrenic, but their families don’t believe in mental illness and refuse to get them treatment. Or they’re gay and trying to come to terms with that in a church that labels them sinners.”