by Paul Theroux
He smiled at me and said, “Yoomit.” He took a hanky out of his sleeve and wiped the perspiration from his face.
It was a moment before I knew he meant humid.
He said, “You guys better light some charcoal. This is a requiem mass.”
He said “guys” and “requiem” in the same way, out of the side of his mouth. For some reason I felt he had been in the navy—he certainly looked more like a sailor than a priest, and perhaps for that reason I found him a reassuring priest.
Chicky and I brought the thurible onto the lawn outside the sacristy and put a match to the charcoal disk. The cross on it fizzed and then we took turns swinging it around until the disk was fiercely alight.
This, like ringing the bells, was another enjoyable routine of being an altar boy. During the mass the priest would sprinkle incense onto the glowing charcoal and a powerful and pungent odor would be released in billows.
I had never questioned being an altar boy. It was something that was expected and inevitable when a boy turned eleven. It was part of being a Catholic boy—an honor and a duty. And becoming a priest was also a possibility. “You might have a vocation,” my mother used to say. I hoped I did not have a vocation; I did not believe I had a choice. When my mother said, “God might choose you for Holy Orders,” I imagined something like marching orders—a beckoning finger, a stern summons—and off I’d go to be a priest, whether I liked it or not. But so far I had heard nothing.
“I’ve never seen this priest before.”
“Furty,” Chicky said. “He’s an alkie.”
“Bullshit.”
“He’s a boozehound. I can prove it.”
It was a beautiful July day, with a bright sky and a loud drone of bees on the flower beds and the clack of lawnmowers across the Fellsway. We knelt in the shade, playing with the smoking thurible, which looked more than ever like a lantern, and then we went in to the funeral.
The routine of a funeral meant waiting until the casket was wheeled into position in the center aisle, and the pews were filled. We could see this from where we now stood, two altar boys in front, priest holding a monstrance like a gold mirror against his chest.
“Let’s go,” Father Furty said, and Chicky yanked the chain to warn the congregation we were coming, and we could hear them clattering to their feet as soon as the bell sounded.
The rich aroma of flowers I always associated with death, and the incense and the beeswax candles always meant a solemn high mass and a long service. It seemed the more odors there were the longer it would all take. At this funeral there were snuffles and sobs, and one person weeping very loudly.
I was fifteen. I had never known anyone who had died: the emotion of grief was disquieting to me, but alien; yet it was no more disturbing to me than hearing someone laugh and not knowing the reason. My first funeral had bewildered me—not the idea of the body in the casket but the crying, the intensity of it—I had never heard anyone crying like that, so sad and continuous. It was always loud and pitiful, but it also seemed to me insincere, because the person was dead. But I had never known anyone who had died.
When we walked down from the altar to the center aisle and the casket, passing the hot rack of burning vigil lights, Chicky motioned for me to look at him. He was carrying the long-handled cross. He had a very ugly, rubbery, funny face—and the candlelight made it yellower. He often tried to get me laughing, especially at funerals. I faced him, to show him that I could take it without laughing. He wrapped three fingers around the shaft of the cross and shaped the word “Magoo” with his lips.
I was more likely to laugh at a funeral than in an empty church—the people screaming and sobbing only made me laugh harder. But I resisted. I was thinking about what he had told me—bare tit, hand-jobs, three fingers. “Her hole gets bigger.”
The casket was closed, but I knew what was inside: in the center of white ruffles, like a clown’s collar, was a dead old man—the pale powdered face with sunken cheeks and eyes bulging under the lids, and farther down, in more ruffles, a rosary twisted around knuckly fingers; like Walter Hogan’s Uncle Pat, whom I had seen at Gaffey’s.
We started the requiem mass. I had learned my Latin from a pamphlet that had set it out in easy-to-say spelling.
Intro-eebo ad-ahltaree-dayee ah-dayum-kwee-lah-teefeekat yoo-ven too-tem mayum.
That was how we began. It made no sense at all to me, though I knew it by heart and I could win races reciting certain prayers.
It was a sung mass—a fat lady and an organist in the choir loft—Dies Irae, dies illa!—and Father Furty intoning the Latin in a falsetto, as if he knew exactly what he was saying. Then he gave a sermon—it was about football and life and being a team player even though you knew you were alone. He said “frannick” and “sem-eye professional” and instead of aunty, “anny.” He said, “yooman beings.” I was thrilled by this. He was like a man from a foreign land.
He finished and the mass continued. The “Confee-teeyor” turned into a race between Chicky and me. Normally we tried to say it very fast, like the “Soo-ship-eeyat,” but when I saw Chicky bent over and hammering his chest at the “mayah koolpah” I decided to beat him and, swiveling and muttering, I finished first.
“I beat you,” I said, just before the consecration. We were at the side table to the far right of the altar, picking up the cruets of wine and water.
“You skipped the middle part,” he whispered.
“Your ass I did,” I hissed at him.
But he wasn’t listening. He whispered, “I’m going to prove he’s an alkie,” and tossed his head.
I looked back at Father Furty, who was coming towards us with the chalice.
Normally a priest held out the chalice to receive a little wine and water, and returned to the stand in front of the tabernacle to drink it. It was a simple operation. But today Chicky did something I had never seen before. When Father Furty extended the chalice for the wine, Chicky emptied the cruet into it—tipped it upside down until all the wine dribbled out.
The chalice trembled, Father Furty seemed to object, but too late; he let out a noisy breath of resignation, considered the full chalice, then moved it sideways for me to add the water. But he lifted the chalice before I could pour more than a few drops in. He returned to the tabernacle, and we studied him.
He straightened up, and then leaned forward and rested his elbows on the altar and glanced into the chalice, tipping it towards him like a big glass. He pushed out his lips, seeming to savor it in anticipation, and then he grasped the chalice more affectionately, shifted his weight onto his back leg, raised the cup, drank it all, and let out a little gasp of satisfaction.
He staggered a bit after that, just catching the toe of his loafer on the altar carpet, and when he was supposed to sprinkle holy water, clanged the gold rod into the holy water bucket and tossed it at the casket. By then his prayers had become growly and incoherent. There were blobs and beads of holy water on the shiny wooden lid.
Men gathered near the casket. There was a shout of pain from the congregation, and more sobbing. Then we stood at the foot of the altar and watched the casket rolled nicely on silent rubber tires towards the doorway, where summer was blazing, and there were trees and traffic.
Back in the sacristy, Chicky doused the incense and took his cassock and surplice off quickly. He said he had to run an errand for his mother. He knew he had done something wrong, and yet his last glance at me said, “What did I tell you?”
Father Furty seemed bewildered, as if he were having difficulty phrasing a question. Finally he said, “This cabinet is empty. That’s very strange.”
It was the cabinet where the mass wine was kept; but Chicky had hidden the only other bottle—before mass, when he was sneaking a drink.
“There’s a bottle in here,” I said, reaching into the cassock closet, where Chicky had put the bottle he had been fooling with.
“Ah, yes. I thought I was going mental for a minute there.”
As
he took it from me he saw the Mossberg.
“The hell’s that?”
“Mossberg. Bolt action. Repeater.”
He hoisted the bottle to see how much wine was in it.
“It’s mine,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”
He smiled and poured the wine into a glass—the wine went in with a flapping sound, bloop-bloop-bloop, purply blue with the light passing through it as if it were stained glass. And with a similar sort of sound, Father Furty drank it, emptying the glass and gasping as he had on the altar.
All this time he was smiling at my Mossberg but he said nothing more. I felt stronger—I was strengthened by his understanding; and from that moment, the period of time it took him to drink the wine, I trusted him.
As I pulled my surplice over my head I heard the sighs of Father Furty still digesting the wine. He was at the sideboard, among the vestments, in his suspenders, leaning on his elbows and belching softly.
Then he staggered back and sat down and sighed again—more satisfied gasps—and said, “Don’t go, sonny.”
I was trying to think how to get my Mossberg out of the sacristy.
Father Furty was still smiling, though his eyes were not quite focused on me. He looked very tired, sitting there with his hands on his knees. Then he grunted and started to get up.
“I’m going to need a hand,” he said. “Now put that gun down and point me in the right direction.” He was mumbling so softly he was hardly moving his lips. “Funerals are no fun,” he said.
2.
Father Furty limped beside me, steadying himself by holding on to my shoulder with his right hand and sort of paddling with his left hand. I kept my mouth shut; I was his cane. His face was redder and it was as swollen as it had been when he had knelt in the sacristy and prayed for the conversion of Russia. I had set off worrying about my Mossberg in the cassock locker, and about meeting Tina—I was already late; and worrying too about everything Chicky had said, the sex talk. But Father Furty’s big soft hand was holding down my worry and calming me—we were helping each other out of the sacristy.
Instead of going to the rectory which was only fifty feet away, we passed it, cut behind the church and down the parking lot, crossed Fulton—he was still limping: where were we going?—and headed towards a blue bungalow. It was called Holy Name House. I had never seen anyone enter or leave it, and I did not think it had any connection with Saint Ray’s.
“Easy does it,” Father Furty said. “We’re almost there.”
He seemed to be saying it to encourage me, because I was slowing down. Did he want me to follow him in? He was rather feeble, and I was sure there was something wrong with him. I did not imagine him to be drunk—after all, he had only downed one cruet of wine and less than half a bottle in the sacristy. It was not enough. No, he was sick—I was sure of that.
An “alkie” was a different kind of person altogether—the kind of crazy stinking bum that slept on Boston Common and mumbled as you passed by and always had a bottle in his hand. But even staggering and breathing hard, Father Furty had a look of understanding and authority—and I had the sense that he was both funny and friendly. He had seen my Mossberg and only smiled!
The porch of Holy Name House was screened-in and breezy but the interior of the house was very hot. The shades had been pulled down to cut the glaring sun, but the shadows looked just as hot as the bright patches. The day darkness of the house made it seem like a hospital ward, smelling of rubber tiles and clean paint and decaying flowers.
“This is where I’m staying,” Father Furty said in an announcing way that I was sure he meant as a joke. “I can’t exactly say I live here. Pretty spartan, eh?”
It was different from his mass voice, the one that had intoned the Pater Noster, and I liked it much better.
He had begun to slow down, though he was still leaning hard on my shoulder. And moving more carefully, he looked into each room as he passed it, poking the door open with his free hand and putting his head in.
“I guess we’re going to be all right.”
The house was empty, and the bright light of the summer day outside glaring through cracks in the Venetian blinds only made it seem stranger and more deserted. I was not at all afraid to be alone here with him; I was actually glad that he had chosen me to help him home—I had never been here! And I was so absorbed in this task that I had forgotten my anxiety about meeting Tina and picking up my Mossberg.
Father Furty groaned.
“I could call a doctor,” I said.
“What do doctors know about flat feet?” he said, staggering a little more.
We turned a corner. There was a mop stuck in a bucket in the middle of the corridor.
“Someone left that there for me to trip over,” Father Furty said and halted and swayed sideways.
I moved the mop and the bucket, and Father Furty continued. When he came to the last room on the right he caught hold of the doorway and hung on to it and panted, as if he had reached the end of a long struggle and was too exhausted to feel victorious.
Just then the doorbell rang.
“Let Betty get it. That’s Mrs. Flaherty. The housekeeper. Oh, bless us and save us.” He was still panting.
The bell rang again, the same two tones, stupid and insistent. I left Father Furty hanging on the door to his room and went to answer it.
A big distorted silhouette, head and shoulders, showed in the frosted glass of the front door. It was the Pastor. He scowled at me horribly when I opened the door, then he unstuck his lips and lowered his head and leaned towards me.
“What are you doing here?”
His sharp question made me uneasy and defensive; I felt instantly guilty, and uncertain of the truth. I did not know why I was here.
“Mopping the floor,” I said, because I could prove it, and I was not sure I could prove anything else. “Alone?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so.”
He always repeated what you said when he wanted to be sarcastic, and it never failed: every time he repeated something I had said it sounded stupid, and it gave me another reason for thinking I was dumb and that nothing good would ever happen to me in my life.
He repeated it again, making it stupider. I tried not to blink. Then I remembered my Mossberg in the sacristy, and I felt much worse and almost confessed to it.
“I’m looking for Father Furty,” the Pastor said. “Have you seen him?”
The last time I had seen Father Furty he had been hanging on the door to his small room and panting, “Oh, bless us and save us.” He wasn’t well, he needed protection; I knew the Pastor to be very fierce.
But instead of saying no, I shook my head from side to side. I held to the innocent belief that it was less of a lie if you did not actually say the word.
I hesitated, waiting for the thunderbolt to strike me down in a heap at the Pastor’s feet—and he would howl, “Liar!”
“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “The floor will never get mopped that way.”
I looked at the scarred rubber tiles.
“Mop it for the glory of God,” he said. “Dedicate that floor to Christ.”
When he said that, the floor looked slightly different, less filthy, and it even felt different—more solid under my feet.
The Pastor did not say anything more. He turned and left, and I realized as he went down the path that I was terrified: the thunderbolt had just missed me.
“Who was it?” Father Furty said, not sounding very interested. He was sitting heavily in his chair beside the bed, his arms on the arms of the chair, and his hands hanging.
“The Pastor.”
His hands closed and he sat up. “Where is he?”
“He went away. I told him you weren’t here.”
He settled into the chair again and smiled.
“That was a close one,” he said. “But why did you fib?”
“I thought you wanted me to,” I said, though I was very glad he had used the word �
��fib” and not “lie.”
“I thought you were sick.”
“It’s not fatal,” he said. “What’s your name, son?”
“Andrew Parent.”
“Shut the door when you leave, Andy,” he said. “God be with you.”
Then he made a little sound, like a hiccup or a sob. I left him in the hot shadows of his small room.
Tina was walking away from the bus stop as I crossed the Fells-way and when I yelled at her to come back people turned around.
“Kid’s got a gun,” someone in front of the drugstore said.
Tina said, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”
She wore a blue jersey and white shorts and sneakers and had two pony tails, one sticking out on each side of her head. Her lipstick was pink, the same shade as her small fingernails, and she fooled with a plastic bracelet, twisting it, as she looked at me.
“They’re never going to let you on the bus with that thing. You could kill somebody.”
But when the bus came, all the driver said was, “Take the bolt out of your rifle.”
“It’s out,” I said, and showed it to him.
We sat in the rear seat, listening to the shudder of the tin flap on the back of the bus. We did not talk. Tina went on twisting her bracelet. Near Spot Pond we passed the New England Memorial Hospital.
“They’re all Seventh-Day Adventists,” I said, trying to make conversation. “They don’t smoke or drink coffee. They’re not allowed to dance. They can’t eat meat. Hey, they can’t even eat tunafish!”
Tina did not say anything. I became fearful.
“Hey, are you a Seventh-Day Adventist?”
She shook her head—she did not say the word “no,” and so I wondered if she was lying. As far as I knew, she never went to any church, and I had no idea of her religion. I guessed that her mother was a protestant because she wasn’t a Catholic. Not having a recognizable religion added to Tina’s sexual attraction.
Beyond the hospital was a large gray building, like a courthouse with magnificent windows—the waterworks, on Spot Pond; and then the woods closed in. We passed the zoo and went another mile on a road that had become flatter and narrower.