The Bishop's Man

by Linden MacIntyre

  “Between the mill and the pensions everybody seems to get nowadays … people seem comfortable. They don’t really need me. Maybe if you were looking to cut back …”

  He stood then, stretched and walked around from behind the desk. Sat in the empty chair beside me. Sighed. Told me parish work is organic, you end up doing what they want you to do, no matter how hard you try to get things going. They get resentful if you get too pushy. If you’re doing nothing and they aren’t complaining … be thankful. It means they need nothing. You can wear yourself out worrying about it, he said. Ministry is about other people’s needs. I know you need to be engaged. But your needs are secondary now.

  “At the end of the day, we’re public servants.”

  I was nodding, as if reassured. I told him I’d attempted to target the youth. Get some kind of organization started for them.

  He raised a hand, smiling, shaking his head.

  “That was a brave idea. But your timing is bad. Keep your distance from the young ones for the time being. No point asking for trouble. Safest place to focus is the Right to Life crowd. Or the charismatics. I know they’re active down there. Can’t do any harm there. Everything is black and white for them. The priest is god.”

  He stood and stared out through a window. My mind raced with items from an agenda I’d been memorizing on the drive over. Now I felt confused. I thought: I don’t know him anymore.

  “Why don’t we just cut to the chase here,” he said suddenly. “I heard about the little fracas last summer. How you got caught in the crossfire … between a couple of young scrappers at a social function.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Happens to the best of us. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “Trust me,” he said. “I hear everything.”

  I laughed.

  “I get the impression that, in your own mind, there might be some connection between the fracas and that Hawthorne suicide. I gather he was one of the boys involved … am I right? And that young O’Brian.”

  I nodded.

  “Where is he now, by the way?”

  “Travelling.”

  “People will invent their own narratives. It’s what they do for their own mental health. Especially around here. They figure things out to suit their needs.”

  “But in that case—”

  He raised his hand. “You have to keep your perspective. I suspect the narrative could be a lot worse, from our point of view. Young fellow loses control, strikes a priest. Suffers irreversible remorse. Loses his mind. Bang. He’s gone. There could be a worse scenario.”

  I studied the crucifix above the desk, struggled to stay silent.

  He looked at his watch then brightened. “Well, look at this. It’s noon.” Would I like a dileag? A little nip to cheer me up. He was trying out a new malt. Highland Park. Had I ever heard of it?

  No.

  We were on our second when he caught my hand. Was there anything else bothering me? Anything in particular? “A parish can be a lonely place,” he said.

  “Loneliness has never been a problem for me.”

  He smiled. “I want to tell you a little story. A little narrative about myself.” He sipped and continued to grasp my hand. “Some people will always misunderstand. Accidentally on purpose.” He was looking off into the distance. “I was a young fellow at Sacred Heart and there was a cook … years and years ago. A lovely country girl from Boisdale. Full of the devil and full of the Gaelic. I was pretty fluent then myself. We were always making fun of the old fellows behind their backs. She was hilarious.”

  He was shaking his head now, smiling dreamily. “Once, they caught us laughing in the kitchen. She was leaning on me. That was all. We were holding each other up, the way you do when you’re weak from laughing. There was nothing improper. Just laughing after some mimicry of hers. I think she might have had her hand on my shoulder.”

  He wiped at his eyes. “There was hell to pay. You can’t believe the fuss they made. The bishop got involved. Old Bishop John R., God rest him.”

  I was watching his face closely. There was a strange movement in the pit of my stomach. His eyes were damp.

  He stood abruptly and said, “I wasn’t getting at anything in particular. But it’s a good little story, eh?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fortunately, it had a happy ending.”

  “Oh?”

  “She married somebody else.”

  “Somebody else?”

  “Did I say ‘somebody else’?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, well,” he said, studying the floor.

  At the door I asked: “And where did the cook finally end up?”

  “Ah. The marriage didn’t work out. The groom was a war vet. A bit damaged. Last anybody heard of him, he was in the Detroit area. She’s still around, though. She raised a couple of fine kids, I hear.” He was rubbing his chin. “I don’t expect my priests to be saints. I expect them to be men. But strong men. Right? A priest who is not a strong man is a sad case.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re never tested beyond our capabilities. If we fail, well, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.”

  He hugged me warmly, held me a couple of seconds longer before pushing me away. “I’ve never been much for hugging men. Hugging is mostly for foreigners and phonies. But you’re like my own flesh and blood. We’re family. Do you know what I’m saying?” For a moment I thought he was watering up again. But he laughed suddenly and punched my shoulder. “You’re going to be all right.”

  Stella seemed to be surprised when I told her: I think the bishop is worried about us.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “It’s the impression I got. Someone here is gossiping.”

  “Everyone here is gossiping. It’s how they deal with boredom.”

  {21}

  January storms out, February swaggers in full of bluster and hostility. People disappear into homes and cars, invisible behind frosted windows. Cars and trucks are clouded perpetually in mysterious vapours. Shapes move inside shapeless winter clothing. People become their boots and coats and hats. Communication reduced to recitation, age-old commentary on the weather. Wicked cold. Snow like in the old days. The wind. St. Georges Bay a vast white plain of drift ice from causeway to the horizon. Dark dots visible through binoculars. Seals floundering. Men on Sundays shooting them for sport.

  The Sunday Mass crowd dwindled as the very old and the young found reasons to stay home. The bishop had suggested that I take a break, skedaddle. Maybe he was right, I thought. Maybe I should break away. They could go to Mass in town. That’s where they were mostly going before my arrival, during the hiatus. Chisholm owes me. He could cover for me. Stella recommended the Florida Keys. Or maybe I’d like the Dominican Republic, where she knew of a condo I could have for free. Just a week, she said. It makes all the difference.

  March break, she threatened. She was making plans to go.

  “I might go with you,” I replied. Joking.

  “Why don’t you,” she said. Seriously.

  Right.

  † † †

  Young Donald O’Brian was phoning home once a week from Korea. The trip was doing him a lot of good. Nothing like distance to give perspective, Bobby O. said wisely.

  Young Donnie was figuring maybe Toronto when he finished up. Not sure what he’d do there, but we pray, Bobby said.

  “He’ll make a great priest,” I said dutifully.

  A Wednesday night late in February, I came home from a card game at the O’Brians’ to find the glebe alight. There was a car parked in front and, beside it, the red truck that belonged to Sextus.

  They were sitting in the living room, laughing, drinks in hand.

  Pat looked up, a bit awkwardly but unabashed. “Look what I found on your doorstep.”

  “Obviously you forgot,” Sextus said.

  “Forgot what?” I said, trying
to remember.

  “That I was coming by for a visit.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “And who should I bump into …”

  “I wanted to drop by to talk about a date for the baptism,” Pat said. “Now they want to wait until the summer.”

  “Summer sounds just fine,” I said.

  “Let me get you a drink,” Sextus said, rising quickly.

  And at that I had to laugh.

  This, I thought when they were gone, is how it should be. Friendships should fit comfortably, merging and disengaging and flowing independently and at the same time interdependent, part of an unconscious choreography.

  Alfonso knew. He was smiling through my anguish. She told me herself, unasked, in Puerto Castilla, he said. Actually, you walked in when she was in the middle of telling me. She was upset. She doesn’t know where this is going.

  That makes two of us, I said. But don’t worry. Don’t turn it into a big deal.

  But if you hurt her … I’ll kill you.

  He was still smiling, but the eyes were serious.

  She’s very, very vulnerable, he said. Did she tell you about the crazy husband?

  Husband?

  Estranged. But crazy as … what do you call it? A shithouse rat. In the FAES. The army, back home in Salvador. Anyway, it’s between the two of you and God. Just be careful.

  Can we talk some more?

  Of course, he said. All you want.

  But there was a knock on the door. And through the glass I could see two policemen waiting.

  MacLeod called again in March.

  “I don’t know where to go with this,” he said. “I thought I’d run it by you. Did you by any chance hear anything about a letter?”

  “Letter? There was a brief suicide note with the body. Basically … just four words.”

  “Yes, I know about that. But I’m hearing that there was something else. Something more explicit.”

  I said I’d ask around.

  His voice went cold. “Father. No disrespect intended. But I’m not going to be fobbed off this time.”

  “I hear you.”

  Stella’s call was innocent enough. An invitation to share some leftovers. Perhaps a glass of wine. It had been weeks since I’d seen her. Not since the bishop.

  She said she was avoiding hard liquor for Lent but that I was free to help myself. I declined. Solidarity, I said.

  A glass of wine with the meal, then, she offered. Wine being food.

  The night was sharp with frost. Through the fields the walk to her place takes twenty minutes. I needed exercise, I thought, setting out. And there was a secondary thought: leave the car at home, no point advertising.

  Crystals crunched beneath my feet. My head was light with freshness. Before I crossed the pool of light in her driveway, I looked around. Guilty reflex.

  There was a car on the mountain road, parked in darkness. Parked where I’d never seen a car before. I hesitated, felt a throbbing uneasiness. Perhaps I saw a movement inside the vehicle. A shadow within a shadow. Time seemed to stop, a strange heaviness suffocated thought. Then a sudden flare of light inside the car, a match held briefly to a cigarette, and then the pulsing glow. I started running toward it, propelled by an unexpected rage.

  The car leapt forward. Ignition, power transmission, tire traction, gravel rattling: all one guilty, panicked reflex. I was at the end of the driveway when the car flashed by. I reached out, mindless, touched the metal of a door, hand bounced back. But I saw the profile.

  William?

  “You’re dreaming,” Stella said.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  She laughed gaily. “Half a dozen I could name. Silly old bachelors from around. They all have crushes on me. Totally benign. It couldn’t have been Willie. Come on, now. Let me pour a glass of wine. Lighten up.”

  “I’ve been trying to avoid the demon,” I said, somewhat reassured. “It’s Lent, you know.”

  “The demon?” She laughed. “Isn’t that a Protestant concept?”

  I followed her to the living room. She sat on the sofa. I sat opposite her, in an easy chair.

  I asked about Danny Ban.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “You don’t know Danny as well as I do.”

  “What about closure? I thought people in your line of work were big on the idea of closure.”

  “Now you’re mocking me,” she said, laughing.

  “I’m serious,” I said, and suddenly I was.

  She was studying me as if I’d revealed a new part of myself, and the look encouraged me.

  “I want to ask you about something,” I said. “Did you know there was a reporter asking questions about Danny’s death?”

  “No.”

  “I had a call from him. He was asking about a letter Danny wrote … before he … before the day he died. Something that spelled things out. Explicitly, the reporter said.”

  “Explicitly.”

  I waited.

  She smiled and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit here,” she instructed, like a mother. I stood, crossed the floor and sat beside her. “Here’s to the future,” she said, touching our glasses. “Happier times.”

  “Happier times,” I said, wondering.

  She sipped, reflecting. “This letter? The one the reporter asked about?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t exist.”

  “It was supposedly—”

  “It’s a fantasy. Certain people have an aversion to the obvious. The truth sits there, plain as can be. Because it’s obvious, they assume it’s false. The real truth, for some strange reason, always has to be … obscure. Reporters are the worst when it comes to that.”

  I pulled back.

  “You saw that movie a few years ago … the Oliver Stone movie about Kennedy?”

  “No.”

  “I was still in Toronto. Everybody was going on about it. The big conspiracy.”

  I said I’d read something.

  “All crap. I’ve read everything about Kennedy. I’m an expert.” She set her glass down on the coffee table, then caught the front of my sweater and pulled me toward her. Her eyes were searching. “It’s time to think about life.”

  I agreed.

  “Dwelling on tragedy is a waste of life. An abuse of the good things we get from the Almighty or destiny or whatever. That’s your field.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “No. You don’t mean that,” she said, smiling, giving my sweater a playful tug. “Don’t put me off. I mean it. Love life. Experience it. We’re only here for a short while. We’ll be dead forever.” Our faces were then just inches apart. “Forget about the losers and the misfits. All the Williams. Are you listening? Come on.”

  She stood and I stood with her, a sudden fear-touched ecstasy causing unsteadiness, but she was holding me then, arms tight around me, face pressed against my neck. “This is what life feels like,” she murmured. “Life should feel warm and safe.”

  Then she looked into my eyes and smiled softly, and kissed me lightly on the lips.

  “You can spend the night,” she said.

  “Happiness grows from the unity of heart and soul.”

  “That’s nice,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “What you just said.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, the electric ecstasy now replaced by a dull sorrow.

  “Just stay the night. It doesn’t have to be anything heavy. I just need …”

  She didn’t finish. I realized I was supposed to understand. But I didn’t.

  “I have to do a lot of thinking,” I said.

  “I’m not asking for ideas. I just want to watch you fall asleep again.”

  “Again?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything improper, you know.”

  “I know. But just let me take things at my own pace. Please.”

  “Sure,” she said. And smiled. And made it even worse.

  When I was leaving,
she held me at the door. “Your friend. Alfonso. You told me … how he died. Don’t you remember? You told me at Christmas.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Did they ever find out for sure? Who killed him?”

  Her face became blurry suddenly. I had difficulty breathing.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I sat staring at the bay until it turned a dull silver colour in the morning light.

  I woke suddenly to the relentless knocking, instantly alert to multiple circumstances. Through an open corner of a window, the cars were dense around the church. An empty bottle. A glass on its side near my foot, carpet still damp. Whisky reek.

  Life. Death. Closure. Misfits. Willie.

  Am I a misfit too?

  Knocking on the kitchen door.

  “Ye-ess.”

  Scrambling now.

  The child’s voice. Am I ready?

  Ready for what? Shit. It’s Sunday again.

  “Yes. Yes. I’ll be right there.”

  Sunday morning and I forgot again?

  The first reading. Paul to the Corinthians. Hard to get through. About charity. Charity is patient, is kind; charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up …

  The words seem loaded with mockery. Could they hear the hypocrisy in my voice? Somewhere else in Corinthians Paul assures me that purity is power, the freedom “to attend upon the Lord without impediment.” Fine for Paul, I thought. Paul the Pharisee, who saw the light and laid down the law for the rest of us. Thanks, Paul.

  I could hear the sound of my own voice, empty of conviction, intoning the mandated reading for the day. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child. But when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

  Am I really a man?

  And in the Gospel, Jesus restored sight to the blind man. I wonder if he ever cured a hangover.

  God forgive me.

  Chastened, I spun a spontaneous and mercifully short homily about spiritual blindness. How the Resurrection restored our sight so that we might know the truth. Only after we embrace the truth does our redemption become possible. Truth and redemption. Codependents.

  I studied the captive faces before me, momentarily restored by a passing sense of purpose before the dread returned.