The Lords of Folly

by Gene Logsdon

  “What it comes down to,” Banana said, pointing the open end of his Royal Bohemian at Danny in the Western Range where they had stopped on their way back to the seminary from the university, “is that we’ve got a choice to make. We can either play baseball or we can become priests.”

  Silence. Swig. Swig.

  “Maybe it’s not either-or,” Danny said, influenced greatly by the beer. “Maybe we can be priests and play professional baseball too.”

  “Are you outta your mind?”

  “Think about it. If you can be a scripture scholar and a priest, or a writer and a priest, why the hell not a baseball player and a priest?”

  Swig. Swig. Well, why the hell not? Actually, it was just as logical. Like Hildy said, if Babe Ruth had been a priest, look at the good he might have accomplished for the Church.

  “We’ll just go to Robert and say we want to start a travelling team of Josephians. We’ll preach the good word before and after the games. Like—what are those guys who play basketball?—yeah, the House of David.”

  “And when Robert says no, then what?”

  Swig. “We’ll call his bluff. We’ll say either we play ball or we’re outta here.”

  “Oh, God, Danny, are you serious?”

  “I always thought I was born to play ball and now that I’ve made Minnesota’s roster, I know it. God’s telling me something. I’ll play ball in the Order or I’ll play ball outside the Order.”

  “Oh, Danny, are you sure?”

  “Do you know that Blaze is quitting? He didn’t tell me in so many words, but I’m sure of it.”

  “And Fen’s gone,” Banana added, agreeing with the direction of Danny’s remarks. “And what in the world is going to happen to Gabe?” He paused. “Well, if the gang is splitting up, I guess I’m for splitting too.”

  Prior Robert thought, in a community full of preposterous people, that he had now heard a suggestion so preposterous that it could not be topped in the annals of preposterous thought. He just sat in his office chair for awhile, staring stupified out the window. But he had to answer.

  “Oblate Daniel, am I hearing you correctly? Are you serious in thinking that the Order would allow the SBDC Boys to travel around the country and play baseball as their mission in life?”

  “It would only be during the summertime. Not that big a deal. I think we could be as effective in spreading the word of God this way as any other. And bring in a lot of candidates for the Order.”

  “And we’d surely make more money than the priests do from saying Mass and hearing confessions in weekend parish work,” Banana added. “People would pay a lot to see a team of monks beat the best of their local boys.”

  Prior Robert stared out the window again. “Why me, Lord,” he finally said. Actually what alarmed him even more than the seminarians’ naivete was the fact that he thought the most preposterous idea of all time was actually a fairly good idea.

  “Look, Prior,” Danny continued, “it is a rare thing when you have a dozen really good ballplayers together at one time in a seminary. Isn’t that a sign from God that we are supposed to do something with that talent? Remember what the gospels say about not hiding one’s talents under a bushel. Banana and I have gotten on the roster at the university. Doesn’t that tell you something?

  “Look what Mendel did and he was a monk,” Banana interposed. “There’s a priest somewhere I just read about who’s trying to get elected to Congress. Is running the base paths any crazier than running for political office?”

  Prior Robert broke into zany laughter. He was losing control. After all these years, he was losing control. Tears came to his eyes as he continued to laugh uncontrollably. Danny and Banana had never seen him this way. No one ever had.

  “The thing of it is, boys, it’s a damn good idea,” Robert said, now laughing more shrilly than Oblate Blaise ever did. “It’s one helluva great idea.” He bowed his head into his arms on the desk, trying to calm himself. “That’s the hell of it.” The two seminarians glanced at each other fearfully. The Prior never used crude language. And they would never have dreamed that he would think their hairbrained idea was a good one.

  Finally Robert straightened up. “You really do have a good idea, I want you to understand, but way, way, way ahead of our time. Surely, surely you realize that it is never going to happen. You want to give the Pope a case of irritable bowel syndrome?”

  Danny and Banana giggled. Prior Robert was an okay guy after all. And they’d never suspected it. So the next part of their proposal became even more difficult.

  “We kind of figured that the answer would be no,” Danny said. He took a deep breath. “We want to seek dispensation from our vows. We want to quit the seminary.”

  “To play baseball?” The Prior could not believe his ears.

  “It’s as good a reason as any I’ve heard,” Banana said. “You want us to say we want to get married? Or we want to go in business and make a lot of money? I mean what is a good excuse for leaving the Order?”

  Prior Robert again buried his head in his hands. “By God, I told them this would happen,” he muttered, again startling the two seminarians. Then his tone changed to one of pleading. “I think you need time, a lot of time, to think this over,” he said.

  “We’ve thought about it seriously for three months.” Danny said. “When we made the university team, we decided that was as plain a sign from God as any we’re likely to recieve. We aren’t going to change our minds unless we can start a travelling Josephian team.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The one person who did not laugh hysterically over Danny’s and Banana’s baseball folly was Melonhead, who did not care a fig about baseball. He did not laugh because a team of ballplaying priests was much more ridiculous, by comparison, than his own proposal. He asked Prior Robert for a meeting. Robert did not appear apprehensive, but it was not because he assumed Melonhead’s proposal would be saner than playing baseball. It was just that, after Danny and Banana, he was beyond apprehension.

  “Do we have to sell Ascension?” Melonhead began after he sat down in Prior Robert’s office. “What do you think about turning it into a Center For Herbal Medicine and Homeopathy? That’s kind of what it was before except for rich people and now it would be for poor people.” No sense beating around the bush.

  “Homeopathy? Isn’t that stuff mostly discredited by now?”

  “Not any more so than the belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin or the Ascension of Christ. If you’d like, I can get Dr. Armbuster to give you a proper evaluation. Herbal medicine and homeopathy have been maligned without justification. The medical establishment is opposed because it fears that it would lose money if people turned to the cheaper cures herbalists can offer or concoct for themselves. Researching the possibility of low cost, do-it-yourself medicine is a perfect project for a mendicant order like us. It should be part of our mission. There’s hardly anyone doing research in these areas because this kind of medicine doesn’t show the profit potential to justify the cost of development. Working without pay, a cadre of priest-healers supported by the Order, by the donations that the laity gives to us, is right in line with mendicant philosophy.”

  Prior Robert rubbed the back of his neck. Lately it had started to hurt. It hurt now because he knew that Oblate Mel was perfectly correct but didn’t have a chance.

  “I know an herb that can soothe that pain in your neck,” Melonhead said. “In fact I’ll wager that if you soaked in a tub wrapped in heated Mudpura peat, you’d get rid of it for a while.”

  Prior Robert laughed. “I’m afraid the pain in my neck can’t be cured,” he said pointedly. “It’s not really my pain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that the Provincial, let alone the Minister General, is not going to allow you to do this. Even if you wanted to start a regular hospital and staff it with Josephian doctor priests, you’d be turned down because, well, we’ve just made this enormous commitment to train priests to staff li
beral arts colleges. Even if the Order wanted to do what you suggest, which it never would, it would involve resources we don’t have.”

  “But alternative education is exactly where Josephians should be working, not in regular universities. There’s plenty of people to do that work. We should be doing things outside the accepted intellectual sphere, out on the ramparts of human endeavor. This is where new discoveries come from. And it would not take a big commitment of money. Gabe and I are the only two who are really interested right now, and maybe Clutch, and that’s enough for the time being. After ordination, we can still do priestly work in the parishes on weekends.”

  What Robert said next he had not known was in him to say. “Look, Mel, you surely know the Order is not going to go along with this. We don’t have any revolutionaries at the helm any more. That’s what’s wrong with the Church. It’s still got its nose in the Divine Office, inhaling and exhaling psalms. What you want to do is noble and good, but you want the old tired Order to pick up the tab. That isn’t going to happen. You have to go on your own. With your persuasiveness, you can raise the money from private sources. You don’t need the Order, don’t you see?”

  Even as he finished his little exhortation, Robert realized that what he was saying could be interpreted as telling Oblate Mel to leave the Josephians. What he meant to say was that Mel should carry on his herbal research as a sort of spare time hobby away from more traditional priestly assignments. He started to clarify himself but stopped. What the hell. He had fought against closing Ascension to the point that he knew he was losing every chance of further administrative position within the Order, which was fine with him. Serves his superiors right. Let them kill the idea of religious communities in the world but not of the world.

  Melonhead left the meeting in radiance. All this and maybe Dr. Armbuster too.

  The Prior had hardly recovered from Melonhead’s proposal when he was hit by another just as astounding, but this time one that the Provincial would welcome.

  Blaze sat down heavily in the office and looked at the Prior a long time before saying anything. Robert thought that Oblate Blaise looked somehow old today.

  “I kept my promise to you,” Blaze said. “I did not tell anyone about the closing before it was announced.”

  Robert nodded gravely.

  “Now I want to propose something that you have to promise me you will tell no one but the proper authorities until I’m gone.”

  “Gone?” Prior Robert’s voice quavered.

  “I want to go to Rome to complete my studies.”

  A hand grenade exploding on his desk would not have blown Robert’s mind farther away. He gasped. The ways of God were wondrous indeed.

  “What’s gotten into you?” he said. “First the university and now Rome.”

  “It’s a long story that you don’t want to know about,” Blaze said, his face flinching. “I’ve looked at all the options. I got handed my deck of cards when I was a kid barely out of grade school and I’m playin’ ’em out. The sonsabitches are breaking up the Sonuvabitchin’ Davy Crockett Boys, and my world with it and I don’t see anything else interesting on my horizon.” He could say “sonsabitches” now to the Prior or anyone else without fear. He no longer felt fear inside his little world, but only outside it. He was going to Rome under the pretext that he was still bound in conscience to the regulations and traditions of the Church. But his real objective was to go to Rome to overturn those regulations and traditions so that future SBDC Boys would have the kind of homelike community and security that was essential to the creative impulses that infuse all humans but which were in danger of being destroyed by the desire for money. Or so he rationalized. The future Josephians might turn out to be fighter pilots. Or whiskey distillers. Or homeopathists. Or any damn thing that promised to help poor people have what only rich people could pay for. And he might see how far he could push his Eleven Theses too. If he were a genius, as his superiors claimed, then by God he would now outwit the whole goddam college of cardinals and make Gabe the Pope. He was, in short, fantasizing again, but this time to keep his heart from breaking because of Marge Puckett.

  Prior Robert’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Living in an Italian seminary is not going to be what I know you consider a happy life,” he said. “What assurance do we have that you will persevere?”

  “What assurance do you have that anyone will persevere doing anything, anywhere? And what about all the people with assured perseverence who up and croak or get killed or waylaid by wine, women and song. I can’t give you an assurance other than my word and my word is probably not trustworthy past next Monday.”

  “Oblate Blaise, you are sounding rather bitter. Has something happened I should know about? Are you doing this because Danny and Banana and Melonhead have disturbed you deeply?”

  Blaze laughed. “I wish it were that simple. We’re all nuts, Robert.” For the first time he did not say Prior Robert. This was the new Blaze who had nothing to lose. If they wanted him to go to Rome because he was their pet genius, then they by God could just humor him a little.

  “It is true that we had hoped you would want to go Rome to complete your studies. But your present attitude is not promising. I will talk to the Provincial. In the meantime, I will not utter a word.”

  After Blaze left, Robert slipped a piece of stationery in his typewriter, and began typing:

  Dear Herb:

  Can you come here at the earliest date. I have a mutiny on my hands.

  But first, the good news. Oblate Blaise …

  Fr. Abelard, stone sober for two months now, could not keep up with the pace of unexpected events that were crashing along toward some climax that he felt sure was to be momentous beyond anyone’s imagination. He had to resort to pencil and paper and keep lists:

  1. Ascension closing. Looks like Knights of Columbus interested in buying for a retirement home.

  2. Oblates Daniel and Bartholomew quitting to play baseball. Doesn’t make sense unless they fell for a couple of girls at the university.

  3. Oblate Mel turned down on request to pursue herbal medicine. Rumor is that he is sweet on some doctor. Can’t confirm.

  4. Poor Oblate Luke is worried that he isn’t going to Rome after all. Says he senses something in the air. Says that Robert not acting right about it. Says that Oblate Blaise is looking at him with even greater pity than usual if that’s possible. I tried to assure him and he told me to screw myself with one of my rejuvenated light bulbs. This kind of audacity bears watching. Guess he wasn’t fooled by those light bulbs after all. Just trying to seduce me.

  5. Sneaked down to barn when no one was around and found that Oblate Mel’s laboratory has disappeared. A mystery.

  6. Oblate Blaise not going to see Oblate Christopher at the lake as much as previously. He is acting strange. He cut his classes short at the university. Something here I can’t figure out.

  7. Oblate Gabriel almost flunked my easiest test. Robert is going to send him to psychiatrist.

  8. Late flashing news: Something amazing must have happened at Lake Wassermensch. Don’t know what yet, but Oblate Gabe came back from lake with liveliest look on his face I have seen all winter and went straight to the prior’s office. I tried to eavesdrop from Alexus’s room but couldn’t hear anything.

  CHAPTER 32

  Marge Puckett stared in astonishment at her father. Then slowly the disbelief turned to anger and the anger to rage.

  “You have sold the farm? You have sold our land? And not said one word to me? Don’t you understand this is my home?”

  George Puckett fidgeted and tried to avoid her glare. “But hon, don’t you see. You will inherit enough money to do whatever you please in life. You won’t have to work so hard like mother and me have had to do.”

  “What I please to do in life is to work hard like you and Mother have. Don’t you care about what you have established here? Don’t you want to keep it going? I do.” She rushed from the house, slamming the door behind
her so hard the window cracked. She did not look back, running towards the fields, sobbing and berating herself in turn. The pastoral world that she had so carefully fashioned in her mind for her future was not to be. Money truly was the root of all evil, just like Blaze said. It made people go crazy, just like Blaze said. Halfway back to the lake, she changed directions. Wait till Al hears this, she thought. He will be even angrier.

  Al was milking when she walked, breathless, into his barn. “Something terrible has happened,” she said. “Daddy sold our farm.”

  To her surprise, Al only nodded. He knew.

  “We sold ours too,” he said. “Some big development coming in. Bought up a couple thousand acres. We’re rich.”

  “Aren’t you angry?” she asked, unwilling to see what was so plain to see.

  “Jeez, Marge. I’ll never have to milk another cow as long as I live.”

  Her mouth sagged. “You mean you don’t like being a farmer?”

  “Jeez, Marge. This is pretty much, you know, shit work.”

  Marge’s hand flew to her mouth. She’d been an idiot. A naive, stupid jerk of an idiot. “But what are we going to do?” she demanded.

  He looked away, shuffled his feet, took a long time to hang the milker cups on the next cow’s udder. That way he didn’t have to face her. “Well, I’ve been meanin’ to talk to you. I was comin’ over tonight in fact. This land sale changes everything, doesn’t it? They bought the little rental house we were going to live in too, you know. We’re all going to have to move. I’m hoping some day we’ll maybe have a big grain farm, you know, just tractor farming. But now …” he paused, “… now everything is kind of up in the air. I’d like to take a year off and just travel around and see what the world’s like.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to get married this summer?”