The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  “Are you sure your information is correct? Father Disalvo promised me the last time we conferred that he would clear all his plans for future demonstrations with me. I haven’t heard a word about this.”

  “I only know what my security people tell me.”

  “Don’t you know by now that cops and lawyers love to anticipate the worst? Lately, I’m inclined to add mayors and university presidents to that list.”

  As he spoke, Mayor Graham (“Jake”) O’Connor’s rugged Irish good looks filled the television screen. His lips moved soundlessly, but Matthew Mahan was sure that His Honor was heaping hypocritical praise on Cardinal Mahan’s head, proclaiming how pleased he was that the Pope had seen fit to reward their Archbishop for his long years of service to the Church, etc., etc.

  “What am I supposed to do about this big demonstration, presuming it exists?” Matthew Mahan asked.

  “I was hoping - that you’d forbid it. Forbid Father Disalvo to participate in it, at any rate. That would pretty much defuse it.”

  “Meanwhile, you can go on pretending to be in favor of free speech and free association while poor slobs like me get pilloried in every underground newspaper from here to California.”

  “We are prepared to issue a statement supporting your stand to the limit. After the violence of Columbia - and Fordham.”

  “Oh yeah. They trashed the administration building at Fordham, didn’t they? No wonder you’re nervous.”

  “Your Eminence,” said Father Reagan forlornly, “I wish you’d try to understand our position. We’ve got several thousand very restless young people out here. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” Matthew Mahan said. “It’s just an irresistible temptation to stick some pins into you guys after all those years of you acting as if the diocesan clergy didn’t exist, pretending that you were the whole Catholic Church.”

  “I don’t think we ever -”

  “How’s my nephew doing? When I heard him describe the grab bag that you’re offering in place of a comprehensive philosophic education, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be better off at the state university, where they don’t discuss religion at all.”

  “He’s doing quite well, I believe, Your Eminence.”

  On the television, the mayor had been replaced by owlish Dominic Montefiore, the head of the City Council, and then by none other than Father Reagan. Having pummeled him into humiliation, Matthew Mahan felt a little conscience-stricken. “Calm down, Phil,” he said. “I’ll get hold of Disalvo tonight and straighten this thing out.”

  Grateful murmurs from Father President. Matthew Mahan hung up and turned on the sound in time to hear his old friend, Steve Murchison, the city’s Methodist bishop, filling the screen with his slow, Gary Cooper grin and telling the people how pleased Protestants were by Pope Paul’s latest choice for the cardinalate. “His Eminence and I were chaplains together, you know. The 409th Regiment. I’ve seen him do things under fire that only a man inspired by tremendous love for his fellowmen would even think about doing. He saved my life one night outside Düsseldorf. I came walking down a road that the Germans had zeroed in with a half-dozen machine guns. Father Matt, as we called him then, jumped out of a shell hole, hit me with a flying tackle, and the two of us went sailing into another shell hole on the other side of the road - full of water. I was going to drown him, I was so mad. Then I saw those machine gun bullets kicking up the dust where I’d been standing ten seconds before.”

  Matthew Mahan turned off the sound and dialed Steve Murchison’s number. He answered the phone himself. “What are you trying to do to me,” he said, “making me sound like Superman and Batman rolled into one? The next time I get on television, I’m going to tell them a few things you did - one in particular - for me.”

  “How are you, Matt?”

  “I could be better, but you know why.”

  Murchison chuckled. “Remember what I used to tell you, about you Romans being too visible with all your schools and colleges and what have you? That’s why you’re a target these days for every radical nut that can find himself a TV camera to talk at. You’ve got to learn to travel light, Matt.”

  “You may have something there, Steve. Anyway, I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate all those things you said just now on the tube, even if most of them weren’t true.”

  “I don’t need absolution, you Irish faker, and you know it.”

  “Good night, Steve. God bless you.”

  Matthew Mahan dialed the mayor’s private wire. His Honor answered the phone. “Jake,” he said, “I just wanted to thank you for the nice things you said on television. I only wish you meant them.”

  “You know how it is, Matt. We politicians have to stick together.”

  “I wish you’d stick a little closer to me when it comes to getting that parochial school aid bill through the state legislature.”

  “I told you before, Matt, and I’ll tell you again. All your goddamn crummy schools ought to go out of business tomorrow. Having gone to them, I speak with authority. You won’t get me to say a word for them.”

  “You know I’m a born Democrat, Jake. But if the other fellows are inclined to help us on this thing, you may find me awfully cool when you run for governor or senator or whatever it is you’re going for next.”

  “If that’s the price I have to pay for winning, I prefer to lose. Believe it or not, Matt, I actually care about this city, this state, this country. Your goddamn parochial schools have wrecked the public school system in this city. Would the blacks be able to scream de facto segregation, if we had your catechumens in the public schools? Would we be getting all this shit about black culture and African studies, instead of learning how to read and write? Why don’t you make yourself a real hero, Matt? Why don’t you announce that you don’t want the legislature to pass that bill? Why don’t you get out of the education business before you tear this city and state apart?”

  Matthew Mahan felt his temperature rising in five-degree leaps to the boiling point. In public, His Honor pretended to be a model Catholic. This was his private personality. He talked to his Archbishop as if he were an uncooperative ward leader.

  “Why don’t you stop trying to be an expert about a field in which you know nothing? Why don’t you try just once to see the situation from my point of view? I’m responsible for the souls of those children you’re telling me to send into the public schools.”

  “Oh, what the hell,” the mayor said, “we’ve already had this argument four times, and you keep coming up with that same garbage. You make it sound like you’re throwing a lot of little lambs to an army of wolves. The public schools aren’t that bad. Have you ever been in one?”

  “No, I just read the papers about them. Have you been in one lately?”

  “Yes. They’re trying to do a good job in an impossible situation - a situation you helped to create by segregating 70 percent of the white kids in this city.”

  “We’re integrating our parochial schools.”

  “Yeah. What are you up to now, 5, 10 percent?”

  “Thirty, 35 percent downtown.”

  “Wow. We’re up to 90 percent in most of the public schools down there.”

  “Well,” Matthew Mahan said, as pain prowled in his stomach and he realized once more that arguing with Mayor O’Connor on this topic was futile, “I didn’t call you to get into this tonight. I wanted to find out if you have any information about a parade being planned by Father Disalvo tomorrow. From downtown out to the university.”

  “No,” said the mayor, instantly alarmed. “Have you? I’ll call the police commissioner and check back with you. It sounds like a lovely way to burn down half the city.”

  “Now, don’t get excited, Jake. I have no intention of letting Disalvo do anything of the sort. I’ve kept him on a very tight leash. Not that you ever give me any credit for it.”

  “I’ll give you a few white points. I’d give you a lot more if you’d shut him up. If you d
on’t, I may arrange to do it with a couple of nightsticks.”

  “Now, now, Jake, don’t revert to the style of your predecessors.”

  “When it comes to Disalvo, I wish you’d revert. On parochial schools, I wish you’d stop reverting.”

  Cardinal Mahan hung up, seething. In his anger, he remembered being present in the office when Archbishop Hogan had phoned City Hall about getting a dropout priest fired from a job as a playground instructor in the Parks Department. (Was it Fogarty? The man’s name was never mentioned.) Catholic children play in that park. I won’t have them exposed to that kind of immorality, Your Honor. From the other end of the phone came nothing but Yes, Your Excellency. No, Your Excellency. Right away, Your Excellency.

  Of course, His Excellency had been ready to sound off whenever they needed him. Such as the year he helped the boys at the Hall defeat a new state constitution which would have required public officials to reveal their personal wealth. Six months later His Excellency had politely accepted a check for $1 million for his Seminary Fund. Maybe, Matthew Mahan decided, his anger subsiding, it was better to have a mayor who told him off to his face than one who mixed money and phony subservience to buy him up like any other power broker.

  Still it rankled, the way the mayor put a sneer into that word “politician” when he threw it at him. Before they were through, Matthew Mahan vowed he would teach Mayor O’Connor at least one political lesson.

  Dennis McLaughlin in his green sports jacket hesitated at the door, the prescriptions in a gray paper bag. Matthew Mahan ripped it open and gazed distastefully at the neon-red Seconals, the tiny white Donnatals, the big brown bottle of liquid Titrilac, and a brown plastic container full of aspirin-size Titrilac tablets. The humiliation he had felt leaving Bill Reed’s office reawakened. It must be a dread of becoming a child again, of losing control of your life, he thought. For a moment, he was tempted to send it all back to the drugstore and rely on prayer and cream of wheat.

  “Do you know Father Vincent Disalvo?” he asked Dennis McLaughlin.

  “I’ve heard of him. Who hasn’t? But I’ve never met him.”

  “You will soon. I want you to put on your clericals and go down to St. Sebastian’s parish right now. Bring him back up here with you. I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing. If you’re wondering why I don’t telephone him, the explanation is simple. He’s never in the rectory, and he never returns calls.”

  As the door closed, the telephone rang again downstairs. With uneasy prescience, Matthew Mahan knew who was calling. A moment later, the red light glowed, and he picked up the receiver. “It’s your sister-in-law,” Mrs. Norton said. “Shall I -”

  “No. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Father Matt?” said the tired, familiar voice. Matt? I didn’t want the whole day to go by without at least callin’ you to tell -”

  “I should have called you, Eileen,” Matthew Mahan said, guiltily remembering that her name had been on the list Dennis McLaughlin had read to him on the way to Mount St. Monica’s, “but I’ve been up to my ears in reporters.”

  “I know. I’m lookin’ at you on television right now. I can’t help thinkin’ how proud Charlie would be.”

  Would he really? Matthew Mahan asked himself, trying to imagine what his brother would have said on this triumphant day. He could only remember the hate-filled diatribes that had been flung at him over the telephone at three in the morning. The ruined political career. They didn’t see me, they saw my big brother the bishop; I never had a real friend. They were all your friends. “I wish he were here. I wish it with all my heart and soul, Eileen. But we have to accept God’s will, even when it makes no sense to us. How are you feeling?”

  “Oh. Pretty well. The job’s boring, ya know. Ya get tired sayin’ hello t’people all day, and never really gettin’ a chance t’talk t’them. They only stay in the reception room a minute or two, mosta the time.”

  “How’s Timmy?”

  “Matt, I don’t want to spoil your big day. I didn’t call to talk about him. But -”

  “Don’t be silly. Tell me.”

  “Oh, Matt I’m terribly worried. He won’t - he won’t talk to me. He seems to be in another world most of the time. I found some pills on his dresser. Bright red little tubes. I was so scared. I threw them down the toilet.”

  “How’s he doing in school?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve adopted pass-fail at the university, so he doesn’t get any marks. I never see him study. He’s never home. And he won’t tell me where he goes. Sometimes I get so worried I - I just sit and cry.”

  Matthew Mahan was staring at bright red Seconal pills on his dresser, and simultaneously picturing his nephew, Timmy Mahan, as he last saw him, six months ago. The urchin face, the half-wise, half-mocking smile - the same smile that he had seen on so many faces at Mount St. Monica’s earlier today.

  “I’ll call you in a day or two, when things quiet down. We’ll have a good long talk. Incidentally, tell your boss that you want a leave of absence, so you can take a trip to Rome.”

  “Rome? You mean for your -”

  “Of course. I want you and Timmy to come. We’ll get a nurse to take care of the younger kids.”

  “Oh gee, I can’t wait to tell him. He’ll be so excited -”

  “Good night, Eileen. I’ll remember Timmy in my mass tomorrow morning. I always remember his father.”

  “Oh yes, Matt, I know. Thank you -”

  It would be better, Matthew Mahan thought as he hung up, much better, if she hated you and told you so. Hate could be conquered by love. But what can love do with a cringing defeated blob? No, that was too harsh. Eileen Mahan could not be blamed for her defeat. She was doing her best to bear a heartbreaking burden of sorrow, a burden she was too weak to carry and, alas, too stupid to understand. But Matthew Mahan knew, even as he tried to right his spiritual balance, that Eileen Mahan had been defeated before she married his brother. In some strange, unfathomable way, she had perfectly suited the methodical self-destruction that Charles Mahan pursued all his life. Why, why, why? O Lord, we grope here in the darkness. Have mercy on us.

  He picked up his breviary and saw he was on the last page of the day’s reading.

  Come let us return to the Lord,

  For it is He who has rent, but He will heal us.

  He has struck us, but He will bind our wounds.

  For a moment, Matthew Mahan’s eyes blurred with emotion. He wiped away the tears and read the final prayer of the day.

  We want to be strong enough, Father

  to love You above all

  and our brothers and sisters because of You.

  Upstairs, Dennis McLaughlin put on his black suit and round collar. He called Eddie Johnson and asked him to bring the car around to the residence. Eddie groaned and remarked in a resigned voice that he was on his way to bed. “That man we work for don’t know the dark from the light, he really don’t. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I could take a cab.”

  “Oh no. When he say he want the car, he want the car.”

  A half hour later, Dennis McLaughlin sat in the back of the Cadillac as the limousine bounced from pothole to pothole along the downtown streets. At last he was going to meet Vincent Disalvo, the city’s radical priest. He had marched to City Hall in one or two protests led by Father Disalvo, protests against the war, against inadequate public housing for blacks. But he had never tried to become a member of the inner circle, a name on the letterhead of his Council for Peace and Freedom. In fact, Dennis admitted gloomily to himself, his career as a revolutionary thinker-activist was pretty much over when he returned to the city from Yale last year. His marching and protests had been reflex reactions, largely at the behest of his brother Leo.

  This thought led to some depressing recollections of his outing with Leo earlier in the evening. They had gone downtown to a converted warehouse called The Place, where lesser faculty, students, journalists, and others committed to saving
the world gathered for liquor and mutual support. He had stood there, beer glass warming in his hand while Leo conferred with ad hoc committee heads and assorted spokesmen and spokeswomen. A feeling of futility had seeped into his veins as Leo smiled conspiratorially and swept each one close in the casually physical style of his generation. Arm around the shoulders of the men, around the supple waists of the long-haired girls. A hug-and-kiss hello or goodbye.

  It reminded Dennis all too painfully of a visit Leo had paid him at Yale two years ago. Then Leo had been the pale, smiling observer, while big brother-father Dennis demonstrated how he spent his days and nights concocting manifestos and denunciations, manufacturing protests, marches, marathon discussions. In vain, Dennis told himself that his reasons for giving up this heady way of life were good and sufficient. He was thirty years old, and the appalling egotism, the superficial thinking, the neurotic hatred of so many radicals, their substitution of hysteria for politics, had rightly chilled his fervor.

  It did not work, this dutiful reminder. He did not like playing pale observer. But now if - as was (theoretically) his privilege - he decided to change his mind, he could not play the other game, the save-the-world-or-at-least-the-country game. He was a man under obedience. At Yale, he had been the clerical civilian, reveling in the opportunity to demonstrate to the WASPs and Jews that a Catholic priest could not only think, he could feel. But thinking, feeling, were verboten now, except as directed by Cardinal-designate Matthew Mahan. He and Father Vincent Disalvo and Fathers Novak and Cannon and all the rest of them, some 2,600 lesser shepherds, were vowed to obey Supershepherd, the man who guarded the sheepfold and who (theoretically) controlled the water of life for both sheep and shepherds.

  Stop, Dennis told himself, stop. It was not that bad. You are out of humor, as the poet would say. Leo had gotten to you; he was making up for those years when Dennis had been mother’s darling, the model to be perpetually emulated and praised. Leo’s condescension was almost blatant. Now he was the man of action, the mover and the shaker, while poor old big brother-father Dennis was the pathetic captive of the Establishment.