The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  DEEP IN the desolate bayou country, far beyond the protection of any bishop, Stephen ran into serious trouble. He was returning (via the one-track Gainesboro & Pitney R.R.) from a solitary Josephite mission school for Negroes, when the train halted in the middle of a swamp. At the sound of drawling profanity Stephen looked out the window and saw the engineer mopping his neck with a blue bandanna.

  As the only passenger on the train, Stephen had a personal interest in the proceedings. It appeared that Number 9, a cow-catcher locomotive of Stonewall Jackson vintage, had snapped an eccentric rod. According to Lem Tingley—engineer, fireman, and conductor on the G. & P.—the repair of eccentric rods was a complicated business. First you walked to Racey, the nearest whistle stop four miles down the track. From there you called up Gainesboro, the southern terminus of the G. & P. If anyone answered, you asked him to send up a new eccentric rod on a handcar. “Ought to get here tomorrow noon,” said Lem. “Then allow-in’ three or four hours for fittin’, we’ll be on our way by suppertime on Friday.”

  The prospect of idling for thirty hours in a mosquito-ridden swamp was scarcely inviting. Quarenghi’s orders had been: “Find out what’s going on in the South,” and the time might be more profitably spent by visiting near-by towns. “Is there anyplace around here I could stay?” asked Stephen.

  Yep, there was the Crescent House in Owosso, eight miles down the line. Decent enough place, but from the depths of his conscience, Lem Tingley couldn’t rightly recommend it to Stephen. “Folks hereabouts are apt to get ugly when they see a Roman collar.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Leaving his luggage on the train, Stephen started down the track. To prevent the sun from wilting his collar, he took it off; not until he reached Owosso three hours later did he observe the priestly amenity of putting it on again. The white badge of his office created a minor disturbance among the rocking-chair brigade seated on the rickety veranda of the Crescent House. Seven or eight loungers, looking for all the world like an unemployed posse, were apparently engaged in some kind of contest involving the production of tobacco juice. The volume, distance, and accuracy of the spitters fell off for a moment, then increased noticeably as Stephen mounted the steps.

  A clerk who might have served as a Confederate drummer boy in the battle of Chickamauga reluctantly produced a register. “That’ll be two dollars—in advance,” he said, as Stephen signed his name. “Here’s your key, Mister. Room Four. Up them stairs, last door on the left.”

  Room 4 smelled like the bottom of a fish barrel. An iron bedstead swarming with leprous scabs supported a sway-back mattress. Moldy straw matting covered the floor. On the wall hung a fly-blown religious calendar, the yellowed memento of a Full Gospel convention held long ago in Owosso. Stephen read the text for the month of August, 1912.

  What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?

  The only plumbing in the Crescent House was a lavatory on the first floor. To this, Stephen descended. He was washing his face and hands, thinking pleasantly of the supper of fatback probably awaiting him, when a delegation of quid-and-chaw contestants lounged into the lavatory. One of them sluiced a half pint of tobacco juice into the washbowl and inquired: “What you all doing in Owosso?”

  “Minding my own business,” said Stephen cheerfully.

  “What sort of business might that be?”

  “I’m a priest, making a survey of Catholic churches in this part of the country.”

  “Fixin’ to start a Catholic church in Owosso?” A cheekful of brown liquid splashed off the cap of Stephen’s shoe.

  “Look, Mister,” said Stephen, “you’ve either lost your aim or your manners.”

  “’Tain’t his aim he’s lost,” snickered one of the trio. “Jeff can drownd a fly at twenty paces.”

  Unmoved by this home-town flattery, the fly-drowner came to the nub of his argument. “Us folks in Owosso ain’t in favor of strangers wearin’ collars hindside foremost. We-all intend, friendly-like, to let them get out of town without causin’ no trouble. But if they-all don’t leave peaceable, why, we got ways of persuadin’ ’em.”

  “I’m getting out of here as soon as I can,” said Stephen. “Will tomorrow morning suit you?”

  “Right now’d suit us better,” said Jeff.

  “Sorry I can’t oblige.” Stephen shouldered his way out of the lavatory.

  Supper was an early-evening affair at the Crescent House. The menu was simple: pork chops, grits, black-eyed peas, and rain-water coffee. Exhausted by his eight-mile walk that afternoon, Stephen went directly to his room, removed his outer clothing, and lay down on the sway-back bed. It was dark when he was awakened by the sound of a heavy boot kicking at his door.

  “Open up.”

  Stephen jumped out of bed, pulled on his trousers and shoes, then opened the door. The corridor was filled with sheeted figures wearing conical hoods.

  “You didn’t git out of town your way, so we’re gittin’ you out ours. Put your clothes on, collar and all. This is goin’ to be a full-dress affair.” Three pairs of hands jerked Stephen across the threshold. Other hands blindfolded him. He was tumbled down the stairs and into the back seat of an automoblie that grunted painfully under the weight of its occupants. No one spoke during the long drive into the country.

  When the blindfold was taken from his eyes, Stephen saw that he was in the center of an open field. In the light of three burning crosses, white-sheeted men were ominously grouped. Directly in front of him a hooded man was caressing the lash of a blacksnake whip. Another hooded figure held a small glinting object in the palm of his hands.

  “Know what this is?” he asked.

  Stephen looked at the object in the man’s palm. “Yes.”

  “What do you Catholics call it?”

  “Catholics and Christians everywhere call it a crucifix,” said Stephen.

  “Danged if you ain’t right. That’s what the whining nigger called it when we took it away from him. Funny the way he begged to kiss it when we strung him up.”

  “Many men have begged to kiss it at the moment of death,” said Stephen.

  The whip-handler took over. “Well, this ain’t no ‘Come to Jesus’ meetin’. There’ll be no cross-kissin’ here tonight. What we’re aimin’ to see you do, stranger”—he cracked the flexible lash past Stephen’s ear—“is spit on it.”

  The values of the proposed ordeal by saliva seemed unreal to Stephen. That grown men should suggest such a thing nauseated him.

  “What will it prove?” he asked.

  “Why, it’ll just prove that no white-kidneyed priest can stick his nose in where he’s not wanted.”

  Stephen saw his opening. “It’s all clear to me now,” he said. “I thought for a minute that you men came out here to see Christ’s image defiled. I was wrong. You don’t really want to insult your Saviour. You just want to scare a Catholic priest.”

  “That’s about it, I reckon.”

  “Well, start scaring.”

  The whip-wielder expected a showier display of cringing. “You mean you ain’t going to spit on this here object?”

  “I couldn’t possibly.” Stephen reversed the proposition. “You spit on it.”

  The suggestion alarmed the master of ceremonies. He held the crucifix at arm’s length, gazing at it curiously like a man seeing something for the first time. “Don’t rightly know how’s I could.”

  “How about some of you other chaw artists?” asked Stephen.

  A tremor of negation passed over the group. “Throw the damned thing in the bushes,” someone muttered.

  “No, give it to me,” said Stephen. He held the crucifix between thumb and forefinger, lofting it like a lantern in darkness. “Let’s get on with the whipping.”

  “Jes’ ’s you say, Mister.” The hooded leader curled a python lash around his victim’s ankles. “Ef you won’t spit—dance!”

  Ancient strength of martyrs flowed into Stephen’s limbs. Eyes on the gilt cro
ss, he neither flinched nor spoke.

  “Mebbe he needs a little music. Give him ‘Dixie’ on your harmonica, Lafe.”

  The metallic wheeze of a mouth organ rose above the blacksnake’s thud. Joyless voices took up the refrain. Calloused hands beat out the rhythm. Higher around Stephen’s body, past knee and thigh, the whip climbed.

  Den I wish I was in Dixie,

  Hooray! Hooray!

  Land of the quid and chaw. Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.

  In Dixieland I’ll take my stand …

  One had to take a stand somewhere. Dixie, Roncesvalles, Tyburn Hill—what matter where? Stephen prayed silently that no drop of spittle, no whimpering plea for mercy, would fall from his lips before the end.

  Now, seeking a gayer tempo, the harmonica switched to “Turkey in the Straw,” but, for some reason not understandable to the audience, the show wasn’t coming off as scheduled. Murmurs of dissatisfaction began to arise:

  “He don’t squirm proper.”

  “Losin’ your touch, Jeff?”

  The whipmaster was apologetic. “I can’t crack her in nacheral while he holds that thing in front of him. Anyone else want to try?”

  There were no takers. All sadistic relish had evaporated by now. With a grunt of disgust, Jeff folded up his whip. “C’mon, let’s get back to town. The muskeeters’ll finish him off.”

  Glum as hunters who had treed their coon but couldn’t get him down, the sheeted men clambered into their cars. Not until the last taillight had disappeared did Stephen lower the crucifix.

  Alone, on a midnight terrain utterly strange to him, he knew that it would be foolhardy to wander about the countryside. The wisest course was to sit down and wait for morning. To the embers of the fiery crosses, Stephen added brushwood and broken branches, thereby gaining the companionship and protection that a fire offers. Sitting in its smoke, he kept the mosquitoes at bay, and by the firelight examined the welts on the lower part of his body. In several places where the skin was broken, dark trickles oozed and coagulated. Not a full baptism of blood—but close enough.

  Through the little eternity between midnight and dawn, he pondered the mystery of the gilt crucifix. Even on souls shrouded in darkness, this glinting symbol of the perfect sacrifice had proved its power to moderate, however slightly, the passions of men.

  At sunrise Stephen made a rough calculation of his position, then struck a course in a general southeasterly direction, hoping sooner or later to strike the G. & P. tracks. He breakfasted on water from a clear stream, bathed the dust and blood from his body, then continued his way across eroded fields too poor to support animal or human life. Hunger began to sap his strength. It was nearly midday when he struck a humpbacked dirt road sparsely rutted with wheel tracks. Exhausted, he lay down in a dry ditch by the roadside and fell asleep in the blaze of noon.

  He was awakened by a foot poking at his shoulder. Looking up, Stephen saw a lantern-jawed man, his cheek bulging with the inevitable quid, gazing down at him. In appearance and costume, the stranger was a composite of all the loungers on the Crescent House veranda. Frayed straw hat, butternut jeans torn at the knees and sagging at the end of stretched-out suspenders. Unshaved chin, big Adam’s-apple. The posse type again, complete, except for shotgun and bloodhounds.

  “Appears like you fell among thieves, brother,” the man was saying.

  The Biblical cast of the remark was something of a novelty. Without answering, Stephen watched the stranger rummage in the haversack hanging from his bony shoulder. The man drew out a square of corn-bread, added a slab of fat-back to it, and offered the food to Stephen.

  “Work up your strength on this,” he advised.

  Stephen devoured the cornbread, then ruefully surveyed the appetizing bit of pork. No dodging the issue now. “Thanks,” he said, “but I don’t eat meat on Fridays.”

  “Catholic, eh?”

  Might as well get it over with. “Yes, a Catholic priest.”

  The announcement caused no change of facial expression other than a ruminant sideslip of the tobacco chewer’s jaw. “Don’t see many of your kind in these parts. Where’re you bound?”

  “I’m trying to reach the G. & P. track four miles south of Racey. Do you know the place?”

  The man spoke pridefully. “Racey? Got a molar there. Figured to yank it tomorrow, but I guess Pa Crump wouldn’t object if it came out this afternoon.”

  “Are you a dentist?” asked Stephen.

  The man plunged his hand into his haversack and pulled out a pair of forceps. “Carry the tools, anyway,” he grinned. “Painless Tatspaugh’s the name. Antiseptic methods. Prices reasonable. Bicuspids and molars, two bits. Wisdom teeth, half a dollar.”

  The itinerant dentist narrowed a diagnostic eye at Stephen. “You look all beat up, brother. What they been doin’ to you?” Without specifying who “they” were, Painless Tatspaugh drew a cocoa can from his haversack and scooped out a fingerful of salve. “Tatspaugh’s Sovereign Elixir,” he explained. “Guaranteed to heal cuts, ringworm, harness sores, and”—he spat mightily—“whip welts. S’pose I rub some of it over the painy spots.”

  Stephen accepted the ministrations gratefully. Refreshed by the combination of cornbread, Sovereign Elixir, and Samaritanism in general, he rose stiffly to his feet.

  Walking toward Racey at the terrific pace set by Painless Tatspaugh, Stephen revised his estimate of the Southern character considerably. Ben Tatspaugh chewed just as much tobacco and spat it as accurately as any man on the Crescent House veranda. He was unwashed, illiterate, and reasonably addicted to profanity. But he possessed that unpurchasable asset peculiar to no economic class or geographic region—the truly gentle soul. His gentleness came out when he stooped to gather a clump of foxglove which, he explained, would do Gran’ma Fugitt’s heart a world of good. It was revealed in his manner of adjusting the rope harness that was galling a mangy mule. Watching him extract a tooth from a sharecropper’s swollen jaw, Stephen realized that Painless Tatspaugh’s reputation sprang not alone from skill, but also from the almost hypnotic confidence he inspired in his patients.

  Through a broiling dusty afternoon, Ben Tatspaugh’s long legs ate up incalculable mileage. Worn almost to exhaustion, Stephen finally panted, “How much further to Racey?” Without missing a stride, the itinerant dentist clucked encouragement. “Bear up, Reverend. We ain’t got fur to go.” From his haversack he pulled a black oval object, placed it to his lips, and blew a tentative note. “Mebbe a marchin’ tune’ll put sperrit into your legs. Ever hear a sweet pertater?”

  Stephen admitted that he never had.

  “Then you got a treat comin’, brother.” On the crude instrument, kin to the gourd, Ben Tatspaugh displayed his virtuosity as they crossed gullies, swamps, and unfenced fields. From a long repertory of hornpipes, jigs, and reels, he chose the liveliest. Then, his narrow chest pumping at full pressure, the sweet-potato player burst triumphantly into “Dixie.”

  Way down south in de land ob cotton,

  Old times dar am not forgotten,

  Look away, look away, look away,

  Dixieland.

  Full circle. Same melody, same words, same landscape. Da capo al fine—only this time different fingers were searching the stops of Stephen’s heart. Dust-grimed but jubilant, he joined in the chorus.

  Coming out of a pine grove, Stephen almost stumbled over a rusty railroad track. “Racey,” announced Painless Tatspaugh. He pointed south. “You’ll find Number 9 down thata way.” Solicitude was in his final question. “Want me to walk along?”

  The man had already walked ten times the Biblical mile, and was willing to go still further. “No, thanks,” said Stephen. “I can make it from here.” In parting, he tried to press a five-dollar bill into his guide’s hand, but Ben Tatspaugh’s essential gentility waved aside more ready money than he would see in a month of molar-pulling.

  “Keep your money, Reverend,” he said. “When I can’t help a neighbor out of a ditch, I bet
ter close up shop.”

  A four-mile walk down the track brought Stephen into the presence of Lem Tingley, twisting a final nut onto Number 9’s eccentric rod.

  “How’d you find things in Owosso?” asked the engineer.

  “Pretty much like most other places.” How comment otherwise on the alternate threads of good and evil woven into the fabric of life?

  No one ever knew that the assistant to the Apostolic Delegate had been flogged in the performance of his mission, or that his wounds had been anointed by a passing stranger. Stephen never mentioned it to Quarenghi or anyone else. The only memento of the affair was a cheap gilt crucifix that Stephen always tucked in his bag whenever and wherever he traveled.

  HIS BRIEF CASE bulging with materials, Stephen returned to Washington and began writing a special report for the Apostolic Delegate. He spent a week describing the condition of the Church in the South, and ended his report with urgent recommendations for Catholic action in that neglected part of the United States. “To preserve and extend the faith in this region,” he wrote, “two things are needed: money and bishops. Funds must be raised by voluntary contributions from more prosperous areas. New bishops must be created in Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. The incumbents must be vigorous young men, able to cope with the double challenge of economic want and religious bigotry.”

  Stephen’s report, approved and signed by Quarenghi, was sent to the Congregation of the Consistory in Rome. The Cardinal Prefect of that Congregation, impressed by the urgency of the report, promptly recommended to His Holiness the creation of four new bishoprics in the United States as requested by the Apostolic Delegate.

  The selection of these (as of all) bishops was no random procedure. To obtain the best possible men for the posts, the Church utilized its time-proved method of scrutiny based on the terna. Every two years the bishops of an ecclesiastic province come together in a meeting; at these meetings each bishop submits a terna—the names of three men in his diocese whom he considers most eligible for episcopal rank. These lists are then sent to the Apostolic Delegate, who forwards them, along with much collateral material, to the Congregation of the Consistory in Rome. Here the names and records of the candidates are carefully examined; all but the most promising are weeded out, and the remaining names are subjected to a still more searching scrutiny, consisting of additional letters of information, and comment from Church officials. The opinion of the Apostolic Delegate carries enormous weight here. This mass of material, sifted through an almost microscopic screen, produces at length the outstanding candidate. The name of this candidate is placed before the Holy Father, who, in the exercise of his power as Supreme Pontiff, makes the final choice when a vacancy occurs.