“Good old Robideau.” Koesler laughed. “He preceded me by several years at St. David’s. They said they were always afraid he would start a fire in the confessional because of the speed with which he kept opening and closing the confessional screens. Someone once accused him of absolving with both hands and both feet.”
They ate steadily. Their drinks would do them little harm. And the entrees had not yet arrived.
“There was a hypochondriac in the parish,” Koesler continued, “who was also really ill-”
“Sort of like the paranoid guy whom everybody actually does hate,” McNiff interjected.
“Right. Well, it was the feast of St. Blaise and this lady called Robideau and actually asked him to come to her house, since she was bedridden, and bless her throat. Robideau of course was not about to do any such thing. He told her to prop the phone between her ear and the pillow, pretend her arms were blessed candles, and cross them underneath her chin, and he would give her the blessing over the phone.”
McNiff snickered. “Reminds me of an incident they tell about that happened in Grand Rapids. This lady’s husband died. They had bought a couple of lots in a public cemetery and she couldn’t get anyone to come and bless the grave. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get anyone to get off his ass and go bless the grave; the guys who were willing to go would check with the Chancery and discover that the Chancery wasn’t giving permission to bless graves then.
“But she finally finds this one guy-must have been a clone of Robideau’s-and pleads with him. So he asks her which way is the cemetery. North, she says. So the guy swings his chair around so it’s facing north and he traces a large sign of the cross in the air.
“The good news is he didn’t charge her a stipend.”
They both chuckled.
The busboy cleared away the dishes and trays and Kay Marie served the entrees. A huge amandine fish. The largest hamburger steak in captivity, smothered in mushroom gravy. And mounds of French fries.
Oh, yes, thought Koesler; a very long walk tomorrow.
As the two got down to serious eating, Koesler reflected on the stories they had exchanged and undoubtedly would continue to recount.
As long as he could remember, at least among his peers in the sacerdotal fraternity, priests were wont to recall and recount stories of the past. Some more than others. The recent phenomenon of Catholic nostalgia had led to such books as the popular The Last Catholic in America and the spinoff play, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? In all probability, had there been no Vatican II, there would not be this wave of Catholic nostalgia because everything would still be pretty much the same. Very little would have changed. Most Catholics would not know or would not be informed that many of the things they had done seriously a quarter of a century earlier were now considered funny.
But stories of “the good old days” had been and would remain favorites among priests, with or without Vatican II.
“You know,” said McNiff as he loaded tartar sauce on the fish, “I got a document yesterday in the mail from the Tribunal. They wanted the document to be put in the parish’s secret archives. Put me in mind of when I was at St. Mary Magdalen in Melvindale-”
“With old Jake Parker.” Koesler was relatively certain that McNiff would not be coming up with any old Jake Parker stories that hadn’t been told before. But, what the heck, they were good stories.
“Right.” McNiff warmed to the memory of old Jake Parker. “So, anyway, I got a document then, too, from the Tribunal, to be placed in the secret archives. So I went to Jake, told him the problem, and asked where the secret archives were. And he said, ‘Father, they’re so secret, even I don’t know where they are.’”
They laughed. Good for the digestion.
“Didn’t you miss Melvindale your first time out?” Koesler recalled.
“Yup. Drove right through the little suburb. Finally asked a cop where Melvindale was, and he said, ‘Father, you just left it.’
“But that’s the way Jake looked at it too. Once I got another missive from the Tribunal. This time they wanted me to do a notary job on a marriage case.”
“You don’t get those as much now as you used to. . at least I don’t.”
“That’s right. But back then, I was getting them almost every week. And I’d have to go out and call on somebody-who was usually pretty hostile-and ask a lot of personal questions. Well, anyway, I’d had it, so I went in to see Jake and I told him, ‘I’ve had it with these notary jobs. What would they do to me downtown if I don’t do it? If I just refuse to do it, what could they do to me downtown?’
“And Jake says. ‘Father, they couldn’t do anything to you; you’re already here.’”
They laughed again. As anticipated, Koesler had heard the story previously. But when consummate raconteurs such as Myron Cohen or Flip Wilson begin to tell their stories, one looked forward to hearing one of their familiar anecdotes.
“Actually”-McNiff had polished off the fish and was working on the few remaining fries-“I think old Jake was ashamed about being in Melvindale, though I don’t know why; it’s a nice enough little town. But for some reason, he just didn’t think anything good happened in Melvindale.
“Now that I think of it, it might just have been something in old Jake’s personality.
“I remember for years I used to get at him to ask for another assistant. We had almost three thousand families and there were just the two of us. But he wouldn’t do it because he was afraid of being turned down. Finally, one fall, he broke down and asked the Chancery for another priest. Well, his worst fears were realized: he didn’t get one. They turned him down. And those were the years when every September and June they shifted hundreds of priests to different parishes and all the new appointments were published in the Detroit Catholic.”
“I remember it well. I was the editor. I used to publish those new assignments. We’d start on page 1 with pastoral appointments, then stick all the assistant assignments on page 2. It always took at least the entire page. Sometimes they ran over onto page 3.
“I remember once our reporter wrote a mock account, which opened, ‘Seven tons of priests were transferred. .’”
“Exactly. Well, the day the new assignments were published-none of them being to St. Mary Magdalen, Melvindale-old Jake sat at the dining-room table all day long with the Detroit Catholic in front of him, opened to the assignment page. And every time somebody would pass by, old Jake would call him over and point to the page and say, ‘Look at that! Just look at that! You couldn’t put your finger on one of those assignments and say, ‘Now there was a smart move.’”
Koesler hadn’t heard that one before. “It’s rationalization like that that can lead to mental health.”
Having finished the ground round, Koesler was sloshing the fries in mushroom gravy. Oh, yes, it would have to be some walk tomorrow. “Reminds me of when I was at Patronage of St. Joseph parish. It was just me and the pastor, Father Pompilio. Then a monsignor from the Chancery was going to take up residence at Patronage. He was offered a single room, just like the one I had. But a Chancery monsignor wasn’t about to take that lying down-literally. So Pomps was obliged to surrender his very nice three-room pastoral suite to the monsignor. Later, he explained to me how, in the end, he had outsmarted the monsignor: The single room was closer to the ceiling fan in the hallway than the suite was.”
The busboy asked if they were finished. Silly question, thought Koesler; he knew he was supposed to ask, but still it seemed obvious that all that was left were the empty plates.
He cleared them away and Kay Marie ascertained that McNiff would have coffee and Koesler decaf and that neither would have dessert. Koesler considered the thought of dessert obscene.
McNiff patted his tummy appreciatively. “We haven’t got a corner on the sort of logic that, as you say, leads to mental health. Before we had our own school in Melvindale, a bunch of nuns used to come in several times a week to teach catechism in the church. And that,
of course, was fine with me. I’ve always said the art of being a truly fine catechist is finding somebody else to teach catechism.”
Koesler nodded approval.
“But old Jake Parker insisted that we go over at least once and talk to the little kids who were going to make their first communion. So this one time I went over, reluctantly, and waited while this nun, their teacher, introduced me. She said, ‘Children, Father is going to talk to you now. And I want you to pay good attention to what he’s going to say. After all, he spent twelve years getting ready to teach you.’ I wondered why she brought that up and where she intended to go with it. Then she added, ‘Of course, I spent twenty-three years in preparation. . ‘ I felt like the village idiot. But I guess she managed to preserve her mental health.”
Kay Marie brought the beverages. McNiff asked for the bill.
“Well,” said Koesler, “I doubt you’d find many nuns that uptight today. Maybe it’s as simple as back then some said there were three sexes: men, women, and nuns. But today they know they’re women. They dress like women instead of like ancient statues. They’re permitted, even encouraged, to be mature, much more in charge of their own lives than ever before in history.
“But back then, you’re right: they could be a bit stiffnecked. One of the toughest groups I was ever associated with were the nuns at Patronage. Even for those days, those gals were on the strict side. I spent most of my time trying to talk our parochial kids into sticking it out and staying in school.
“Being with that group is probably what made the two funny ones stand out as much as they did.”
“You had two funny Salacians? That may be a record.”
McNiff began to compute the tip.
“Yup, two; count ‘em, two. One Tuesday, after Our Lady of Perpetual Help devotions, the two of them came back into the sacristy. They were the sacristans, which post became the only outlet they could find for their humor. One of them, a Sister Dulcilia-hard to forget a name like that-asked me if, when I blessed religious articles after the devotions, did the blessing include crosses. I said sure it did. So Dulcilia, pointing to her companion, said, ‘That’s fine; next week I hold Sister here on my lap.’
“Another time, I arrived in the sacristy to prepare for Perpetual Help devotions. As usual, the Sisters had laid out the appropriate vestments on the vestment case. I was already wearing my cassock and collar. So I put on the surplice and found that the Sisters had pinned to it one of those ribbons from a funeral floral arrangement with the word ‘Friends’ on it.
“I just left it that way and wore it for the devotions. All the nuns were sitting in the front pews. I wish you could have seen the faces of the two jokers when they saw I was wearing the funeral ribbon. They told me they got in a lot of trouble over that one. . ‘a scandal to the good people of the parish’ and all that.
“Now you’d think that might have cured them. But some time later, when they were certain I was scheduled for the early weekday Mass, they laid out the vestments the night before. They had a purple stole, a green maniple, and a black chasuble.”
“Don’t tell me,” McNiff interrupted, “you didn’t have the first Mass!”
“With their luck, it couldn’t have happened any other way. Father Pompilio wanted to go on an early morning fishing trip and traded Masses with me. Fortunately, he didn’t report them. But he was convinced they were certifiably insane.”
“Remember,” McNiff spoke through his laughter, “the time when everybody thought I was insane?”
“The time-? Hmmm. . there were so many. But since you’re talking about Melvindale, it’s probably the one where you came back for the parish fall festival.”
It would not occur to Koesler to head McNiff off at the pass merely because the anecdote was ancient and oft repeated. Good stories remained good even when retold.
“That’s the one. It was, O Lord, three or four months after I was transferred from Melvindale and I had nothing more to do with the parish. But old Jake Parker wasn’t feeling all that good and he asked me to come back and stand in for him at the fall festival. That’s where I was insane: in agreeing to do it.
“Well, it was just your ordinary parish festival with simple little games and prizes and a few rides. All except for the big card game in the rear of the tent. The ushers got kind of carried away and were hosting a full-scale gambling concern-poker, blackjack, that stuff. And that’s when the good old Melvindale police got into the act: closed us down, made some charges. Meanwhile, old Jake Parker is up in bed nursing a cold while I am trying to handle the cops.”
Purple stole, green maniple, and black chasuble. Why was this thought continuing to distract him? Koesler tried to pay attention to McNiff s story.
“And that wasn’t even the worst part. Who does the Free Press reporter call for a statement-Jake Parker, the pastor and the one responsible for it all? No, he calls me. And what do I say? I say, ‘Why don’t you tell your editor that you couldn’t find Father McNiff?’ And what does the Free Press reporter write in next morning’s paper? He writes, ‘A certain Father McNiff, when contacted about the police raid, stated, “Why don’t you tell your editor you couldn’t find Father McNiff?’”
“It was at that point that all my peers and classmates were willing to pronounce me certifiably insane.”
“And rightly so.”
They split the bill plus tip evenly. Kay Marie bade them good evening and asked them to pray for her aunt the nun. When McNiff, after asking, was informed that the nun was eighty-four and pondering retirement, he asked Kay Marie to have her aunt pray for them.
During his drive home, Father Koesler tried to listen to WQRS, the classical music station. But it was offering chamber music, which Koesler easily could live without. He switched off the radio and smiled as he recalled the stories, some old, some new, that McNiff had told. And he smiled as he recalled the stories, all old, that he had told.
But his preoccupation with the vestments of mixed colors still puzzled him. The problem was not intrinsic to the story. Koesler had told that story many times; never had he been troubled or puzzled by it.
From time to time he wondered if he were coming down with Alzheimer’s syndrome, or whether it was just the natural disintegration of the brain cells that accompanies aging. But then, in good time, it would all come together and make sense.
So he was confident that at some unpredictable time the elusive link between the color-confused vestments and whatever they reminded him of would be made clear. Probably it would happen while he was showering. For some strange reason, the routine of showering always cleared his mind for some of his better thinking.
5
Father Koesler was showering. It was a quarter to eight on a bright Thursday morning. Mass was at eight-thirty. As usual, the priest’s mind wandered in an undirected path.
Something, some inner feeling, some intuition told him the police were going to catch the killer of Henry Hunsinger today. This was, after all, the fifth day of the investigation. And Inspector Koznicki had told him more than once that the longer a case remains unsolved, the less likely it is that they will arrive at a solution.
Then there was the assurance by Lieutenant Harris that they would, indeed, solve the case. The professional confidence of Harris and Sergeant Ewing, Koesler was convinced, simply could not be gainsaid.
At any rate, the police would not be the only ones busy today. Koesler faced the crush of business that had piled up, due in part to his early participation in the investigation as well as to his day off yesterday. For one thing, shortly after breakfast there would be two days of mail to attack. Oh, well, everything in its allotted time. It would, in any event, be a busy day.
After showering, shaving, and dressing, he had just a few minutes to look over the Scripture readings for today’s Mass. After all his years of being a priest, reading and meditating on the Bible and preaching, it did not take him long to come up with a two- to five-minute commentary on the Scripture of the day.
Seven people were waiting in the church. The usual customers. Koesler knew them all well. By the time he vested and was ready for Mass, there might be one or two more present.
The Mass began as informally as a very formally structured ceremony could. In no time, he reached the Gospel reading. It was from St. Mark, the eighth chapter. Everyone stood as he read:
“When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him. Jesus took the blind man’s hand and led him outside the village. Putting spittle on his eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, ‘Can you see anything?’ The man opened his eyes and said, ‘I can see people but they look like walking trees!’ Then a second time Jesus laid hands on his eyes, and he saw perfectly; his sight was restored and he could see everything clearly. Jesus sent him home with the admonition. ‘Do not even go into the village.’”
The congregation sat and looked expectantly for today’s message.
“That little story,” said Koesler, “is my favorite miracle. It’s so much more. . well. . human than the usual miracle. This is not a grand show of power like stilling the angry winds that are whipping up the waters of the Sea of Galilee or calling Lazarus back from the dead after three days in the tomb.
“This is a more tentative kind of cure, if you will, instead of miracle. Can’t you just see Jesus rubbing a little spittle on the blind man’s eyes and saying, ‘How’s that? Do any good?’ And the guy says, ‘I don’t think you’ve got it yet. All I see is stick people walking around like trees. Have you got anything else up your sleeve?’ And Jesus says, ‘Okay, give me one more shot at it.’ And he touches the blind man again. Then the blind man says, ‘I can see everything very clearly now. I think you’ve got it! By George, you’ve got it!’
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