"Gentlemen, thank you for coming." Michael stood behind the microphones, but ignored them. They had been set at the cardinal's height, not his, and he'd have had to kneel to use them. "The cardinal will make a short announcement, then will entertain your questions for about fifteen minutes." Michael paused, looking over the audience. The Catholic press—the diocesan newspapers from New York, Rockville Centre, Brooklyn, Newark, Bridgeport and Hartford, the stringer from the Catholic News Service and writers from the Catholic magazines—was fully represented. Religion reporters from secular newspapers and wire services were there, and the TV crews from the pair of local stations. Michael didn't know them personally, but it was easy to imagine who they were. Uniformly middle-aged, gregarious men, smokers, drinkers, somewhat shabby in their old suits and frayed shirts. They'd begun their careers in journalism with the usual enthusiasm and perhaps more than the usual promise. They tended to be literate, liberally educated and, for journalists, reflective. But for one reason or another they'd slid from paper to paper—big-city daily to suburban weekly to diocesan—or from desk to desk—Metro to Obit to Religion. They were men who'd been shunted aside, and the news they covered was unimportant not only to their editors but to them. If the rare major story did break in their area—like the Vatican Council—these poor bastards were bumped by the first-stringers or the foreign guys. Except for a couple of them, they had not even been to Rome and weren't going now. Michael resolutely refused to make anything of it, but he knew full well that only failed reporters regularly covered the events that formed the core of his life.
But it wasn't the sight of the regulars that gave Michael pause. A young man in the third row had caught his eye. He wore heavy black-rimmed glasses, and his thick red hair was disheveled enough to suggest he rarely combed it. He looked nothing like the others. He was staring intently at Michael, and his air of expectation alone would have set him apart from his blasé colleagues. But there was something else. Suddenly Michael realized what had snagged his attention. The young man was not wearing a suitcoat; he sported an ill-knotted, gray knit tie on a faded brown workshirt. But it wasn't a workshirt. It was an old woolen army blouse like he had worn himself once.
Michael cleared his throat. "It is my honor to present the archbishop of New York, the Military Vicar for the United States Armed Forces, His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Spellman."
Spellman, so short and stout, so bald, so ruddy-faced, was in no way a figure of imposing physical presence. When garbed in the elaborate episcopal vestments he seemed slightly ludicrous. But when he wanted to, he could transcend his cherubic manner utterly, conveying more than a hint of his immense authority. He took his power for granted and so had no need to flaunt it. But when it was time to make a serious point, he knew how to do it. And nothing in his entire ministry was more serious than this. Oh, he wanted the funds to be raised and the orphans to be cared for, of course. The Children's Relief Fund was a fine idea, but not only for its own sake. He wanted Americans to remember that in the war against Communism their commitment had long since been made. Nothing reminded them so well, he knew from years of doing this, as the forlorn face of an orphaned child. He had that face in mind as he finished reading what Father Maguire had written for him. "In the last year alone more than a hundred thousand Vietnamese civilians have been killed and perhaps three times that many wounded. It is impossible to say with precision how many children have been left homeless and parentless by this violence, but surely the figure is many tens of thousands. The country and the cities are full of boys and girls, hungry, ill clothed and terribly afraid. In the chaos of the fighting no one will care for them if we do not. That is why the Catholic Relief Service of which I am episcopal director has launched this emergency effort, and why I call upon all Catholics and all Americans of goodwill to join us in it."
Spellman raised his eyes from the statement. "It should be emphasized in addition..." he began.
Michael studied his hands. He had been hoping the cardinal wouldn't ad-lib. It was impossible to predict what he would say.
"...that these children are on the frontline of our war against Communism. It isn't a flood or an earthquake that rendered them homeless, motherless, fatherless. The Reds did that. They are doing it to the Vietnamese, but who they'd really like to do it to is us. Which is why we must stop them there. Otherwise, tomorrow it will be Australia and day after tomorrow it will be Hawaii. It is impossible to exaggerate what an evil force we are dealing with." Spellman stopped. Like an expert preacher he let the silence gather and build before going on. "Many of the children we want to help were forced to witness the beheading of their own parents." He paused again to let the men see how this moved him. "And we know for a certainty that the Reds would have murdered the children too, but they let them live because, alive, they are a drain on the resources of the struggling democratic government. But we are determined that not even such heinous tactics as these shall succeed! That is why we call upon Americans to do their part to see that democracy and freedom and Christian values survive in Vietnam. Only in that way will they survive here."
Spellman nodded at the reporters to indicate that he was finished.
Their hands went up. He pointed at an overweight gray-haired writer in the front row and said, "Hal?"
"Your Eminence..." The reporter struggled to his feet and had reference to his pad as he asked his question. "What do you think the chances are that the Vatican Council will allow some use of the vernacular in the Mass?"
Spellman flashed his famous twinkle. "If I have anything to do with it, none."
The reporters laughed.
"How much longer," another asked, "do you think the council will last?"
"I'd say we should wind it up this month. The bishops of the Church are busy men and have to get back to their dioceses." He smiled again. "I know I do."
"Will you be making your usual tour of army bases this Christmas?"
"Of course I will. This will be my twentieth year. I have to go; Bob Hope needs me. Besides, what would I do with all those Camels?"
The men laughed again. Spellman had been distributing packs of cigarettes to the GIs since the war. The tobacco company not only gave them to him to do so, but embossed each pack with his name and seal.
The cardinal swatted out answers to half a dozen like questions as if he was a coach drilling grounders to his infield. He was amusing and engaging, especially for an archbishop.
Then Spellman recognized the young man in the brown shirt. "Your Eminence," he began. His nervousness, apparent as he stood, set him apart from the regulars. "I'd like to ask about Vietnam." He paused. Cardinal Spellman stared at him, and the room grew utterly quiet, but for the whir of the TV cameras. The young man glanced over at one of the cameras, then went on. "We're supposed to be defending democracy there, right?"
"Yes," the prelate said carefully. "That's right."
"Why are you against elections then?"
One of the cameras stopped filming.
"I'm not against elections, son. Who said I was against elections?"
"You did, Your Eminence." He fumbled with a sheaf of papers. A notepad fell to the floor, but he found what he was looking for. "You said that the elections called for by the Geneva Convention would be, and I quote, 'taps for the buried hopes of freedom in Southeast Asia.'"
"Oh, you're talking about Geneva. That wasn't binding on anybody." Spellman glanced over at Michael, his irritation flared.
Michael raised his finger at the newsman from the second TV station, and in turn he whispered in the cameraman's ear. The cameraman straightened and snapped his camera off too.
"I respectfully disagree, Your Eminence," the young man continued. "The Geneva Convention called for elections in nineteen fifty-six. The government of South Vietnam has flagrantly violated—"
"The government of South Vietnam never signed that convention!" Spellman's face had turned crimson. Unconsciously he lifted himself on his toes. He gripped the podium, as if that pres
sure would spill off his tension. "And neither did the United States! Everybody knows you can't have fair elections with the Reds."
"So you are against elections."
"Rigged elections, yes."
"But when Ngo Dinh Diem held his own plebiscite in the South in nineteen fifty-six against the Head of State Bao Dai who had appointed him, he won by ninety-eight percent. Wouldn't you call that 'rigged'?"
Spellman answered with his fiercest stare. "Who are you, young man?" He asked finally. "I don't believe we've met."
"My name is Nicholas Wiley, Your Eminence. I'm with the Catholic Worker."
Spellman smiled. There was a stir in the room as the reporters nudged each other. The strained atmosphere eased. "Oh, the Catholic Worker." Spellman nodded sagely, then said, aside, "Some of my best friends are Catholic Workers."
The reporters laughed loudly. Several clapped. They were glad for the release of tension. They knew, of course, that the cardinal was referring to the controversy that ensued the year before when the Catholic Worker crowd publicly challenged him during the Archdiocesan Cemetery Workers' strike. But Spellman had crushed the gravediggers' union, and the Catholic Worker's picket-line hadn't impressed anyone but kooks.
"I'm glad you people are taking an interest in Indochina. You tell Dorothy Day for me, will you, that she should preach her pacifism to the Reds."
The reporters chuckled, enjoying themselves now. This could have been embarrassing, but the cardinal was chewing the punk up.
"I go way back with Dorothy," Spellman said. And, again aside, with a showman's timing, "I'm the one who gave her permission to use the word 'Catholic' for her newspaper. I guess for 'Worker' she went to Joe Stalin."
Now the reporters were slapping their knees.
Nicholas Wiley took his glasses off and looked around. He was blushing and seemed disoriented. What could he do now but slink off? But suddenly he pointed his glasses at the cardinal. "You were talking about the children! You said the Communists were the assassins! But the International Control Commission reports that the South Vietnamese Secret Police are systematically murdering Buddhists even as we—"
Cardinal Spellman threw a glance at Maguire, who stood abruptly. "That's it," he said firmly. "Thanks very much, gentlemen."
Michael's crisp statement belied what he was feeling. Buddhists? Had the kid said Buddhists? But instead of welcoming Wiley's challenge as a version of the one he himself had tried to mount against Spellman, Michael resented it. The kid reeked of self-righteousness and was obviously a nut. His raising the issue like that would only confirm Spellman in his certainty that no one but kooks had questions about policy in Vietnam. It would have been pointless to admit the anger he felt toward the cardinal for his refusal to defend the Buddhists, and it would have been humiliating to acknowledge his peevish irritation at the punk who'd spoiled his press conference, so Michael channeled both feelings into the pretend authority with which he adjourned the session.
Before Wiley could protest, all the other reporters rose at once. He tried to say something, but his words were lost in the bustle.
The VIP lounge had been transformed by the clerics with their dominating black suits and flashing gold Chi-Rho-embossed cuff links, with their boisterous laughter and waving cigars, into a rectory common room. Even though it wasn't noon, there were drinks all around—the flow of booze was the great advantage of traveling.
It was a scene Michael had been relieved to return to after the loneliness of Vietnam. The camaraderie of priests, their great, if often biting, wit, their addiction to stories well told, their minds finely tuned to political nuance, their knack for deflating pomposity—these things made Michael glad to join their company. There'd been several rectory parties— gaudeami —in his honor since his return, and when the fathers sang, in reference to his old seminary nickname, the show tune "Mr. Wonderful," he was surprisingly moved.
When Michael walked in then, some moments after Spellman, the chancellor gestured at him and pointed toward the cardinal. Michael crossed to where he was sitting.
"I don't appreciate that one bit, Father. Not one bit."
"I'm sorry, Your Eminence. I should have checked him out. I have no idea how he heard about the press conference."
"There were television cameras present. Those people only want to embarrass me."
"It won't happen again, Your Eminence."
"And I didn't appreciate that statement I had to read either. Not one mention of what it's all about over there. I had to bring it in myself."
"My thought was to emphasize the children, Your Eminence. My thought was to leave politics aside, especially now that the situation there is so..."
"Well, you flatter yourself to call that thinking. It's not politics to speak out against Communism in season and out. It's faith and morals. And, Father, don't you forget it."
Michael had to look away. Everyone in the room was listening. He'd have felt abused and humiliated, perhaps, but his stronger feeling was one of embarrassment for the cardinal who, in Michael's opinion, was quite plainly making a fool of himself. But wasn't that Michael's way of deflecting his true reaction? He was deflection itself now.
The cardinal was finished with him. Michael took his leave, saying, "Good luck in Rome, Your Eminence." But Spellman ignored him.
When Michael had crossed the room, Don Duff, a priest who lived down the hall at Saint Gregory's, the Manhattan rectory he'd moved into, handed him a Bloody Mary. "That was rough, buddy," he said.
Michael nodded, "He's a little touchy, isn't he?"
"You'll get used to it." Duff smiled wanly. "And if he really takes to dumping on you, he'll make you a monsignor."
The two priests raised their glasses to each other.
Then Duff said, "You know what Adam said to Eve, don't you?"
"No. What?"
"'Stand back! There's no telling how big this thing is going to get!'" Duff grinned.
If only all things were as simple as weather, Michael thought as he crossed the airport parking lot toward his car. In October, New York weather is either hateful or glorious and on that day it was quite the latter. The air, even over Long Island, had been scrubbed clean by the austere night, and now the late morning sunshine bathed everything it fell upon in warmth. The sky into which the airplanes climbed was cloudless, a perfect pale blue like the inside of a porcelain bowl.
One of the new passenger jets roared and Michael looked up at it. We marveled at aircraft in those days, the way we now do at microchips. Planes were still the great emblems of modern genius, and of course under Kennedy we had just launched the contest of all time—to build a better plane than the Russians and fly it to the moon. But Michael was neither an engineer nor an outer-space patriot. He automatically saw the silver fuselage and wings as a cross, then chided himself for piety. It was an old habit. In the prison camp a decade earlier he'd disciplined himself to look for crosses everywhere—in the plaster cracks, in the weave of his palm-leaf mat, in the shadows cast by the stockade grilles. Three trees on the low sky. Now he'd have said there were crosses enough in life without looking for them.
He was relieved that the press conference was over and that Spelly was gone, and he promised himself that he would not soon be in a position again to take such shit from anyone. After the autonomy of life in Vietnam it was a shock to be back in a position of such overt subservience. He hoped he could get used to it again.
As he pulled his car, a late-model black Chevrolet, out of the parking lot and onto the road that gave access to the expressway, he saw a hitchhiker. It would not have occurred to him to stop, but he recognized the young man's disheveled red hair, black-rimmed glasses and, obscured by a tattered lumberman's jacket, his army shirt.
Only after he'd begun to apply the brakes—after it was too late—did Michael realize that the sight of the kid pissed him off again. The last thing he wanted to do was ride into Manhattan with him. But he stifled his feeling with charity, the reflex-kindness priests were
schooled in. Anger, resentment, bitterness they could show only to each other.
"Want a lift?"
"Oh, Father. Hi." Wiley was embarrassed and he hesitated.
"I'm headed for midtown," Michael offered.
"Oh. Well, I'm going to the Worker."
"Chrystie Street, right? Hop in. I'll drop you off."
"Oh, no," Wiley said, but he was getting in. "I'll just go to midtown with you. That would be great."
He carried an olive canvas satchel slung from his shoulder. It was stuffed with papers and books, but Michael recognized it as an army gas-mask bag. So the kid did his shopping in a surplus store. The shirt meant nothing.
Once he'd joined the flow of traffic Michael asked offhandedly, "Are you actually writing something about the cardinal's press conference?"
"I didn't mean to upset him."
"I don't think you did," Michael said automatically. If he instinctively denied the cardinal's anger, how much more readily would he disguise his own. "I doubt he's given you a further thought."
"He should give the point some thought, though."
"What, the Geneva Accords? Believe me, Cardinal Spellman has thought more about those than the diplomats who wrote them."
"You agree with him?"
Michael swallowed. "Sure I do." Who was Wiley after all? "The Geneva Accords were a French sell-out, my friend. They really were."
"De Gaulle says Vietnam should be neutral."
"Tell that to Comrade Ho."
"Did you ever read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence? The one Ho wrote?"
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