A telegram came over from the rectory. It had been sent from Brazil.
GOOD LUCK. WISH WE COULD BE THERE. JOINED THE GREEN CANARIES AS A RESERVE CAPTAIN LAST MONTH BUT STILL PLAYING BALL TOO. POWER TO YOU AND ALL THE PEOPLE. LOVE. CLIO.
Willie asked everybody at the party what the Green Canaries were, but no one knew.
The reception lasted an hour or so, and at the end only Mr. Grayson remained.
Willie and Mr. Grayson sat down under a statue of Saint Anthony, who had once preached the word of God to the fish of the sea because the people who lived in his hometown weren’t interested.
“I visited friends of yours in Atlanta,” said Mr. Grayson. “In prison. I never knew you were with Father Benjamin and the others.”
“You saw Father Benjamin!”
“He asked me to bring his love.”
“Truman—the large man who cannot talk?”
“Truman, too.”
“What wonderful news, Mr. Grayson! They are well, Father Benjamin and the others?”
“Very well. I chatted with Joto also—Joto Toshima, the artist.”
“I have not met Brother Joto,” said Willie slowly, remembering the strange white picture of nine years ago.
“Joto is the dear friend of my friend Herman Felder.”
“Herman Felder! Why—I thought he was dead.”
“You are confusing him with his father, Gunner, who went to the Lord some years ago.”
“And they are truly all right, after all these years?”
“Doing the work of the Spirit and praying for the bettering of the world. They speak of you so lovingly. They know, as I know, you will do the work of the Spirit like nobody.”
“Oh, Mr. Grayson. To have this news of the brothers—it cheers me up so much. And to see you again. Won’t you stay with me in Houston until I get my assignment?”
“I have to go back to the club, son. The players are sinning daily. The whole world is sinning. I got to do something for the Spirit, like you.”
“Your time will come, Mr. Grayson,” said Willie. “And even now there is something you can do.”
“Only tell me. I want to work for the Spirit.”
“It is about Mr. Regent,” said Willie.
Mr. Grayson gave him a long frightened look.
“Why do you speak of that man?”
“I have something to tell him,” Willie said, “something that has to do with the past and must be set in order.”
Mr. Grayson said, “You should have nothing to say to that man.”
“But I do, Mr. Grayson. You see, we had an awful row when I left. He called me terrible names and I lost control of myself. I want him to know all that is past and that I ask his forgiveness and that I forgive him.”
“My poor boy,” said Mr. Grayson, “he would simply laugh at that idea—forgiving.”
“Perhaps. But I must not laugh at it. How can I ask a man to forgive an enemy if I cannot do the same myself?”
“That man hates the Spirit,” Mr. Grayson said. “I would have left him long ago were it not for this.” He drew from his jacket the battered Vest Pocket Ezee Bible that Willie remembered from the old days. “This shields me from him and helps me guide the players through temptations. Without this I would be lost against that great hatred!”
“Hatred—can you or I really know who hates the Spirit?”
“You don’t know who he is,” Mr. Grayson said sadly. “He is truly one of the great foes.”
“Is it possible that through us the Spirit can break through his hatred, if it really is hatred?”
“I will deliver the message,” said Mr. Grayson, “though when I cannot say. I almost never see the man anymore. He is all over the world conducting his business.”
“You will see him one day and you will deliver the message,” said Willie. “Until you do, Mr. Grayson, I will not be completely free.”
“Free of what, my son?”
“The weight of all that has gone before,” said Willie.
Mr. Grayson sighed. “I’ll do what I can, son,” he said. “But now I must go .back to the club.”
Mr. Grayson wept a little. Then, looking very worried, he got into a cab and went back to the airport.
* * *
That night, having no place to stay, Willie went back to his old room in the seminary.
Across the street a civic organization had put up a new sign that flashed off and on: THE SWELLEST TOWN IN THE SWELLEST STATE IN THE SWELLEST COUNTRY IN THE SWELLEST WORLD.
Willie began thinking of Clio. He read the telegram again. Who were the Green Canaries?
He called The Houston Clarion looking for information.
The reporters did not know. They told him to ask the night editor.
“It’s just some Marxist outfit,” the editor said, “a small revolutionary army.”
“Do they practice violence?”
“What?” the editor asked.
“Is it an army that practices violence?”
“No, it practices ballet, for God’s sake.” The editor sounded angry and busy.
“Sir, where could I get some further information about this army?”
“No idea,” the editor said. Then he laughed. “Of course our publisher, Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade, might know a thing or two about them—seeing as how they just stole his plantation.”
“Why did they do that?”
“They—what do you mean why? I said they’re revolutionaries.”
“Is Mr. Goldenblade there?” Willie asked.
“For Christ’s sake, man, this is Sunday night,” the editor said. “Besides, he’s the publisher. He doesn’t talk on the phone.”
“Why not?” asked Willie.
“Why not? Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you call the White House and ask to talk to the President?”
“Could I call Mr. Goldenblade at his home?”
“This is a funny little joke isn’t it?” said the editor. “A little party game.”
“No sir,” said Willie. “I would very much like to talk with Mr. Goldenblade.”
“Are you a kid or something?”
“No sir, I’m twenty-eight years old.”
The editor made a little whistling noise on the phone. “Let me impart a little practical advice, mister. You don’t call Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade at his home. That’s a no-no.”
“Why?”
“He’s an important busy man,” said the editor. “Understand? You don’t call a man like that at his home.”
“I have to talk to him.”
“It is a put-on, isn’t it?”
“No sir, I have a friend in that army. He might be in danger.”
“Really? Why don’t you call him. Maybe he’ll have some information.”
“How could I do that?” asked Willie.
The editor hung up.
Willie looked up Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade’s number and dialed it.
A butler answered.
“This is an emergency,” said Willie.
“Mr. Goldenblade is entertaining at the moment.”
“It’s about the Green Canary Army of Brazil.”
Silence. Then, a voice raspy and raw with much recently swilled whiskey.
“This better be important; otherwise, I’ll sue.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Goldenblade,” said Willie, “but this is about the Green Canary Army of Brazil.”
Upon hearing this, Mr. G. D. Goldenblade took the Lord’s name in vain twenty-one different ways, then shouted: “Those creepy monist Marxist swine are going to get it for what they’re doing to me!”
“What is it they are doing, Mr. Goldenblade?”
“Oh nothing, nothing at all,” said Mr. Goldenblade, making his voice soft and purry. “Just a little bombing, a little looting, a little burning, a little pillaging. And then,” here Mr. Goldenblade’s voice got louder, “then stealing my 29,000-acre plantation—the Priscilla-Lucy-Ducky-Billy-Candy Ranch, which is name
d after my five lovely daughters and has been earning me a steady mill and a half per annum since the day I bought it for fifty cents on the acre twenty-four years ago tomorrow. Stealing it like the flag-hating traitors they are, bombing the Alamo and burning our nation’s capital and spitting on the graves of our mothers!”
“But surely they haven’t burned the capital!” cried Willie. “Or the Alamo!”
“Don’t think they wouldn’t if they could!” roared Mr. Goldenblade, and he took the name of the Lord in vain another sixteen times.
“Sir,” said Willie, “the only reason I called was to ask about a friend.”
“Is he somebody of mine?”
“Sir?”
“Does he work for me—W-O-R-K?” Mr. Goldenblade shouted.
“Oh no sir,” said Willie, “he’s a ball player. But I got a telegram from him today saying he had joined this Green Canary Army and—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold it right there,” Mr. Goldenblade said. “Let’s see if I have this straight or if maybe I have been taken drunk. I am talking on the phone right now, am I not?”
“Yes sir.”
“Would you mind telling me where you are?”
“No sir,” said Willie, “I’m at the—”
“Because I’m going to call the chief of police, the sheriff, the governor, the FBI and the Houston Old America Club and we’re going to come over there and we’re going to arrest you as a conspirator against the government of the United States of America and a lousy creep who has insulted my five daughters and a supporter and agitator who goes around spitting on the graves of innocent American mothers.”
“Sir!”
“Who are you?” Goldenblade said hoarsely.
“A priest.”
“I am drunk,” said Mr. Goldenblade, and mumbled something about God which Willie could not understand.
“Mr. Goldenblade? Mr. Goldenblade?”
There was a shuffling sound on the line, then the voice of the butler:
“I’m afraid Mr. Goldenblade must disconnect.”
“I’m sorry. I guess he got too excited.”
“He has many worries of late, being one of the most important men in the state of Texas, the United States and the world.”
“Well, good night,” said Willie.
“You’re welcome,” said the butler.
The next day Willie went down to the chancery office and Bishop McCool gave him a letter signed by the archbishop, which said he was being loaned to the diocese of Santa Fe, to serve Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in the town of Delphi, New Mexico, where many tragic conditions prevailed and the bishop certainly wished him Godspeed in carrying the many crosses that could be expected.
Chapter six
Out of the dim memories of his boyhood, Willie knew Delphi as a poor border town where Mexican people and a few black people lived in a cluster of shacks around an adobe church and where nothing ever happened—people were only poor together under the vast, hot sky.
But in the years since Willie was a boy, Doveblade Communications had come to town and Delphi had changed. People had jobs now, money in their pockets, TV antennas on their rooftops. Doveblade Communications had tripled the population of Delphi in less than five years.
For many years Doveblade Communications had conducted its operations at two large factories—one in Philadelphia, the other in Chicago.
The Philadelphia operation, employing 40,000 workers, had been described as a model American industrial plant by Midas magazine. But the Chicago facility, almost from its beginning, had been plagued by strikes, shortages, theft, sabotage, delayed deliveries and overruns—all of which sins the chairman of the board, George Doveland Goldenblade, attributed to the “immoral greed and monist tendencies of the Chicago laboring force.”
When the workers struck the Chicago plant at the beginning of the unending war in the Middle East, causing a two-month shutdown, Goldenblade and the members of the board determined to move the operation to what Goldenblade called a “free enterprise climate.”
Whereupon the Doveblade management began a long and extensive survey of what Goldenblade described as “your free opportunity American town—that is, a town where there have never been any jobs and where any wage is better than no wage. This is what we are looking for.”
Many free opportunity towns were scrutinized—Macabre, Kentucky; Yush, Nevada; Hole, Georgia.
Delphi, New Mexico was the town the officers selected.
It seemed a splendid choice: few citizens here had ever had a job.
Here the citizens were happy and uncomplicated and religious. As one of the company officers wrote to Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade, The people of Delphi are so religious, they see poverty as a cross to be carried through life. They fear riches and some of them think rich people will lose their eternal souls, or the equivalent. Even the minimum wage would be dangerous to these people—a temptation of the world, the flesh and the devil. Recommend we play up this angle by erecting religious statuary about the plant and maybe a cross at the factory gate.
When the company built its new plant in Delphi, the Doveblade authorities took out an ad in The Wall Street Journal which was as beautiful as a poem by the famous American poet of the unremembered days, James Whitcomb Riley. The theme of the poem was how Doveblade, the company that cares about people, was bringing prosperity to some colorful poor folk who lived in a tiny border town in New Mexico.
The message warmed the hearts of many citizens, and the company received numerous requests to have the ad made into Christmas cards.
The President of the United States said it just showed what could be done “within the system, when good sound businessmen put their heads together and get to work on the problem of poverty.”
For some years the Delphi Plan succeeded wonderfully.
Profits were higher than ever.
The poor Mexican and black people of Delphi had jobs for the first time in their lives.
Even the wives of the Doveblade management thought the town had charming possibilities. One of the more enterprising wives opened a mail-order store which sold the beautiful blankets made by the Indian women to families all over the United States. In a year’s time the Delphi Den Blanket became a wonderful gift for a birthday, confirmation, bar mitzvah, wedding or any happy occasion.
When the United States entered the period of the Six Wars—or pacifications, as they were called by Doveblade management—the Delphi Plan had to be modified. The plant could not hire people fast enough to keep up with the demand for weapons.
So the officers of the company took out help-wanted ads in the newspapers of the Southwest. The ads brought many white people to Delphi. These people, too, became workers in the busy plant and settled in the town.
These were the first white people who had ever lived in Delphi. No one could predict how the races would get along with one another.
As long as the Six Pacifications kept up, there was no problem of any kind. It was when the conflicts began to wear down, run out or, in other words, end in peace with honor, that the tranquillity of Delphi came unglued and the Doveblade Delphi Plan headed for trouble.
As the pacifications wound down, the orders for weapons began to decline. There were still four pacifications going on—enough to keep the demand for weapons very high—and one could count on many future conflicts waged in the interest of liberty, honor and self determination, but still the ending of just one pacification made it unprofitable to keep all the workers on the payroll.
And so, in the same June of Willie’s ordination, it became clear to the officers of Doveblade that it was absolutely necessary to let 800 workers go.
Which 800? That was the question.
Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade himself summarized the problem to his board of directors at a secret meeting in the executive lounge of the company headquarters, an elegant room called Bimini Lounge, which had a luxurious bar decorated with photos of historic atomic cloudbursts.
“If we fire the whites, there’s going to be talk we prefer the nigras and the wetbacks to the whites, and the whites are going to cause a tumult, even though the nigras and the wetbacks were here first and even though we can pay them low and they put up with it. On the other hand, there is the justice of the situation. With the pay they been gettin’, the nigras and the wetbacks have been getting fancy and high-hat, which is getting very offensive to Mrs. Goldenblade and my five lovely daughters, who frequently buy their lousy blankets, which are going up and up in price and which is a case of outright swindling and exploitation which ought to be reported to the Bureau of Indian Affairs or some other agency of the government that has got some shred of moral horse sense. If we do fire the blacks and the wetbacks, though, because of this new high-hat mentality they been acquiring, they too could touch off a tumult. Which brings us a twofold course of action… .”
At moments of great stress Goldenblade had a habit of humming the melody of a tune from the unremembered ages. The tune was an ancient hymn that bore the title Tantum ergo Sacramentum. Few knew the meaning of this title or even that the humming had a title until a former Catholic, who had once studied Latin and now worked in Doveblade public relations, related that the word tantum meant only and ergo meant therefore—an explanation that satisfied no one but at least gave the humming a name.
Throughout Doveblade Communications, every employee knew that when the Only-Therefore humming commenced, the anger of the chief executive had entered the most dangerous zone of all.
Now, in the executive lounge, the ominous sound took up.
Hum hum hum hummmm.
There was a stir around the great table.
Hum hummmmm.
The third vice-president nudged the second vice-president. The second vice-president nudged the first vice-president. Automatically the first vice-president nudged the man next to him—Goldenblade himself.
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