The Last Western

by Thomas S. Klise

  Now what makes this such an interesting idea to me, and I hope to you, is a couple of facts about this man which one of our investigation teams has discovered in the past forty-eight hours.

  Number One, this priest used to be a famous pitcher for Bob Regent’s ball club in New York. You remember the night of your elevation to archbishop going out on Bob’s yacht and how excited he was about this new player he had signed? This is that same boy, which just goes to show you it is a short world after all. And right now as I dictate this, I am paging through a small bible of press clippings on this spade, which recount his feats on the baseball diamond. You and I never cared for the game, but apparently this bird was some kind of miracle pitcher, a great favorite with the fans, very big at the gate, and so on. In other words he has, or at least once had, a name.

  Number Two, his family was wiped out in the riots here in the city eleven-twelve years ago. In fact, as far as we know, that is why he left the club. And that’s why he is so opposed to extremist violence—seeing as how it cost him his family. Our people have been trying to get more information on his folks and general background, but it appears just about everybody who knew him when young got smoked in the riot. The diocesan chancery seems to know little about him either, except that he was a bad student and we have checked this out with several classmates who confirm. Bob Regent could probably give us further information but as you have undoubtedly read in the papers, that man is practically cut off from the world now. No one knows where he is from one day to the next, and his business operations are so screwy and so secret and he makes himself so scarce, refusing to see people or meet with people, I wonder if Bob hasn’t burned a circuit. We should surely remember Bob in our prayers.

  I am taking the trouble to tell you all this because we are getting into another rough summer here, in many ways very much like the summer of eleven years ago. And I understand things aren’t so sweet in N. O. either. Our field people are sending in various reports from Chicago, L. A., Cleveland and D. C., which are also bad. Wouldn’t we be able to render a great service to the country and to the church if we had somebody to send into these areas just before flash point to cool things down?

  As I dictate this I am looking at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, which you will recall dedicating for us five years ago. Every morning I pray to Our Lady that she will show us some way out of our troubles. I honestly think maybe she has sent us this spade as an answer. I would be passing all this on to the local arch here, but as you know better than I, he is so out of it these days all he does is go around asking people what ever happened to the pagan babies he ransomed as a kid. He should be put in a home without doubt. As for the new dude, young McCool, well, you remember the trouble Dad had with that s.o.b. who called himself his father. It is not charitable of me to say so, but I do not like a man to smile that much. He knows how I feel, and if I were to recommend the advancement of this Afro to McCool, it would probably be the one sure way to get him sent to the South Pole. But if trouble broke out here, you could talk to the man in Dallas and recommend this boy and there is always the Delegate as you once told me about.

  Irene and the girls are fine and outside the lousy ending in Pakistan we are not doing too bad. I hope you are over whatever it was that was tying up your internals.

  A week after George Doveland Goldenblade sent this cassette letter to his brother, a white policeman shot and killed a seventeen-year-old drug addict named Martin King Kennedy, who was attempting to rob a grocery store at the corner of 63rd and Halsted in Chicago, Illinois, and the first great riot of the summer began.

  Within two hours of the incident, Cardinal Goldenblade of New Orleans had called Cardinal Powers of Chicago and Cardinal Powers had called Archbishop Tooler of Houston who wanted to know what ever happened to the pagan babies Cardinal Powers had ransomed in his youth. The handsome Bishop McCool took the phone.

  Bishop McCool did not understand anything about riots but he did understand that it was Cardinal Powers who was making the phone call and if Cardinal Powers wanted the pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Delphi to come to Chicago, then he would certainly be happy to arrange it—and Cardinal Powers was welcome, no trouble at all, any time really, it was nice to be able to help a fellow bishop.

  The telegram reached Willie in the old church, where 341 Mexican and black people were busily engaged in making, sorting, pricing and boxing blankets.

  The telegram said, A private plane will land shortly at the airport of the Doveblade plant. You are to board this craft and proceed to Chicago, Illinois to assist his eminence Clarence Cardinal Powers in putting down a riot. May God bless you in this good work. Bishop Francis McCool.

  Willie looked at the happy, busy, boisterous people in the church, their beautiful skin colors even more beautiful than the blankets they were making.

  He looked at the children running about the sanctuary.

  The old church had never felt life like this even on the happiest feast days.

  The people had taken hold of a moment and made it their own, and the excitement of that choice was in the air, making everything different.

  How could he leave them?

  Sureness Jack saw the sadness come to Willie’s face.

  “Everything all right, Willie?”

  “I have to go away, Sureness,” said Willie. “Remember this, won’t you: you can make this work succeed if you stay on together and work as a family. You can be happy and you do not have to make weapons in order to eat.”

  “You are not going away for good?”

  “No,” said Willie, “I don’t think so. But matters are uncertain. I will try to come back as soon as possible.”

  “You cannot leave, Willie,” said Sureness, frightened suddenly.

  “The work is yours not mine. You must learn to do it without me.”

  “I will tell the people.”

  Willie took his hand.

  “Not now, Sureness,” he said. “Wait until I am gone. I cannot say good-bye to them.”

  Then Willie went out to the airport, where a jet was waiting to fly him to Chicago.

  He was wearing a torn sweatshirt and blue Levis, and the pilot of the aircraft said to the priest who was the only other passenger, “That is the man?”

  “They told us he was odd,” said the priest, who was the secretary to Cardinal Powers and who knew what he would be doing every half hour for the next six months.

  When the plane curved up over the town, Willie looked down on the people.

  They had come out of the church and were standing in a ragged circle waving their bright blankets in farewell.

  “Good-bye, my loved ones,” he said. “My beautiful brothers and sisters, good-bye.”

  “How little people look from the air,” said the priest-secretary. “Flying certainly puts things in perspective, doesn’t it, Father? Would you like a drink?”

  And so began Willie’s second public career—queller of riots, messenger of calm, cooler of the hot towns, which were that summer hotter than ever because the fires had burned on steadily from the inside without anyone paying attention and were out of control in ways that men could not measure.

  Chapter ten

  In Chicago, twelve square blocks were under siege.

  The city police, the county police, the state police and the National Guard had moved around the area, arms at the ready.

  So far, no one but Martin King Kennedy had been killed in the strife, but the black people in the riot district were on the rampage.

  They had set fires to many tenement buildings and loan offices and shiny new buildings in the neighborhood that had the word opportunity written on their windows.

  The fire trucks could not get into the area; the black people had sealed it off.

  Any minute now the mayor and governor were expected to give the order to invade the district, firing on those who tried to obstruct their efforts to bring peace.

  “What’s the priest supposed to do?” the mayor asked Ca
rdinal Powers as they surveyed the scene from the top of the Entirely New Life Insurance Company building.

  “He has some way with them, Frank,” the cardinal replied, fondling his shamrock-shaped pectoral cross. “He sings, I believe, or performs in some way.”

  “Sings?” said the governor. “The South Side is about to blow.”

  The Kerry blue eyes of Cardinal Powers twinkled behind gold-rimmed spectacles. “Now, now, Governor. We must have faith. This humble black man speaks their language—has these little ways they understand.”

  “Jesus,” the mayor whispered to no one in particular.

  Willie was shown into the office.

  The cardinal, his rich red silk robes rustling, started, almost jumped at the sight of him.

  “Who’s this?” the governor asked.

  Willie went to the window.

  “This is the priest?” the mayor asked dumfounded.

  The cardinal, whose episcopal motto was Dignitas in Omnibus, asked for a glass of water.

  “Wait a minute, wait,” the governor said, snapping his fingers. “You’re the ball player. The pitcher.”

  “Father?” said the cardinal. “You are a priest?”

  Willie looked down at the fires, which were sending a continuous cloud of black smoke into the dusky orange sky.

  “You have a plan, Father?” the mayor asked.

  “Maybe you could go on TV,” the governor said. “Why, with your name… .”

  Willie could see people in the streets running between the burning buildings.

  “You could pitch!” the governor said. “That pitch you had!”

  Willie said, “If you had a truck—with a loudspeaker—maybe we could go in.”

  The cardinal held his water glass with shaking hand.

  “You’re going to sing, Father? In clothes of that type?”

  Willie started for the door.

  “We have good singers here,” the mayor said. “Right here in Chicago—lots of them. All due respect, Father.”

  “This is that pitcher,” the governor said once more to the cardinal.

  Suddenly, just as Willie got to the door, the cardinal cried out. “Keep them away from the Lady!”

  Willie stopped.

  “Old parish—first mass—Lady of Angels,” the cardinal said, suddenly a small, old altar boy.

  Willie plunged down the tall building in a fast elevator and climbed into the back of an open truck that had been commandeered by the police.

  The truck belonged to the Jerry Cherry Fruit Company. There was a huge cat’s face on the door of the truck, and under the cat’s face, the slogan, JERRY’S CHERRIES ARE THE BERRIES.

  “Go right into the middle of it,” Willie told the driver.

  “Your circuits are blown,” said the driver, and he got out of the cab.

  A crowd had gathered around the truck.

  Willie, taking the microphone, said, “I need a driver to help me go and try to stop the riot. Will someone volunteer?”

  The crowd fell silent. People turned away.

  “Please,” said Willie, “just one man.”

  A young girl edged through the crowd, a black girl of about twenty, whose face with its high cheekbones stopped Willie, froze him and held him as if something had hit him, driving a shaft through his body.

  To the glossy hair, the liquid brown eyes, the sad mouth turning away, she was identical to Carolyn.

  “I can’t—I can’t let you go,” he said, his lips scarcely moving.

  He was bending down to her from the panel of the truck.

  Where, out of so much death?

  “I can make it,” the girl said.

  Even the voice—out of death, long ago.

  He stared at her, trying to make words.

  “I can’t let you take the chance,” he said at last.

  The girl said, “I know the neighborhood. I grew up there.”

  She turned then and got into the cab. They were pulling away.

  He could see only the back of her head now.

  Why do you always put yourself on the bottom rung?

  The fires came up to them, the shouts were closer, they were going into the storm.

  They came to a police barricade.

  The mayor had radioed ahead to let the truck pass and the barricades were opened by the sullen guardsmen. A police captain waved them through with a Good Luck! that was just a noise.

  Put all that back, he told himself. It is gone. Now only this, since all the rest is—all right then.

  The girl pulled over to a curb at the edge of the riot area.

  “There’s a public library about three blocks in. There’s a sort of park next to it. If we could get there, you could probably get them together.”

  He put it back once more.

  “Okay,” he said, “but why not let me take it from here?”

  Without answering, she shifted the gears of the truck with a little difficulty, and then they were within the smoke and roar of the hurricane.

  Something hit the roof of the cab—a thrown brick or something falling from a building.

  Confused shouts rose on every side.

  People were running, carrying things, looting the stores.

  The truck swung into a narrow street and headed toward a knot of black youngsters who were blocking the way.

  “Go home children!” Willie called into the microphone. “If your homes are burning, then go to the edge of South Shore Drive.”

  Astonished at the fact of the moving vehicle, the children fell back and the truck went on.

  At the corner a gasoline station blazed away, its skeleton alone still standing. It seemed to scream.

  The truck turned, crawling through the smoke toward the library building.

  There were many people in the street. It looked like moving day for the entire neighborhood, with some people carrying things out of tenements and others carrying things in.

  The girl tapped on the window and made a rectangular motion with her hand. Willie understood.

  Standing at his full height, he began to talk into the mike.

  “Please, please come to the other side of the library. We will have a meeting in the park. Please come to the park. Please… .”

  The faces swirled past, showing only occasional, slight surprise.

  The truck reached the end of the block and turned again. No one paid any attention to it.

  “Please,” Willie called, “please come to the library.” His voice carried up and down the streets. People turned momentarily to trace it, then went back to the business at hand.

  When the truck had completed its rectangular route, the girl drove it into the middle of the playground and parked it near a sliding board which had rusted and worn through years ago.

  Willie said Please come to the library a few more times, but no one took notice.

  “It’s no use,” Willie called to the girl.

  She pointed now to some red bulk on the other side of the library. Through the smoke Willie could see the outline of a fire truck. It had been summoned into the tenement area when the riot began and had then been abandoned.

  Taking the microphone and sound equipment, Willie and the girl advanced to the truck. There were children playing on it.

  “Come down,” Willie called.

  The girl entered the cab of the truck and began pushing buttons on the dashboard.

  Suddenly, as the last child scampered off, a ladder, making a great creaking noise, began to unfold on top of the truck.

  Willie grabbed it, holding onto the mike with his free hand.

  “Keep off!” he shouted to the children.

  Stunned at first, they began to clap and shout as the ladder rose.

  As he went up, rising above the blackened library, above the smoke, above the clustered children, the people going in and out of the tenements caught sight of him.

  Arms reached out. There were cries of surprise. Jeers. Laughter.

  Willie could see the girl�
�s brown face, upturned, getting smaller as he ascended.

  Now she seemed to.wave.

  “What?” he called—just as the ladder, reaching its fullest extension, snapped and shuddered, causing the whole truck to tremble.

  He slipped.

  A gasp came from the people as he struggled on the tip of the ladder, trying to hold on.

  For the first time, the people in the library area stood still and looked.

  Hanging on with one hand, holding the microphone in the other, he strained to pull himself up.

  His groaning could be heard over the treetops. Windows opened. People began to move toward the truck.

  As he struggled to swing his body back to the ladder, his breathing, powered by the microphone, came like a wind through the district of the riot.

  For a moment he was going to fall.

  An old woman screamed.

  Then, delicately, he swung his body forward, then back. His foot caught a ladder rung, and held.

  He hung there for a moment, his red hair flaming in the light. He looked like a hobo trapeze artist.

  Someone started clapping; others took it up.

  His breathing came in short gasps.

  As he finally righted himself on the ladder, the crowd cheered. But then a sort of moan came from his lips. Its sound froze them.

  Suddenly, between pants, his words came like slow summer thunder over the multitudes.

  “… how you feel.”

  He held the mike farther away and looked down and saw them coming together, looking up, and he began talking in words he had never used before and that later he would not remember saying.

  “I have seen all this before—I tell you—brothers and sisters—there is no way—to come out of this—on the good side. Violence and burning never succeed.”