Prodigal Father (8 page)
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my anxieties.
âPsalm 139
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On Monday evening, when Father Dowling showed him the stuff that Eric Hospers had downloaded from the Internet, Phil read through it with a scowl.
“This is the nice guy you were telling me about, Marie?”
“Let me see that.”
Phil handed her the papers. Father Dowling went on puffing at his pipe, giving no indication of what he thought Phil's reaction to the California machinations of Stanley Morgan would be. Marie rattled the pages as she skimmed them, her expression one of indignation.
“The man was accused and acquitted, that's the long and short of it. He is as innocent as you or I.”
“He got off on a technicality.”
“What else is law but technicalities? He was acquitted.”
“That's right,” Father Dowling said.
Phil was relieved. He had feared that the pastor of St. Hilary's expected his old friend the cop to run Morgan out of town on the basis of these shenanigans on the West Coast.
“What's he doing here?”
“Searching for his flown partner, apparently.”
Marie sat forward. “A man he said had been a priest!”
“He wasn't even indicted, Marie.”
“So why did he disappear?”
“That's Morgan's story. He didn't accuse his partner of anything.”
Marie was having none of that. She had found Stanley Morgan to be a fine man and swiftly developed her version of what must have happened in California. It was clear as a bell. This renegade priest had left Morgan in the lurch, Morgan was indicted, and the Judas Iscariot probably thought Morgan would be out of circulation for a good long time, courtesy of the California penitentiary system.
“Wasting away in Alcatraz.”
“Alcatraz is closed, Marie,” Phil said. “It's become a movie set.”
“I just wish Stan Morgan was here to defend himself.”
“He could plead guilty to a lesser offence. Again.”
“That's right!”
“His partner does seem like a skunk, Roger.”
The pastor sent a wobbly smoke ring sailing over his desk. “Have another beer, Phil. Marie?”
Marie got to her feet. “You can drink a toast to Stan Morgan.”
After she brought the beer, Marie did not stay, and when they were alone, Father Dowling asked Phil to close the door.
“I think I know where Marie's villain is.”
“The runaway priest?”
“He has returned. He was an Athanasian.”
“So what is there for him to return to?”
“They're still a community, Phil. With the return of Father Nathaniel, there are six.”
“Nathaniel?”
“Richard Krause.”
“Aha. Who found him? Morgan?”
“No. I don't know that Morgan realizes where the man he is looking for is. Boniface made the connection when I showed him those pages. Eric gave them to me Saturday, Boniface was here, and I showed them to him. It seemed a cruel thing to do, but it would have been more cruel to keep the information from him.”
Roger described the prodigal's return to the Order of St. Athanasius, where he was spending a period of probation before he could be reinstated.
“So you already suspected?”
“It was Boniface who saw the connection.”
“What will he do?”
“I don't know. He is not enthralled with Richard's return.”
“And this could blackball him?”
“We'll see.”
Phil shuffled through the pages young Hospers had printed out. “All this stuff was there for the asking?”
“If you know how to ask. There was something about a search engine.”
Phil did not even pretend to understand, but the printouts provided a spooky sense of the Web, everyone's secrets available to anyone with a computer anywhere on the globe.
“Cy Horvath has gotten into that. Sometimes it's quicker than going through regular channels.”
“Have Cy put through a search on you, Phil.”
“He better not.”
“Boniface told me that something like twenty percent of those who left the priesthood have come back.”
“And they let them in?”
“What would you suggest?”
“Drawing and quartering. Think of the scandal they caused, and the scandal their just coming back would cause.”
“There is that danger, I suppose. But not with an Athanasian.”
“I hope Boniface gives him the heave-ho.”
“Well, that's two strikes against him.”
“Did you advise Boniface to send him packing?”
“I was thinking of Marie.”
“She's just infatuated with this guy Morgan.”
“Is that a note of jealousy in your voice?”
“Roger, the idea of marrying again never so much as enters my mind. I am celibate as you are.”
“And you might have been in the same way as I am.”
“Latin,” Phil groaned. “But don't get me wrong. I will never regret marrying and having my daughters, being grandfather to their children.”
“That's not an impediment, Phil.”
“To what?”
“Maybe you should return to the dreams of your youth. Talk to the cardinal.”
Father Dowling's little joke. But driving home, the suggestion lingered. How unattractive it was. Yet how many times had he sat in Roger Dowling's rectory nursing the unexpressed illusion that they were just two priests, having a chat, watching a game on TV. But that was the allure of the might have been and never could be. Father Dowling's kidding suggestion confirmed Phil in the conviction that his inability to learn Latin had been providential.
He wasn't meant to be a priest. He was a cop and that was the way he would end up. And he didn't regret it a bit. He could still have his semiclerical evenings with Roger Dowling.
He wasn't meant to be a priest. He was a cop and that was the way he would end up. And he didn't regret it a bit. He could still have his semiclerical evenings with Roger Dowling.
Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it.
âPsalm 96
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Michael George awoke with a twinge of conscience to the sound of a mower, the latter the cause of the former. He scrambled out of bed and went to the open window of the lodge, the building that had housed his family since before the Athanasians had come into possession of the estate. All this was family lore. His grandfather had been employed by the Corbetts and when with his second marriage Maurice Corbett had returned to the faith of his fathers it had seemed to threaten the security of the George family. But the second Mrs. Corbett had been a paragon of ecumenismâFather Boniface had supplied the phraseâand it was largely due to her counsel that the estate was deeded to the Athanasians, with the proviso that the Georges went with the land.
“Serfs,” Michael had said, shocking his grandfather and getting a belt on the ear from his father.
The sense that he and his family were part of the property persisted until he saw it all as Rita did, she of the dark flashing
eyes and firm, trim body who had been unable to conceal her envy at the way Michael and his family lived.
eyes and firm, trim body who had been unable to conceal her envy at the way Michael and his family lived.
“We head the maintenance crew,” he said.
“And you should thank God for it.” The lodge was mansion enough for her. Had she already formed the dream of living here? Michael had grown up scheming on how to escape his humbling heritage. At school, he had been identified with the estate. It was difficult to see their situation as demeaning, the way they were treated by Boniface and the other Athanasians. It was because of Boniface that he had passed three years following the course of the minor seminary, learning Latin and Greek and the great works of literature until he rebelled and was permitted to attend the local high school in his senior year. That was where he had met Rita. It was as if there was a plan laid down for his life and all he had to do was enact it. After years of language, he had put his mind to failing at Spanish.
“I'll tutor you,” Rita had said, in Spanish, a species of Spanish, one that had crossed the Rio Grande with her family and then traveled north to Illinois where they settled, sending money home to their extended family near Guadalajara. He nodded.
“You understood me.”
“You speak so clearly.” Small white teeth peeked out beneath the upper lip, resting between outbursts on the plush lower lip he longed to touch with his own.
Rita had reminded his father of the immigrants who had always proved so undependable when he hired them onto the crew, but her deferential manner, her virginal composure, soon won over his parents.
“She is a good girl,” his father said, and it might have been a warning.
He saw the estate and his home with her eyes and, compared
with the modest rented home in which her family lived, it did seem palatial. Her father called him
hidalgo
with a smile that showed his goldedged incisors.
with the modest rented home in which her family lived, it did seem palatial. Her father called him
hidalgo
with a smile that showed his goldedged incisors.
“And this is where you'll live?” Rita mused.
“Of course.”
“I would live with you in a hut,” she said with more fervor now that it was clear that no hut awaited them if, as Michael insisted, they married.
“Not for years,” his father said.
“Now. After we graduate.”
“You're nineteen years old.”
“Did you think I have to go to college in order to learn how to work with you?”
The point was taken. Boniface had remained unenthusiastic.
“I thought you might have a vocation.”
“We're not Catholics, Father.”
“Greek Catholics.”
“Orthodox.”
Their priest had told them the difference, insistently, considering where they lived and who they worked for. He came to see Boniface, ready for war, but the result was a truce.
“He is a good man,” Father Maximilian said.
“They all are.”
“I know only him. But you must be faithful to your own religion.”
That would have been no problem if it hadn't been for Rita. She came with him to his church one Sunday and was put with the other women, wearing her mantilla, following it all with wary curiosity.
“When did the Mass part happen? I didn't understand it at all.”
Michael could not explain it to her. His own understanding of the Orthodox liturgy was imperfect. She insisted that they must marry before her priest.
“If you're serious,” she added.
He would have repudiated his family for her sake, but he knew his family and the lodge was a large part of the attraction he held for her. He tried to resent this, but found he could not. She seemed to think he was heir to the estate because he could follow in his father's footsteps, carrying the family tradition into a third generation.
“You have the touch,” his father said, when he saw what Michael had done with the hibiscus bed. Were such things inherited, passed along like Original Sin from father to son? He instinctively understood the relation between the earth and growing things. It was not a theory, not knowledge in that sense. He had worked beside his father since he was a mere boy, an unconscious apprenticeship, one in which he felt a deep, wordless satisfaction when the various flowers bloomed in sequence from spring through early autumn.
“Is it okay with your parents, Rita?” He meant their marrying. He had planted things around the Martinez house, the wisteria bringing delighted cries from Mrs. Martinez.
“It is up to me.”
“That's good.”
“You're too sure of yourself.”
Was it possible that he dissembled the fear he had that one day the bubble would burst and Rita would go off with one of the dark-haired young men with the premature mustaches and swaggers that swaggered over nothing?
“I want to be sure of you.”
“We'll see,” she said teasingly.
“You said yes.”
“I wasn't thinking clearly.”
“Thinking clearly is for strangers. I don't want you thinking clearly with me.”
“There are months before graduation.”
But now it was a week away and still she had not repeated her Yes as she had when her mind was unclear. When he held her she felt fragile, warm, nothing he dared press to himself with the urgency he felt. No talking then, no promises exacted or given, a mute understandingâthat was what he had to settle for. He was mad with desire but told himself it was holy. He wanted her as his wife. When he imagined her naked beside him in bed, her warm brown body in his arms, his thoughts were not holy. But it could never happen unless they were married.
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The car was several years old but it was a convertible and the man behind the wheel looked out of place. He was fat and thirty at least and beckoned to Michael to come to the side of the parked car.
“What do you want?”
“To talk. You one of the Georges?”
“Is that why you stopped?”
“It is. It is. You work on the Corbett estate.”
“It hasn't been that for years.”
“My grandfather built it.”
“Yeah?”
“He's the one who gave it away.”
“My grandfather worked for him.”
“There. See how much we have in common?”
They had nothing in common, Michael saw that at a glance.
Sweat stood out on the broad, pasty forehead, and the eyes were small and bloodshot.
Sweat stood out on the broad, pasty forehead, and the eyes were small and bloodshot.
“You want to look around just go in the driveway. No one will stop you.”
“I have your permission?” Spoken with a snarl, but then he tried to smile again.
“Go to hell,” Michael said.
That was the first time. In the following weeks, he saw the car several other times. Once the guy did come up the drive, but he kept the car moving, never stopped or got out. Michael was in the greenhouse where he could watch him without being seen. Why did such a fat, sweaty bastard seem a menace?
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