The Green Revolution

by Ralph McInerny

  “Father Genoux, isn’t it?”

  Genoux was amazed. They had never met. He had no reason to think that Roger even knew he existed. “The Ethics of Austen.” The huge man made a little face and wagged a finger.

  “You’ve read it?” This was Genoux’s doctoral dissertation, rotting as he would have thought like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake in some obscure corner of the library.

  “I found it interesting. For a dissertation, that is.”

  The other man said, “I am Francis Parkman. Are you the Genoux who works in the president’s office?”

  Startled, Genoux laughed a nervous laugh. “Work in the president’s office? That’s an oxymoron.”

  Roger Knight, at least, appreciated this.

  “You have a bad habit of not answering letters.”

  What would he say if he knew the letters were filed under CRANKS? Parkman, chairman of the Weeping Willow Society, did not look at all like Genoux had imagined.

  “Not the ethics of Austen,” Roger chided.

  “I wish I could discuss it now,” Genoux lied, “but the fact is I dropped by to ask Professor Knight if he could possibly meet the wife of one of the trustees on Monday.”

  “Then you do accommodate some wishes.”

  “Mimi O’Toole. She’s staying in the Morris Inn. She wants to talk about Baron Corvo.”

  “For lunch?” Roger asked.

  “That would be perfect.”

  “Only if we can be served on the patio.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Mission accomplished, he wanted to flee, but Parkman was now positioned in a way that would make that difficult.

  “Father, know this. We are quite serious, and we intend to get the information we ask for. We intend to get responses to the sensible suggestions we have made. We are not in the grip of some momentary pique. For many of us, if this is the last thing we do in our lives, we will be content. So please don’t think that our society will fade away like a football season.”

  “I promise to pass this on,” Genoux said.

  “Threats are never seemly, particularly threats of litigation. I speak as a judge. But you might consider that there are many strange new laws and even stranger judicial decisions. Surely you wouldn’t want to be sued by alumni whose desires are the good of this institution?”

  All this was said in the calmest of tones, Parkman’s voice raised only because of the level of noise in the apartment. In self-defense, Genoux took his hand and shook it vigorously. He nodded at Roger.

  “Monday.”

  “Did you say Mimi O’Toole, Father?” Parkman asked.

  “Yes.”

  Genoux waited, but there was nothing further.

  14

  Only after persistent questioning had Father Carmody told Iggie the line from the Cataline Orations.

  “Did you pass that class?”

  “Father, I loved Latin.”

  “Not a reciprocated passion. You better go easy with that stuff.” The priest nodded at Iggie’s glass. There was some giant who kept filling it up. Iggie’s glasses were in his shirt pocket, and even apart from the alcohol he had consumed, the world would have been blurred.

  “At this time of night it goes down like water.”

  “That’s what it largely is. It’s the rest that does you in.”

  “Not Iggie Willis.”

  “Doesn’t your profession require a steady hand?”

  The image of Pearl drifted by Iggie’s clouded mind, followed by Miriam, wearing a disapproving look not unlike Father Carmody’s. Iggie fought the impulse to pour out his troubles to the priest. This wasn’t the place or the time. He must do that, however, before he headed home.

  “It starts with quo,” he prompted.

  Father Carmody recited the line then. Murmuring it over and over, not wanting to lose it, Iggie headed for the door. Outside, on the lawn, addressing some constellation he couldn’t have named, he shouted the Ciceronian line to the stars. The night air had the odd effect of making him feel drunk. He was drunk. Whoops, here it comes. He bent over and retched helplessly, managing to miss his trousers but not his shoes.

  When he was sure it was over, he plunged back inside, looking for the bathroom.

  “You left your glass.”

  The giant again. Iggie took the glass, full to the brim. A hair of the dog. This was more like a pelt. A belt. He was laughing as he headed for the bathroom.

  A very bedraggled dentist looked out at him from the mirror. Are you really drunk if you know you are? Thank God he had been outside when he threw up. He blamed it all on the loss that afternoon. He liked a drink, sure, but getting drunk was not in his repertoire. It was being back on campus that explained it, that and the loss to Boston College. It had taken Iggie years to like Doug Flutie, the first BC quarterback to have humiliated Notre Dame.

  Iggie slipped out of his loafers and rinsed them off in the sink. Good as new. He had trouble slipping into them again, but he managed. Don’t underestimate good old Iggie Willis. He picked up his drink and left the bathroom. The giant seemed to be waiting for him.

  “Wintheiser,” he replied when Iggie asked him who he was.

  Wintheiser! Pearl’s husband. As Iggie thought of returning to the bathroom and locking the door, he put on his glasses. This guy was two heads taller and had the body of a linebacker, but then that is what he had been. Wintheiser was nodding.

  “I didn’t recognize you in clothes.”

  Nothing. Just a steely stare.

  “The locker room? The club? When you threatened me?”

  “Did I threaten you?”

  How in the hell could he put this? Take your wife, I’m through with her? “Look,” he began.

  Wintheiser put up a hand, a huge hand; he could have gripped Iggie’s head in it like a football.

  “You’re right,” Iggie said with relief. “Let bygones be bygones. What did you think of the game?”

  “I think they ought to fire the fans.” No change of expression, no twinkle in the eye. He looked at Iggie as if there were something on his face. He dabbed with his handkerchief. There had been something on his face.

  “I threw up,” he explained to Wintheiser.

  “Now you have your second wind.”

  That turned out to be true. He took a long pull on his drink and found it bracing.

  “I’ve got to sit down.”

  “You drive here?”

  “On a game day? You’re kidding.”

  “Where you staying?”

  “The Morris Inn.”

  “I’ll take you there.”

  “Leahy’s would be better than this.”

  “You got everything?”

  “You know, George, I’m glad we got together like this. I’ve wanted to call. The trouble is, what could I say?”

  Outside there was an electric cart, and Wintheiser helped him get into the passenger seat.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “The athletic department.”

  Soundlessly the cart began to move. Iggie put back his head and looked at the night sky. This time he didn’t shout the line. Quousque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?

  “What’s it mean?”

  “How long will you abuse our patience, Catalina.”

  “Who’s Catalina?”

  “An island off the California coast.”

  Was the guy dumb or something? Still, it was nice of him to offer this ride back to the Morris Inn.

  “I’m thinking of serenading Charlie Weis with that line.”

  15

  After the game Masses are said in various chapels around the campus, as well as in Sacred Heart Basilica and the Stepan Center, a convenience for travelers, since this vigil Mass fulfilled their Sunday obligation. There were many, too many, expressions of the thought that a requiem Mass would be appropriate after such a loss. Before these worshippers set out for home, the bulk of the visiting fans would have been efficiently directed on their way by camp
us and local police. With nightfall, revelers subsided and something like peace covered the campus lawns, the trees, the residence buildings. Already, in the stadium, the work of cleaning up had begun, and with morning other crews would remove the debris that littered the campus.

  Notre Dame is the largest local employer, and provides as well a number of temporary tasks associated with football. There were the ushers in the stadium, those who guided visitors in the parking lots, police from around and about who helped keep things orderly, vendors of various sorts, and the campus cleanup crew.

  It was not a cold day, but Bridget Sokolowski wore an extralarge windbreaker and a cap with an oversized bill. Nothing odd there; it was the huge sunglasses that surprised, but then Bridget both needed the money this temporary employment afforded and was ashamed to be engaged in such menial labor. A temporary member of the underclass. No one she cared about knew that this was how she spent Sunday mornings after a Notre Dame home game, cleaning up the darned campus. It was something any nitwit could do. There was no skill involved at all. It was just the mechanical act of picking up and cramming into plastic bags paper, Styrofoam, cups, plates, bottles, whatever. She felt like a bag lady.

  The crew she was with moved down the mall westward toward Rockne Memorial. When they got there, they took a break. Bridget moved away from the others and sat on a little wall, looking toward the golf course. Just below her was the practice putting green. The man lying on it seemed to have assumed the posture of the little leprechaun, the Notre Dame mascot. For a moment, she wondered if it was the mascot, but the man wasn’t wearing that elfin outfit. Imagine sleeping outside like that. He had probably passed out and didn’t know where he was.

  “Whatcha looking at?”

  It was the girl they called Chita. Bridget shrugged, but she turned away and felt that her eyes would draw Chita’s to the drunk asleep on the practice green.

  “Look at the guy on the grass,” Chita cried.

  “Passed out.”

  “I wonder. Let’s go see what’s going on.”

  “Not me.”

  “Hey, you found him.”

  “What do you mean, found him?”

  “Well, I’m going to take a look.”

  A minute later Chita’s shriek lifted from the putting green and the whole crew rushed to see what was the matter. But not Bridget. She left her plastic bag full of trash and hurried across the mall, anxious to get the hell out of there. The body on the putting green spelled trouble, and Bridget was not eager to get involved in any publicity that would reveal to her friends how she spent the Sunday after home games.

  PART TWO

  1

  The chief of the cleaning crew alerted campus security, and when the patrol car arrived, most of the crew lost interest and drifted away. This break was turning into a long one, and they intended to enjoy it. There were some among them whose relations with the police had not always been happy. The rest just wanted to avoid whatever trouble the dead man on the putting green represented. Except Chita.

  “I found him,” she told one of the cops.

  “Yeah?”

  “We were standing up there, sitting on that wall, and we looked down and there he was.”

  “We?”

  “Bridget noticed him first.”

  “Where’s Bridget?”

  Bridget could not be found. The cop let his partner, a real fatty, look after the body. He wanted Chita to sit in the patrol car and tell him all about it. He wanted to get in back with her, but she put the kibosh on that.

  “You up front, me back here.”

  “Maybe you should contact your lawyer.”

  “Lawyer? What are you talking about?”

  “Anything you say may be held against you.” He made it sound dirty.

  “You’ve been watching too much TV.”

  “So what did you hit him with?”

  Chita opened the back door, but the cop stopped her. “Hey, I’m just kidding around.”

  “Do corpses affect you that way?”

  “Only dead ones.” But he stopped his eyebrows from dancing before they really got started. He was kind of cute.

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “In my own words?”

  “Just so it’s English.”

  “No habla español?”

  “Let me see your green card.”

  “I was born in Indiana!”

  “No kidding.”

  “I went to St. Joe High School.”

  His face lit up. “What year?”

  “Don’t tell me they let you in.”

  “It was getting out that was the problem.”

  “How long you been a cop?”

  “A few years.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Listen to killers trying to deflect me from my interrogation.”

  Finally he got serious, and she told him what she had seen and done.

  “You came right down to inspect the body?”

  “I wanted to see what was wrong with him.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “He was dead.”

  “How did you figure that out? Did you try giving him first aid? You know, mouth to mouth.”

  He was back to being a stand-up comic. His name was on the label sewn above the right pocket of his shirt. Larry Douglas.

  “What’s your wife’s name, Larry?”

  “Mrs. Douglas.”

  “That figures. That her guarding the body?”

  “I’m not married!”

  “That figures, too.”

  He was kind of nice when he wasn’t playing cop.

  “What year were you in at St. Joe?” he asked.

  “1066.”

  “What’s a good-looking smartie like you doing on a cleanup crew?”

  “Meeting dumb cops.”

  “Let’s go find Bridget.”

  First he had to call in. Chita listened. How ordinary it sounded. Dead white male, drunk, fortyish, must have been at the game Saturday. He had to repeat what he said about the Notre Dame towel.

  “That’s right. Stuffed in his mouth.”

  Larry was asked who the dead man was.

  “Ignatius Willis.”

  * * *

  Campus security called Father Genoux, and he immediately put in a call to Father Carmody at Holy Cross House. Despite the hour, the old priest sounded bright and chipper. Probably he still said his Mass at the crack of dawn.

  “They found the body of Ignatius Willis on the putting green next to Rockne.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was at the Knights’ party after the game.”

  “I know.”

  “Who reported it?”

  “I just got a call from campus security.”

  “Come and get me.”

  Genoux was halfway to Holy Cross House before he realized that he hadn’t hesitated a minute to obey the old priest. Well, this was something he hoped to dump in Carmody’s lap. If there was any way to prevent this from blowing up into unwelcome publicity, Carmody would know.

  He was standing under the overhang when Genoux arrived, and he skipped out to the car and got in.

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Where they found it.”

  “Let’s get going.”

  At the putting green, Father Carmody went immediately to the body and knelt beside it, head bowed. He was praying. He lifted his hand in blessing and then let it lie on the dead man’s shoulder. He used the shoulder to get himself upright again. He looked around, and it was clear he was relieved to find that the cop on the job was a young fellow named Larry Douglas. “You check the hole?”

  “For what?”

  “A ball. This is a putting green.”

  Apparently a joke. Carmody listened while Douglas told him what he knew.

  “Who else knows?”

  “The cleaning crew found him.”

  Carmody frowned. “And you called it in?”

  “
I told Bernice to let Father Genoux know.”

  “She talk to anyone else?”

  “Bernice?”

  “I don’t know her. Let’s keep a lid on this, Larry. For now.”

  “What about the body?”

  For an awful moment, Genoux thought Carmody would suggest getting rid of it—bury it, drop it in the lake.

  “No more harm can come to him lying there.” He turned to Genoux. “You got a cell phone, Father?”

  Taking it, he punched a number with slow deliberation and then seemed to wonder which end to put to his ear. He listened, frowning out at the golf course, or what was left of it. The back nine had been built on; only the front remained. Genoux knew that Carmody did not like the new course north of campus that had cost a bundle to develop.

  “Roger? Father Carmody. Is Phil there?”

  2

  “You want to come along, Roger?” Phil asked when he told his brother why Father Carmody had called.

  “I have to go to Mass.”

  Of course. Only Roger was Catholic, converted during his time at Princeton. He had enigmatically likened this to F. Marion Crawford’s conversion while he was in India, after having been brought up in Rome in the shadow of the Vatican. Phil had learned not to ask Roger to explain such remarks. Phil believed in God, of course—someone had to be in charge of all this—but the niceties of religious belief had never drawn him.

  “They will,” Roger said. Nothing smug about it, just a statement.

  “Willis was among our guests last night, Phil.”

  “I know.”

  Phil did not want to think about that party; he did not want to remember how much he had drunk. The party had roared on for hours after Father Carmody left, and it continued to roar on in Phil’s aching head.

  “Call me after church,” Phil said, putting on a jacket.

  There was no point in calling Roger. Even when he had his cell phone with him, he never turned it on until he wanted to use it.

  When he went through the campus gate, saluting the guard, Phil wondered if she knew a dead body had been found on campus. He doubted it. Father Carmody had indicated that he didn’t want anyone spreading the alarm, at least not yet.

  Larry Douglas and his partner, Laura, were crouched at the edge of the putting green nearest the road. The two priests were standing by the body. Laura had put a piece of clear plastic on the ground.