The St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club
Page 22
The bishop, in a deep, rumbling voice finally asked, “What is the matter of such great urgency?”
Crump appreciated the practiced tone of the bishop’s voice, a tone he also sometimes employed when discussing matters of great consequence.
“I want to talk to you about Father Tom Abernathy.”
The bishop raised his eyebrows as if to clear his vision and better study his visitor.
“What about Father Abernathy?” he asked slowly, and if he were struggling to harness his impatience and incredulity.
“Word on the street is you’re taking his parish away from him.”
The bishop didn’t respond, but focused intently on Billy’s face. After about a half minute of staring he asked, “Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met.”
“No,” the bishop said after a pause. “I’m sure we’ve met.”
“I would remember.”
“What did you say your name is, again?”
“Pastor Billy Crump, Grand Hope Nondenominational Family Church.”
The bishop sat considering Billy’s response and then said, “Now I know. You’re the preacher on the billboard on the south end of town.”
Crump sensed by the bishop’s pronouncement of “preacher” and “billboard” he had a hard, condescending edge, honed by unquestioned fealty that fed his conceit. But Billy didn’t care; the bishop’s edge was not as hard as his own.
“Anyway, Bishop, I want to talk to you about Father Abernathy.”
“My advice to you, Mr. Crump—”
“Pastor Crump.”
“As you wish. My advice to you, Pastor Crump, is to not worry yourself about gossip you aptly described as ‘word on the street.’”
“It comes from a reliable source.”
“Be that as it may, it is none of your business. It is church business.”
“I beg to differ, Bishop. It is God’s business. I’m merely an instrument of God.”
The bishop slid his chair back and put his feet on the desktop in overt display of condescension. Crump read the imprint on his shoe sole and figured he could feed a hundred people for a month for what those shoes cost.
“Do tell, Pastor Crump, of the Grand Hope Nondenominational Family Church, if I got that right, what business of God’s are you an instrument of?”
“Tom Abernathy is a saint.”
“A saint?”
“A bona fide saint.”
“A saint? Are you an expert on canonization?”
“And he’s a faith healer.”
The bishop smiled and openly winked at his secretary, as if to confirm for Crump he considered him a crackpot. Billy started to feel anger burn his throat, but he controlled his voice, didn’t let it crack, didn’t let it quaver.
“And what proof do you have of his miracles?”
“Do you know Theo Swindberg?” Billy asked
“The pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran? Not well, just by reputation. A very good man, I understand.”
Billy summoned his own deep voice of authority: “Father Tom cured his wife of cancer.”
The bishop dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight in his chair. “You may have your own deluded reasons for interrupting my day, sir, but dragging Pastor Swindberg and his wife into your fantasy is beyond the pale.”
“Call him.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
“Listen, you pompous son-of-a-bitch,” Crump said sweetly through a smile, “I’ve been privy to a miracle of God, worked by Father Tom Abernathy. He saved a woman from cancer, through faith and prayer. Now you want to strip the man of his parish, his life’s work. It ain’t right. Get behind me, Satan!” Billy shouted, jumping up from his chair.
The bishop scrambled from his chair and stood close to his secretary. Crump wanted to laugh at the two nervous emissaries of Rome huddled up in the presence of a crazy little evangelical preacher, yet he kept a grim look on his face as he stared at the two priests.
“Now, if you want to hear the truth, the truth will set you free. You can talk to Theo; you can talk to his wife; you can talk to his wife’s doctors; whatever it takes for you to get it through your fat head that Tom Abernathy is a chosen Lamb of God and he should stay right where he is.”
“I think I’ve heard about enough out of you, Mr. Crump,” the bishop hissed. “Where Father Tom serves, if he serves, is none of your business. I resent the tone you’ve taken with me, and I advise you to be on your way.”
“I’ve got a little something for you before I leave,” Crump said as he set the Wal-Mart bag on the bishop’s desk. The bishop and his secretary eyed the bag apprehensively until Crump said, “It won’t bite you fellas. It’s just a little free-will offering from my folks to help you decide the right thing to do about Father Tom.” He dumped the bag, and bundles of $100 bills plopped on the desk. “There’s five thousand dollars here, Bishop, all in $100 bills. No one needs to know but the three of us.”
“Well, I never!”
“Oh, I’m sure you have, Bishop,” replied Crump. “And I’m sure you will again,” he said over his shoulder as he clomped out of the bishop’s office.
Midmorning, the day after Billy Crump’s visit to the bishop, Theo called Father Tom and told him the bishop requested he come in, that Billy Crump had told him a wild tale about Father Tom Abernathy and Naomi. The bishop wanted him to come in and clear up the matter. “I don’t know what to do,” Theo said.
“Don’t do anything, Theo. The bishop has no authority over you; you know that.”
“He might make trouble for me with the Synod.”
“Don’t worry about that, Theo. Guys like him are intimidated by Protestants; they’re afraid they might be right.”
Apparently, Theo didn’t think Tom’s comment funny. “What do you think Billy told him?” he asked in response.
“Everything, I guess. Look, I didn’t ask Billy to talk to the bishop. You know Billy. That’s how he plays his hand.”
“I want to help you if I can, Tom.”
“Just let it go. The bishop probably thinks Billy’s a crank. If you get involved, more folks will find out. The Synod will hear about it. You could lose your position. We don’t need two unemployed preachers in our poker club.”
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
“No reason to be sorry, Theo. It’s done. Time to move on.”
“What will you do?”
“I haven’t figured that out. But I’ll let you know when I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Father Tom Abernathy called to order the last meeting of the St. Michael Drinking & Poker Club the Thursday after his telephone conversation with Theo. Theo had taken his advice and refused the bishop’s invitation to meet. Subsequently, the bishop’s secretary called Tom to confirm that he was to be out of St. Michael by Sunday afternoon. The secretary reiterated the bishop’s position, saying a priest’s failure to minister to his flock for unexplained reasons could not be tolerated. The diocese was accepting his resignation and retirement, and the bishop wished him no ill will.
The four clergymen gathered in Father Tom’s rathskeller and took their usual seats around the poker table. No cards were dealt. No one was in the mood to play cards. Each of the guests was somber, but Tom was lighthearted, entertaining them with his spot-on impression of the bishop, which Crump confirmed, and offering bits of gallows humor regarding his forced retirement. He handed out cans of beer and beseeched the men to have a drink, one last time, in honor of the good times they’d had.
“I should have done something,” Metzger said, ending the pensive silence which followed Father Tom’s invitation to drink. “I should have gone with Billy. I could have backed him up. I know people, I would have if I’d known—”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” Billy said with an edge to his voic
e. Then he eased back in his chair, sighed, and with a conciliatory tone, qualified his words. “Bottom line, Brian, it wouldn’t a done any good. The bishop had his mind made up. And Tom didn’t want us to interfere. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“What’d you think was going to happen, Billy?” Father Tom asked jovially. “The Pope make me a saint? It takes three miracles for canonization, and I only have two. Getting you boys together was the first one.”
“I probably caused more trouble for you.”
“No harm, Billy. The bishop just thinks you’re a nut.”
“Well, the old fraud kept my money and believe you me, I’m getting it back. For the poor. He’s not shed of Billy Crump.”
Theo sat sipping his beer, listening to the others talk. “It was my job, Brian,” he finally said with tears in his eyes. “Tom saved Naomi’s life, and I couldn’t even bring myself to speak up on his behalf.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Theo,” Father Tom offered. “I told you not to. Anyway, it’s all working out for the best. Things happen for a reason. It’ll all work out the way it’s supposed to. I want you gentlemen to give me your solemn promises you’ll never speak of this matter again, to anyone. And Theo, I’d like for you to tell Naomi that if she has any feelings of gratitude to the Lord for His gift of healing, she won’t speak of it either.”
Tom surprised himself with his assertions that things happen for a reason and that it was for the best. The sentiment was outside divine intervention and also not part of his personal philosophy. He believed most folks looked at bad outcomes, disappointments, and loss in the light of the changed circumstances, and with no other circumstances being possible, accepted and adapted to the change. They adopted the new circumstances as happening for a reason or happening for the best, because there are no other options. They resorted to platitudes to assuage dire disappointment. His own situation, at least as far as his forced retirement went, was the result of an overweening bishop asserting his primacy. For a reason? Sure, but not preordained. For the best? Likely not.
In all likelihood, and Tom would never share this with the others, his situation was a result of a malignant alignment of the stars, a negative effect on Aries, the Ram.
“What are you gonna do now, Tom?” asked Crump.
“I’m going back home, where I grew up. Grow roses and vegetables, maybe get myself a cat or two. I like cats; cats have free will.” He smiled. “I’ve been renting out my mother’s place for years, figuring I’d retire there someday. Well, it’s someday. Besides, my horoscope for today told me to reduce stress by returning to my happy place.”
“You can come and work with me,” offered Crump. “Think of the folks we could heal, the money we could raise for the poor.”
“I appreciate the offer, Billy,” Tom replied with a benevolent smile, “but at this stage of my life, I don’t want to work as hard as you do.”
“The offer will always be on the table, Tom.”
“I appreciate that, but I’m tired. I’m going home. I can tell you fellows the only right thing my old man ever did in his life was taking out a paid-up life insurance policy to cover the mortgage on the house before he left town. I was at Benedictine College when my mother got a call from a funeral director down in El Paso, Texas, saying he had my old man’s body and wanted to know if she wanted him shipped up for burial. My old man had listed her as next of kin on his last job application. No, she told the undertaker, bury him down there, where he wanted to be. And she wired five hundred dollars to cover the expenses, and another two hundred with instructions to have Masses said at the local Catholic Church for the repose of his soul. She told me later she figured she owed him that much, considering he left her the home place and all. In any event, the insurance policy paid off the home place, and Mother had a place to live.
“I’ll tell you boys, for most of my life, I hated my old man for abandoning us. It wasn’t until I realized that some men like he and I just aren’t cut out to be husbands and fathers. But we still have a purpose in life. His purpose was to provide my mother with her little house and a plot of land to grow her vegetables and roses, and give her me, her son, the priest.”
Tom looked into the faces of the men sitting around the table. “Well, that’s enough of the sad old stories. All in all, the St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club has been a pretty good time, hasn’t it, boys?”
He raised his can of beer in a toast and the three other men took turns clanking their can against his. He could hear Theo softly humming “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” not because it was a proper moment for a hymn, but because he suspected if Theo didn’t concentrate on the ponderous melody and difficult words he might break down and cry.
“I always liked that hymn, Theo,” said Father Tom. “It’s a strong hymn. Don’t know why they never included it in our lexicon. Although it might have something to do with the fact it was written by a heretic.”
Theo, dour and sad-eyed, made himself smile at Tom’s joke. When he could no longer contain his feelings, he lowered his head and wept like a baby. Metzger wiped his eyes as well, while Crump sat in stony silence staring straight ahead, not looking at anyone, lest he too make a scene. True to form, however, he couldn’t control himself, got up, and with tears pooled in his eyes, walked around the table and stood in front of Father Tom.
“I swear, Tom, you’re the best damned papist I’ve ever known.”
Tom stood up, grabbed Crump in a bear hug, and shook him up and down. “And you, my friend, are the best looking little evangelical that ever graced a billboard.”
When Metzger and Crump had gone, Theo, now composed, stayed behind to clean up the cellar as he’d done after each meeting for months. Tom told him he needn’t bother; there was nothing to clean up other than four empty beer cans. But Theo insisted, saying it was the least he could do, and he wanted to do it one last time. Tom picked up the beer cans, and Theo gently smoothed the tablecloth with his hands.
“I might as well put that away, Theo. I don’t think there will be any more card games.”
Theo gently folded the cloth in half and smoothed the creases. He then folded it in quarters and smoothed it again. As Father Tom watched, he said, “You know, Theo, that’s really not a tablecloth; it’s a Catholic altar cloth. I was waiting to spring that on you in front of the other guys, you know, as a joke. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
Theo picked up the folded altar cloth, gently kissed it, and handed it to Father Tom.
“I’ve always known what it is, my friend. It was a sign to me from the very beginning. One must always be vigilant; you never know where you’ll find an instrument of God.”
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge the fine editing of the manuscript by Mary Ward Menke and Karen K. Snyder.
Author photograph by wphotography, Columbia, Illinois.