Flight Dreams

by Michael Craft

  Manning pauses, watching the priest, then asks flatly, “Really?”

  “Yes.” Father Carey laughs. “For heaven sake, Mark, it’s not a conspiracy. People at that level of power and influence all know each other. In fact, the archbishop knew the Carters well—he played golf with Ridgely. Chances are, Nathan Cain did too.”

  Manning remembers the morgue photo of Cain with the Carters. He nods, deep in thought. Then he feels the priest’s hand on his knee.

  “Mark, I’d like to help you. But I can tell you from the outset that I have no idea what happened to Helena Carter. I’d be a wealthy man if I did.”

  “Do you care about wealth, Father?” asks Manning, pointedly using the clerical title.

  “My remark was indiscreet, I admit. But since you ask—yes, I confess that certain earthly pleasures are highly appealing.” He removes his hand from Manning’s knee. “I hasten to add, though, that an interest in money is not necessarily contrary to my priestly calling. I’m a diocesan priest, Mark; I’m not a member of a religious order and have taken no vow of poverty. Wealth is not intrinsically evil. Indeed, much good can come from it.” He gestures with both hands at the building that surrounds them, a testament to the benevolence of cash. “Does such an attitude bother you, hearing it from a priest?”

  “Certainly not,” Manning assures him.

  “I only ask,” the priest explains, “because it bothered Helena deeply. We’d become close friends, but the issue of money eventually drove us apart.”

  “So that was it,” Manning says, underlining something in his notebook. “I talked to Helena’s sister, Margaret, a couple of days ago, and she said that you and Helena had a falling-out.”

  “It’s funny about money. After her husband died, her wealth began to prey on her—she didn’t deserve her affluence, she married him for it, that kind of thing. It was during the course of some lengthy counseling sessions that the whole matter flared up. In an attempt to relieve her of these pointless anxieties, I confided in her my own materialistic leanings. She misinterpreted my remarks completely, and from that day forward I sensed her suspicion that I was after her legacy. It was very poor judgment on my part.”

  “It couldn’t have done too much harm, Matt. Her will leaves the bulk of her fortune to the Archdiocese.”

  The priest stands and steps to the center of the sanctuary. “I was shocked to learn it. Yes, we had discussed the possibility of a major bequest—earlier.” He places a hand on the altar. “But I swear by the God I serve, Mark, that I did not expect a dime for the Church—not after our money-talk. I was convinced that it would all go to The Society.”

  “What ‘Society’? Margaret O’Connor told me that her sister had gotten interested in some conservative Catholic group. They sounded to me like a bunch of reactionaries.”

  “Precisely. They call themselves the Society for the Restoration of the Faith, but in church circles they’re simply known as The Society. The movement’s seeds were sewn back in the sixties at the Vatican Council itself. The whole upshot of Vatican II, of course, was reform.” He whirls a hand above his head, indicating the bizarre architecture. “But there was a sizable faction of the council that wanted the church to remain unchanged. There were even those who wanted to return to earlier ways. The handwriting was on the wall, though, in favor of modernization, so most of the conservatives either stepped in line or just kept quiet. But not all of them.”

  Carey sits next to Manning again, explaining, “A tiny group spearheaded by the Belgian prelate, Marcel Cardinal L’Évêque, became increasingly vocal in the debates, declaring the council’s proposed changes heretical—an extremely serious charge. But the council’s momentum would not be stopped, and I imagine you’re familiar with the direction of mainstream Catholicism since then.”

  “Generally,” says Manning. “And L’vêque?”

  “He didn’t stop. He’s ancient now, but he vigorously heads an ultraconservative movement that’s preaching schism. He’s on a collision course with Rome, flirting with excommunication. But that would only make him a martyr to his cause, and I don’t think Rome would risk it. So his numbers are growing. Slowly.”

  Manning rises, thinking, and strolls across the aisle to the next bank of pews. As a child, he was taught to genuflect whenever crossing the church’s center, and even now he feels the subliminal tug of that training on his right knee—but he resists it. He turns to ask Father Carey, “How did Helena Carter get interested in all this?”

  “There was a lot of publicity about the founding of a community in this country about ten years ago. The movement had been predominately European since its inception, so of little interest to the American church. The Society caused quite a furor, though, when it announced that it had generated enough interest—and secured sufficient funding, the source of which was never revealed—to acquire an abandoned mission town in the West. It would become their base of operation in America, reporting directly to L’Évêque. The community never really got off the ground, though, and it dropped out of the news entirely, even in church publications.”

  Manning sits in the nearest pew, writing in his notebook. Facing the priest across the aisle, he asks, “What do you know about the place?”

  “Not much. It’s called Assumption, a little town that was built in the desert somewhere in the Southwest—Arizona or New Mexico, I think—miles from any city. It’s secluded, and they want to keep it that way. There’s a church and a school and maybe a hundred residents at most. Their civic as well as moral leader is the pastor of the church, Father James McMullen. He’s a fine man, sincere in his beliefs, though of course I feel he’s gone off the deep end with them. It so happens that I took classes from him in theology and doctrinal history while I was in the seminary, so I knew him well. Years later, we were all shocked to learn that he was packing up and leaving to oversee the founding of this reactionary community in the desert. It all sounded so eerie, like a cult or some oddball sect.”

  Manning asks, “Helena Carter sympathized with The Society?”

  Carey exhales audibly. He rises and approaches the altar again, telling the reporter, “I don’t think she fully understood it as the anti-Rome doctrinal faction that it essentially is. Instead, she viewed it simply as the last stronghold of those sentimental aspects of Catholicism that many of us would like to hang on to. The Latin Mass, the meatless Fridays, the novenas and benedictions, stations of the cross, Saturdays in the confessional—all those things served to set us apart and, by doing that, to define us to ourselves in ways that were easily understood, guaranteeing salvation in no uncertain terms. That can be very comforting. Some of our people have never recovered from the loss.”

  “Was Helena one of those people?” asks Manning. “Did she seem inordinately anxious to return to the old ways? Do you think she’d be willing to run off and devote her life to the issue?”

  “No,” says the priest. He returns from the altar and stands near the pew where Manning sits. “Her preference for the old ways of the church never struck me as anything more than the wistful longings of a middle-aged widow who wanted to recapture part of the world she had known in her youth.”

  “Margaret told me that you wrote to Assumption to ask whether Helena might be there.”

  Carey sits next to Manning and explains, “Sometime after the disappearance, Margaret came to me and told me she wondered whether Helena had gone to Assumption. She didn’t know anything about the place—not even its name—but apparently Helena had spoken of it at home from time to time. Since the same thought had crossed my own mind, and since I’d known Father McMullen from school, I immediately wrote to him, asking if perhaps he had a new arrival who might be Helena. He soon wrote back, regretting that he could be of no help, assuring me that there was no such woman there.”

  Manning asks bluntly, “Would he lie to you?”

  The priest laughs, then rivets Manning with a dead-serious stare. “It’s unthinkable that Jim McMullen would lie or even stretch
the truth for the sake of his personal gain.”

  “What about the sake of the community, The Society?”

  “I see what you’re driving at, Mark, but I know this man well enough to let the whole matter rest on his word.”

  Manning turns a page of his notes and asks, “How well do you know Margaret O’Connor?”

  “Margaret has never exhibited the depth of faith or the interest in church activities that her sister did. Other than Christmas and Easter, she rarely attends Mass. I like the woman; I just don’t know her very well. I have no idea what happened to her faith. I guess she’s just one of those who have gradually fallen away. Like so many.”

  “Like me. I fell away too, Matt,” Manning tells him with a directness appropriate to the confessional.

  “I wondered. Professional curiosity. But I’d never have asked.”

  “I know you wouldn’t have. And I guessed that you were wondering. I wanted you to know.”

  “Why?” asks the priest, leaning close. His knee touches Manning’s.

  “So you would know,” Manning says softly. “So you would have a clear picture of the person you’re dealing with. I don’t expect you to sanction my views. I don’t even want you to—that would imply a belief that I long ago abandoned.”

  The priest leans closer still, his leg pressing against Manning’s. “What is it, Mark, that you don’t believe in—the pope, the Immaculate Conception, heaven, hell, Christ, the Trinity, God?”

  Father Matthew Carey may be testing waters that are not entirely theological—Manning isn’t sure. His mind reels with a mix of conflicting emotions. Both attracted and repelled, he answers, “God.”

  “That’s the one I can’t touch,” says the priest with a vanquished smile. His leg no longer presses against Manning’s, but there is still a point between their knees where fibers of their trousers kiss, like microscopic diodes, arcing hot energy. “Any of the others, I might have offered logical arguments, or I might have slyly advised you to dismiss the smaller issue in favor of the larger. But you’ve already hit theological bedrock, so to speak, and I won’t question your intelligence by asking how you’ve drawn your conclusion. So we disagree. Let’s just say that what’s ‘right for me’ may not be ‘right for you.’”

  “Sorry, let’s not. When it comes to a question of existence—does God exist?—there can be only one answer. Yes or no. Something either is or it isn’t—that’s irreducible. If you say there is a God and I say there isn’t, one of us is wrong; it’s not an issue that we can have both ways. By your own definition, belief in God is a matter of faith, a faith that cannot demand proof and that condemns rational scrutiny. I hate to draw flat statements, but you’re wrong, Matt, and I’m right.”

  They sit in the front pew before the sanctuary, eyeing each other with an unwavering gaze. The church is silent except for the low rumble of a blower fan churning in distant ductwork. The banners waft lazily overhead. At last the priest blinks and, almost imperceptibly, shifts his weight away from Manning. Their knees no longer touch.

  “Seems we got sidetracked,” says Manning with a quiet chuckle that further breaks the tension. “We were talking about Margaret O’Connor. I saw her at the estate on Monday, as you know, and afterward I spent some time with Arthur Mendel, the houseman. He mentioned that Margaret once caused an uproar with her ‘loose ways.’ I can’t imagine what he meant. Can you?”

  The priest stands, pressing his hands together, forming a little steeple. He touches his fingertips to his lips, paces a few steps away from Manning, then turns back to him. “I want to help you get to the bottom of things,” he says, “but this isn’t a subject for print. I wouldn’t want to be quoted.”

  “All right.” Manning caps his pen. “Background only. What happened?”

  “Margaret O’Connor had a brief affair with Ridgely Carter, her sister’s husband, right there at the estate.”

  “Jesus!” says Manning, instantly wishing he could retract the expletive. “Right under Helena’s nose?”

  “No. Helena frequently traveled to cat shows, so Margaret and Ridgely had ample time to themselves. I get the impression that poor Margaret was … well, desperate, and Ridgely sort of took pity on her. Somehow, Helena got wind of it after Ridgely died. Understandably, she was plenty pissed.”

  Surprised by the priest’s candor, Manning asks, “What did she do?”

  Father Carey sits next to Manning again. “She threatened Margaret—talked about throwing her out of the house, cutting her out of the will. Helena told me all these things, and I counseled her at length, urging her not to let anger, which was justified, fester into spite. Later, after she disappeared and her will was opened, it was gratifying to learn that Margaret would be generously cared for through a separate trust. Knowing Helena as well as I did, I should have known that her good nature would be predictably constant.”

  “On the other hand,” says Manning, “Margaret is full of surprises. When I spoke with her Monday, she said something that really threw me. She mentioned that when she and Helen were very young, there were twins growing up at home with them. It was the first I’d ever, heard of them.”

  Shaking his head in bemused disbelief, Father Carey says, “Margaret is a sweet thing. Her sister’s disappearance has been a source of profound stress, and—I hate to say it—sometimes I wonder if she’s entirely lucid. Helena and I had many long conversations about her childhood, and she never said anything about having brothers. She surely would have mentioned it.”

  She surely must have, Manning tells himself. He told the priest about “twins,” yet the priest has spoken of “brothers.” Manning uncaps his pen and scratches on his pad: Father Matthew Carey lies.

  Later that morning, a bird caws and fidgets on the cross atop a very different church, a traditional little Gothic church that stands in defiance of a white desert sun. Nothing stirs in the scrubby, treeless landscape below. The town that renamed itself Assumption has taken refuge against the heat.

  The bird, responding to some arbitrary synapses within its gravel-size brain, hops off the cross, swirls earthward round the spire, then glides over the roofs of several nearby houses. All the houses in Assumption are in various states of disrepair. Most are wooden, some are stucco or adobe, but only one—the rectory, the priest’s house—is made of brick. The bird lands on a weathered stone finial, a pineapple, that graces a brick pier to one side of the rectory’s front stairs. The opposite pier has stood unadorned for years, denuded of its pineapple by vandals or by the ravages of heat or simply by the passage of time—it’s been longer than any of the current townspeople can remember.

  Inside, Father James McMullen sits at a rickety dining room table spread with paperwork that has outgrown his cramped office. He signs a document, stuffs it into an envelope, then tries to decide which pile of papers to tackle next, avoiding the tallest, the unpaid bills.

  It is late morning—almost lunchtime, he notes—and the house is quiet. A clock ticks on the mantel. Down the hall, in the kitchen, his housekeeper is fussing with something. He wonders what Mrs. Weaver has in mind for lunch, hoping it’s not tuna salad. He’s never liked those sandwiches, so quintessentially Catholic—not since he was a boy, when he had to eat them every Friday at school. Though he still observes meatless Fridays with everyone else in Assumption, Mrs. Weaver is apt to foist tuna salad on him any day of the week, describing it as “heart-healthy,” at least the way she fixes it, without mayonnaise, which makes it even worse.

  The stillness is broken by the phone, ringing once, in the kitchen. A few moments later, Mrs. Weaver appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Telephone, Father.” She turns to walk back to the kitchen, then stops to tell him, “Lunch’ll be ready whenever you are.”

  He rises from his chair slowly—not that it’s difficult for him, but he sometimes feels dizzy if he gets up too fast—and follows her down the hall. Mrs. Weaver resumes rinsing something in the kitchen sink. It’s celery. Tuna salad, alas, is inev
itable.

  The old black Bakelite wall phone is mounted near the doorway. Next to it, thumbtacked to the woodwork, are the last three pages of a church calendar. Little paper shreds, remnants of the past nine months, sprout from its wire spiral. The priest picks up the receiver. “Good morning. This is Jim McMullen.”

  Smiling, he listens to the caller, but has trouble hearing over the water gurgling in the sink. “Yes, Mr. Manning? Where are you from?”

  “I’m a reporter for the Chicago Journal,” says the voice over the phone, “and I’m working on a story about Helena Carter, the heiress who disappeared about seven years ago. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

  The priest’s smile fades. “I’m aware of the incident, yes. In fact, I had some correspondence with the woman’s home pastor shortly after her disappearance.”

  Manning says, “I spoke with Father Carey just this morning, and he told me about that.”

  “Then he must have also told you that I know nothing of her fate.”

  “He did,” confirms Manning, “but that was quite a while ago, and I couldn’t help wondering if there had been any further developments in the intervening years.”

  Father McMullen turns away from the housekeeper and huddles the phone into his shoulder. With anger mounting in his voice, he asks Manning, “Why would I conceal any knowledge of this woman’s whereabouts? The terms of her will are well known. Her fortune will go to the mainstream Church. What would be my motive for deception?”

  Mrs. Weaver turns off the water and is poised to begin chopping celery. Listening, she doesn’t move. The dried-out linoleum pops under the shifting weight of her feet.

  Friday, October 9

  84 days till deadline

  DRESSED TO RUN, MANNING stands on the sidewalk looking down the street. Though he has never been here, the place seems familiar, pieced together from countless recollections. It is midday, warm, and perfectly clear. Birdsong drifts from colossal elms that arch over the street to form an endless fluttering tunnel of green, dappled blue. There are no people, no cars. Except for the shifting light in the trees above, all is still.