The Bishop's Man

by Linden MacIntyre

  “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  He wept. The sobs rose in spasms. “It will kill my mother,” he said. “All she wanted from her life was to see one of us ordained. I was the youngest of seven. I was her last chance. They slaved and sacrificed to get me through. And now?”

  I struggled to keep the Honduran policeman in the forefront of my mind. Don’t ever let him engage. Desperation endows great strength to the doomed.

  “We were in the sem together—”

  I cut him off. “Your mother doesn’t have to know. The point is, nobody must know.”

  “She’ll know.”

  “You should have thought of that years ago. Act like a man for once.”

  The look was incredulous. Like a man?

  “God forgive you,” he said.

  Forgive me?

  The bishop was smiling when I reported back. “He can relax about his poor old mother,” he said. “We’ve loaned him to Boston. I figure with the wops and the Irish down there, he’ll keep his nose clean if he knows what’s good for him.”

  I remember an unexpected feeling of achievement.

  “We have to be careful,” the bishop said, draping a collegial arm across my shoulders. “We can’t get hung up on the homo part of it. The natural revulsion.” He grimaced to emphasize his point. “You have to control your imagination. You have to set your prejudice aside. It has nothing to do with being queer. It’d be the same if they were chasing women. This is about the violation of a sacred vow. It is an act of personal rebellion that challenges the very foundations of the Church by jeopardizing the faith of ordinary people. Scandal, Duncan. This is about scandal. The Holy Mother Church being scandalized by little men. Weak little misfits. We have to root them out. Word of this garbage gets around … who knows what the impact might be. You know yourself how you were affected by what you only thought you saw. Imagine someone who’s been through it for real.”

  For real?

  I laughed. It was a reflexive expression of surprise. He waited for my mood to pass.

  The room seemed suddenly small and airless.

  “You don’t look well,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Alfonso told me that he was the first in the family to get beyond grade five.

  So was I, I said.

  People were amazed, he said. Did I tell you that my father was a half-breed? They all thought that I’d amount to nothing?

  A half Indian … descended from the Pipil.

  The what?

  The Pipil … an ancient community.

  A man of the Pipil, I said.

  He looked away and sighed. Very original, he said.

  Contrite, I said, I can believe it. Nobody thought I’d amount to anything, the way we were. My father was … illegitimate. A drunk. They didn’t want me, because of him.

  He took my hand in his. We’re brothers, he said. Really. They never really wanted either one of us.

  “A vocation,” Father said, “would be a blessing for the parish. The last one was before my time. Father MacFarlane, I think.”

  I listened carefully.

  “So when you see the bishop, emphasize your own determination. The purity of the call you’ve heard. Voices even.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve heard voices?”

  I shook my head.

  “It happens sometimes. All the saints heard voices. It’s a sure sign of sanctity.”

  Yes.

  “So when you see His Excellency, you’ll have to gloss over certain … blank spots in the family. On your father’s side.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Emphasize your dedication to the larger family. To your true and Holy Mother Church.” “Yes.”

  “I’m clear, then?” “You are.”

  I told the bishop: “The records were lost in a fire. You understand the way it was. Old wooden churches burning down. It happened all the time in the old days.”

  Sunshine streamed through the window, wreathed him in a beatific halo. God in Heaven was amused. You could almost hear celestial whispers, but they were saying: Look who wants to be a priest! Listen to him!

  His Excellency was nodding. It was our third meeting. He said he was surprised to see me back.

  “A fire,” he said. “I suppose there is a record of that … fire?”

  I ignored the question. “In winter, people would bank the stoves the night before a Mass. Something would overheat. Chimneys would catch fire.” I shrugged.

  He sighed. “It was awful,” he murmured. “The destruction, due mostly to carelessness.”

  I thought: He’s buying it.

  “Documents for half the older people in the diocese are gone,” I said. “I suppose that we could get an affidavit.”

  “An affidavit, eh? You should go into canon law,” he said, half mocking. I took it as encouragement.

  I can still see him sitting there, below that glowering crucifix, hands folded on his stomach. Smiling thoughtfully.

  He shook himself, as if struggling against boredom. “We normally need some kind of documentation. To prove at least that you’re a Catholic. Baptized. Confirmed. It’s also nice to know something about the quality of family life. I’m not sure if an affidavit will do the trick. You know what I think of affidavits.”

  “No.”

  “One guy lies, the other swears to it.”

  “You have my baptismal records. My mother died. You have her death certificate. The rest you’ll have to take … on faith.”

  He smiled, picked up a document and studied it. “TB,” he said, shaking his head. “Awful, the carnage that it caused around here. Like in the Third World, it was. No different.”

  “She was from Scotland. An island in the Hebrides. I’ve written to a parish there. But it’ll take a while. Anyway, I’ve heard everybody there is Catholic. Where she came from. I’d like to start next fall.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening. “But you don’t know anything about your father’s people?”

  “Like I said, the records have been lost.”

  “And he doesn’t know?”

  “He has shell shock,” I said. “Something from the war.”

  “He met your mother overseas.”

  “Yes. In England. I was born there, actually.”

  “Your dad,” he said at last. “He was in the CBH?”

  I nodded. Yes. The Cape Breton Highlanders.

  “Served in Italy?”

  “And northwest Europe. Holland.”

  “Never able to work since the war.”

  I nodded.

  “I was in the North Novies, but I was young. It was near the end. I missed all the action. Never got any closer than Camp Borden. Always regretted that. Missed the biggest event of my age.” He sighed. “So you haven’t got a clue where your father’s folks were from.”

  “I’ve heard about a place called Hawthorne. In Port Hood parish.”

  “MacAskill isn’t a very common name around here for a Catholic. That’s why I have to ask. There could be … impediments. You understand?”

  “Of course. You can’t just take anyone who comes along.”

  “Truer words were never spoken,” he said.

  It was at the end of the fourth visit that he told me: “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. We’ll consider your father’s genealogy a small … lacuna, shall we say. A little blip.”

  He pronounced it “bleep,” the way my father did. And I was suddenly startled by the resemblance between them.

  “You won’t regret it,” I promised.

  In the morning, I was wakened by the sound of a machine in the driveway. The storm had ended, probably late at night judging from the snowdrifts in the fields. Through the window I could see Bobby on his tractor, bucket down, biting large holes in the smooth drifts that blocked the road. Moving methodically, attacking the deep white barrier that had briefly offered an excuse for my isolation.

  {8}

  Christmas
takes over the memory temporarily. And memory makes every Christmas bittersweet. Each of the senses stores identical impressions year after year. We hear the same sounds, see the same colours, inhale the same fragrances. The language of Christmas is unchanging, full of false celebration and hysterical goodwill. Personally, I’d rather be in the Third World for Christmas.

  “The Third World!” Stella was laughing at me.

  She’d telephoned two days earlier. Christmas was going to be in Hawthorne, at Danny’s. He wanted us all to come. Including Sextus. They knew each other from their younger days, working in Toronto. He needs the support of friends, I thought. He’s struggling with his illness. He’s feeling his mortality.

  I told Stella that I was expecting my sister home for the holidays.

  “Well, bring her too,” she said. “I’d love to meet her. Sextus has told me all about her.”

  I doubt it, I thought. But only said: “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ll get a room ready,” I told Effie after she announced her plan.

  “Don’t go to any bother,” she said. “I think I’ll stay in town.”

  I didn’t pursue it. I knew what she meant.

  “What about Cassie?” I asked. Effie’s daughter, my niece.

  “She’s planning her own holiday. She and some journalist friends are going to Mexico, I think. Christmas in the heat. I couldn’t picture it myself. But that’s her choice. So, rather than spend the holiday alone, I just decided. Spur of the moment.”

  “You’ll rent a car, I suppose.”

  “No. Sextus will meet me at the airport.”

  Stella said she’d pick me up at five. They were planning dinner for early evening. Her car was warm and softly scented. I thought, Her bedroom probably smells like this. Music murmured from a disc in the car stereo. Something classical, but with a Christmas theme. The darkness thickened as we drove. Soft pools of red and white and green light made a confection of the snow in front of blazing houses. On this unusual day, I thought, we can believe that all is harmony and warmth within those inscrutable dwellings, even if our knowledge tells us otherwise. Beyond Long Point, a fat moon glittered on the swelling bay.

  We drove in silence, concentrating on the road, but once, I stole a glance and she was smiling slightly.

  Driving up the Hawthorne Road, she said: “I always thought I was a shore person. But there’s something special here. The place is named after the American writer, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She was nodding.

  “I thought it was the tree,” I said. “They say the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head came from the hawthorn tree.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The tree of thorns.”

  And then we were at Danny’s.

  Sextus was already there, and Effie. He seemed to be the designated bartender and poured a stiff drink, handed it to me. He was casting a salacious eye at Stella.

  “You know her, I believe,” I said. “From tennis.”

  “Stella? Oh, yes. The wonderful, impenetrable Stella.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “A lady full of mysteries. If you can get around that, you’re a better man than I am. She’s got a wicked backhand.”

  He winked. I laughed dismissively.

  Waiting for dinner, Danny and Sextus entertained the room with outrageous tales of misbehaviour during their younger days away from here. I watched young Danny for reactions to the exaggerated anecdotes. His face was flushed, smiling in tolerant affection. The look, I thought, of one with stories of his own.

  “So you’re the new priest in Creignish,” said a middle-aged man who was sitting beside me.

  “I am,” I said, trying to remember a name. William something, I recalled. Stella’s cousin who lived with her aunt. He was tall, about my height, with a large stomach, a florid face and watery eyes that suggested a history of heavy drinking.

  “Willie Beaton,” he said, extending his hand.

  I grasped it briefly.

  “I get a kick out of the stories they’ll be telling,” he said, nodding toward Danny Ban. “Quite the performers those two were, if you believe the half of it. Danny Bad, they called him, for good reason.”

  I just smiled.

  “I guess we could all tell a few stories, eh, Father,” he said with an insinuating grin.

  The room was suddenly too warm.

  There was a dreary sameness to the scenes. The rooms all seemed to smell and look alike. Potpourri or carpet cleaner, or both. Pastel colours. Sturdy furniture, probably bought from one of the pay-when-you-feel-like-it merchants shouting out of their oversized TV sets. Swedish wood stoves. Rooms overheated. Long silences. At first I was confused by the tension, which I finally attributed to embarrassment on the part of what we were calling the victims.

  In spite of how much I’ve learned since then, I still wonder about that word. Victim. What does it really represent? Uncertainty? Guilt? Victims of whom? The predator? Their weaker selves? What complex web of circumstances does that prophylactic word conceal?

  “That isn’t your job,” the bishop said. “Circumstances? They’re for cops and lawyers. We have to settle these things before that crowd gets involved.”

  “What if they want money?”

  “We’ll deal with that if it arises.”

  “The wife had a doctor’s appointment,” the man said, handing me a mug of coffee. “She’s been on medication since this shit came up.”

  He sat opposite me, a low table between us. There was a large art book beside a red glass ashtray. You remember the obscure details. They buffer all the odious realities. He was a businessman, the jeans he was wearing looked stiff and new, yet-unwashed. My formal suit, my collar, meant nothing to him now. The circumstances made us equals.

  “The boy is in school. I thought we should talk this over man to man.”

  “Yes. But I should meet him.”

  “You will. He’ll be home in an hour or so. How was the drive down?”

  It was a two-hour drive, but it took me three. By then I’d developed an aversion to these trips. I had stopped at a little restaurant and lingered over tea for as long as I could endure the glances and the stares drawn by my black suit, my Roman collar.

  “This is hard to talk about,” the man said. “But let’s cut to the chase. I want that man out of here toot sweet. I don’t care where he goes. But I want him out of here. Preferably out of the Church entirely.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “If he was anything but an effing priest, I’d shoot him, if you’ll pardon my language.” The contempt in his expression was all-inclusive. “I’m gonna tell you right up, straight, and I don’t want you to take this personally. But just looking at you sitting there gives me a problem. That’s what he’s done. That’s what he’s done to me, for God’s sake. I don’t even want to think about the young fellow and how he feels.” He waved a futile hand in my direction then looked away. “The collar … Christ, I was an altar boy myself. That collar meant something. It carried more authority than a badge. Now? I could just … rip it off of you.”

  “If it would help, I’ll—”

  “No, no. Christ. Don’t do that. I’m sorry.”

  It was by then a familiar story. Devout family. Boys on the altar. Excursions. No suspicions of anything. Then a personality change. The boy seems withdrawn, uncommunicative, showing signs of rebellion. They think it’s growing pains at first. Then they find pot or pills and it explains everything for a while. They read how excessive use of cannabis makes them moody, causes school performance to suffer. There is a confrontation. Eventually, the tearful, heart-stopping allegation.

  “I imagine it’s like getting shot,” the father said. “My dad was in the war. Got hit in France, a few days after D-Day. Said you don’t feel a thing at first. The pain comes later, gradually.”

  I said I understood.

  “Thank Christ he isn’t around for this,” he sighed. “Dad was from t
he old school.”

  I sipped my coffee, waiting. They have to get it out.

  “The thing that gets me is that I used to hear about this kind of stuff and I’d always minimize it. Isolated situation, I’d say. A bad apple in every barrel. Or you’d hear about a case that went on for years. I’d ask myself: How can someone be a victim for years … repeatedly? Over and over again. Why don’t they stop it? They must, in some way, be complicit. That’s what you’re thinking. You forget they’re only kids, dealing with the ultimate in moral authority.” He seemed to pause, to pull back from the brink of bitterness. He shook his head. “Then it happens to yourself. Right in your own family.”

  “You weren’t exactly wrong when you thought it was a matter of ‘isolated incidents.’ I have to assure you that this—”

  “Whoa,” he interrupted. His face flushed as he raised a cautionary hand. “We’re both grown-ups. Let’s not bullshit each other. I’ve been following what’s going on. In Newfoundland. Down in the States. What the Indians are saying about those schools.”

  He got up then and took my mug to the coffee pot and refilled it. The angry spasm seemed to pass.

  “He’s such a good boy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “From the day he was born, you just knew that this was one of the special kids. Sweet-natured. Smart. Spiritual in a way you don’t see often in little boys.”

  I could sense the returning outrage.

  He lit a cigarette, tapping off the ashes even before they formed. “This was the last thing I expected. You’re ready for the little fender-benders and the mood swings and the booze and the pot. I mean, it isn’t so long since I was young myself. And we went through it all before, with his older brother. I thought he was haywire. I mean the booze thing. Even dope. But nothing like this.”

  Tactical opportunity. “And where is he now?”

  “Who?”

  “Your older boy.”

  “He’s at St. Mary’s. Maybe you heard of him. On the football team.”

  “Ah,” I said, smiling, insinuating that I knew of him.