The Bishop's Man

by Linden MacIntyre

  The phone rang. She chatted into the telephone briefly, then, looking my way with a wink, said, “You won’t believe who I’ve got for a visitor.”

  I studied the floor.

  “No. Father Duncan. Remember Duncan MacAskill? Yesssss. He was looking for you. So we were just having a drink, reminiscing. Yes. I’ll tell him … There,” she said, putting the phone down. “That was Don. He’s going to be late. Again.”

  I relaxed. Everything is okay, I thought, amazed. There is no deception. My car in front is now explained. Whatever happens in here is now conventional. Totally above-board. There is full disclosure. She waltzed across the room with an imaginary partner. I noticed that she had taken her shoes off. She had slender ankles, long, delicate feet. Red toenails.

  “I love this song,” she said.

  I stood. “It’s been years since I danced,” I said. My feet were suddenly too large for the room. I was moving them slowly, deliberately. I could only think of her bare feet and my heavy shoes.

  I stopped, stood still. I should take my shoes off. She misread my hesitation. Then she was full against my chest, face snug below my jaw. Pressing herself closer against me. Her forehead was hot. And then we were kissing.

  She stepped back and sighed, tilted her head. There is beauty there, I thought. She has mysteries that are dark and rich.

  “That just happened spontaneously,” she said. “I hope you didn’t mind.”

  “On the contrary.”

  “It must get lonely,” she said.

  Suddenly I couldn’t speak.

  “I know about lonely too,” she said. She was holding both my hands. Then she put her arms around my waist and pressed her face against my shoulder. Then looked up. “I don’t know why they automatically assume letting priests get married will make them … happier. Marriage is a lot of work.”

  “I think I should go,” I said, fighting sorrow and confusion.

  She nodded. “I don’t blame you. Some old woman putting the make on you.”

  “You’re lovely,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Yes, you are. It’s true. This isn’t about you.”

  “The years are unkind to women,” she said.

  “On the contrary.”

  “You don’t have to be nice.”

  I shook my head firmly. I wanted to reassure her further, that I was leaving because of fear—my fear of the voice I knew would occupy my head thenceforth, the fear of what the voice would say if we proceeded one step further than this.

  I drew her to me. Sheltered from her searching eyes, I whispered, “I suppose you’re mad at me.”

  “God, no. Why would you think that? Promise to come back?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m in the book.”

  I meant it, too. It will not be like the last time, I thought. And suddenly the sorrow came with the memory of Jacinta.

  Passing the church in town, I noticed the police car in my rear-view mirror.

  {23}

  John didn’t stay long after we retrieved my car from the roadside. He came immediately when I called. I offered him a drink, but he was still on the wagon, he said. “I don’t have to tell you what I’m like when I’m on the sauce.”

  I said nothing.

  “But it’s your lucky day,” he said. “The Breathalyzer’s no laughing matter anymore. The papers don’t hesitate to nail a fella, even priests. You see their names from time to time, even judges.” He was standing near my book-case. “Maybe a fella really should be writing things down, but then again, if you’re anything like me, you’ve got an awful memory.”

  I thought: Perhaps a blessing. “Thanks for coming over. I didn’t know who to call.”

  “I owe you. For last year, putting up with … whatever …”

  “No.”

  “I can be an arsehole sometimes.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Another reason for avoiding diaries. Best to let the past just disappear.”

  After John was gone, I noticed the Mountie’s business card where I’d left it on my desk. I picked it up. Cpl. L. Roberts. For an instant I considered calling him, to ask him what he knew. I laughed at myself, tossed the card aside.

  The Mountie and MacLeod got nothing wrong. I’m the one who got it wrong.

  “I’ve been shafted,” I said aloud, and the words made me feel a little better.

  The situation was straightforward. Father Roddie went to Ontario for treatment. Red carpet treatment, by the sound of it. A place called Orangeville. It was funny, almost. Red carpet treatment in Orangeville. I see tall maple trees and red brick buildings with Red Ensign flags. Many churches. A place where the clergy still retained some of the respectability of long-gone days. Something stirred in the memory about controversy in Orangeville a few years back. Something about the ordination of gay people by the United Church.

  I can see Father Rod nodding sympathetically with his U.C. pals, counselling moderation and compassion. Lead by example, he’d say, and they’d listen to his wise words because he looks and sounds exactly the way moderate Protestants want to imagine R.C. priests to be. Like kindly bachelor uncles.

  Old bastards, I thought. I struggled to banish the image of Father Roddie and the bishop bent over their cards, discussing their strategy. No thought given to the wreckage-strewn pathway old Rod had trod before that point. Apparently the suicide victim in B.C. came from Nova Scotia—somebody from before the banishment to Orangeville who fled to the west coast to escape his demons. But the demons followed. They tend to do that.

  Rod was versatile. Retarded girls and frightened boys.

  Briefly, the gallery of miserable faces assembled in my mind once again. Wretched. Embarrassed or angry or defiant. But always wretched.

  “You don’t know the whole story,” Brendan Bell said quietly when I first gave him directions to Port Hood. Cross the causeway, turn left. After turning left, keep straight. I winked. Keeping straight is key.

  He stared, then shook his head slowly. Smiled sadly.

  “I’m sure I don’t know the whole story,” I conceded.

  He seemed to brighten. “But I know what you’re thinking, and I agree. ‘The whole story’ isn’t really relevant, is it? I messed up. I’m glad it’s out. Now I can get on with things.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “I’m going to put in my probation and use the time to make a plan.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  Except that, while on probation, he reoffended. I was now convinced that I’d been taken in again.

  And I remembered the voice from Honduras: Faced with destruction, the doomed find superhuman power to manipulate your emotions. You have the absolute physical power in your hand. The gun. But it’s nothing compared to the power of their desperation. The power of the primeval will to live. Never allow engagement; never listen. Just pull the trigger, then walk away.

  And that was how I did it, repeatedly. No engagement. No opportunity for them to cloud reality with their extenuating circumstances. Their cruel mothers and remote fathers. Their drinking/drug/psychiatric problems. Their loneliness and isolation and self-doubt. Their deep, deep philosophical issues, crises of faith, etc. It all boiled down, I knew, to character deficiencies.

  “I could actually see you in this job someday,” the bishop had said after Bell was gone, echoing the sentiment expressed by Father Rod. Is that where Father Rod got the idea? From Alex? During one of their bridge games? Or was it the other way around?

  I could hear them: The young fellow has gumption.

  A big word in that generation. Gumption. A word my father used a lot.

  And then Alex dispatched his friend Rod to Orangeville. Episcopal Monopoly. A game. Passing Go. Collecting $200. Landing on Boardwalk, intact. Do Not Go to Jail. The secrets buried.

  Now what?

  I will not make the same mistake. I will not succumb to that kind of weakness. I’ll find Brendan Bell and I’ll not hesitat
e before I pull the trigger.

  Alfonso and the two policemen spoke quietly outside for what seemed to be a long time. When he returned, his face was stony.

  He walked past without seeing me.

  I stopped him. What do they want? I asked.

  He ignored me.

  Is there something wrong?

  I have to go with them. They want to talk to me. Someone has been killed. Back home. A friend of mine. A priest.

  He put his jacket on and went out again, drove away with them. I thought I saw the one they called Calero in the car.

  According to MacLeod, the word is out. Word of the suicide in B.C. got back here to people in a parish where Father Rod put in a month or two some years back. Nobody thought much at the time about his comings and his goings. He was a philosopher who moved around a lot during brief recesses from the pressures of the university. How long had the bishop known about him?

  At least half a dozen people had joined forces, hired a lawyer and sworn affidavits, and they wanted Father Rod’s blood. The cops were busy trying to follow his trail back through all the places he’d been. The bishop wasn’t being overly helpful, but I knew that the whole miserable mess was going to come out in the end. Including Bell.

  “It’ll be your call,” the bishop warned. “But you’re going to have to decide where you stand if this blows up in our faces.”

  The bishop can worry about MacVicar and the others. But I must find Bell, I realized. I sent him there. He must atone for both of us.

  We are drunk now. The rum bottle almost empty. Alfonso has ceased his weeping. He has finally been able to pronounce a name. An unfamiliar name, at least to me. Rutilio. Have I never told you of my friend? Rutilio Grande? There was a real priest! According to the police, Rutilio and two parishioners were on their way from El Paisnal to Aguilares … Did I tell you that I come from Aguilares? They were driving in a car. To say Mass. I kid you not.

  Alfonso is always using expressions like I kid you not, learned when he studied for a year in California.

  On their way to say Mass. They were intercepted by gunmen and murdered.

  They killed a priest? On his way to Mass?

  He stared at me blearily. Oh, Pelirrojo, he said. The killers were also from Aguilares. My own people killed Rutilio.

  And then he wept again.

  Thursday evening, I saw the back of Sextus’s pickup truck poking out from behind the house where Pat lives with her mother and her daughter. For a moment I considered stopping. They’re probably playing cards, he and Pat and the old lady. That’s what I need, a good game of Auction. Get my mind off things. The old lady would be thrilled to see the priest. But I drove on by. Maybe I should talk to Stella, drag everything out into the open once and for all. It’s in her line of work, isn’t it? Listening to people? I turned up the mountain road but saw immediately that her house was dark. I thought briefly of Barbara. She’s in the phone book. I went home instead.

  {24}

  The bishop called on a Thursday in early April. I’d been stewing about going to see him, trying to think of a way to tell him that I knew everything without provoking a confrontation. We have so much history. He has become my father. The breach would be too painful, but I just want out of this. If there’s a parish open farther away from here, I want to go. Send me back to Central America. Send me to Rwanda, for Christ’s sake. Then he called. We should have a talk, he said. I struggled to sound normal. He said he’d prefer to do it face to face.

  “We’re going to have to come up with a strategy,” he told me on the phone. “Things are getting a little out of hand.”

  “I hear,” I said.

  “What did you hear?”

  He seemed surprised, and it irritated me. “I had a visit from MacLeod,” I said. “He basically told me everything.”

  “He basically did, eh?” There was a long silence as he waited for me to explain. “You better come over here,” he said at last.

  “Okay.”

  “Come now,” he said.

  “It’s nine o’clock at night—”

  “I’ll expect you in an hour,” he said, and put the phone down.

  † † †

  He looked older and smaller, standing backlit in the doorway. I’d been struggling with my emotions all the way over, dialogue buzzing inside my head. My goal was simple: to walk away from this.

  Even I was surprised by how quickly it all unravelled.

  “I want to know everything that MacLeod told you,” he said without looking at me.

  I studied his face carefully, searching for a gentler way to confront him.

  “You haven’t been entirely honest with me,” I said, shocked at the sound of my own assertion.

  His face flushed. He tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowed.

  “MacLeod told me about the suicide in British Columbia. And he told me about the affidavits. And he told me about … Orangeville.”

  He seemed relieved. “What’s any of that got to do with me being honest with you?”

  “You failed to tell me the whole story of Father Rod. You didn’t tell me you were covering up for him—”

  “You’re out of line,” he snapped.

  Silence hung and grew colder.

  “Let’s get back to the issues,” he finally said. “What we do now. What we say. I’ve had a plainclothes Mountie here from Halifax. That’s bad.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What do you mean you’re sorry?”

  “I have nothing to offer. I thought our job was to get these guys out of circulation. How many more Father Rods are there? I thought our priority was to work with the families and the victims to—”

  “Don’t use that word in this house,” he shouted.

  “What word?”

  “‘Victim.’ Don’t you dare use that word in front of me, do you hear me?”

  He was standing over me and a bolt of terror paralyzed my voice.

  “You’re with us or against us,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “Victim, for God’s sake. Don’t make me sick.” And he sat down, suddenly breathless.

  I watched him as he recovered his composure. And as he calmed down, I could feel the storm gathering inside my chest and the ache beginning in my head. With us or against us? My mouth was dry. I stood up.

  When I started for the door, he said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  I think I sat in the car on Main Street for twenty minutes before I finally drove off. Perhaps there was a childish part of me that expected him to follow. To open the car door, slide in. Save me. Say: Hell, what are we doing out here? Come on back in … I’ll pour a Balvenie and we’ll talk this through. I know I have a bit of explaining to do.

  And over the drink he’d apologize and he’d explain how in our line of work we don’t make many close friends. You hang around with other priests but rarely find true friendship. Usually they’re just colleagues, at best acquaintances. And so, when you find a real honest-to-God friendship, it can sometimes acquire a value that outweighs your better judgment. And how very rarely you discover someone who is more than a friend. A kindred spirit. Family. That was what Father Rod was. Like a brother. Did you ever have a friend like that?

  And I would tell him. Once, I had a friend like that.

  I looked in the direction of the palace just in time to see the last of the downstairs lights go out.

  I drove away. The night was darker than usual. There was an old man hitchhiking on the shoulder of a bleak stretch of highway called the Dagger Woods. I was at least a hundred yards past him when some impulse caused me to slow down and pull over. I started backing up, slowed, stopped, waited. No one came, and as the seconds became minutes a strange chill crept through me and I put the car in gear and sped away.

  may 20, 1977. i’m worried about alfonso. he’s been in a funk since the murder of his friend in march. now he tells me that since 1972 there have been eleven priests and a seminari
an assassinated in his country. since february this year, ten priests have been exiled … just like he was. did I not know that he, alfonso, was in exile here? eight others have been expelled, five of them tortured beforehand. i was one of the lucky ones, he said. he says he must go home. i tell him he must be cracking up.

  Approaching my lane, I saw a car drive slowly down from the house, pause, then turn north. I couldn’t see it clearly enough to identify a driver but was surprised to notice lights on in the glebe as I turned up. Then I saw Sextus’s red truck parked in front.

  He was in my study. He had a book open in his hand.

  “Interesting,” he said, closing it. “Everyone should keep a journal.”

  I took it from him, studying his face.

  “I was passing by. The door was open.”

  “How much of this did you read?”

  “Nothing of importance,” he said, as if wounded. “I picked it up just before you walked in.”

  “Who was that driving away?”

  “Driving away? I didn’t see anybody.”

  The night is full of phantoms, I thought.

  “I’m going to have a drink,” I said. “Are you interested?”

  “No,” he said, yawning. “I think I’ll take off. Where were you?”

  “You’re sure you won’t have a nightcap?”

  “No. I have to teach tomorrow. Somebody should do a story about the teacher absenteeism in the schools around here. It’s great for substitutes like me.”

  I watched him go and braced myself for the despair. And with the click of the door behind him, it started. By the time I heard the roar of his engine, I could barely move to the liquor cupboard.

  The living room was full of weak daylight when I woke on the chesterfield. Making my way painfully to my bedroom, I noticed that the door to the bishop’s room was ajar. When you live alone, you notice the small changes. A door that is usually closed speaks to you when it isn’t. When I peered inside, I saw a small dark shape on the floor beside the bed. It was a wallet. I picked it up. It fell open and I saw Sextus’s Ontario driver’s licence.