Deadline for a Critic

by William Kienzle

  “You submitted it in a contest as if it were yours. And you stole it. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone!”

  “What?” Clearly, Mitchell had not expected that response.

  “What about your little adventure tomorrow afternoon?”

  “What’s that got to do with this?”

  “You’re not exactly sinless, you know. You’re going to fracture a prohibition that is so taken for granted that nobody even took the trouble to make a rule about it.”

  “Apples and oranges, Rid. I’m going to fool around a bit . . . pay off on a promise I made. What we’re talking about here is serious. Rid, we—you and I—respect—reverence—the theater. We’ve spent a lot of time on stage. We’ve both written plays. You can’t throw all that in the gutter by stealing somebody else’s work! For us, especially, it would be like a sacrilege!”

  His eloquent plea met with silence.

  “Well?” Mitch finally prodded.

  “I’m not going to do anything.”

  “But you’ll be discovered. How’s it going to be to have plagiarism on your record?”

  “They won’t discover it. I’m banking on it.”

  “But I did.”

  “You’re more perceptive than they are. I thought it might get by you. It didn’t. But it will get by them.”

  “What if it does? What if it wins? What happens if you win with a stolen play?”

  “I can live with it. Besides, I improved it; even you had to admit that!” Groendal hesitated. “What about you? Are you going to do anything about it?”

  Mitchell’s eyes widened. Obviously he had not considered this eventuality. He had thought he’d be able to convince Groendal to clean up his own mess. “I don’t know, Rid. I’ll have to think about it.”

  Mitchell rose and left. He took with him both the book and the manuscript. At that moment, Ridley Groendal knew what Mitchell would do. After their conversation, it was transparent. Mitch could not see that borrowing an idea was just a normal response to writer’s block.

  Nothing was more dangerous than a self-righteous person bent on inflicting some sort of justice on a poor soul. If nothing was done about this, Mitchell would surely blow the whistle on him. So, something would have to be done. But what?

  8

  Robert Koesler stood in the seminary foyer. A very busy place this Sunday as a steady stream of visitors kept entering and gathering here, each bunch meeting their student and then dispersing to various designated visiting parlors.

  He had heard that dying people have their lives pass before them. He didn’t know about that. But he did feel that his career as a seminarian and potential priest might be grinding to a halt as a result of what he was about to do. And most of his past transgression of seminary rules was marching through his memory.

  His infractions ran from the prosaic, such as talking during periods of silence, tardiness, and unexcused absences, to the more exotic, such as playing table tennis during study period and helping to place another student’s bed beyond anyone’s reach atop a dormitory stall. But nothing approached today’s folly: in effect, smuggling human contraband within these sacred walls. And all out of a sense of loyalty to a friend.

  When, he wondered, would he learn?

  There, coming through the front door: a young lady in green. She seemed to be alone. As she climbed the steps, Koesler, with an expectant look, stepped in front of her. She gazed at him quizzically. Instantly he knew this was not Beth. Awkwardly, he tried to act as if he were moving forward to greet someone else as the young lady dodged by and joined her party.

  What an outrageous adventure! Here he was, waiting for someone he didn’t know who, in turn, would be looking for someone she didn’t know.

  For just an instant he wondered whether it might be feasible to simply call the whole thing off. The thought lasted no more than a split second. As foolish as he now considered his participation in this plot, he was indeed committed to it.

  “Bob?”

  He looked down. How did she get there? He hadn’t noticed her. But there she was, very pretty in a bright green dress.

  “Y . . . yes,” he managed to stammer.

  “I’m Beth.”

  “Uh-huh.” How had she found him? Waiting for their visitors to arrive were many underclassmen in civilian clothes. And there were quite a few from the Philosophy Department, dressed as he was, in cassock and Roman collar. “How could you tell it was I?”

  “I asked around. Somebody pointed you out.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “Yes, I did. How else was I going to find you?”

  “I guess you had no choice.”

  Would her inquiries prove embarrassing for him if this whole plot came unraveled?

  “Well, come on; let’s go.”

  After they had walked a considerable distance, Beth remarked, “My, this is a large building!”

  It was. But familiarity had artificially shrunken the distance for Koesler. “It helps if you remember that basically it’s built in a square. The chapel’s in the middle of the square. Then the four corners sprout their own extensions. There’s the auditorium in one corner, the convent and infirmary on another, the gymnasium on the third, and St. Thomas Residence Hall on the fourth.”

  “Ah, St. Thomas Hall. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.” As far as Koesler was concerned, they couldn’t get there too soon.

  They walked in silence for a while. Koesler had to admit she certainly was pretty. But, worth the risk? Not as far as he was concerned. Anyway, in a few minutes, if all went as planned, his role would be completed until it was time for her to leave. And that, compared with getting her in, would be duck soup.

  “Hmmm . . . I was wondering,” Beth said, “why are you wearing that?”

  “What?”

  “That uniform.”

  “The cassock?”

  “Yes. It’s a priest’s uniform. But you’re not a priest—she looked up at him incredulously—are you?”

  Koesler grinned. “No. We’re supposed to start wearing the cassock in third-year college. It’s sort of the uniform of the day. We wear it just about everywhere, I guess, except for sports and in our rooms.”

  Her nose crinkled. “Does Mitch wear one of these cassocks?”

  “Uh, ordinarily, yes.” That was it. That was the reason Mitch did not want to meet her himself: He would have had to be wearing his cassock. He didn’t want her to see him in a “priest’s suit.” It might well cramp both their styles.

  They arrived at the double doors leading to St. Thomas Hall. This was it. Koesler took a deep breath. It was considerably reassuring to find Groendal on duty.

  “How’s the coast, Rid?”

  “We’re in luck; not a soul in sight,” Groendal replied.

  “I’m Beth.” She extended her hand.

  “Ridley Groendal.” His hand was in and out of hers in a second.

  Koesler felt foolish for not having introduced her. But he would not be able to relax until she was out of his jurisdiction—which, with any luck, would only be a few seconds more.

  Wordlessly, Groendal entered the hall and walked deliberately down its length, looking from side to side as he went. At the other end of the hall, he peered up and down the staircase until he was certain no one was around. Then he signaled to Koesler, who looked back down the main corridor. There was still a crowd at the front entrance but no one seemed to be looking down the corridor or paying any attention to them.

  “Okay,” Koesler said, “go ahead.”

  “Isn’t this a little too complicated?” Beth complained.

  “Go!” Koesler almost shouted.

  She gave a startled little jump and hurried into the hall.

  “Room 12, don’t forget!” Koesler stage-whispered after her. He waited until he saw her knock rather timidly at the door of room 12, and enter. Then, as if the weight of the world
had slipped from his shoulders, he almost skipped down the corridor toward the rear of the building. Two hours to go and the business would be done.

  What to do with two hours on a bright, balmy spring day having just shed a heavy burden of responsibility? Nothing inside the building. He changed into casual clothes and went outside to play a little baseball. He had taken the precaution of advising any potential visitors not to come, thus avoiding any conflict on this trying day.

  Pick-up games were in progress at several of the seminary’s five diamonds. He joined one. He hadn’t a care in the world. Well, one: He would have to be back on duty for this silly caper at four promptly. He consulted his watch. It was exactly three o’clock. Whatever Mitch and Beth were doing, they were right in the middle of it.

  It was exactly three o’clock when there was a brief but insistent knocking at the door of room 12 in St. Thomas Hall. Summarily, the door was flung open.

  Later, when he tried to recall that moment, Mitchell would say that all he could remember was a long row of red buttons and red piping on the black cassock of Monsignor George Cronyn, rector of Sacred Heart Seminary. Of course, Mitchell went into a state of shock.

  Beth, on her part, remembered the Monsignor’s face, mostly because it was as red as the trimming on his cassock.

  As the door swung open and banged against the wall, Beth instinctively pulled the sheet up so that it pretty well covered both of them to the shoulder level.

  For a moment, no one said anything. There was almost nothing to say. Mitch and Beth had been caught in flagrante delicto. A most rare, if not unique, instance in the annals of the seminary, at least to that date.

  “Mr. Mitchell,” Monsignor Cronyn snapped the syllables, “you have betrayed a sacred trust. I want you gone from the seminary by vespers this afternoon. Gone for good! Is that understood?”

  Presumably the question was rhetorical; the rector did not wait for a reply. He merely retrieved the door whence it still vibrated near the wall and closed it behind him, again with a resounding bang.

  Cronyn stormed along the corridor and up the staircase to his room. All the way he fought mixed emotions. He was furious with Carroll Mitchell, a young man who had shown such great promise. He might have made an impressive priest. His grades were well above average. He showed creative talent on the stage and as a playwright—abilities that promised great success in the pulpit. And he had an attractive, manly personality that easily would have drawn young boys to the seminary to test their vocations.

  But what Mitchell had done was patently intolerable. If the seminary faculty had learned that he was even dating steadily, the student would have been warned most forcefully. If it had been proven that he had fornicated, Mitchell’s expulsion would have been seriously debated. But to flaunt the affair as Mitchell had done! Bring the girl into the seminary right into his room! A young man such as this could never again be trusted. But to have thrown away so promising a career so nonchalantly was a crime that very nearly cried to heaven for vengeance.

  Nor was Monsignor Cronyn all that happy over how he had learned what was going on in room 12.

  The principle of “fraternal correction” had been around a long time. Still, it remained a dangerous tool in the hands of almost anyone, let alone an adolescent with perhaps a personal ax to grind. At the beginning of each scholastic year, when Cronyn would explain the notion of fraternal correction, he would try to emphasize the dangers inherent in such an action. Nevertheless, it was part of seminary policy that a student report to the authorities any other student who was guilty of a flagrant violation of law—God’s or the seminary’s.

  And thus it had been in the stated interest of fraternal correction that Ridley C. Groendal had come to Monsignor Cronyn’s office at approximately 2:45 that afternoon to inform on what he thought was happening in Carroll Mitchell’s room.

  In all probability it had been the proper thing for Groendal to do. Still, it was extremely rare that any student would turn in another. Even though Cronyn understood the importance—historical if none other—of fraternal correction, in his heart the Monsignor was leery of, and indeed disliked, the principle. Nor did he much care, privately, for a student who would—he hesitated to use the word, but, yes—betray a confrere.

  In spite of his intellectual acceptance of the procedure, at his core Cronyn found squealing distasteful; he could not help looking upon the informer with a certain amount of loathing.

  There were exceptions, of course. It was thoroughly understandable to speak out to save oneself or another innocent party from harm, as in the case of incest or child abuse. But it was quite another thing to cry havoc just because a rule was being violated.

  From this day forward, Monsignor Cronyn would have to force himself to try to be objective with regard to Ridley C. Groendal.

  Regularly checking his watch, an action that was second-nature to him anyway, Koesler knew that it was precisely twenty minutes to four when he left the baseball game. He took a quick shower, climbed back into his cassock and returned to the entrance to St. Thomas Hall at exactly four o’clock.

  He waited almost five minutes. Trying not to draw too much attention, he kept glancing down the hall. He was impatient and growing a little angry. Visiting hours were over at 4:30. There were just a few more minutes left to get Beth out of St. Thomas Hall and out of the building. A challenge was a challenge, but Mitch was taking unfair advantage of this situation.

  At last, patience exhausted, he entered the hall and walked toward Mitchell’s room. As he neared it, he saw that the door was ajar. For one confused moment, he wondered if his watch had slowed or stopped. Had he erred and failed Mitchell? He hurried forward to the open door.

  Inside the room, Mitchell was throwing clothes into a suitcase.

  Koesler was perplexed. “What the hell’s going on, Mitch?”

  Mitchell looked at him briefly, then returned to packing. “What the hell’s it look like?”

  “You’re packing. But what for?”

  “I’m out on my ear, Bobby. Just like you tried to warn me.”

  “I don’t understand. Did something go wrong?”

  Mitchell smiled bitterly. “I’d say so. The rector dropped in while Beth and—I were . . . uh ... in a sort of compromising position. And he took that occasion to fire me.”

  “But that’s impossible. I was very careful when Beth and I were going through the halls. Nobody paid any attention to us. And I certainly would have noticed the rector if he had been in the corridor anywhere.”

  “How about if somebody told him?”

  “But who could . . .” Koesler did not complete the sentence. There was only one who could have told. “Rid.” Even as Koesler pronounced the name he had difficulty believing it was true. “Ridley?”

  “Rid!”

  “Are you sure? How can you be sure?”

  Mitchell closed the suitcase and snapped the lock. “We’ve already had it out. After Cronyn pronounced sentence on me, Beth . . . oh, hell, Beth got dressed and left. Cronyn didn’t say who did it, but I was pretty sure. I found Rid in the rec hall listening to his goddam classical music. We had it out. It was Rid, all right.”

  “But why? Why would he do a thing like that? I can’t believe it!”

  “Why did he do it?” Mitchell obviously was fighting back tears and, as time passed, having a harder and harder time of it. “Okay. I’ll tell you . . . but you have to promise to keep it a secret.”

  Koesler nodded. Briefly, he reflected that he was becoming the receptacle of a lot of secrets. He knew he would have lots of secrets to keep if he ever became a priest. He hadn’t known he would have to warm up in advance so often.

  “It’s got to do with the contest,” Mitchell explained. “You probably know that I entered a play.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “And you know that Rid also submitted a play?”

  Koesler thought for a moment. “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay. So we both entered plays. But
, the poor slob was afraid he couldn’t beat me. So he stole a play that had been written about fifteen years ago. He didn’t even bother changing very much of it.”

  “He plagiarized!”

  “Uh-huh. And when we exchanged plays and read each other’s I recognized the work he stole. So I confronted him and finally got him to admit it.”

  “So where’s the problem?”

  “He wouldn’t withdraw it from the competition.”

  “They’ll discover him!”

  “He doesn’t think so. Anyway he said he was going to go through with it. And I wouldn’t promise him I’d keep quiet.”

  “But he was going to keep your secret today.”

  “That’s the way he looked at it too. But it’s not the same thing.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he was afraid I was going to turn him in. So he decided to cut me off at the pass: If I were caught this afternoon, I wouldn’t be around to turn him in.”

  “But . . . what’s the point? You could still turn him in.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. But he guessed right—at least part right. I’ll take my medicine. I gambled—and I knew it was a gamble—and I lost. Of course I wasn’t figuring on a betrayal. But you’ve got to plan for everything.” He shook his head. “I was stupid. I should’ve realized that once I was a threat to him, he might try something. It just never entered my head that . . . well, he’s won this round.

  “But I’m keeping a copy of his manuscript, his plagiarism. Someday, who knows? Someday it may hurt him as much as this hurts me—to have people know that he stooped to plagiarism to try to beat me in a contest.”

  “Mitch,” Koesler said, “if you don’t mind my bringing this up, your plan pretty much lowers you to Rid’s level. This sort of thing—where you hold on to revenge for what might be a lot of years—can take a lot out of your character, too. I’d rather see you turn him in now or just forget about it.”

  Mitchell shook his head. “This is the way it’s going to be, Bobby. It’s the way Rid wants to play the game. These are practically his rules. I’d like him to spend the rest of his life waiting for the other shoe to fall. And I don’t plan to drop the other shoe until or unless it will hurt him the way I’ve been hurt.