The Bishop's Man: A Novel

by Linden MacIntyre

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “I’m sorry too,” I said.

  He seemed surprised.

  “No, dammit,” said his father. “You got nothing to feel sorry for. I told him he was lucky we live when we do. Not so long ago he’d probably be excommunicated by now. Or worse. The hand rotting off of him with gangrene.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said.

  There was a long silence.

  “I understand,” I said finally. “I understand, and I don’t need apologies. But there’s a young fellow who probably doesn’t understand.”

  Young Danny was shaking his head. “No. I’m not going to.”

  “If you really want this thing closed off,” I said, “I suggest you go over to O’Brians’ place right now. That’s where you have some tidying up to do.”

  “I can’t.”

  I looked at his father, appealing.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said, raising a hand and looking away. “Hittin’ a priest is one thing. The other thing is between themselves.”

  Their expressions were identical. Eyes steady, mouths thin, firm lines.

  “Then there’s nothing left to talk about,” I said.

  {13}

  I think of Mullins often. For priests like him and others I could name, the Gospels are rich with insights to be applied to the human condition. They even find logic in the superstition. They can trace a clear path through all the infantile promises of literal salvation and arrive at an objective truth that they carry in their pockets like a smooth, warm stone. What is it about them?

  Why, really, did I become a priest? The answer smacks me in the face: I needed an out. I needed an escape.

  Early the next week a young Mountie came by and told me that I should consider laying a charge of assault. “Young MacKay is a menace to himself and others,” he said. “Maybe he needs a wake-up call.” I figured the policeman was no more than a few years older than Danny.

  “I think he knows what he’s done,” I said. “He’s going through a phase. We all do.” I smiled, doubting that the young man before me had ever known but one long proper phase.

  He spoke again, but I wasn’t really listening to the words, just the tone. The flat, learned politeness that isn’t politeness at all, just a sterile formality. I wanted to say: “You sound like a robot. Did you learn to talk like that in Regina?” But didn’t, realizing that he was probably a decent enough boy. And that it’s the tone I hear from almost everyone.

  I heard from Stella weeks later that O’Brian was talking about moving to Japan. About going there to teach English, deferring his plans for priesthood indefinitely. Get a little time and distance between himself and everything, was how she put it.

  “It’s probably just speculation,” I said. “People love jumping to conclusions.”

  “He’s changed. I tried to discuss it with him.”

  “And did he tell you he was going to Japan?”

  “No. Not in so many words.”

  “I think he’ll be a good priest someday.”

  “You really do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Poor Danny. It wasn’t all his fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  She searched my face for evidence of knowledge, then she placed her soft hand on the back of mine. “Someday we should talk.”

  “I’d really like that,” I said.

  The boat became an escape for me, but not a particularly healthy one. The original purity of the experience faded and I realized it was becoming a deep seduction, a place to hide.

  “Going to do a bit of jiggin’, are you, Father,” they’d say as I lifted my cooler down from the dock, careful to avoid the telltale clank of bottles in the rattle of the ice cubes.

  “You know me,” I’d say back. “The fish have their own technology. The ‘fisherman-finder.’ Soon as I show up, they’re gone.”

  That’s a good one, they’d laugh.

  There was an American, a writer from the New York Times, who kept a boat near mine. We’d exchange mild pleasantries from time to time.

  “I hear you spent some time in Central America,” he said once.

  “Ah, yes. You know the place?”

  “Covered the trouble there in the eighties. Nicaragua. Salvador.”

  “I was in Honduras.”

  “Aha. Among the Contras,” he said.

  “That was after my time.”

  A blonde woman in shorts and a loose tank top lounged in a deck chair at the back of his boat, studying me with an expression that revealed the remnants of some earlier disclosure, perhaps that I was A Priest. Our eyes engaged and I smiled. She quickly looked away.

  Late in August, I saw Danny on the far side of the harbour, his boat hauled up in the mobile cradle. He was working in the shade under it, painting the hull with a long-handled roller. I could hear music. Straining to listen, I recognized a song from my university days. “Desperado.”

  The boy really is old-fashioned, I thought.

  I decided to go over, to talk. About the Eagles. Don Henley. Cash in some of the currency acquired from living for so long in close quarters with the young. Then I noticed that occasionally he’d reach down to pick up a beer bottle, raise it to his mouth then stand there, head back, as if to drain it all in one swallow.

  The next day the boat seemed abandoned in the slipway, and after two days fishermen were grumbling on the wharf.

  “Danny’s gone to sea with Captain Morgan,” one of them told me wryly.

  After three days I noticed a crew around the boat one morning, half-tons hauled up close to it. Four men were finishing the painting. When the paint was dry, they relaunched and floated the boat across the harbour and tied it up behind mine.

  “Has anyone heard anything lately?” I asked.

  “Oooh, yes,” the man said, snapping half hitches around a post.

  “Where is he keeping himself these days?” “He’s around. Under the weather, though. That old Bacardi flu, he caught.”

  He quickly tied a knot and left.

  Unannounced, young O’Brian came to see me. He stood at the door looking nervous. I asked him to come in for a cup of tea or a cold beer. We hadn’t spoken since the incident at the hall.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I have something for you.” He handed me an envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “I have to give you back the money. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it.”

  I feigned confusion.

  “You can explain to them.”

  “Explain what?”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not ready. Not now, anyway. I’m going to take a year and just travel. Think things through. Maybe after that. But I can’t. Not now.”

  I protested that he shouldn’t take the incident at the hall so seriously. That I knew young Danny MacKay felt badly about it.

  “Do you really think he’s the only one who thinks like that?” Donald asked bitterly.

  “It doesn’t mean—”

  “No?”

  I could feel the sudden anger.

  “Do you really think he’s the only person around here with that attitude?” He was staring through me and I could hear his unuttered question: What do you think?

  I said nothing.

  “I feel sorry for Danny MacKay, actually,” he said at last. “For whatever hang-ups made him do that. He just couldn’t keep it to himself, the way the others do. That guy is heading for big trouble.”

  “Keep the money. Travel can be expensive.”

  “Thanks, but I expect you can find better things to do with it. I hear they want to replace the Glebe.”

  “I’d do anything to make you change your mind.”

  He stared at me. Then, after what seemed like a long silence, he turned and walked away.

  {14}

  Then it was late September. The weather in summer can be unpredictable, but Septembers are, almost without exception, an unbroken flow of warm
, still days drenched in sunshine. I had the engine uncovered, floorboards up. There was evidence of dry rot in the planks below the fuel tank. I wondered if the MacKays knew about it before they sold it to me.

  Next one will be fibreglass, I thought. And then, in a spasm of distress, I realized the dry rot didn’t matter. In a few years I’ll be gone from here. There won’t be a next one.

  I opened my cooler and brought out the rum. The bottle was wet and cold and comforting. I found a plastic cup and twisted the cap from the bottle.

  There was a violent, startling thump. It was Danny. He’d jumped down from the dock and was walking along the washboard in my direction. His face was unshaven. He was wearing a ball cap backwards. I felt a momentary panic, sitting there with the incriminating liquor bottle in my hand. I fought annoyance.

  “I was just pouring a cocktail,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested?”

  “I don’t suppose the pope shits in the woods,” he replied. “Or is it the bear does that?”

  I smiled.

  He walked past me and stood at the stern, studying his boat with his hands on his hips. “You didn’t happen to notice who put my boat back in?” he asked.

  The tone was hostile, so I lied. “No.”

  “They could have told me.”

  “I’m sure they tried to find you.”

  “I’m not that hard to find.”

  When he turned to face me, I realized he was still drunk.

  “I’ll take it straight,” he said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Never better.” He turned away again and studied his boat, drink in hand. “I’m thinking of getting rid of her anyway. I’ve decided. I’m going to pack up and head for Calgary. That’s where the future is. This fishin’ is for idiots.”

  I said nothing.

  “The government wants us all out of business. All the little guys. Turn the whole effing thing over to the big companies that can afford to bribe the politicians.”

  I just listened.

  “There’s a job for you. Speak up about that stuff. Raise a little hell. Stand up for the little guy, that’s what you should be doing. The way the old priests were, before they all went hippy-dippy.”

  I shrugged.

  He went into a long silence then and finally turned to me and asked, “How come you just let me get away with that?”

  “With what?”

  “You know. At the hall.”

  “What do you think?”

  He lit a cigarette. “You should have hit me back. That’s what you should have done. You should have poled me. That’s what old Father Donald would have done … so I’ve been told. That’s what I deserved. I wouldn’t have stopped you.” He stared at me, puffing on the cigarette. “Somebody was telling the old man you used to be pretty good with your hands yourself. Never took shit off nobody.”

  “We outgrow that stuff.”

  He laughed. “How about if I gave you a free shot. Right now. Just nail me.”

  I stared, speechless.

  “Come on. Right here. I deserve it. It’ll be my penance.” He stuck his chin out.

  And suddenly, before me, I see the jutting faces of my father and our neighbour, Sandy Gillis, men misled by war to the belief that violence is a path to righteousness. I understand their problem now, how they got that way, how pain and guilt invite more pain. And I might have said to Danny, then and there, what I never said to them: Don’t you think that you’ve been hurt enough?

  But I simply shook my head and turned away, silenced by uncertainty. We just sat there sipping our drinks, avoiding eye contact, listening to the soft wash of the tide slipping by.

  “Did you ever think of going back to school?” I asked at last.

  “All due respect, Father, you’re jokin’.”

  “You’re still young, Danny.”

  “That’s half the problem right there. I was born too late for anything that matters.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “We’ll catch you later,” he said, setting his glass on the washboard then bounding up over the side of the wharf.

  I wanted to call him back. But by the time I’d climbed up onto the wharf, his truck was racing up the shore road. I see it now, and the amber light of the falling September sun turning fields to gold and setting fires in the windows of the silent houses where all the secrets are.

  † † †

  “I have a feeling that you know more than you’re prepared to tell me. Am I right or wrong?”

  Stella was silent on the other end of the phone. Then she sighed. “This is something very deep. He needs some help, but he isn’t ready for it yet.”

  “Can you tell me anything?”

  “No.”

  I put the phone down and only remembered afterwards that I’d forgotten to say goodbye.

  Sunday, October 8. It occurred to me that Bobby O’Brian was avoiding me. People consider me to be aloof; a word I’d never have thought of, but Sextus used it once when he was explaining the trouble with people like me. We hide behind this forbidding exterior, he said, and it fools most people. He had a hand on my lapel, fingering the heavy wool fabric.

  “The cloth … the outward sign of your authority,” he said. “Something cultivated by old black-robed priests to save them from accountability.” Sextus uses the word accountability a lot. And transparency. Words, I assume, that people use more often in the larger places. But Bobby O. never seemed to notice my aloofness. Bobby O. is one of those people who always seemed comfortable with the priest.

  “Bob,” I called out as he marched, head down, toward his car.

  He hesitated. He was clearly wondering if he could get away with pretending not to hear me. So I broke away from a little group of women near the door of the church and walked toward him.

  “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Been pretty preoccupied. Union stuff. You know the way it gets.”

  I asked him if he was hearing from his son.

  “Ah, yes,” he replied reluctantly. “He’s doing good. Got a teaching job in Korea. Think of that. Korea.” He was trying to seem pleased.

  There was a long pause then.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “It was embarrassing. I just don’t know any other way to put it. He kind of built up all those hopes, then … running away like that.”

  “It isn’t running away. He just needs time. He was wise to go away, where he can think about it without feeling pressure.”

  “It wouldn’t have been any different for him. You know what I’m talking about.”

  And then I understood the anguish in his face.

  “Things like that don’t matter when you’re a priest. Right? You have help, the Lord’s grace. Isn’t that what they tell us? I always figured he’d be safer as a priest.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “I gotta tell you, I worry about him. It’s a dirty rotten world.”

  “Say hello for me. And if he ever wants to drop a line.”

  “I’ll do that.” Then he said, “I hear young MacKay isn’t doing so good. I hear he’s been on a bender for weeks now.”

  I nodded.

  “I feel bad about that. He used to be a nice little fellow. I remember when they were both in the high school. They were buddies.”

  “It’ll work out,” I said, feeling embarrassed at the poverty of the comment.

  “Ah, well. Young people, eh?”

  He headed toward his car, and I felt a wave of sorrow from somewhere deep, a place I rarely dare to go.

  † † †

  Thursday, October 12. Young Danny was on the phone in the morning.

  “I was just wondering … I’ll probably haul the boat out next week. How about if I do yours at the same time?”

  “That would be fine,” I said.

  “The weather is closing in … they’re expecting some storms. Might as well put ‘er away for the winter.”

  “Can I help?”

&
nbsp; “I’ll handle it. Call it a little act of contrition.”

  We both laughed.

  “Ego te absolvo,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I feel much better now.”

  Then it was the fifteenth. I clearly remember a high wind out of the northwest flinging cold rain against the hills and the houses, autumn leaves cascading from the tragic trees, congealing in rich coloured clumps on the road. After Mass that day, the people ran to their cars holding their parish bulletins over their bare heads. Rushing to their welcoming homes. I stood in the doorway of the church for a full five minutes, watching the storm racing over the bay, gathering up the whitecapped water, smashing it against the land. Something about my house made me want to linger in the creaking church, where there were still traces of living humanity. My house, a dead place compared to this and the living storm outside.

  Then I saw the red half-ton turning up the lane. Sextus, I thought with surprise.

  “Isn’t it grand,” he said, standing with the rain lashing his face. “I love this. I drove out to the old place, but the wind is blocked by all the trees. Then I thought of you here, and the view. I brought a jug of wine. Thought we’d have a little brunch.”

  “Why don’t you step in here before you get soaked.”

  “I just love the smell of it. The smell of the fall, nature throwing off the summer things. What else rots so fragrantly?”

  I suspected he’d already started drinking, the way he was waving his arms around.

  “Come on to the house. I’ll fry up some bacon and eggs. Put on a pot of coffee.”

  He opened the wine. I had my Sunday Bloody Mary and set about the kitchen while he pulled a chair back from the table and sat there watching me.

  “I hear young O’Brian is in Korea or someplace like that,” he said finally. “It’s just as well.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Not that he wouldn’t make a good priest. I just don’t know why he’d want to put himself through all that.”

  “All what?”

  “The constant suspicion. And of course, the tension inside himself.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I had my back to him.