The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  “I appreciate your concern, George, but I’ve discovered that most things get done the way I like them when I do them myself.”

  I saw poorly concealed smiles on several faces. It is common knowledge that Petrie is getting more and more annoyed by the Cardinal’s disinclination to elevate him to the purple. If Big Matt made anyone else an auxiliary, Petrie would probably burn down the chancery office in sheer vexation.

  All in all, it was a charming little party, and I was flattered to find myself on the inside of the Big Story. See how readily I succumb to the lure of power and influence? You will have to write me one of your sermons on the Mystical Body as a divine comedy, and set my feet once more upon the straight and narrow. I don’t know whether I’ll be coming to Rome or will be left here to mind the telephones. But I would say we have a fair chance of a reunion on Ye Olde Aurelian Way.

  As ever, Mag

  Charles Mahan’s waxen face, the one he had worn in his coffin, had been transferred to a statue in a mysterious cathedral. It was not the archdiocese’s white monstrosity nor was it any other cathedral Matthew Mahan had ever visited. It had the cold penetrating smell of the catacombs. The heavy leaded glass of the windows had only crude outlines of the saints and biblical heroes that would have glowed with rainbow life in the sunlight. It was a cathedral of the dead, a gigantic crypt in which the statues bore witness to the failures rather than the triumphs of love. Matthew Mahan knelt before another statue. Its back was turned. Yet, it was maddeningly familiar. A big man, solid shoulders, large head. Who was it?

  In the distance, chanting. A procession emerged from the darkness. Monks or nuns, two by two, with cowled heads, a strange wailing hymn. Ahead of them, a cross twice his size and weight fastened to his back, struggled a dog. An Irish setter, the favorite dog of his boyhood, Shane. His wide uncomprehending eyes stared up at Matthew Mahan. A crown of thorns was imbedded in the dog’s skull, beneath the soft silky setter’s ears. One of the cowled figures bent down and patted the dog’s head. He jerked back his hand and shook it angrily. The thorns had cut him. Who was he? Who had always patted Shane’s head in that strong authoritative way? The father, dear God, yes, the father.

  Matthew Mahan woke up. The cathedral bell was softly tolling one, two, three, four. He peered at the digital alarm clock beside his bed and saw it was 5:00 a.m. He had missed the first stroke. He thought for a moment about his bizarre dream. The dog, Shane, with a crown of thorns. It was vaguely blasphemous. Yet they had all loved him. Shane had especially loved the father.

  Matthew Mahan sighed and told himself that dreams were full of incomprehensible mumbo jumbo. Rolling over on his right side, he shut his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Impossible. A mixture of words and images churned in his mind. His Eminence. A Prince of the Church. No longer one of 2,500 bishops, but one of a select 120 or 130 Cardinals. Why? Him of all people, the swimmer against the Vatican tide. What did they want from him?

  Then he became aware of the pain. It began slowly, and built remorselessly to an explosion that sent slivers of anguish up, down, and around the center of his body. The earlier pain that had vanished after supper was a caress compared to this agony. Again it built, exploded, and regrouped to focus itself like a fiery disk just below his waist. Cancer? Matthew Mahan remembered his father in the hospital, teeth clenched, jaw muscles bunched, refusing to cry out against the probing pincers of the crab. No, cancer did not come and go like this. An ulcer? Absurd. He was born with a cast-iron stomach. Besides, ulcer pains were mild. Or were they? Ruefully, Matthew Mahan reminded himself that medically, he was an ignoramus.

  He went into the bathroom and peered into the medicine chest. He saw a bottle of aspirin tablets, shook two into his hand, and gulped them down. Aspirin was supposed to be a pain killer. But the aspirin did not work very well. The pain seemed to grow more intense. Soon it was almost a separate thing with a personality of its own, a small, ferocious animal. Who was that saint who concealed a lion cub under his cloak while hiding from Roman persecutors and let it gnaw him to death without a word of complaint?

  By the time his alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., the pain was almost unbearable. But he managed to shave and dress and walk downstairs to his private chapel. He nodded to Dennis McLaughlin, who was just finishing his mass and knelt for a moment on one of the prie-dieu before the altar. He studied the writhing Christ on the crucifix above the tabernacle. Baroque ecstasy, blending pain and beauty. He offered up his pain for Bill Fogarty and his brother Charlie, one in Purgatory, the other in this world’s version of that place of suffering.

  Dennis helped him vest and then served his mass for him. The sacred Host, the wine that was transmuted into Christ’s body and blood, seemed to have a soothing effect on his malevolent internal visitor. Breakfast was even more helpful. By the time he finished his bacon, eggs, and home-fried potatoes and drank his coffee, the pain had vanished again.

  Dennis McLaughlin had his usual thimbleful of orange juice and a cup of black coffee. “I don’t know how you can get through the morning on that, Dennis,” he said, realizing as he spoke that it was not the first time he had made this remark.

  “My mother says the same thing.”

  Matthew Mahan got the implied comparison. “You’d better call Monsignor Cohane over at the paper and tell him the news,” he said briskly. “Let him set up the press conference. See how many copies of my standard biography we have in the files over here. We’ll probably need a couple of dozen pictures, too.”

  Dennis McLaughlin nodded and reminded him, “We’re scheduled to be at Mount St. Monica’s at ten forty-five.”

  “I know,” said Matthew Mahan. “We’ll skip the mail today. I’ll catch up on my committee reports.”

  Upstairs the Cardinal-designate spent the next half hour stretched out in his Barcalounger reading his breviary. He found the opening lines of the morning prayer particularly suitable.

  O Lord, open my lips

  And my mouth shall declare your praise.

  After completing half the day’s reading, Matthew Mahan opened a door at the rear of his bedroom and entered his office. On his long table-desk, in small gold frames, were three pictures. On the right were his father and mother. Bart Mahan was on the beach, the ocean visible behind him. He wore white pants and an open-necked shirt. The barest hint of a smile was on his tough, handsome face. Beside him was a much earlier picture of Teresa Mahan, taken in a city garden. She was a pretty, vivaciously smiling young woman in a below-the-knee print dress. A mass of dark hair fell to her shoulders à la Mary Pickford. On the left, was a family portrait of Charles Mahan and his wife and their seven children, taken four years ago. They looked marvelously happy as if they had just been named Catholic family of the year.

  Around the walls of the office were many more pictures, almost all of them commemorating a sports event. A smiling Matthew Mahan was presenting a trophy to the winning baseball team, basketball team, football team, track team. Everything, he had once remarked looking at all the pictures, except a winning horse.

  Above the door hung the Archbishop’s coat of arms. On the right side of a green shield was a golden griffin, a mythological animal, half eagle, half lion, the heraldic symbol of the Mahans. He was on his hind legs, all but embracing a golden halberd, symbol of the martyrdom of St. Matthew. On the left side of the shield was the symbol of the archdiocese, a lamb feeding before a church spire. Beneath these images was Matthew Mahan’s motto, Dominus in corde – “May the Lord be in my heart.” It was taken from the gospel prayer of the old Latin mass. Above the shield was a gold Maltese cross, symbol of the beatitudes from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Surmounting this was a green broad-brimmed pontifical hat with five gold tassels running down each side of the shield.

  All these things - the coat of arms, the pictures - were the everyday furniture of Matthew Mahan’s life, and he seldom paid much attention to them. By now, it was eight o’clock. He spent the next hour reading reports from the committees of the National Con
ference of Bishops. The one on diocesan financial reporting was the most important - and the most incomprehensible to him. As far as he could figure it out, every other diocese, and often every other parish, religious order, and institution within a diocese, used different accounting methods to keep track of their money - with the result a haphazard jumble that drove businessmen and bankers berserk. It made him grateful for Chancellor Malone, who was considered a financial genius.

  Malone was one of the few chancery officials he had held over from the old regime. The chancellor’s right-wing politics created a separate problem, however. Matthew Mahan spent another half hour brooding over the report of the Malone-dominated Building Committee, recommending the creation of three new parishes and the construction of three new churches and church schools in the city’s ever-growing suburbs. During the past year, the local chapter of the ultra-liberal National Association of Laymen had fiercely criticized the archdiocese for spending too much of its money in the suburbs and ignoring the needs of the decaying inner city. Chancellor Malone was inclined to discount protests from such “agitators” as left-wing propaganda.

  “Your Eminence,” Dennis McLaughlin said from the doorway, “the car is here. I’ve talked to Monsignor Cohane at the paper. The wire services have the story. The papers, the radio and TV people, have called him. He wants to know if two o’clock would be a good time for a press conference.”

  “Perfect,” Matthew Mahan said. “Get on your hat and coat. I want you to come with me and take notes on what’s said - and not said - out there. Nuns only hear what they want to hear, and they sometimes think they’ve said something when they’ve only meditated on it.”

  The Saturday morning traffic on Kennedy Parkway was light. Without warning, the pain began stirring again beneath Matthew Mahan’s belt buckle. At first, he tried to regard it objectively, with no more interest in it than a computer has in the electrical impulses that dart down its intricate circuits. But within a few minutes, it had resumed its explosive role, hurling long slivers of agony upward along his nerves to end sometimes in his throat like stifled cries.

  Picking up the white molded phone on his side of the back seat, Matthew Mahan gave the operator a number and waited for it to ring, his eyes wandering along the sidewalks of Kennedy Parkway, collecting bits and pieces of familiar images. The same bored teenagers staring woodenly at each other before the doors of La Parisienne, the city’s most expensive ice cream parlor. Clumps of shouting, wrestling grammar school boys on the way to Washington Park to play baseball. A cop on a corner gabbing with a friend. Still the same, nothing has changed really, the images whispered to the Cardinal-designate.

  A feminine voice spoke brightly into his ear. “Mr. Furia’s office.”

  “My goodness, Doris, has he got you working on Saturday, too?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind, I really don’t, Your Excellency. I charge him for it.”

  “Good.”

  In seconds, Mike Furia’s ragged, rugged voice was on the line.

  “Padre,” he said, “how goes it?”

  “Fine,” he said. “How’s everything?”

  “Okay, except for the wandering boy.”

  “He’ll come around. Just be patient, Mike.”

  “The hell with patience. You’ve been telling me that for a year.”

  “It may take another year. Look, Mike, I’m calling from the car. It’s not the place to discuss anything seriously. I just wanted you to know a piece of news. I’d rather you heard it from me than from a newspaper or TV reporter.”

  “What’s happened? Has Father Disalvo decided to improve the liturgy by saying mass in the nude?”

  Matthew Mahan laughed briefly, politely. “No, Mike, nothing that important. Somebody in Rome has gone crazy. They’re making me a Cardinal.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” roared Furia, almost shattering Matthew Mahan’s eardrum. “When I knocked out that German tank only twenty feet from your foxhole at Falaise, I never thought I was saving a Prince of the Church.”

  “You didn’t sound like you were saving a chaplain, either,” Matthew Mahan said with a reminiscent smile. “I’ve tried to forget them, but I can still remember three or four of those names you called me for being out there in the first place.”

  “Yeah,” Furia roared at the same decibel level, “but you gave me absolution on the spot.”

  “It was all I had to give,” Matthew Mahan said. “Besides, you probably needed it.”

  “The hell I did. That was the one time in my life when I said more prayers than you. Listen, is this one of those deals where you go to Rome and throw yourself at Il Papa’s feet?”

  “More or less.”

  “We’ll charter a plane and I’ll go with you. We’ll sell the seats for a thousand bucks apiece.”

  “That sounds a little steep, Mike, but you’re a better judge of those things -”

  “Listen, if it goes the way I think it’ll go, we’ll probably need two planes.”

  “Let’s think about it for twenty-four hours, Mike.”

  “Okay. But listen, congratulations. It’s about time they recognized the best damn Archbishop in the country.”

  Matthew Mahan slipped the phone back into its white cradle and cast a slightly uneasy sidelong glance at Dennis McLaughlin. Why, he asked himself irritably, was he worried about what Dennis would think of that conversation? There was nothing unusual about organizing a group to go to Europe with a new Cardinal. They were undoubtedly talking about the same thing in New York and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh at this very moment. Maybe frankness was the best way to face it. These young people had to accept the fact that in the modern Church, money and the sacred, if that was not too grandiose a word for his elevation, were inextricably mixed. “Mike wants to charter a plane and organize a cheering section for our trip to Europe. He says he can get $1,000 a seat.”

  Dennis smiled. “I want the scorecard concession.”

  Matthew Mahan was half inclined to laugh. Instead, his eyes fell on the dark red hair that vanished unwillingly beneath Dennis’s round white collar, and he became serious. “Mike’s a wonderful guy. But a little too enthusiastic. I have to rein him in a lot. The poor fellow’s been having all sorts of trouble with his son Tony. Mike and his wife are separated, which is probably the root of the problem. Last year Tony dropped out of Georgetown. Mike put Pinkertons on his trail. They finally located him in a commune down in Hutchinson County.”

  “Hard Times Haven?”

  “Something like that.”

  “They publish a newspaper - the Hard Times Herald. Everybody reads it out at the university. Would you like to see some copies?”

  “No thanks.”

  Wrong, Matthew Mahan thought. You made it sound like a rebuke. He fiddled with his episcopal ring. “Well,” he said, “you’ve been on the job almost two weeks now. How do you like it?”

  “A lot more than I thought I would,” Dennis said with a slightly strained smile.

  “Good. I thought you’d like to know that I’m satisfied. Quite satisfied.”

  There was no evidence of pleasure, much less warmth, on Dennis McLaughlin’s face. He ran his hand through his unruly hair and nodded. “Good - good. I’m - glad,” he said.

  “Let’s see,” Matthew Mahan said, “who else did I have on that list?”

  Dennis took an index card from his coat pocket. “Your sister-in-law, Bishop Cronin at the seminary, the mayor.”

  “You take care of him,” Matthew Mahan said.

  “The president of the City Council.”

  “Ditto.”

  Matthew Mahan picked up the phone and dialed the seminary number. A querulous voice answered. “Rosewood?” It must be Mary Malone’s fiftieth year at the switchboard. Matthew Mahan decided to see if she was as ornery as ever. “I’d like to speak to Bishop David Cronin, please,” he said.

  “He retired five years ago,” replied Mary.

  “Isn’t he still living at the seminary?”

&nbs
p; “How should I know,” said Mary. “I ain’t got time to keep track of all the old nuts they got parked around hee-uh.”

  Matthew Mahan sighed. Someday he would become indignant enough to fire Mary. But today was not the day. “This is Archbishop Mahan,” he said. “Ring Bishop Cronin’s room, will you, please? If he isn’t there, try the library.”

  A series of clicks and buzzes followed, with no commentary from Mary. With his free ear, Matthew Mahan could hear Dennis McLaughlin saying, “Yes, your Honor. His Eminence just thought - no, nothing special, I can assure you. He just thought you might like to prepare a statement. It doesn’t hurt to get one step ahead of the reporters. Yes, certainly, I’ll let him know.”

  A dry voice rasped in his other ear. “Cronin here.”

  “Mahan here. I thought you’d like to hear some interesting news I just got from the apostolic delegate.”

  “Now what could that be?” said Auxiliary Bishop Cronin in his ripest Irish brogue. “Is he bringing over his sister and her twenty kids, and wants you to get the pack of them city jobs? Or worse, has he set them up in a Roman palazzo and wants you to send them everything you collect for the propagation of the faith?”

  “No, nothing like that,” said Matthew Mahan. He caught a glimpse of his own smiling face in the rearview mirror. The pain stirred menacingly as if it were watching, too.

  “Then it’s got to have something to do with the heretofore unused miraculous powers of the papacy. From now on, you’ll be able to ban books before poor fools like me have even written them.”

  “Oh, he knows all about you,” Matthew Mahan said. “I told him a long time ago that if anything happened to me, he’d better consecrate the commandant of the Marine Corps to keep you in line.”

  “All right, all right,” said Bishop Cronin, “let’s get to the point. I planned to spend the day demolishing old Pio Nono, and I don’t want to waste a minute of it.”