“We’ll go out again before we put her away for the winter, eh?”
“I hope so.”
“Look,” he said, “I …”
But he turned suddenly and walked away.
I sat in the car for a long time before leaving. What is it that attracts the Bells? Priests of old were father figures. What happened?
Bell once told me with confidence: “People will see whatever they need a priest to be. Father, saviour, coach, ombudsman, shrink. Lover, even. Now that people don’t really need priests, they don’t see us at all.”
“You’re saying we’re obsolete,” I said.
“More like invisible.”
“So why did you become a priest?”
He shrugged. “Limited career options. Infantile piety. Need to please. Who knows?”
“Or invisibility?”
I thought the jibe would bring him down.
“That too,” he said, and smiled.
I wanted to say: I knew a man who became a priest to save the world. His world, at least. His people. A man who thought the priesthood was an agency of justice. I wanted to say it and the moment felt right. But it would have meant devaluing a precious memory. And it would have invited intimacy.
“What about you?” Bell asked.
“I don’t know,” I said finally.
“I hear you,” he said.
“What will you do after this?”
He gave it some thought, then shrugged. I remember we were sitting at Mullins’s kitchen table at the time. “Maybe I’ll just stay here. I’m getting attached to the people. It feels a lot like home.”
And he grinned.
We went out once more that fall, on a grim, grey day. Danny Ban came with us. This time I eased away from the dock and out through the mouth of the harbour without any appearance of uncertainty and without any help. Outside, she pitched and bucked in the quick, choppy waves. And I remembered Alfonso’s advice, on horseback for the first time in Honduras. Ride with her, he said. You ride with the horse, not on top of her. Become part of her motion. It was true for the boat too.
I opened the throttle and looked around. Young Danny and his father were standing back near the stern, smiling.
The wind was bitter and the plunging bow sent shivers of freezing water over the cab. The two Dannys moved forward to stand out of the wind and sudden showers, looking back over the stern. Danny Ban was huddled deep into his coat, trembling.
I swung in a large loop and headed back. “It’s too cold,” I called.
“Cold?” Danny Ban shouted. “You call this cold?”
I let young Danny take the boat back in, and as he tied up, his father asked, “What do you plan to call her?”
“Call who?”
“The boat. He’s putting the old name on the new one. Can’t have two named the
Lady Hawthorne.
You can call this one anything you want now. After somebody special, maybe. Like your mother.” He rubbed his chin, thinking.
Walking by us, young Danny said, “You could always call her
Sinbad,
after the sailor fellow in the fairy story.”
“What?”
“You could make it
Sin,
comma,
Bad.
” He’d stopped and was smiling slightly.
“That’s hilarious,” his father said sourly as the boy turned away, now cackling at his own joke. Then, to me: “Give yourself lots of time to think about it. It’s an important thing, the name of your boat.”
“
Jacinta,
” I said, remembering the voice.
“The
Jacinta?
What would that be?”
“Just something that popped into my head. It’s Spanish, for a flower.”
“Spanish, eh?”
“I worked in Central America for a while. Learned some Spanish.”
“Yes. I heard some priests from here did that.”
“I think I’ll call her the
Jacinta.
”
“That’d be different,” he said. “The
Jacinta.
”
I could feel my face growing warm from speaking the name out loud.
“That’s often how the best ideas come,” he said. “Just pop into your head like that. Yes, the
Jacinta.
That’s a good one.” And after a silence: “How are you liking it up there in Creignish, anyway, Father? Must be a change after the university.”
“Yes, a big change,” I said, still savouring the name I now could safely speak.
“All those young people over at the university. Must be a big change, by yourself in Creignish.”
“It was time for a change.”
“Look,” he said quietly, “you didn’t get a chance to talk to the young fella?”
“Not really. He isn’t much for talking.”
“That’s different too. Used to talk the ear offa you. His little joke, before, about naming the boat?
Sinbad?
That’s the way he always was. Dizzy jokes and pranks.”
“They all change. It’s part of growing up.”
“Nah. It’s more than that. For one thing, you can’t get him to darken the door of a church anymore. Christ, he used to be more faithful than I was. Serving on the altar almost every Sunday. Mullins needed somebody, short notice, for a wedding or a funeral, he’d be there like a shot. And when that young Newfoundlander was around … Brendan something … he was down there all the time.”
“Is that so,” I said.
“Then—poof—he just quit. Maybe if you talked to him.”
“It’ll be up to him,” I said.
“I know. I know.” Then he laughed and, with a large paw on my shoulder, said: “Maybe you’ll put a word in for all of us, next time you’re talking to the Almighty.”
I said I would.
His son called, “Hurry up,” and waved.
I shouted up to where he was standing, beside the truck: “I can hardly wait for next summer.”
He shouted back: “There’ll be lots of summers.”
It’s one of those memories I cling to now, to rebut those who say it was only a matter of time. He told me himself and I can still hear him:
There’ll be lots of summers.
And he was smiling when he said it. He wouldn’t have lied. Not to a priest.
{6}
A
southeast gale near the end of October stripped the mountain of its colour. Then it was November. The autumn days filled with rain that flattened fields and turned them into mud. The rain washed the hillside clean and now it lay bare, waiting for the snow. Leaves of chocolate and scarlet and lime plastered and clumped in the driveway and on the concrete doorstep of the church. This time of year the country turns to business. Pleasures finished, all the tourists gone. From the altar I asked for suggestions, parish activities that might get people involved. Half the population seems to be on a pension of some kind. Old-age benefits. Early retirement from the mill. People with time to kill, Sextus likes to say, before time kills them.
But there was hardly any response to my request for ideas. Someone mentioned bingo. I declined.
“Maybe we could start something here … for the divorced and separated Catholics,” Pat suggested.
“If you think we need it.”
“Actually,” she said, “most people prefer to go to town.”
“Things takes time,” Bobby O’Brian told me.
Danny called on a Sunday afternoon. “I don’t like to bother you, but I think we might need some advice.”
“Okay.”
“I might be out of line. We really don’t know each other all that well … You can tell me, straight up, if—”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The young fellow. He’s in a bit of trouble.”
“Really?”
“I think he went on a twister last night. Was a hockey game at the arena and I guess they celebrated a bit too much afterwards. Went on a rampage with the half-ton truck. Did a fair bit of damage.”
“Is he all right?”
He laughed. “Oh, yeah. But his mother is pretty upset. We were wondering if you might put in a word for him.”
“A word? With whom?”
“Father Mullins.”
Mullins?
Young Danny had driven his truck onto the lawn of the parish church in Port Hood. Spun up the sod, knocked over the sign for the Sunday Mass schedule, and was in the process of destroying the turf in front of the glebe when his wheels sank into the mud. Mullins caught him in the act. Sitting there spinning his wheels insanely. Nearly burned the clutch out of the truck, according to his father.
Mullins was unforgiving, and he had already called the RCMP. He was planning to turn the incident into a big deal.
“You don’t know the lad as well as I do,” Mullins said wearily when I called. “He’s turning into a real nuisance. Maybe a stretch of probation would be good for him. I wouldn’t want him in jail or anything. But maybe he needs a bit of time to cool his heels. Frankly, I think the big problem is booze. Maybe even drugs.”
I listened carefully, agreeing that there should be consequences. But I thought maybe the stain of a police record might be a bit extreme for property damage.
“Property damage,” Mullins huffed. “We’re talking parish property here. The church, for God’s sake.”
I noted the astringent tone. Remembered the word the boy used:
asshole.
“Well. It’s only a lawn.”
“The lawn this time. But what next? Next thing you know, they’ll be tearing up the tabernacle. You hear about things like that. The vandalism.”
I promised then to speak to Danny, maybe persuade him to pay for the damage. Make restitution.
Mullins wasn’t impressed, but said he’d think about it and that he’d hold off on the charges for a few days.
“He isn’t a bad kid,” I said. “I dealt with lots like him at the university.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn,” said Mullins. “These aren’t university kids. These are the leftovers.”
I didn’t notice her in the back of the church that Sunday until just before the end, when I was announcing that I wanted the teenagers in the parish to come to the hall for a short meeting the following Wednesday night. I wanted to find out what their interests were. Whether, together, we could cook up some activities that might engage them. Anything but bingo.
We made eye contact and she smiled slightly. When I was standing at the door shaking hands, she approached and I said that I was surprised to see her there and she said she came out of curiosity. Plus she wanted to express her appreciation for what I’d done to help the family. I suppose my face showed some confusion.
“Young Danny,” she said. “What you did there was a big help. He isn’t really like that. It was out of character.”
Then I remembered that she was his aunt. His mother’s sister. Stella.
I laughed and said something about everybody being connected to the MacKays, and she replied, “Well, you’re from around here, you know how it is. Everybody is more or less related.”
“I understand.”
“Good luck with the young people. But it’s going to be an uphill battle. Unless you can afford a bunch of video machines.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Social life revolves around school. The school is in town. That’s their community now. This is just where they sleep and eat.”
“I want to change that,” I said.
“Maybe you shouldn’t rule out bingo.”
The eyes were twinkling.
“Let me know if I can help,” she said.
I watched her walk away, and there was an unselfconscious grace in the way she moved. Getting into her car, she turned, smiled awkwardly and gave a little wave.
Feb. 2. last night jacinta told me she struggles to remind herself that i’m a priest. she was laughing when she said it. i don’t’t know what to think.
Wednesday night I waited in the hall. The coffee pot was gurgling. I’d said eight o’clock, but nobody came. At five past eight I heard a car outside crunching the gravel, but after a minute of silence I heard it drive away. Nothing has changed, I thought, remembering how nobody wants to be first. Nobody wants to seem eager.
By eight-thirty I could smell the coffee burning.
In Honduras they’d come just to listen to the stories of what was happening around them. Looking for hope in the news Alfonso brought. Ferment in Nicaragua. Rural reform in El Salvador, where he was from. Christian communities, led by the lay people, taking over the work of the priests. Priests taking over the lay responsibility to fight repression, taking on the powerful. Priests in politics. Ordinary people and their priests, finally standing up to the elites, the handful of wealthy families that seemed to own everything. People risking life and limb for justice. Exodus 3, Alfonso kept reminding them. It’s all there.