“Why does this stuff matter?”
“Because people matter, their stories matter.”
“Getting too wrapped up in ‘people’ and their stories can be dangerous,” I said.
“You bet your boots. But what else is there?”
The expression on her face invited argument. Come on, it said. Roll out your revelations, about eternity and resurrection, life in Paradise.
“So. When will you be home again?” I asked.
There was a knock at my door on a hot Tuesday morning in early July. Hardly anybody knocked by then; they’d usually just walk in, call me from the kitchen. Through the window of the study I could see a small green car parked near the church, a BMW. I went to the door full of curiosity, and it was Brendan Bell.
He was smiling broadly, wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals. His face was tight and tanned, his black hair swept back and held secure by a dose of gel. The little ponytail was gone. On his left hand was a shiny wedding ring.
My curiosity passed for a welcome and he came in.
“I was just going to make some coffee,” I lied.
He was passing through, he said. His wife had gone out west to visit relatives. This was a chance for him to touch base back in Newfoundland. Going to loop around Cape Breton on the way through. Perhaps stop in Port Hood for a day or so to look up some old acquaintances. “I heard you were here. How is everybody?”
“As usual,” I replied.
“Mullins, still the barrel of laughs?”
I laughed with him.
“Actually, old Mullins and I got along fine,” he said. “Mercifully, he didn’t know about my sordid history. I thank you for that.”
And he asked about the MacKays. “The young fellow,” he said. “Young Danny. Junior, the kids called him. I really liked him. He’d be around the hall when the young people would get together. They’d come for evenings and we’d play music or watch videos or just hang out. That was the highlight of my stay. I thought maybe I’d look some of them up.”
I replied that they were all more or less still around. Not much has changed.
“Great,” he said, and finished his coffee. “I’d heard on the grapevine that you were here doing a spell of parish work. How do you like it?”
“A big change from the university.”
His eyes moved restlessly around my shabby kitchen. The small silences grew larger.
“You asked about Danny MacKay,” I said at last. “I guess you got to know him pretty well.”
“Obviously I knew him. He kind of stands out.” His face seemed troubled.
“He’s going through some difficulties. He has plans to get married. A lovely girl from here. But the prospect seems to have precipitated a kind of … crisis.”
“That’s a shame. I found him kind of … deep. Compared to the others. Marriage is a big deal.”
And there was another silence.
“Marriage seems to suit you well,” I said, smiling.
He nodded, studying the coffee mug, then turned his gaze toward the window. “My God,” he said at last. “I was admiring the view from here. I’d say you’ve scored the perfect job.”
I agreed.
“There’s a part of me that envies you,” he said, “that questions the whole decision to leave. I guess they were right in saying ‘Once a priest, always a priest.’”
And he said that one day he’d love to have a longer chat about things. The mind races, seeking openings, and finds only barriers. He got up to leave and I followed him toward the door.
“Maybe I’ll add a day to the trip,” he mused. “Call in on the way back. Maybe you’d put me up for a night. There are things I could probably talk about now that I didn’t really have the stomach to go into when I was here before. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” I said, relieved that the reckoning was postponed.
“Anyway. That’s for another day.”
But he stood there for a long silent moment.
How do we judge? Handsome face, sincerity in the eyes, a deep intelligence crafting sentences out of surprising perceptions and ideas and humour. All the outward signs of integrity. Yet these are also the gifts of the actor, the con artist, the survivor. I knew from my experience the cunning of damaged people. There’s a palpable uneasiness about him, I thought as I walked beside him to his car. And for a moment I considered stopping him. Hell, let’s have a drink. It’s afternoon somewhere. Let’s talk. And I’ll tell you about Alfonso, who was the kind of priest we all should be. And about Jacinta and my own brush with human weakness. And about my campaign to purify our Holy Mother Church by burying your kind in what I hoped would be impotent obscurity. And, in return, you can do what none before have done. Explain.
The little car drove down the lane and turned north.
Alfonso and Jacinta are more startled than anything else when I find them in the kitchen. I’ve interrupted the weeping.
I’m sorry, I say.
She rushes out, brushing past me as she leaves. He and I face each other across the tiny room. Then he smiles. Puts a forefinger to his lips, shakes his head.
Shhh.
Sextus phoned on a Thursday morning. It was, already, a hot, still day. The bay was flat. “I thought you’d be on the water,” he said gaily. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I sat out on the deck. The heat was intense. A car turned up the lane. It was Stella. She was wearing a denim smock with metal buttons up the front. The top and bottom buttons were undone.
“I’m on my way to the beach,” she said. “You should come.”
She was bare-legged, wearing sandals, hair tied back, a lock of hair uncaptured near her ear.
“I’d love to,” I said. And meant it. She smiled at me.
I offered coffee. She declined. Said she’d stopped in on business.
“What kind of business?”
She wanted to book the hall for Saturday night a week later. A little celebration for young Donald O’Brian, to raise some money for his studies at the seminary in Scarborough. “Obviously, you’ll have to be there,” she said.
I said I’d make a note of it.
She was hardly gone when Sextus arrived with a cooler full of beer. The sun was high and heavy. It was near noon.
“Days like this a fella can get depressed about all the years he pissed away in Ontari-ari-ari-o,” he declared, stretching, arms high above his head.
Below us, the dark expanse of water throbbed softly, a distant yacht moved slowly southward.
“Let’s get out there,” he said.
Young Danny MacKay was standing at the stern of the
Lady Hawthorne
with a large hose, sluicing the deck. His face seemed grim, but when he noticed us he smiled, turned off the water. Sextus handed him a beer.
“It’ll be nice on the island just now,” he said.
“I haven’t learned yet how to manoeuvre in there,” I said.
“A piece of cake,” Danny said.
The
Jacinta
sliced cleanly through the still water and all reality slipped away. The vestments hanging in the sacristy, the empty confessional, the crumbling glebe, strangers’ expectations, deep, impossible questions about purpose and potential. Danny and Sextus were standing aft, beers in hand, laughing at some shared observation.
In the corner of the cab window, a horsefly struggled in a cobweb. The spider sat at the edge of his trap, watching. What does it take to extinguish the instinct to survive? Despair? Finally, perhaps, a deep understanding of futility.
I looked back toward the stern. Sextus and Danny were talking seriously, the warm breeze ruffling their hair. Sextus noticed me and waved. I turned back to the cobweb just as the spider wrapped his body around the struggling fly. The struggle ceased.
Sextus stood beside me then. “Let me steer for a while.”
I stepped aside.
A distant beach was crowded with sand-coloured bodies. Danny was staring toward them, arms folded. Stella is among them, I thought, the denim smock and sandals discarded. Danny seemed to be waiting for something.
“Everything okay?”
He shrugged and smiled. No complaints.
“You seem troubled,” I said, and slapped his shoulder. “You’re sure everything’s okay?”
“Isn’t everybody troubled? One way or another?”
“One way or another,” I replied.
“I bet you’ve got your own troubles, eh, Father?”
I laughed. Turned my attention back toward the beach. “Do you swim?” I asked.
He shook his head.
We stood in silence for a while.
“I saw a friend of yours the other day,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Brendan Bell.”
“I heard he was around.”
“He seems prosperous. Driving a BMW. You know he’s changed jobs?”
“I heard something.” He drank from the bottle, his face expressionless.
A creeping uneasiness intruded like a cloud.
“We’re almost there,” he said. Pointing toward the light that sits just off the island breakwater. You couldn’t see an entrance.
“I’ve never had the nerve to go in there.”
We returned to the wheel and he gave instructions. Heart pounding, I tucked between two small speedboats, vulnerable as eggshells.
A profound feeling of achievement put all the large questions to rest.
Another beer to celebrate?
What, I asked myself, am I worrying about? He’s fine. Just going through the usual stress of young adulthood.
“There’s a little church up there,” he said, pointing. “Real peaceful. It’s from back when the island was a real community. Nothing here now but summer people. Americans. They hate it when locals like us come out. Disturbs their fantasies. But the church is kinda special.”
“There’s hope for you yet,” I said.
He laughed. “The whole place will be like this someday,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like Port Hood Island. A summer resort for people from away. A few of us locals hanging on by our fingernails. Workin’ for the foreigners.”
“Never,” I said. “You’d never let it come to that.”
He stared at me almost mockingly, but he said nothing more.
On the way back, I heard a startling clatter on the roof. Sextus told me later that Danny was dancing up there, a strange jig to the rhythm of his workboots. Very weird, Sextus thought.
“I think the kid is cracking up.”
“He’s fine,” I said. “People should just leave him alone.”
On the Saturday evening of O’Brian’s celebration the bay was dark and still as the sun settled. Mass at seven was crowded, cars and half-tons lining the lane and the parking spaces around the hall. I walked down the hill toward the hall at a quarter to nine, respectably tardy. I was to give a little speech, a formal send-off, and present Donald with a cheque from the parish. The sound of music grew louder as I approached and the babble of voices rose. Stella had arranged a liquor licence. An amplified violin screamed from a tinny speaker. A group of men stood near the door smoking. Among them I noticed young Danny MacKay. As I walked by, I attempted eye contact, but he looked away.
Inside, Stella asked, “Did you see who’s here?”
“Danny?”
“Yes. I think they’re here together. It’s a good sign.” She nodded toward Sally, who was selling tickets for the bar.
I try to remember the details now, imagining there was an odd discordance in the tunes, a certain sinister expression on familiar faces.
The young fiddler named Archie was on the stage, his cheek and ear close to the instrument, as if straining to hear each note above the background babble of conversation and laughter, his right knee jerking up and down, his foot pounding heavily on the floor. The guest of honour, Donald O’Brian, was intently hammering the piano, his proud parents standing near the stage accepting homage from their neighbours. Stocky men in shirt sleeves stood with plastic glasses, faces red, brows beaded with perspiration, their beefy wives busy at a long food table. Danny Ban was among them, leaning on a cane, sweat staining his crisp white shirt.
I caught sight of his son again, Sally speaking close to his ear, but I couldn’t see her expression. He stood, hands in pockets, face tilted downward, nodding. They will have handsome children, I thought, but the notion dissolved quickly in the anxiety that always grips me in crowds.
The music stopped. I called young Donald from the stage, walked him slowly toward the centre of the floor, a fraternal arm draped across his shoulders, and I made my short speech. They laughed at anecdotes about my time at the seminary. Stories about young men who pushed the boundaries of tradition and discipline while I surrendered blindly to orthodoxy. Something I advised young Donald to avoid. Don’t make my mistakes. Have some fun. I made safe jokes and imagined that the laughter was, in part, surprise. Listen! He can make us laugh! I had planned to close with some thoughts about humility and ordination and the joys and struggles of priesthood, but decided to end my little talk with a toast to the new seminarian. Everybody cheered and I saw Stella coming toward me with two plastic glasses.