Prince of Peace (43 page)

"The government of South Vietnam never signed that convention!" Spellman's face had turned crimson. Unconsciously he lifted himself on his toes. He gripped the podium, as if that pressure would spill off his tension. "And neither did the United States! Everybody knows you can't have fair elections with the Reds."

"So you are against elections."

"Rigged elections, yes."

"But when Ngo Dinh Diem held his own plebiscite in the South in nineteen fifty-six against the Head of State Bao Dai who had appointed him, he won by ninety-eight percent. Wouldn't you call that 'rigged'?"

Spellman answered with his fiercest stare. "Who are you, young man?" He asked finally. "I don't believe we've met."

"My name is Nicholas Wiley, Your Eminence. I'm with the
Catholic Worker."

Spellman smiled. There was a stir in the room as the reporters nudged each other. The strained atmosphere eased. "Oh, the
Catholic Worker
." Spellman nodded sagely, then said, aside, "Some of my best friends are Catholic Workers."

The reporters laughed loudly. Several clapped. They were glad for the release of tension. They knew, of course, that the cardinal was referring to the controversy that ensued the year before when the
Catholic Worker
crowd publicly challenged him during the Archdiocesan Cemetery Workers' strike. But Spellman had crushed the gravediggers' union, and the
Catholic Worker's
picket-line hadn't impressed anyone but kooks.

"I'm glad you people are taking an interest in Indochina. You tell Dorothy Day for me, will you, that she should preach her pacifism to the Reds."

The reporters chuckled, enjoying themselves now. This could have been embarrassing, but the cardinal was chewing the punk up.

"I go way back with Dorothy," Spellman said. And, again aside, with a showman's timing, "I'm the one who gave her permission to use the word 'Catholic' for her newspaper. I guess for 'Worker' she went to Joe Stalin."

Now the reporters were slapping their knees.

Nicholas Wiley took his glasses off and looked around. He was blushing and seemed disoriented. What could he do now but slink off? But suddenly he pointed his glasses at the cardinal. "You were talking about the children! You said the Communists were the assassins! But the International Control Commission reports that the South Vietnamese Secret Police are systematically murdering Buddhists even as we—"

Cardinal Spellman threw a glance at Maguire, who stood abruptly. "That's it," he said firmly. "Thanks very much, gentlemen."

Michael's crisp statement belied what he was feeling. Buddhists? Had the kid said Buddhists? But instead of welcoming Wiley's challenge as a version of the one he himself had tried to mount against Spellman, Michael resented it. The kid reeked of self-righteousness and was obviously a nut. His raising the issue like that would only confirm Spellman in his certainty that no one but kooks had questions about policy in Vietnam. It would have been pointless to admit the anger he felt toward the cardinal for his refusal to defend the Buddhists, and it would have been humiliating to acknowledge his peevish irritation at the punk who'd spoiled his press conference, so Michael channeled both feelings into the pretend authority with which he adjourned the session.

Before Wiley could protest, all the other reporters rose at once. He tried to say something, but his words were lost in the bustle.

 

The VIP lounge had been transformed by the clerics with their dominating black suits and flashing gold Chi-Rho-embossed cuff links, with their boisterous laughter and waving cigars, into a rectory common room. Even though it wasn't noon, there were drinks all around—the flow of booze was the great advantage of traveling.

It was a scene Michael had been relieved to return to after the loneliness of Vietnam. The camaraderie of priests, their great, if often biting, wit, their addiction to stories well told, their minds finely tuned to political nuance, their knack for deflating pomposity—these things made Michael glad to join their company. There'd been several rectory parties—
gaudeami
—in his honor since his return, and when the fathers sang, in reference to his old seminary nickname, the show tune "Mr. Wonderful," he was surprisingly moved.

When Michael walked in then, some moments after Spellman, the chancellor gestured at him and pointed toward the cardinal. Michael crossed to where he was sitting.

"I don't appreciate that one bit, Father. Not one bit."

"I'm sorry, Your Eminence. I should have checked him out. I have no idea how he heard about the press conference."

"There were television cameras present. Those people only want to embarrass me."

"It won't happen again, Your Eminence."

"And I didn't appreciate that statement I had to read either. Not one mention of what it's all about over there. I had to bring it in myself."

"My thought was to emphasize the children, Your Eminence. My thought was to leave politics aside, especially now that the situation there is so..."

"Well, you flatter yourself to call that thinking. It's not politics to speak out against Communism in season and out. It's faith and morals. And, Father, don't you forget it."

Michael had to look away. Everyone in the room was listening. He'd have felt abused and humiliated, perhaps, but his stronger feeling was one of embarrassment for the cardinal who, in Michael's opinion, was quite plainly making a fool of himself. But wasn't that Michael's way of deflecting his true reaction? He was deflection itself now.

The cardinal was finished with him. Michael took his leave, saying, "Good luck in Rome, Your Eminence." But Spellman ignored him.

When Michael had crossed the room, Don Duff, a priest who lived down the hall at Saint Gregory's, the Manhattan rectory he'd moved into, handed him a Bloody Mary. "That was rough, buddy," he said.

Michael nodded, "He's a little touchy, isn't he?"

"You'll get used to it." Duff smiled wanly. "And if he really takes to dumping on you, he'll make you a monsignor."

The two priests raised their glasses to each other.

Then Duff said, "You know what Adam said to Eve, don't you?"

"No. What?"

"'Stand back! There's no telling how big this thing is going to get!'" Duff grinned.

 

If only all things were as simple as weather, Michael thought as he crossed the airport parking lot toward his car. In October, New York weather is either hateful or glorious and on that day it was quite the latter. The air, even over Long Island, had been scrubbed clean by the austere night, and now the late morning sunshine bathed everything it fell upon in warmth. The sky into which the airplanes climbed was cloudless, a perfect pale blue like the inside of a porcelain bowl.

One of the new passenger jets roared and Michael looked up at it. We marveled at aircraft in those days, the way we now do at microchips. Planes were still the great emblems of modern genius, and of course under Kennedy we had just launched the contest of all time—to build a better plane than the Russians and fly it to the moon. But Michael was neither an engineer nor an outer-space patriot. He automatically saw the silver fuselage and wings as a cross, then chided himself for piety. It was an old habit. In the prison camp a decade earlier he'd disciplined himself to look for crosses everywhere—in the plaster cracks, in the weave of his palm-leaf mat, in the shadows cast by the stockade grilles. Three trees on the low sky. Now he'd have said there were crosses enough in life without looking for them.

He was relieved that the press conference was over and that Spelly was gone, and he promised himself that he would not soon be in a position again to take such shit from anyone. After the autonomy of life in Vietnam it was a shock to be back in a position of such overt subservience. He hoped he could get used to it again.

As he pulled his car, a late-model black Chevrolet, out of the parking lot and onto the road that gave access to the expressway, he saw a hitchhiker. It would not have occurred to him to stop, but he recognized the young man's disheveled red hair, black-rimmed glasses and, obscured by a tattered lumberman's jacket, his army shirt.

Only after he'd begun to apply the brakes—after it was too late—did Michael realize that the sight of the kid pissed him off again. The last thing he wanted to do was ride into Manhattan with him. But he stifled his feeling with charity, the reflex-kindness priests were schooled in. Anger, resentment, bitterness they could show only to each other.

"Want a lift?"

"Oh, Father. Hi." Wiley was embarrassed and he hesitated.

"I'm headed for midtown," Michael offered.

"Oh. Well, I'm going to the
Worker
."

"Chrystie Street, right? Hop in. I'll drop you off."

"Oh, no," Wiley said, but he was getting in. "I'll just go to midtown with you. That would be great."

He carried an olive canvas satchel slung from his shoulder. It was stuffed with papers and books, but Michael recognized it as an army gas-mask bag. So the kid did his shopping in a surplus store. The shirt meant nothing.

Once he'd joined the flow of traffic Michael asked offhandedly, "Are you actually writing something about the cardinal's press conference?"

"I didn't mean to upset him."

"I don't think you did," Michael said automatically. If he instinctively denied the cardinal's anger, how much more readily would he disguise his own. "I doubt he's given you a further thought."

"He should give the point some thought, though."

"What, the Geneva Accords? Believe me, Cardinal Spellman has thought more about those than the diplomats who wrote them."

"You agree with him?"

Michael swallowed. "Sure I do." Who was Wiley after all? "The Geneva Accords were a French sell-out, my friend. They really were."

"De Gaulle says Vietnam should be neutral."

"Tell that to Comrade Ho."

"Did you ever read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence? The one Ho wrote?"

"No."

The young man fumbled in his bag and pulled out a leaflet. "This is how it begins. 'All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.'" He looked up from the page in triumph. Refute that, Your Holiness!

Michael remembered what Adam said to Eve: Stand back! Why should he rise to this kid's bait? "You said your name is Nicholas Wiley. I'm Father Michael Maguire, Nicholas. Good to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, Father." Nicholas leaned back against the seat. He put the pamphlet back in his bag, then took out a small cloth bundle. He put the canvas bag on the seat between them, and fell silent. Maybe he didn't want to talk about Vietnam either.

Wiley unwrapped the bundle in his lap. He spread the cloth, like a napkin, on his knees. There was a small block of wood the size of a cigarette pack, and a penknife. He opened the knife, then began to whittle. He looked across at Michael. "Do you mind? I'll watch the shavings."

Michael smiled. "No. Go right ahead. I like to watch an artist work."

Wiley sliced away at the wood. Michael drove in silence.

After a time, Michael, casting a glance at the canvas bag between them, said, "I like your bookbag."

Wiley looked at it, then went back to his carving. "Thanks."

"You know what they used it for?"

"It was for my gas mask."

"Yours?" Michael took his eyes from the road long enough to look at Wiley's face.

"I was in the army."

Michael tried to conceal his surprise. "So was I."

"What, as a chaplain?"

He shook his head. "GI."

Wiley seemed uncertain whether to believe it or not. "I don't think of priests as having been in the army."

Michael laughed. "My thought exactly about Catholic Workers."

"Well, I didn't last. I was only in for seven months. I'm a C.O."

"They let you out?" It was nearly impossible for Catholics to claim C.O. status because they could not base their pacifism on their religion. Everyone knew that Catholics were allowed to kill.

"I was discharged on medical grounds."

"Oh."

"I mean psychiatric. They decided I was loony."

"Are you?" Michael looked at him again.

"Depends on how you define it. Maybe. I know something snapped in me during basic. Maybe it was my mind."

"Or maybe your conscience?" Michael felt an inexplicable rush of sympathy for the kid, almost an attraction.

Wiley grimaced. "It's good of you to admit the possibility."

Michael thought of his own experience of basic, of that day when the DI took their pet rabbit and snapped its neck and disemboweled it with a bayonet. "I remember basic," he said, and for the first time he felt ashamed that he had not protested in Thumper's behalf. "They try to numb you, don't they?"

An expression of gratitude crossed Wiley's face. "Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. They want to turn you into a robot."

Michael nodded. Of course they did. How else could they get you to attack pagodas without hesitation? But that was someone else's army, not ours.

"If you think that," Wiley asked suddenly, "how come you're working for Cardinal Spellman?"

Michael shrugged. "I'm working for the Church, Nicholas. I'm working for the children of Vietnam."

"But the children of Vietnam are victims of their own government. Why isn't the cardinal opposing Diem by now? Why aren't you?"

But he was, wasn't he? Michael veered from the boy's question. "Perhaps because it's a little more complicated than you'd like to think. Ho Chi Minh may have plagiarized Thomas Jefferson, but he also heads an army of men who cut testicles off village chiefs and stuff them in their mouths until they choke to death."

Where had that come from? Michael realized at once and with horror that it was an image he had not from something he'd heard in Vietnam, but from one of the sadistic harangues of his basic training drill instructor, years before.

Nicholas stared at Michael, then energetically resumed his carving. After a few moments he asked, almost absently, "Were you drafted?"