"Why, thank you, Father."
After he hung up, Michael had to stifle his dislike for her. Saints are great in heaven, as Cushing loved to say, but they're hell on earth.
How had Wiley crossed her? Sex? A girl in his bunk? That would get him kicked out on the spot, but he didn't seem the type.
Michael buzzed his secretary and asked her to send Wiley in.
"I guess I'm early, Father," he said, entering. He was holding his brimmed leather hat and still wearing his field jacket. His canvas bag hung from his shoulder.
Michael was aware now of what he'd missed before, the haggard, spent look, the red splotches on his skin, the disheveled clothing. Nicholas hadn't shaved and his long hair was matted at the ends. He'd been caught in the rain. Michael guessed he hadn't been to bed. "Take your jacket off, Nicholas. Have a seat." Michael felt sorry for him suddenly. Whatever he'd done, he hadn't deserved to be turned out in weather like this. The
Worker
had been his home since the army. "Do you want some coffee?"
Wiley shook his head. "I try to leave caffeine alone." He removed his jacket and let Michael take it. He remained standing.
"I used to have a field jacket like this. I should have kept it, eh? I'd be the counterculture priest." Michael smiled. While he hung up the jacket he asked, "Why do flower children love army clothes?"
"Because they're the color of the earth." Wiley answered as if he'd thought of it before. "When you take the militarist insignia off, the clothes are beautiful." Suddenly he grinned. "Just like soldiers. When you take our weapons away, we're just peaceniks and priests." He flashed a V-sign. "Peace, Brother. I mean, 'Father.'"
"You can call me brother if you want."
"I'd rather call you Mike."
"That's okay too, although Michael is what I go by."
"I've never called a priest by his first name before. I doubt if I could do it."
"My mother manages, and she's a lot more old-fashioned than you are. Why don't you sit down?" Michael pointed to the large vinyl couch, the room's only piece of furniture aside from the desk and chair. They both sat on it, in opposite corners. Michael hiked his leg up, taking his ankle in his hand and facing the young man. He was aware that his own clothing, his trim black suit and clerical collar, was the sartorial opposite of Wiley's jeans, workboots and blue shirt colorfully embroidered with, in point of fact, flowers.
"Nice office," Wiley said.
The office was smaller than O'Shea's, the linoleum floor was bare and the walls were unadorned except for a Mexican straw crucifix above the couch. But the window looked out on midtown, facing north. Even in the haze the great green patch of Central Park stretched before them like a carpet. There was definition to the clouds now, as if the storm was breaking. "I like it," Michael said.
"Great view."
They looked at the city in silence.
"You were wrong before, Father, about me being a flower child. Flower children have no politics."
"How would you describe your politics, Nicholas. As
Catholic Worker?"
"I'm against the war. That's the main thing."
"That's not 'politics.' Everyone's against the war, especially the people who have to fight it."
"Our GIs throw prisoners out of helicopters when they refuse to talk. I'm against that."
"We don't have to argue about the war, Nicholas. Why don't you tell me about the
Worker?
What happened?"
For a moment Michael thought Wiley was going to cry, such a forlorn look crossed his face. But he said, "The
Worker's
nowhere, Father. People dying in Vietnam, and on Chrystie Street nobody even talks about it." He reached into his canvas bag and pulled out a pair of tattered photographs that had been clipped from newspapers. He held them out to Michael who took them.
One showed a boy the trunk of whose body was mutilated by burns; the skin was gone and the bloody tissue was exposed. The other showed an old woman staring at the camera without affect, and holding in her arms a charred log. After a second look Michael recognized the log as an infant. "I've seen photographs like this, Nicholas."
"I can't get their pictures out of my head, Father. I go to sleep at night, their faces are in my head." His helplessness was unconcealed now. "I wake up and I wonder if I didn't dream up the war, my private nightmare. But then those pictures are still in my bag and the morning paper always says we're escalating. Sometimes I think it's making me nuts."
Michael hesitated. The kid was clearly asking for help, but he was already in therapy. Michael knew he should steer him back to the doctor. But it struck Michael that Wiley, in his emotion, was to him what he himself had been only minutes before to O'Shea. He remembered how touched he'd been when Wiley gave him the wooden cross he was wearing even then inside his shirt. "What's been going on with you?" he asked.
"A lot."
"I gather."
"It shows?" Wiley smiled thinly.
Michael nodded. "Mildly. But I just talked to Dorothy Day. She told me there'd been a problem, but she didn't say what it was."
Alarm crossed Wiley's face. "Why were you talking to her?"
"I'll tell you that in a minute, but why don't you tell me what happened first. I get the feeling you'd like to talk about it."
Wiley stared at his hands. They were large hands, and the flesh around both thumbnails had been gnawed. He did not speak.
Michael waited.
After a long time, Wiley whispered, "She kicked me out." When he raised his head to look at Michael, water spilled out of his eyes.
"Why?"
"Because..." His mouth twisted with a misery that throttled his capacity to speak. He continued to look at Michael as the tears came and then he began slowly at first, soon violently, to sob.
Michael slid next to him, to put his hand on his shoulder.
At last when he could speak he told his story. "Last night you wouldn't talk to me, but Doctor Levine did. He explained how those poor kids had been substituted for the wounded ones. I couldn't believe it. And I watched you and Monsignor O'Shea going around being polite to everybody and helping that Vietnamese doctor, I just couldn't believe it."
"We were trying to help those children, Nicholas. Even if they weren't the ones we expected, we couldn't just send them back."
"I know. But last night it just seemed to me like you were letting them get away with it. I kept thinking, what did they do to the kids who were
supposed
to be here?"
"I kept thinking that too."
"But it, like, made me crazy, Father." Wiley dropped his eyes to his hands.
Michael had to prod him. "How do you mean, Nicholas?"
"I walked into the city."
In the rain? Michael thought, From the airport?
"I guess I was in kind of a trance. What hit me last night was that when I became a C.O. I sort of washed my hands of the war, like Pontius Pilate. After I got out of the army, I thought I was home free, that all I had to do was, you know, keep my own nose clean. So I went to the
Worker
where, I mean, down there everybody's a saint, you know? Voluntary poverty, feeding the hungry, the brotherhood of man, all that stuff. And as for war, well, we're just against it period, you know? But so fucking what? We can feed the hungry until there's no food left, and that's just fine with the army. They don't even know the
Catholic Worker
exists. It just hit me last night that the
Worker
is completely irrelevant, because nobody down there is doing anything to
stop
it. God knows what the army is doing to those kids! But what are
we
doing to stop it?"
"Did you say these things to Dorothy Day?"
"I did, yes."
"And she didn't like it?"
"I walked all night. Finally I got back to the
Worker
this morning. It was later than I thought. I had no idea what time it was. I mean, that's stupid..." He laughed. "The sun was up, but I didn't even notice. When I showed up, the morning soup line was almost over. At seven we serve oatmeal and cornbread. I'd forgottert that it was my turn to work the line. Dorothy was there and she sort of criticized me. She saidâright there in front of all these old derelictsâthat I was thinking too much of myself lately and not enough of others."
"What did you say?"
"I asked her if I could talk to her in private. And she said no, that I should just get into the kitchen and do my job. But I didn't move. I think I just stood there looking at her. Everybody in the room got real quiet. And then I just said what I had to say about the Worker."
"That it was irrelevant?"
"Yes, and that everybody who didn't work to stop the war was just as guilty of it as McNamara and Johnson." Suddenly Wiley started laughing bitterly. "What an asshole! Can you picture it? There I am surrounded by these poor old farts who only want to eat their cornbread so they'll have something in their bellies to soak up the shit-wine they drink, and I'm preaching a sermon to Dorothy Day about resistance! What an asshole!"
Michael didn't laugh. All this time his hand had rested on the kid's shoulder. Now he withdrew it. "But you had a point to make."
"Oh, and I made it. Do you know what Dorothy said when I finished? She said, 'Now go in the kitchen and do your job.'"
"And did you?"
"No." He stopped laughing. "There's the rub. I said I was going up to my room to write the story of the wounded children who couldn't get out of Vietnam. I told her that I was coming to see you about it. And I told her that from now on everything I did was going to have one aimâstopping the war. And she said that was fine, but it wasn't how things went at the
Catholic Worker.
And I said, 'You mean I'm out?' And she just nodded her head, her fucking head, like she was the queen of England. And I saw that as far as she was concerned I was just gone. I didn't even exist anymore. And you know what's funny? I thought she loved me."
Michael was stunned. "You know what, Nicholas? I felt after last night very much like you did. You called it 'crazy.' I don't think it's crazy at all."
Wiley raised his head sharply. "But you didn't take it out on some poor old bum."
"What do you mean?"
"There was a guy sitting there, just one of the street people, an alkie. I knew him. His name was Slate. He started yelling at me not to talk about America like that. I ignored him. Those old guys are all right-wing lunatics if they're anything. But he picked up his bowl and threw it at me. It hit me on the side of the head. It didn't hurt that much, but, well it made me snap, I guess. I don't even remember thinking. I just went across the table at the guy. I mean, an old wreck who can hardly climb stairs, and there I was pounding the shit out of him, as if he was McNamara. There I am, the great C.O., the pacifist, the would-be war resister, beating the shit out of the poor bastard. They couldn't pull me off him, and the next thing you know..." He lost control of himself for a moment, crying, then regained it. "...there's blood all over his face, and he looks like one of those people in my dream or in the pictures I carry, like a bomb has hit him. But it wasn't a bomb. It wasn't the army. It was me."
"You know what, Nicholas? I didn't pound somebody, but I might have. We both have strong reactions. You know who we remind me of? Peter. Saint Peter." Of all the characters in the New Testament, Michael was drawn to Peter. And in that wayâfor his contradictions, flaws, extremities, for his
brio
âhe was drawn to this boy too.
Wiley snorted. "Speak for yourself, Father. I feel like Judas." Michael shrugged. "Same difference. Judas and Peter both did the same thing. They both betrayed the Lord. The difference between them was in what happened next. Judas refused to let go of what he had done. Peter allowed Jesus to forgive him."
"Peter didn't beat the shit out of anybody."
"Oh, really? He cut the high priest's servant's ear off with a sword. Who are you, Nicholas? The worst son of a bitch to ever come down the pike? Come off it. So you lost your temper. So you beat somebody up. Hell, he asked for it. Obviously, who you wanted to pound was Dorothy. Maybe you did a pretty good job of redirecting your anger. I mean, I'd say she really let you down. I'd have been damn pissed if I was you. So you're capable of anger. Big deal. You're capable of violence. Welcome to the human race."
"I think maybe I broke Slate's nose. It was bleeding bad."
"He'll survive."
"I'll find him. I'll make it up to him."
"Good idea. And while you're at it, why not make it up to yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"People like you and me, Nicholas, we tend to take the weight of the world on our shoulders. Like the wounded children; we have the same reaction. You carry your pictures around. In my own way so do I. As if we're the ones dropping napalm on them. Don't get me wrong. I think we have to feel it, and I think we have to do something about it. But we shouldn't beat ourselves for it. We're not burning those children. Look, I have a certain history, and so do you, and maybe we both feel some guilt about itâyou for getting out of the army, me for not getting out. Bonhoeffer says guilt is an idol. We cling to our bad feelings and beat ourselves with the past when what we should do is let go of it, like Peter did. Once you let go of guilt, then you go out and change the world."
"But how?"
"By daring to live as a forgiven man."
"I don't know how to do that, Father."
"You start by listening to me when I forgive you. Would you like to call this 'confession'? Would you like absolution?"
"Yes. I'm really sorry for what I did."
"I know you are. Bow your head, Nicholas." Michael put his hand on the kid's head and pronounced the Latin words. He was thinking, It's the people who don't care about the war who are the sinners. The moderates, the balanced onesâthey're the crazies. This kid, he thought, is decent and brave. I should be more like him.
After making the sign of the cross, the priest was silent and his usually churning mind became calm and then, as it were, empty.