In the morning he ran. Not far. He was just getting started at it, or returning to it. His new Socony Jazz shoes felt like cushions. He was ready to fly in them. Instead he jogged slowly up Austin Boulevard. It was six-fifteen and and traffic was not yet at its peak.

He made it to Columbus Park in the crisp early-spring cold and then went east along Jackson Boulevard, skirting the golf course, bouncing up and down as he went, huffing, puffing, keeping his eyes out for suspicious characters.

The city resisted decay here. The park’s tennis courts had their patrons in the black people who had moved into the well-preserved apartment buildings and two-flats across from the golf course. There was open space and benches and sometimes unemployed men looking at you as you ran by. Not this early on a crispy day, as Devlin ran along. But he had passed them mid-morning on a Saturday, looking at him as if he were trespassing.

They’d gotten the look themselves, in other neighborhoods. Not from Devlin, who being a priest and all was more or less exempt from the ruder manifestations of ill feeling. But the black dudes on the park bench didn’t know that. Didn’t care either. They were mean mothers, glad to have an object for their general pissed-off feeling. But Devlin, making a mental note to watch how he looked at people in the future, ran on past them.

On this early morning jog, however, the benches were empty. A squirrel scampered across his path, its tail lacking the full, bushy quality Devlin had come to expect in a squirrel. Urban decay, after all, hitting the squirrels. Where was the squirrel lobby? Where the picket lines in front of the ward office? Where the alderman making an impassioned plea to the city council? Where the headlines, “Squirrels: the first to be frozen, the last to be fed?” No justice in the city, clearly.

He approached Central Avenue, a half mile past Austin. He was leaving the park now, heading full blast into the ghetto, the black neighborhood where white wasn’t all right after all and where you didn’t have to be brown to stick around or have to step back if you’re black.

No place for a white man, he thought, then fought the idea. He began to improvise as he approached the stoplight. If you’re black, give it a crack, frown. If you’re white . . .

“Get out of my way, motherfucker!” A black guy came charging down the path behind him as he reached Central.

Turning in self-defense, he saw the grinning face of Arthur Williams. Devlin breathed, seeing hewas on a morning’s jog like himself.

“Arthur, my old friend,” he managed, “how are you today?” Then, “What the hell are you trying to do?” as the two stopped. “Are you trying to give me heart failure? You are crazy, Arthur. You are plain crazy”

Arthur, in sweats and running shoes, stood puffing in front of him, hopping up and down.

“Father Devlin,” he puffed. “I couldn’t resist it. The devil made me do it.” He grinned. “Come on Back to Austin.”

They began jogging. Devlin muttered, “Scared hell out of me. Why’d you do that, Arthur? Son of a bitch, Arthur. Why’d you do that?”

Arthur kept saying he was sorry but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“You do that sort of thing to all your white friends?” asked Devlin.

“Both of them?” said Arthur.

Devlin shook his head, and they jogged along in silence. A crow cawed overhead. The streets were still deserted.

He relaxed as he hit the part of his run where everything came together.

He had worked painfully through the lethargy, gotten through some blocks that would be work again, invested in another day’s run, another day’s mid-jog euphoria.

“Oh yeah. In fact, I’m enjoying myself,” he told Arthur, who had asked, “running along here thinking how I’m laughing.”

“As long as you’re enjoying yourself. I like to see the clergy enjoy themselves. I worry about you people.”

Devlin considered saying that was mighty white of Arthur, but decided it was a tired joke. “Don’t think we don’t appreciate that, Arthur. Where would we be without the thoughtful concern of our parishioners?”

“Listen,” Arthur said as they approached Austin. “How about joining Melissa and me tomorrow night? We’re going out to get a bite to eat and would like your company. We can make jokes about Protestants or something.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said Devlin. They had stopped for the light to change. “I’d like that a lot. I’m touched.” He was touched. The invitation came at a good time. Good timing, Arthur.

He liked the Williamses. They were relaxed and he relaxed with them. “Good idea,” he said, as they crossed Austin Boulevard and picked up their run again.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Devlin and Ginny had lunch at Berghoff’s. Devlin wore clerics. He never considering not wearing them. He hadn’t adopted the casual civie-wearing approach of some of the younger men.

Anyhow, he was downtown, and he was a West Side pastor. Chicago being what it was, full of micks and other fish-eaters, a West Side pastor was not about to float incognito through the Loop in the middle of a weekday. No point in dressing up like an unemployed stockbroker, as if he were trying to escape detection, which he wasn’t.

He wasn’t pulling anything. He was having lunch in a crowded restaurant. Ginny Morgan demonstrated normal friendliness between two adults. Two consenting adults, he almost said to himself, then didn’t. Bad connotation there. Nothing of the sort in this lunch meeting of two friends. Nothing of the sort.

So why did his palms sweat? He had said he’d meet her in the street-level entrance, right inside the door off Adams. She was a little late, and his palms were sweating. Ridiculous. Silly.

She blew into the waiting area like a spring breeze. “Hi,” she said, smiling. Really, Radiant, Devlin noted instantly. Teeth, eyes, red hair, cheeks. She glowed.

“Hello,” he said.

They didn’t shake hands. He kept his sweaty palms at his side. They chattered in the dark-panelled restaurant, the wood shining with thousands of polishings, the waiters shooting about in black suits and bow ties, a mix of German-accented immigrants and Hispanics. All men. Same with the hosts who sat people down in several dining rooms on two floors. Devlin liked the place.

“Busy day?” he asked.

“So-so.” She smiled.

“Did what’s his-name, Louie, get his story? I didn’t read the paper too carefully next day.”

“Louie got his story.” She paused. “Louie got the story. Four ‘graphs on page 10.”

“The story?” he asked. “Story of the day, week? Page ten?”

“The page doesn’t matter,” she explained. “It’s nice to be up front, but the story got what it deserved. You get the story, tell it in the length required, and that’s it. You did your job. It’s the story because it’s not a story.”

Devlin raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “That story about a fire on Austin Boulevard is not a story, and it’s not the story of the week, but it is the story?” He looked at her skeptically. She laughed.

They walked to the head of the line as the host led a party of four to a table.

“Come on,” he said, “what’s the story?”

She laughed again. Devlin noticed her eyes were green. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? He drank in her looks — her lips and teeth, eyes, glowing cheeks — then stopped himself and returned to looking at her as someone with something to say, a whole entire person with traits that should not be allowed to detract from conversation.

“The story’s the thing,” she said.

“Like the play in Hamlet. The story’s the thing, dum-de-dum-dum-dum,” he mocked.

“The story, not a story. Not any story.”

The host interrupted. “Right this way, please,” he said, showing them to a small table against a wall. A little card clipped to a small pedestal announced May wine as the week’s special.

“The wine of the week,” Devlin said, pointing to the card, a serious look on his face.

Ginny threw her head back laughing, almost silently.

“Listen to me,” she said, taking his hand and holding it for an electric fraction. “Hear me out or I’ll pour water in your lap.”

Devlin bent forward as if covering up his lap, looking both ways as if to be sure he wasn’t watched.

“The last man that trifled with me while I explained that got a mixed drink there.” She looked up and down as if at his lap. “And his suit was more expensive than yours. You want a dry lap, don’t trifle.”

Devlin’s turn to laugh. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m all ears.” He bent forward.

“You don’t just hustle to fill space.” She paused. “Example I’ll never forget. Some years back, big child-abuse case. Lots of publicity.

“The kid might show up at the Audy Home, on the West Side? For under-age delinquents or even just wards of the state. Half reform school, half orphanage. Lots of reporters. Print, TV, radio people all over the place.

“Waiting for someone to talk to. We’re all talking to each other. You know, ‘Is there a state’s attorney in the house?’ Or public defender. Anything. Anybody who can give us something to bring back to the editors.”

“What will you have?” the waiter asked perfunctorily. “Something to drink?” The place served lots of booze, but if you wanted none of it, no sweat off this waiter’s back. They ordered May wine.

Ginny continued.

“We’re there all afternoon, with nothing happening. The newspaper people face being relieved shortly by the middle-watch replacement, and by late afternoon it looked like a good idea.

“In the midst of us is a TV reporter, lusting for an interview with somebody besides a cabdriver. Why is he lusting? Because he lives for truth and is dying to tell people what’s the latest with the abused kid? If he gets on camera, it’s extra bucks for him. He’s lusting after the bucks.”

The waiter, a fiftyish, puffy-eyed German, brought the wine. They ordered food, wiener schnitzel for Ginny, sauerbraten for Devlin.

She continued, or started to, but Devlin interrupted. “So what? That’s incentive for the guy. He hustles harder. Is that bad? When did TV ever get to the heart of the matter?”

She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“TV is like movies. It flickers. How do you find truth in what flickers?”

“Only in print, right?”

“Sure,” he said. “Something that holds still long enough to be corralled.”

“It’s a dull and dreary process.”

“Not if you know what you’re doing,” he said.

“Is this Father Devlin’s time to instruct the nearest newspaper reporter?”

She wasn’t angry, just probing, and wondering how he came to think he knew so much.

She had to admit, on the other hand, this was a nice Reverend Father she was having lunch with.

(end of chapter 6)