“When you get down to it, that’s the only way to do it,” Devlin told Dolan as they sat on the St. Emma’s front porch about 10 o’clock that night. The crickets were going again. Sunday night traffic was slow on the avenue. The two priests sat in the dark on wicker chairs, looking out onto the parish garden on the set-back front porch of the gray stucco rectory.
“I made the best of it, Terry,” Devlin continued. “Went out with a bang and all that.”
Dolan didn’t say anything.
“They deserved to hear from me on the subject. I couldn’t just fade away. I took my leave officially. I owed them as much.”
“You owed them more,” said Dolan.
“What else?”
“Being a little more gentle about it, for one thing. They didn’t need to get socked with it.”
“They did too.”
“You needed to sock them with it, you mean.”
“Well there you go again, Terry, inquiring into my motives. And commenting on them, to boot. Will you ever accept what I do at face value? You’ve got no use for psychology anyway. Why do you pull it on me?”
“O.K. OK. I shouldn’t talk that way,” said Dolan, throwing up his hands. “You have a right to your own sermon. I never contested that. But this one . . .” He trailed off.
“This one was my most important sermon, Terry. It beat the rest by far.”
“It was the most sensational, you mean. I’ll grant you that.”
“That’s the trouble with you priests.”
Dolan looked at him quickly, then turned back towards the garden and street farther away.
Devlin continued. “You shrink from the sensational. You’re so organization-minded, you don’t want to communicate. You want to say what’s good for the organization.”
Dolan turned to him. “Now stop that.” He held up one hand. “I caught that ‘you priests’ business too, by the way.”
“I’m out. You’re in. I know when I’m an outsider. See you in church if the windows are clean, and all that? Well as of this morning, I’m on the outside looking in.”
“Sure,” said Dolan. “You’re the aggrieved layman now, full of advice.”
“Only preaching what I practice,” said Devlin.
“Bull,” said Dolan.
They sat listening to crickets.
“What are you going to do?” Dolan asked.
“Well, I’m meeting tomorrow with Nate Goodman, who is offering me several entry-level opportunities with potential for early advancement, something suiting my advanced age and considerable achievements.”
“You don’t say.”
“You are looking at a man about to leave the ranks of the disinterested servants of humanity and enter those of the money-grubbers. I will report back in six months or six weeks on how it is out there.”
“Would you please.”
“Nate asked me if I wanted to make money. I said, were there any options? He said I could starve if I wanted to, or at least eat very lightly, sleep outside, that sort of thing. I said I wanted to make money. He said it was good to get that straight from the start, because if I was unsure in the matter, he couldn’t recommend me.”
“If you’re going to grub, you have to be serious about it.”
“Yes, people have to know they can count on you. They have to know you’re committed.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That I was committed.”
“That’s what you told the previous archbishop twenty-five years ago.”
“If Nate could count on me for twenty-five years, he’d be happy.”
“Twenty-five years ago, both you and the archbishop had more than that in mind,” said Dolan.
“That’s true. As I said in my sermon, I’m not above reproach. As I also said, churches need more people like me.”
“Not if you’re proud of your underachievement or whatever you want to call it.”
“Sexual knee-skinning, I think was the term I used, more or less. I did leave Ginny out of it, however. Better a creative circumlocution than flat-out statement, any time, I say, especially in a repressive society. Did you ever hear that theory, that repressive governments encourage creativity? Writers have to come up with something clever enough to escape the censors, and they produce art in the process. Where anything goes, on the other hand, you get anything.”
“I never heard that theory. Is that why the samizdats are so good?”
“It’s a theory,” said Devlin.
They sat quiet for a few minutes. A fire engine went by, siren moaning.
“Where you gonna live?” Dolan asked.
“At Ginny’s.”
“Oh.”
“What are friends for, anyway? I need a place. She has one. I’m moving in.”
“You’re not broke, are you?”
“Hell no, I’m not broke. You know that.” There was a pause. “That bothers you, doesn’t it? It bothers you most of all that I’m about to go more or less public with an illicit relationship. If I was getting married, even by a judge, you’d feel better, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I would.”
“There you go, protecting institutions again. This time it’s marriage. You old conservative, moss-backed, traditional R.C. priest, running to the dikes with all five fingers, plugging holes. Save the institutions, full speed ahead.”
“Listen, Dev. You aren’t living apart from those institutions. You may yet be mugged by some punk who never knew family life at all and thinks a pimp’s car is heaven on wheels. Crap on family if you want, but it matters to all of use”
“Sure it does, Terry. But Ginny and I are not exactly storming the bastions of the American family. Give us a little time, O.K.? A little space too, if you don’t mind the expression. A little place of our own, all right? who knows what we may come up with in my delayed adolescence, or whatever it is? We may come back and join St. Emma’s and become pillars of it.
“I can see you now,” said Dolan, “the seven of you in the front pew, coming up with your envelopes at collection time. . .”
“Oh, I see. You’ve got us in a family way, haven’t you? God, you priests are insidious. And five kids? Or did Ginny stay home, and there are six? Or are two of us her parents visiting from Ohio?”
“To see what goes on in a Romish church, right,” said Dolan. “But the kindly veteran pastor is there to win them over, show them his Kiwanis button and drop hints about the Masons, you know, thinking he might join some day, or some of his best friends are Shriners, and so forth.”
“That’s you, the kindly pastor, right? Right, Terry? Still here holding the fort at St. Emma’s?”
“That’s me, Dev. Right. I’ll still be here with my fingers in the dike, saving society from itself. God, if Lacordaire could see me then.”
“Oh yeah, the French preacher. ‘What a life, O priest of Jesus Christ!’ I remember that. He made it look good, didn’t he? It looked good to me once.”
“But it doesn’t any more, does it?”
“Nope. I’m a fallen sparrow now. Not exactly hopeless but a hard case nevertheless,” said Devlin. Then a huge smile wreathed his face. He stood up. “I’m going to bed, Terry. Tomorrow I pack. I’ll be gone by noon.”
Dolan stood in the darkness and put out his hand. Devlin took it and squeezed, then put both hands on Dolan’s shoulders and squeezed again. Then he went inside for his last night in the rectory.
=========================
Author chimes in. He’s glad he discovered the text some months ago, in a long undisturbed file cabinet. He recalls writing it and being pleased with himself about it. Keep in mind it’s fictitious and implies no all-around approval of positions taken by its fictitious characters.
In any case, the book was written in the early 40s, remember, when he was in his early 50s and can be forgiven for lacking the ages-old wisdom of one in his middle 90s, right???
One final note, this about himself and early episodes as of 2009!!!
Blithe Spirit 