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Authors: Thomas Gifford
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much.”
“How true. Of course he’s still wondering if I’m reallyhis son. Maybe there was a mix-up in the maternity ward. It’s the only hope he has left.”
“You’re awfully hard on the old boy, aren’t you?”
“Nope. Anyway, I didn’t come out here to see him. I got a call this afternoon from Val, all mysterious and determined to get me out here tonight. So I came through all this crud and she’s not home to meet me.” I shrugged. “When did you see her? What’s this skating party thing? I hate skating—”
“When she was passing through last summer on her way to Rome, we had dinner. Old time’s sake.” He took another fry. “I think you’re right about that mysterious sound—there’s something going on, she’s been doing some pretty heavy research … she wrote me from Rome, then Paris.” His face clouded for a moment. “She’s writing this monster of a book, Ben. World War Two and the Church.” He made a face. “Not a time the Church likes to brag about—”
“With good reason,” I said.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Pius was Pius and I was just a little kid in Princeton, New Jersey.”
He finished off my fries, grinning at me. I felt a surge of warmth. Val had been pretty serious about Peaches, had told me she might just marry him. They became lovers when she was seventeen.
Val had felt a good bit of Catholic-schoolgirl guilt when she lost her virginity to him one summer night out in the orchard. Later on, when she got to thinking seriously about the Church, Peaches thought it was a phase. Then he thought she was caving in to pressure from Dad. Then he figured she’d just gone crazy. But Val wanted her life to mean something special—to herself, to the world she lived in, to the Church. Kennedy had been assassinated and Peaches said, hell, you want to save the world, go join the Peace Corps. She wouldn’t fight with him about it. It wasn’t that she needed the Church, she said, but rather that the poor old Church needed her. Val never had any trouble with her ego.
John XXIII was her idea of a new start after the reign of Pius, whom she counted an embarrassment. But PaulVI seemed willing to lose what had been gained, seemed content to have the Church sink back into the past again. She saw the world changing and the Church needed to keep moving, growing into a new and humanistic role. She saw Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Pope John and she wanted to join them in making a better world. And Peaches, well, if he couldn’t have Val, he didn’t want anybody else. In time he became a priest and it all went to show you that you never knew how things were going to turn out.
He was walking me down the length of the bar when he noticed the guy he’d been waiting for in the doorway and pulled me over. “Ben, I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
The man in the doorway was wearing a yellowing old mac and a dark olive snapbrim with a narrow leather band. Bushy gray eyebrows arched outward over pale gray eyes set deep in a pink-cheeked face. A flash of white dog collar peeked from behind his dark green scarf. He was five seven, maybe in his early sixties. The laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes made him look like Barry Fitzgerald, who often played priests in forties movies. Fitzgerald had also played a pixilated Irishman in
Bringing Up Baby
and a crafty old avenger in
And Then There Were None:
I could see both possibilities in the face before me. There was something distant and cool in the flat gray eyes. They didn’t seem to go with the rest of his crinkly, smiling face. I recognized him from his publicity photos.
“Ben Driskill, this is the Church’s poet laureate, Father Artie Dunn
“Faith and begorra,” Dunn said. “Forgive young O’Neale, Mr. Driskill. You aren’t by any chance Hugh Driskill’s boy?”
“You know my father?”
“By reputation, of course. I’m told he is not one of my readers.” Dunn’s face
“How true. Of course he’s still wondering if I’m reallyhis son. Maybe there was a mix-up in the maternity ward. It’s the only hope he has left.”
“You’re awfully hard on the old boy, aren’t you?”
“Nope. Anyway, I didn’t come out here to see him. I got a call this afternoon from Val, all mysterious and determined to get me out here tonight. So I came through all this crud and she’s not home to meet me.” I shrugged. “When did you see her? What’s this skating party thing? I hate skating—”
“When she was passing through last summer on her way to Rome, we had dinner. Old time’s sake.” He took another fry. “I think you’re right about that mysterious sound—there’s something going on, she’s been doing some pretty heavy research … she wrote me from Rome, then Paris.” His face clouded for a moment. “She’s writing this monster of a book, Ben. World War Two and the Church.” He made a face. “Not a time the Church likes to brag about—”
“With good reason,” I said.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Pius was Pius and I was just a little kid in Princeton, New Jersey.”
He finished off my fries, grinning at me. I felt a surge of warmth. Val had been pretty serious about Peaches, had told me she might just marry him. They became lovers when she was seventeen.
Val had felt a good bit of Catholic-schoolgirl guilt when she lost her virginity to him one summer night out in the orchard. Later on, when she got to thinking seriously about the Church, Peaches thought it was a phase. Then he thought she was caving in to pressure from Dad. Then he figured she’d just gone crazy. But Val wanted her life to mean something special—to herself, to the world she lived in, to the Church. Kennedy had been assassinated and Peaches said, hell, you want to save the world, go join the Peace Corps. She wouldn’t fight with him about it. It wasn’t that she needed the Church, she said, but rather that the poor old Church needed her. Val never had any trouble with her ego.
John XXIII was her idea of a new start after the reign of Pius, whom she counted an embarrassment. But PaulVI seemed willing to lose what had been gained, seemed content to have the Church sink back into the past again. She saw the world changing and the Church needed to keep moving, growing into a new and humanistic role. She saw Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Pope John and she wanted to join them in making a better world. And Peaches, well, if he couldn’t have Val, he didn’t want anybody else. In time he became a priest and it all went to show you that you never knew how things were going to turn out.
He was walking me down the length of the bar when he noticed the guy he’d been waiting for in the doorway and pulled me over. “Ben, I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
The man in the doorway was wearing a yellowing old mac and a dark olive snapbrim with a narrow leather band. Bushy gray eyebrows arched outward over pale gray eyes set deep in a pink-cheeked face. A flash of white dog collar peeked from behind his dark green scarf. He was five seven, maybe in his early sixties. The laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes made him look like Barry Fitzgerald, who often played priests in forties movies. Fitzgerald had also played a pixilated Irishman in
Bringing Up Baby
and a crafty old avenger in
And Then There Were None:
I could see both possibilities in the face before me. There was something distant and cool in the flat gray eyes. They didn’t seem to go with the rest of his crinkly, smiling face. I recognized him from his publicity photos.
“Ben Driskill, this is the Church’s poet laureate, Father Artie Dunn
“Faith and begorra,” Dunn said. “Forgive young O’Neale, Mr. Driskill. You aren’t by any chance Hugh Driskill’s boy?”
“You know my father?”
“By reputation, of course. I’m told he is not one of my readers.” Dunn’s face
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