Read Online The Green Revolution by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online

after a phenomenally awful round.
    â€œI remember you,” the man said.
    Iggie found his glasses and put them on, adopting his professional smile.
    â€œFrom South Bend.”
    â€œA Domer!” Iggie stood, managing to catch his towel before he would look like Adam in Eden, before the fall. “What year?”
    â€œI lived in Alumni Hall.”
    â€œSo did I!”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œSo what’s your name?”
    â€œGeorge Wintheiser.”
    Iggie nearly dropped his towel again. Pearl’s name was Wintheiser.
    â€œWeren’t you on the team?” he managed to say.
    Wintheiser bent and looked him in the steamy glasses. “Leave my wife alone.”
    He went off to his locker, and Iggie darted back into the shower. Could all great Neptune’s ocean wash this guilt from off his soul? He stood under water as cold as he could stand. He warmed it up a little and remained under the shower. He was still wearing his glasses. Oh, to hell with it. He wanted to make damned sure Wintheiser had dressed and left before he got out of the shower.
    â€œI met your husband,” he said to Pearl the next day.
    â€œI’m getting a divorce.”
    â€œCome on, you’re Catholic.”
    â€œYou sound like George.”
    â€œWhat happened between you two, Pearl?” He tried for a concerned tone, the tone of a man anxious to help her in her troubles.
    â€œWhat did he say happened?”
    â€œNo need to go into that.”
    It was an inspiration. He had transferred his panic to Pearl.
    â€œI think he wants to get back together with you.”
    â€œDid he say that?”
    â€œPearl, he spoke in confidence. One Notre Dame man to another.”
    â€œTo hell with Notre Dame.”
    â€œYou can’t mean that.”
    This time her sobbing did not unnerve him. He patted her shoulder and managed to keep his hand from sliding down her back.
    â€œGive it another chance, Pearl.”
    It worked! Well, at least it cooled any ardor Pearl had felt for him. She apparently thought he knew all sorts of things he didn’t. Ignorance is power.
    With half his problem settled, he began telephoning Miriam regularly at her mother’s.
    â€œWhat did you tell her, sweetheart?”
    â€œIs that all that bothers you?”
    â€œCome home. Please.”
    He sent her flowers, using their regular florist. He asked her to come to the Boston College game with him.
    That was before the disastrous season began. Iggie would never have admitted it to himself, but he welcomed the vast distraction of the string of defeats with which the Notre Dame season began. He felt betrayed rather than a traitor. It was a good warm feeling. He got the fellow who had computerized his billing system to set up the Web site CheerCheerFor Old NotreDame. The response was terrific. He flew back and forth to South Bend, a man with a mission. Charlie Weis had become his scapegoat.

10
    Rimini was surprised and flattered that Wintheiser even knew that he had once been on the team, a member of the sacrificial squad that the varsity team played against in preparation for games. Nonetheless, aching, covered with mud and grass stains, the young Rimini had hobbled from the practice field on those long-ago afternoons, his helmet swinging from his hand, with the sense that he was an integral part of Notre Dame football. One step up from a tackling dummy, but what the hell, it had prepared him for life. He had never been able to duplicate that sense of exhausted achievement.
    â€œWhere would we have been without you guys?” Wintheiser had said in response to Rimini’s self-deprecating remark. It was a sports banquet kind of remark, but Rimini appreciated it nonetheless. He had reached an age when he grasped at any laurel offered.
    Not that he and the enormous Wintheiser had been students at the same time. Wintheiser was fifteen, twenty years younger. Still, there seemed an easy camaraderie between them when