Read Online Touch (1987) by Elmore Leonard - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elmore Leonard
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was on Conner, across from the Detroit City Airport, within a few blocks of De La Salle, where August had attended high school, and less than a mile from Saint David, on East Outer Drive, where he had gone to grade school. August Murray was thirty-seven, had never been married, did not date girls, and had been a member of Saint David Parish all his life, except for a year and a half in the seminary. His parents had moved to Tampa, Florida. He lived alone now in the apartment over his shop, above the black-and-yellow sign that said ZIPPY PRINTING and, smaller, WHILE-U-WAIT.
August parked in back, off the alley, hurried with his ring of fifteen keys, and pointed to the lavatory as he went in through the back hall. Father Nestor walked in stiff-legged behind him.
August's own father would have walked in here and had a fit--the shop silent in half light that showed through the storefront venetian blinds. A quiet printing shop was a sin. Offset presses, A.B. Dick 360's, doing nothing. The IBM copier sitting there; the camera, the cutter and folder at the end of the worktable--the room close, smelling of ink. His father had printed parish bulletins and napkins and matchbooks and kept his accounts at the blond-wooden desk against the wall. August dropped his newspaper on the desk and turned on the electric fan that sat on the file cabinet.
With all that was happening, August wasn't going to waste his time on cocktail napkins and matchbooks.
He wished the priest would hurry up. Old priests in shiny black suits, withered necks sticking out of round Roman collars, seemed more useless than old laymen in sport shirts and straw hats. What did you do with them? Let them say six o'clock mass at a side altar somewhere---
Unless you were lucky enough to find one like Nestor and you saw the opportunity to squeeze a little more use out of him.
Father Nestor Czarnicki, OFM, fifty-two years a priest, nineteen years of it served in Santarem, Brazil, on the Amazon River. Returned with amebic dysentery and a story about a Franciscan brother who performed miracles.
Nestor Czarnicki--uncle of Greg Czarnicki, member of the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost--invited to a meeting to tell about his life as a missionary. And August stunned by what he heard ("And with the healing of the child, the manifestation of the blood; this, to me, the unmistakable sign . . .") and the opportunity he saw before him.
Father Nestor, who said mass in a mixture of Latin and Portuguese, never in English, no, he could never do that. If he had to he would leave the order, move to France and join Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, God's champion in returning the use of Latin to sacred rites.
"Wait," August had said to him. "Talk about signs--don't you see it? You come from Seminario Sao Pio Decimo and find, already established here, the Society of Saint Pius X."
A society with the same name whose direct purpose is to reinstitute the Latin tradition?
And the Franciscan Brother Juvenal, also returned from Sao Pio Decimo on the same plane--Wasn't that another sign?
August had to remain calm, keep himself from trying to do everything at once. Meet Juvenal, cultivate a relationship, but not bring him into the picture just yet. The plan, first, was to establish a new parish, put Nestor in as pastor, and invite Archbishop Lefebvre over to consecrate the church, the same way the Pius the Tenthers down in Texas did it.
Five months later Outrage had leased the empty Covenant Baptist Church in Almont, rechristened it Saint John Bosco, and they were on their way. A minor problem--correspondence with Lefebvre indicated it would be at least a year before he could come for the consecration. In the meantime Father Nestor might give one last grunt and expire on the toilet. So the plan was revised. Instead of consecrating the church, they would officially "dedicate it to the accepted traditions of the Catholic Faith as established by Jesus Christ, the Son of God." A series of pamphlets was run
August parked in back, off the alley, hurried with his ring of fifteen keys, and pointed to the lavatory as he went in through the back hall. Father Nestor walked in stiff-legged behind him.
August's own father would have walked in here and had a fit--the shop silent in half light that showed through the storefront venetian blinds. A quiet printing shop was a sin. Offset presses, A.B. Dick 360's, doing nothing. The IBM copier sitting there; the camera, the cutter and folder at the end of the worktable--the room close, smelling of ink. His father had printed parish bulletins and napkins and matchbooks and kept his accounts at the blond-wooden desk against the wall. August dropped his newspaper on the desk and turned on the electric fan that sat on the file cabinet.
With all that was happening, August wasn't going to waste his time on cocktail napkins and matchbooks.
He wished the priest would hurry up. Old priests in shiny black suits, withered necks sticking out of round Roman collars, seemed more useless than old laymen in sport shirts and straw hats. What did you do with them? Let them say six o'clock mass at a side altar somewhere---
Unless you were lucky enough to find one like Nestor and you saw the opportunity to squeeze a little more use out of him.
Father Nestor Czarnicki, OFM, fifty-two years a priest, nineteen years of it served in Santarem, Brazil, on the Amazon River. Returned with amebic dysentery and a story about a Franciscan brother who performed miracles.
Nestor Czarnicki--uncle of Greg Czarnicki, member of the Gray Army of the Holy Ghost--invited to a meeting to tell about his life as a missionary. And August stunned by what he heard ("And with the healing of the child, the manifestation of the blood; this, to me, the unmistakable sign . . .") and the opportunity he saw before him.
Father Nestor, who said mass in a mixture of Latin and Portuguese, never in English, no, he could never do that. If he had to he would leave the order, move to France and join Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, God's champion in returning the use of Latin to sacred rites.
"Wait," August had said to him. "Talk about signs--don't you see it? You come from Seminario Sao Pio Decimo and find, already established here, the Society of Saint Pius X."
A society with the same name whose direct purpose is to reinstitute the Latin tradition?
And the Franciscan Brother Juvenal, also returned from Sao Pio Decimo on the same plane--Wasn't that another sign?
August had to remain calm, keep himself from trying to do everything at once. Meet Juvenal, cultivate a relationship, but not bring him into the picture just yet. The plan, first, was to establish a new parish, put Nestor in as pastor, and invite Archbishop Lefebvre over to consecrate the church, the same way the Pius the Tenthers down in Texas did it.
Five months later Outrage had leased the empty Covenant Baptist Church in Almont, rechristened it Saint John Bosco, and they were on their way. A minor problem--correspondence with Lefebvre indicated it would be at least a year before he could come for the consecration. In the meantime Father Nestor might give one last grunt and expire on the toilet. So the plan was revised. Instead of consecrating the church, they would officially "dedicate it to the accepted traditions of the Catholic Faith as established by Jesus Christ, the Son of God." A series of pamphlets was run
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