Purgatory snakes would coil around their fingers and wrists and throats
His face is ruddy, and he jokes about being a whiskey priest, though he’s not. He gets
outdoors as much as he can, goes for a long walk every morning, and hunts and fishes with
me. But I can’t get him on a horse anymore. Ten years ago I could badger him into a trail
ride; I had to give him a western saddle, and he’d hold the pummel and bounce through the
woods with me, and be sore for days. He’s looking at seventy with eyes that are younger
than many I’ve seen in people in their twenties. I do not remember ever feeling the way
they seem to; but I was lucky, because even as a child I knew that life would try me, and I
must be strong to endure, though in those early days I expected to be tortured and killed
for my faith, like the saints I learned about in school.
Father Paul’s family came down from Canada, and he grew up speaking more French than
English, so he is different from the Irish priests who abound up here. I do not like to make
general statements, or even to hold general beliefs, about people’s blood, but the Irish do seem
happiest when they’re dealing with misfortune or guilt, either their own or somebody else’s,
and if you think you’re not a victim of either one, you can count on certain Irish priests to try to
change your mind. On Wednesday nights Father Paul comes to dinner. Often he comes on
other nights too, and once, in the old days when we couldn’t eat meat on Fridays, we bagged our
first ducks of the season on a Friday, and as we drove home from the marsh, he said: For the
purposes of Holy Mother Church, I believe a duck is more a creature of water than land, and is
not rightly meat. Sometimes he teases me about never putting anything in his Sunday collection, which he would not know about if I hadn’t told him years ago. I would like to believe I told
him so we could have philosophical talk at dinner, but probably the truth is I suspected he
knew, and I did not want him to think I so loved money that I would not even give his church a
coin on Sunday. Certainly the ushers who pass the baskets know me as a miser.
I don’t feel right about giving money for buildings, places. This starts with the Pope,
and I cannot respect one of them till he sells his house and everything in it, and that church
too, and uses the money to feed the poor. I have rarely, and maybe never, come across saintliness, but I feel certain it cannot exist in such a place. But I admit, also, that I know very
little, and maybe the popes live on a different plane and are tried in ways I don’t know
about. Father Paul says his own church, St. John’s, is hardly the Vatican. I like his church: it
is made of wood, and has a simple altar and crucifix, and no padding on the kneelers. He
does not have to lock its doors at night. Still it is a place. He could say Mass in my barn. I
know this is stubborn, but I can find no mention by Christ of maintaining buildings, much
less erecting them of stone or brick, and decorating them with pieces of metal and mineral
and elements that people still fight over like barbarians. We had a Maltese woman taking
riding lessons, she came over on the boat when she was ten, and once she told me how the
nuns in Malta used to tell the little girls that if they wore jewelry, rings and bracelets and
necklaces, in purgatory snakes would coil around their fingers and wrists and throats. I do
not believe in frightening children or telling them lies, but if those nuns saved a few girls
from devotion to things, maybe they were right. That Maltese woman laughed about it, but
I noticed she wore only a watch, and that with a leather strap.
The money I give to the church goes in people’s stomachs, and on their backs, down in
New York City. I have no delusions about the worth of what I do, but I feel it’s better to feed
somebody than not. There’s a priest in Times Square giving shelter to runaway kids, and
some Franciscans who run a bread line; actually it’s a morning line for coffee and a roll, and
Father Paul calls it the continental breakfast for winos and bag ladies. He is curious about
how much I am sending, and I know why: he guesses I send a lot, he has said probably more
than tithing, and he is right; he wants to know how much because he believes I’m generous
and good, and he is wrong about that; he has never had much money and does not know
how easy it is to write a check when you have everything you will ever need, and the figures
are mere numbers, and represent no sacrifice at all. Being a real Catholic is too hard; if I
were one, I would do with my house and barn what I want the Pope to do with his. So I do
not want to impress Father Paul, and when he asks me how much, I say I can’t let my left
hand know what my right is doing.
He came on Wednesday nights when Gloria and I were married, and the kids were
young; Gloria was a very good cook (I assume she still is, but it is difficult to think of her in
the present), and I liked sitting at the table with a friend who was also a priest. I was proud
of my handsome and healthy children. This was long ago, and they were all very young and
cheerful and often funny, and the three boys took care of their baby sister, and did not bully
or tease her. Of course they did sometimes, with that excited cruelty children are prone to,
but not enough so that it was part of her days. On Wednesday after Gloria left with the kids
and a U-Haul trailer, I was sitting on the front steps, it was summer, and I was watching
cars go by on the road, when Father Paul drove around the curve and into the driveway.
I was ashamed to see him because he is a priest and my family was gone, but I was relieved
too. I went to the car to greet him. He got out smiling, with a bottle of wine, shook my hand,
then pulled me to him, gave me a quick hug, and said: ‘It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Let’s open
some cans.’
With arms about each other we walked to the house, and it was good to know he was
doing his work but coming as a friend too, and I thought what good work he had. I have no
calling. It is for me to keep horses.
In that other life, anyway. In my real one I go to bed early and sleep well and wake at
four forty-five, for an hour of silence. I never want to get out of bed then, and every morning
I know I can sleep for another four hours, and still not fail at any of my duties. But I get up,
so have come to believe my life can be seen in miniature in that struggle in the dark of
morning. While making the bed and boiling water for coffee, I talk to God: I offer Him my
day, every act of my body and spirit, my thoughts and moods, as a prayer of thanksgiving,
and for Gloria and my children and my friends and two women I made love with after
Gloria left. This morning offertory is a habit from my boyhood in a Catholic school; or then
it was a habit, but as I kept it and grew older it became a ritual. Then I say the Lord’s Prayer,
trying not to recite it, and one morning it occurred to me that a prayer, whether recited or
said with concentration, is always an act of faith.
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