Augustin Gerald Sinclaire had been the dreamer of the two boys. He constantly fantasized about himself and his future life. At times he was a pirate, born in another time, somewhere on an exotic island. Sometimes his fancy transformed him into an internationally known scientist, an explorer, even a discoverer. He saw himself traveling to unknown places.
During class, when Sister Philomena spoke of the Church’s great evangelizers and martyrs, Augie day-dreamed seeing himself as a missionary, ready to surrender his life to cannibalistic savages. This dream had a twist though, for the savages would decide not to devour their victim after all. Instead, they would beg the humble missionary to become their archbishop, or more often their cardinal. Then the dream shifted, and he would find himself in other lands, not as a missionary but transformed into a monarch, or even an emperor.
If Augie was the dreamer, Hugh was the planner. Even when the boys were still in grammar school, Hugh would come up with schemes to counter Augie’s dreams. Sister Philomena would reprimand Hugh for day-dreaming in class, when what he was really doing was planning. He was well aware of what life expected of him.
“Don’t you want to grow up to be real rich, Hughie? I do.”
“Nope. I’m going to be a priest.”
“Aw, get out of here! Just because Sister said that those guys are big shots.”
Hugh was convinced of what he wanted in life even then. He also knew what he did not want. He did not want his family’s shabby life with its threadbare, gray existence. He did not want to be like his brothers who were content to work in factories and gas stations. Hugh did not want to be like his father who worked like a mule, and came home at day’s end to eat in morose dejection, slowly killing his wife with silence and disdain.
“I hated you, Pa. Did you know that? I hated you for being poor, and because you didn’t mind working until you dropped dead like a worn out nag. I couldn’t stand you because of what you did to Ma. You treated her like dirt, and even though you saw that she was dying, you did nothing. Nothing!”
The priest saw his father’s face looking at him in the darkness. His face wore the dull expression it always did when he looked at his son.
“Yeh, yeh, Pa. You thought I didn’t know anything. Right? Well, you were wrong. You were the jerk, not me.”
Hugh would be a priest, not just an ordinary one but an important member of the Church’s priesthood. Sister Philomena told him, not once but many times, that a priest could become a bishop or even a cardinal of the Church. Even then he figured that if a young man could choose that way of life, why should he waste time on little aspirations. Why not aim at being a cardinal?
On the day they graduated from high school, Hugh told Augie of his intention to enter the novitiate by the end of that summer. The news took Augie by surprise. Even though he had known of his friend’s plans ever since he could remember, he still felt shaken to think that Hugh would take the first step while he was still day-dreaming. Before he knew what he was saying, Augie blurted out, “Hughie, I’m coming with you.”
“You’re crazy,” Hugh said quickly, “What about your plans to become a millionaire? And what makes you think you can join up, just like that?” Hugh snapped his fingers as he nervously waved his right hand in the air.
“Look, Augie, first you’ve got to apply, then take a bunch of tests, and then, if you get that far, you’ve got to be interviewed, and then maybe, just maybe, you might be accepted. Just remember, Augie, you don’t have a vocation.”
“That’s a crock, and you know it! Vocation, schmocation. What’s that have to do with anything? Come on, Hughie, admit it! You’re going into it for the same reasons everybody else does, so don’t try to pull that vocation crap on me!”
Hugh felt a strange sensation. He wanted to hit Augie for implying that he was a hypocrite or an opportunist. He was offended that his closest friend could suggest that he aspired to the priesthood for anything less than reasons of dedication. His irritation, however, was caused by something deeper than insult. He felt an inexplicable emotion, as if Augie had inadvertently touched a secret niche in his heart, pressing it with the tip of his finger.
Turning his face away from his friend, Hugh told himself that he did have a vocation to the priesthood, that he had been called by God. He repeated this several times, trying to convince himself. He thought that the shaky feeling prompted by Augie’s words was nothing less than a temptation against his calling, and he would not allow himself to give in to it. Hugh turned to Augie.
“Aw, shoot! What do I know, Augie. If you want to come along, who am I to say anything? But you’d better get the ball rolling if you really want to be part of the group entering this Fall. Go ahead, try it and see, but if I were you I wouldn’t bet my bottom dollar on being accepted.”
“You make it sound as if I was about to sign up for the next train to Heaven, Hughie old man. It’s just another summer camp as far as I’m concerned. You just watch your old pal. Come on! What’s with the big horse face? You really didn’t think you could get rid of me that easy, did you?”
Hugh’s annoyance with his friend increased with each word. He knew that Augie would be accepted to the novitiate because he had that kind of luck. He felt cheated because he wanted to walk alone down his life’s path without anyone tagging along or depending on him. Now his resolve to be alone among the best was diminishing.
Hugh had been right. Augie was accepted into the novitiate that Fall of 1957. Certain exceptions had been made. A few short cuts were taken in the process because, as the final report stated, Augustin Sinclaire demonstrated notable piety and other worthy talents.
In September, the Joyces and Sinclaires rambled to the entrance of the novitiate. The grounds, covered with grape vines, were a blur of golds and reds and yellows, and the air, which sometimes was oppressively hot during that time of the year, was crisp and transparent. Showing the confidence he was feeling, Augie entered the novitiate’s wide front door strutting as if he were a hero. He grinned broadly at his boyhood friend, then whispered, “I guess it’ll be more fun yanking on it in here than out there, eh, Hughie?”
Hugh pretended not to have heard. He wished that Augie had been struck dead for speaking as he had in that sacred place. He was disgusted with Augie’s vulgarity and coarseness, and he wished with all his heart that Augie had been rejected. Above all Hugh desired to put his impoverished life behind him, to begin a new life with different friends and ideas. This would now be impossible with Augie pulling at his sleeve.
Augie, however, was not cut out for the priesthood. The rigors of novitiate life soon began to rub like sandpaper against his flesh. What in the beginning had been fun, soon became torture for him. The long hours of silence, interrupted only by the study of courses in Latin, Greek, philosophy and theology ate at Augie’s nerves like termites. He was intelligent, but his disposition pulled him away from anything abstract. He hated the books he was assigned to read, and he detested his teachers even more.
“Who in the Hell cares what the Hyper… the Hyper… the Hypersthenic Union is? You tell me, Hugh. Who gives a shit?”
“You mean Hypostatic Union.”
“You see? I can’t even pronounce the stupid word.”
The discipline of novitiate life wore at Augie’s spirit, often reducing him to tears. He felt humiliated when this happened, and he tried to keep it to himself, but inevitably, during the brief moments in which the novices were allowed to speak, Augie’s conversations were filled with complaining and belly-aching. The daily routine fatigued him, and he was especially restless in chapel during the long periods set aside for prayer, when he felt bored and resentful. Whenever he looked at his fellow novices, he became frustrated and irritated because they seemed lost in a trance that he found unexplainable.
Augie detested the Novice Master. He called him Old Fart behind his back, or Gasher or Bulldog because of the priest’s prominent lower jaw. Most of all, Augie hated the cassock the novices were obligated to wear at all times, and he resented that he was forbidden to remove it during the day even when working in the garden or doing other types of work. Augie cheated on this rule, as he did with all the others rules, especially the one that demanded that the novices observe silence.
He was especially depressed by the Grand Silence, the period that began with late evening, dragging on through the night, and into the morning hours until after breakfast. It was at those times that the novices seemed like robots to Augie, unthinking idiots who obeyed without speaking or asking questions, and he hated all of them because of their docility.
Hugh, unlike Augie, gave himself wholeheartedly to the life expected of a novice. When the bell to rise sounded in the early morning, he sprang out of bed, offering its difficulty as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin and for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. He mouthed his prayers with as much fervor as possible, and he gave all of his energy to the assigned work and studies. He even told himself that he enjoyed speaking Latin at table during meals, an exercise hated by the rest of the novices. Hugh, who excelled in the language, unabashedly showed off. He didn’t know it, but his fellow novices competed with one another just to sit at the same table with him. Since he did all the talking, it relieved them of having to struggle through the intricate Latin conjugations.
He was successful in every aspect of his novitiate formation, even where chastity was concerned. Whenever he overheard other novices speaking of their recurring temptations and sexual urges, Hugh felt relieved because he was free of that struggle. Even when the novice master asked him about his feelings and impulses, Hugh claimed that he did not experience any difficulty.
At night, however, during the hours when his mind and will fell into deep sleep, Hugh lost control over his thoughts. It was then that he was unable to wrestle with vivid images of men and women engaging in sexual intercourse. Even though he denied it during his waking moments, Hugh frequently woke up at night thinking he heard groaning and sighing and the squeaking of a bed. Whenever this happened, it did not take Hugh long to realize that it had been he who had been moaning, he who was aroused and wet. At daybreak, however, when he regained control of his mind and sensations, Hugh suppressed this detested and embarrassing experience by denying it to himself, making certain never to think about what happened to him almost nightly.
Hugh had other secrets as well. He never told anyone of the silvery voice of ambition to which he listened carefully since his first days as a novice all the way through his years as a priest. Calling it dedication, Hugh surrendered to his need for prestige, for recognition, refusing to be satisfied with anything less than being in first place at all times and in all things. It was his secret as well that he disdained any weakness in his brother priests, that he looked down on any priest who blundered or fell into sin. The other side of his contempt for weakness was that Hugh judged power and control to be greater than mercy and humility. In his mind, only those priests in places of authority and influence were good priests.
As Hugh molded himself to fit his own image of the priesthood, Christmas of 1957 neared, and Augie was finally forced to admit to his friend that he was not made for that life. He said little to Hugh when he left the novitiate early one morning, only a few words about keeping in touch. Hugh was unmoved; he felt nothing except relief. He convinced himself that God had manifested His will, at last relieving him of Augie’s crudeness and vulgarity.
It was a different story for Augie, however. He felt strange leaving his friend for the first time since they had been boys. He wanted to tell Hugh that surely he would one day be a great and important priest, probably a bishop, maybe even a cardinal. Augie wanted to tell his friend what he had never before told him. He wanted Hugh to know that he admired him, that he would miss him, and that he could always depend on him for anything. His friend’s aloofness, however, discouraged Augie from saying anything.
When Augie walked away from the novitiate on a rainy December morning, he had no purpose, he didn’t even know where to go. So he drifted. He made his way on freight trains that crisscrossed small, dingy towns that promised little and inspired him less. He hitched truck rides down endless stretches of highway that unraveled like black ribbons over baked desert ground. He spent days and nights with transients and hobos with whom he found comfort in a shared pint of cheap whiskey and rough talk. Augie was not unhappy in that world; he even liked it. He could be himself, use the vulgar language with which he best expressed himself, and laugh his rough, loud guffaws without faces turning in his direction, without eyebrows lifting.
A few months of aimless wandering, however, were enough. He settled in Las Vegas, where he was able to get a job dealing blackjack at night and filling in as a part-time hotel doorman during the day. Since he was quick with his hands and even faster with his talk, Augie found fast, easy success in that city. He became a sharp dresser wearing pin-striped suits and wing-tip shoes, and he always had a wad of bills bulging in his pocket. Eventually he purchased a 1958 Cadillac Coupe de Ville on an installment plan. Through it all, Augie felt good with the crowd he was able to associate with, especially the women. He usually dealt the cards until his shift ended, then polished off the night in a motel with a woman whose name he frequently didn’t know.
As the years passed Augie became a faster talker than most of his friends and learned how to run with the brightest and most important people in town. He made solid contacts with men who held big money and bigger ideas on how to get more of it. During it all he never forgot Hugh, mentioning his name whenever he was with buddies and girlfriends, usually when he was high on booze.
“Did I ever tell you guys about my old buddy Hugh Joyce? I have? Well, don’t forget, he’s a priest, or almost one. I bet none of you bums have a friend like mine.”
Augie’s boast was usually met with a here-we-go-again look from those listening but he remained unruffled. He was proud of Hugh in a way that would have embarrassed the young priest. During those years, Augie kept in touch with his friend, writing him letters that told little about his own life, and that were instead filled with questions regarding Hugh’s life.
Hugh responded, gladly providing Augie with pages describing the stages of his formation as a novice. He wrote about his novitiate days, which came to an end when he pronounced vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. Some years later, Hugh explained in his letters that he was now assigned to study philosophy somewhere in Europe.
“You see what I mean, Babe? Here’s this letter that tells how Hughie is studying this boring stuff, a real pain in the ass, believe me. No one can make sense out of the crap. And he does it full-time, non-stop! What’d I tell you? A real brain! And we grew up together, on the same stinking street. What do you say to that? Can you believe it? Well, don’t just sit there staring at me. Say something! Aw, you’re too dumb to know what I’m talking about.”
The letters between the two men were consistent even though in time Augie began to experience mixed feelings regarding Hugh’s responses. He sometimes felt envious of his friend, wishing that he had Hugh’s clarity of purpose and his confidence. At these times, Augie comforted himself remembering that Hugh was not free like he was, and that he would always be obligated to obey someone or something. Most of all, Augie was glad that he was not in his friend’s shoes, especially when it came to women. He told himself that he couldn’t even begin to imagine a world without them. At other times, however, Augie could not help representing Hugh’s bragging.
“I’ve written an essay that’s about to appear in the next Review.”
These comments from Hugh dominated his letters to Augie, which frequently conveyed news of his work and his publications. Augie felt annoyed that his friend sang his own praises. At those times, however, he found reasons to ignore his exasperation.
“Oh, what the Hell! What else does the poor jerk have anyway?” The letters between Hugh and Augie continued for years. In 1967, Augie received a letter telling of Hugh’s approaching ordination, to be followed by his first mass a few days later. Augie, however, had already received the notice of his induction into the army. Three months later, on the day in which Hugh’s hands were anointed by the bishop, Augie’s leg was ripped from his body by a Vietcong mine. Days later, Hugh celebrated his first Mass. While he whispered the sacred words of the Consecration, Augie, in anguish and pain, blasphemed God, and cursed Christ’s mother and all the saints in Heaven. While Hugh, radiant and surrounded by proud friends and relatives, accepted congratulations and admiring smiles, Augie, lost in a morphine-induced nightmare, was hallucinating and screaming out Hugh’s name.
Unknown to Father Hugh, by the time he delivered his first university lecture, Augie was a different man. Not only was he missing a part of his body but the carnage with which he had lived had blocked out his awe for his old friend. Augie was a changed man by then. He wept tears of rage and frustration knowing he would end his days as a cripple. He understood with bitterness that, even though he was only twenty seven years old, he had no other prospect but to depend upon the kindness of others.