THEO
MORNING STREAKED THROUGH my bedroom window. It took a minute before I realized I hurt like hell from head to toe. When my feet hit the cold wood floor a jolt of pain burned in my hip. I limped to the bathroom and looked in the mirror—yep, another broken nose. I popped it back into place, screaming words a priest shouldn’t scream, then washed the blood from my face, looked into the mirror, and smiled, which also hurt.
In my closet hung my black robes, black shirts, black slacks. My aching body sank; I just couldn’t wear that costume today. I stared at my olive green duffle bag standing in the corner. RAKKASSAN – RILEY was in black block letters along the side, with 187th AIRBORNE INFANTRY in smaller block letters below that; the rope tie was still cinched closed at the top. I hadn’t opened it since 1954, two years. It bulged with my coat and boots like a withered body packed tight inside. I thought about where all I’d walked, run, climbed, and swum in those boots, always moving forward with intent. And that coat that kept me warm, protected me from the elements, carried ammo, identified me as a U.S. soldier in the air and on the ground. Knew who I was and what I was doing at all times. I untied the bag, pulled out my navy-blue sweatshirt with RAKKASSAN in white letters, re-tied the bag, and closed the door.
I made two ice packs—one for my nose, the other for my hip—and grabbed the papers off the porch step, plopping them on the dining room table. Mamaí’s dining room was a serious room. A room of proper china displayed in a hutch and an oil painting of the way the beach should look: sun glistening off the sea, kites flying, kiddies playing. Not the grey sky, lone footprints along a deserted Oregon shore reality, but her sunny vision of it. In a bout of activity I took that sunny painting down, packed up her china, and restocked the hutch shelves with books—tiny rebellions against a departed women who continued her reign.
Now in the dining room with fresh ice packs, feet propped on my footstool, I opened the morning paper, the special edition Tillamook Tribune, to a large picture of me: black eye, fat lip, torn clothes, and a bloody white collar. Perfect! It’s a good day when you can act with purpose and actually achieve something worth achieving. Right a wrong. Real good day.
The radiator in the corner sizzled and sputtered to life. The room filled with a wisp of steam that settled on my arms and face. I fed my saltwater aquarium. The thing was the size of a huge beer cooler and held forty gallons of water; seven tropical fish of all shapes and sizes of azure blue and bright yellows, oranges, and reds; wafting grasses and sea life; a sea anemone the color and size of my fist; and tiny, coy seahorses that only came out at night—they, I understood. The aquarium filter released a rush of bubbles just as the phone rang. I knew it was Bishop Doyle, so I didn’t answer. But it rang again.
“Father Riley?”
“Yes, your Eminence,” I said, steadying the telephone against my shoulder. “I’m here.”
While he talked I added a touch of red model paint to Kiernan’s tin solder’s arm band, set it by the window to dry, then unfolded the morning papers. Both the Oregonian and the Tribune had the same headline: NEHALEM MECHANIC TORECK SEALY LOCKED UP FOR 5 YEARS. I should have felt shame or remorse. I smiled. Lip split again—it was worth it.
“The telephone here at Saint Patrick’s has rung off the hook all morning,” he said.
“Sorry, sir.”
I moved my golf clubs, which had been collecting dust in the corner, and dropped into my chair. The radiator moaned as he said, “Funny, a repentant tone seems absent in your voice.”
“Sorry about that too, sir.”
“Who is Toreck Sealy, anyway?”
“No one who matters now, sir.”
“This isn’t Ireland, Theo. America is a litigious country and growing more so by the day. You’re not in a boxing ring, and you’re certainly not an Irish street thug.”
“It won’t happen again. And sir, I was ten when we left Ireland—hardly a thug,” I said glancing up at Mamaí’s rosary around my high school picture.
“What won’t happen again? I understood you to be the victim here. Is that correct?”
“No, I—”
“You are the victim here, understand? I’ll have the newspapers do a story about a war hero who refused violence. That’ll make things clear.”
“Sir, I’m no hero, I just survived for some incomprehensible reason. That’s all. I’d like to stop bandying that term around. It makes me—”
“Semantics,” he stopped me. “I work hard to keep any stories about the church above reproach. This isn’t going to be easy to overlook, but . . . perhaps we can use it to our advantage.”
“Advantage?”
“You’re needed here this week . . . I’ll arrange a dinner honoring your courage.”
“Not up to travel just yet,” I said. “Maybe next week.” A promise I didn’t intend to keep.
“I see,” Bishop Doyle replied. “We pay a price for our ethics, Theo, especially when those ethics are not in alignment with the values of the church. Do you understand this?”
“I’m painfully aware that when we make the wrong choice for the right reason, or the right choice for all the wrong reasons, there will be a toll exacted. Painfully aware, sir.”
“On to other business then,” he said.
I retrieved the aspirin from the kitchen and downed four with another shot of Murphy’s. Blood trickled from my nose to my white t-shirt. The red stain spread like blackberry juice.
Finally he spoke. “Your sweet mother, Fiona, was a dear friend of Saint Patrick’s.”
“Yes, one of your greatest admirers,” I lied.
“Indeed . . . but, she had provocative ideas about that Indian and Mrs. Beaumont.”
“They’re family.”
“I’m well aware of your mother’s friend Constance Beaumont,” he said. “‘Your Mrs. B’. I helped her deliver letters to the governor of Oregon while you were confined in Korea.”
Confined? I said beneath my breath. That’s one way to put it.
“She demanded your return, as if the governor himself was your jailer.”
“Yes sir, I appreciate it,” I said, staring into the aquarium, where something was wrong.
“However, the church is your family now,” he coaxed. “I thought you were happy here.”
“I was . . . then,” I said, opening the freezer. I broke ice free from the metal tray, wrapped it in a towel, settled back into my chair, and pressed it against my swollen, throbbing nose.
“Well, Fiona is missed,” he said. “However, it’s come to the attention of the church that her good nature fell under the sway of heretical influences in her dealings with those people.”
“Heretical, sir?” His disappointment that Mamaí left nothing to the church was palpable.
“Yes, Father Riley, heretical. Non-canonical, outside scripture, morality, holy divinity . . . I’m sure you recall these concepts as part of your devotion.”
“Vaguely,” I said. “What are these influences and why do they concern the church?”
“Is it true that that Indian lives in your backyard?” he asked. “In a tree?”
“Well, that’s the short story, but yes. This house sits on his family property. After Mamaí found out, she deeded that back portion back to him. It was the right thing to do.”
“It’s too late to argue that point. The problem is that we can’t have a Catholic priest living so closely with an Indian in this modern era.”
“That doesn’t sound very modern, sir. Is this the church’s opinion or yours?”
“They are one in the same, Father Riley, and that Indian shaman creature belongs on the reservation. And that woman, all the rumors and stories . . . well, she’s another case in hand.”
“Mrs. B’s a harmless old woman,” I offered, though rumors about her were often true.
“Harmless?” he challenged. “Wasn’t she a rumrunner during prohibition?”
Mrs. B, now in her eighties, was a stout woman with rounded shoulders and a bulging belly. But in her day she was a “real looker,” my Da said. Her skin was so white it was almost luminous. Her aqua eyes sparkled like gems beneath her wrinkled lids. Da also said she was not to be buggered with; she was a rumrunner and had barmy friends who were true pirates.
I bent closer to the aquarium glass, peered inside, and said, “Mrs. B doesn’t actually like rum. Besides, she was our school teacher and Solomon’s just an old man.”
“Right . . . an old medicine man,” he said. “Well, I understand the funeral, mourning, and the need to take care of things. But it’s been three months.”
“Who else would run Saint Mary’s with Father Mark retired?” I half-asked. Then, there it was . . . something in the rocks moved. Damn! A bloody hermit crab.
“There’s always someone waiting in the wings,” he replied.
I lifted the aquarium lid and dropped in some food. One of my new clown fish was dead, and I took its tiny body out with the spoon-net, set it aside, and quickly looked for what killed it.
“It’s time you return to Saint Patrick’s,” came the dreaded request.
“I can’t leave.” I closed the cover. “There’s fifty parishioners, a Saturday class of ten teens, regularly attended Mass, and five women in the valley who are due any day now—”
“You’re not a doctor, Theo,” he said. “Those people can go to Tillamook.”
“That’s a forty-minute drive! Most don’t have cars—”
“They’ll figure things out.”
“This is a mistake—”
“Are you questioning a decision of the church?”
I paced back and forth in front of the aquarium. “And the children here?”
“They’ll find their way.”
“With no guidance or help from the church?”
“It’s for the greater good.”
“Whose greater good?”
“Enough! You don’t understand the economic realities, Father Riley. Suffice to say we need you here in Portland. Beginning next week. Is that clear?”
My body hardened to stone. “Perfectly, sir.”
As an Irish-born Catholic priest with “war hero” status, I was a golden-egg-laying goose; a carrot to dangle at Portland fundraisers. And Saint Mary’s was just costing them money. I understood alright. God, I hated being used that way.
“Let’s face it, Father Riley, you have many, many skills. Running a small town parish isn’t the best use of them. Oh, and I received your paperwork to terminate your prison ministry; it’s denied. God be with you.” He hung up.
I slammed down the phone and kicked my golf bag. Golf balls dribbled across the floor.
***
Bishop Doyle was never more wrong than when he talked about Solomon. I’d long since given up the argument and reconciled that his disdain for Solomon was partly because he was threatened by a man people considered divine in a way he himself could never conceive. Doyle could talk for hours in sophisticated circles, using thousands of lofty words and never arriving at a single truth. Solomon found truth every day using no words at all, his beliefs beginning where Doyle’s ended. He perceived the world beyond the senses that filtered it for the rest of us. For this offense Doyle saw him as an intolerable iniquity, a blight on society needing to be scraped from the earth like dirt and muck from a tire.
However, he was right about one thing: I had been content at Saint Patrick’s, where my tight schedule and cloistered surroundings kept everything inside of me in check, at bay. Here in Manzanita at Saint Mary’s, I was reminded that being a soldier, though Mamaí proudly displayed the medals, was beneath me, boxing was beneath me, Andréa not good enough. Mamaí hated anything that interfered with her sunny vision of a son who was a priest. In Portland I felt I’d failed at everything else, so may as well don the robes of Saint Patrick’s, keep busy, and keep my promise. Be good for something. But here . . . here was different.
Upon my return to Manzanita a few months ago to attend Mamaí’s estate, it was as if I woke from a long, dark dream, felt my pulse again, breathed fresh ocean air again, and wanted to live for the first time in years. I was home. I could never return to Saint Patrick’s.