The Good Shepherd (22 page)

“We’re in the Hürtgen Forest, see. Goddamn Germans dug in ten feet deep everywhere. We’re coming down this ravine, when all of a sudden, they open up on us with machine guns. We dive for the bank of the ravine, and they can’t depress the guns enough to get us. Out in the middle of the ravine, we got a half-dozen dead and maybe four badly wounded. We lost another dozen guys trying to get to those wounded. This thing started at dawn, and for a while, it looked like a replay of the Lost Battalion, you know, the World War I job, on a small scale. The Krauts were counterattacking all around us, and we lost contact with everybody as they rolled back with the punches. Meanwhile, those wounded guys were out there all day in the sun dying little by little. It was absolute agony, listening to them.

“Well, we hang on there for twenty-four hours. Every two or three minutes, all night, Adolf’s friends send up flares to make sure nobody gets to those wounded guys. By noon the next day, we’re out of water, and some guys were talking surrender. I told ‘em I’d shoot the next guy that used the word, but I was thinking about it myself. Suddenly, into the ravine comes this - this figure. We were all half-crazy with thirst, and I thought it was an hallucination. But it was the Padre wearing his mass vestments. He was walking in a very slow, stately way, like he was in a procession in the cathedral. He kept shouting, ‘
Ich bin ein katholisch Priester
.’ He was betting there were some Catholics behind those German machine guns. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen a man do. Those Nazis didn’t give a damn for priests, most of them. By any kind of odds, he should have gotten himself blown apart.

“He got to the wounded guys. Two of them were dead. He touched some oil on their foreheads and said a prayer over them. Then he picked up the other two guys, one under each arm, and dragged them over to our foxholes.

“Under his robes he’s got about ten canteens full of water and a couple with whiskey in them. And a couple of pounds of C rations hanging off his belt. Next, he ties us into the operations for the day. There was a big counterattack coming in about an hour. We went up the bank just as Adolf’s boys got hit from the flank by a couple of other companies, and they didn’t stop runnin’ until they got to Düsseldorf. I was for giving the Padre a Medal of Honor, but the chief of chaplains cut it down to a DSC because there was some sort of hanky-panky about wearing his vestments that way. It violated the Geneva Convention or some damn thing.”

“Hell,” said Herb Winstock, “he won a DSC damn near every day that we were in action.”

More stories from Winstock, from Jim McAvoy, from a half-dozen other well-fed, middle-aged faces, all conspiring to make Matthew Mahan a cross between a saint and a superman.

“The guy just wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid of anything,” said Jim. “I remember when he made me chaplain’s assistant. I thought I had it made. Then I found out the three guys who had the job before me were in the hospital. The next thing I find myself taking more chances than the whole rest of the division put together. There was no place he wouldn’t go. And half the time he didn’t crawl - he walked straight up - right through barrages.”

Jim gulped his drink, obviously reliving some of the fearful emotions of 1944-45, then he said quietly, “I’ll tell you something - following him made a man out of me. I mean, I was the original callow kid, and maybe a little bit of a mama’s boy in those days. I was sure I was going to fink out under fire. I forgot all about it, after watching him in action for ten minutes.”

“You should write a book about him, Dennis, I really mean it,” said Mike Furia. “He should have been the Father Duffy of World War II. Even Ernie Pyle said so. But when he got home, he wouldn’t talk to a writer. Not even to the reporters from the
Journal.”

A harried stewardess came by, begging them for the third or fourth time to sit down for dinner. Dennis reluctantly rejoined Eileen Mahan and her son. They discussed Catholic education, and Dennis was surprised to discover that Mrs. Mahan was not in favor of reinstating the Baltimore catechism. “They got to give these kids more freedom. Why shouldn’t they? They treated us like we were in reform school or something.”

“Maybe you would have been better off if you had been,” said Timmy, wolfing down his filet mignon.

He looked mockingly across his mother’s tray at Dennis as he said this. Mournfully, Dennis saw the pathetic dimensions of Timmy’s illusions. The Archbishop’s secretary had to be a square faggot. The Catholic Church in particular and everything else in the world that represented tradition, order, were garbage. This reduced the number of books worth reading, the music worth listening to, the thoughts worth thinking, to a pitiful minimum.

After dinner, they turned out the lights, and Dennis tried to sleep. Eileen Mahan was soon snoring gently beside him. Timmy continued to peruse Zap comics. By this time, Dennis estimated that he must have read each copy at least seven times. After an hour of squirming, Dennis found his mind yearning for sleep and his body refusing to obey it. First his back ached, then his eyes ached, then his neck ached. His mind drifted like a Ping-Pong ball accidentally loose in a spaceship with zero gravity.

First, Helen Reed’s breasts were touching his moist palms, then his mother smiled primly at him and snapped his picture in the white suit he wore for his First Communion. Then Leo was there, a disembodied face peering in the cosmic window, shouting above the humming engines: “When are we going to start telling the truth, Jesuit?”

Next came memories of the day he visited Bishop Cronin at the seminary. He was sitting on the sagging daybed once more, politely drinking cold coffee and staring around him at a room piled high with books and stacks of miscellaneous papers. Names whizzed past him; Mansi, Cccconi, Mosley, Veuillot, Icard. The immense effort that the old man was making staggered him. More saddening than dismaying was the evidence that the task was too huge. The text, what he read of it, was too emotional to be history and too burdened with abstruse arguments to be a successful tract. He did not have the heart to tell him, but Cronin, with an almost awesome intuition, seemed to read his mind. “I know I’ll never finish it,” he said. “All I can hope, really, is to get enough on paper to catch the nose of a bright young dog like yourself who likes to feed on red meat.”

Then his sudden outburst. I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong dog. For me, the whole thing is an argument about nothing. I don’t believe this fanatic first-century Jewish revisionist named Jesus is the son of God. The more I think about it, the more I realize I’d better sit down and tell that to Cardinal Mahan, and be on my way.

In the background, the ironic angel had clapped his wings. They sounded exactly like the erasers he used to clean for Sister by pounding them together in the school yard once a week - a job that left him coated with chalk dust.

Do you really believe that, lad, asked the old man with a very serious face, or is that the result of last night’s or last month’s book?

What do you believe?

First of all, I believe that history has some sense, that it isn’t a totally mad collection of anecdotes as it sometimes appears to be. I believe, with that Frenchman who like me never had the guts to publish what he really thought when living - once past seventy you might as well consider a man legally dead, because people no longer take him seriously - I believe with that Frenchman in the Holy Event. Exactly what the devil that means I don’t pretend to know. But it changed the course of human history, and you can’t walk out on history, you can’t act as if the whole damn slate can be wiped clean, not if you’re Irish. Out of it came the Church - and for all its terrible blunders, there’s something grand about it at the same time - soaring as it has above history, and at the same time so much a part of it - it’s the one thing around that puts poetry in the mouths of common people, lad, and gives them someplace else to look for consolation and hope. The nation can’t do these things, try as it might. It’s too bound up in the lust for power and the pursuit of its own best interests. Only the Church can change men’s hearts - and how well she might do it, we both know, if only we could free her from her self-forged shackles. The truth is - and it must be told by someone - that the Church has been seduced by the nation. In fact, seduced is hardly a proper word. The hussy never so much as resisted old Constantine’s first buss, but she leaped into bed with that bad imitation of a Roman emperor and like a shrewish wife immediately began coopting his power. It’s this fatal imitation of Caesar that’s destroying us, and since there’s no hope of convincing the Italians of this, we must tell the rest of the world.

But listen, now. What disturbs me more than anything else in that bit of foolishness you just bespoke is the idea of talking to Mahan about it. Don’t do that. If you must go, think up something more suitable, like being seduced by an oversexed nun. The likes of Matt were not made to deal with problems that torment garçons like you and me. He was born to lead the common people, to fill their hearts with hope and faith of the sort that they must have to live at all. Shackled though he is, it’s toward freedom that he leads them, the kind of freedom that no bureaucrat in the Internal Revenue Service of the Curia will ever understand. If God is willing, the likes of you and me may yet strike off some of the shackles that keep him from being the true shepherd that he is at heart, that cursed subservience to Rome and the canon law that sits like an imp of Satan on every bishop’s crook. Such as Matt can’t free himself from those shackles. He loves too much, too readily. He has a heart that’s too full, too good. Those are the most obedient, you know. It’s the cold fools like us who have little or no love to spare; we’re the ones who must stand back and decide with good reason on what we shall bestow our mite.

Still no sleep. Only these baffling words revolving through his tormented body. Gradually, Dennis concluded that the night flight to Europe was one of the most exquisite forms of torture devised by modern man. The Inquisition was mercy in comparison to it. Another two hours, and he would confess to any sin.

In the first-class compartment, Matthew Mahan was reminiscing with Mike Furia about their first trip to Europe. “Did you ever think that we’d be going back this way, Matt?” Mike asked. “I sure as hell never did. But I bet you did. I can remember watching you in action on the troop ship and saying to myself, ‘That guy will be a bishop someday.’”

“Oh, come on. I was so green and so seasick I didn’t know what I was doing half the time.”

“You took charge. That’s what a bishop does, right?”

“To be honest, Mike, I never dreamt of being a bishop. I didn’t think I had enough brains. I was pretty much convinced that the Lord intended me to get shot somewhere in Europe. That’s all big lugs like me - and you, for that matter - seemed to be good for then. And after our first day under fire, I was absolutely convinced I was going to get killed.”

“You and me both.”

Mike Furia brooded into a silver cup half full of Bourbon. “So here we are,” he said. “We didn’t get our heads blown off like we thought we would. Here we are, twenty-five years later, and when I ask myself why, what difference it made, I don’t have an answer.”

“Now, Mike,” Matthew Mahan said. “It’s 4:00 a.m. Remember what I told you about 4:00 a.m. thinking?”

“I know, I know. You told me. But you didn’t necessarily convince me.”

“You put together a big business, Mike. You gave jobs to thousands of people. Good jobs, and you treat them fair and square.”

“Three cheers,” said Mike, pouring himself another hefty belt of Bourbon. “I just happened to find out that’s the best way to do business. But that doesn’t give you the kind of satisfaction I’m talking about. Nobody in the company really gives a damn about Mike Furia. He’s a good meal ticket, that’s all. That goes for my brothers, my nephews, my cousins. I’m talking about the people who mean something to a paisan like me. You’re half Italian. You know what I mean. A man without a wife, a father without a son. What the hell is he? In ten, twenty years, I’ll be dead. The rest of the clowns in the family will either sell out or run the company into the ground.”

“Mike, isn’t there any hope that Betty will calm down and help you and Tony get back together one of these days?”

The contempt on Furia’s face suddenly made Matthew Mahan wonder if he knew the real story of why the Furias’ marriage had collapsed. Was it simply Betty Furia’s resentment over her husband’s constant traveling - and her fear of flying? Did marriages break up over such things?

“She’s never going to let that happen, Matt. That’s her revenge - making sure my son hates his old man’s guts.”

Another belt of Bourbon, and the expression on Mike Furia’s face was almost menacing. “What’s the answer? You got one, Padre?”

“Prayer, Mike. Nothing else but prayer.”

Mike slumped back in his seat and shook his head. “Padre, you’ve got more faith - a hell of a lot more - than I have if you can say that and mean it.”

“Don’t be silly, Mike. You’ve got faith all right. I’ll do the praying for both of us.”

“Okay, okay.”

Down another note, from grudging assent to unconvinced agreement. How often you have heard that in recent months, Matthew Mahan thought.

“Mike. You’ll feel a lot better tomorrow afternoon when you get a couple hours sleep. Look, there’s the sun coming up.”

Ahead of them, the horizon was a rim of fire. Racing toward the dawn at 600 miles an hour, they never really saw the sun rise in traditional, multicolored majesty. Within an hour, they were winging through mid-morning brightness, and the stewardesses were passing out hot washcloths to give the sleepless travelers an illusion of refreshment. A light breakfast came next and then the pilot was saying, “In a few minutes we’ll be landing at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. The temperature on the ground is a cool 58 degrees. Light rain and some fog have lowered visibility to about a half mile. I regret to inform you that there has been a wildcat strike of porters and baggage handlers. I’m afraid it will mean some pretty annoying delays. . . .”