Peter Michelson

Pater Noster

            In those days, he was a priest in the Order of the Holy Rood, the order that owned and managed Our Lady. He was a shanty Irish Chicago kid‑his father had been a ward heeler for the Democratic machine‑who had discovered his vocation at the age of 12. Apparently the fervent prayer of all Irish Catholic mothers was that their sons clip on the collar. I gather it was not unusual for Chicago Irish kids to get the call in their early adolescence. Pater contended that shanty Irish had a higher than normal ratio of Oedipal complexes and that the vocation was a means of holding down the incidence of patricide, masturbation, and other unspeakable practices. A slightly dubious interpretation in light of the fact that Holy Rood tested Pater's calling for two years before admitting him to the seminary, plenty of time for him to have perpetrated any or all of those outrages. Having failed to murder his father or pillage his mother, though I don't know about his incidence of masturbation, he was packed off to Our Lady at the age of fourteen. And there he stayed, seminarian and collegian, until Holy Rood sent him back to Chicago to be a graduate student.

            His vow of poverty, and a couple of others as it turned out, had not really been on the line until then. He earned his keep at a Polish parish on the North Side by performing priestly duties. Holy Rood and Our Lady anted up his tuition. They also staked him to an automobile, more or less. They gave him $300 to buy one and permission to keep the change. He got a deal on a 1939 Packard hearse.. It was black and bulbous and about the size of Soldier Field. It wasn't in bad shape but did have a few geriatric idiosyncrasies. He had to open the hood to start it, for example, and the brake pedal would not release under its own recognizance. He rigged a rope to the pedal with which to rein it back into place by hand. in traffic this kept him busier than a one‑armed mule skinner. If I couldn't 17 avoid riding with him, I insisted on riding in back.

"Either way," he grinned, "you're Nearer My God to Thee."

"That's Protestant property," I said, "don't sully it with Papal bull."

That's where I was when he cruised through a red light. He had got understandably confused, and instead of depressing the brake pedal with his foot, he was hauling on its rein and cussing like a teamster. Fortunately, we didn't hit anyone. Unfortunately, there was a cop at the intersection watching with a certain disbelief as we drifted past like a houseboat.

"I think he wants us to stop," I said. I was laughing pretty hard.

"What the hell do you think I want," Pater said. He was still trying to sort Out the braking functions.

"Well, see what you can do," I cackled. "I don't think we can outrun him."

"Can the jokes."

"I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, try the brake."

The cop patted the hearse's back fender appreciatively as he approached. Pater was not wearing his priest suit. The cop glanced at me sitting cross‑legged in the back.

"Well now, boys," he said, "would you be going to a funeral . . . perhaps your own?"

I attempted to look contrite. Pater assumed the solemn manner I imagined him having in the confessional. The cop studied Pater's license a moment. "McGinnis, is it," the cop said. Distinct approbation for a son of the old sod. "Well then, McGinnis, you weren't in much of a hurry, but you weren't paying attention either."

"A little problem with the brake, officer," Pater said.

The cop looked to the floorboard. He must have seen the rope, but he either could not or would not imagine that even an Irishman would try, to stop this hulk by pulling on a rein.

"Ah, you'd better see to it then, McGinnis," the cop said. "It would be a shame to have to haul the both of you on your last ride in the back of this fine old machine." He patted the hearse again and walked off.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," I said. "No ticket."

"Luck of the Irish," Pater grinned.

“Popish plot," I said. "Take me home."

At first, when we were still taking classes, Pater always wore his priest suit. Partly because his only other clothes were old jeans and t‑shirts and partly because he thought it gave him an edge with the professors. Which it did, at least with a couple of linguists who were intimidated by what they supposed was his expertise in Latin. His Latin was pretty good, but he said it was more work to read than he generally cared to do.

This was a problem when we took a seminar in medieval criticism. For the most part we were permitted to read the Latin materials in translation, But the professor opined that the translations did not satisfactorily reflect such nuances as, for example, the difference between imitatorius and itnitatio. One of our first essay assignments was to investigate how these linguistic nuances signified in terms of the critical concepts. Pater persuaded me we should do a joint venture, him researching the Latin subtleties, me applying his results to the critical concepts.

"Good economics," Pater said. "We each get twice the product for half the labor."

As it happened, Pater thought the assignment somewhat arcane and compared nuances a bit cavalierly. As it also happened, the professor held Pater to a higher standard since my paper, based on Pater's linguistic interpretations, implied a higher sophistication in the matter than I possessed. My paper came back slashed mercilessly and loaded with vitriolic comments as to how I could be simul­taneously so well‑and so ill‑informed. Naturally, there were similar comments on Pater's paper.

"Pater," I said, "this is not good. Your bungling is taking bread from my child's mouth. " My kids had not yet been born.

"Man does not live by bread alone," Pater grinned.

"Pater, this is serious. One part bread plus one part fraud and, presto gypo, we're left with fraud alone, the whole distinctly less than the sum of its parts."

“All right, I admit I was a bit casual," Pater said.

"A bit casual." I waved my slashed‑up paper in his face and read some of the professor's choicer acidic comments. "What am I to do? What am I to say? How shall I explain having designated refutatio as I part of speech when it is a part ofa speech's organization! And that is the very least of my blunders, Pater, tile very least."

"Leave it to me," Pater said.

"Leave it to you. Leave it to you, who are already my ruination, my cross, my extra mile? Leave what to you? I'm obviously failing this course. He thinks you and I both are con artists, bad con artists. But I am not a con artist. I am merely a fool. Only a fool would have listened to you. What should I do, throw myself "n the mercy of the court? Plead innocent by reason of stupidity? Say seriously to him that I should not fail because I am too ignorant? The humiliation, Pater, the humiliation. "

" Humility is good for you," Pater said. " Leave it to me."

"I need help, Pater, not lessons in ersatz Christian virtues."

Pater somehow fixed it up. A few days later, the professor whose visage I dread­ed, the man who had condemned me to the Siberia of scholarship, called me aside and was not only amiable but solicitous.

"Pater," I said, 11 what did you do?"

"Appealed to his fellow feeling," Pater grinned.

"Explain, Pater."

"He's a good Catholic," Pater said, "nine kids."

"Is this more hanky‑panky of the brotherhood, Pater . . . Did you bribe him?”

Pater grinned. "How could I bribe him?" He pulled his pockets inside out to display the fruits of his vow of poverty. A quarter clanged to tile floor.

"An honorary commission in the Knights of Columbus, perhaps? A lifetime supply of Novenas, Ave Marias, Pater Nosters? A man with nine little Catholics Could use a big supply of stuff like that. Pater. You know I do not approve of 'Catholic rules'." When he played basketball and other games, Pater, who was a good athlete, was inclined to irritating little cheats, like holding your shirt or pinning your foot with his. If you complained, as I always did, he appealed, with blythe innocence, to 'Catholic rules.'"

           “What did you do?"

           "I told him you were a lost soul, a pagan, what could he expect.

           "God damn it, Pater. .

           Pater did have ways that sometimes surpassed understanding. When my kids were born, for instance, he saw them before I did.

           The night before that occasion, my wife and I had gone to the Loop to see a performance of Genet's "The Blacks." Naturally, we were seated in the balcony. It was late July and hot. In front of us, a burly black guy in a sharkskin suit took off his jacket. He had a pistol jammed in his belt at the small of his back. It wasn't large but looked nonetheless lethal. I nudged my wife. She had seen it. It sort of caught your attention. An optimistic view was that he was a detective pledged to serve and protect even on his night off. But it was also quite plausible that he was a Blackstone Ranger in sharkskin disguise waiting for the right moment in the play to announce the revolution and start firing at point‑blank range.

           But we were still alive at 5:30 the next morning, when my wife woke me up and said she thought we should head for the hospital. My sphincter responded immediately. She packed a bag while I was in the bathroom.

           After some time, she said through the door, "Maybe I should just drive myself over and you can come along when you're feeling better."

           "Very funny," I said. My bowels were in a state of panic. I lodged a wad of toilet paper discretely and rose to meet my responsibilities.

           At the hospital, things started slowly but abruptly shifted into overdrive. My wife had a very high threshold for pain, which deceived the nurses about the timing of the labor pains. When they figured out what was up, they whisked her down to the delivery room, leaving me to follow haplessly in the wake. I was barred at the door and directed to a waiting lounge. Luckily, there was a toilet adjoining, to which I made a couple of dozen trips over the next two hours.

                        Meanwhile, my wife was unexpectedly delivering twins. After the first appeared, the doctor announced there was another one in there. Much surprise, consternation and a rush to general quarters. Because both girls were under three pounds, incubators and emergency paraphernalia had to be requisitioned. I apparently didn't occur to anyone until some time after the dust had settled, and my wife and daughters were safety stashed away.

I had just emerged from my 23rd trip to the toilet when the doctor finally came with the news. I sat down to assimilate the information. The doctor congratulated me and said he'd send a nurse to take me to my family. I made my 24th and final trip to the facilities, during which the nurse emissary apparently came and went. I wandered down the hall. A nurse interrogated my intentions brusquely. I was looking for my wife and daughters. Following scrupulous identification, I was led at last to their room.

And there was Pater in his priest suit, grinning and hugging my wife, patting the incubators as if they were animate creatures. Surrounded by my family, ho looked sort of like a modernist portrait of St. Francis of Assisi.

"Pater," I said, "how did you get here?!"

"Drove," he grinned.

"That's not what I mean."

" I’m feeling fine, thank you," my wife said. I kissed my wife.

"How did he get here?"

"Your daughters are also fine . . . or do I hear a complaint . . ..” Hillary, the younger by 23 minutes, was squalling. Pater was patting her incubator and making ridiculous noises in falsetto.

"Would you like to say hello?" my wife said.

"That's my kid," I said to Pater, "You're making her cry."

Pater ignored me and kept cooing, though I'm sure I heard fuck you directed at me in high C.

"Pater, these are innocent children."

"Don't worry about a thing,” Pater said, "I've already absolved and bap­tized them."

"Absolved them ... from what?!"

“The sins of their father."

“And what do you mean baptized? You made them Catholics?" I turned to my wife. "Did you hear that, he's turned these kids into Catholics." She waved her hand dreamily. This from a woman whose father was a high Presbyterian, the sort that never heard of Calvin. He had once actually said, as an index of his broad‑ mindedness, "I don't care if a man's a Catholic, a Moslem, or a Jew, so long as he's a good Christian."

          "Pater, is this more 'Catholic rules'? Everybody knows you guys get a bounty for souls, but this, Pater, this is low, lower than low. Call off your spell, call it off right now. . .. "

          Pater grinned.

          "Okay, Pater, you leave me no choice. I'm taking it up with my grandmother, who cries out from her grave. As you know, Pater, she's a Lutheran, a Lutheran, Pater, and she doesn't fool around. She'll go right to the top with this. Martin Luther, Pater, Martin Luther."

          Pater had told me that Martin Luther was the only Protestant theologian over whom the Catholic clergy lost sleep. That was because the Pope could ecclesiastically demote you or even excommunicate you, but once an Apostolic Successor always an Apostolic Successor. In that sense both the Anglicans and the Lutherans had the Pope by the balls. The Anglicans, Pater said, had no theologians worth their salt, but Martin Luther was a big lick.

          "I'm a little tired," my wife said. "Why don't you guys go have a drink somewhere."

          How Pater got there was that he had had a hunch when he woke up. It was confirmed when we didn't answer our phone. He called the hospital, saying that he was the family priest and was expected at the birth. Naturally, they not only told him what he wanted to know, but when he got to the hospital in his priest suit, they ushered him posthaste to my wife's bedside while I was cooling my heels and wishing for a massive dose of Enterovioform.

          Pater had brought a fifth of Black Jack Daniels.

          "What about your vow of poverty?" I said.

          "I did a wedding the other day," Pater said.

          "You charged them for it?"

He grinned. "Nope. But they did ask what kind of whiskey I drank. The next day they left a case with the Brothers."

"A whole case?"

"Occasionally the Brothers get thirsty." He produced two huge Havana cigars front his jacket pocket.

"Another wedding?'

"Baptism."

"You soul savers are shameless."

"The Lord giveth," Pater said.

"I'll drink to that."

            When Pater started wearing "civvies," as he called them, I knew something was up.

"What do you think?" He displayed his new ensemble, black penny loafers, pastel blue slacks, and a pastel plaid shirt of many colors over a white t‑shirt showing at the throat.

"You forgot the pennies." I pointed at his shoes.

"Us Irish have a little taste," he said.

"I've noticed that. Who's your fashion consultant?"

"Tommy." Tommy was one of his boyhood chums, also a shanty Irish kid, now working his way toward foreman at a tooling plant.

"It figures."

"You don't like it."

"I like it fine, but you ought to have some pennies. Where'd you get the money, another wedding?" Not that the outfit, including a tan poplin jacket with ribbed wrists and collar, could have cost more than $30.

"I had the jacket and shirt. The other stuffs new. Do I look sexy?"

"Pater, you're not supposed to look sexy." Apart from the fact that he looked like the captain of the bowling team, I was accustomed to seeing him in his priest suit or levis and a t‑shirt.

"You look sexy," my wife said, sidling next to him and taking his arm. "Ve vant to be alone," she vamped.

            “Wrong movie," I said. "The line's supposed to be, 'Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"'

            "If ve vere left alone," she said, "I could find that out without having to ask."

            "You're contributing to the delinquency of a priest."

            Pater grinned.

            "Pater, you've already stolen the souls of my daughters, now you're after I'll wife . . . "

"Catholic rules.."'

My wife patted Pater's arm. "Don't mind him, big boy, come on up and see me sometime."

In fact my wife, like several women, found Pater sexier in his priest suit than in civvies. Pater said it wasn't unusual for women to flirt with him. It was a well‑known phenomenon for priests.

"I guess there's something about a vow of chastity that challenges women," Pater said.. "They warned us about it in seminary. They instructed us on how to deal with it."

The instructions amounted to being polite but professional and avoiding intimate situations. I did notice at parties that Pater now and then became distinctly polite and professional.. I didn't know if this constituted a strain on him. When I asked about the cold shower theory, he just laughed.

But he showed up about eleven one night looking glum, very glum. He said he'd just had a "date."

"What do you mean 'a date'?"

"With a girl, a woman, you know, a date.

Pater, your vows are becoming a shambles. First a car, then new clothes, now a date. This is serious, Pater, much more serious than fucking up Latin."

It turned out he'd had several dates.

"Pater," I said, "a date is one thing. Several dates are quite another. Several might be many, and many dates are commonly understood to be a romance, in your case an affair. I believe you are married to Jesus or the Virgin or someone, are you not?"

"No," Pater said. "Nuns."

Nuns? You mean all those dirty books are true, you're married to nuns?"                       

"No, no . . .. Nuns are married to Jesus."

"Nonetheless, Pater, this smacks of all affair. Your vows of chastity. . .

"My vow," said Pater gloomily, "is intact."

"I'm not quite clear about the technicalities of chastity. Do you mean that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak?"

“The spirit is willing, the flesh is able, butt . . .” Pater shrugged.

"The Lady's not for burning. . .

Pater nodded.

". .. . in hell for your sins? Or for sufficient ardor?"

Pater shrugged again.

"So I take it that you're not here, gloomier than where the sun don't shine, ill guilt and contrition, to confess and be absolved?"

"I am not. I'm simply depressed and confused."

Pater's state was due to an incomprehensible alternation in the lady's currents: intimate surges followed by others just as intently aloof. This had been going on for a couple of months. At first Pater thought it was his vocation. Then he thought it was his clumsy inexperience. Now he thought it was something else, he didn't know what. Tonight, after a pleasant dinner at the lady's apartment and a medley of the Everly Brothers and Chopin and discourse, to Pater's despair, largely of a highbrow sort, he had attempted to kiss her. She became angry.

"Spare me the obscene details, Pater, but does the lady suspect, as well she might, your intentions?"

"I doubt it. I told her."

"You told her ... told her what?"

"That I love her."

"Shit, it's worse than I thought."

Pater nodded ruefully.

"What are your intentions?"

"I don't know. But they're not to have an affair. I love her. I may be a priest, but I'm a man, and I love her."

"She knows you're a priest?"

            “Well......    "

"That isn't the problem. She's not a Catholic. She's not even a Christian. The Church isn't the problem."

"Maybe she doesn't love you. That happens."

"Maybe she doesn't. But she doesn't say so. And sometimes it seems that she might. She doesn't tell me never to darken her doorway again. In fact, she invites me to do the opposite. I don't know." Pater put his head in his hands and stared at the floor.

"Pater, do I know this lady?"

He didn't answer, so obviously I did.

"Pater, if I am to earn my fee for therapy, which I must tell you is uncon­scionably high for a man with no skills but common sense and Psychology 10 1, we have reached a moment of truth. There are many things to consider—premier among them is the lady herself."

Pater hemmed and hawed.

"Pater, are you embarrassed by this woman‑I mean, is she a fat, freckled teenager with precocious acne or something?"

He shook his head.

"Is she embarrassed by you?"

"I don't think so."

"Are you sworn to shroud her honor in secrecy?"

He shook his head.

"Then for God's sake tell me who she is, so we can get on with it."

She was the star of our graduate classmates. Brilliant, sophisticated, witty, humane. Not so much beautiful as vivacious. She was also athletic, which would have appealed to Pater. She once slashed a hot grounder at Aaron that broke his finger. Notwithstanding that the ball was a soft 16‑incher and Aaron was an athletically inept hypochondriac, a hot grounder is a hot grounder. Perhaps that was the occasion at which Pater's heart was won. She was indeed lovable and, though her hair was styled too short for my tastes, lovely. So was Pater, for that matter, excepting perhaps his bowling team vestments, a matter far too trivial to be the source of his beloved's hesitations. But there was a problem.

“Pater," I said with more sympathy than it was my custom to use with him, 18 you have fallen in love with a lesbian."

Pater recovered his poise and his vocational commitment after a relatively brief period of mourning for his first love. He was called back to Our Lady, who wanted to recoup some of her investment by having him teach while he completed his dissertation. It was on an arcane Dutch Aristotelian of the Renaissance who wrote in Latin. He completed it within the year, a fact not wasted on my wife.

He also prepared for my coming. He somehow persuaded the appropriate authorities at Our Lady that I was what they were looking for. I suspect he even persuaded them that they were looking at all. I took the Toonerville Trolly—a one‑car train, excepting rush hours and football weekends—down for an interview. Pater met me in his priest suit.

"Where's the hearse," I said as we got into a more or less contemporary sedan with an Our Lady logo on the door.

"Had to get rid of it. Down here I'm back to pure poverty. Got $400 for it."

"Pater, you only paid three. Who's the sucker?"

"A kid," he grinned.

"That's grotesque, unethical and grotesque." Pater's Dutch Aristotelian had been an authority on the grotesque.

"I tried to give it to the Brothers, but they didn't want it. Cost too much to maintain. So I sold it to a kid in the parish. He loved it. Look, it's the American way—can't give it away, sell it."

"What about the brake? You tell him about the brake?"

"Sure, not that it needed telling. Kid's a mechanic, junior grade. Going to fix it up. Get some black velvet curtains for it. Good kid."

"Whom you bilked out of a hundred dollars."

"Blue book value," Pater grinned. "Anyway, he's going to get at least a hundred dollars worth of pleasure out of fixing it up. Kids should learn the value of pleasure."

         “So The Church Fraudulent makes a hundred bucks off the kid's pleasure. Isn't that some kind of sin, pandering or venality or something?"

         "Not the Church." A grin lurked beneath Pater's deadpan.

         "Pater?"

         The grin broke through. "They didn't ask. Let's get a drink. I'm buying."

         We stopped at a funky bar called Donny's Inferno.

         "This is where the hippies hang out," Pater said. "Want you to feel at home."

         "Appropriate place," I said, "for all ecclesiastical pickpocket."

         Pater prepped me for the interview. I asked how he'd managed to peddle me as a viable candidate.

         I lied a lot," he grinned, "inventing some virtues for you. Family man was a big selling point. A lot of gays think this place is paradise ... all those young boys. I told then) You were honest, loyal, and brave. Dripped Off my tongue like honey. Intelligent, however, stuck in my craw. Luckily, they weren't all that interested in intelligence. Still, I did a few dozen Novellas just to balance my account."

"What about religion, what am I to say when they ask about religion?"

"They won't. In the first place) it's illegal. In the second, they have to hire a few dissenters to give the place credibility in the pagan academic world. In the third, I've already told them you're a swamp of sins and an infidel dog. They're all set to take you up like the white man’s burden."

"Pater, I am a white man. "

"Skin deep. What you am is a Lutheran Jew atheist and, by your own ad­mission, a backslider. And there's no soul so black as a backslider's soul."

"Thanks. Ten bucks says you can't repeat that ten times."

"I need speak but once. Let it be written; let it be done. You forget I'm infallible."

"I thought that was the Holy Roman Emperor."

"He takes his orders from me. Just go in there and lie. If you tell them the truth it will only confuse things. Be reasonable for once."

Apparently I was reasonable enough. They offered me the job. I told them I wanted to think it over and talk to my wife. Pater grinned.

"You already know what she thinks," he said later.

“But I'm not so sure what I think. Maybe this place is all a den of thieves like you. And an orthodox den of thieves to boot."

"Come on," Pater grinned, "I'll show you around." He took me to an old classroom building. "This goes back to the 1880s."

"Do all the classrooms have crucifixes on the wall?"

"Sure. Keeps you focused on the sober truth."

"Pater, do people pray in class?"

"Used to when I was a student, a prayer before class. Now, some do and some don't."

"Sounds like a slack ship to me. What happens to those who don't? Because I won't have prayers, Pater. They fuddle the mind. And it was prayers with which you stole my innocent daughters' souls, Pater. It cost my erstwhile father‑in‑law Much trouble and gelt to secure a Presbyterian exorcist. And even then, Pater, all

on account of prayers, there was some question whether these innocents, pure as the driven snow not withstanding your accursed casuistic shenanigans, some question whether they could be permitted to wear white dresses for a proper Presbyterian baptism."

"Won't do any good," Pater grinned.

"Such smirking cynicism," I said, "is unbecoming to a man of the cloth."

"Presbyterians," Pater snorted. "A cheap imitation. We give you the real thing, field tested for 2,000 years. Guaranteed salvation. My baptism is good 'til Kingdom come. What do you get with Presbyterians? A lottery ticket. Maybe it's a winner, maybe not. What kind of baptism is that?"

"Nonetheless, Pater, I had to take them half‑way across the continent just to be safe. And all because of prayers, Pater, and you know very well that the Good Book itself enjoins the faithful not to do it in the road. I won't have it, Pater, no prayers in my classroom."

"You know more Scripture than you let on," Pater laughed. "on the other hand, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."' Pater was overly fond of Pope and epigrammatic verse. It was a source of contention between us.

            "As for that, I am suspicious, Pater, that you know more than you are letting on. Some pray and some don't? Doesn't sound orthodox to me. Sounds Protestant, or worse. Free Thinkers, Pater, sucking at Our Lady's mammary? And why was there no mention, not one word, of religion in that interview? The Church has a long and honorable history of deviousness, Pater. You know this. Casuistry, Pater, is that what's going on here? Prayers and no prayers? Religion and no religion? Tell it like it is, Pater, and no 'Catholic rules."'

"I already told you," Pater said. "Look, until ten or fifteen years ago, this place was a glorified prep school, an excuse for a football team, a safe haven where Catholic boys wouldn't have their assumptions bruised. Even now 80% of these kids come from parochial schools. But especially since Hindenburg took over.

"Hindenburg?"

"That's what some of us call the president, because sometimes he seems like a big blimp full of hot air. But he has built the place into a real university. And there's been opposition from the old‑guard priests and alumni who were happy ... as carp in the mud." We were out on the campus now, strolling along a pleasantly arbored lake. Pater pointed out an old lady casting bread crumbs on the water, which churned with orange carp feeding feverishly. On the other side of the path was a grotto where a dozen or so candies flickered in front of a pastel plaster Virgin.

"The faculty's improved enormously, " Pater continued, "in the past decade, especially in the sciences. We've got a new library, maybe a bit too monumental, but that was the idea, to symbolize learning, establish a priority. Now they're building up the humanities. That's where you come in. To be credible they have to have different points of view. Yours is worthless but it's different. A third or less of the faculty now are priests. In the English Department, for instance, six or seven out of forty or more. Hindenburg is cautious. He's not going to hire any lesbian Marxian Maoists thumping the little red book. But he's opening things up. It's true that he's a Philistine in many ways, but he is liberalizing this place. I grew up here. I love this place. So do a lot of young priests. We want it to grow up. And it is. I think it's exciting. That's why I want you to come down here."

Pater may have had neo‑classical aesthetics and a jesuitical residue from his training, but a Dominican had once told him that he was essentially a heretic. Only the fact that the Dominican was an old man had restrained Pater from knocking out his teeth. Because at heart Pater was a hot‑blooded passionist,  enamoured of the Christian Passion and, as it turned out, some other kinds as well. Frequently this took the form of sentimentalism, which was at once our bond and our bone. I was also a sentimentalist. The difference was that I dis­trusted the inclination, whereas for Pater it was moral and ontological necessity. Our running symposium, which was often enough heated, frequently turned oil this point.

But in the end, it was love that took me to Our Lady. Love for Pater, who wanted me to join his enterprise. Love for my by then two‑year‑old daughters, who had no interest whatsoever in the decision. And love for my wife, whose motives at the time seemed reasonable and whose happiness seemed to require it.

As it turned out, she and I miscalculated on both counts. But no one then would have guessed that Chicago was the frying pan to Our Lady's fire.

That summer, before we moved, I was enlisted by my political friends back ill Chicago to help campaign for Lyndon Johnson. Barry Goldwater said he would defoliate Vietnam. That seemed like a bad idea. His slogan was, "In your heart you know he's right." Lyndon Johnson said that in your heart you knew Barry might. That was no idea at all, but seemed to imply one. On its behalf, I trudged the precincts.

We moved at the end of August. Pater had located a nice, old house for us to rent near the campus. The landlord's name was Malo. I walked to work down a tree‑lined avenue.. On one side was a large open grass field at the edge of campus, where Our Lady's ROTC cadets did their marching and cars parked for football games. On the other side was a graveyard.

A couple of weeks after we moved in, Pater took me for a swim in the lake where we'd seen the carp. Pater carried on about the pastoral beauties of the place. I concurred. He wanted to know how I liked things. So far, so good, I said. Patel­was insistent. What did I think of the chairman, my colleagues, the library, the students? We were in the middle of the lake.

"Pater," I said, "what's with all these questions you know I can't answer yet?"

           Suddenly the image of those carp we'd seen in their feeding frenzy came to me. Where there were carp . . .  “Pater," I said, "are there turtles in this lake?" I'd once seen two guys haul what was at least a 150‑pound turtle out of a sluggish midwestern river east of Chicago. They'd stuck a chunk of meat on an enormous hook, the size artists depict replacing Captain Hook)s hand. But the hook hadn't got him. He'd simply clamped on to the decaying meat. His jaws still had it in a vise grip when they hoisted him into the bed of the pickup. Otherwise, he was totally passive. That was when I first questioned Gary Snyder's perspicacity about those Indian myths of Turtle Island.

Pater dove and came up spurting an arc of water that I dodged. "Yep," he grinned, "pretty good‑sized too."

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said. "I don't swim with snapping turtles."

Pater grinned and dove again. When he came up, I was looking for another arc. He spurted a straight jet to my face.

"'Catholic rules,"' he said.

From time to time after that, he would interrogate me along the same lines.

Over Christmas break, he went to Chicago to visit his family. When he came back, he announced he was going to get married. The next summer he did, to a pretty blond with a year‑and‑a half‑old son, whom Pater later adopted.

"Looks like you're Pater Noster willy nilly," I said. "That's what all the questions were about?"

"I wanted to know if you liked it," Pater grinned, "since I'm leaving it in Your hands. I still love this place."

Even in extremis Pater was a sentimentalist.

"I suppose," I said, 11 that keeping you around would be the equivalent of their hiring a lesbian Marxian Maoist?"

"Pretty much. It would be a bad example for all those horny young priests. Besides, when I'm a family man, they'll have to pay me. I did offer to stay on at a cut rate 'til they thought they'd got their investment back. Hindenburg expelled a little gas at that."

“Do they expect you to pay them back for your education, to say nothing of your ill‑gotten profit from the hearse?"

"No. They'll write it off to overhead. Catholic accounting. Besides, I already paid them off."

"With what?" I said.

He looked at me, a grin spreading over his face.

"Pater," I said, "you slippery son of a bitch."

In January, Lyndon Baines Johnson was inaugurated as the 35th president of tile republic. Pater left in June. He'd got a job out in L.A. He and his new family moved into a commune near Venice Beach. LBI was soon making good on Goldwater's campaign promise. "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" By early spring of'68, he'd had enough. I was asked to speak at Our Lady's annual journalism banquet. I said the war was a bad idea. Half tile audience gave me a standing ovation. The other half sat oil its hands, the half that included Hindenburg. That wasn't the only problem, and the handwriting on tile wall was asking me whether Our Lady would fire me before I quit. Late one midsummer night Pater called me from L.A. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated. Three months later, as things worked out, I quit.