Prince of Peace (11 page)

Now what would they make of me, timidly hanging back in my dark corner among the purple draperies of the confessional booths? "Monsignor Riordan." The very name frightened me and I moved away from his confessional again, as if an arm was going to reach out from behind the curtain and grab me. It was the pastor's whisper I'd imagined, not God's; "Oh, really, Mr. Durkin? Eternal hostility?"

A stirring in the sanctuary rescued me.

I focused on the sacristy door. The bell tingled and the pair of acolytes entered. The congregation coughed once and rose. The silent procession of the Holy Name Society began and I held my breath, straining every faculty of perception, not for the monsignor or my father's cronies or my old school chums but one. It was he I wanted, he I was afraid to see.

Two hours later, after the Mass during which I'd wanted only to chat with my solemn neighbors, and the breakfast banquet during which I'd ignored their openings, I was nearly out of patience because I'd yet to make contact of any kind with him. In the shrilly lit cavernous parish hall below the church he was being introduced by Monsignor Riordan. We had eaten our scrambled eggs and toast and now were smoking and sipping coffee, carefully not clinking the cup and saucer. The pastor's legendary ability to unsettle his parishioners was related in part to the rude disproportion of size between his head, which was huge and topped off by a bush of gray hair, and his body, which was slope-shouldered, waistless and too small. Physically he was graceless and disjointed, but he was a cultivated man and an accomplished orator of the Bishop Sheen school. When he spoke, even in conversation, he commanded absolute attention. "And Father O'Shea told me that even at the last moment, Sergeant Maguire could still have saved himself. That helicopter was right above his head. All he had to do was reach up and seize it. They were calling for him to do that. But did he? We know he didn't and we know what he suffered as a result. But why? Why didn't he latch on to that helicopter and hold on to it for dear life, and let it bring him safely home? Well, I'll tell you why. Because he wouldn't leave his brother to the mercy of those atheistic Communists, that's why. Father O'Shea said Sergeant Maguire was holding his mortally wounded comrade the way our Blessed Lady held her dear Son down from the cross. 'A Battlefield Pietà,' he called it. Sergeant Maguire preferred the final comfort of his compatriot to the solace of his own safety. Father O'Shea told me that there were tears in his eyes as that helicopter pulled away—and Father O'Shea, I'll tell you, men, is one tough Irishman—yet there were tears in his eyes as he watched the Reds closing in on Sergeant Maguire and his wounded
amicus.
And Father O'Shea said running through his mind over and over was that great line from Scripture, 'Greater love than this hath no man...'

"And do you know what I said to Father O'Shea, men? I said, 'You're damn right. Because he's his father's son and a Good Shepherd boy, and that's how we grow them here.' You know our motto:
Deus et Patria.
We teach our boys to give their all to God and Country, because God and Country have given all to us. Men, I want you all to stand up and welcome home Sergeant Michael Maguire of the United States Army."

We stood and clapped for a long time, and more than one of those men had tears in his eyes as Michael, resplendent in his brown uniform with its simple row of colored bars pinned to its breast, took his place at the podium. He was blushing so fiercely and he was so thin and his hair was so short and he stood so rigidly at attention that he seemed altogether unlike himself. It was my first unobstructed view of him, and I can't for the life of me tell you what I thought. I suspect I was hoping rather desperately that he was not about to say some version of "Aw, shucks, a man just does what he has to do." But also I hoped he wouldn't second the monsignor's saccharine canonization of him. I was not unmoved by the facts of his heroism or by the monsignor's reference to his long-dead father, but there were no tears in my eyes. I was afraid for Michael, having seen for the first time the new peril he had to deal with. Having survived the war as a hero, he had to survive the peace as one.

Finally the audience stopped clapping and sat again. When the last scraping of chairs had faded and quiet had settled over the men and their transfixed sons, Michael began to speak while staring at his hands, which were at rest on the podium. "I guess you're hoping to hear about the war, but I can't tell you much about it because I was only in combat a month."

He looked up and grinned and a few men laughed.

"It ended for me a long time ago." Michael let his eyes drift across the hall and I braced myself, thinking he would see me any minute.

"You probably want to hear about the Chinese prison camp I was in, but to tell you the truth there's not much to say about it. Two and a half years of nothing happening, nothing at all. What can you say about that?" He grinned again, but more awkwardly. He knew the audience expected some momentous statement and he was saying right off that he didn't have one to make.

"But Monsignor Riordan mentioned his good friend Father O'Shea, and I did want to say a word or two about him. Father O'Shea was in that helicopter because
he
had stayed behind with the wounded when it seemed certain the Chinese would take them. What struck me about that, and I think other GIs too, was that it seemed, well, not that surprising that the chaplain would do that. I mean he volunteered and all, and he didn't have to, and any other guy who volunteered to stay behind when the enemy is just down the hill, well we would have just thought he was nuts, you know?"

We laughed hard, all relieved at his lack of pompousness.

"But, well, Father O'Shea was a priest and I guess what I'm trying to say is that when the average Joe does something like that, he gets treated like a hero because the average Joe isn't supposed to stick his neck out. But well, if a guy happens to be a priest, then we change what we expect. A priest stays behind with the wounded and everybody says, Well, of course. He's a priest. That's what he's here for. And I guess that just makes me feel real proud to be a Catholic. I know I felt that way in Korea. See, in the army the Catholic guys feel sort of defensive about the priests, and when they're good ones, we're proud of them. Father O'Shea, well he was the best and everybody knew that. And it didn't matter if you were Jewish or even an atheist. He was with you no matter what you were. Of course if you were Catholic, he was
really
with you."

He stopped while we laughed warmly. Monsignor Riordan was nodding dramatically at his place, feeding the laughter. It faded and Michael resumed, more solemnly. "And I know that if Father O'Shea could have, he would have taken my place on that hill and later in the POW camp. He would have taken my place for any of it. And I'll tell you something, there were a lot of days when I'd have let him."

We laughed again, but quietly. That audience of three hundred plumbers, cops, carpenters and telephone repairmen was beaming at Michael. Eyes glistened everywhere in the hall. Pride, admiration, gratitude filled the spaces above us, like angels. But the sons, teenaged boys mostly, had reason to squirm. Each of them at that moment, by virtue of not being Michael Maguire, was a disappointment to his father.

"People have told me I was pretty special because I was lucky enough to pull through the time in the camp in pretty good shape. It sort of embarrasses me because I know I shouldn't be getting any credit for it." Michael stopped and for an instant he looked right at me, but there wasn't a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Finally he said, "I have to give credit where it's due and that's with God. This is the first talk I agreed to give since I got home. You can probably tell I don't do this much. I didn't do it at all in China."

We liked him needling himself, and were edified by his testimony. This was an audience of devout men, but they had no patience for overt expressions of piety and would tolerate sermons only from the clergy, if that. But this kid had earned the right. They liked him for his reticence. He was still a blue-collar guy and knew it.

"When Monsignor Riordan asked me to talk to you I thought about it and I said I would because Good Shepherd gave me my faith. The monsignor knocked it into me."

Laughs again and coughing, nods all around. Monsignor Riordan had been known to clip altar boys on the ear right in the sanctuary. Once, during Mass, when I gave him a finger towel that was wet he threw it in my face.

"And I figured this would be a good chance for me to thank God sort of publicly, which is something I promised myself I'd do. Or maybe I should say I promised Him. So anyway, that's what I'm doing up here. Not that God needs it particularly, but, well, I do."

And suddenly Michael stopped talking and bowed his head. We realized he was going to pray now, and we all automatically made some shift in posture, uncrossing our legs, scooting to the edge of our chairs, dropping our heads onto our hands so that we wouldn't have to watch. We snuffed out our cigarettes and as always we coughed.

Michael said so softly one had to strain to hear him, "Thank you, Almighty God, for getting me through and for bringing me home." He paused, then for a long moment was utterly still. I looked up at him. He resembled a statue, a GI at prayer. And I realized there was not an ounce of swagger in him, no artfulness or conceit. I don't know that I'd ever had the experience of seeing a person for exactly what he was. He was not a pretender of any sort, and he had come before us to claim nothing. Therefore we'd have given him anything. My anxieties in relation to our reunion dropped away. He was unlike anyone I knew. Straight as an arrow. Square as a die. A profoundly good man. I thought him beautiful.

"And...," he continued softly, "...may the souls of the departed rest in peace, amen."

I made the sign of the cross too. Who was I kidding? Agnostic Fosdick! At that moment, because Michael Maguire believed in God I did. I was only the first of many people to react to him that way.

He looked up at us now, somewhat helplessly. We looked back at him.

Finally, Monsignor Riordan stood up and began to clap, and so did we. But I sensed a reluctance all around me. Applause was off the mark. Not even a standing ovation was what the moment wanted. The young sergeant had touched us all and had made every category we might have applied to him—hero, leader, saint—irrelevant. We just would like to have sat there for a moment longer and looked at him.

Before the applause stopped, Monsignor Riordan shook Michael's hand and smoothly drew him back to his place at the head table. He picked up his napkin and pulled his chair out. He nodded once at the audience, his first acknowledgment of the ovation, and then, only then, he looked directly at me and his eyes held mine, held me. His look made me feel caressed.

"H
E
is a tower unleaning," I said to myself, that opening line of John Crowe Ransom's, as I watched Michael greet the others. After the breakfast broke up a reception line had formed spontaneously. The men and their sons waited decorously to shake his hand, but I hung back. How could I possibly have greeted him that way, as if he were a politician I wanted favors from? On the other hand how could I presume to set myself apart? Maybe I was just one of the gang. From Olympus didn't all mortals look alike?

"Good morning, Frank," Monsignor Riordan said, startling me. "Hello, Monsignor." I shook his hand manfully enough, but he'd set my insides to quivering, as always.

"What do you think of your old friend?"

We both looked across the hall at Michael, who was graciously, patiently saying hello to each man, not with poise exactly, but with an utterly engaging awkwardness that served both to underscore his virtuousness and to put the Society members at ease. "I think he looks good, Monsignor. Real good."

"So do you, all decked out..." With a judging glance he took in my double-breasted suit, my starched shirt and tie, my polished wing tips. I had my overcoat over my arm, and my wide-banded felt hat hung at the end of my fingers. Like all college boys of the day I dressed the part of a bank teller or an FBI agent.

"...We don't see enough of you around here. You shouldn't forget your old friends, Frank."

"I don't get back much, Monsignor."

"I gather that. And you didn't go to Communion either."

I blushed despite myself. In the old days when we all went to Confession on Saturday, if you didn't go to Communion on Sunday, it meant you'd masturbated Saturday night or, if you'd had a date, you'd copped a feel. I remembered our all-purpose if unconvincing cover: "I broke my fast, Monsignor."

He grunted. "How are Mom and Dad? We miss them since they moved to Queens."

"They're fine."

"Your father talking to you yet?"

My father hadn't spoken to me for a year after I'd chosen NYU over Fordham. My objection to the latter wasn't the Jesuits or that it was Catholic, but that it was only across the river from Inwood. It meant I'd have had to live at home, and not even my father's wrath was enough to make me do that. My father eventually softened toward me, but my family would never recover from the wound of our breach. It mortified me that the pastor knew about it. His hostile pressing made me feel deprived of oxygen. "My dad and I get along fine, Monsignor."

"Good. Glad to hear it. I know your mother was brokenhearted."

I forced a smile. "She's fine too."

We laid off each other and let our gazes drift back to Michael. After a moment the monsignor said, "Father O'Shea told me he was simply the bravest soldier anyone had ever seen over there. He saved a lot of lives I guess, but you wouldn't know it from him."

It occurred to me that Michael's greatest achievement was to have forced this bitter old fart to suspend his mordant disdain. I'd never heard him speak admiringly of anyone.

"And Father O'Shea knows what he's talking about. He's the head army chaplain in Germany now." The monsignor looked at me. "A colonel."

"Is that right?"

He stared at the bridge of my nose—for every Michael Maguire there are a thousand bums like you.