The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

by Thomas J. Hubschman

Copyright © 2012 Thomas J. Hubschman

Published by Savvy Press at Smashwords

ISBN: 978-1-939113-01-6

Cover art by Eric Black

All rights reserved.

All the characters in this book are
fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is
purely coincidental.

Published by:

Savvy Press PO Box 63

Salem, NY 12865

http://www.savvypress.com

Other Books by Thomas J. Hubschman

Available at Smashwords:

Song of the Mockingbird
(Novel)

Look at Me Now
(Novel)

My Bess
(Novel)

The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

Billy Boy
(Novel)

   
CHAPTER ONE

   
Diocesan
rules
forbid going about the streets of
one’s parish in sport shirt and slacks. But there was no rule
governing the sort of attire a priest should wear when he set out
on his vacation. Many men kept the roman collar on until they were
safely out of the diocese, then changed to casual dress. Father
Walther was of two minds on the subject: if parishioners saw him
drive off in a Hawaiian print, there was no telling if the story
would include a sexy blonde by the time it finished its rounds. On
the other hand, a priest had as much right as the next person to a
life of his own. If some busybodies wanted to gossip, they would
find opportunity to do so, no matter how well or badly he behaved.
He liked to think he was striking a small blow for clerical
liberation by leaving town in mufti. But he also realized that few
of the tongues that could be expected to wag were up and about at
one o’clock on a Monday morning.

   
He liked
driving at night. There was less traffic, it was cool, and there
was no glare to contend with. He got to see little scenery, but how
much countryside was there to observe along the turnpikes and
interstates that connected the cities of the eastern seaboard? A
mechanic had pronounced his Ford aging but healthy. That was like
telling a ninety-year-old there was nothing wrong with his heart.
The mechanic gave, or pretended to give, a break on labor he did on
the car, making it difficult for the priest to dispute his
diagnoses. It was just one of the many special considerations a
cleric suffered at the hands of the laity. Someone was always
trying to do you a favor—the milkman who left a free quart of
orange juice, then looked as if you had run over his dog when you
turned down his offer to sell you twice the cream you needed (at a
discount, of course); the used car dealer who always had a “clean”
heap stashed away on a corner of the lot that he was saving for the
pope, Jesus Christ or, in the event either of those two preferred
public transportation, yourself.

   
The
swamps of Secaucus were behind him. So were the refineries and
other evil humors of central Jersey. It was clear sailing all the
way to Baltimore. He had been holding the Ford to fifty-five miles
an hour, not out of respect for the legal speed limit but to lessen
the strain on its organs. The distance between exits was steadily
lengthening. Half the traffic consisted of long-distance trucks
cruising along at sixty-five and seventy, creating a turbulence as
they passed that caused the Ford to veer skittishly from one side
of its lane to the other. New York stations had disappeared from
the radio dial, replaced by hillbilly music and all-night
preachers.

   
It was
as if the bonds that tied him to his parish were loosening. Maybe
that was what he liked about these night journeys to his mother’s.
Everything and everyone, from the huge tractor-trailers that tried
to sweep him off the road to the sleepy waitress in the Howard
Johnson’s he had stopped at for coffee a few exits back, took him
for what he seemed to be—a (young) middle-aged man on an
indeterminate journey. No one tipped his hat in deference to the
roman collar he wore the other fifty weeks of the year. No one felt
an urge to make inane conversation or abrupt confession. And,
perhaps best of all, no one felt obliged to censor his or her
behavior and vocabulary. It was like being a spy in a foreign
country without any of the risks. If someone should take a heart
attack at a lunch counter or fall asleep at the wheel, he had only
to reach into his glove compartment for the narrow satin stole that
proved his priestly identity. The rest of the time he was Joe
Schmoe.

   
The
coffee he had drunk an hour ago was beginning to wear off. If he
didn’t get more soon, the temptation to close his eyes would become
acute. But even if he pushed the Ford to an even sixty miles an
hour, he would have to keep awake another half hour without the
benefit of caffeine. He should have asked his housekeeper to fill a
thermos for him. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep and run the car off
the road. Of all ways to die, that surely was the most
senseless.

   
He
pumped the brake pedal to alert the huge tractor-trailer in his
rearview mirror that he was slowing down. The truck’s massive
grille, headlights blazing like the eyes of some angry monster,
closed to within a few feet of his rear bumper, then swerved into
the outside lane and all but blew him off the road. He pulled
cautiously onto the shoulder, his own headlights scarcely able to
penetrate the darkness.

   
Even
before he had come to a full stop and turned on his flashers, the
sweet damp smell of open country filled the car. He rolled up the
windows and reached into the back seat for the gray cardigan he
kept there. Then he folded his arms and inclined his head against
the backrest. He expected to fall asleep immediately, but the
sounds outside the car, not just crickets but a kind of muted
primeval chatter broken irregularly by the roar of a passing truck,
kept him awake. He felt no fear of anything that might be concealed
beyond the low scrub bordering the roadway, but the unfamiliar
noises kept a part of his mind alert when the rest wanted badly to
grab forty winks. It seemed a long time before he finally felt
himself drift off.

   
The
tapping noise made no sense at first, nor did the bright light
shining in his eyes. Then he saw the head of the flashlight. As he
rolled down his window he noted with relief the gray uniform behind
it.

   “
Anything
wrong?” the trooper asked.

   
He responded
with a sleepy version of his clerical smile, designed more to offer
reassurance than to receive that comfort.

   “
Just taking a
nap, Officer. My eyes were getting heavy.”

   
He only
remembered there was nothing visible to indicate his priesthood
when the trooper directed his flashlight into the back seat, then
trained it on the unoccupied place beside him, and finally onto his
lap where, he only then realized, an erection was
subsiding.

   “
There’s
a rest stop down the road where you can get coffee,” the trooper
said, mercifully pointing the light away before he had had time to
notice the priest’s blush. Father Walther had a chance now to see
his face. It looked surprisingly young.

   “
I’ll do that.
Thanks very much for stopping.”

   
The trooper
hesitated, then nodded cautiously and returned to the white patrol
car parked behind the Ford. He got in, said something into his car
radio and pulled back onto the Turnpike.

   
It was
one thing to wake up with an erection caused by a full bladder.
Even that rarely occurred anymore, and besides, he had taken care
to relieve himself at his last stop. When he was younger, in his
teens and twenties, he rarely awoke without a stiff penis. He used
to wonder if it wasn’t a sign he might not have a vocation after
all. But his confessor and, later in the seminary, his spiritual
mentors assured him there would only be something wrong if he did
not get erections. His vocation did not mean he was not a sexual
being. What mattered was how he controlled these libidinous forces,
whether or not he sublimated them (as a psychologist once put it to
him and his fellow seminarians) into “productive channels.” He had
known priests well into their thirties and forties who were still
troubled by sex. But once he had decided on a celibate life it was
as if he had been granted a dispensation from that burden. His
sexual self did not disappear (the occasional wet dream was enough
to dispel that illusion), but his sexual self became like a talent
he simply chose never to exercise, like being able to throw a
baseball ninety miles an hour or lift great weights. He liked to
think that if he had been called to a non-celibate life, he would
be one of those men who never gave a second thought to any woman
but his wife.

   
He
turned the ignition key, but nothing happened, not even the groan
of a dying battery. He switched off and tried again, with the same
result. He tried his headlights. They too were dead.

   
He
fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment and got out to
have a look under the hood. Apart from the dipstick, radiator cap,
and battery leads, an automobile engine was foreign territory to
him. His most recent problems with the car had been in the
transmission and suspension, not with anything that could
conceivably cause sudden death. He closed the hood, then realized
he should leave it open and attach a white rag to his radio
antenna. He still could not believe that if he just turned the
ignition key one more time, the engine would not start as usual.
But it did not.

   
He
waited the better part of an hour for a trooper to arrive—the same
who had stopped earlier. He explained the problem, half-expecting
the cop to have a look at the engine himself. But the young man
only glanced contemptuously at the car’s ragged interior, returned
to his patrol car, and sent a radio message.

   “
They’ll be a
tow along.”

   “
I’m sure it’s
only a loose wire.”

   
The trooper gave
the Ford another look, this time noting a rusty dent in the front
fender. The look seemed to say that anyone who took a wreck like
this out on the highway,
his
highway, could expect to get just what he
deserved. The priest wanted to point out that the car’s beat-up
condition was the result of long service in the Lord’s work. But he
doubted that fact would make any difference to the cop (whom he
took for Protestant, in any case, because of the English name on
his ID plate).

   
They
sat, the trooper in his patrol car, Father Walther in the Ford,
until the tow truck arrived. By then it was past four a.m. Even if
the serviceman could fix the car right there on the highway (he
could not) he would still be late getting to his mother’s. The best
he could hope for was a prompt repair at the garage.

   “
Tore
through here like a cyclone,” the tow driver said, his fat pink
arms encircling the truck’s steering wheel. “Lost power three
hours.”

   
They
were racing along an unlit country road. Father Walther could see
the Ford in the sideview mirror bouncing behind like a trussed
animal. His experience of country places was limited to Boy Scout
hikes and seminary picnics. There was scarcely a vacant lot left in
the northern New Jersey suburb where his parish was
located.