A Graveyard for Lunatics

?And as fine.?

?It?s good to hear a writer praise his boss. I rarely did.?

?You!?? I exclaimed.

Father Kelly laughed. ?As a young man I wrote nine screenplays, none ever shot, or should have been shot, at sunrise. Until age thirty-five I did my damnedest to sell, sell- out, get-in, get-on. Then I said to hell with it and joined the priesthood, late. It was hard. The church does not take such as me off the streets frivolously. But I sprinted through seminary in style, for I had worked on a mob of Christian documentary films. Now what of you??

I sat laughing.

?What?s funny?? asked Father Kelly.

?I have this notion that half the writers at the studio, knowing about your years of writing, might just sneak over here not for confession but answers! How do you write this scene, how end that, how edit, how??

?You?ve rammed the boat and sunk the crew!? The priest downed his whiskey and refilled, chortling, and then he and I rambled, like two old screen toughs, over movie-script country. I told him my Messiah, he told me his Christ.

Then he said: ?Sounds like you?ve done well, patching the script. But then the old boys, two thousand years back, did patchwork too, if you remark the difference between Matthew and John.?

I stirred in my chair with a furious need to babble, but dared not throw boiling oil on a priest while he dispensed cool holy spring water.

I stood up. ?Well, thanks, father.?

He looked at my outstretched hand. ?You carry a gun,? he said, easily, ?but you?ve not fired it. Put your behind back on that chair.?

?Do all priests talk like that??

?In Ireland, yes. You?ve danced around the tree, but shaken no apples. Shake.?

?I think I will have a bit of this.? I picked up the snifter and sipped. ?Well? Imagine that I were a Catholic??

?I?m imagining.?

?In need of confession??

?They always are.?

?And came here after midnight??

?An odd hour.? But a candle was lit in each of his eyes.

?And knocked on the door??

?Would you do that?? He leaned slightly toward me. ?Go on.?

?Would you let me in?? I asked.

I might have shoved him back in his chair.

?Once, weren?t churches open all hours?? I pursued.

?Long ago,? he said, much too quickly.

?So, father, any night I came in dire need, you would not answer??

?Why wouldn?t I?? The candlelight flared in his eyes, as if I had raised the wick to quicken the flare.

?For the worst sinner, maybe, in the history of the world, father??

?There?s no such creature.? Too late, his tongue froze on this last dread noun. His eyes swiveled and batted. He revised his proclamation to give it a new go-round.

?No such person lives.?

?But,? I pursued, ?what if damnation, Judas himself, came begging?? I stopped??late??

?Iscariot? I?d wake for him, yes.?

?And what if, father, this lost terrible man in need should knock not one night a week but most nights of the year? Would you wake, or ignore the knock??

That did it. Father Kelly leaped up as if I had pulled the great cork. The color sank from his cheeks and the skin at the roots of his hair.

?You have need to be elsewhere. I will not keep you.?

?No, father.? I floundered to be brave. ?You need me to be gone. There was a knock on your door?? I blundered on? ?twenty years ago this week, late. Asleep, you heard the door banged??

?No, no more of this! Get off!?

It was the terrified shout of Starbuck, decrying Ahab?s blasphemy and his final lowering for the great white flesh.

?Out!?

?Out? You did go out, father.? My heart jumped and almost slewed me in my chair. ?And let in the crash and the din and the blood. Perhaps you heard the cars strike. Then the footsteps and then the