Vatican II, in the early sixties, priests just did not retire. They died, like as not, on a Saturday afternoon while hearing kids’ confessions, halfway through an absolution, bored to death. Somehow, it all seemed more appropriate-dying in the saddle, as it were.
Now there was mandatory retirement at age seventy. Retirement to what? The priest had no wife to live out with him “the Golden Years.” No family with whom to visit or to invite home. Today’s Senior Priest might move to a warmer clime, there to vegetate. Or hang in there doing whatever parish chores he chose. What with the vocations crisis, priestly retirement was a luxury the Church could ill afford.
Koesler hunched his shoulders. Was it getting cold?
He was beginning to develop a philosophy that “nothing is as good as it was.” Not the music, not the movies, not the newspapers; not entertainment, not cars, not pride in workmanship, not anything. Well, if he was developing into a full-fledged curmudgeon, he was of an age at which it seemed appropriate.
He walked along the beach, almost mesmerized by the rhythmic lapping of the waves.
On another, brighter aspect, he reflected, this was just about his favorite season, autumn. And it was just beginning now, a bit ahead of time, on the second day of September. The sun had already begun to tilt from its directly overhead summertime course. There was a nip in the air. Footballs were flying. Baseball was nearing the home stretch. Soon the leaves would display their breathtaking colors.
The only fly he could discern in the present ointment was the commitment he had made to that blasted writers’ workshop.
Bob Koesler was forever repeating that same blunder: accepting invitations to events many months in the future. In analyzing his own pattern, it seemed that when invited to participate in something in the distant future, he would convince himself that it was so far off that it would never happen. Or that perhaps in the meantime he would die.
In any case, there was no getting around this one. The panel of experts (or “faculty” as they were called) would assemble tomorrow at Marygrove. And he would be there with them.
Apart from having become a conscientious reader of mystery novels, he could think of no reason why he should be a “resource person.” True, he had had some small contact with Detroit’s Homicide Department. But that had been quite fortuitous. The Fickle Finger of Fate, as the late lamented TV program, “Laugh-In” put it. It was a case of his being at the right-or wrong-place at the right-or wrong-time, depending on how one looked at it.
He had been of some small help in solving a few cases in the past. But that had not been due to any native expertise in crime detection on his part. No, all the cases he’d been involved with had a religious, mostly Catholic, element. So he had been able to supply the missing church ingredient needed in the resolution of such investigation. Now that he considered his present involvement, he could not imagine why he had ever accepted this invitation.
The only consolation-and it was not inconsiderable-was the prospect of his meeting the four authors.
Koesler had a special regard for writers. He had read at least one offering of each author on the panel. It was something like experiencing a Dick Francis novel. Francis had been a successful jockey. And, regularly, the race track provided the background for his plots. Thus, in addition to providing a pleasant diversion, a Francis book was more than likely to give one added insight into the racing game.
So it was with the present four. And it wasn’t only that theirs was a religious background, but that their backgrounds were so diverse. Besides the entertainment and the mystery, the reader got an insight into the specialized world of an Episcopal (and married) priest, or the drastically changed nun’s world, or life in a cloistered world, or the world of the Jewish culture, so filled with tradition and law.
Koesler was, of course, steeped in the unique lifestyle of the Roman Catholic priest. With his express interest in religion, he found fulfilling the revelations the others provided. He was eager to meet them.
He was less than enthusiastic about being made available as a “resource person.” Especially since he sincerely felt he had little to offer. But he had agreed to do it. So, ready or not, here he came.
Koesler realized that he was shivering ever so slightly. He checked his watch. It was getting late. The imminence of sundown, plus the breeze from the lake, must have lowered the temperature.
Quiet, undisturbed moments were rare and such time passed quickly. He would have to collect McNiff and head home. Both of them had Saturday evening, as well as Sunday, liturgies to offer.
He turned and walked toward the cabin.
Around this time tomorrow he would be preparing to go to Marygrove and meet his fellow participants in the workshop. His final thought on the matter concerned Klaus Krieg. The one who, in Koesler’s view, did not fit.
Krieg was a publisher, not an author. That part was all right; writers would be pretty lonely people without publishers. It wasn’t that a publisher, as such, was out of place at such a conference. It was the stuff that Krieg published. In Koesler’s view. P.G.’s publications were simply not in the same literary league as the material turned out by these authors.
It was obvious that P.G. Press made money-lots of it. But then, someone once said that no one had ever gone broke by underestimating the taste of the American public. Klaus Krieg might not have been the original author of that aphorism, but he certainly seemed to bear it out. In all honesty, Koesler had to admit that his knowledge of the quality of Krieg’s entrepreneurial empire was largely secondhand. Koesler had read only one book published by P.G. Press. The setting had been New York’s Catholic Church. And if the story had been anywhere near true, most New York parishes would have been forced to close: There wouldn’t have been any priests around to say Mass or hear confessions, let alone administer a parish. According to that book, most New York priests were in bed pretty much around the clock, and hardly alone.
It wasn’t just that the book needlessly and gratuitously debased the priesthood-although that was bad enough. Women, in the book, were depicted as kittenish creatures curled in sacerdotal arms, and grateful in a depraved way for the macho favors they had been granted.
Once he was sure the book could not possibly have been salvaged by a single redeeming feature, Koesler had put it-and all future P.G. books-aside forever. From reports he’d received from others, and from reviews and news articles he’d read, he had concluded that his experience with P.G. was by no means isolated.
P.G. Press was giving both religious and romance novels a very bad name. But from all indications, P.G. Press was making money-lots of it.
And that was not even the half of it. The greater money-making venture, by far, was the Praise God Network. Klaus Krieg was among the foremost of the current crop of televangelists-once again, as far as Koesler was concerned, giving religion a very bad reputation.
All in all, he was not yearning to meet Klaus Krieg. Or, as he was sometimes disrespectfully referred to by some of the media, “Blitz” Krieg-German for “lightning war.”
Nor could Koesler guess what had motivated the organizers of this workshop to include Krieg. Those writers who had such an evident respect and reverence for religion really had nothing in common with Krieg except the most tenuous connection with some sort of religious expression. How would or could they relate to such a person?
Koesler did not fancy confrontations. And he had the clear premonition he was walking right into a classic showdown.
But here he was at the cabin. He entered to find almost everyone in helpless laughter. The only one who seemed not to be getting the joke was Koesler’s host, Patrick McNiff. McNiff seemed bewildered.
Sklarski, the first to show signs of recovery, gasped, “Tell him. . tell Koesler what you just said.”
“What’s so funny about it?” McNiff was obviously flustered. “I don’t see anything so funny about it.”
“Tell him,” Sklarski urged.
“Wait,” Tracy interrupted, “we’ve got to set it up. It’s no good without the setup.”
Sensing he was the butt of a joke, a joke he didn’t get, McNiff showed clear signs of increasing anger.
“I woke him up just before you came in,” Sklarski said to Koesler. “I asked him why he bothered coming all the way over to Canada just to sleep all afternoon. Then. .” he turned back to the baffled man, “what did you say, McNiff?”
McNiff was gathering his belongings-a book, a couple of magazines, an electric shaver-and slamming them into a duffel bag. “I don’t remember.” He was turning defensive.
“Come on, why did you sleep all afternoon?”
“Because I’ve got a cold,” McNiff tried tentatively. He wasn’t sure whether it was this statement that the others had found humorous. It was something he’d said, he just wasn’t sure what. No one laughed. This wasn’t
