Works and Days

Retreat

2

“So what’s Father Heinz really like?” Diggs leaned in and asked Geoff Ford once the newer priest had set off on his walk around the lake.

“Whaddo you mean what’s he like?”

This from Jim Addison.

“He means,” Chayne said, “none of us ever talks to him for long. Everyone’s wife and daughter is in love with him. He plans great masses. He’s the most handsome priest this side of The Thornbirds, but we don’t know anything about him.”

“He’s almost too perfect to be real,” Diggs said.

“You act like there’s something wrong with being perfect,” Jim Addison sounded offended.

“Firstly,” this from Chayne, “Robert Heinz is not perfect. But it just doesn’t seem like he’s human.”

“Maybe,” John spoke up for the first time tonight, “you guys ought to give him a chance.”

“Everyone’s giving him a chance,” Geoff Ford said. “Everyone likes him.”

“He’s a great guy,” Jeff Cordino spoke up, “but he’s just hard to know. You wonder what’s beyond the... the face. Kind of like when I first met Thom.”

Thom looked at Jeff, surprised.

“That’s how I used to feel,” Jeff Cordino explained.

“Well,” Jeff sat back. “I don’t really know what he’s like. I mean. He’s busy. He runs around and prays a lot. Has a lot of meetings. He’s… a lot of busyness. I don’t know much about him, really. I guess I haven’t really tried to find out.”

“I just...” Diggs began, “I just can’t see him coming down to have a drink at the Blue Jewel.”

“I can see him,” Chayne differed, lifting a finger. “I can see him there, inviting himself. But I can’t see anyone inviting him.”

“I don’t really know anything about anyone here,” said Chuck Shrader.

“I’m so rude,” Jeff Cordino smacked his own forehead.

“No, Jeff, you introduced everyone. I was just saying. I don’t know anything... Especially about that Father Heinz. But he’s a nice enough guy, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t trying to say he wasn’t,” Diggs spoke quietly. “I just wanted to know... What he thinks about when he goes off alone to walk around the lake. It seems like a lonely sort of life.”

“Well, now I’m depressed,” said Chayne. “If there’s no more gossip, I think I’m going to bed.”

“You can’t just go to bed,” Ted protested. “It’s only ten o’clock.”

“Not even,” Thom looked at his watch.

“There’s nothing to do but look at each other,” Chayne protested, rising. “The boys already disappeared.”

“We could go to the liquor store!” Diggs suggested.

“We’re on a retreat!” Bill Dwyer looked disgusted, and the look on Bill Dwyer’s face was enough to make Chayne say, “Great idea, Diggs, let’s go. We’ll take the hearse.”

“Who else is coming?” Chayne turned around and asked while Diggs started up the hearse.

“If you all start drinking, I’m leaving,” Jim Addison said.

To which Ted Weirbach and Chuck Shrader stood up and followed Chayne and climbed into the car.

“Father Geoff,” Jim turned to Geoff Ford, sitting still by the fire. “Tell them to stop.”

“The most I can do,” Father Geoff half shouted, not even looking away from the fire, “is strongly advise against it!”

But by then the hearse was strongly driving away, leaving Thom, Bill, David and Jeff Cordino to stare at its passing along with a flabbergasted Jim Addison, who turned to them, sputtered and trumped off into the woods.

“He’s a stick in the mud, anyway,” Thom thought he heard Geoff Ford mumble.

Russell tried to be passive for the first few minutes with the other three boys. He expected Cassidy to take the lead. Cassidy was tall, though Russell now realized, not much taller than him, with dark hair all a mess and chubby cheeks, which made him sound fat so Russell revised in his head, full cheeks. Soon it became apparent that no one was going to suggest anything, so Russell said, “I’m going on a walk. I need my scarf.”

“It is starting to get cold,” Dave Armstrong agreed.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t wait until after Easter to have this,” Russell went on, coming out of Chayne’s tent with his scarf, Dave going in to get his jacket. Niall and Cassidy hung off to the sides and Niall, hands jammed in his pockets said, “I don’t know why we had to have it all.”

Russell wished Gilead was here. He was walking ahead of all of them, past the moonlit lake. Niall and Cassidy walked silently beind were walking silently, and while Dave went behind. Russell thought it strange that Cassidy was not saying anything. All this afternoon he’d been talking, and sometimes he came to the RCIA meetings where he always had something to say about Jesus, the Blessed Mother, the Holy Father and everything in between. Cassidy was the reason his father was being Confirmed. Now, the tall, dark boy was saying nothing. Russell was not anxious for him to speak, and did not feel comfortable enough in his presence to pretend that he was. Obviously, neither did anyone else.

Now that they were by that unfortunate pier where he had fallen out with his father, they all heard laughter from across the lake, and Russell climbed the rocks to look back.

“That’s our camp!” he said.

“What could they be laughing at?” Dave, beside him, asked.

Russell shrugged.

Oddly enough, Dave chose this time to ask, “Russell, whaddo you think of my father?”

“Mr. Armstrong?” as if Dave had another.

And as if he did have another, Dave Armstrong nodded.

“I think he’s a good guy,” Russell said decisively.

Dave, looking pleased said, “Me too.”

Now the other two boys had come up to the rocks as well, and Dave said, “I like your dad too, Russell.”

“Well, thank, you Dave.”

What else could he say?

“I hate mine,” Niall said suddenly. “I think he’s the biggest asshole on the planet.”

Russell was a little shocked by his classmate’s honesty, and a little shamed because he would have said the same thing not long ago, and now and again, he grew afraid that he might say it again.

“Uncle Bill?” Dave sounded wounded.

“You shouldn’t say things like that about your father,” Cassidy told Niall.

“Well, I shouldn’t have a father like him,” was all Niall said, shrugging, and he climbed off the rocks and trudged into the woods. They followed. Russell was almost in as much shock about what Niall had said as was Dave, except that Russell knew from past experience that the parent the rest of the world saw could be a very different animal from the one you knew at home.

“I think Mom made him take me on this retreat,” Niall went on. “Because he really doesn’t like me at all.”

“Uncle Bill likes you!” started Dave.

“Uncle Bill! Uncle Bill!” Niall mimicked. “Cameron came two years before me, and when I was born there was no room left for... whatever. Dave—and you too, Russell, you don’t know how great you’ve got it being the only kids. Even if your parents are shitty. And, Russell, I saw your mom throwing your Dad’s shit out the window and carrying on. I live right next door, so I know the crazy family you have. But even if they don’t treat you right, you never have to stand back and watch the way they treat someone else better. My sister can’t do anything wrong. Everything she does is perfection. When Cameron goes to the bathroom, Dad wants the whole family to stand up and clap. When she cheerleads, you’d think she’s Baryshnikov or something. But my dancing—”

“You dance?” Russell interrupted.

“Is that a problem?”

“No... I just never knew. It’s kinda neat.”

Niall, caught off guard, smiled a little, but went on. “He thinks I’m a sissy for it. He thinks all my music is sissy music. How would you like to have a dad who headbangs to Black Sabbath and looks down on your Brahms records, or on your Beethoven and says ‘Son, one day you’ll get over that crap and listen to some real music!”

“Well, tell us how you really feel—” Dave started, then his cousin turned on him and shouted, “FUCK YOU!”

Startled by his own outburst, Niall Dwyer became again the quiet Niall Dwyer they all knew, or at least were used to.

“I’m sorry, Dave. It’s just. No one knows what it’s like.”

“I think—” Russell heard himself speaking, and stopped when all eyes went to him. “I think... that most of us do, but no one ever says anything. And so... it get’s lonely. You know?”

Only crickets chirped, then the quiet night was interrupted by the roar of a semi, and its lights blazed out the road before them and a fluourescent lit gas station on the other side of the trees.

“I’m hungry,” Cassidy said with emphasis, as if he’d just made a major discovery about himself.

Another car whizzed by and Russell said, “Me too.”

 They headed for the gas station.