Deliberate Lies

By

Karl Purnell

Copyright © 1997-2000

Deliberate Lies

I Love you ,"Pandora said.

The Flying Dutchman smiled. How much do you love me? He asked.

"So much that I would walk straight into the waves and die for you now," Pandora answered.

The Flying Dutchman pulled back from her arms, remembering the dreaded words of the god who had cursed him to sail the seas forever unless he could find a woman who loved him so much she would die for him.

"And what will you sacrifice for me?" Pandora asked.

"My salvation," the Flying Dutchman answered

"What do you mean," she asked.

" You need not die for me. I will make the ultimate sacrifice so you can live," he responded. "After all, the measure of love is what one is willing to give up for it."

Paraphrase of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

Chapter One

Throughout the night, a dark-robed Jesuit priest has been gliding silently among the rows of iron beds, fingering his rosary beads and muttering his prayers as he passes by the sleeping students. The holy father keeps a careful eye on the young boarding school boys to make sure silence prevails. Reading in bed with a flashlight is prohibited and laughter from any of the students will incite his wrath. Even those who talk in their dreams are quickly wakened and told to sleep without making a sound.

At precisely 6 a.m., however, the dormitory prefect lifts a heavy brass bell from a stand near the doorway and shakes it vigorously. Then his stern voice bellows through the silent dormitory.

"Levez Vous. Levez vous, mes gars." Arise my boys.

Outside, a cold wind rattles against the window and sends gusts of snow whistling along the gray stone building. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Henry pushes back his thin, blonde hair. From a sitting position with the cover pulled over his waist, he slides off his warm cotton pajamas and pulls up his trousers. No flesh can be exposed. That is the first step toward sin.

He puts on shoes and a shirt. Then he slides off the bed and goes quickly to the bathroom to prepare for the long day ahead. He brushes his teeth at one of the many sinks lining the wall. Carelessly, he flips a tie around his neck and ties it with well practiced fingers. Then, he returns to his cot and makes his bed, making sure the gray blanket is tucked neatly beneath the mattress. His pajamas are hung on a peg in the locker behind his bed and all books and papers placed neatly on a shelf.

By 6:30 a.m, Henry slips into his blue blazer and lines up with the other boys for the cold march down the stairs to the school chapel.

The young boys walk in silence to morning prayers, stumbling half-asleep in two lines along each side of the cold hallway. Pere Benoit, the father prefect, arrives to watch like a jealous lion overlooking his cubs. Tall, powerfully built, with gray eyes and a deep voice that can range from controlled anger to warm laughter, he watches his charges through narrow, wire-rimmed glasses as he stands between the two rows of passing students.

A whispered word from the boy behind Henry to someone across the hallway brings the prefect into action. Silence is shattered like the crack of a deer rifle on a snow-filled morning. "You there, the one talking, Mets toi a genoux. On your knees," the father prefect snaps.

The young culprit moves without protest to the center of the hallway and drops to his knees. He knows the punishment. For the next half hour, he must remain kneeling on the cold tile floor. One does not argue with the Father Prefect.

Henry is the only American in this school of French Canadians but he approves of the priest’s stern actions against the boy who talked in the hallway. He’s a firm believer that discipline and punishment go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.

That’s why Henry fights with Jeremiah. A year earlier, he realized he was having conversations with a voice that advised him to do things that cause trouble. Henry named the voice after the prophet Jeremiah, who says the heart is deceitful and corrupt. Jeremiah tells Henry to look at dirty magazines in news stands, cheat on history quizzes, tell lies and even steal from stores. They have arguments with each other that go on for hours, sometimes days. Jeremiah often wins and then Henry is filled with regret. As he gets older, he’s finding it harder then ever to say no to Jeremiah.

As they take their places on the hard, wooden benches of the chapel, Henry breathes in the smell of incense and luxuriates in the glow of small votive candles burning brightly at the front of the chapel. He looks up

at the life-sized statute of the Virgin Mary, above the pulpit, with her robin’s egg blue robe, sculpted in smooth plaster. Henry begins to pray: "Hail Mary full of grace, blessed be the fruit of thy womb, Jesus" He repeats this several more times.

Henry’s friend, Piere Dufours, a tall skinny boy with red hair and a hatred for the school, sits next to him. Bored and still not fully awake, Pierre kneels, then stands and then crosses himself like a robot. Henry pays no attention to his friend. Matins are a special time for Henry, an oasis of tranquility and sometimes even ecstasy within the harsh world of College Jean de Brebeuf.

By 7 a.m., morning matins are finished and the boys have a few minutes in the recreation hall where they can talk before entering the refectory for breakfast. Pierre slides up to Henry and shows him a gold watch with a silver band strapped around his slim wrist.

"Hey Henry, like my new watch?"

"Is that gold?," Henry asks, as he holds Pierre’s arm up in the light to examine the watch. "Where did you get it?"

"Jewelry store on St. Catherine street. The owner was talking to some lady so I grabbed it and just walked out. He never knew it was gone," Pierre says proudly.

"You stole it?" Henry asks.

"Sure. Why not," Pierre answers.

"It’s wrong. That’s why. Haven’t you learned anything about honesty here?" Henry answers.

"Oh come on. Henry. You’re just as bad as the priests in this cursed school," Pierre responds as he saunters off to his locker.

Henry looks out the window, across the hockey rink with it’s shinny new coating of ice, formed during the night, after it was hosed with water. In three more days, he will be on the rink crew for an entire week. Then, he’ll have to get out of bed at 5 a.m. to help water down the school’s three hockey rinks before matins. He tries not to think how cold it will be.

He enters the refectory where Pierre has saved a seat for him. A priest calls out the benediction and then the boys launch into large plates of scrambled eggs, bacon and waffles.

"Hey Henry, you want to go into Montreal with me next Sunday?" Pierre asks.

"Not for stealing things," Henry answers.

"We’ll go to the movies," Pierre promises.

"Maybe," Henry responds.

Classes begin at eight. The boys file into the small room and take their seats. Frere Jean, a diminutive man with smooth, olive colored skin, glides gracefully around the front of the class in his cassock, instructing the class in the art of writing grammatically and with good penmanship. Having never completed the eight years of preparation for the priesthood, he has nevertheless committed his life to the Society of Jesus. Since he cannot say mass, his status among the Jesuit priests is not much above the head chef in the kitchen .

Frere Jean begins with a dictee’, reading an essay slowly so the students can write down his words. He pronounces each syllable carefully, implying that the boys should do the same when they talk. Patois French Canadian, with its guttural jumbling of words, is not a respectable way for the students of College Jean de Brebeuf to talk.

At 9 a.m., Monsieur LaFontaine arrives to teach mathematics. Dressed in a suit and tie, he seems strangely out of place among all the black robed Jesuits. A humorless and glum-faced gnome, he teaches the intricacies of calculus and geometry with a deadly boredom that almost puts Henry to sleep. The morning goes on, one class after another. History, literature and finally Latin. The phrases are drilled into the boy’s mind like a jack-hammer. In Roma, ad Roman, sub Roma. Latin is not just the province of the educated elite, it’s the language of the Catholic church. It’s importance cannot be overstated. By noon, Henry hurries downstairs with the other boys for lunch.

After a quick meal, he dresses for practice, pulling on long

socks over his pants, slipping his shin guards into place and then stepping into his padded uniform. He puts his skates on next to his locker and covers the blades with rubber guards so he can walk across the cement porch to the rink without losing the edges of his carefully sharpened blades.

Outside, intense cold hovers over the school grounds and a gray sky threatens to bring more snow. The temperature has dropped to fifteen below zero. Still, the boys skate on the open rink, racing up and down the cement-hard ice, slapping the frozen puck at the shivering goalie braced in front of the steel framed cage. Lips swell from the cold. Noses run with snot.

Pere Benoit coaches the varsity team. He skates powerfully back and forth across the rink with his black robe flying up behind him, engaging in endless shouts of encouragement to move faster, to hit opponents harder, to shoot the puck more accurately. After an hour of practicing shots on the goalie, passing the puck back and forth while skating at top speed, the boys are called by Pere Benoit to start a game. They play hard against each other. Henry is hit with a stick from behind as he goes into a corner. He turns quickly, drops his gloves and slams several punches at the angry, red face of a defenseman who cross checked him into the boards.

Pere Benoit says nothing. Fighting is part of the game but skating slowly is not. When several boys skated lackadaisically up the ice, Pere Benoit calls out, "Maurice Richard is coming to visit us this winter. You want him to see you skate like that?" The young athletes re-double their efforts at the mention of the great hockey player from Les Canadiens who is, indeed, scheduled to skate with them sometime during the season. By the end of practice, Henry walks mechanically into the refectory for supper, eats, and then lines up with the other boys for the march to evening prayers. This is his favorite time of day. The soft music of the Kyrie fills the chapel with a warm cloud of pleasant feelings . The choir begins a Gregorian chant and Henry loses himself in the bliss of spiritual euphoria.

After the service, the boys march to the study hall. Henry is exhausted. The price of playing hockey in the freezing weather has taken its toll. Latin declinations fail to focus. Math problems don’t add up. His eyes close and suddenly his head slumps against the desk in flagrant violation of the rules.

The study hall prefect is walking slowly up and down the aisles with a large wooden ruler ready to crack the hand of anyone who talks or tries to sleep. Pierre Dufours, who sits next to him, offers a warning. "Attention Henry. Ne dors pas," he whispers. Be careful. Don’t sleep. Henry forces his head up and stares once more at the blurred print in the Jesuit history book lying open on the desk.

In a few minutes however, his head drifts slowly to the desk.

Suddenly, the sharp sting of a wooden ruler cracking against Henry’s wrist, shoots through his entire arm. His head jerks up and he pulls the pain-racked limb to his chest. The prefect, a short, round priest with narrow black eyes, has smashed the ruler with the entire force of his strong arm against the sleeping boy’s hand. Then the priest looks at him in disgust. "On ne dors pas ici." We don’t sleep here, he hisses.

Henry knows that crying out or protesting would betray weakness. He bites his lower lip to keep the tears from forming in his eyes. He says nothing, although the pain is growing more intense and he can see a large welt swelling up near his knuckles. The priest turns away and steps slowly up the aisle. He took a full swing at Henry instead of the light tap normally issued as a first warning. and his friend Dufours is outraged at the excessive punishment. Dufours lifts a middle finger at the receding prefect and whispers to Henry, "Espece de fou, the stupid fool.

It was too loud. The prefect heard the insult. He whirls around and steps toward Dufours, "Did you say I’m a stupid fool ?"Defiance sweeps across the face of the young boy. Pierre looks up at the priest and slowly but clearly enunciates the words, "Oui mon pere. " Yes my father,.

"Oui mon pere?" the astonished priest repeats. "That is what you said?"

Dufours remains silent, resistance still glistening through unflinching eyes that look straight up at his accuser.

"On your knees," the study hall prefect shouts.

Pierre angles out of his desk seat and slides to his knees.

"You think I’m a stupid fool, do you?" the priest asks.

Determination holds steady on the face of the young boy. He lifts up his chin and looks directly at the study hall prefect.

"Oui mon pere you are a very stupid fool."

The stunned prefect hesitates and ,for a moment, looks around the study hall like a trapped animal trying to figure out what to do next.

Among the watching students, mouths drop and eyes pop wide at the suicidal and unheard of response which Pierre has muttered at the black-robbed priest. The prefect moves into action. Slowly and deliberately, he draws his arm back and closes his fingers into a tight ball. Then with a sudden lurch forward, he swings his fist at the face of the kneeling student. The force of the blow sends Pierre flying backwards, rolling across the floor.

The Prefect turns to Henry. "I suppose that you too think I am an "stupid fool," he snaps.

"No my father," Henry replies.

"Both of you. Report immediately to the Father Prefect. We shall soon see who runs this study hall," the priest orders.

Determined to deny the study hall prefect the satisfaction of witnessing his pain Pierre staggers slowly to his feet but does not touch his jaw. Silently, the two culprits leave the study hall, turn right down the hallway and march obediently to the dreaded office of Pere Benoit.

The father prefect is summoned from another area of the school. As they wait outside the door in the cold hallway, Henry asks Dufours why he made such an incriminating remark.

"That stupid priest hit you too hard. It wasn’t necessary," he says.

"But you didn’t have to tell him he was a fool," Henry says.

Then Dufour confesses his real motive. He hates the school and the holy fathers, but his parents won’t let him leave. The early morning mass, the strict rules of silence in the dormitory, the hallways and the study hall plus the constant emphasis on discipline and hard work have been too much for him. He is determined to do something so drastic that he will be expelled from the school. This, he admits, is his goal. He realizes he will get a beating first, but if he refuses to give in and repent, they will have to send him home.

"I hate this place and I’ll do anything to get out of here ," Pierre says.

"That’s really a dumb thing to do. You can learn a lot here," Henry tells him.

"A lot of nothing," Pierre grunts. "Who cares about Latin and Greek. Nobody talks like that anymore. Why should we have to walk everywhere in silence or go to chapel twice a day? We’re not priests. Let them live like that if they want, but not us."

Before Henry can respond, Pere Benoit appears at the end of the hallway. His cassock swishes back and forth as he approaches and sweeps past the boys into his office. "Entrez," he commands.

They enter and stand together in front of his desk. Pere Benoit explains in stern, unforgiving terms that the two boys have violated the rules of the study hall. Worse, they have displayed insolence toward the study hall prefect. This, he says, is unacceptable behavior and they shall each receive the maximum punishment. "Before we proceed, do you have anything to say for yourselves?" he asks, as he pulls open a drawer of his desk and extracts a thick piece of rubber the length and width of a twenty four inch ruler.

Dufours does not flinch. "Only that the study hall prefect is a stupid fool," he says, Pere Benoit nods slowly, dangerously silent. Then he turns to Henry.

"This is not fair," Henry protests. "I have done nothing. I fell asleep in study hall and I have been struck but that is all I did."

"Tres bien," Pere Benoit responds as if Henry had said nothing at all. Very good. "Now, Monsieur Dufours, drop your pants." Turning to Henry, he snaps. "You! Wait in the hallway."

From outside the office, Henry can hear the slap of rubber against Dufours’ bare skin. One. Two. Three. His friend does not make a sound, not even a whimper. Then three more. On the last two lashes, Henry hears a grunt from the victim.

In a few minutes, Henry will be called into the Prefect’s office for the same painful ordeal. A momentary vision fuses through his mind of the early Jesuit missionaries winning over shoguns, emperors and kings. By the shrewd application of knowledge, bravery and cunning, these priests had overcome insurmountable odds throughout history. Now these same time-tested tools of intelligence and courage must work for Henry.

The door opens and Dufours steps out. Tears fill his eyes, but he says nothing. He marches slowly down the hall to the dormitory. It is Henry’s turn. "All right young man, come in here." Pere Benoit orders.

Before he can tell Henry to drop his pants, the young boy shouts at the father prefect, "No my father. You can’t do this. Its wrong and I will not allow you."

The ceiling light reflects from Pere Benoit’s glasses and his eyebrows furrow in momentary confusion at this heretical defiance. Sensing an opening, Henry moves quickly to exploit the slim advantage gained by his audacious attack.

"Justice and truth are part of the Jesuit heritage. Father Brebeuf gave up his life because the Indians lied about him and did not treat him with justice. Now you are acting like the savage Iroquois. You are betraying the principles of the Society of Jesus if you punish me. There is no reason behind this and reasoning is the distinctive feature of the order. It’s what distinguishes the Jesuits from other human beings. That was true of the Pater Nostra Sancto himself and it is true today."

Pere Benoit listens intently. Then he stands and walks toward the window. He looks at the brilliantly lit cross of St. Joseph’s Oratory shining through the dark night For a moment he struggles to frame a response to Henry’s surprising statement. Then he turns to the young boy, "And what if I do not respond to your impassioned plea, monsieur, with your erudite reference to our founder, St. Ignatius Loyola? What if I proceed with the punishment that has been decreed and which your friend Dufours has already undergone?"

"Two things," Henry replies. "You will be looked upon with disfavor by Jesus Christ for violating the rules of the Societyof Jesus and secondly I will walk out of this school tonight and I will never come back."

Pere Benoit does not move. Like a professional poker player who has just seen the pot raised to table stakes level, he studies Henry with steady, gray eyes. "You will leave us. Just like that?"

"Yes. I am an American. I can and I will do that and it will cause a great deal of trouble for this school."

Slowly, Pere Benoit puts the rubber lash on the table. Then he sits down behind his desk and tells Henry to take a seat facing him. "How old are you?" he asks.

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen years of age and you mount a defense like that? I’m impressed. More than that, I’m inclined to discuss this with you. That is something I have never done in all my years as head prefect of this school. However, no student has ever assured me that I would incite the disfavor of our Lord Jesus Christ if I did not follow the wishes of the student in question. Nor has any student of this school, to my knowledge, ever warned the head prefect that he is violating the principles of the Society of Jesus."

Carefully, Henry explains to Pere Benoit that he does not wish to be disobedient and that if he deserves the punishment, he would accept it. However, he points out that he did not insult the study hall prefect and falling momentarily asleep was his only transgression. Furthermore, Henry tells the Prefect that Pierre created this scene because he wants to be expelled.

"I do not wish to be expelled or leave. I love it here. I want to stay. Please do not make me do something drastic because you will not follow truth and reason," Henry pleads. Pere Benoit pulls open the drawer and puts the lash away. Then he comes around the desk.

"You love it here?" the surprised Prefect asks.

Tears come to Henry’s eyes and he bites the inside of his mouth to maintain control. "Yes my father. I do," he answers.

A smile parts the Jesuit’s stern lips. He places his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiles. "Let us forget all this for now. Go in peace my son."

Chapter Two

Pierre Dufours is not expelled from school. His mother arrives the day after his punishment and convinces Pere Benoit that her son would be victorious if he were dismissed. The better lesson, she argues, would be for him to remain in the school where he would eventually learn to conform to the strict discipline of the Holy Fathers. Her petition succeeds and Pierre’s punishment is to remain with the Jesuits.

Pierre is furious. "They won’t throw me out. I took that beating for nothing," he says.

Henry is glad his friend will not be leaving. "You got the hardest punishment of all. You have to stay here with the rest of us," he says with a chuckle.

The winter days pass quickly at College Jean de Brebeuf. After rising early each morning, the boys filter into the small classrooms for daily sessions where the teachers instruct them in the art of writing comprehensible paragraphs, the structure of Latin and Greek sentences, the intricacies of mathematics and of course the dramatic history of the Jesuit priests in the early days of French Canada. But the Holy Fathers also realize the importance of French poetry and literature. Knowledgeable men of culture have been the lynchpin of The Society’s ascendancy on the world stage. Their young charges must eventually be ready to take their place at the helm of French Canadian society and even Canada itself.

Although it’s particularly difficult for Henry to learn all of his subjects in French, he pushes himself each day to keep up with his classmates. By afternoon, however, he runs happily to his locker to change for several hours of playing hockey.

Day-long blizzards, blowing across the across the school, sometimes fill the rinks with heavy snow. Prodded by a popular classmate who was elected the year before as Minister of Hockey, dozens of boys accost the sub-zero weather with shovels to clean the ice before the hoses can be brought up from the cellar to spray a new cover over the rock-like surface. Then, the young players put on their padded uniforms and skate throughout the cold afternoons until the dinner bell calls them inside the school.

One frigid afternoon in February, after the others have left, Henry stays on the rink for an extra fifteen minutes of skating before dinner Determined to make the first team before the year is out, he’s decided to practice more than anyone in the school in order to achieve his goal.

Snowflakes are floating through a gray sky and the screeching of his skates against the diamond-hard ice reverberates around the wooden boards of the rink. Henry is stick handling the puck from left to right while skating up the rink, when suddenly, Pere Benoit appears along the boards.

"Keep your head up Henry, or you’ll get it knocked off ," he calls.

"Oui mon pere," Henry replies. Then, wheeling on his skates, he glides across the ice to where the Father Prefect is standing, relaxed and smiling in his black overcoat and Cossack style hat.

"Have you ever seen a professional hockey game?" Pere Benoit asks.

"No my father, never," Henry answers.

"Would you like to see the Canadians play?" the prefect asks.

Henry smiles. "Yes. Of course," he answers,

"Then we’ll go," Pere Benoit says." They play the New York Rangers this evening."

. Surprised that the Pere Prefect would extend such an invitation to a student, particularly an American, Henry agrees to meet him behind the school at six p.m. "We’ll take the Cote De Neiges tramway downtown and catch the number six to the Forum," Pere Benoit says..

It’s already dark when they slide onto the wooden seats of the noisy tramway and start down the hill. They sit in the corner next to an iron stove that throws warm waves of heat into the cold car. Through the frosted windows, the lights of St. Joseph’s Oratory glisten through the early evening. The massive cathedral built on Mount Royal, where so many thousands of pilgrims have thrown away their crutches and canes after being healed, looms through the darkness like a huge ocean liner on the high seas. Then, the tram shutters and climbs up Mt. Royal street before descending again into the city. In a few minutes they’re swept along by the crowd of fervent fans flowing into the Forum.

Pere Benoit shows his tickets and immediately they’re ushered next to the rink and directly on the red line. Center ice. Best seats in the house. Henry offers to pay for his ticket but Pere Benoit shakes his head. "They’re gifts from one of the players." As they wait for the teams to skate onto the ice, Henry asked the Prefect if they would see Maurice Richard that night.

"Yes. He’s a friend of mine. He plays tonight. Would you like to meet him?"

"Meet him?" Henry asks incredulously. Maurice Richard is the best hockey player in the world, the hero of all French Canada, a demigod to schoolboys throughout the province. "How could I meet someone like that?" Henry asks.

"Just wait," Pere Benoit says. Then, they both look up as the crowd erupts in a roof-shaking roar. Les Canadiens are skating onto the ice, their red shirts shining like small bonfires in the bright glare of the overhead lights.

Henry immediately recognizes the famous face of Maurice Richard as he skates onto the ice. Dark hair slicked back over a broad head. Black, beady eyes flicking up and down the ice like a starved wolverine ready to pounce on its prey. Maurice "The Rocket" Richard is skating in tight half-rink circles right in front of Henry’s eyes.

"You really know him?" Henry asks Pere Benoit in astonishment.

" We grew up together," the Pere Prefect says nonchalantly. "We played hockey in the junior leagues for many years and were both chosen to play professionally the same year. That was the year I took my novitiate."

Then, as if to prove his words, Maurice Richard suddenly skates to the players’ bench and waves to Pere Benoit.

"Bonjour mon pere. J’ suis content que t’etes ici," he calls out. Hello Father. I’m glad you’re here. Henry realizes that Maurice Richard used the familiar pronoun "tu" that connotes familiarity and friendship. Henry is suspended in a state of disbelief. "Rocket" Richard and Pere Benoit are talking to each other like old friends.

Pere Benoit holds up his hand. "Merci pour les billets." Thanks for the tickets.

The "Rocket" waves his heavily-gloved hand. "Its nothing," he says. "I wish you were playing with us tonight. We need some help." Pere Benoit laughs and tells Maurice Richard that he wouldn’t do his team much go

"Mon Pere, You had the best slap shot in Canada," Maurice says.

Then Pere Benoit puts his hand on Henry’s shoulders and introduces him to the great hockey player. He tells Maurice that the young student is an American at the school. Maurice Richard looks at Henry and with a twinkle in his black penetrating eyes, says the young Ameican probably wants the Rangers to win. Before Henry can protest, the Rocket waves and returns to the ice. The game is about to begin.

Maurice Richard plays brilliantly, exploding up and down the ice, racing into the corners, flashing past the defensemen and rifling his notorious wrist shot at the Rangers goalie. It‘s not enough. He scores only once and Les Canadiens lose by four to two.

But Pere Benoit would never be the same for Henry again. Knowing that the Father Prefect could have played professional ice hockey and gave it all of up for the priesthood, adds a new dimension to the young boy’s perception of the Father Prefect. On the return trip to the school, as they sit rocking back and forth on the tramway, he asks Pere Benoit if it was hard to forgo all the glory and fame of being a professional hockey player in order to join the Society of Jesus.

The Jesuit priest looks out the dark window where the lights of St. Joseph are still shining brightly through the night.

"Major sacrificio major gloria dei."

"The great Sacrifice...," Henry attempts to translate.

"The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory to God," Pere Benoit says, completing the translation.

"But you could have joined the Jesuits after your career in hockey," Henry points out.

"Sometimes I think about that. Then I remember that what we give up shapes our lives. Fame. Excitement. Wealth. They all become worthless after they’re achieved. Its like people who buy a new car. After they’ve owned it for a few days, its nothing more than a ride. The worth of material possessions will always fade but a Jesuit priest who sacrifices the things of this world is never disappointed because he’s happy seeking a higher purpose. True joy is found in the process of seeking rather than a final attainment. That is an infinite desire, one that can never be fully attained or completed. When Maurice Richard gets too old to play hockey he’ll have to quit. But my work as a Jesuit is never done. There are always new sacrifices waiting to be undertaken. Sometimes, Henry, our lives have to be judged by the sacrifices we make. What we’re willing to give up can determine the course of our existence."

Since then, Pere Benoit pays special attention to Henry. He consistently goes out of his way to advise him on everything from shooting a puck to memorizing Latin declensions.

Some of the other boys in the school become aware of the special treatment. Even Pierre Dufours teases him relentlessly. "Hey Henry, how’s the Prefect’s little boy today? he asks. Others are more aggressive with their resentment. "You think you’re better than us because you’re the Prefect’s pet," they announce angrily to Henry . Sometimes, it causes a fight and then Henry uses his quick jabs and short right crosses to the jaw, learned while playing hockey, to silence his tormentors. He realizes it’s not the Jesuit way, and later in evening as he goes to sleep, he prays for forgiveness and the strength to avoid violence in the future.

However, his willingness to fight has earned him a respect among his fellow students.

In fact, early in the spring when elections are scheduled for ministers of the various school activities, Pere Benoit, suggests that Henry run for Minister of Tennis. After hockey, it’s Henry’s favorite sport and he’s one of the best players in the school.

"But, Mon Pere, I would have to give a speech in front of the whole school. They would laugh at me, " Henry protests. "Not if you prepare you speech properly," Pere Benoit says.

Finally, in order to please his mentor, Henry enters his name as a candidate for the elections to be held the following Friday evening. The next day, Pierre Dufours cautions him to withdraw.

Why?" Henry asks.

"You’re not French Canadian. A lot of guys don’t think an American should be a Minister of anything. Also, they don’t like the way Pere Benoit pays so much attention to you." Pierre says.

The warning only spurs Henry’s determination. During the following two days, he writes out and memorizes a speech detailing why he should be elected as Minister of Tennis. The following Friday evening, a podium is set up in the basketball court for the elections. When it’s Henry’s turn to convince his fellow students why he should be elected, he pauses before his speech and then begins a litany of promises. "If you vote for me, you will no longer have to play tennis with torn nets. You will no longer stumble over holes. You will be able to play on smooth, well-groomed tennis courts," he says.

The student body listens attentively for a mistaken sentence, an Anglicized pronunciation which would give them a reason to blackball the American candidate. But there are none. Henry has prepared his speech too well and when the results come in later than evening, he’s the new Minister of Tennis. Pierre Dufours scoffs at him. "They felt sorry for you," he says. But Pere Benoit approaches and shakes his hand. "That was a brave thing to do.. Congratulations. Someday, you will make a great Jesuit, Henry.".

As the short days of winter extend into spring, rain arrives to melt the ice. Each morning, hockey pucks, flipped outside the rinks by a wild shot during the winter, appear black and shiny against the disappearing snow. The first boys outside that day quickly scoop them up for use the following year.

Winds blow constantly across the school during March and April, making it difficult to play outside, but by May a spell of warm weather allows the new Minister of Tennis to work on improving the courts. He spends his weekends rolling the clay, helps lay out the tapes so they will remain flat against the dirt throughout the season. He gets a heavy black thread and repairs the nets. Henry is determined not to give anyone an opportunity to say his election was a mistake.

Finally, the end of the school year is only a few days away. From the pulpit , Pere Benoit talks about the upcoming vacation during morning matins.. "Alors mes garcons," so my boys. "In three more days you will leave here for the summer. That can be an opportunity to prove your ability to avoid sin and to bring your friends and neighbors to the path of salvation. Some of you wish to become priests, even to take the orders in the Society of Jesus. It is not easy to be a Jesuit. When you go home and become involved in your life there, think of it as a test. Each day, you must ask yourself, "Am I strong enough to answer the call of God to take the Holy Orders of chastity, poverty and obedience? Can I make the sacrifices necessary to bring about the greater Glory of God?"

Special men called by God himself! That is what Henry wants to be and as Pere Benoit speaks, the young student thinks of the Jesuit missionaries going among the Indians in the early days of Canada’s history, when the French were beginning their settlements in Quebec. It was an opportunity for the very best men to prove their devotion to God, to convert the savages, to save them from the certain path to Hell which all heathens must face. The Indians, however, refused the promise of salvation offered by the courageous fathers. They were suspicious of the men in black robes who wanted to drip water on their heads and promise them eternal life. They captured the priests and executed them with an expertise developed through centuries of torturing their enemies. Father Joques was tormented for days on end. Squaws chewed off his fingernails. Children dropped hot coals on his chest as he lay staked to the ground. Yet, like so many others he refused to give up. After his escape and return to France, he had only one wish: to go back. His request was granted. A year later, he was caught by a tribe of Iroquois and burned at the stake. The same thing happened to the patron saint of the school, Father Jean de Brebeuf. Flayed and slowly roasted over the flames, he blessed his Iroquois tortuerers as the flames licked up his legs and sucked life from his pain-racked body. A steady gaze into the horizon accompanied by the final Latin blessing ended his life, "In nomine patri, fili, spirito sancto." In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Henry is sure he could never make that kind of sacrifice. He hates pain. But he can imagine himself walking back and forth on the porch of the Jesuit house each morning. reading the breviary, fingering a string of rosary beads. He could say mass, teach, write poetry, even become a missionary, converting the heathen to Christianity. Jesuits do all those things. They’re God’s front line soldiers. The best. The most disciplined.

Pere Benoit knows Henry is thinking about this. He’s pleased that his young protégé wants to take the orders to become a priest.

Now Henry must demonstrate that he can live a life devoid of sin in order to become a Jesuit. He plans to do exactly that this summer. He lives in a large brick house in a small town devoid of evil and temptations. A place where sin is unheard of, where people get married, have children, go to their jobs, attend church and finally die happily in the arms of God. He thinks of his hometown as a monastery. Proving to Pere Benoit that he can spend a summer living in a state of grace will not be difficult. Then, in the fall, he can begin his novitiate in the eight-year program of study and discipline required to become a Jesuit priest. Henry is anxious for the summer to pass quickly so he can return to his beloved school for the beginning of his training in the Society of Jesus.

Chapter Three

On a rain-filled morning in early June, Henry takes the morning train from Montreal to New York. A taxi deposits him and his luggage at Windsor Station and soon he is sitting in a passenger car as it winds its way southward toward the American border. The train is filled with soldiers who board and depart at each stop as the train descends into New England. . It seems that every young man over 18 is in uniform. Henry envies the brown uniforms with their shinny brass buttons. Yet, he knows that he will never go to war…at least not as a solider. Perhaps, one day he will be called as a chaplain. But for now, only the long study period of a priest in training can be his future.

He arrives in New York in the evening and immediately finds a cheap hotel for the night.

Accosted by a hookAfter hours of walking around the Times Square area, he returns to the hotel, tired and footsore. Then, in the morning, he goes to Penn Station and takes another train to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where his parents will be waiting to drive him home.

"Well Henry, have you had a good year?" his father asks while placing his son’s trunk in the back of the Buick sedan which the doctor uses every day to make his house calls.

"It was great. It really was," Henry aks.

His mother, a tall slim woman with her hair wound neatly around her head in a French twist, pursues her own line of questioning as they begin the drive home.

"Next year, Henry you’ll have to choose a college. Have you thought about that?"

"I guess so," Henry replied.

"You could probably get into Harvard,’ he his father says. "They’ve got a good pre-med program there."

"Being a doctor isn’t what I’ve been thinking," Henry replied bluntly.

"And just what are you thinking?" his mother asks.’

The Holy Orders, Mom. I' d like to start my novitiate next year."

A priest," his father exclaims.

Henry’s mother shakes her head. "I don’t know how it would be for you to be a priest."

Suspicion has replaced the traditional pride of the Catholic mother offering up her son to the church. As priest, her son cancels hope for an ambassador, a businessman, a rich banker. A son who takes a vow of chastity ends all dreams of Christmas dinners with grandchildren, summer vacations with an enlarged family. True, the good fathers will ensure against failure and drunkenness. They will keep her son from the disappointment of lesser family métiers: farmer, store clerk, office worker carpenter. Yet a priest coming from a large family is quite different from an only son who takes the vows.

"Not just a priest, Mom. A Jesuit priest."

She understands and it frightens her. She knows you can never tell about the Jesuit, where they will go, what they will do. Tending a nice country parish is never enough. Teaching young boys to read Latin, memorize poetry or learn the intricacies of the mass is only part of their early training. Then the strong ones, the men who are fearless and devoted, become missionaries in harsh countries where their lives are constantly being threatened. They instigate rebellions on behalf of the poor, they encourage revolutions against juntas and dictators. They’re effective because they’re educated and possess the power of knowledge. They understand how to manipulate the written word to their cause, stir the disenfranchised to demand justice. They become solitary poets, influential even as recusants. There is no telling whether a Jesuit will end his days at the end of a rope or be eulogized as a famous intellectual. Trained from early youth to accept discipline, hardship and poverty they understand how to acquire the power needed to accomplish their goals. A son in the Society of Jesus is enough to make any Catholic mother kneel before the Mass begins and say an extra Hail Mary for her strange offspring and his peculiar avocation.

"I know. I know," she sighs. "That is what concerns me."

"zHenry’s father remains silent for the rest of the trip. Yet, that night, just after Henry falls asleep, his father knocks on his bedroom door. .

Henry, there’s an accident. You want to come with me?" he calls. Henry wakes and immediately tells his father he’ll be ready in a minute..

In past summers, Henry’s Dad often asks him to ride with him when he makes house calls in the small villages and isolated farmhouses nearby. This evening, his father has roused him from his sleep, "A car crashed on a road outside of town. You want to come along?"

The 1942 Buick sedan slows to the side of the road and stops on the gravel brim. Flashlights blink through the rain-filled night like yellow monster eyes flashing in the darkness at the underbelly of the smashed-up car. Several men in rain coats yank at the door of the glistening wreck as it lies on the highway like an overturned bug.

The round, mustached face of the police chief, Charley Pearson, looks into the driver’s side window. He calls out, "It’s Doc."

Magic words. The men stop tugging at the door. Onlookers from nearby houses, hunched forward in shinny raincoats, turn to watch as the door of the Buick opens and Henry’s father steps out. Splashes of rain spritz into the car, cool against Henry’s face.

As he limps toward the wreck, Charley Pearson says "That guy’s still inside the car. Didn’t wanna touch ‘em till you got here Doc. Charley has always limped ever since he contracted polio when he was a kid. When the war came and the town needed a new police chief, all the able-bodied candidates were gone. The council felt sorry for Charley because he couldn’t go over to fight so they gave him the job. It helped that he was interested in sports although people laugh at how he wouldn’t be able to chase any robbers. On occasions like this, however, he brings authority and organization to the accident scene like a baseball umpire enforcing the rules of the game.

The neighbors step back as the doctor approaches the wreck. He surveys the scene for a few moments. "Looks like a bad one," Henry’s Dad announces. That’s a strong statement for the doctor It probably means somebody in the car has been killed. Henry wishes that he had had stayed in bed and not agreed when his father woke him and asked if he wanted to come along. Henry hates the sight of blood. He would never make much of a doctor.

Sometimes they bring accident victims to the large house in the middle of town where he lives. At night, they ring the doorbell and loud, desperate voices call up to the second floor. "Hey Doc! You there?" Henry hears them first from his room in the front of the house. By the time, he’s out of bed and knocking on his parents bedroom door, his father is up.

"Go tell them to come around to the office," he says.

He involves Henry at a young age, issuing authority like a new uniform for a young recruit. Now he tells his seventeen-year old boy to order grown men around in the middle of the night. His father is training his son to follow in his footsteps. He believes that if you give a young boy a taste of power at a young age he’ll become a doctor. He doesn’t realize this is also how you make Jesuit priests.

The night of his arrival, before he has much opportunity to talk with his parents about the past school year, Henry meets Pandora, a beautiful nurse who often assists his father in surgery at the nearby hospital, She’s standing at the scene of an automobile accident not far from her farmhouse outside of town where a car has recently slammed into a tree after skidding off the road.. Pandora has joined other neighbors to watch the grim proceedings. On this particular night when Henry speaks to Pandora for the first time, he’s standing several feet away from the car while his father peers into the wreckage. One of the men, who apparently has not seen him approach, places a heavy, callused hand on Henry’s shoulder. "Better stand back kid. Ain’t a pretty sight in there."

Before Henry can move, a woman’s voice speaks gently through the night, "That’s doc’s boy."

The hand is removed. Henry turns to the woman. A red, polka-dot bandanna, soaked tight around her head from the rain, frames a round smiling face with almond eyes and perfect white teeth. Strong, ring-filled fingers emerge from her rain coat and press against his arm. "Hello Henry. I’m Pandora."

Careful not to look at the body inside the car which his father is examining through the windshield, Henry asks: "What happened?"

"Going too fast. Skidded on the turn and hit that tree," Pandora answers.

"Must have bounced back onto the road," he surmises with unalloyed confidence.

His father turns from the car and speaks softly. "Henry, get my stethoscope from the car." Obediently, he goes to the Buick and retries the black tubes attached to a silver medallion which can easily detect the cavernous boom of the heart when pressed against the chest of a living person. Henry opens the leather satchel and retrieves the slinky, snake-like instrument. His dad’s hand on the victim’s cold wrist has already found death but properly filled out certificates require the silence of a stethoscope. He applies the earplugs and leans inside the car.

As the gathered crowd waits for the final verdict, Pandora places her arm around Henry’s shoulder. "I hear you want to be a priest, Henry."

A mixture of anger and pride form a disgruntled, "I guess so." Henry doesn’t think his father should go around telling people about that. If he wants to be a priest, that’s his private business.

Pandora continues: "and you like horses."

That’s true and Henry doesn’t mind if people know about it. She informs him that a quarter horse named Daisy is stabled in her barn. It’s a good horse, but it needs regular exercise. She explains that if he has time that summer, before going back to school, he can ride the horse whenever he wants.

Before Henry can accept Pandora’s offer, Charley calls through the rain, "Doc says the guy pinned behind the steering wheel is dead."

Then his father steps back from the car. "When the ambulance arrives, they can take the body to the undertaker," the doctor says.

Pandora lifts a forefinger at the doctor and smiles, her white teeth glistening through the night.

"Hi Maddy," the doctor calls through the rain, the way he would say "hi" to his son or to his mother.

On the way back, the rain stops. The windshield wipers squeak against the windows until Henry’s father leans forward and turns a black knob on the dashboard. Now, only the headlights slicing through the darkness disturb the night. "That lady said I could ride her horse."

His father nods. "Her name’s Pandora. She’s a nurse at the hospital but she’s also an actress at the Playhouse during the summers. Has a beautiful voice. People come from all over to see her perform.

"I’d like to see one of her performances."

His father says that Pandora will be the star in a play that summer and he suggests they go see it.

"How many miles is it to her place?" Henry asks, trying to figure the bike-riding time it would take so he can ride her horse.

"About three," his father answers. "Twenty minutes on your bike." "Can I go tomorrow?" Henry asks.

"If she’s home to show you around, get you used to the horse. You’ll have to call and ask," the doctor says.

After they return to the house Henry goes to his bedroom where a patch of light from the street lamp creates monsters through the dark leaves of a Chestnut tree outside his window. He keeps thinking of Pandora with her rings and bracelets and perfect smile and how easily she put her arm around his shoulders. The church clock, located in the steeple across the street, strikes eleven, then twelve. Finally, he falls asleep.

Chapter Four

Pandora is at home the following Sunday afternoon when Henry peddles his Schwinn Roadster up to the barn. She appears at the kitchen door wearing long baggy pants and a tight fitting, blue shirt that Henry tries not to look at or, at least, not get caught looking at. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a French twist and a small black beret crusted with silver stars holds a pink rose, picked from the nearby garden, at the back of her head. Pandora throws her arms in the air and her mouth opens wide with a luminous smile.

"Henry, you’re here!" she calls out, as if they were old friends and he had just returned from a long voyage

"I tried to phone but no one answered," Henry says.

"I was in the garden and no one was near the phone. But now you’re here and I’ll show you the horse," Pandora responds as she leads him to the large, wooden barn located next to the house.

She leads Daisy from the stable. The mare is dark brown with the heavy haunches and broad chest of a quarter horse that can produce the quick turns and immediate speed needed by the cowboys who created the breed. Pandora slips a double snaffle bit into the horses mouth and cinches up the English saddle.

"Daisy’s a western horse but I ride her English. She’s got a light mouth and wants a loose rein," she says. "Pull her up tight and she’s trouble."

Henry realizes that Pandora knows a great deal about horses. She tells him that she once rode in Madison Square Garden in New York City and he believes her. "I used to ride all the time before I got married, I wanted to be a film star and play in western movies. Now I live on this farm and all I do is work at the hospital."

"I bet you’d be good in a movie," Henry says as he watches Pandora saddle the horse..

She turns and smiles at him. "You do? Well, thank you ‘Henry and you want to know a big secret?"

"Sure," he answers.

"Well, one of these days, I’m just going to leave for California and become a Hollywood movie star. I think I could be famous in no time at all if I just got the chance," she says.

"My Dad says you’re a good actress," Henry tells her.

"He does? Well isn’t that sweet of him to tell you that. I love it so when people appreciate what I really do and don’t just say, ‘Oh, she’s a good nurse all right’." Pandora answers.

When she’s finished tacking up the horse, Henry asks. If he can ride the horse out to the nearby woods.

"Of course .You can ride her anywhere you want. Just make sure she’s cooled off when you put her back," Pandora says.

Henry places his left leg in Pandora’s hands and as her gold bracelets clink together on her wrists, she boosts him onto the saddle and tells him to come into the house for some lemonade when he’s finished. Then, she sends him trotting down an overgrown lane toward a stand of dark-green woods in the distance.

Henry turns in the saddle and waves at Pandora. She waves back and calls out:" Have a good ride."

Grasshoppers fly up and occasional squirrels rustle loudly through the brush as they scamper for cover into the vine-covered juniper trees growing along the lane. Henry is still unsure of himself with the horse, but the joy of moving freely through the grass towards the open fields on a warm summer afternoon reminds him of the ecstasy he experiences in the school chapel when the incense wafts across the pews and the priest chants the sacred words preceding the Holy Communion. It occurs to Henry that God has been good to him and he feels fortunate that in two more months he can begin to reciprocate these holy gifts by dedicating his life to the Society of Jesus.

It’s late afternoon when he returns to the barn with the horse. Pandora’s husband, Jake, comes out to talk. He works at a shipyard in New York, making tanks for the Army. The draft turned him down when x-rays detected several fused vertebrae that causes him back pains.. Round and fat, with a shinny bald head, Jake has a .09mm German Luger which he likes to fire behind the barn. When he’s home on weekends, he shoots his Luger at tin cans which he stacks up in a shale pit. He bought the pistol from a wounded veteran who captured it in North Africa during the battle of El Alamein.

Today, with the gun tucked into a dark leather shoulder holster, he complains about everything as he chews tobacco and hocks dark wads of spit beyond a big belly that hangs over his belt. He’s a constant source of pessimistic sayings like "Life is a rat race and the rats are winning" or "the dumbest animal in the jungle is the giraffe, always sticking his neck out."

While Henry brushes the horse and wipes the tack off with Neatsfoot oil, Jake talks about his desire to fight in the Army. "Just wish I could go over there and get myself a couple a god dammed Nips," he says. Jake tells him that once, when a German Shepherd pup wondered into the barn from the neighbors, he kicked it and said he didn’t want any Nazi dogs on his property.

Jake finally stops talking and says he must return to the house because it’s time for Pandora to drive him to the train station for the long ride to New York. As he disappears through the barn door, he complains to Henry that he won’t arrive in the city until eleven that night and then he has to be up at five in the morning to start work.

Henry says he’ll see him next week and then he picks up the saddle and bridle and begins to wipe the warm leather. As he works, he hears a car start up and drive out onto the road. Pandora is taking Jake to the train station in town.

The tack is still brittle and only several days of constant oiling and rubbing will make it soft and pliable. By the time he’s finished, the rubber wheels of Jake’s old Desoto sedan crunch again on the stone driveway as Pandora returns from delivering her husband to the station. Henry fills a bucket of water from the spigot at the end of the barn and carries it to Daisy’s stable. Finally, he climbs the stairs to the tack room on the second floor with the saddle and bridle propped carefully on his arm. As he steps across the creaking floor boards, he notices a window that looks into the bathroom of the house which stands only a few feet from the barn.

Before he can place the leather equipment on the wooden rack, he accidentally looks into the bathroom where a round porcelain sink is located in front of a narrow mirror framed in silver. Behind the sink, white puffs of steam swirl toward the ceiling from an old bathtub filled with hot water. Henry surmises that Jake’s wife must be getting ready to take a bath. Realizing that looking into other people’s bathrooms is none of his business, Henry turns to go when suddenly Pandora appears in the open doorway with a towel in her hand and her hair combed down to her shoulders. He hesitates and decides to take one more look as she moves to the sink and begins to wipe make-up and lipstick from her face with white tissue paper.

The bathroom is lower than the barn window so he can look down and see what’s going on without being seen by Pandora. She places the washcloth on the edge of the sink and then, casually begins to unbutton her blouse. Her long fingers, tipped with red polished fingernails, fly nimbly along the small buttons. Henry’s breath blows out like a balloon stuck with a needle. He knows that he should turn away from the window, that he should stop watching. After all, he has no business watching someone undressing. Immediately, he realizes this is the kind of situation Pere Benoit had talked about time and again during the past school year.

"Mes jeunes amis," he would say with a benign smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "La peche vous cherche." My young friends, evil will search for you.

When that happens, you should turn away and say no.

Suddenly, however, Jeremiah, speaks up and says, "go ahead and have a look. She’s beautiful."

Henry tries to look away and leave. Quickly, he pulls his rosary from his pocket and asks for help: "Holy Mary, Mother of God. I wish to be a Jesuit. Help me!" he whispers.

"There’s nothing wrong with just having a look," Jeremiah interrupts

But Henry whispers as fast as he can: "Hail Mary, full of Grace. The Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Henry’s prayer is answered. He looks away from the tack-room window and places the saddle on its rickety pine-wood rack. Then he steps quickly toward the stairs when a sudden and uncontrollable urge for just one more glance at Pandora forces his head to turn slightly toward the window. As he does so, Henry’s leather boot misses the narrow wooden step. His arms fling wildly in the air and he falls forward, crashing on his back against the stairs. He bumps several more times against the hard wood before landing at the bottom of the stairs. Miraculously, he’s unhurt except for a bruised elbow and a rapidly growing lump on the back of his head. For a moment, Henry lies motionless, realizing that a well-deserved punishment has been sure and swift.

"Don’t be stupid. You tripped, that’s all." Jeremiah says. But Henry knows it was a warning, a small canon ball whistling across the bow of his storm-tossed ship. Slowly he stands and moves toward the stall to water the horse. He drags a bale of yellow, dust-filled straw from the far end of the barn to the stable and shakes it out around the horse’s legs. Then he closes the stable door and slowly sweeps the cement aisle between the stalls. He refuses a desire to return to the tack room window. The young Jesuit priest-to-be has learned his lesson and has no intention of making the same mistake again.

Outside, the dimming afternoon sun drops behind a pear tree creating a long shadow across the barnyard. Henry is thankful for the painful throb on the back of his head. It’s a well-deserved punishment for his sin. From now on, he will be strong enough to avoid temptation. By the end of the summer, he will be ready to take the holy orders. Only the very best boys can begin their novitiate at twelve. Henry feels certain that now he can be one of them. He leaves the barn and pushes the brightly painted Schwinn Roadster toward the highway.

Before he reaches the road, however, he hears Pandora calling him from the farmhouse. "Henry. Don’t leave." Pandora’s words ring through the warm summer afternoon like a church bell tolling it’s members to worship on Sunday morning. She has finished her bath and is calling from the bedroom window. "Come in and have some lemonade."

Henry’s face turns red. He wants to jump on his bike and peddle swiftly away from the farm. Pandora must know what he was doing. She will surely be angry at the ungrateful young voyeur who rides her horse and then looks through her bathroom window even if it was for a few moments only.. Knowing he has no choice however, he opens the kitchen door and goes into the house.

Pandora enters the room looking like a ray of warm sunlight. She’s wearing freshly pressed Khaki pants. Her hair is still wet and the smell of rose perfume exudes from her glowing face as she smiles and waves her arms in the air to punctuate her words. She obviously has no knowledge of the crisis which has so recently transpired in the barn.

"How did it go with the horse?" she asks.

Henry tells her where he rode that afternoon, how he cantered to the woods through the fields with the freshly mown hay, how he stopped and drank from a spring as the water trickled out from the rocks. Pandora understands. She knows about riding like that, breathing in the sweet scent of freshly cut alfalfa, smelling the lather and sweat from the horse. She knows where the spring is located and is surprised that it’s still running in the dryness of summer. She brings lemonade from the refrigerator. Then she goes to the cupboard and takes out a pack of Camel cigarettes.

"I’m sure you don’t smoke," she says.

"No," he replies.

"I have to smoke when Jake’s here. Can’t relax when he comes home. He starts drinking and gets mean," she says. Henry detects bitterness in her voice as she hands him a glass of lemonade and they both sit at the kitchen table. "You like that French school you go to in Montreal where they’re teaching you to be a priest?" she asks.

He explains that it isn’t a place where you have much fun and that it’s extremely strict. Still, he tells her that he likes it there. Pandora looks at him and smiles. The lemonade glistens against her full mouth of perfect white teeth. Henry tries not to think how she looked through the bathroom window with her long hair combed down her back.

Pandora asks if he really speaks French and Latin. She shakes her head in amazement when he replies that he is fluent in French but can only read and write Latin. "Seventeen years old and you know three languages. You’re a pretty lucky guy, aren’t you?"

Henry had never thought of it that way. People have a way of complimenting you on your achievements and what you can do. They never talk about how you learn those hard thing, the misery you have to go through conjugating verbs, learning vocabulary and writing out sentences. Luck, it seems to Henry, is something you get without having to work or suffer for. Learning Latin and French was not luck.

Pandora finishes her cigarette and lights another. Then she returns and looks at Henry with her blue, beckoning eyes. She tells him how glad she is that he stayed to talk. She looks toward the ceiling and shakes her head. "Oh Henry, look at this mess. I wish I could be your age again"

It hardly seems like a mess to him. Nice house in the country. A horse in the barn. A husband that brings home good money from building tanks for the war. Pandora guesses his thoughts. "Probably seems wonderful to you Henry. But you have your Dad and your Mom and a nice home. In the fall you go back to that French Canadian school you like so much. You have people to talk with. You go places, do things. You’re going to be a priest. You have a dream and you’re going to make it happen."

Pandora sips at her lemonade again. Suddenly, tears begin to form in her eyes. "I have a dream and it’s not happening," she says.

"What is it?" Henry asks.

"Remember when I told you out in the barn that I’ve always wanted to be a movie star, go to Hollywood, be discovered Well, I mean it Henry. I can just imagine how it would be. Go to parties every night where handsome men would swoon over me and tell me how beautiful I am. I’d wear beautiful gowns and pose while photographers scrambled to take my picture. Ever since I was a little girl, it’s all I’ve dreamed about But it hasn’t worked out and pretty soon it’s going to too late. My parents both died years ago and I’m stuck here alone all week.

But you husband comes home on the weekend," Henry says.

"Oh yeah, he comes home all right. I wish he’d just leave, go away, never come back. I cried all night when he was turned down for the Army. All he ever does is go out in the woods and shoot that stupid German pistol. Then he comes back, gets drunk and attacks me. Look! Just look at this," she says, pointing to a black and blue mark on her arm.

Henry examines the bruise and shakes his head. "He did that?" he asks. "Why?"

"Drinks, get violent and... I can’t do anything about it. Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you about that but sometimes I have to talk to somebody. There are days when I sit here at this table and ask myself where did I go wrong. I’m twenty three and my life is already finished.

"But you’re a really good actress. My Dad told me you’re in a show at the Playhouse."

"Its only a small theater nobody ever heard of, but you can come and see me this summer, Henry. I’ll be playing Nora in the Doll’s House. Its a play by Henry Ibsen about a woman who can’t stand her husband so she decides to leave him." Pandora replies. Then she chuckles, "I don’t have to do much acting."

"I will. I’d really like to see you in a play," Henry says.

Pandora’s bitter mood changes. Enthusiasm replaces sorrow as she tells Henry about her dreams. "When I was your age, I could already play the piano and sing. Everybody said I could be a great actress or a singer. I’d give anything to go to Hollywood and be in the movies. Betty Davis, Lauren Bacall, June Havoc. I’m just as good any one of them. People are always coming up after the show and telling me I’ll be a big movie star someday.

Henry isn’t sure why she’s telling him all this. His mind freezes and words stall on his lips. Pandora seems to understand and reaches toward him. Her warm fingers, with the red shiny nail polish, close around his hand. "I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about all my problems." She withdraws her hand, finishes her drink and then smiles. "You’re a nice person, Henry. I hope we can be friends this summer." Then she asks him if he wants to stay for dinner but Henry demurs, knowing that his radio programs are due to start soon. The Shadow begins at 5:30 and then The Lone Ranger at 6 p.m. Soon Henry is on his way down the macadam road, peddling homeward to hear the strange, creaking noise of a door shutting as the Shadow enters a room with his long laugh and famous opening line, "The truth is a thousand times stranger than fiction. Heh! Heh! Heh! The Shadow knows."

Chapter Five

Pandora watches Henry disappear down the highway in the declining light of early evening and then goes to the cupboard and takes out another cigarette. Sundays nights are the worst for her and she wonders how she can possibly get through the silence and loneliness of one more evening on the desolate farm. Rehearsals begin in three more days for The Doll’s House and then the two week run at the summer theater will keep her occupied. She can hardly wait since the role of Nora, for which she’s been cast, is one of her favorites. But now, walking back and forth through the kitchen, she stares desperately from the white cabinets to the window and then back to the cabinets again. She goes into the living room, with its blue walls and over-stuffed furniture where photographs of her posing in bathing suits, riding horses and acting in plays and musicals adorn the walls and the slate mantel above the fireplace.

She picks up a Life magazine and leafs nervously through the picture-filled pages with their images of men dying on the battlefields, women working in munitions plants and children gathering scrap metal and tin cans for the war effort. Smoke rings, blown nervously from her lips, curl into the air and disappear against the white stucco ceiling. She wishes Henry had stayed.

She crushes the cigarette butt into an ashtray on the kitchen table and paces slowly back and forth across the linoleum floor.

The vision of leaving, just packing up and taking off in the car filters once again through her thoughts. Where would she go? What would she do when the gas runs out and the car sputters to a stop along some deserted road and there is no money to fill the tank? She moves close to the table, and prepares to sit when suddenly she sees Henry’s rosary beads curled like a sleeping snake next to the table leg. She stoops to pick them up, to roll the small green balls of glass through her strong fingers. He has dropped them by mistake.

Walking out the kitchen door, she looks into the warm night air. A full moon hangs forlornly against a black sky. It occurs to her that this would be a good night to go riding, but she does not want to go by herself. Why must everything be done alone? She lights another cigarette and immediately drops the glowing stem, crushes it beneath her shoe and then walks slowly through the white picket gate to the barn. It’s cool in the stable area. Perhaps a ride on Daisy would do her some good. That’s it. A bareback gallop through the moonlight filled lane to break the relentless bond of depression that has overwhelmed her this evening. Quickly, she feels her way up the darkened stairs to the tack room, pulls the bridle off its hook and then carefully returns to the stable area.

Approaching Daisy’s stall, Pandora suddenly jumps back at the sight of Henry who is standing in the doorway silhouetted against the pale light of the distant moon. "Henry is that you?" she calls out.

"I lost my rosary," he announces.

Pandora giggles happily. "I found your beads under the table. You must have been praying while you were talking to me." Then she enters the stall and tells him he’s just in time for a ride with her on the horse. As she leads Daisy across the cement floor to a patch of grass outside the barn, Henry draws back and points a languid finger toward the night sky, suggesting that its too dark. Pandora shakes her head and says there is plenty of light for a nighttime ride. "Just for a few minutes. We’ll ride double," she adds. Henry says he has to return home but Pandora only laughs and tells him they’ll be back in twenty minutes.

Henry knows he should avoid the experience of sitting on the horse so close to Pandora, feeling her arms around him as they ride out the lane towards the woods, realizing it will only lead to temptation. As usual, Jeremiah is urging him on, explaining how much fun it will be, how good Pandora will feel against him when they get on the horse together. Still, Henry remains adamant. "No. I don’t think so," he says.

Pandora sighs and looks at him with her head tilted sideways, as if he’s a small boy in need of a paddling. "Henry, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not going to harm you."

He offers an excuse, "Its not that. I have to pass papers in the morning." But Pandora is determined. Promising just a short ride to the end of the lane, she persuades him to mount Daisy bareback. Reluctantly, he accepts her open hands, places his knee in her strong fingers and pushes his weight up and onto the horse. Then, Pandora grabs his shoulders, jumps up and swings her leg over the horse. She lands behind him and quickly grasps his shoulders for balance. She laughs and calls into his ear; Let’s go out to the woods through the lane." Henry moves the horse forward.

"Easy on the bit," Pandora warns as the horse takes several hesitant steps away from the barn. In a moment, Henry has the reins adjusted lightly in his fingers and Pandora is sitting behind him with her hands oround his arms for balance. For a few minutes, they ride silently across the barnyard to the lane where a series of trees cast their shadows across the grass-filled path.

"Isn’t it beautiful," Pandora says into Henry’s ear. "Have you ever gone riding at night?" Henry replies that this is the first time. Then Pandora calls out, "Put her into a canter."

Henry presses the horse’s flanks and relaxes the reins, signaling Daisy to leap forward. Unaccustomed to the double load on her back, however, the horse begins to buck a few times before settling into a canter. The bracelets on Pandora’s arms clang together as she grabs his shoulders and they both struggle to avoid falling. In a few moments, they’re laughing and shouting as the horse flies gracefully beneath the trees along the grass-filled lane. When they arrive at the edge of the spring, Pandora takes her arms from his shoulders and sits back on the horse. "Wasn’t that fun?" she asks.

"It was okay but I better get back now," Henry replies cautiously.

Pandora places her arm around Henry as he turns the horse toward the barn and says, "You’re such a sweet boy." They allow Daisy to walk back, giving the mare time to cool off so she won’t founder in the stall. As they move slowly past the dark trees with the leaf-filled branches occasionally brushing against Pandora’s legs, she looks up at the sky and sighs happily.

It takes only a few minutes to put the horse back in the stall when they arrive at the barn. As Henry prepares to push his bike toward the road, Pandora suddenly leans forward and kisses him on the cheek "That was wonderful. We’ve got to do it again," she says. Without a word, Henry mounts his bike and disappears into the darkness, leaving Pandora to enter the house and gently close the door behind her.

CHAPTER SIX

Henry decides to stay away from the farm when Pandora is there alone. He is beginning to think of her too much, remembering the look of her beautiful eyes, her strong arms around his shoulders, the quick kiss after their night-time ride. He decides to go riding only on the weekends when her husband is home from making tanks for the Army.

The following Saturday, when he is sure Jake will be there, Henry mounts his bike and peddles slowly through town and heads toward the farm

The barn is quiet and cool when he arrives and mounts the stairs to the tack room. A few swallows dart back and forth among the rafters and a solitary pigeon beats its wings against the still air as it flies through an open window. Below, the horse stomps against the floor. Henry is surprised to find the door of the tack room closed but he pulls on the latch, pries it open and steps inside.

Before his eyes adjust to the dim light, a deep voice suddenly cracks through the musty air. "What’n hell are you doin’ here, Henry?" Its Jake yelling as he slams down the lid of a small iron box and shoves it into an opening in the floor. His eyes are narrow with anger.

Henry jumps back. Words of apology tumble from him like nails falling from an open box, " I didn’t know you were here. I was just going to pick up the saddle."

"You were spying on me. Trying to find out about the money," he shouts.

"No! No! I just got here. I was going to ride the horse." Henry replies as he turns to leave, explaining that he can ride another time.

Jake realizes his mistake and waves him back. He walks to the corner of the room, sits down on the tack box and puts his hands in his face. "I’m sorry Henry. I shouldn’t get mad at you. Its not your fault." Then he picks up the container and opens the lid. Carefully stacked bundles of green fifty dollar bills, held together with blue rubber bands, fill the box. "Somebody’s gotta know about this," he says.

"About what ?" Henry asks.

"Twenty five thousand dollars. I’ve been saving for years, hiding it up here so Pandora won’t know. Nobody has any idea its here. Except for you as of now." He closes the lid and places the box carefully under the floor board. Then he turns and beckons the young boy to sit next to him on the tack box. "I’m gonna be leaving one of these days, Henry. Found a guy in the Army medical corps that signed for me even with my back the way it is."

"You’re going to the war?" Henry asks.

"Life ain’t so great around here. Maybe you being a priest someday can understand what I’m saying," Jake continues. "All I do is work. Ten, sometimes twelve hours a day. Then I come back here on the weekends. But there’s nothing to come back for. No good woman. No kids. Nothing," Jake pauses and looks up at the cobwebbed ceiling. Drops of sweat have formed on his brow and beneath his eyes.

"But you’ve got Pandora," Henry protests.

" Madleline!" Jake snorts. "Sometimes I think I’m married to the Statue of Liberty. She won’t have nothing to do with me. Still thinks she oughta be some kind of movie actress. Some weekends go by and we don’t say one word to each other. I try to talk, find out what’s wrong, what it takes to patch things up. But she won’t budge. Stubborn as a mule."

"Maybe you should go to church.," Henry answers. "If you talked to a priest and went to confession, he could help you."

Jake dismisses this suggestion with a wave of his hand, explaining that neither he nor Pandora go to church although they were both brought up Catholic. Then, shaking his head slowly, he announces that the only solution for him is the Army. "I have this funny feeling I’m gonna’ get killed, Henry. Once I leave, I won’t be comin’ back. When I think about it, I’m kinda glad you showed up here this morning and found out about the money. Somebody’s gotta know what to do with it if I end up six feet under."

"Shouldn’t you tell Pandora?" Henry asks.

Jake leans close to him and whispers, "She’s the last one should know." Then he straightens up, folds his arms and begins slowly nodding his head. "I haven’t done much in life Henry. Just worked since I was a kid. I wanted to do something good, help somebody, make it better for people. But I never knew how. Never had the chance. Now I got this money and if I don’t come back from the war, I want you to make sure it’s spent right."

For a moment, Henry imagines Jake jumping up from a foxhole and charging across a shell-blackened field toward a machine gun nest until he stumbles and falls dead. "Nothing will happen to you. The war’s almost over." he says.

"Maybe and maybe not," Jake replies. "Nazis won’t give up without a fight ‘an the Japs’ll commit hari kari before they quit. I’m only saying that if I don’t come back, you’re in charge of the money. Make sure it goes for a good cause."

"Like what?,"

"I don’t know. You’ll just have to use your head, figure it out." Then Jake punches Henry’s shoulder with his forefinger, "Hey, that’s what you got brains for Mr. Henry. Your mind’s like a parachute. If it ain’t open, it won’t work." Henry smiles and Jake grabs his hand. "Let’s shake on this. I’m not much for this religious stuff but I think I can trust you Mr. Henry. Yes sir, having you know about the money is one damned good move. That way I don’t have to worry about her finding out." Then Jake stands and waddles down the creaking, wooden stairs of the barn. with the announcement that he’s going to the house for a good shot of whiskey.

Henry lifts the saddle from its rack, grabs the bridle and goes to the stall where Daisy is munching on green, freshly mown timothy hay. In a few minutes, he has saddled the horse and is riding out the lane where he cannot overcome his reflections on the surprise confrontation with Jake. Jeremiah comes up with his usual kind of suggestion, saying that if Jake is killed in the war, Henry could keep the money. "With twenty five thousand dollars, you could buy a farm and have your own horse," the inner voice says.

That suggestion is easily dismissed. Even if Jake is accepted into the Army with his bad back, his chances of being killed are slim. By the time he gets to Germany or Japan, the war will probably be over although the casualties this summer have been among the highest since it all started.

They come to an alfalfa field which has recently been mowed and raked. Henry urges the horse into a gallop, jumping over the rows of hay like Elizabeth Taylor going over the hedge jumps at the Grand National in the new movie, National Velvet. When he reaches a dense copse, Henry slows down in order to get through the brush. Then another field and more woods. Henry is overcome with happiness.

Finally, he arrives at the spring where he swings off the saddle and holds the horse while she gulps at the slim trickle of water appearing miraculously from a group of small stones. Suddenly, the horse jerks her head up and snorts. His fingers tighten on the leather reins as Daisy steps back nervously, her ears pointed toward the edge of the woods. A twig snaps. The horse snorts again. Then Pandora, faced bruised, eyes red from crying, steps from behind a clump of dark green bushes. She has walked out the lane and crossed the hay field to the spring.

"What happened?" Henry asks. .

"Jake and I had a fight. He kept hitting me with his fists, kicking me," she answers. "I don’t know what to do. It happens every time he comes home."

Pointing to the black and blue ring beneath her eye, Henry asks if Jake did that and Pandora nods, "He’s a savage, mean person. I’d like to get away, to leave. But I can’t. He’s so tight. Makes me pay for everything from my salary so I can’t afford to do anything. Won’t tell me what he does with all the money he’s making in New York.

"Why do you accept that?" Henry asks.

"I don’t have a choice." Pandora sits down on a log next to the spring and splashes water across her tear-covered face. Her strong fingers linger delicately against a swollen red bruise on her neck. "Where can I go? Who would take me? How do I find someone who will come with me to California and help me become a movie actress?"

"Can’t you go alone?," Henry asks.

"No. Of course not. I need company…and money. It would take money to go to California. I know Jake has thousands of dollar stqashed away but I don’t know where."

Sunlight filters through the trees. From the edge of the woods, a solitary crow caws an occasional warning signal across the corn fields. Pandora leans back, her blonde hair cascading over the green moss growing on the rotting log. Henry wants to say something that will help her. He thinks of the twenty five thousand dollars stored in the tack room. That would be more than enough for Pandora’s trip to California. However, he cannot tell her. His promise to Jake cannot be broken.

"Henry, would you come over here and sit next to me?" Pandora asks. He loops the reins to a tree branch and sits down next to her with his back resting on the log. She moves closer and then suddenly throws her arms around him and begins to sob, "Please sit here with me. I need someone to help." She presses against Henry and he remembers how she looked through the window of the tack room. He likes the softness of Pandora against his shoulders, the smell of her rose water perfume. He should pull away but he can’t. She continues to hold her arms around him and together they sit against the log as the sun drops slowly behind the trees at the top of the hill with the horse only a few feet away.

At first Daisy twitches and swats her tail at a solitary horse fly. Then she drops her head and stands passively. From a nearby oak tree, the crow sends out another series of shrill calls through the still afternoon air.

Suddenly, Pandora murmurs close to his ear, "If only you were ten years older, we could run away together." Then she pulls back and her shoulders shake with laughter. "But you’re going to be a priest You wouldn’t want me anyway."

"Yes. Yes I would," Henry protests. "I think you’re really beautiful."

Pandora smiles. Her eyes reflect the light blue of the sky beyond the fields that hangs like a brightly painted flat behind a huge stage. Her strong fingers close around his hand, "You do?"

Then she pulls back and braces her arm against the log.

"Oh Henry, you’re too young," she whispers,

The spell is broken. Pandora stands up and brushes her skirt. "You’re such a good kid. Why can’t I ever find someone like you. Someone who would love me and take care of me." She looks across the field as tears form in her eyes.

"I’m sorry," Henry blurts.

"Don’t say that. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m the one who’s making a mess out of my life. I‘ve got to do something Henry. Get rid of Jake. Get away from here."

Pandora stands and announces that its time to go back. Henry does not want to leave but he realizes he’s been fortunate. He was beginning to think too much about Pandora. That could only make trouble. In silence, he takes the horses’ reins and with Pandora walking beside him, they slowly make their way through the fields back to the barn.

As they move along the grass-filled lane with its weeds and stunted trees on each side, a hawk glides above them looking for prey in the fields below. "Oh, how I’d like to be free like that hawk. Just sail away on the wind," Pandora exclaims.

They walk further until the dark, weather-stained cupolas on top of the barn appear in silhouette against the blue sky, prompting Pandora to stop and place her hand on Henry’s shoulders. "I have an idea. Jake won’t be coming home next weekend. He’s working overtime in New York. Come out on Saturday morning and we’ll ride over to the wooden bridge and go swimming in the creek. I’ll make a picnic and we can stay all afternoon." Henry hesitates but before he can offer an objection, Pandora laughs and says he’s not allowed to say no. "I need to talk to someone. Who knows, perhaps you can give me some good advice. After all that’s what priests do, isn’t it?"

"I better not," Henry answers.

Pandora takes his hand. "You’re going to be a Jesuit . You must learn to help people when they ask. Or will you always think only of yourself and your own salvation?"

Henry nods reluctantly: "I guess you’re right," he says.

"We’ll be back by supper time and we’ll have a wonderful time," Pandora assures him and then adds a reminder as Henry mounts his bike for the ride back to town, "Don’t forget now. Saturday morning."

SEVEN EIGHT

Puffing and coughing up steam like a huge dragon, the train engine comes to a tremulous halt in front of the small station on Saturday morning of Henry’s scheduled picnic with Pandora. An engineer with a round blue hat hangs out the window and waves. Three cars down, two men toss the bundle of morning newspapers onto the wooden loading ramp next to the tracks.

Earl, a short middle aged man with bald head and a stooped but powerful back, helps Henry move the papers into the station where they cut the hemp cords and begin separating the Philadelphia Inquirers. Earl is a full time paper boy and the town grave-digger. He lives near the train station in a one-room shack covered with tar paper. In the evening, puffs of white smoke swirl up from the tin chimney that connects to the pot-bellied coal stove he uses for cooking. No one seems to know where he came from, who his family is or even his last name. He’s just "Earl the paper boy" or "Earl the grave digger."

He does both jobs well. He’s never been reported for failing to deliver the morning newspaper at the proper location of his subscribers. And when death occurs within the community, Earl arrives promptly at the cemetery the following morning after passing his papers and begins digging a grave on the appropriate plot. His graves are always six feet deep even when rock has to be chipped away with a sledge hammer to achieve the proper depth.

Henry is a substitute carrier for the summer, taking the place of a boy who went to visit his grandmother until school starts in the fall. The woman who hired him, an aging, overweight crone with the unlikely name of Stella, sits each day behind the counter of a small gift shop eyeing her customers through heavy glasses. She warned him about missing any subscribers and although her admonition frightened him, it does little good. All too often, Henry forgets to leave a paper on a back porch or even a front door. Then the customer calls his house and complains to his mother. Even worse, they call Stella and she threatens to fire him. He envies Earl’s ability to pass his papers each morning without forgetting anyone.

It’s Saturday morning and a banner headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer catches his eye. "GIs Hit Normandy Beach." He stops to read the story about the huge assault taking place in France:

The German Atlantic Wall has been breached

Thousands of American, Canadian and British soldiers, under cover of the greatest air and sea bombardment of history, have broken through the "impregnable" perimeter of Germany’s European fortress in the first phase of the invasion and liberation of the Continent. Communique 2, issued at the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, before last midnight, reported that all initial landings, which had earlier been located on the coast of Normandy in northern France had "succeeded."

Earl moans " Ta mon Henry. I gotta get my papers delivered ‘for some of ‘em start yellin."

"Okay Earl. Okay," he agrees.

Earl sees stupidity at the loss of time Henry causes by reading the paper. "Readin’ all that stuff don’t do you no good," he warns. But Henry senses the importance of GIs hitting the beaches in France. Maybe it will mean an end to the war. Finally, the bundles with their pungent smell of fresh ink are counted and sorted and they stuff the papers in the canvass carrier bags.

"Hey Henry, you comin swimin’ today?" Earl asks.

When Henry replies that he’s going riding, Earl shakes his head and points a stubby finger at him. "You better be careful ‘bout going out there. That woman, what’s ‘er name? … Pandora? … she’s trouble."

Henry asks Earl what he means by "trouble."

"I ain’t saying," Earl replies.

"Why, what is it? Come on. Tell me."

"Okay but this is only what I heard. She and her old man don’t get along. Some of the guys are saying she’s looking for a replacement, somebody who will take her away from this place."

Henry rolls his eyes skyward and tells Earl that kind of talk is typical small town gossip. Earl shakes his head slowly from side to side and warns, "Okay, but I’m just telling you for you own good, you wantin’ to be a priest and all. You better come with me. Bunch of us are goin’ out to the covered bridge. You kin dive right off the top if you know how."

"You dive off the top of the bridge?" Henry asks.

Two yellow teeth extrude from bare gums as Earl smiles with pride. "Yep. Did ‘er twice yesterday."

"That’s something," Henry says.

Earl pushes a well chewed fingernail into Henry’s shoulder, "Hey buddy. Ain’t nothin wrong with goin’ off the bridge long as you dive shallow an don’t get scared. When you’re up there ready to dive, you can see rocks at the bottom of the crick. That’s when most of the other guys quit and climb down. Not me. Them rocks don’t scare me one bit. You gotta just let go of being scared and make your dive," he says, picking up his bag and starting down the street to pass his papers. As he disappears around the corner Earl, repeats, "You gotta just let go of being scared and make your dive."

Henry moves along the silent, tree-shaded sidewalks, occasionally tossing a rolled Inquirer unto a porch or stuffing it in a doorknob. He tries not to think about Pandora, to forget how she looked standing outside the house and telling him to come for a picnic on at the creek this afternoon. .

As each newspaper is carefully placed by the door of the trim, well-kept houses along the paper route, Henry suddenly finds himself in an argument with Jeremiah. "Go late in the afternoons or on Sundays when Jake isn’t there and have another look at her," he says. "She likes you. She’s all alone out there on that farm. She might just show you a thing or two that you outta know before taking the holy orders."

Henry counters: "Watching Pandora through the window or wanting to kiss her is a sin. Father Benoit once said the unforgivable sin occurs when you know something is wrong but you do it anyway. You can go to Hell for that."

Jeremiah scoffs at Henry and says there’s nothing in the Bible that claims looking at a woman or even wanting to kiss her is a sin. But Henry disagrees. He tells Jeremiah that Hell is no joke, that its bad enough to burn your finger on a stove or over a campfire for a second or two but burning forever is another matter.

Breakfast is ready when he returns to the house. His mother, a tall slim woman with dark eyes and strong, smooth hands, is pushing pieces of bacon around a frying pan. "Il fait pas beau aujourd hui." Its a nice day, she says in the French Canadian accent that still carries the slurs and grunts of the peasant farmers who first settled in Quebec in the 17th century. Speaking in French has created a special bond between them, her reward for insisting on sending him to school in Montreal.

"Ca m’etes equale," he answers. It doesn’t matter to me.

As she moves toward the kitchen table, Henry can detect the smell of whiskey. After the first few days of being home for the summer, he has discovered that his mother has a drinking problem. Already she has taken her first glass of whiskey for the day. Each morning, she disappears to her bedroom several times where a silver flask is stored in some obscure drawer. As the hours pass, her words begin to slur. Sometimes she sways and even stumbles on the stairs or in the living room next to the radio. By noon, her speech will break off in mid-sentence as she struggles to recall what she’s talking about. Early afternoons are reserved for sleep behind a locked bedroom door where the shades are always drawn. When the sun finally drops behind the trees in the small yard behind the house, his Mom descends the stairs quietly, enters the kitchen and begins cooking dinner.

"Are all your papers passed?" she asks. A slight lowering of her voice, a certain tilt of her head suggests reprobation for two missed houses earlier in the week. When it comes to sending a message, his mother’s actual words are only the tip of an iceberg. Sometimes he wonders how she can pass judgment on someone else when her own sins are so consuming. In fact, he realizes that something must be done about her alcohol problem. His own Mother needs the help of the young Jesuit-to-be.

"Yes."

"People want to read about the invasion this morning." She knows about the landing in Normandy. She has coffee in the living room each morning where she listens to the news reports about the war after his father leaves for the hospital.

"Does that mean we’re going to win pretty soon?" Henry asks.

"I think so" his mother replies.

"General Eisenhower says the Germans won’t give up without a fight," Henry says.

Her voice switches. Approval creeps in. Her son reads the newspaper. Knows about Eisenhower. Smart kid. Maybe he’ll be a famous diplomat some day. "Do they pay you to read the papers or pass them?" she asks with a smile.

When Henry’s decides to bring up a delicate subject, one that is bothering him more and more. "Mom, I have a question I want to ask you."

Her eyes narrow and her head, tilted slightly to the left, signals suspicion. "What’s that?"

"Why do you drink so much?"

There it is, out in the open. The admission that Henry knows, that all her efforts to conceal the daily naps, the slurred words and forgotten sentences have failed. Offended, embarrassed, his mom fires back. "What kind of question is that from a seventeen-year-old boy?"

"It’s not good for you Mom."

"Not good for me? Not good for me?" she repeats angrily. "And just what is good for me? You think I live a wonderful life here in this stupid little town with everyone laughing at me, making remarks?"

"No one’s laughing at you. You attend mass every Sunday. You go to confession. People respect that," Henry answers. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he adds, "and so does God."

"God," she exclaims. "Yes God. True I go to mass. I take the sacraments, I confess. And then I come home and I ask myself whether anything has changed. Is anything different? Does life get any better after all that?"

"But Mom, what do you want? You have a nice home. Dad didn’t have to go off to the war and be killed. You have your own car. You can go back to Quebec and visit your relatives whenever you want."

His mother’s anger subsides. She places her hand on his shoulder and looks into his eyes with sympathy. "You’re right, I should be thankful," she says. She wants the conversation to end but Henry presses the issue.

"So why don’t you give up drinking ?" he asks.

His persistence fires up his mother’s anger, "I’ll tell you why Henry. I do it to escape the terrible boredom of living in this town with a husband who does nothing but work. I spend my days without friends, no one to talk with. For me, life is hardly worth living. You go out to play, you go off to school. Your father goes to the hospital, sees his patients. And me? What do I do? Stay home! Cook dinner and wait! Wait for your father to come home eat, read the paper and then go back to his patients. Is this a life? Maybe now you know why I drink, Henry. Because there’s no other choice!"

Her aggressiveness surprises Henry and he sympathizes with her.

For a few minutes, they sit in silence, observing a sudden but unspoken agreement to avoid the topic of her drinking.

The phone rings. Henry’s mother answers. He can hear a hoarse, desperate voice coming through the black handset which she holds several inches from her ear.

"This here’s Staley. Is Doc home?"

"No, he’s not. He’s at the hospital," she answers.

"Wife said I should call. She ain’t doin good. Wants Doc to come on out."

Henry knows the Staley place. A dark, paintless shack on the side of a hill where Mr. Staley spends his days rocking on the front porch, watching his cows graze in a stone-filled pasture next to his dilapidated barn. Henry’s father says he never pays, but the doctor goes anyway. He feels sorry for Mrs. Staley, a whispish dying woman with a skeletal face and dark eyes that peer hopelessly from a cavernous face..

"I’ll leave a message for him Mr. Staley. He’s at the hospital this morning, but I’m sure he can stop by this afternoon." His mother hangs up the phone as he prepares to leave.

"Bye Mom, I’m going riding."

"Riding? Where?" When he tells her, his mother shakes her head. "Henry I know Pandora works with your father. She’s a good nurse. But ... well just be careful with her."

Henry laughs. He tells her that he’s seventeen years old and he knows how to take care of himself. Then he starts for the door and soon he’s outside, peddling his bike though the quiet streets on the way to the farm.

He rides by the town’s only hotel where ice cream is sold at the soda bar near the entrance but its too early to be open. Disappointed, he begins his turn onto the road toward Pandora’s farm when he sees Charley Pearson sitting in the police car. "Hey Henry, how you doin?" the Police Chief calls out.

"Okay," Henry replies, guiding the bike up to the black Ford coupe with the words POLICE stenciled neatly on the side door. The polished strip along the side and the circular saucer of chrome below the front hood glisten in the sunlight.

"You coming to school here this year?"

"No. Don’t think so," Henry replies.

Charley Pearson tips his wide-brimmed police hat against his bald head, pauses and then sighs, "Damned shame. They need guys like you for the basketball team."

"I wish I could play here," Henry answers.

"Yeah, but I guess you’ll be goin back to that French school again."

Charley shakes his head and strokes his waxed mustache with a long, slim forefinger. The police chief never misses any of the high school games. He knows all the athletes. Remembers who played ten and fifteen years ago and what game they starred in, what error of judgment or ability caused defeat. After each game, when the fans, the cheer leaders and the players all gather at the ice cream parlor to talk and listen to the woeful songs of love spinning from the brightly colored juke box, Charley critiques each move, each play of the evening. Sitting in one of the booths, surrounded by the players, he assesses the performers in a narrative replay of the game.

"Henry, you let that guy dribble past you at the end of the first quarter. You were out of your zone. You gotta stay in position." And Henry would look down in shame. "Tony, that was a great pass you made in the second half. Picked out your man under the basket and laid it right into his hands. Couldn’t be any better than that." Tony smiles happily. A compliment from Charley is the best you can get. If the police chief says you’re pretty good at a sport, then you’re going to be a star some day.

Now, Charley bestows his blessing on Henry. "Saw you riding that horse through the fields the other day. You look pretty good. Make some ballplayer all right."

"Yeh? Thanks" Henry replies looking down at his bike handles with unmitigated pride. "We play hockey every afternoon even when its ten or fifteen below zero. Its a big sport up there."

"Hockey. Ice hockey. I guess that’s pretty good to," Charley murmurs with a slow shake of his head. His disappointment with Henry is clear. Then he looks up and tilts his chair toward the road leading to Pandora’s farm. "You goin’ riding this morning?"

"I guess so," Henry replies.

The police smiles: "You sure there’s nothin’ goin’ on between you that lady. What’s ‘er name? Pandora?"

Henry shakes his head, "Naw. Not me."

Charley reaches his hand toward the starter button of the police car. "She’s something all right" he says shaking his head and starting up the engine. "Damned husband is one mean son of a bitch when he gets to drinking. But her, yep, she’s really something."

Henry turns his bike and begins peddling happily along the road. In a few more minutes, he will be with her for the rest of the day. He stands on his peddles and pumps as fast as he can.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Pandora is packing the picnic lunch when Henry arrives at the farm late Saturday morning. A light splattering of rain followed by the emergence of hot sunshine descending from a cloudless sky has left sparkling raindrops on the trees and grass outside the farmhouse. "There you are. Its such a gorgeous day," she cries with a radiant smile as he saunters through the kitchen door. "I was afraid you might change your mind and not come with me." Pandora is wearing a sleeveless cotton blouse and her usual Khaki pants. Into a canvass shoulder bag, she has already placed ham sandwiches, a jar of lemonade, a small box of oatmeal cookies, a Turkish towel, and a bathing suit as well as a carefully folded Army blanket. When Henry tells her the train was late delivering the papers, she throws her hands in the air and says it doesn’t matter. "We have all day and it will only take an hour to ride over to the creek."

As Henry waits for her to finish, he walks into the living room and begins looking at the photographs of Pandora. From the mantel, he picks up a silver-framed picture of her dressed in a cheer-leading outfit, waving a pair of white pompons. She sees him from the kitchen and immediately enters the room with a pleased smile. "Oh Henry, I never showed you my pictures did I?" she says, looking over his shoulder at the photo he’s holding. "That’s me in high school. I made the cheer leading squad from freshman year on," she says proudly. Henry nods and puts the picture back while Pandora reaches for another photo of her dancing in a low-cut chiffon evening gown with an older, fat man wearing a tuxedo. "Look, this is me at the Stork Club in New York. One of the swankiest places in the whole city. The walls were all covered with mirrors so you could see everybody in the place. The guy who took me there was loaded. I think he was Mafia, but could he ever dance and spend money! Bought me anything I wanted." Pandora is excited now, going from one picture to another, pulling framed black white photos from the wall and offering Henry an explanation of each photo. "Here’s one you would like, " she says showing him a picture of her in jodhpurs standing next to a horse. "That’s Blinky, my horse. You should see all the Blue Ribbons we won. People used to say we should be in picture shows together. You know, like that little girl, Elizabeth Taylor, or Gene Autry, something with me being a star in a movie where I had to ride."

Not a photo is missed as Pandora explains each situation and why the picture is important to her. When the last frame has been returned, however, she throws her hands in the air and tells Henry they must be going. At her suggestion, he goes to the barn and brushes the horse for several minutes and then walks up to the tack room for the bridle. As he pulls the soft leather reins from the hook, he glances at the dark corner where Jake’s money is hidden. He wonders what would happen if Pandora were ever to discover the rows of greenbacks stacked in the tin can.

She’s waiting for him outside the barn as Daisy clomps across the floor and then stops quietly next to a tree stump on which Henry stands while mounting the horse. Then, he takes the canvas picnic bag and holds Daisy steady as Pandora jumps on behind him.

"I’ve been looking forward to this all week," she says as they start across a hay field that serves as a short cut to the creek.

At first, Henry tries to lean forward so Pandora’s chest will not be pressed against him. She realizes what he’s doing and pulls him back against her. "Henry, stop treating me like some Delilah who’s going to harm you," she scolds. Embarrassed, he leans back against her in silence, quickly learning to enjoy the feeling of Pandora’s warm body against his back.

They cross the field and are riding slowly down a country road in the direction of the creek when Pandora begins to quiz him. "Tell me more about the school you go to. Do you ever meet any girls there?" she asks into his ear.

Henry tells her that occasionally a nun from one of the nearby convents is invited into class to talk with the students, but other than that, the boys see no women during the school year.

"Don’t they have dances or teas?" she asks.

No, Henry says, there is no time for anything like that. Saturdays, he points out, are filled with athletic events and on Sundays the boys attend early matins, then a long mass in the middle of the morning and finally prayers in the evening. Sunday afternoons, they can play outside or use the study hall.

"That sounds horrible," Pandora says.

"Not really," Henry replies. "If we had girlfriends or even went to dances, we wouldn’t be thinking about anything else. We couldn’t get our work done or lead a spiritual life." When Pandora asks him if he has any vacations, however, he tells her about the All-Saints holiday in early November when he can spend five days doing anything he wants. "I can practice skating, sleep late, or even go into Montreal and visit the city," he says.

"They let you do that?

"Sometimes I go to St. Joseph’s Oratory. It’s the most beautiful cathedral in the world. People go there to get cured. Miracles happen all the time," Henry says.

Pandora sighs, "I’ve always wanted to visit Montreal. I think I’ll come to visit you this November and you can take me to St. Joseph’s. Would you do that? " she asks. Henry laughs at the unlikely prospect of such a visit and agrees to be her guide.

As the horse passes a clump of multi-flowered rose bushes along the dusty road, a pheasant suddenly explodes from the brush and, cackling like a snare drum in the school band, flies off toward the sun in a brilliant display of red, yellow and orange feathers. Daisy shies sideways and almost throws the two riders, but Henry grabs the horse’s neck and Pandora throws her arms around him to avoid losing her balance. "You saved us both Henry. You’re such a wonderful rider," she says.

Soon, the quiet waters of the creek appear through a stand of trees and the two riders dismount. Henry secures the horse’s reins to the branch of a small oak tree while Pandora empties the canvas bag and spreads the picnic lunch on the old army blanket. Then they both walk to the edge of the creek where a murky collage of sky, clouds, shoreline trees and bushes is reflected beneath the shimmering surface of the blue-tinged water while bubbles of white foam, created by an up-creek dam, drift lazily downstream in the hot sun.

"I’d like to be like that creek," Pandora says. When Henry asks why, she explains that the creek knows exactly what it is and where its going. "It never stops or changes directions. The water never questions its goal or how it will get there. It just flows day and night toward the sea and even if people dump trash or garbage in it, the water doesn’t get angry or upset or depressed. It just keeps right on flowing to its destination."

"You could be like that," Henry answers.

"By joining the church?" she asks.

"Yes."

Pandora turns to him and says, "I thought that’s what you’d say and perhaps I should. Nothing else I do seems to work." Then her mood switches. She throws her arms into the air and suggests they go for a swim before having the picnic.

"Last one in’s a sissy," Henry answers, pulling off his shirt and tugging at his long pants to display the swimming trunks he carefully put on before leaving home.

"Not fair. I’ve got to change first, " Pandora calls as she dashes back to the blanket, pulls a one-piece red bathing suit from the bottom of the canvas bag and disappears into the woods. Henry steps up on a large rock and dives into the creek. The water is cool and soothing as he strokes downward with his eyes open, observing a small school of minnows darting away from him to seek protection among the smooth rocks and stones lying on the bottom.

After he has surfaced and stroked to the middle of the creek, Pandora appears and dives in. She’s a strong swimmer and soon she joins him, submerging under water and grabbing his legs. They wrestle underwater for a few moments and then come up laughing. "I bet you thought I was a shark," she gasps, her wet lips only a few inches from his.

"Not a shark but a whale and I was Jonah," Henry responds

"Oh you poor thing. But I would never spit you out."

They swim downstream where the water turns shallow. After resting for a few minutes, Pandora suddenly plunges against the current and strokes hard toward the shore where the picnic blanket has been spread in the grass at the edge of the water. "Time to eat," she announces, releasing her hair from the confines of a pink rubber bathing hat and rubbing her legs and shoulders with the Turkish towel. As Henry climbs from the water and approaches, she turns toward him with the towel and begins to dry his back. "Here, you need to be spoiled by a woman," Henry tries to back away, but Pandora only laughs and turns him around so she can dry his chest. "Why are you so afraid of me?" she asks.

"I’m not," Henry answers.

"Yes you are," Pandora says, poking him in the ribs and making him laugh. "Now come and sit down and tell me why you want to be a priest and why I should give up my worldly ways and turn to the church for salvation."

"Are you making fun of me or do you really want to know?" Henry asks, as he sprawls on the edge of the blanket.

"I really want to know why you wish to be a Jesuit."

"A Jesuit is dedicated to changing the world, making things better for people. That’s what I’d like to do," he says.

"That’s what your father does every day," Pandora responds.

"But he’s only interested in physical healing. My mission will be to bring spiritual health to people."

"So Henry, how would spiritual health help me? How would going to church get me to Hollywood and into the movies?."

"I’m not sure it would Maybe that’s not important."

"Not important? That’s all I’ve ever wanted and someday, somehow I’m going to do it," Pandora responds with indignation.

"Father Benoit says the reason people are unhappy is because they want too much. They want this, they want that. And because they can’t have it, they’re miserable. People don’t know how to accept ‘no’ for an answer."

"So I suppose your Holy Father would tell me to sit back at the farm, get old and die without ever achieving anything because no one will say ‘yes’ I’ll take you to Hollywood."

"He says that yes is good and no is also good. They open different doors but "no" can still be a door that leads to a path of opportunity."

"And that’s what the Jesuits teach you?" Pandora asks.

"That’s what Pere Benoit teaches. He’s not like most of the other Jesuits I know."

"Well I prefer the answer ‘yes’ and its what I’m determined to get," Pandora says as she unscrews the tin lid from the jar of lemonade and, with an apology for neglecting to bring paper cups, hands it to Henry. Then, uneasy with the seriousness of the previous topic, she shifts the conversation to a teasing question, "If you want to kiss me, you shouldn’t mind drinking from the same jar or did you forget what you said last week?"

Henry’s face turns red and a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, "I didn’t forget anything I said to you."

Pandora leans toward Henry and takes his hand, "You’re so sweet." Her face moves close to him and she whispers a few inches from his lips, "I think I’m going to fall in love with you for the rest of the summer." Henry shuts his eyes and allows his mouth to find her soft, parted lips. He feels her finger sliding across his bare shoulders and he throws his arms around her.

Just as Pandora’s wet bathing suit presses against him, however, the sudden crack of an oak limb snapping from a tree trunk and the loud stomping of hooves breaks through the warm afternoon silence. Daisy has accidentally twisted the reins around the tree limb and in desperation, has reared back, tearing off the limb and breaking the reins. Terror-stricken, the horse bolts through the woods and gallops toward an open field in the direction of the barn.

"Daisy. Stop!" Henry shouts as he jumps up from the blanket and runs barefoot to the edge of the woods. On the far side of the field, he sees the animal with reins dangling between her front legs, trotting through the field in the direction of the barn.

"What a shame. Now we’ve got to catch her," Pandora says, hurrying to throw the sandwiches and lemonade and blankets in the canvas bag.

"Stupid horse," Henry shouts at the disappearing animal.

Oh Henry is "no" wonderful. Now we can walk on a spiritual path that leads all way back to the barn," Pandora calls out, suddenly shrieking with laughter. Henry, too, laughs as Pandora disappears into the woods again to change from her wet bathing suit. Soon she comes back to fill the canvas bag and lead the way on the long hike back to the barn.

In a few minutes, they reach a country road which eventually winds its way back to Pandora’s house. Thinking they might catch a ride Pandora and Henry began walking along the side of the hot asphalt. In a few minutes, their hunch pays off as a solitary Model-T-Ford appears in the distance and slowly approaches with her neighbor, Professor Metzger, at the wheel. They easily flag him to a halt and as the rickety car sways up and down in response to the grumbling motor, he calls "Hop in." They climb aboard. The retired teacher from a nearby university sweeps his gray hair back along his head and, smiling, displays yellow, crooked teeth. "We don’t go very fast, but we get there," he shouts above the noise of th engine. The professor releases the gas lever and soon they’re rolling along the road at a maximum speed of 35 mph.

"So the horse ran away," the Professor repeats after hearing the story of their aborted picnic. Then with another smile crossing his wrinkled lips, he adds, "As the great poet Robert Burns has written: The best made plans of mice and men do oft but come anaught."

As the car sways and rocks through the countryside, Pandora leans toward Henry and whispers in his ear. "Come to the farm with me this afternoon. We can pick up where we left off,"

Her invitation is clear and uncomplicated. The Professor will drop them off at Pandora’s farm. They will put the horse away and then she will invite him to come into the house for lemonade. It’s the opportunity he has been thinking about for the past week. "Jeremiah breaks in. "Tell her yes. This is your big chance."

Henry hesitates. He wants to go with her, to spend the rest of the day with the woman who is sitting next to him with her blonde hair blowing in the warm summer air as the Professor’s Model T moves along the highway. Yet, he also knows the price he will surely pay is much too high. Nothing less than salvation itself will be sacrificed. He looks straight ahead, knowing that if he even glances at Pandora he will agree to go with her. Finally, he stammers: "No. I can’t do that."

Pandora squeezes his hand. "Oh Henry please. I don’t want to be alone for the rest of the day."

" You know what will happen." he says.

"All right, I promise I won’t get near you. Just come and help me with the horse and then you can go," she says.

"Just to catch Daisy and clean the stall?" he asks, knowing that inwardly he’s really looking for an excuse to stay with Pandora.

"That’s all," she promises.

"Well, okay. But then I have to leave," Henry says.

In a few more minutes, the Professor slows the Model T in front of Pandora’s farmhouse.

"Well, here we are," he calls out as the motor rattles and groans to a stop.

Pandora and Henry climb down from the running board and wave goodbye to Professor Metzger as he shifts gears and drives off.

Together they walk to the barn where, sure enough, Daisy is standing by the door with a torn bridle hanging to the ground.

"Daisy, you are really bad," Pandora scolds.

Henry takes the reins and together they lead the horse into the barn and brush the burrs and mud from the horse’s coat. Then, Pandora leads her into the stall and replaces the bridle with a loose halter.

"There, you silly thing. We shouldn’t give you any feed today but you don’t even know you did something wrong, do you?" she says, while dumping a small bucket of oats into Daisy’s wooden trough.

Henry’s brain is racing like a stock car rounding a dirt track on a Sunday afternoon. The horse has been put away. There is nothing left to do. He should go to his Schwinn now and say goodbye to Pandora .To stay longer will signal his willingness, even his desire to remain with her. He starts to walk out the barn door.

"Would you like to come into the kitchen for some lemonade?" Pandora asks with sudden formality.

"No. I really have to go," he responds quickly.

Pandora turns toward him with a raised, angry voice.

"Oh Henry, why do you have to be such a prude? Don’t you ever think of anything but you and your self-righteous Jesuits? What about me? Am I supposed to just spend the rest of the day here alone?

"I can’t resist you," Henry blurts.

"How do you think I feel about you, or doesn’t that matter?" she asks.

"I can’t. I just can’t," Henry says.

Pandora’s voice rises in anger. "Oh, go then! Leave! Go back to your Jesuits. But don’t come back anymore when I’m here. Ride the horse when you want but just stay away from me," Then, she turns and starts toward the barn.

Henry realizes the end is very close. He needs only to accept her verdict, get on the bicycle and peddle back to town. Temptation will be avoided. He will be able to begin his novitiate in the fall. By then, Pandora will only be a memory. He turns and walks slowly to his bicycle and is soon riding back to town, and when he’s finally back in is room and the sounds of katydids are reverberating through the warm summer night outside his window, he realizes that he made the correct decision.

Yet, Jeremiah doesn’t agree. "You had your chance and you blew it," he says.

Visions of staying on with Madeline that night flick through his brain but he quickly cancels out his fantasy. His decision is made. The prospect of eventual salvation has been salvaged. He must never be alone with Madeline again. Yet, he promised to go with her to the Air Patrol shack to spot enemy planes. Somehow, he needs avoid this potentially dangerous commitment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A blue sky, unmarked by even a hint of clouds, has appeared early Sunday morning by the time Henry arrives at the train station. Heat soon simmers from the sidewalks and silence returns immediately to the deserted streets after the noisy train deposits the bundles of Philadelphia Inquirers and chugs off into the distance. Earl arrives, admonishing him to concentrate on his job.

""You better not miss any of them damned houses this morning," he warns.

But Henry’s thought are far from passing papers. Now, as he begins peddling down the street with his newspapers, he realizes that he must forget completely about Madeline. He will not go with her to the Air Patrol shack no matter what he promised. He knows he cannot resist her. Only abstinence from her presence will enable him to continue his vow.

After two weeks of passing papers, Henry knows where they should be delivered. The crumbled slips of yellowed paper with names and addresses of each customer scribbled carelessly in Stella's thick handwriting are no longer needed.

Professor Metzger is the last customer on the route. Tall, silver haired, with rumpled clothes and constantly blinking eyes, he watches as the paper-boy rides up to the white, clapboard house located precariously close to the road just outside of town. Professor Metzger taught college for many years before retiring and now he writes books and magazine articles in the cluttered, tome-lined study at the back of his house. His residence is only a quarter mile from Pandora’s farm where he occasionally delivers tomatoes, squash and fresh corn from his wife’s garden. The professor often lingers to chat with her during the long, summer evenings.

This morning, the old man scrutinizes Henry carefully as if he knows what happened the previous afternoon between his beautiful neighbor and the young paper boy.

"You find the horse okay?" the professor asks.

"Yes sir. Daisey was waiting at the barn door.

The professor takes his Philadelphia Inquirer and asks how long Henry will be delivering newspapers.

When told it will only be for the summer, Professor Metzger asks Henry to take a seat on his front porch. Quickly, he mines the young man’s short history, including his plans for the priesthood. "I suppose we all go through that stage. Even I contemplated being a preacher once," he says. .

When Henry asks why he changed his mind, the Professor blinks several times and snaps that a person can hardly be a minister of God if he doesn’t believe in the Virgin Birth, the validity of Communion or the existence of Heaven or Hell. "Those are barriers I could never leap. No. It was the discipline, the sense of purpose, the opportunity to lead a spiritual life that attracted me to the ministry, " he says. "But the mythology, the pagan rituals of the Church with all of its Christian veneer, was the stumbling block."

Not quite sure of his meaning, Henry nevertheless responds that these customs come straight from the Bible itself and can be practiced with complete confidence.

As if Henry had said nothing, the Professor places his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants and looks across the porch where his wife, Maggie, is hoeing a vegetable garden. A rotund woman with straggly grey hair held loosely together by a leather beret at the back of her thick neck, she pecks quietly at the soft dirt. In the summers, she is the director of all the shows at The Playhouse where she has spent years in promoting the local theater. "She's a wonderful woman. We've been married fifty five years. Don't know what I'll do without her and I don’t know how The Playhouse can ever survive if she’s not there." he says in a voice that betrays both fear and sadness.

Turning back, he asks Henry if he knows when the Gospels were written. No answer is forthcoming and immediately, the professor nods his head up and down. "Sixty years after the death of Christ. Don’t you think the human imagination might have worked overtime in telling the Christian myth throughout all those years? In short, does it not occur to you that the story of the bible is a literary rather than a factual event?"

Surprised at the ferocity of the professor’s argument, Henry struggles for a rebuttal. He agrees that some details might have changed, but the basic truth remains. After all, he points out, the men who wrote the Bible were inspired by God Himself so it hardly mattered if a few historical facts were altered.

As they talk, Henry suddenly sees Pandora walking down the road toward them. She has apparently seen his bicycle leaning against the Professor’s porch and decided to join them. Quickly, he tells the Professor he must leave.

"Why? You must stay for breakfast. My wife has made shoo fly pie," the old man says.

Pandora is getting closer and he realizes only an instant bolt for his bicycle will enable him to avoid going to the Air Patrol shack with her for the rest of the day. .

"You’ve got to stay. We must finish our talk, you know," the Professor commands.

Henry hesitates. He tries to move toward his bike but instead he lingers on the porch. Then it’s too late. Pandora has arrived.

"Ah, our very own Sarah Bernhart," Professor Metzger calls out as she steps up on the porch.

"Good Morning Professor," Pandora says. "And Henry, you must be finished passing papers," she adds impassively, as if she hardly knew him. He watches her carefully as she joins the conversation and soon offers an impassioned soliloquy about her own declining faith in the power of the Almighty. "I used to pray all the time for help to become a famous actress but I’ve quit now. God isn’t going to help me. I’ll have to do it on my own," she says wistfully.

Professor Metzger looks across the road for a few moments at a field of soy beans reflecting myriad shades of green in the early morning sun. Then

he turns to her and says she is right to depend on herself. "If God would make you a movie star, why hasn’t he done it?" he asks.

"Maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he thinks there is something better for Pandora," Henry interrupts.

"Well then," Pandora hoots, "he better stay out of my business if he’s against me going to Hollywood."

With blinking eyes, professor Metzger steers the conversation back to Henry again, wanting to know where he thinks the idea of eternal damnation comes from. When Henry suggests Christ as the author, the Professor shakes his large, square head, "No young man, the concept of salvation came from the Greeks, initiated long before the Redeemer’s birth."

Before Henry can respond, Maggie appears from the garden.

"That’s enough of your chatter for the day," she admonishes her husband. "I have some shoo fly pie from yesterday. I’m sure this young man must be hungry. And Pandora, you, too, can stand some breakfast.

Then they all sit together and soon the conversation turns to the war effort.

Maggie announces that the amount of war bonds being sold in the community has just surpassed $25,000. The Junior Commandos have collected two tons of scrap metal.

Henry is called upon to evaluate the latest movies Casablanca with Humprehy Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The professor wants to know about the movie showing the following weekend: Wallace Berry and Binnie Barnes in Barbary Coast Gent.

Maggie is not a well woman and soon she rises and, without a word, disappears from the room. Henry can hear the stairs creak as she struggles to the second floor. The Professor sighs, "Poor Maggie. She doesn’t have long to go."

When they have finished with the pie, Pandora announces that’s its time for her airplane watch on top of the hill. I have to go to air patrol Please, Henry you promised to come with me," she says.

Excellent idea, " the Professor adds.

"I can’t,{. Henry answers.

"But you promised," Pandora says.

"A man of the cloth who doesn’t keep; his word?" the professor jokes.

Henry hesitates like a trapped rabbit. Then, he nods."Okay. I guess I did promise," he says.

cHAP[TER TEN

Blue-black clouds twist and roll across wind-swept skies as Henry and Pandora climb the steep hill rising above town. Pandora volunteers one day a week for the Civil Air Patrol where she scans the skies from a small shack located at the top of the hill overlooking the community. By means of a telephone rigged from the shack to the fire station below, the wail of warning sirens can be instantly turned on to alert the unsuspecting citizens of an enemy attack.

"Isn’t this sort of foolish. I mean why would Hitler ever launch an attack against this place even if his planes could fly that far which they can’t," Henry observes as he follows Pandora with a constant eye on her bare legs, exposed by red peddle pushers. She merely shrugs, suggesting that people need to do something for the war effort and spotting airplanes is probably good for morale even if there is no danger.

Like a protective giant, the nameless hill they ascend is a perpetual provider of benefits for the people nestled at its feet. A spring along its tree-filled slope provides water that once flowed through hollowed-out oak trees but now is pumped into a huge steel reservoir. A steep road descending from the crest allows bicycles to hit full speed without the need of peddles. In winter, its snow-covered paths send sleds and toboggans hurtling downwards with their young, human cargoes laughing and screaming in the freezing wind. Even the cemetery is located on one of its slopes, welcoming departed citizens with dignity and a perpetual view of the town below.

The binoculars are removed from the picnic hamper and Henry carries a rickety bench from inside the freshly painted board shack. "Looks like rain but at least we won’t have to worry about run-away horses," Pandora quips as she begins to scan the cloudy horizon. Then, handing the glasses to Henry, she takes a seat on the bench and reminds him that he has only one month left before returning to school. "Will you be glad to go back?" she asks.

Henry takes the binoculars and sweeps the darkening sky for several moments before admitting a sullen, "I guess so."

"Maybe you should take a trip or do something exciting before you return. It might be your last chance,"

There are no enemy planes in the sky. No black dots on the horizon evolving quickly into Japanese Zeros or German Mescherschmidts swooping low over town with machine guns blazing and bombs tumbling down on the houses, the churches, the train station and even the grinding mill next to the railroad tracks. In fact, no one has ever seen an enemy plane since they began watching the skies that first day after Pearl Harbor when one of the young men of town came up on the hill to spot the waves of enemy airplanes which he and others thoughts would surely arrive to decimate their community. Still, the patriotic volunteers like Pandora and even Henry’s mother come each day to observe any alien aircraft that might appear so the people below can be alerted to the imminent raids.

"Oh sure. Just take a trip. Go somewhere exciting. How would I do that?" Henry answers as he puts down the binoculars and takes a glass of lemonade which Pandora has poured after opening the picnic hamper.

The wind is picking up from the west and Pandora motions him to join her on the bench.

"I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. About accepting no for an answer," she says.

Henry corrects her, "That’s what Pere Benoit says."

"Well, I think he’s wrong and I’m not going to accept no. I’ve decided to leave this place and start a whole new life. I’m going to Hollywood, Henry. I don’t know how but I’m going to do it."

Fingering his glass of lemonade, Henry expresses his surprise and immediately wants to know just how she plans to make such a drastic move. "I’ll just get in the car and drive as far as I can toward California and when the money runs out for gasoline, I’ll hitchhike the rest of the way."

Henry tells her its crazy, that she’ll need funds to survive once she arrives in Hollywood but Pandora suddenly takes his hand in hers and says she’ll get a job as a waitress, a bartender. even a dishwasher if she has to. He senses the determination in her voice and it frightens him. He cautions her to reconsider, but Pandora has made up her mind to go before its too late, before she gets old and loses her beauty. "That’s not a very good idea. I mean that could be really dangerous just to arrive in Hollywood without knowing anyone. You’ll need money and a place to stay," Henry argues.

Pandora leans close to him, squeezes his hand and whispers, "I don’t care. I’m going anyway and I wish you would come with me."

As they talk, the breeze turns stronger and the black clouds that had been hanging on the horizon begin racing across the near-by mountain ridge from the far end of the valley.

"To Hollywood?" Henry gasps.

"You could help me drive my car to California and get settled and still be back in time for school," she says.

"But my Dad and Mom...."

"Henry, you’re seventeen. You’re a man. You can do whatever you want."

The first drops of rain smack against the tin roof of the Air Patrol shack, followed almost immediately by a sheet of wind-driven water that lashes across the top of the hill, pummeling Pandora and Henry as they scurry inside the damp shelter.

"Sure. It would be great. I’ve always wanted to go out West, " Henry says as they place the bench against the wall and close the shack’s only door to block the rain.

Pandora’s fingers touch against Henry’s wrist and begin slowly rubbing against his bare arm as she whispers into his ear, "Then, why not?"

They resume their seats on the bench as thunder cracks and a jagged line of lighting flashes against the window. "You really think it’s possible. I mean just drive out there?" Henry asks.

"People do it all the time. We could stop in Chicago, and maybe the Grand Canyon. I hear you can ride mules to the bottom of the canyon," she says, placing her arms around him and touching her lips lightly against his cheek.

Henry fingers one of her bracelets as his imagination fills in the details of the huge, red canyon with a muddy Colorado River rushing through the riverbed far below. "I’ve heard about that. But where would we stay?"

"You ever heard of a motel? Queen sized beds?" Pandora asks seductively. "After I’m settled in Hollywood, you could take the train back to Montreal in time for school. This could be your last chance to do something exciting before you start your novitiate," she says.

Heavy winds are howling outside now and as they huddle together on the bench, Pandora reminds him that he is not yet a Jesuit, "Even Father Loyola didn’t take the vows until he learned about women. It made him a better priest."

A piece of tin roof breaks loose and begins to flap up and down in the heavy gale, allowing a shower of water to spurt into the small shack. As the rain pours down on them, Pandora pulls Henry closer and kisses him with both her hands, pulling his face against hers. Then, she pulls her lips back a few inches and pleads, "Henry, please, we can go on Sunday after my final performance in The Doll’s House. Jake will leave in the afternoon and we can go that night," she says. Then her face is close to him again. They kiss for several minutes until rain drops begin sliding between their lips. Pandora draws back, screaming with laughter. "Oh Henry, when can we ever be alone long enough to have at least one good kiss?" Sweeping the rain from her hair and face, Pandora picks up the picnic hamper and shouts at him to shut the door carefully so it isn’t blown off its hinges. Hunching forward against the wind-driven sheets of water, they force their way off the hill and down the cinder path. Small rivulets of rain rush beneath their feet until finally they reach Pandora’s car and jump inside.

"Hop in. I’ll take you home," she calls through the storm. Then, as the car starts and they begin driving through the storm, Pandaora asks: Will you come with me to California?"

"I can’t," Henry answers.

"But why not? We could drive all the way to Hollywood. Just the two of us. Pandora’s hand moves slowly up his thigh as she whispers in his ear, "We’ll stop wherever you want and Henry ... we’ll be together all night long."

Henry would like to respond "That would be adultery Pandora. A violation of the seventh commandment. I could never do that," but he remains silent.

Then, he bites the inside of his lower lip for several seconds and repeats slowly, "I’d like to. I’d really like to do it."

She stops the car in front of his house. Pandora tells him Jake will take him to her final performance at the Play Barn on Saturday evening and then they can leave the following day after her husband has departed for New York "Will you consider it?" she asks.

Henry nods as he opens the door and then dashes through the rain to the house.

CHAPTER NINE

Maggie’s sickness, becomes more evident on the Fourth of July when Professor Metzger brings Maggie into town for the annual parade in an old car that sputters up to the driveway of the house, quivers for several moments and then shuts off with a loud explosion. At the suggestion of Henry’s mother, he has asked the Metzgers to watch the parade on the front porch of his parents’ house. His mother serves hot dogs, potato salad, lemonade and an endless supply of potato chips on a table after the elderly couple sink happily into the porch chairs to watch the parade unfurl through town.

"Help yourself," she says, apparently enjoying these few hours when at least the appearance of a happy home life can be placed on display.

The familiar notes of the school band playing military songs drift through the crowded sidewalks. Silent lips mouth words of praise for the boys overseas, fighting in the great battles of El Alamein, Corrigidor, Iowa Jima. Private Wagner, who lives down the street is a prisoner of war, sending rare notes of survival through the Red Cross. Captain Stimmel from the other side of town, was shot down while piloting a bomber over France. Mrs. Armstrong, the third grade teacher, received word that her husband was killed in action with the Marines somewhere in the Pacific. Anchors Aweigh my boys! To the shores of Tripoli! Over there, Over there? Up, up and away! The band music is familiar, inspiring. Soon the Army will begin a drive toward Germany. Victory is in the air this afternoon. The prospect of the war’s end manifests itself in the raucous shouts and loud laughter from the parade participants as they pass by the house in the warm shade of early July.

"Quite a show," Professor Metzger says as a float passes by with young girls dressed in their prom dresses. "Quite a show."

Henry’s father has joined them, helping to pass the hot dogs to a number of neighbors who have come to watch the parade from the porch. "Does it remind you of World War I?" he asks the Professor

"Yes of course. They’re all the same, these wars. All the same. Everybody gets all worked up over the music. If you didn’t have those songs, you couldn’t have a war."

Before the parade is even half finished, the familiar signs of an "attack" overcome Mrs. Metzger. Her face turns gray and twists into a pain-filled grimace. Her glazed eyes focus on her husband. She struggles to stand. Henry’s father helps the professor guide her to the old car. Together they lift her up onto the seat. The professor cranks the starter on the front of the car and the engine fires up with several loud bangs. In a few minutes, Charley Pearson signals a momentary stop to the parade so Professor Metzger can drive cross the street and hurry home with his ailing wife.

"She won’t make it through the summer," Henry’s father says. "But don’t worry, Henry, she goes to church every Sunday. She’ll be up there with the angels before your friend Earl can dig her grave."

Henry wonders if he should include Maggie in his plans for conversion. He is not so sure that someone from the Lutheran Church can go straight to a heavenly reward without a sufficient wait in Purgatory. His father is being overly generous on that one. In any case, as far as the Professor is concerned, Henry realizes that time is running out. He needs to win him over before returning to school. Converting Professor Metzger to the church could be the single most important event of the summer, the triumph that would make his vacation a perfect sequel to beginning the novitiate. It could also be the capping event of a trial in which the forces of sin are totally and completely defeated, a victory that is nevertheless dependent on his ability to avoid thinking about Pandora and refusing to allow his lust for a beautiful woman to lead him into temptation and its irrevocable consequences.

After three days of merciless July heat, the doors and windows of the Play Barn are opened to catch a slight evening breeze that has miraculously stirred through the wooded grounds outside town where the old theater is located. Jake has picked up Henry in his crumbling Desoto with the rusted chrome siding and brought him for the final performance of the Doll’s House. "It’s always better to see me at the end of the run rather than opening night," Pandora had told Henry.

"I’m at my best after I’ve had time to improve on my character." And then she added, "On Sunday, after Jake catches the train for New York, we’ll leave for California. Oh Henry, I’m so excited. We’re actually going to do it,"

Now, leaning against the trunk of a Chestnut tree as they wait for the doors to open, Jake puffs on a large cigar and grumbles, "Its gonna be one hot son of a bitch in there tonight. Yes sir, Mr. Henry, you’re gonna find out what hot is before this damned thing is over."

Henry nods and loosens his tie. Neither the heat nor Jake’s pessimism can dampen his excitement over the prospect of seeing Pandora perform on stage and knowing that in just a few more hours they’ll leave for California. It has all tied in so perfectly. Jake will go to the Army , planning never to return. The frees Pandora to leave for Hollywood. And when all of that is taken care of, Henry can return to school for the beginning of his novitiate. In the meantime, however, he will have Pandora all to himself for two weeks. He will visit Chicago, ride a mule down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, see California and by staying in the car each night, avoid the temptations of sin. Henry wonders how he can possibly wait for one more day to pass before they leave.

"Have you ever seen her in a play before?" Henry asks Jake.

Jake laughs. "Couple a times. Generally speaking, I stay as far away from this acting business as possible. Nothing but a waste a goddamned time far as I’m concerned. Just Pandora trying to get people’s attention"

"But you’re here tonight," Henry replies.

"That’s only ‘caus you needed a ride, Mr. Henry. After all, you and me, we’re pals. Once I leave for the Army this week, you’re in charge. Remember?"

The black iron box stored in the tack room of the barn, with its rows of fifty dollar bills, has become Jake’s symbol of their friendship, an alliance Henry finds increasingly uncomfortable. He not only disapproves of Jake’s drinking, he’s beginning to hate his violent behavior toward Pandora.

"Of course I remember," Henry sighs, thinking how much better the money could be spent by giving it to Pandora.

Suddenly, the door swings open and Maggie, in a long, print dress with her thick hair pinned into a bun by a silver clasp, signals the waiting audience to enter. Jake tosses his cigar into the bushes next to the weathered board siding of the old theater and together, he and Henry, move into the thinly carpeted foyer. "You’re sitting next to the Professor," Maggie announces as she hands them a two-page program and points them in the direction of Professor Metzger’s white shock of hair clearly visible several rows from the stage. As Henry side-steps in front of the cushioned seats, the Professor calls out, "Ah my young and learned Jesuit."

"Good evening Professor Metzger," Henry says.

"I wasn’t aware that Ibsen’s message was among your many interests," the Professor quips. "But surely Pandora’s husband is one of its practitioners."

The professor’s scathing sarcasm passes over their heads like a shooting star flinging its light across a night sky and before Henry can think of a reply, Maggie suddenly appears..

"Henry, Pandora would like to see you backstage," she calls.

Jake snickers. "Hmph. Probably wants some help getting dressed." Without a word, Henry eases himself to the end of the row and follows Maggie through a small door next to the stage.

Pandora’s dressing room is filled with old costumes hanging from wooden pegs. A small table with a mirror and lamp are pushed awkwardly into the crowded room where Pandora has just finished putting on her stage makeup as Henry enters through the flimsy door.

"Henry, God, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been thinking about you all week," she says, standing and throwing her arms around him. Henry steps back and pushes her arms away from him. Pandora rolls her eyes toward the ceiling and tells him she’s sorry and promises not to touch him anymore. Then she laughs and draws back, "I can’t kiss you anyway with all this stage makeup."

"Are you ready to go tomorrow?" Pandora asks.

"Yes. I’ll go to church with my mother in the morning and come riding in the afternoon. I’ve taken $500 from my savings account."

You should leave a note for your parents," Pandora says.

"I’ve already written it."

"Oh my God Henry, I can’t wait. Going to Hollywood with you to take care of me. Won’t it be wonderful?"

Suddenly, Maggie’s voice calls from the hallway, "Five minute curtain call."

Pandora throws her arms in the air. "You’re going to see me perform tonight. I hope you like me." Then, as she pushes him gently toward the door, she adds, "just so you know, Henry, even if I can’t even kiss you, I still love you and I can’t wait until we leave for California. Just the two of us. "

The house lights have already gone down as Henry crawls over Jake and takes his seat next to the Professor. Her last words, "I love you," ring through his mind like wind chimes dancing in the wind as he watches the stage lights slowly come up. Pandora, playing the role of Nora, is wrapping Christmas gifts on stage. Her clear voice carries easily through the small theater, as she recites the opening lines of the controversial play that has achieved international popularity since its opening performance in Sweden eight years earlier.

"Hello dear," she calls to her husband as he arrives on stage.

"Is that my little lark twittering out there?" her husband asks.

"Yes it is," Nora replies sweetly and obediently.

"Is that my little squirrel bustling about?" he asks.

In her role as Nora, Pandora assures her husband that she and the squirrel are one and the same. Then the husband asks, "Has my little spendthrift been wasting money again?" Once again, his pretty, dutiful wife answers "yes."

Henry is entranced by Pandora’s convincing role of household "doll", yet as the play progresses and she reveals that she has borrowed money to save her husband’s health, the inner strength of Nora begins to appear. Soon, Pandora has made it apparent that Nora is, in fact, the stronger personality in a home where the husband is a weakling with only a concern for appearances.

As the first act comes to a completion, Jake has lost interest and an occasional snort from his open mouth indicates that he is sound asleep. Henry thinks of pinching his arm to wake him, but before he can take action, the house lights come up and the red velvet curtains creak together in the middle of the stage.

"Remarkable performance, remarkable," Professor Metzger calls out as the light come up. "Our friend Pandora is a great actress." Henry nods his head in agreement and joins the audience in a round of applause. Even Jake has awakened and now joins in clapping for his talented wife.

After a brief, intermission, they take their seats again and soon the play moves into it’s final sequence of events when Nora announces she is leaving her husband. Jake has once again fallen asleep. The message which Ibsen had drawn so well and which Pandora played to perfection is lost on the real-life husband. Disgusted, Henry joins the professor in a brief back-stage appearance to congratulate Pandora and hear her quick words. "Tomorrow we leave Henry. I’ll be waiting for you." Then, Henry hurries to the parking lot. Jake is waiting with the Desoto engine running to take him home. It occurs to Henry, as they drive out onto the highway, that in a few more hours, he will be sitting behind the wheel of this same car as he and Pandora begin their journey to California.

CHAPTER TEN

Henry wakes early on Sunday morning and before doubt or guilt can work its effects on his determination to accompany Pandora to California, he jumps from bed to pack the few clothes he will take on the trip. His trunk has been packed for shipment to school later after he writes to this parents that he will be going directly to Montreal following the western journey with Pandora.

Slowly, Henry puts on a coat and tie so he can attend Mass with his mother. Later, he will change to his riding clothes and leave for the farm, carefully balancing a suitcase on the handlebars so they can leave after Jake departs for New York.

As he flips his tie into a knot, he listens to the bells in the tall church tower across the street tolling their solemn hymns exhorting the faithful to march forward as to war, to take up the banner, to cross over the river. Henry knows the music well and as he wraps a wrinkled tie around his slim neck before joining his mother for the morning mass, he silently hums the words. He wishes the Catholic church played music similar to these Protestant songs with their familiar tunes and rousing words. Yet, he also thinks that the ancient Latin liturgy is capable of bringing far greater feelings of ecstasy than these simple rural tunes.

His mother is in a somber mood as they enter the church and genuflect toward the Host before taking seats. Henry is proud to be sitting on the cushioned bench with these church members who know of his plans to become a priest. Each Sunday, when he exits the huge stone building, with its gothic towers and rococo entrance, they offer their congratulations, "We hear you’re going to take the holy orders Henry. That’s wonderful! Good for you young man, we need more fellows like you in the church."

As the organ announces the beginning of the service and the priest enters the chancel, Henry wonders if his mother has confessed to her growing problem with alcohol. He prays for the strength to drive with Pandora to California without succumbing to lust or physical desire. He also asks God’s forgiveness for all the people he knows who are not in a state of grace. He recites several Hail Marys and submits a special prayer for the strength to go back to the Church after his trip with Pandora. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, blessed be the fruit of they womb, Jesus." His fingers slide along the small round beads as the familiar chant of the mass filters through the warm summer air of the church and brings him a sudden peace of mind.

When the mass is finished and Henry has returned to his home, he changes into his riding pants and boots. His father is at the hospital and his mother offers him a quick Sunday dinner which he quickly dispatches and then hurries out the kitchen door for the rendezvous that has become his obsession. After pushing his bike onto the quiet street, he loads the suitcase onto the handlebars and peddles slowly along the road toward the farm.

Jake is closing the barn door when he arrives. Henry manages to hide his suitcase behind a clump of bushes as Jake waddles up to him with the German Luger imbedded behind his belt. He smells of alcohol and his words are slurred. Jake has been drinking heavily. Puffing and sweating from the heat, he wipes his bald head with a fat forefinger and calls out," Hey Mr. Henry, don’t tell me you’re going riding this afternoon."

"Just a short one," he replies.

"Me, I was gonna try out some new bullets I got for the Luger but its too god damned hot," Jake says, caressing the pistol butt that protrudes like a huge goiter from the soft bowl of flesh beneath his belt. "Damned heat’s enough to drive a person crazy."

Waves of guilt flow through Henry’s mind as he asks Jake if he still plans on reporting to the Army. "You damned betcha. I’m just gonna write Maddy from New York and tell her Uncle Sam wants me and I’m not coming home," he says.

"Just like that? You’ll just go straight to the Army?" Henry asks relieved to hear that Jake’s plans have not changed and his own departure with Pandora to California will not be canceled.

"Yep. Don’t wanna give her the satisfaction of knowing I’m gettin’ outta here," Jake says.

Henry asks Jake if he wants to receive any letters. He smiles and takes Henry’s arm in his huge, paw-like hand and tells him how much he would like that. "Besides" he adds, "you and me got a secret. And when people find out the Japs or maybe even some Kraut bastard got me and I ain’t coming back, you’ve got a big job on your hands."

"What’s that?" Henry ask.

"The money. All them fifty dollar bills stacked in that box up in the tack room. Twenty thousand, five hundred and fifty. I just added another fifty only a couple minutes ago."

"Maybe you should put all that money in the bank," Henry suggests.

"No. No. Then Maddy would be sure to find out once I’m gone for good. No sir, Mr. Henry. Its yours. You’re going to do something real good with that money. Remember?" Henry tells Jake its all talk, that he won’t be killed, but he remains adamant, "I gotta hunch about that. Some goddamed Nazi’s gonna line me up in his sights before I can get my Luger outta’ the holster. Then its gonna be bam! There goes Jake."

Jake tells Henry to come to the house after his ride and have some lemonade so he can get his school address and shake hands goodbye. Henry agrees and as Jake moves off toward the house, he enters the barn and goes straight to the tack room for the saddle and bridle. The horse whinnies from her stall and a pigeon flies from one rafter to another. Sweat gathers quickly on Henry’s forehead before he can tack up the horse and lead her outside. Already, he thinks of the cool water coming from the spring where he can stop on the way back.

. As Daisy breaks from a lazy trot into a canter, he leans forward with his face pointed skyward to catch the cooling air.

The penetrating heat of a mid-summer afternoon soon spreads white lather on Daisy’s neck. It seems unfair to keep her out so Henry turns back before he reaches the woods. He sits down in the saddle and reins the horse to a walk along the grass-covered lane to the barn. Jake has not left for the train when he returns to the barn and slides off the horse. Suddenly he hears voices shouting from the house. Jake and Pandora are having an argument. He moves close to the heavy barn door so he can hear the angry exchange.

Pandora is screaming, "Stay away from me you bastard."

Jake responds with an angry roar, "Miserable bitch. You’re supposed to be a woman not a goddamned iceberg."

Silence for several seconds. Then Pandora shouts for Jake to let her go. Henry figures they’re in the kitchen and Jake has grabbed her with his powerful arms, drawing her close to his protruding belly, "We’re gonna live like man and wife from now on," Jake shouts.

Henry hears Pandora screaming for him to release her in words that are easily heard over the short distance between the house and the barn, "Don’t you ever touch me again Jake," Pandora screams. Suddenly silence replaces the angry voices. Henry assumes they must have gone to another room to continue their argument. He continues putting the horse away. Then he slides the wet saddle and bridle off the horse and mounts the stairs to the tack room. In a moment, the tack is in place and he steps toward the door. Just then, Jeremiah whispers, "Take a quick look. She might be there getting ready for a bath. One little peek wouldn’t do any harm."

Jeremiah has a way of making temptation seem insignificant. Sin without a price! What harm could come from a quick glance? Pandora is probably downstairs still arguing with her husband. Henry takes several steps toward the window and looks across the empty space between the house and barn into the bathroom. No one is there. As he turns to leave, however, the door suddenly flies open and Pandora rushes into the bathroom. She’s wearing jeans and the familiar white blouse is ripped and hanging from her bare shoulders. Her lips are moving, her neck bulging as she screams words he can barely hear through the two closed windows. He watches silently as Pandora pulls open the top drawer next to the sink and grabs the 9.mm Luger which Jake must have returned after shooting behind the barn. Red-tipped fingers slide the bolt back and forth quickly so that one of the new bullets Jake bought in New York would be slammed into the chamber. Pandora steps behind the door, pistol in hand.

For a few moments, she waits. Words of supplication form in Henry’s mind, "Please God, don’t let anything happen." He considers breaking the window to divert her attention. Instead he takes out his rosary beads and begins a Hail Mary as he watches Pandora standing motionless behind the bathroom door with the gun in her hand.

Suddenly, she raises the pistol. A moment later, Jake’s square body is framed by the doorway. His fists are clenched and his lips are mouthing unintelligible words of apparent anger. As he steps into the bathroom, Pandora raises the Luger a few inches more to the level of his head. The sharp thud of the gun firing penetrates the two windows. Jake’s head seems to explode. Blood splatters against the mirror as he falls sideways on the countertop and slides to the floor. Pandora slowly lowers the gun and stares at him for a few seconds. Then she reaches for toilet paper next to the commode. Carefully, she wipes the handle of the Luger, throws the paper into the bowl and pulls on the metal chain that flushes the implicating evidence into oblivion. Finally, she leans over Jake’s motionless body and places the gun in his pliant but lifeless hand. With one last look around the bathroom, Pandora walks slowly through the door and disappears, leaving the still body of her husband sprawled and bleeding on the floor.

Henry waits for several minutes, then he moves quickly down the stairs, grabs his bike from behind the barn and pushes it across the hay field so no one can see him. Aware that the trip to California will never happen now, Henry realizes that Pandora has ruined her chances for going to Hollywood. In a few minutes, he has arrived among a row of trees next to the road. Without looking back, he loads his suitcase on the handlebars again, jumps on the Schwinn and heads toward home, standing on his peddles, riding as fast as he can.

Henry is not sure how he got home. He remembers peddling back to town and going straight to his room while trying to suppress the image of Jake’s head splitting open when the bullet crashed into his skull. He saw Charley Pearson speeding past him in the police car. The Chief waved at the young boy on the bicycle with a quick flash of his hand. Henry knew where Charley Pearson was going. Pandora must have called. him.

Now its evening and Henry is lying on top of his bed staring at the ceiling where occasional lights flash across the room when cars pass through the street outside the house. Possibly sleep came and went while guilt-laden questions rolled back and forth in his mind like a rowboat in storm driven waves. Was Jake’s death caused by inaction on the part of Henry? Should he have done something to prevent the shooting? Smash the barn window or run into the house to warn Jake? Did his passive silence also destroy Pandora, making her a murderer, a woman who will must pay the price for killing her husband?

"How could a Jesuit-to-be stand by and allow the killing of another human being to take place?" Henry asks himself. Has he not committed the unpardonable act for which there is no forgiveness? Knowing evil is going to happen and doing nothing to prevent it Henry remembers that he did say a Hail Mary, that he did pray for help.

Jeremiah enters the argument, "So where was God when you needed him? You’re always telling everybody that prayer always works. How come it didn’t do any good for Jake?"

Henry squeezes his head with both hands to stop the questions. From downstairs, he hears the clink of dishes. The smell of fried onions drifts into the room from the kitchen where his mother, sobered from her afternoon nap, is making supper. Henry realizes that in the morning, he will have to go to the police station and tell Charley Pearson what happened. The police will need to know exactly how Jake was killed and only Henry will know. Pandora will be arrested for murder and taken off to prison. All because Henry did nothing to stop her as she waited to kill her husband.

He hears the Buick pull into the driveway. Henry wonders if his father knows what happened? He doesn’t want to be the one to tell him. In a few minutes, his Dad knocks on his door and enters.

"Henry, I’ve got some very bad news for you," he says, taking a seat on his bed.

"I know Dad."

His eyebrows lift in surprise. "You know what?"

"About Jake."

"You know that Jake committed suicide?"

"Suicide? No Dad, I know that Pandora killed him. She shot him in the head with the Luger when he came into the bathroom. I was standing in the tack room looking though the window and I saw it happen."

The night noises of summer hum through the room from the trees outside. Crickets and katydids issuing their nocturnal mating calls. Then Henry’s father speaks slowly, measuring each word with care. He tells Henry he’s wrong, that Jake’s death was suicide. He explains that he was there with Charley and they examined Jake’s body sprawled on the blood-smeared floor of the bathroom. He says Jake held the gun next to his head and pulled the trigger. The Luger, still in his hand, was fired at close range the way a person would hold a gun while committing suicide.

Henry shakes his head and tells him that is not what happened. He explains how he stood by the tack room window and watched Pandora lift the pistol to the exact height of Jake’s head before pulling the trigger. He tells his father how she calmly wiped the fingerprints with toilet paper and placed the gun in her dead husband’s hand. Henry admits he did nothing but watch, finally taking the bike and riding home without having the courage to go into the farm house.

The doctor’s face turns red and small globes of sweat appear on his forehead. When Henry informs him that Jake planned to enter the Army within the week, his Dad punches through the air with a closed fist, "Good God. Why did she do it?"

Silence again falls across the room. Now he believes his son. The doctor walks to the window and looks out on the darkening street below. An owl, located high on the one of the nearby Chestnut trees, issues a single hoot through the still air of early evening. A car passes. A trace of light slides across the ceiling.

"Henry, we’ll have to keep this to ourselves. You absolutely cannot tell anyone what you saw."

"But Dad," Henry protests. "She killed him. You’re not allowed to do that. I’ve got to tell the police. Its my duty."

His father’s voice becomes hard, authoritative. "Henry you have no idea how much trouble there will be if this gets out. Jake is dead. There’s nothing you nor I can do about that. The police have already investigated and I’ve signed the papers saying that suicide was the cause of death. If anyone finds out what you saw, Pandora will be charged with murder. There will be a court trial. She’ll go to prison for the rest of her life. She might even get the electric chair."

Again, Henry insists that crime must be punished, but his father claims that Jake was also a criminal for constantly beating Pandora. "He abused her and beat her to the point where she had to do something Henry. Its not your business to interfere."

Confusion spreads through Henry’s thoughts. He knows that Charley Pearson saw him, even waved from the police car as the officer was speeding toward Pandora’s farm. Charley will know and he will have questions about where Henry was on the afternoon of the murder.

The clock on the church steeple begins to beat out the hour of nine. Henry buries his head in the pillow.

"Dad could we please not talk about this anymore. I’m really tired," he asks.

His father places his hand on his shoulder and expresses regret that all this is happening. Then he is gone and a pleasant blanket of sleep covers Henry’s painful visions of what happened that day.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Early Monday morning, before the first light of dawn has seeped into his room, Henry wakes and is immediately swamped with thoughts about Pandora. He wants to help her. He also wants to be close to her, touch her arm, admire the curved, smooth lines of her mouth and nose. He thinks of burying himself into the all-enveloping warmth of her pliant body. Yet, the going price of such pleasure has now risen far beyond his ability to pay. Pandora has killed her husband. She is a murderess. The trip to California can never take place. Even worse, he will be obligated to tell a court of law what happened and she will go to the electric chair or to prison for the rest of her life.

Desperate to break the chain of early morning worries, he decides to ride his bike on one of the country roads outside town. After dressing quickly and leaving a note for his mother, he pushes the Schwinn from the garage and swings into the narrow seat. The sun is already a bright ball of orange filtering through the leaf-filled trees, splashing its warmth across the deserted streets. He glides by the quiet houses filled with still sleeping residents. As he passes the undertaker’s garage, a white square building with no windows, he thinks of Jake lying inside on a cold cement slab after the afternoon of his murder. Death came quickly, unexpectedly to him. No dash across a bomb-charred field with machine gun bullets kicking up bursts of dust beneath his worn, GI boots. No firing of the Luger at a desperate enemy crouched in a bare pit of mud. No chance to kill a Jap or a Nazi before the enemy soldier leveled his sights on the overweight GI lumbering toward him. Jake never suspected even for a second, that his life was about to end, that Pandora was pulling the trigger on his very own pistol and thus fulfilling his prophecy of imminent death. No opportunity for a deathbed confession, a last-ditch chance to obtain salvation. No priest to offer a final promise of Heaven through the ritual of extreme unction. He never heard the last words that might have brought salvation no matter how badly he had treated Pandora, the words that have brought forgiveness to the dying faithful for centuries, "By this holy unction and His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatever sin thou has committed by thy sight, by thy hearing." Jake has gone to hell.

Jeremiah points out how unfair that is. "He never had a choice. Pandora didn’t just kill him, she ruined his chance for salvation."

Henry disagrees. Jake did have an option. He could have attended mass each Sunday. There are plenty of churches in New York. He could have gone to confession after building tanks all day for the Army instead of wasting his time in bars or going to the movies. It wasn’t like Jake was some kind of African heathen who never heard about the promise of Eternity. He knew, If for no other reason, he knew because Henry had told him.

As the bike picks up speed on the gentle slope of a hill, a cool breeze encircles Henry’s face. He sits back without peddling when suddenly Jeremiah makes a devastating suggestion. He says that Henry is the one who has sent Jake to eternal damnation. It was the future Jesuit priest who led the murdered man to commit the unforgivable sin.

"The day he was complaining about Pandora, you told him to talk with a priest, you gave him the opportunity to confess and take the Sacraments. Until then, he didn’t know. He was like a Buddhist monk or a Massai warrior who never heard of Heaven or Hell. At least he could have gone to purgatory. But you offered him the opportunity to choose God and he turned it down. You go around bringing this message of salvation to everyone and when you don’t succeed, you condemn them to burn forever. You’re not saving anyone. You’re sending all your friends to hell, Mr. Jesuit."

More punishment from Jeremiah is interrupted as Henry finds himself gliding past the Staley farm. The old man is sitting on the porch looking like a circus clown with worn black boots protruding from torn, oversized overalls. A corncob pipe is perched precariously from his thin lips that suck continually on the brown-stained stem.

"Morning Mr. Staley," Henry calls out.

Staley’s eyes squint suspiciously though narrow slits of yellowed flesh at the unusual intrusion of his quiet Sunday morning.

"Who in hell is it?" he calls out.

Henry dismounts and wheels the bike up to the sagging porch. Pieces of barbed wire and rusty cans litter the dusty ground in front of the house. A gray, skinny chicken scoots from under a rotting apple crate while a three-legged mongrel dog yaps from the end of a chain wrapped precariously around a cinder block.

"Shut up Queeny, damned yah," Smiley roars without looking at the dog. The barking dissolves to a growl and a smile creases the old man’s face. "Well I’ll be god dammed. Its Doc’s boy."

"I was just out having a ride," Henry answers.

Staley nods his head and repeats "just out for a ride." From the barn, a cow bellows through the still air. The chicken, feeling safe now, chortles and pecks through the dust of the front yard.

"Ain’t seen Doc for a couple days."

"He’s been pretty busy," Henry replies.

"That nurse ‘a his. Hear there might be trouble," Staley says with a slow suck on his pipe. Stunned by Staley’s words, Henry is careful not to show any emotion. Casually, he asks what the trouble might be. Staley pauses and then speaks slowly. "Fellow stopped by here last night, said the wife mighta’ had somethin’ to do with Jake being shot. Wouldn’t be surprised if they call for some kinda hearing to see what happened."

Before Henry can respond, Mrs. Staley appears at the warped and torn screen door, long since bent into the shape of an overcooked piece of toast from rain and snow. Sunlight exposes strands of gray hair that droop across her yellow skull like wet pieces of spaghetti. Exhaustion marks her cavernous cheeks, darkened from years of milking cows, cooking, caning, washing clothes, digging gardens and heaving pitchforks full of wheat onto horse-pulled wagons. She whispers slowly in the passive voice of the near dead, "You want a sugar cookie and a glass of milk?"

Staley apologizes before Henry can answer, "milk’s warm. Ran outta ice couple weeks ago. Gotta wait now till the crick freezes."

Questions about Jake’s death are diverted. Henry envisions the hunched, stiff-legged farmer driving his horse across the frozen creek. The rust-stained saw, powered by a conveyor belt hooked to a wheel, catches on the ice and cuts a deep gash on the cold surface as the sled slides behind the horse. Later, cold squares of ice are lifted with tongs onto the sled and hauled through the snow to the stone milk parlor for use the following spring and early summer.

Now, with the ice house empty, warm milk drained just that morning from a cow’s udder, must suffice. Henry enters the kitchen. Mrs. Staley beckons him to the black leather couch next to the wood-burning stove where she is usually lying when Henry’s father comes to see her.

"Don’t know what we’d do without Doc," the corpse-like woman wheezes. "Even in winter when the lane’s blown shut, he’ll come if he’s needed. Not many like that."

Henry has heard it all before. His Dad, the saint, the father-god to people like the Staleys. They treat him like a resurrected Christ, a perfect being without sin. Henry knows better. His father may talk about duty and being honest but when it comes to a real test like turning Pandora in to the police, he is quick to take the easy way out. Suddenly, duty becomes twisted and distorted. The truth is reversed and the guilty becomes innocent, the victim becomes the accused. The old man takes a seat at the kitchen table, leaning back on a paintless wooden chair with two rungs missing from the backsplat. "You gonna take up doctoring?" he asks. Before Henry can reply, Staley looks out the window where a black Ford coupe cruises slowly along the narrow road at the end of his rut-filled lane. "What in hell’s Charley Pearson doin’ out here ?"

"Charley Pearson?" Henry asks.

"Hell yes. Just saw the damned police car go by."

Henry’s fingers tighten around the milk glass. He knows why the police chief is driving around the country roads. Undoubtedly, Charley has stopped by his house to inquire about Henry, only to be told by his mother that her son has gone for a ride on his bicycle. Now, the police chief is looking for Henry. It’s time for the truth to emerge. The hour has arrived when he can no longer put off revealing what he saw in the blood-spattered bathroom across from the barn.

When the glass of milk is emptied, Henry informs the Staleys that its time for him to return home. Pandora can no longer be protected by silence. Henry cannot take on the burden of sin by avoiding his duty to inform the police chief about Jake’s murder. In a few minutes, he is coasting down the hill past the fields of hay and wheat. He thinks of Pandora again. He has not seen her since that fateful afternoon and he misses her raucous laugher, her touch on his arm, her glistening smile. It will be such a waste to send a beautiful woman like that to jail for the rest of her life. Then, it suddenly occurs to Henry that he should speak to her before he goes to the police, offer her an opportunity for redemption, a chance to confess what happened. Surely it would go easier for Pandora at the inevitable murder trial if her lawyer can explain to the judge that she has confessed, sought salvation and voluntarily submitted to arrest.

At the next crossroads, he takes the road leading to Pandora’s house. He knows it will be difficult to confront her, to inform her what she must do, but still, its better than just turning her in.

First, he will go to the barn and pray for Pandora’s salvation. Then, he will go into the house and tell her what to do if she has any hope for eventual salvation. In a few minutes, Henry pushes the bike across the field behind the barn, shoving back the worn steel latch that opens the door leading into the row of stalls. Quietly, he parks the Schwinn against a musty pile of hay.

The pigeon is gone from its perch among the rafters. There is no flash of white stirring from its roost at the sight of a human being moving quietly across the barn floor. Daisy snorts and moves to the front of the stall. "Easy girl," he whispers, fingering her soft muzzle that presses through the iron rails of the sliding door. "We’re not going out this afternoon." Then Henry eases himself down on the barn floor and leans against a stack of hay bales. Through the slivers of light piercing the slatted wood windows, he can see the sun glaring from a cloudless sky. Flies and bees drone through the warm air outside the barn. So much is happening so quickly. Slowly, he pulls the rosary from his pocket and begins a series of Hail Marys on Pandora’s behalf. He must pray for her so that she will have the courage to confess and seek redemption. The silence and the warmth of the barn induce drowsiness. He slides down between the hay bales and closes his eyes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

After placing the .09mm. Luger into the fingers of her dead husband, Pandora goes immediately into the bedroom and phones Charley Pearson, telling him to come right out because her husband has committed suicide.

Then she throws herself across the quilted blanket that covers the large brass bed which she so unwillingly shared with Jake. Tears fill her eyes and for several minutes, she sobs uncontrollably, occasionally striking at the soft pink pillows. She thinks of calling for an ambulance in an attempt to get Jake to the hospital but she knows that would be useless. The Luger has done its work. Now the shock of Jake’s sudden death, and the fear, or was it rage, that led her to run into the bathroom and extract the pistol begins to sink in. There had been no choice. She could not withstand one more of his drunken, sexual attacks. At least she had been smart enough to make it look like suicide. She’s lucky that Jake was shot at such close range. There can be no denying her alibi. A confession is not required. She needs only to rely on her ability as an actress to perform the role of grief-stricken widow whose husband has taken his own life.

Falling back on an inner discipline and control, she remains calm and unemotional when Charley Pearson arrives and even when the Doctor drives out to pronounce Jake’s official death. This is followed by the undertaker who enlists their help to drag the heavy body onto a stretcher and carry it down the stairs to the waiting ambulance. And then, after they are all gone, she falls exhausted on the bed and sleeps until early the next morning.

She wakes early and for a few minutes, remains motionless in bed and the terrible event of the previous day floods back into her memory. Quickly, Pandoa gets up and goes downstairs where she calls the hospital to inform the head nurse she is taking the day off. The she goes out to the garden where she sees Henry pushing his bike into the barn. Before she can enter the creaking wooden doors to speak with him, however, Charley Pearson arrives in his black police car, searching for Henry.

"Hate to say this Pandora, but we might have to hold a hearing about what happened yesterday, you know, just to get things on the record so that later on there can’t be no questions."

"What kind of a hearing?" Pandora asked.

"You know, one of them quickies where they ask if there might have been any witnesses?"

Pandora points out that the everyone already knows there was no one at the farm and in fact, the doctor himself had signed the official papers stating that death was undoubtedly caused by Jake’s own hand.

"Well, there’s one thing we gotta ask about. Seems like young Henry was out here yesterday afternoon. In fact, I seen him coming home on his bike right after you called me and I was on my way out here," Charley says.

"Henry was here?" she asks in astonishment.

"I saw him riding his bike when I was driving from town. Course that don’t mean he saw anything. The district attorney called me this morning and said he wants to ask some questions. In fact, I’ve got this subpoena right here I gotta give him," Charley says matter-of-factly, adding that if Pandora happens to see Henry, she should tell him to come over to the police office so the papers can be served requiring him to appear at the hearing.

Pandora remains silent, hoping that Henry will not suddenly emerge from the barn. Then, after the Police Chief has climbed back into his car, she waits for several minutes until he disappears down the road before going immediately to the barn.

"Henry. Wake up." Pandora’s voice cuts through the dim region between his sleep and wakefulness. Soft fingers gently tighten around his arm. Sleep rushes away. He sits up and looks at her familiar face now shadowed with lines of desperation

"Oh hi. I came in the back way so no one would see me," Henry stammers.

Pandora replies quickly, "I was out in the garden and saw you going through the field. Then Charley Pearson stopped by. He’s been looking for you Henry. Said he saw you yesterday after Jake ... after all that happened. Is it true? Were you here in the barn?"

Henry nods and Pandora removes her hand from his arm. "You didn’t ... you didn’t see anything!"

Henry sits up on the hay bale and looks at the rafters crisscrossing the top of the barn. Then he turns slowly to Pandora and nods. "I was in the tack room and I saw what you did through the window."

"Oh God!" Pandora gasps, burying her head in her hands. "How did all this happen? He was drinking and he was trying to rape me. I was so scared. I didn’t know what I was doing." Her shoulders shake up and down with huge sobs. She takes his wrists in her soft hands. "What should I do? If the police find out I could go to the electric chair or maybe spend the rest of my life in prison. Henry, I’m so sorry. I need someone to help me. Please you’ve got to get me out of this."

"You have to go to the police and tell them," Henry says.

Pandora draws her head back and slowly whispers, "I can’t do that. Henry you wouldn’t tell him would you? You won’t let Charley Pearson know what happened?"

Henry remains firm, explaining to Pandora that he has no choice, that he cannot be expected to lie about what he saw. A new round of sobs from Pandora." Please Henry, you can’t do that. I couldn’t stand being in prison. I’d kill myself."

"That’s not a solution. You would end up in hell," Henry reminds her.

"Then what should I do? You’re so young and yet you seem so strong, so wise. I need advice Henry. I have nowhere to turn."

"Church. You can go to church and confess. Then you’ve got to turn yourself in," he replies.

"The church yes. That I can do. But turning myself in. No. Please."

"It will go easier for you if you do," Henry says.

"I’ll go to church. I’ll do what you say, but prison ... I can’t, I just can’t do that." Pandora’s eyes narrow. "Please Henry, promise me you won’t tell anyone what happened to Jake?"

The pigeon returns. It flies around the top of the barn and then lands on a rafter. A solitary white feather floats down past the hay mow and lands on the plank floor. Sensing the possibility of a bargain, Pandora speaks quickly. "I’ll go to church this evening. I’ll ring on the parish door and ask for the priest. I’ll request a private communion, even confession if you promise not to say anything."

"You want me to tell a lie?" Henry asks.

"Henry, sometimes in our lives, we have to do things that are unpleasant in order to achieve a greater good. Your father has to cut someone open in order to restore their health. Now, I’m asking you to do the same thing Just think how much you can help me by simply saying you didn’t see anything. They’ll believe you. Then this whole mess will be over with. Please Henry, promise me that. You want to be a priest, you want to save people’s souls. Here’s your chance. By telling them you saw nothing, you can save me Henry."

Slowly, he stands up and takes several steps across the barn floor. Jeremiah seizes the sudden silence between Pandora and Henry to point out the possibility of saving a lost soul. "Its a fair deal. You can lead this woman to salvation simply by telling a small lie in return for an entire life. That’s a bargain you can hardly refuse."

Henry remembers the admonition of Father Loyola in the Exercises, "No consideration of interest or temporal disgrace, not even the consequence of immediate death, should be capable of drawing us into deliberate venial sin." This is countered by Jeremiah who advises, "Don’t be a fool. Here’s your chance to save this woman’s soul. Father Brebeuf spent years among the Indians without ever converting one of them. You can do more than he did in his whole lifetime just by telling Charley Pearson you didn’t see anything happen."

"I’m sorry Pandora. Its not possible."

A new round of tears appear in Pandora’s eyes as she steps slowly across the barn floor and takes a seat on a bale of hay. Placing her face in her hands, she speaks slowly between heavy sobs, "Then its over for me. The electric chair or even worse, life in prison. Oh God, where did I go wrong? Why has this happened?"

With tears still in her eyes, she stands and looks directly at Henry. "Please I beg of you. You’ve got to save me." When Henry looks down silently at the floor, she realizes he cannot be swayed. She turns and in a renewed burst of tears stumbles across the barn floor to the door and disappears immediately in the direction of the house. Henry waits for several minutes and then goes to his bike and peddles back to town. The truth is a cruel master, but he sees no other option The stakes, he believes are far are too high for even a consideration of denying the truth about Jake’s death.

When he returns to town, a few elderly men and women are sitting on their front porches watching the meager flow of cars and people passing along the streets. Henry knows most of them from passing papers. The crabby old Dutchman sitting on a swing at the corner was always the first to complain if he was late with the Philadelphia Inquirer. The retired farmer and his wife rocking back and forth in the middle of the block gave him a twenty five cent tip after his first week of delivering the papers.

He turns the corner in front of his house, ready to step off the bike and park it into the barn.. The police car is parked in front of the house with Charley Pearson sitting behind the wheel Henry stops and like a trapped animal looks up and down the street for a way to run. There is no escape. Casually, Henry guides his bike along the sidewalk between the car and the house. Charley leans his head out the window, "Hey Henry, how you doin?"

"Okay, Charley," he answers.

The police chief pushes the car door open and steps off the steel running board onto the street. "I’ve been looking all over for you Henry. Where in hell you been?"

"Riding my bike," he answers.

The police chief is friendly, easy going. "No big deal," he says. "But I gotta ask a couple questions about what happened to Jake," he says.

Henry’s hands are shaking so he pushes them deep into his pockets to keep Charley from noticing.

"Like I say," he repeats, "No big deal. I guess you were out there riding the horse the other day when Jake committed suicide, right."

"Just for a while," Henry answers. "It was pretty hot."

"Yeah, it sure was. Like I told my wife, just too damned hot for anything but sitting on the porch with your feet in a bucket of water. That’s what I was doing until the phone rang and Pandora said I should come out because Jake had shot hisself."

Henry replies that his Dad told him what happened. Charley tilts his police hat back on his head and scratches the back of his ear. "Coulda closed the case right there, but some of ‘em are talking. You know, people saying maybe Jake didn’t do it all by hiself. They’re saying maybe he had a little help. So the District Attorney is gonna have to hold a hearing ... you know, make sure there ain’t no reason for having a trial. Since you was out there Henry, they’ll be wantin’ you to testify."

"I thought you and my Dad decided it was suicide," Henry says, knowing that in another minute he will have to reveal what happened.

Charley throws his head back and pulls down on the brim of his blue police hat.

"Right. That’s right. But the problem is you were out there at the farm and the D.A. wants to make sure you didn’t see nothing. Course I know you didn’t, and that’s what I reported, but he wants to hear from you in court."

"How do you know I didn’t?" Henry asks, ready to blurt out to Charley how Jake was killed.

"Hell, you woulda said something, so I just went ahead a wrote it up the way your Dad and I agreed. There weren’t no witnesses and the guy committed suicide just like his wife said.," Henry suddenly realizes the Police Chief doesn’t want the truth. He’s on the side of his father. No one wants Pandora to be prosecuted for killing her husband.

"When would the hearing be held if they have one?" Henry asks.

"That’s the problem. Judge just had an operation so we can’t schedule the damned thing until November."

"Well I can’t be there. I’ll be in school by then."

Charley laughs. "Law won’t care too much about that Henry. When you’re called as a witness, you gotta be there,"

"So what am I supposed to do?" Henry asks.

"You’ll have to come home from school in November and tell the Judge what happened. If you tell them you didn’t see nothing or that you saw Jake kill hisself they’ll call it suicide and that’s it. Then you can be on your way back to that damned school where they play hockey in the winter instead a’ basketball."

"Suppose I did see something?" he asks.

Charley pushes his hat down over his forehead and laughs. "Sheet Henry, you tell those people you did see something, like her being involved in a murder, then Jake’s wife is gonna’ have to go on trial later on and if you really saw her do it, she’ll get a life sentence or maybe even the chair."

Charley reaches into the police car and pulls out an official looking document. He informs Henry that he has a subpoena requiring him to testify at the November hearing even though his official report says that Henry saw nothing that afternoon that would contradict Pandora’s story of her husband’s suicide. He apologizes but insists he had to make out a form like that and give it to him personally even though he knows it isn’t necessary.

Henry take the subpoena and pushes the bike up the sidewalk while Charley starts the engine and disappears down the street. His father’s car is parked in the driveway. Henry wishes he could turn and run all the way down the street, out of town and just keep running until he arrives at Cote de Neiges Boulevard in Montreal until he saw the imposing, gray buildings of College Jean de Brebeuf looming up in the distance. Instead, he parks the bike and enters the house.

Henry’s mother is peeling potatoes with a small paring knife as he opens the screen door and steps into the kitchen. Pork chops sizzle on a frying pan over the gas stove, emitting a tantalizing smell that reminds him that he hasn’t eaten all day. Anger flares in her voice. She drops the knife and turns to him with a series of pointed questions that he easily avoids.

"Charley Pearson is looking for you Where were you all morning?"

"I know, Mom, I just talked with him. He was waiting outside."

"People are saying that maybe she killed him, that it wasn’t suicide after all. Do you know anything about that?"

"Where’s Dad?" Henry asks, careful to respond with a question rather than an untruthful answer.

He goes to the office complex at the rear of the house where his father is listening to a complaining woman moaning a litany of pains and aches. Henry can hear her shrill voice through the closed door: "Shootin’ pains. In my legs, arms and all over. Hurts every morning, soons’ I git up and start down the stairs."

Patiently, Henry waits for the usual examination. The pulse, the squeezing of flesh in the area where pain appears and then finally, the pills with an admonition to take two in the morning and two in the evening. The chair screeches on the wooden floor as the woman rises with a "Thanks Doc. How much do I owe yah? Then the door opens and his father sees her to the door.

Henry enters the office and sits next to his father’s desk. Rows of medicine bottles filled with powders and pharmaceutical liquids line the shelves along one wall. Above the desk, a framed certificate from medical school testifies in Latin that his father earned his doctorate in medicine. Before Henry can finish translating all the words, however, his father returns. "Did you talk to Charley Pearson?"

"He was waiting outside. Gave me this thing." Henry answers as he hands him the subpoena.

Henry’s father has changed. Now he’s more aggressive and talkative since early in the summer when he drove around the country roads in silence. Once again, he explains that "we" have a problem. He wants to know what Henry plans to tell the judge.

"I don’t know," his son answers.

"You don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know?" he asks, eyes glistening in a rare display of anger. "Do you realize what’s at stake here? If you go before that judge and tell them you saw Pandora shoot her husband, she’s going to be charged with first degree murder. Then there will be a trial and you will be the only witness. The prosecutor will question my medical report that Jake committed suicide and accuse me of complicity in a murder. That means I could lose my medical license. Pandora will be found guilty of murder and she will either die in the electric chair or spend the rest of her life in prison. You can no longer attend your beloved Jesuit school because I won’t have the money to pay for your tuition. Those, Henry, are just a few of the things that will happen if you tell the Judge you saw Pandora kill her husband."

Henry sits silently as the clock in the church across the street from his room counts to a solemn six.

"Well? Do you understand?" his father asks.

"Yes."

"Are you prepared to tell the judge you saw nothing, that you were out riding the horse and had no idea what happened?"

"Dad, I can’t do that. Its a violation of God’s law?"

Henry’s father knows the bible. He asks, "What law?"

"The Ten Commandants," Henry responds.

The Doctor is on his son like a cat pinning a small bird to the ground, saying that he must be referring to the ninth commandment which states ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor’. That, he points out, has nothing to do with this case because Henry is not being asked to bear false witness against anyone. Thus, his testimony at a court hearing might be legal perjury, but certainly not a violation of God’s law.

"False witness means lying," Henry answers.

His father slams his closed fist against the desk and shouts, "No it does not. You cannot interpret the words of the Bible to fit your purpose."

They argue but eventually the Doctor realizes neither biblical logic nor threats of disaster will sway his hard-headed son. Henry’s Dad switches to the role of understanding, sympathetic father. He admits he didn’t understand how important his son’s religion had become but now he realizes his commitment to the church is serious. Henry’s father points out that sometimes in life people need to compromise and do things that might appear wrong but in the end bring about the greater good.

He also turns shrewd and clever as he rattles the nerve center of Henry’s strength. "Those letters you write on all your correspondence. A.M.D.G. stands for the ‘Greater Glory of God’, doesn’t it?" he asks.

"Yes," Henry replies. "Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam."

"And what does that mean?"

"The mission of all Jesuits is to bring about the greater Glory to God," he answers. "All papers or letters begin with those letters to remind us of our duty."

"That’s right Henry. The overriding purpose of the Company of Jesus. And do you sincerely believe that the Greater Glory of God will take place by sending Pandora to the electric chair?"

"Dad, you don’t understand. It would be an unforgivable sin for me to do what I know is wrong. My chance for salvation will be lost forever if I tell a lie in court. I’ll burn in Hell Dad. Don’t you understand that?"

His father counters by asking where in the scriptures Henry can find anything about unforgivable sins. Its church law Henry tells him and admits that he learned it from Pere Benoit. Anger creeps into his father’s voice. "There are some things that are sins against nature, Henry. Things that human beings should not do. But unforgivable sin, no! That is the great promise of the Church, that forgiveness and salvation are available after confession and Communion. You know that. So don’t tell me about unforgivable sins."

The doctor stands and walks toward the window. For a few moments, he gazes out on the darkened street. Then he turns, "There are certain crimes against nature which happen in this world. Perhaps telling a lie can be considered one of these under certain circumstances. In this case, however, it would be unforgivable for you to send this woman to a life in prison. She was being abused by her husband. She had a reason for pulling that trigger. You will be forgiven for telling the judge you saw nothing. If, however, you reveal Pandora’s secret, we ‘ll all pay the price for the rest of our lives in a way that cannot be forgiven."

For more than an hour, they continue the debate. Finally, Henry’s mother knocks on the door and tells them its time to eat. Their argument is leading nowhere. Henry’s father tells him to think about their discussion and they can talk later. Then he stands, places his arm around his son and together they go to the kitchen.

For some strange reason, Jeremiah was silent during the conversation between Henry and his father. During lunch, when Henry attacked his pork chops with the frenzy of a starved sailor, Jeremiah had continued to hold back his usual admonitions. Now Henry knows why. Jeremiah has the rest of the day to make his case.

When Henry has returned to his room, Jeremiah immediately launches into a full-scale attack. "Be smart, Henry. Listen to your father. Tell the judge you didn’t see a thing. You would have to be crazy to testify about Jake being killed by Pandora."

"No. I have to do this. This is condemnation to Hell we’re talking about, not just a burned finger," Henry answers.

Henry pulls his notebook from a shelf next to the bed and reads over the words of the Spiritual Exercises he wrote earlier in the summer, "no consideration of interest or temporal disgrace, not even the consequence of immediate death, should be capable of drawing us into deliberate venial sin."

"That’s it, Jeremiah," Henry says. "Nothing. Not even the execution of Pandora or the destruction of my father’s career should draw me into deliberate sin." Having justified his position, he leans over to pick up a book when suddenly he hears angry voices coming from downstairs. Quietly, he opens the door and steps out into the hallway. His parents are in the kitchen shouting at each other.

The Doctor is banging his fist on the kitchen table, blaming his mother for what has happened. "Its was your idea to send him to that damned school. I told you there’s and old saying that if the Jesuits can get a hold of a young boy for just one year, they’ll change his life forever. But you wouldn’t believe me. You kept talking about what a good education he’d get. Now they’ve got him. Turned his mind just like I predicted. He won’t obey his own father He would make a fine doctor. But no! He’s obsessed with this idea of becoming a Jesuit priest. He’s worried about unforgivable sins that will send him to Hell. He thinks his salvation is at stake over this one issue. I can’t talk to him. He’s totally unreasonable He’s planning to tell the judge exactly what happened."

Henry’s mother parries with a strong offense, accusing her husband of bringing all these troubles because of his obsession with his work. "You never spend any time with him or take him places except to the hospital or on house calls. No wonder he won’t listen to you." The voices are gradually lowered and soon Henry can hear no more. He goes back to the side of the bed and kneels with his hands folded on the sheets. "Please Mary, Mother of God, be with me in my hour of need."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two days after Jake’s death, Henry wakes well after the sun has cast its warming light through the curtained window and rolls out of bed, dresses and hurries downstairs where he jumps on his bike and peddles quickly to the train station. The papers have already been tossed onto the platform when he arrives. The engine is disappearing down the tracks with a last hoot at the sleeping town.

Earl is mad at him. "Where you been this morning? Ain’t just my job to carry the papers up from the platform," he complains.

"I’m sorry. Too much going on ," he responds. Earl nods. "Yeah, I guess what happened to Jake must be pretty upsetting," he says as he begins loading his share of the Philadelphia Inquirers into his carrier bag. "You hear about Metzger’s wife?"

"No." Henry answers. "What happened?"

"Died last night. They say the Professor’s goin’ crazy. Drove his car to the undertaker at four o’clock this morning and told them to pick her up right away. I guess he couldn’t stay in the house with the old lady being dead ‘an all."

The news of Maggie’s death hits Henry like a smack across the face. She’s gone. Like Jake. Two deaths within two days.

"What’s going on? First Jake now Maggie?" Henry asks. "Both gone forever."

"Yep, that’s the way it is," Earl replies. "Things start goin’ bad, they just keep on gettin’ worse."

Henry realizes that forever is a very long time and now he will never again see two people he knew just last week. He looks out across the railroad tracks at the end of town where the Professor must be sitting in his study wondering what to do without his wife. He will be alone for the first time in fifty five years. At the same time, Pandora is probably sitting in the kitchen of her house, smoking Camel cigarettes and wondering what happens next to someone who has murdered her husband.

Earl interrupts his thoughts, "Hey Henry. Somethin’ I wanna ask you." He explains that the professor wants his wife buried the following day and the man who usually helps dig graves is in the hospital with a ruptured hernia. Earl wants to know if Henry will help him dig a hole for Mrs. Metzger. Jake, he explains, is being taken to New Jersey for burial, but the Professor has reserved a plot in the cemetery above town.

"Dig Maggie’s grave?" Henry asks in astonishment.

"I gotta have help. I don’t know who else to ask," he replies. "How about it Henry? You ain’t got nothin’ to do."

Desperately, Henry attempts to concoct an excuse, but Earl knows him too well. There is no way out, no reason why he cannot assist in the macabre and unsettling activity of digging a grave for someone he talked with only twenty-four hours earlier. Reluctantly, Henry agrees to help.

When the papers are all passed, he meets Earl back at the station. Together they mount their bikes and ride up to the graveyard on the hill above town where the tools are kept in a shed behind one of the cement mausoleums. Earl fumbles with a rusty lock on the shed door and extracts shovels, picks, a digging iron and a ball of string for marking the three by six hole that will shortly become Maggie’s grave.

By noon, the sod is carefully removed and they have already descended a foot into the rectangular hole. At first, the soil is loose and soft. Then rocks and hard red clay begin to appear. Earl picks up the digging iron and smashes it down again and again with a seemingly inexhaustible energy. Meanwhile, Henry develops a rhythm of pushing the shovel with his foot and throwing the earth onto a pile next to the grave. Maggie will be well covered once they replace the rocks and dirt over her coffin.

Sweat pours down the bare backs of the diggers and the shovels and picks become heavier as the afternoon progresses. Finally, just after the town clock strikes four, they take a break for a glass of water which Earl secures from a nearby house.

"Hey Henry. Somethin' I wanna ask," he says as they sit on the edge of the grave with feet dangling down the three feet which has been uncovered so far.

"When you grow up and become a priest, are you coming back here or will you be doin' all that preaching somewhere else?"

Henry explains to Earl that a Jesuit goes where he's told, that obedience is one of the main characteristics of the order and he would probably be assigned to some foreign country. "They might send me to a village in South America where the generals torture people and take all their money. I'll have to start a church and teach them how to organize a rebellion and throw out the guys that make their lives so miserable."

"Why would you care about them kinda people?" he asks. "We gotta enough poor folks right here in our own country."

Earl asks difficult questions and for a moment, Henry has to think hard. Finally, he answers, "In some places in South America, they never heard about God so they don't have a chance of being saved. At least people around here know about hell so they have a chance to be saved."

Earl's head nods up and down several times, "Like me, huh Henry?"

"Yes Earl, like you," Henry responds with all the severity he can muster.

"Okay, I got another question. Some guy told me the other day that when you join these Jesuits you gotta' whip yourself until you start bleedin. Is that true?"

Henry wonders who Earl has been talking with to know about the flagellation option recommended in the Exercises. Only Professor Metzger could have told him about that. Henry admits to him that its true, explaining that young Jesuits are taught to beat themselves as an extra method of punishment for their sins.

"Its only for the novitiate who needs as a special penance," Henry explains. "Its like hockey practice. If you just skate along with the team, you’ll only be as good as the other guys. But if you skate after practice until it hurts, until you can hardly breathe, you’ll get a lot better than anyone else. You’ll score more goals. You’ll make the first team. That’s the whole point of flagellation. If you’ve committed a really big sin and you need extra punishment, then you should whip yourself. Its a is a way of gaining forgiveness when the usual penance isn’t enough. People probably think its strange, but they don't understand because they've never done it."

Earl shakes his head and mutters "crazy" as they return to work.

Suddenly, however, Henry puts down his shovel and looks at his companion. "Earl, there’s something I’ve got to tell you."

"About what?" Earl asks suspiciously.

"About Pandora. Earl, I’ve got to talk to someone about this and I believe I can trust you.

"What is it?" he querries.

"She did it. Pandora killed Jake. I saw her do it and now I have to tell the police," Henry says.

Jake drops his shovel and looks into Henry’s eyes. "You saw her do it?" he asks.

"Jake chased her into the bathroom and she shot him with his Luger so he wouldn’t attack her. I was watching from the barn. Now I’ve got to tell the police."

"Oh my God," Earl sighs. "So that’s what happened," Then, he picks up his shovel and begins to dig again. "Well, you never told me nothing about that," he says;

"But I just did, Earl. I had to talk to someone about this," Henry states.

"Now, I’ll have to go to court and tell ‘em what you said. . Just keep me outta this. I don’t want nothin to do with sending Pandora to jail. Far as I’m concerned you never told me nothin’ about this," Earl answers angrily.

"But now I’ve told you," Henry says.

"And now, I’m in big trouble. Henry I ain’t sending no woman to jail and neither are you. Now let’s make a pact to keep your mouth shut about what you saw," Earl says.

"I can’t. I’ll have to tell what I witnessed," Henry protests.

"No you don’t," Early responds.

The argument is cut short when Professor Metzger suddenly arrives with a loud bang from his old car. Mussed up gray hair hangs wildly over his square forehead. His eyes are red and lacking in focus. He talks rapidly in rambling questions and statements that betray the desperation of his sudden loneliness. "That you, young man? Didn’t know you were a gravedigger?"

Henry is standing in the hole next to Earl wanting to say something appropriate like "I’m so sorry to hear about Maggie" or "She will surely be missed," but at Earl’s insistence, Henry’s role has been reduced from the learned professor’s intellectual companion to a mover of dirt.

"I’m just helping out," Henry responds

"I don’t know what to do without her. There was no one to cook breakfast this morning, no one to talk to. I thought I’d just come around and see how things were going," he mutters.

"Everything is just fine Professor," Earl says. "We’re making a mighty fine grave for Mrs. Metzger."

The Professor looks away and mumbles "Yes, mighty fine. Mighty fine." Then he ambles off, gets into his car and drives away.

"I don’t like people coming around here when I’m digging graves," Earl says. "Makes me nervous. They get all kinds of weird ideas about what we’re doing. Wanna know how their people are gonna like it down here in this hole all covered with dirt. I try to tell them dead people don’t feel nothing. Oughta get ‘em cremated if it don’t suit to put ‘em six feet under."

"If they’re already in heaven, I guess it doesn’t really matter," Henry adds.

Earl pauses and looks up from his shovel and laughs, "And if they’re in Hell, why a hole like this would feel mighty good, right Henry?"

It’s early evening when they finally stop. Henry’s arms are sore and tired and he can barely pick up the shovel. The grave is almost complete and they’re both exhausted. Finally, Earl throws down the digging iron and suggests they finish in the morning. "The funeral’s at two o’clock. We have plenty of time to finish after the papers are passed. If it don’t rain, we can cover up the coffin right after the service," he says. Relieved, Henry coasts down the hill on his bike for supper, eats rapidly and then staggers upstairs to bed where he falls asleep as darkness settles in for the night.

The papers dissipate slowly the following morning. The mother of the five Sullivan sailors is dedicating a new cruiser in memory of her sons who were lost at sea earlier in the war. Henry stops to read the details, wondering what it would be like to stand on the deck of a burning destroyer as it tips up in the air and then, amid explosions and screams of wounded sailors, slips quickly beneath the waves. Did the Sullivan brothers hold hands, say a final Hail Mary and then slide down with the ship without a word? Or did they jump clear of the flaming, gray hulk of steel and try to swim in the shark-infested waters before finally sinking from exhaustion after the huge waves had carried them far beyond any life preservers or rescue boats?

His questions are interrupted when a grumpy woman with paper hair rollers on her head leans out the second story window and shouts that her husband has been waiting all morning for the paper. "Whyoncha get here on time?" she whines.

At another house, an obese man with elephant-size legs waddles out on the porch and tells him not to bring any more papers. "Things are gettin' too expensive around here," he wheezes. "Can't afford to buy groceries no more, let alone pay for a newspaper nobody in this house reads anyway." Henry crosses his name from his list of customers, noting that he already owes $2.25 from the past month which will never be collected

When the route is completed, Henry hurries to the station where Earl is waiting with two ham sandwiches, potato chips and several bottles of Coca-Cola in a used brown paper bag. He's annoyed at Henry for taking so long. "Don't you take nothin' seriously," he asks. "We gotta get goin', otherwise we won’t get the grave finished in time for the funeral."

By two o’clock, they have completed the job. The undertaker has placed a green rug around the hole and Maggie has arrived in a silver gray coffin. The Professor and a small group of elderly women, friends of hers from the Lutheran church, are gathered at the grave while Earl and Henry move further up the hill. Still dressed in work clothes, Henry would feel embarrassed to join the distinguished crowd of funeral goers. Nevertheless, he can pray for her and for the Professor. Slowly, he removes the beads from his pocket and begins a series of "Hail Marys" with an occasional pleading that Maggie will be received in Heaven and that the Professor himself will one day accept the requirements needed for his own salvation.

The Lutheran minister, a stout man with a bald head now covered with a black hat, runs through the ritualistic words for those who have departed this earth. From his seat on the grass nearby, Henry hears the words, "From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust." A prayer is offered and then the funeral director and several men begin lowering the coffin into the ground.

Suddenly, a loud wail wafts across the cemetery. The Professor has thrown his arms into the air and is screeching at the top of his voice, "No. No. Maggie. Don’t leave me. I want to come with you."

The funeral director quickly moves to his side and places an arm around his shoulder, but the Professor pulls away. Then he points in Henry’s direction, "The young man is right. I need to be saved if I want to be with her." The small cluster of people surrounding the grave turn to look. Henry’s face flushes red. Earl begins to giggle.

Later, when the two gravediggers begin shoveling the moist red earth into the hole where Maggie’s coffin now rests, Earl says Maggie would be in heaven by now . Henry says nothing although he secretly hopes that Earl is right.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Summer heat simmers off the wooden bridge that hovers over the creek like a dark rainbow against the cloudless sky. Below, a dozen boys in ragged, cut-off shorts splash and shout in the warm water. Henry is with them. Several days have passed since Jake’s death and Maggie’s funeral but still he can think of nothing but Pandora. What would have happened if Jake had not provoked his wife into shooting him. He and Pandora would be half way to California by now, laughing, talking, and going to visit the Grand Canyon. Henry has stayed away from the farm and Pandora. Still, he cannot stop thinking about her. He says rosaries and prays several times a day for the strength to stop wishing he could be with her. In order to accomplish the goal of avoiding his relentless thoughts about her, he decides to join Earl and several other boys from the nearby villages and farms at the creek during the long, hot afternoon.

Earl is climbing, ape-like, up the curved railing of the bridge. He is strong and tan, a small bundle of bulging muscles. A cigarette is clamped firmly between his lips. The shouts and mindless banter of the swimmers die down. Awe-filled whispers flit across the water, "Earl’s gonna dive off."

Occasionally, he stops to puff on the cigarette as he climbs up the huge timbers, hand-hewn decades earlier when only animals and people treaded the wooden floor of the old bridge. One of the younger boys calls out, "Hey Earl, who you gonna dive for?" Earl always dedicates his dives to one of the boys swimming below, usually a young talkative boy who is likely to tell others about the event.

Like a king gazing down on his adoring subjects, Earl smiles triumphantly at his audience. "Bobby," he calls from the top of the bridge. Bobby is the youngest boy swimming that day. He jumps up and down in the water and shouts hurrah. The other boys laugh and splash water on him.

Earl reaches the decaying shake roof where he stands up straight and slowly takes the cigarette from his mouth. He inhales and blows the smoke into the air. Then he stuffs the cigarette back into his mouth, bends his knees and launches his sausage-like body off the bridge. He plummets downward. A geyser of water sprouts upward. Moments later, Earl appears miraculously on the creek’s churned surface with the wet cigarette drooping from his mouth.

Mixed reactions from the boys in the water. "Nice going Earl" intermingled with "Wonder he don’t crack his damned head on them rocks." Bobby is again shouting "hurrah."

As Henry treads water in the middle of the creek, he marvels how easily people can observe the same event and have totally different interpretations of what happened. Everyone sees the dangerous dive Earl is making into the shallow water. That seems to be the fact, the reality. Yet some interpret it as foolishness, others as an act of skill and bravery. He remembers what Professor Metzger said about that one morning as they sat on his front porch. "There is no such thing as reality, young man. Everything is perception. We only know what things seem to be, not what is. The war itself, with all those boys dying over there is only a perception you get from seeing the movies or reading the newspapers. You don’t really know there is shooting and bombing going on in Europe. You only perceive there is. Nor do you know the Germans are wrong and the Allies are right. That is your interpretation, your perception."

Henry agreed with him on all that, taking issue however when the Professor said his belief in the Holy Trinity was also nothing more than a perception. "God is real. That is something I know to be a fact," Henry protested. But the aging savant had ignored the protest, insisting that belief in God was little more than a dream which man had developed over the centuries as a means of explaining the unexplainable and consequently overcoming a fear of death. "A perception not without value, but a perception nevertheless," he said.

Eventually, the sun disappears over the creek and the swimmers melt away, riding their bikes down country roads or walking home along the paths of nearby fields and woods. Henry picks up his Schwinn and begins peddling toward town where fields of wheat, dried to a deep brown by the hot sun, bend back and forth in a light breeze. In another few days, the combines will arrive to mow down the strong plants, shake the grain loose from the mother stalks and leave piles of straw stacked in windrows. Then a baler will arrive to scoop up the straw and press out rectangular bundles to be stacked in the barns until it is time to pull them down and spread the dry grass on stable floors for the cattle. With the war on and the insatiable need for wheat to make bread for the troops, the farmers are earning good money. They can afford to give up their horse-pulled wagons and hand-cut scythes in favor of the expensive tractors and combines.

"Hey Henry, wait up," a voice calls from the bottom of the hill. It’s Earl, standing up on his peddles, pushing the bike from side to side as his powerful legs pull him up the road. He wants to know how Henry liked his dive and when Earl is told it was really scary, particularly with the cigarette in his mouth, his double-tooth smile reflects pride.

"Couple guys there today never saw me dive before," he says. "Thought I was gonna hit the rocks. Not me. No way. I just do that belly-flop and bingo! I’m right up on top of the water."

"You better be careful Earl," Henry warns him. "The creek’s getting low this summer. Pretty soon there won’t be enough water for even a belly-flop."

"Don’t worry none about me, buddy. I know what I’m doin’," Earl says.

From the top of the hill, they glide down the asphalt road for a long stretch before it levels out and Earl asks how soon Henry will be going back to school. When he hears his friend will leave in one more month, he expresses disgust, "Just when you was gettin’ good at passing papers."

"I’d never be as good as you," Henry replies.

"That’s caus you don’t think about what you’re doin’. Couple times when you didn’t know it, I followed you around after I was finished and you were reading the goddam papers while you’re walking along the sidewalk. No wonder you miss people."

A few houses appear on each side of the road, trim well-kept properties with freshly mown front yards. Pots of purple and red pansies hang from wires on the front porches. Green and blue shutters highlight white clapboard siding. The Germanic need for order and cleanliness has survived from the first settlers who arrived here generations ago. When they reach the middle of town, Henry asks Earl if he wants some ice cream. He says he has no money so Henry offers to buy and he can pay it back in the morning at the train station when they pick up their papers. They take the huge cones outside and sit on their bikes, licking the rich ice cream before it can melt from the afternoon heat and roll down their hands.

"I hear them Jesuits or whatever you’re gonna be...I hear they can’t get married or have any kids. Is that true?" Earl asks.

He has a way of finding out one or two facts and then using it to extract further information. When Henry agrees, Earl shakes his head and says he can’t understand what that has to do with being a good preacher. Henry tells him that a priest can’t devote his life to God if he’s diverted by family responsibilities. Earl is not impressed.

"Me, I don’t bother goin’ to no churches. Waste ‘a time far as I’m concerned. For me, what counts is doing stuff for people, helpin’ out ‘en all."

"Doing what?" Henry asks suspiciously.

"There’s an old lady down where I live. Can’t get around no more. Has to stay on the couch all day. So you know what? I do all her shopping ‘en stuff. And that ain’t all Henry. This here’s a secret an’ I don’t want you tellin’ nobody ‘cause the guys would all be giving me a hard time. But I even help the poor old woman get in bed at night ‘caus she can’t move around by herself.

The vision of Earl lifting the loose flesh of her skeletal legs up onto a bed is repugnant to Henry. Its the kind of thing his father has to do for some of his patients.

"How much does she pay you?" Henry asks.

"Nothing. Not a cent Henry. She don’t have nobody to help so I do it for nothin’. Anyways, I don’t need the money. Got enough just from passing papers and digging graves," he adds.

Words that Henry should say stall on his ice-cream cooled lips. Warnings of hellfire for those who refuse confession should be made. Earl needs to know about the eternal years in purgatory promised to those who do good works but fail to fulfill their obligation to the church. Yet Henry knows he won’t understand, that Earl will laugh and show his two teeth in derision. But Henry remembers that Jesuits do not give up without trying. The Holy Fathers did not avoid their duty because the goal was in doubt. Henry speaks sternly, "That’s not enough Earl. You have to go to confession and take communion so your sins can be forgiven. Otherwise you’ll never make it to Heaven."

Earl slaps Henry’s shoulder, "come on buddy, you know that stuff ain’t true. The old lady I work for, the one I was tellin’ you about. She’s says Gods’ gonna save me ‘caus a what I do for her."

"It’s not enough," Henry says.

Earl looks up at the sky and shrugs his shoulders. "He ain’t gonna care where I go. " I’m a nobody, just a piece ‘a dirt. Can’t read or write. But you know what, I got everything I need."

"But you don’t have anything. Just that old shack down by the tracks. No good job. No savings. And you don’t even care about your own salvation."

Earl laughs. "Hey Henry, that’s just the point. If you don’t want nothing, then you don’t need nothing. That’s what most people don’t know."

Henry decides not to protest. Instead he finishes the ice cream in silence. Before he leaves, however, Earl has a final question. "One thing I wanna know, Henry, you think I otta give up diving off the bridge?"

Henry tells him to stop before he gets killed but Earl isn’t satisfied. "How about praying before I dive, you really think that would do any good?"

Surprised at the question, Henry answers with his usual confidence. "Prayer is never wrong. If you pray for something hard enough, you’ll get it."

Earl tilts his head suspiciously toward his bike handles and asks, "It always works?"

Henry does not hesitate, "Yes always, even though you might get a different answer from what you asked for."

"That’s crazy," Earl sneers. "What good is praying gonna do if you don’t get what you want. Like if I pray for ice cream and they give me a hot dog, then what’s the use of praying in the first place."

"You get what’s best for you. Like sometimes a hot dog might be better for you," Henry responds.

Earl snickers and turns his bike toward the road. "You’re a smart guy Henry. You know a lot about all them books and newspapers but I ain’t so sure about this praying business." Then he steps up on the peddle and pushes his bike forward with a wave of his hand and a final "See you tomorrow."

As the two separate and go off in different directions, Henry wonders if he has done enough to show Earl the way to salvation. A good Jesuit would have tried harder to convert him. Father Brebeuf did not give up on winning over the Iroquois Indians because he assumed they wouldn’t understand. When they carved off pieces of his flesh and hung white hot stones around his neck, he still tried to save them. When the flames were swirling up around his feet and legs and the pain was unbearable his efforts to convert the heathen Indians continued until his least breath. Does that mean he should grab Earl by the throat and choke him until he confesses and begs for communion? Should he argue with Earl until he agrees? Did it do any good to tell him about the power of prayer? Maybe it did. Perhaps he planted a small seed that will enable Earl to take a first step on the path to salvation. Patience, he realizes, is a difficult but necessary adjunct to bringing about the greater glory of God,

In a few minutes he has returned home and gone up to his room where he immediately begins to think of Pandora. He remembers the afternoon by the spring when she threw her arms around him and he wanted to kiss her. Henry wishes he could see her again, touch her arms, feel her warm shoulders pressing near him. He struggles to put these thoughts from his mind, but the vision of her bare back and long hair brushing against his face will not disappear.

Outside, a slight breeze stirs the leaves of the hovering chestnut tree. Katydids call through the warm summer night. Sitting up in bed, Henry takes out his notebook and copies from the Spiritual Exercises, Father Loyola’s second degree of humility, "the second degree is more perfect; it consists in the indifference of the soul toward riches or poverty, honor or shame, health or sickness, provided the glory of God and salvation are equally secured on both sides; Further, that no consideration of interest or temporal disgrace, not even the consequence of immediate death, should be capable of drawing us into deliberate venial sin."

Reading back over these instructions, he realizes his duty is clear. He will have to testify in court about the murder she committed. The truth must be told when he stands before the court.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Philadelphia Inquirers arrive late on the opening day of the county fair where Earl and Henry are planing to find jobs when the papers are passed. For days, they’ve been talking about the fair, how its possible to make a couple of dollars in just one day’s work and how you can win a free ride on the Merry Go Round by grabbing the brass ring. Earl reminds Henry that he’ll have to sneak under the tent at the strip show since he’s not yet eighteen.

"They really have a strip show?" Henry asks.

"Hell yes. An’ another thing I heard. If you throw a dollar bill on the stage, she’ll take everything off," Earl responds. Henry righteously assures his friend that he’s not going to any strip show although it does occur to him later that he had his own private strip show if he wanted to watch through the tack room window.

He has not returned to the farm during the two weeks since Jake’s death. Avoiding Pandora seems like the only path of resistance to the sinful temptations she represents. Still, he cannot stop thinking about her. Riding double on the horse at night, feeling her fingers against his bare back at the aborted picnic by the creek, kissing her in the rain-drenched Air Patrol shack are all memories which refuse to disappear. Despite what she did to Jake, he still wants desperately to drive her to California. It could be his last chance to see the country before entering the Church for his eight year period of study. The prospect of spending two whole weeks with her, eating in restaurants, visiting tourist sites and maybe even staying in a motel with her for just one night instead of sleeping in the back of the car, have all become an unrelenting obsession to Henry. He even thinks of giving Jake’s money to her despite his plans to donate the $25,000 still hidden in the tack room to the Society of Jesus. He also knows how wrong it all would be. Pandora has committed a murder. He can no longer even think about her.

As the first light of dawn filters through the window of his bedroom, he wakes, pushes himself out of bed and hurries downstairs and out to the shed where his bike is stored. Then he peddles quickly to the train station where Earl is waiting for him to pick up the papers. As the they push through the heavy oak door of the waiting room, the station master holds up a telegraph and announces the train will be delayed for at least two hours. "Says here she won’t be comin’ in till nine thirty fellows," he calls from his worn swivel chair behind the teller’s cage.

Earl groans and complains that the best jobs at the fair will be gone before they get there. "You gotta be there soon as them trucks come in so you can get the best jobs. They watch to see how you work, carrying boxes and hauling tents around. If you bust your ass doin’ that stuff, then you get hired for the concessions," he says.

"What can we do? The papers have to be passed first," Henry says.

Earl scratches the side of his head with stubby fingers, chewed back so far the flesh curls over the bitten nails. Then he shakes his head and explains that one of them will have to pass all the papers so the other can ride out to the fairgrounds and start working on the setup crew. He suggests that Henry should go.

"Why me?" he asks.

"You don’t know my route. Even if I gave you the list of customers, you couldn’t pass the goddam papers without missing somebody. Hell Henry, you’d be stopping to read about the war news instead of doing the job right." Henry tries to protest but Earl cuts him off. "No need to argue ‘bout it. You might read books and know all them big words and stuff but that ain’t gonna get the papers passed. I’ll take your route soon as the train gets in while you ride your bike out to the fair grounds and get on the setup crew. When, it comes to hiring for the concessions, let ‘em know that you and me go together. Tell ‘em we’re like a goddamn team of mules. They don’t get one without the other."

Reluctantly, Henry accepts Earl’s argument that he’s the better paper boy. He even agrees to work diligently on the setup crew so they’ll be sure to be hired. In a few minutes, he’s on the Schwinn peddling toward the far end of town where the fairgrounds will be filling up with tents, rides, bingo booths, hot dog stands and even, according to Earl, a strip show.

The sun is already glowing from a cloudless blue sky when Henry sees the fairgrounds in the distance. He peddles on for another minute and soon pulls his bike up in front of the gate. Sitting next to a small wooden ticket booth, the police chief is leaning back on a chair with his heavy black shoes hooked to the foot rail.

"Hey Henry, how you doin?" Charley Pearson asks without moving from his precarious position. "You ain’t gonna be in the fair are you?" Before Henry can answer, he adds, "They got all the freaks they need." The police chief laughs so hard at his own joke that the chair tilts forward almost throwing him to the ground.

Henry forces a smile and asks him if anyone is hiring for the setup crew. Charley explains that nothing has started yet, but in a few minutes that would change. "I see your friend Pandora’s gonna be here today," Charley adds.

When Henry asks why, the Police Chief explains that the Play House has a booth where they serve hot-dogs to raise money for the theater and Pandora is one of the volunteer workers.

As he speaks, a large Chevrolet truck suddenly turns off the main road, its engine crackling and sputtering as it stops in front of the gate. Faded letters spell "Exotic Dancers" through peeled paint and dark brown rust on the side of the vehicle while a twisted Louisiana license plate dangles from the front fender. The driver is squeezed into the narrow cab with a woman and young girl. He pushes back greasy strands of long black hair along his thin skull and leans out the window.

"This heah the main gate?"

The police chief straightens his chair, stands up and approaches the truck with a yellow tablet of lined paper attached to a clipboard. "What’s the name?"

"Lucien Beauregard," the driver responds. "Got two spaces reserved."

Charley checks off the new arrival’s name, calls out the numbers of the reservations and waves the truck through the gate. As the rickety vehicle shudders forward, Lucien Beauregard yells at Henry, "Hey kid, y’all looking for work?" When Henry shouts "sure," the driver jerks his head sideways, signaling him to follow.

"There you go," the police chief says. "Got yourself a job at the strip show. That’s Sabrina, The Exotic Dancer. Better get going, that fellow has two concessions to set up this morning." Henry pushes his bike forward and hurries toward the truck where Lucien Beauregard is waiting for him to unload the two concessions stands. One of these offers a selection of prizes like over-sized stuffed Teddy Bears, cheap ceramic dolls and even shiny steel compasses all for knocking down wooden bottles with a baseball. The other is a tent featuring Sabrina, the Exotic Dancer. Lucien jumps from the truck, looks at Henry with suspicious tilt of his head and asks whether the boy is a worker or a talker.

"Here’s the deal. Y’all work the morning setup and do a good job, I’ll hire you long as we’re here. Two dollars a day. You goof off, stand around talking, you’re fired with no pay. Got it?"

The tall, shapely woman with red hair climbs down from the truck and stretches her bracelet covered arms. "Cute kid. Maybe he better work mah dressing room," she says with a deep-throated cackle intended as laughter. Lucien explains with a proud smirk that Sabrina the Exotic Dancer is his wife. The other girl, Anna, is their plump fourteen-year-old daughter who looks at Henry with green eyes and asks if there is anything going on in town.

"Just the fair," he says.

"Humph," she answers with disgust. "Then there ain’t much goin’ on."

Oblivious to the presence of his wife and daughter, Lucien growls that’s its time to work. In a few minutes, Henry is busy unloading boxes and helping him pull the heavy tent posts from the truck. Mindful of Earl’s advice, he races through the work, lifting and moving rapidly, even running between the truck and the concession tent to pick up the next load. At one point, Lucien exclaims, "Y’all are some worker kid but you don’t have to kill yourself."

By late-morning when the two tents have been erected and they have only the huge signs left to put in place. Lucien says he can work both days of the fair replacing the wooden bottles after they’ve been knocked down by baseballs in the Pitch-A-Prize concession.

"There’s another guy that works with me. He wants a job too," Henry explains. "His name is Earl and he’s a good worker."

Lucien shakes his head and says he only needs one person.

"Then I can’t do it," he replies, explaining that Earl is passing his papers and he’s supposed to get jobs for both of them.

"Is this guy some kind of fagot friend of yours?" Lucien wants to know.

Henry says no and remains firm about the job. He has given his word to help Earl and nothing will keep him from doing what he said he would do. When Father Joques was first captured by the Iroquois, and saw the Indians torturing his companion, Guillaume Couture, he ran to the victim and threw his arms around him as protection from the savage blows. The result was a similar treatment for the Jesuit missionary. For his act of loyalty, Father Joques underwent a savage beating as the Iroquois ripped out his finger-nails with their teeth and clubbed him into unconsciousness. Now, Henry feels he must display the same loyalty and keep his promise to Earl.

"Its either both of us or I quit," are Henry’s irrevocable words to Lucien.

Exasperated, the concession owner raises a pointed finger at him and says, "Look kid. I need somebody to work Sabrina’s dressing room, help her with the act. I can’t use no snot-nosed kid for that. Cops would have my ass in jail before we open the show." Explaining that his friend is a grown man who would be perfect for the job, Henry points out that the police chief would never bother his act if he knew Earl was being employed. Lucien is placated and agrees to hire Earl. "Unless he’s some kind of nutcase that ’gonna raise hell about working for a strip show."

By noon, both shows are ready for the afternoon opening of the fair and Lucien gives Henry a half hour for lunch before the Pitch A Prize opens. He has done his job well, kept his word to Earl and succeeded in finding him work. Like Father Joques, he feels he has demonstrated uncompromising loyalty. Now, it is time to go to the Play House hot-dog stand and get something to eat, but more importantly, to see the woman who dominates his thoughts.

While sauntering down the mid-way, however, it suddenly occurs to Henry that he made a mistake in securing Jake a job at the strip show. He is leading Earl astray by enabling him to work for Sabrina, the Exotic Dancer, a place so obviously tainted with carnal sin. Of course, Earl will want the work. In fact, he’ll like the idea of changing props and playing the victrola so she can lip sync lewd songs. He will even thank his friend for getting him a job with a woman who performs immoral acts in front of a crowd. Henry decides to save Earl from this temptation. First, however, he must talk with Pandora, a prospect which is at once frightening and irresistible.

As he takes a seat at the stand, he sees her wearing a white apron and chef’s hat, stirring hot-dogs over a grill. She looks at him with her usual radiant smile and calls from the back of the booth. "Henry, Hi. Where have you been for the past two weeks?" she asks, as if nothing unusual transpired, as if Jake was never murdered and she had not asked him to lie about what happened.

"Nowhere," he manages to stammer.

Pandora takes his order and in her fast, efficient way, soon has a hot-dog with ketchup and mustard sitting in front of him. As he takes the first bite, she leans toward him and whispers, "Let’s go somewhere after they close tonight. I’d like to see you."

Henry almost chokes on the hot-dog but manages to stammer, "I don’t know. I.."

"Oh come on Henry. We’ve got to talk. I have to see you."

Before he can search for an answer, Henry is saved by Earl who slaps him on the back and takes a seat at the booth.

"You got the jobs?" Earl asks.

"I did. A guy by the name of Lucien offered us both jobs. But we can’t do it, Earl. I just realized we can’t do it."

Pandora goes back to work as Earl asks just why they can’t take the jobs. Quickly, Henry explains what happened, how he worked for Lucien setting up the concessions in the morning and how he agreed to hire both of them for the next two days. Then Henry tells him there’s a big problem and a mistake has been made.

"What’s that?" Earl asks suspiciously.

"This guy Lucien owns two concessions. One is pitching balls but the other is called Sabrina the Exotic Dancer and that’s where you have a job. Sabrina is the owner’s wife and she’s also strip dancer. We would only be promoting sin if you work there. You can’t do it."

"Sin. What in hell you talkin’ about Henry? Ain’t nothing in the bible says some woman can’t show off what’s she’s got for a bunch a dumb farm boys."

Earl’s defense surprises Henry. Desperately, he tries to recall an appropriate bible reference condemning strip shows but nothing comes to mind, particularly when Lucien’s angry shouts suddenly explode behind his ears telling him that customers are lining up at Pitch-a-Prize. Before Henry can even have a final word with Pandora, Lucien orders him off to the concession stand and then turns to Earl and asks if he’s supposed to be Sabrina’s helper. Earl jumps up and assures Lucien he’s ready to work.

"Let’s go then. Nobody’s gonna make money if y’all sit around talking the rest of the day."

Anna is sprawled on a director’s chair in front of the counter at Pitch-A-Prize. A low-cut peasant blouse, freshly pressed and carefully pulled down over her shoulders reveals a precocious figure apparently inherited from her mother. Her hands are firmly deposited in the change pockets of a white canvas apron as she delivers her aggressive sales mantra to several farm boys in heavy clodhoppers. They have stopped in the middle of the midway, eyes roaming back and forth from Anna to the colorful assortment of prizes. Henry has seen two of them before, brothers by the name of Zimmer who drive around in an old Ford sedan looking for trouble.

"Hey fellows, y’all come on over heah and win the big one. Knock down those bottles and you get any prize you want," Anna calls seductively.

Embarrassed, the boys look away. "Y’all with them funny shoes on, come on over heah. I’ll give you a deal," she says. The Zimmer brothers stop and look back. Then, shy grins spread across their field-tanned faces as they mumble "You wanna?" to each other and amble suspiciously to the booth like two rabbits checking out a lettuce patch. She offers a free throw to each of them and the boys are hooked. In a few minutes, they’ve offered up a dollar and are busy firing their best fast balls at the stack of wooden bottles in the rear of the tent. They throw hard but wild. Still, one of the boy manages to knock down all the bottles with one throw. Henry stacks them again while he selects a Teddy Bear.

One of the boys calls out to him, "Hey buddy, how much we get for knocking your head off?" His brother grins, "Yeah, git over there by the damned bottles buddy so we kin have a throw."

Henry says nothing and Anna quickly diverts the Zimmer boys by offering them two throws for the price of one. Twenty minutes later, the two are gone, clutching several prizes in their muscular arms after leaving six dollars with her. When Henry suggests she lost money on the boys, Anna laughs and tells him the prizes only cost thirty cents. "They could hit a strike every time and we still win," she says.

The afternoon passes quickly as more and more pitchers respond to Anna’s siren song. They throw with passion, occasionally with skill and the prizes are awarded although the hard-earned dollars of the local boys remain in Anna’s apron pocket. It occurs to Henry that he should explain to her that she needs to find a better life than working in a carnival. God would not want her tricking people into spending their money on worthless prizes. Everyone, he reasons, is a candidate for salvation and it would be wrong not to help her. This should also apply to Pandora who is also waiting to see him that evening. He will have to make a choice and since Anna will be soon be gone, he decides to avoid the difficulty of dealing with Pandora and concentrate on the relatively simpler task of trying to save Anna. As he picks up bottles and replaces them on the stand, he struggles to make a choice. He would rather go with Pandora. To be with her again would be bliss. That same bliss however could easily turn into sin. Furthermore, his duty is to Anna is clear. A soul is waiting to be saved.

An unexpected opportunity to perform this duty arises during a lull in the activity when she turns her chair toward Henry and asks what he plans to do that evening when the concession closes.

"Go home, I guess," he replies.

"Is that all you people do in this dump? Just go home?" she asks.

Henry says the only place open in the evening is the soda bar at the town’s only hotel where they have a juke box. She thinks for a few moments and then suggests they go there when the concession closes.

"Since y’all don’t have no car, you can haul me on your bike," she says with unconcealed disdain. As Henry moves to the back of the tent to pick up the heavy wooden bottles that have just been knocked down, he realizes that his decision has been made and he no longer has a choice between Anna and Pandora. After all, the admonition of Jesus exempts no one, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved but he who does not believe will be condemned."

Just after five, Earl arrives at the concession booth and joins Henry in the back of the tent with a non-stop soliloquy about his new job. The afternoon shows are finished until seven so he has two hours off. He explains that Sabrina does all kind of dancing on the small stage."Man can she ever shake it. Once she told me to come back to the dressing room and zip her up her gown before one of the acts. She don’t care who sees what she’s got and I wanna’ tell you Harry, she definitely has got it," Earl exclaims, adding that the evening show is supposed to be even better. "A guy told me she’ll be taking everything off tonight. You wanna come over, I’ll sneak you under the tent but you gotta stay in the back ‘caus ‘a that law about being 18."

"No thanks," Henry replies. "Anna wants me to take her to the soda bar after the concession closes," he says.

"No kiddin,’ Earl replies looking carefully at Anna’s plump figure. Before he can offer a predictably salacious comment, however, Henry asks him to go for a hamburger and Coke. No need to tell Earl why he is willing to go out with Anna. His friend would only laugh and repeat the charges of Henry’s craziness.

Customers continue to hand over their money for the Pitch-a-Prize and it becomes obvious that work will not cease until nine that evening. Just before closing time, however, Pandora appears at the booth. "Henry, may I speak to you for a moment?" she asks.

Stepping outside the tent, Henry starts to apologize for not coming back to see her at the hot dog stand, but Pandora cuts him off.

"You don’t have to say your sorry. Its okay. I know its difficult for you. But please, I can’t go back to that house one more night alone. You’ve got to meet me somewhere after the fair closes tonight."

"I can’t. I just can’t do it."

"Why Henry? Why won’t you help me now when I really need you?

"Its ..its her, Anna. I promised to take her to the soda bar after work." he stammers.

Pandora spins around, glares at Anna and then turns back with her lips drawn tight with anger. "You rat. You absolutely awful person. Going with that little tramp? I suppose you’re planning come back to this tent and make out with her tonight, aren’t you? That’s why you don’t want to see me."

Henry protests, tries to tell her he’s only interested in Anna’s salvation, but Pandora interrupts him, spewing words of anger like a woodpecker hammering against an old oak tree. "Don’t even try to explain. You and all your Jesuit talk. It doesn’t mean a thing. Punitive, that’s what you are. I adored you. I loved our relationship, but now I see you’re trying to punish me instead of helping me."

Again Henry tries again to explain, but Pandora bursts into tears and with a final "I wish I had never met you", she turns and hurries off into the crowded midway. He wants to follow her, to tell her how much he loves her, but bottles are waiting to be replaced and Henry can only get back to work.

By closing time, as the last customer walks away, Anna tells him to help close the tent flaps so they can go into town and listen to the juke box. Reluctantly, he pushes the Schwinn out to the road and soon he’s gliding through the silent streets with Anna sitting on the crossbar leaning back against his arms talking about places he’s never heard of. She prattles on about Norfolk, Virginia where she went with a sailor she met at the fair, describes winters in Sarasota, Florida where her Mom dances at a club every night and small towns where guys take her riding in their pick-ups or in the rumble seat of old Buicks. There seem to be no limits to where she’s been or what she’s done.

As they approach the Hotel, she turns with her face only inches away from him, her dark hair blowing softly against his cheeks. "So you got a girlfriend here?"

"No. Not really." Henry replies.

"How come? You’re a pretty good looking guy." Quickly, he explains to Anna that he wants to be a priest. "You gotta be kiddin’ ," Anna answers.

Before he can say more, they arrive at the soda bar, still crowded with kids who have come in from the fair. Charley Pearson is sitting in a booth with a couple of football players. They whistle as Henry and Anna walk by and one of them calls out, "Hey Henry, who’s your new girlfriend?" Anna turns and smiles at them while Henry slides quickly into a seat, torn between pride at showing her off and embarrassment at the attention she’s causing.

Anna tells him to order a chocolate ice cream soda and then wanders over to the jute box. where she immediately engages several boys in conversation. The Zimmer brothers are among them. When the sodas arrive, she returns and takes a seat at the booth. Picking up a spoon in her fist, she begins to attack her chocolate ice cream soda. "One a them fellahs ovah theah has a truck. Wants to go ridin," she says. Then, she places her hand on his arm and looks at him with her green, penetrating eyes.

"You never been with a girl before, have you. You know, gone all the way?

"No," Henry replies.

Anna smiles, "Well, it don’t matter. Ah’m going home with you even if you are kinda weird."

Henry nods proudly as Anna finishes her ice cream soda with several loud sucking noises from the straw. She looks up and giggles and even Henry smiles.

"Hey you wanna go? Maybe we can stop somewhere on the way back," she says.

Suspicious of her meaning and sensing the danger of Anna’s intentions, Henry nevertheless agrees to go, knowing that only when they are alone and away from the music and noise of the soda bar can he talk to her about the importance of being saved. Father Brebeuf did not refuse to go north into Iroquois country because it was dangerous. The Jesuit father placed the opportunity to save souls above his own safety. Henry must do the same.

In a few minutes, they mount the Schwinn again and Henry is pushing hard against the pedals to haul both of them through the dark streets toward the open farmland at the end of town where the carnival is located. As they pass a recently mowed hayfield lined by a small stand of pine trees, Anna turns and whispers into his ear, "Sure is purty out tonight. Let’s stop over there and have a look at them stars."

Henry rolls the bike up to a large walnut tree, where a rabbit jumps from the brush and bounces across the field, its white tail bobbing up and down in the moonlight. Several tree frogs croak from the darkness and the usual staccato calls of insects drum through the warm night air. Anna sits down, smoothes out her dress and leans back against the tree trunk.

"So whatdaya wanna talk about, Mr. Preacher?" she asks seductively.

Henry, still standing, waves his arm toward the dimmed lights of the carnival. "Your life. Tricking people into spending their money on worthless prizes. Having your Mom show herself off to all those guys. If you’re not careful, Anna, you’ll end up the same way." When Anna shrugs her bare shoulders and asks what’s wrong with that, Henry explains she should pursue a higher purpose, one that promises salvation.

Anna scoffs, "Y’all sure you got a problem with this religion stuff, don’t yah?"

Henry runs a hand through his hair and prepares to respond when suddenly a yellow wall of light flashes across the field. A Ford sedan is bouncing toward them with the two Zimmer boys leaning out the window.

"Hey buddy, what’s goin’ on out here?" a derisive voice shouts as the car slows to a noisy stop. The boys push open the doors and step slowly off the running board. The tall one swaggers toward Henry. "What’s you doin’ out here all alone with a nice looking girl like that?" he sneers.

His brother laughs. "Getting yourself some pongtang buddy?"

Anna’s voice cracks through the night air like a whip, "Fuck off you guys and mind your own business."

"Whoa, we got a tough one here," the older Zimmer boy grins as he moves closer to Henry and prepares to push him back against the tree. Henry realizes there is no backing out of this. He must attack first and draw blood quickly to discourage the big one so both boys will not come for him at the same time. He steps back, turns his left shoulder and cocks his right fist just below his jaw. The short one, with the floppy straw hat, laughs, "Looks like we got here just in time to save this young lady from gettin’ messed up."

Anna yells again, "Mind your own goddamned business you bunch of jerks." The older one reaches out to give Henry a push, thus crossing the invisible line that signifies a fight cannot be avoided. On the frozen hockey rinks of Montreal, Henry has learned the technique of hitting fast with both fists like a jack-hammer until blood is drawn. As the Zimmer boy moves closer, Henry rolls his shoulder forward while snapping his left arm and clenched fist straight at the Zimmer boy’s face. The hard bone of his knuckles crunches against nose cartilage. Stunned, the boy steps back and grasps his face as blood begins to pour over his mouth and jaws. "Hey you son of a bitch" the short one shouts as he stampedes forward with his head lowered like a charging bull. Henry blocks him to a halt and then punches straight for the side of the boys face, hitting him squarely on the ear. The boy stumbles and falls to the ground. Then,Henry begns to move for another swing at the big one with the bleeding nose. However, the brothers have had enough. They run back to their car and jump in. As the motor starts, the driver leans out the window.

"We’re coming back for you, yah son of a bitch," he yells as they drive off across the field.

"You okay? " Anna asks as Henry stands up and rubs his sore knuckles.

"I guess so," he replies.

"God, you’re tough. You knocked both those guys down. Where’d you learn to fight like that?"

"At school, playing hockey," Henry answers.

"I never seen nobody fight like that," Anna says with admiration. However, Henry is worried that the boys might return with some friends ready to beat him up so he suggests they go. Anna agrees and quickly he pushes the bike out to the road where he helps her mount the cross bars and in a few minutes they’re back at the fairgrounds.

They enter the main gate and Henry deposits Anna in front of the old truck where a tent has been attached to the side. "Home again," Anna announces with disdain. Then she turns to Henry and asks if she will ever see him again. Before he can answer she pushes a piece of paper in his hand with her Florida address scrawled on heavy black pencil. "Here’s my address. You ever decide you’re over that priest stuff and you want a girlfriend, write to me. We’ll get together," Anna says as she moves her face toward him and kisses his closed lips. Then, with a sigh, she turns and disappears into the tent.

Henry pushes the paper into his pocket and begins wheeling his bike down the dusty Mid-way, knowing that he will never seen Anna again and that nothing he has said to her that evening will change her life. As he glides through the dark streets, however, thoughts of Pandora fill his mind He thinks of riding out to the farm and throwing his arms around her, but he knows that would only lead to more temptation. Reluctantly, he heads for the large house in the middle of town where only sleep will help him forget what happened at the fair.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Several more days pass quickly and despite the dramatic events of the past week, the time for Henry’s return to school is getting closer. On a rainy mid-week morning when Henry has nothing else to do and only one surgery case has been scheduled, his father urges him to visit the hospital.

They arrive early and after scrubbing down and donning white gowns, they enter the operating room where bright ceiling lights sparkle against a row of silver instruments placed on a white cloth next to the surgical table. Henry stands next to his father as Pandora arranges the instruments. With blue eyes bulging frog-like from the narrow opening between her surgical cap and mask, Pandora looks up and winks at Henry as she picks out a small scalpel with a rubber-gloved hand. Another nurse, bending over an anaesthetized hulk of woman, swabs Mercurochrome across an exposed patch of belly. Pink flesh turns death-colored orange. Then, with hands held up like a prisoner signaling surrender, Henry’s father moves close to the patient and the command "scalpel" filters through his white face mask.

Pandora slaps the razor-sharp instrument into his hand. The surgeon points the scalpel on the woman’s belly for a moment and then slides it quickly through the soft layer of skin. Standing next to him on a stool, Henry breathes slowly through his mask as Pandora presses a towel into the blood-filled trench of flesh, soaking up the rivulets of red liquid that flow up like a ground spring in April. A geyser of blood suddenly spurts several feet into the air.

Pandora grabs a silver pliers-like instrument and holds it out before the doctor can call out "clamps." She knows what he needs and hands it to him before he can speak. Pandora is so efficient. Henry senses how difficult it would be to find another woman who provides a man with what he needs before he can make his request.

"Can you see this, Henry?" his father asks. He’s pointing a finger at a mass of blood-covered flesh embedded in the woman’s abdomen. "This is the appendix. Now we’re going to take it out."

Bring Doc’s boy into the operating room. Let him smell the pungent odor of ether as it drops into the patient’s mask, invite his eyes to feast on the ripped flesh and spouting blood. Put the patient’s wrist in his hand and tell him to count the pulse. Notice how the gowned nurses, with their sensual eyes peering from sheaths of white like the veiled women of Algiers, obey the doctor’s slightest command. Immersion in all this will surely guarantee the occupational legacy of father to son.

But it doesn’t. Henry hates this. He finds that reaching into the blood-soaked innards of this massive and ugly woman is disgusting. His legacy is that of Pere Benoit. Kneeling on the rough bench in the chapel and inhaling the delirious joy sparked by the smell of incense, the steady voices of the choirboys singing their Gregorian chants and the shining statue of the Virgin Mary. He would rather hear the patient’s confession, nod knowingly at her difficulties and experience the satisfaction of recommending a harsh penance accompanied with the prospect of salvation. Real power. Sovereignty far beyond the pale authority of the surgery ward, the banal obeisance accorded to "Doc" at the Staley farm or at the scene of an accident. He prefers to follow the admonition, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." And fortunately for Henry, he will return to all this in one more day. His father will take him to the train station and then he will undergo the long ride back to Montreal to begin the school year.

When the appendix is finally removed, the arteries closed off and the outer skin sutured, Henry sighs into his surgical mask with relief. One of the nurses tilts her head at him, signaling an invitation to the physicians’ changing room. She takes the gown Henry has been wearing and says, "Your Dad will be another half hour, but you can wait here."

The room is L-shaped and she points to a couch in the back section where he can rest without being noticed by anyone using the front area. Henry and his father left for the hospital just after six for the early morning operation and the prospect of a quick nap is appealing. Almost immediately, he sinks back against a pillow and stares out the window. Earl would be at the creek by now, climbing slowly up the hot rafters of the bridge, pausing to dedicate his daily feat and then diving swiftly down into the shallow water. Henry would like to be there, shouting and splashing without restriction, wrestling underwater with the other boys. Perhaps in the afternoon, when his father is finished, he will ride his bike along the simmering country road past the baking fields of wheat and corn for an hour of swimming before everyone leaves for supper.

In what seems like only a few minutes, however, Henry hears his father’s voice from around the corner. "Pandora. You have got to stay away from him. I know what you’re doing."

The familiar voice of Pandora interrupts, "He saw what happened. If he testifies about what happened, I’m finished. I’m only trying to keep him from telling the police. You can’t blame me for that."

Sleep departs and Henry’s brain fires up to full speed as he listens to the astounding words being spoken a few feet away.

"He hasn’t said a thing," the Doctor responds.

"No, but he’s going to. I want to live. What I did was wrong but Jake drove me to it. I had no choice and now they’ll put me in prison or maybe even send me to the electric chair. You’ve got to talk to him, Doctor. Please."

"He thinks its his duty to reveal what happened," Henry’s father says.

"I know that. He’s such a wonderful person ... I like being with him. I think that I ..."

"You think you’re what, Pandora?" Henry’s father asks in his most severe tone of voice.

"I think I’m in love with him. He’s so gentle and kind ... I’ve never met anyone like him."

Several moments of silence ensue as the doctor obviously attempts to overcome his shock and grope for an appropriate response. Finally, his words, laced with authority, cut through the room. "Pandora, he’s only seventeen years old. You’re married ... I mean you were married. You’ve got to stay away from him."

"I’m only twenty four," she protests.

"But he wants to be a priest. You’ll only confuse him, ruin his life."

Pandora begins sobbing, "and what about mine? Who cares about me?" she asks.

"We’ve got to keep Henry from saying anything. That’s the only solution," Henry’s father says. Then, suddenly he stops and speaks quickly, "somebody’s coming." A door opens and he hear the voice of a nurse, "Doctor, you’re wanted in emergency."

"Thanks. I’ll be right down," Henry’s father says matter-of-factly as if he had just been discussing suture techniques with nurse Pandora.

The door closes and Pandora’s voice, more desperate than ever, fills the room, "Doctor, will you talk to Henry again? Will you make sure he remains silent about ... about what happened?" Pandora asks.

"Good God Pandora. Do you realize what you’ve done?" The doctor asks angrily. Then his voice lowers and he promises, "I don’t even want to think about what happened to Jake, but I do know that nothing good can come of revealing it. I’ll try again."

The door opens and closes. Once again, Henry is alone in the changing room, the solitary priest left to ponder the real-life enactment of a confession of Pandora’s love for none other than himself.

Mental sluice gates open and Henry wonders why all this is happening. Pandora in love with him! He should be horrified, but he’s not. Instead pride dominates his thinking ... a beautiful and wonderful woman like Pandora in love with him. Is that so evil? He’s not yet a Jesuit. He has not yet taken the vows. Cannot he also be in love with her without becoming a sinner? After he has taken the vows, of course. But now? That is another matter and Jeremiah assures him there is nothing to be ashamed of. "You’re not that important Henry. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Shame is the same thing as pride. They both rely on a myth of self-importance. A person who thinks he’s the greatest is the same as someone who thinks he’s a sinner. They’re both conceited. They both believe in a lie."

Sometimes Jeremiah gets out of control and makes arguments Henry doesn’t understand. Pride and shame the same thing? How could that be?

Slowly, Henry swings his legs off the couch and drops down on his knees. His hands come together, "Our father who art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us for we know not what we do." Just as the Lord’s Prayer is completed, however, the door opens and he jumps to his feet.

The nurse who took the operating gown appears, "Henry, your father wants you in the emergency room." He joins her in hurrying down the hall and descending the stairs. His father is waiting outside the door, biting down on his lower lip. He puts his hand on Henry’s shoulder, the unspoken signal of trouble. Something has gone wrong.

"I have some very bad news for you," he begins. Before Henry can inquire what it is, his father has opened the door of the emergency room and Henry sees the familiar body of Earl lying on the gurney. A sheet covers most of his short, squat body but his shoulders are bare and smeared with blood. "They just brought him in," the doctor says. "He’s been asking for you."

Stepping closer, Henry notices a trickle of red liquid oozing from a small hole in Earl’s head. His dark hair is caked with blood. "He was swimming near the covered bridge. Apparently, he dove off the bridge and hit his head on a rock," the doctor says.

"I was afraid this would happen," Henry responds. "I kept telling him the water was getting too shallow but he wouldn’t quit."

Pandora presses a damp cloth against Earl’s forehead. His eyes open slightly and a smile creases the corner of his mouth. His arm raises and his stubby fingers close around his hand. "Henry," he whispers.

Henry looks up at Pandora. She shakes her head solemnly and he turns to his father for confirmation. The doctor looks out the window and then wheels around with a sigh. "Nothing we can do."

Words gurgle from Earl’s mouth. "Henry I was doing that dive for you. Ask some ‘a the guys they’ll tell you," he says slowly.

"But why Earl?" Henry responds. "You shouldn’t have done that. There hasn’t been any rain for weeks. The water was getting too low." But pride in his courage forces a smile from Earl, as his two front teeth, stained yellow, protrude from swollen lips.

"You’re my best friend Henry. You’re gonna have to take over my paper route till they send me home. Make sure you don’t miss no one."

"I will Earl and I’ll be really careful about your customers."

Earl leans his head back and closes his eyes for a moment. Then a slight smile again plays around his mouth. "I didn’t wanna have to say anything in court."

"Oh no," Henry gasps.

The Early whispers again. "I bet you wanna say some kind of prayer for me."

"Yes. I can do that," Henry answers.

"Ain’t gonna do no good, but its okay with me," he gasps. Earl holds up his arm and Henry takes his short, fingers that are course like sand-paper. Henry closes his eyes. The words pass slowly through his mind. "Please Holy Mary intercede with your Son, Jesus. Save my friend, Earl. He’s a good person. Let him get better."

Outside, the ambulance starts up. It shifts gears and the noise of the motor revs for a moment and then fades as the driver heads toward the highway to another scene of sickness and death.

Henry’s lips begin to mouth the sacred words, "Holy Mary, Mother of God ..." Suddenly, Earl’s fingers loosen around his hand. Henry opens his eyes and notice that Earl’s chest is no longer moving. The words "he’s dead" loops through Henry’s mind and his father shakes his head slowly. Henry places Earl’s limp hand across his waist and Pandora pulls the sheet over his still face.

"I’m sorry Henry. I know you were fond of him." Henry’s father says as he places his arm around his son’s shoulder and they walk slowly from the emergency room.

Henry bites his lower lip to keep from crying and together they go to the car for a silent return home. As the Buick turns down the road from the hospital, Jeremiah keeps asking why Earl is gone. "He was a good person and if God is so good, why did He let Earl die?" Henry tells Jeremiah to shut up it but it does no good. "Maybe there isn’t any God. Maybe its just a big story people make up so they don’t have to be scared of dying," Jeremiah suggests.

Henry can hardly wait to talk with Pere Benoit and hear his comforting words. "God’s wisdom is often hard to understand my son but we must have faith." he would say.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Grand Central station. New York. 8 p.m. The Pullman car is located at the front of the Montrealer as it starts its slow, snake-like crawl north along the Atlantic seaboard. Soundless aisles of sleeping berths, draped with dark green curtains suggestive of a funeral parlor, are suddenly filled with nervous passengers pushing and elbowing each other to their seats with a pack-inspired frenzy.

A skeleton-thin porter with a purplish black face and sparkling brown eyes calls out in a baritone litany, "Evenin’ sah. You got youh ticket? Das raght, three seats down. I be coming by later on, make up dah bed." He shows Henry to an upper berth already prepared with clean sheets and a heavy blanket. The porter explains that seats are available in the back section of the train and that he can go to the dining car in a few minutes.

"You make youself comfortable young man and if you want to go to bed early, why this heah berth is all ready. Yes sah. All ready to go."

Sleep would be welcome. Henry climbs up the polished wooden ladder that can be shifted anywhere along the aisle. Lying down on the firm mattress of the bed, he stares out the window as the train begins its journey through the crowded slums of Harlem, the endless rows of Bronx apartment houses until finally the open fields and woods of Connecticut appear through the dusky light of early evening. Sleep is illusive. He can think only of Pandora. He wonders what it would be like if she were here with him, lying on the narrow bed, watching the dark countryside roll by. Her lips would press against his. She would run her fingertips over his face. He would throw his arms around her. He remembered when she once told him, "Its good to desire a woman." Good or bad, wrong or right, he now wants Pandora more than ever. Like a terrier dog digging into a rabbit hole, her pleas for his silence, made through sobs and tears in the cathedral-like silence of the barn, claw at his commitment to admit what he saw through the tack room window. It occurs to him once again that this same silence can become the impassable barrier to the eternal life he wants so badly.

In the aisle, Henry can hear the passengers slowly taking their place as the car rattles on through the night. Finally, the talking and whispering die down and the last of the berths are filled but Henry is still awake. He remembers the early morning voice in the barn. Fears the coming hearing before the judge, and finally, today’s silent ride to New York with his parents in time to catch the night train to Montreal. All reverberate through his feverish thoughts. Having rolled over, changed the angle of the pillow and tried counting sheep, all without success, he opens the heavy curtains and jumps to the floor without aid of the ladder. Then he walks down to the men’s lounge where the porter is sitting, half-asleep on a brown, leather-covered couch. He looks up and asks, "Something you be needin’?"

"No," Henry replies. "I’m having a hard time getting to sleep." The porter moves over and invites him to sit on the couch. "Its like that for a lot a folks. Usually, though, it ain’t the train. Its the worries they bring with ‘em from somewhere else."

"That’s how it is for me," Henry answers.

The porter nods with sympathy and asks where Henry lives and when he describes the location of the small town where so much has happened during the summer, the porter turns his moist, brown eyes toward the window.

"I used to live in one of them small towns once," he says, rambling easily from one thought to the next. "Not much going on. Course I was just a nobody, never learned readin’ ‘an writin’. Alls I could do was pass papers. One day, I just ups and takes off, comes to New York and meets this fellow who belongs to the union. He gets me a job with the Pullman folks an’ I’ve been here ever since."

The Porter is fully awake now. Henry tells him that he also passes papers. The old man nods his dark head and says thoughtfully as if delivering newspapers were a sacred calling, "we all gotta be doin’ the work of the Lord."

The train slows and then stops at a small station in New Hampshire. The Porter helps a mother and two children on board, finds their berth and then as the engine hisses and groans, they rattle northwards again into the dark countryside.

The Porter returns and resumes the conversation.

"What is you gonna be when you grows up?" he asks.

The question hits Henry like a bullet between the eyes. For the first time since the hearing that morning, he realizes that he no longer has the quick and confident answer that served him so well throughout the summer. "Ah...h" is all that comes out.

The Porter laughs. "Don’t know, does yah? Well that ain’t so bad at your age. Lot a grown ups don’t know either. Never do learn. Go to work, bring up kids, take vacations, go to war, grow old. Get to thinkin’ how important they are, what big jobs they hold, how much money they be makin’. Don’t do them a bit of good all ‘caus a one thing they never find out."

"What’s that?" Henry asks.

"Who they is. What they be doing. Where they goin’." Big questions and most folks don’t even think about none ‘a that all the time they be livin’."

Before the Porter can explain further, a large man in red pajamas with a bald head and a grey beard appears at the curtained doorway of the lounge. He’s angry because the man in the berth above him is snoring. He tried shouting, even reached inside the berth and shook the noisy culprit, but it did no good. Now he wants help.

The Porter sighs and follows the angry passenger down the aisles.

Henry waits but soon his arms and legs feel heavy and he returns to the berth where he tries to allow the steady beat of the train wheels against steel rails to bring on sleep. Instead the vision of seeing Pere Benoit again dominates his thoughts. He imagines the conversation that will shortly take place when he arrives at school.

"Have you had a good summer, my son?" Pere Benoit will ask.

Henry will answer no and tell him that he can no longer hope to become a Jesuit. He imagines the priest’s kindly voice, his warm gray eyes filling with understanding and sympathy. "Ah, I’m sorry to hear that. One of the first things we must learn is that life is a very difficult struggle. There is no easy way but I’m certain that whatever has happened can be forgiven.

"I can no longer aspire to such a thing, mon pere. I’m not worthy to join the Society of Jesus," Henry will insist.

"Why is that my son?

"I have fallen in love with a woman. She’s all I think about."

"Is that so unnatural? Are you the first young man to ever fall in love? After all, you have not yet taken up the holy vows," Pere Benoit will respond.

"No. But with this woman it is different. She has committed a terrible crime. She has murdered her husband and I must testify in court that I saw her do it."

Pere Benoit will not find that such an easy confession to hear. There will be no simple penance like avoiding meat for three days or reciting ten Hail Marys to resolve this problem. No. Even the holy father will have to admit that Henry has gone too far for a return to the Jesuit fold. Finally, he falls asleep and then, while it seems only the middle of the night, the Porter wakes him and announces that in a few more minutes, the train will arrive.

A cold drizzle hangs in the grey sky over Montreal as Henry emerges from the Gare Central and hails a taxi. The driver, a fat French Canadian with a beret tipped over his eyes, wiggles reluctantly from the driver’s seat and helps push his trunk into the rear seat.

"Where do you go?" he asks in one of his few English phrases. When Henry tells him "College Jean de Brebeuf," the driver’s eyebrows furrow and he tips his beret back on his bald head. "Mais je croyais que t’etes American!" he says. I thought you were an American. Henry assures him his hunch is correct and that he is the only one of two Americans who go to the elite French Canadian school. The driver is pleased. "Ah, c’est bien ca," he mumbles much like a missionary suddenly finding a Christian in the middle of an African tribe. That is good.

The taxi careens around the corner, dodges through a maize of late summer traffic and is soon speeding along St. Catherine street until suddenly the dim gray outline of College Jean de Brerbeuf looms in the distance. Nothing has changed. The heavy front doors with their square wood paneling surrounded by rectangular blocks of stone, the tennis courts on the sides of the circular driveway, the cinder lacrosse field which will be turned into hockey rinks when the weather turns cold: all stand just as they were when Henry left three months earlier. Somehow, he suspected that since so much has changed for him, the school architecture would also have undergone alterations.

The taxi driver takes his money and wishes him good luck. Behind and in front of him, other cabs and cars are disgorging young boys who are returning for another year with the Jesuits. Henry would like to see Pere Benoit immediately. He wants to run straight down the tiled hallway to the Prefect’s office, open the door and throw his arms around him. "Bonjour mon pere. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you. I’m so glad to be back, to see you again." But that would not be the Jesuit way. In the Society of Jesus, feelings are held under control. Emotions must be handled with reserve and discipline. Perhaps in the evening, if Pere Benoit stops in the recreational hall after dinner, he will come to Henry and welcome the young student back to school.

After dragging his trunk upstairs to the dormitory, Henry begins unpacking. Winter clothes are folded neatly and placed in the back of the locker. Sweaters, long socks and shoes are almost put away when a young boy he has never seen before approaches and tells me him he is wanted in the prefect’s office.

Pere Benoit probably wants to see him, to find out how the summer went. Henry walks through the hall toward the prefect’s office and knocks on the familiar door. An aging, gray-haired priest with sharp, black eyes and thin lips invites him to come in and take a seat in front of his desk. He introduces himself as the new Father Prefect and explains that Pere Benoit is no longer with the school However, he says, the departing priest has left a letter. He places the envelope on the desk and invites the young student to read it immediately. Henry tears it open and removes the single page message.

A.M.D.G.

August 10, 1944

Mon cher Henry,

By the time you receive this letter, I will be in Brazil. The Provincial Father has consented to my long-standing request for a missionary assignment to a small village many miles up the Amazon where the word of God is still unknown.

Every so often, the Holy Mother of God selects from the many candidates for the priesthood, a young man who is destined to become a great Jesuit. In her infinite knowledge, she chooses someone who has the courage to make unlimited sacrifices while also managing the challenges of life for the greater glory of God. I think, Henry, that you are one of those. I have recently said a special thanks to Our Savior for allowing me to meet such a person as you in my lifetime.

For now, best of luck in your new school year. Remember to keep your head up when you’re skating down the ice and do not forget the words of Father Loyola "Go out and set the world ablaze." It will take much suffering and many disappointments before you understand this but I know you will eventually succeed.

If you have time, perhaps you can occasionally write to me about the news of our wonderful College Jean de Brebeuf.

In Nomine Patri, Filli,

Spirito Sancto

.

Henri Benoit, S.J.

Henry looks up at the new Father Prefect. He was gazing out the window while the letter was being read but now he turns and says bluntly. "Father Benoit thinks very highly of you. I hope that you will be able to live up to his expectations."

"Oui mon pere." Henry replies. Yes father.

"If you wish I will be glad to act as your confessor this year."

Knowing that he will begin crying in a few more seconds, Henry stands and says quickly, "Thank you father. I would appreciate that."

Then he is walking down the hall with his head down so no one will see the tears pouring from his eyes or the spasmodic shaking of his shoulders. He goes quickly to the chapel, pulls open one of the heavy wooden doors and moves to a seat toward the front of the nave. Instinctively he slides onto the kneeler and clasps his hands together. The hard wood of the narrow plank causes a familiar yet pleasant pain in his knees Someone is practicing the organ and the music of the Kyrie lifts through the vacant chapel. Candlelight reflects on the haunting statue of the Holy Mary. He remembers so well Pere Benoit holding up the Host and chanting the obscure Latin phrases of the mass.

Henry wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. Perhaps, he reflects, it’s best this way. Pere Benoit will never know what has happened. Now he can be spared the deep disappointment of learning that his favorite protégé has let him down. He will not have to hear the words, "I am sorry Mon Pere, but I have failed. My devotion to the Church has been overpowered by a beautiful woman whom I think about all the time. Sin has found me out and I have been unable to resist. I will not be able to set the world ablaze as you had hoped."

The music stops and the young student who was practicing the organ stands and leaves the chapel. Suddenly it occurs to Henry that one other option exists. A final opportunity come to mind, redemption is a very large river with many twists and turns as it rushes toward the sea. The words from the Spiritual Exercises filter back. The simple instructions in the Additions which the new novitiate is invited to try during his first week of the long retreat are clear. Pere Benoit would not recommend this. It would, however, be a step toward salvation whose promising elixir had become so illusive since Henry first met Pandora. Under the category of external penance which the student priest can add to his search for God, the Pater Nostra wrote, "The third is to chastise the flesh; that is to say, to cause it sensible pain." Flagellation. Beating oneself. Bringing pain onto the body as a means of gaining forgiveness and paying the price of sin. This was the practice Professor Metzger had explained to Earl so that Henry’s grave-digging friend could question him about it as they sat with their legs dangling over Maggie’s grave. It is now the opportunity which awaits Henry in the privacy of the shower room upstairs next to the dormitory. Perhaps the pain and the suffering inflicted by a bare leather belt will help Henry put aside his carnal thoughts for a woman and his desires for the flesh can be substituted for the more noble aspirations of the spirit.

Slowly, he rises from the kneeler and turns toward the door. The chapel is quiet now. The glow of a few votive candles sputters yellow and orange light against the deep hues of the colorful windows that depict in graphic detail Christ’s painful path to the cross. Henry’s decision is final now, arrived at through a desperate need to recover what has been lost.

He walks quickly down the hall and mounts the stairs. A few boys are unpacking in the dormitory, but no one is in the shower room. Each shower has its own stall. He remembers that strange afternoon during the previous winter when the hockey team was sent to play against an English school and they were offered an opportunity to wash after the game in a shower room with no cubicles for privacy. Embarrassed and unwilling to expose themselves, they declined the opportunity to bathe naked in front of each other and without a word returned to school with dried sweat caked around their sore bodies. Now, he steps into the steel lined stall and removes his belt. Then he takes off his shirt and kneels on the cement shower basin.

A Hail Mary crosses his lips. Then, wrapping the belt around his hand, he lashes the buckle across his back. The first stroke awakens a sense of pain but does not really hurt. The second and third bite into the skin. The pain hits full stride now. He wants to stop, but instead he hits harder. Several more strokes crack against his shoulder and now he can feel the trickle of blood sliding down his back. The deep sting of the buckle forces him to gasp for air. He must stop thinking about her. No longer can the memory of her strong fingers against his arm, even the soft, wet feel of Pandora’s lips against his own or the imagined pleasure of sharing a Queen-sized bed with her in some distant motel penetrate his mind. Still, he cannot go too far. Father Loyola cautioned against excessive mortification, "What seems to be most suitable and safe in the matter of penance is that the pain should be felt by the flesh and not penetrate to the bone, so that it may give pain, and not cause infirmity." The good father wanted his disciples to be healthy and strong for the work of the Society. Beating oneself into physical infirmity would not help. Mutilated and crippled Jesuits cannot bring greater glory to God..

Henry agrees. As the dry blood cakes quickly on his shoulders, the belt is replaced around his waist and he slides his shirt across his shoulders. The pain takes on a rhythm now, ebbing and flowing like the tides of an ocean. He opens the shower door and walks back to the dormitory. Through an open window, he can hear the voices of young boys yelling to each other as they race up and down the cinder-covered lacrosse field outside the school. It’s time to join them. This fall, if he practice tossing the ball for a half hour each day against the wall of the porch with his deep-pocketed stick, he’ll have a chance to make the first squad. When winter arrives, he will volunteer to rise at 4 a.m. to help hose down the hockey rink so there will be smooth, black ice ready for the skaters in the freezing afternoons of the Montreal winter. Third year Latin begins this term. The ambiguities of French literature will get underway with the requirement for memorizing La Montaigne’s poetry. The tormenting confusion of Algebra will shortly attempt to overtake him.

He descends the stairs and goes to his locker where sneakers and lacrosse sticks were placed a few hours earlier. Then he hurries outside to join the other boys on the playing field.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The early weeks of September unwind slowly for Pandora. A succession of warm, hazy days drag on endlessly as the neighboring farmers drive their crackling tractors back and forth between barns and fields like busy ants storing the season’s remaining crops of wheat, oats and even a third cutting of alfalfa. Desperate and lonely, she slips inexorably into a deep and silent depression in which the exuberance and joy which had always returned after Jake was gone for the weekend now remain illusive. Ghost-like, she goes each morning to the hospital and returns home in the evening to the dreaded loneliness of the solitary farmhouse.

In the evenings, she clips rose bushes, digs in the garden and then as dusk settles across the valley, she goes into the kitchen, lights a series of Camel cigarettes and listens to the radio where reports of the allies advance against Germany is electrifying the world. Yet nothing provides relief from the crushing desperation and despair. With Henry gone, the brief moments of companionship and even romance he once offered now lie enshrouded in the dreaded prospect of the testimony he will offer when he returns for the trial. The realization that he, of all people, will send her to prison if not the electric chair fuels in her a growing conviction that life is no longer worth living.

Finally, on a late Saturday afternoon in early October, Pandora is feeling particularly desperate. With tears in her eyes, she walks from the kitchen out to the barn and enters by the creaking wooden door where the last rays of sunlight filter through the slatted windows. A small sparrow flits across the ceiling, attracting her attention to the rusted hay fork hanging motionless from a rope, once used to swing the loads of green-dried timothy and alfalfa from the wagons into the hay mows. As Pandora stares at the wooden ladder where the rope is tied to a large rafter, it suddenly strikes her how easily she could attach the thick, hemp cord around her neck, step off the rafter and end her misery. For several minutes, she stares at the rope. Then, as her eyes sweep across the dark upper reaches of the barn, she suddenly decides it’s time to bring her suffering to an end. She simply cannot go on another minute. She thinks of writing a note, but is unsure of what to say. Anyone finding her would understand why she wanted to die, particularly after they learned what Henry had seen and was prepared to disclose before a court of law.

Quickly, before she has time to reverse her decision, Pandora steps toward the ladder and begins climbing, hand-over-hand, to the top of the barn. Sweat breaks out across her forehead and her breath comes heavily as she reaches the horizontal rafter where the hay fork is secured. Determined now, she quickly unties the dusty rope and constructs a crude noose large enough to slip over her head. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes are glazed with fear. Nobody will even care. They will never remember what she was, what she might have been.The beautiful and talented actress who could have becme a geat Hollywood star will acheive her goal. Her life has been cheated of all that might have been worth while: stardom, riches, fame and the adoration of moviegoers around the world. As the seconds tick by, she slips the noose around her neck and steps to the edge of the hand-hewn rafter, ready to plunge downwards until the rope breaks her fall, snaps her neck and ends her unbearable anguish.

"Pandora. Is that you up there?" The words of Professor Metzger drift through the upper rafters of the barn like a crack of thunder in a hollow canyon. "I brought some tomatoes for you." He’s standing in the doorway, backlit by the declining afternoon sun, peering up at her with his thin arm shielding his blinking eyes.

Pandora quickly removes the noose from her neck and releases the rope, allowing it to swing free across the barn floor "I ... I was just fixing some things up here," she calls, "I’ll be right down."

The Professor is not fooled. "You were going to do something desperate, weren’t you?" he asks as Pandora steps from the bottom rung and approaches. "I know your feeling but you can’t do it. Now come in the house with me." The Professor places a slim arm around her shoulder and guides the distraught Pandora through the barn door. "We have to talk about this."

Not quite sure whether she’s relieved to be alive or disappointed that the professor stopped her, Pandora takes a seat at the kitchen table. "I would have done it. I would have. I was ready," she repeats through uncontrollable bursts of tears.

"Yes I suspect you would have but now it’s too late. You have to go on living," he mutters.

"I can do that. It’s too much," she responds.

"But you have no choice. The curse of life is continuing to live when it’s no longer worth while. And yet. sometimes that same curse will deliver our goals long after we’ve given up. So you must go on, Pandora," the Profesor says.

Sobbing anew, Pandora tells him what happened to Jake that Sunday afternoon.

"I killed him. He was attacking me and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I put the gun at his head and pulled the trigger.

But no one knows that. The whole terrible event has been listed as a suicide," Professor Metzger replies.

"No. No. There is someone who knows, who plans to testify against me," she answers.

"Who could that possibly be? The professor asks.

"Henry saw what happened. He was in the tack room of the barn where there’s a window that looks into the bathroom. He saw me do it and he’s going to testify that I killed Jake," she says in a renewed burst of tears.

"So the young man intends to testify against you?" the professor asks. "Even though he knows you were being attacked."

"He has to. He’s very religious you know."

"Yes. He hopes to join the Society of Jesus," Professor Metzger says,

"He says he must tell the truth or he can’t become a priest. He also believes he’ll lose his chance at salvation. He says he’ll burn in Hell if he doesn’t tell the Judge what he saw," she says.

Apparently he sees his testimony as a potential for avenial sin. That is a problem," The Professor muses.

"So what can I do?" Pandora asks. "Henry is coming home for the trial and he has every intention of telling the judge what happened."

"Then you must change his mind and I have no doubt that you’re capable of doing so. The young man is in love with you. He’ll do anything you ask."

Pandora shakes her head and more tears form in her reddened eyes.

"He won’t do it. I’ve already pleaded with him. His father tried. Even Charley Pearson is doing what he can. No one can convince him to lie before a judge and I can’t bear to spend the rest of my life in prison," Pandora responds.

The Professor stands and places his hand on Pandora’s shaking shoulder. "You’ve got to take a train to Montreal, take him out of school and persuade him to provide the kind of testimony that will exonerate you. You’ll have to use all the skills of a first-rate actress but you cannot allow this boy to send you to jail. Now, come out to my car and let me give you the tomatoes I picked just this morning."

The tomatoes are placed on the kitchen table and then the Professor turns to leave. " Remember the young man is possessed by the Jesuits. They are hard, tough men but they have a weakness for sacrifice and suffering. That is the soft underbelly of the shark and that is where the knife must go. You must convince him that he must make a sacrifice…the greatest sacrifice that any Jesuit can make." Then, he turns and slowly ambles through the kitchen door and into the receding light of early evening.

After the professor is gone, Pandora looks out the window across the silent fields where a final sliver of red glows from the distant mountain. She realizes the professor is right. A final attempt must be made to persuade Henry. She remembers that he has a short vacation coming up in early November. It will be a final opportunity to follow the professor’s advice.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The cool days of autumn pass quickly at College Jean de Brebeuf for Henry. Each morning at 6 a.m., he wakes to the ear-piercing clang of the heavy wake-up bell swung without mercy by the black-robed dormitory prefect. Rolling from the iron cot, he joins the other boys in the morning ritual of dressing and lining up in the hallway for the silent march to morning prayers. As daylight begins to glow through the stained glass windows, he kneels in the chapel, reciting a series of Hail Marys in mumbled unison with the rest of the student body. There is much to pray for during these daily devotions. Henry knows he will soon leave the school for several days and return to the hearing where Pandora’s fate will be decided. He prays for her but he also prays for the strength and determination to carry out his duty.

He has no doubts about the testimony he will offer. The truth must be told. There is too much at stake. He must reveal to the judge what he saw on that fateful Sunday afternoon when Jake was murdered by his wife. To lie before a court of law would be the unforgivable sin for which Henry would have to give up his own salvation. Despite the warnings of his father , the last request of Earl or the pleadings of Pandora herself, Henry has no intention of suffering eternal damnation all because he is unwilling to see Pandora pay the price for her crime. There is, after all, one sacrfiice that even a Jesuit should not be asked to make.

"Please God, give me the strength to tell the truth," he repeats as the familiar notes of the Kyrie fill the vast space of the dimly lit chapel.

Cool weather comes early and by late October, morning frost begins to appear on the playing fields and the tennis courts outside the school. The freshly painted white board walls are placed around the areas designated for hockey rinks. Hoses are brought from the cellar storage areas for the important day when below-zero weather will allow the first layer of water to be sprayed on the frozen ground.

By the time All-Saints holiday arrives in early November, the hockey rinks are filled with smooth surfaces of glistening ice. Henry turns down an invitation to visit at the home of a friend in order to stay at the school and practice skating throughout the five days of vacation. He looks forward to being on his own, free to sleep late in the mornings, leave the school for forays into the city or spend long afternoons dashing up and down the hard ice, practicing his slap shot against the boards or skating backwards around the rink gasping for breath before collapsing against the goalie’s cage.

"Tu vous pas partir come les autres, Henry

?" the father Prefect asks when he is informed that the young American has decided to stay. "You’re not leaving like the others?"

"No mon pere. Je prefere rester ici," Henry responds. No father, I would rather stay here.

On a cold afternoon, of the second day of his vacation within the confines of the school, Henry pulls his skates from the steel locker in the recreation room and soon he’s on the ice, stick handling a black rubber puck back and forth across the ice. He has not even began to tire when a young priest from the administration offices calls to him from the cement porch overlooking the hockey rink.

"Henry. Quelquene veut te voir, " the priest calls to him. A woman wants to see you.

Henry stops and looks surprised. He distinctly heard the father say "une" signifying that the call is a female person. His mother has never visited him at the school. He wonders who it could be. "D’accords, Je vien," he shouts. Okay, I’m coming. Then, quickly, he skates to the heavy wooden exit door, pulls off his skates and hurries to the main foyer of the school.

Pandora, in a dark blue coat, is standing by the wall looking at a painting of Father Brebeuf being tortured by the Indians. No red polish shines from her fingernails. Her hair is pulled straight back and only a touch of make-up accentuates the fine bones of her face. She turns quietly and with her usual smile, throws her arms around him.

"Henry, I’m so glad to see you." she whispers. After they take a seat on a small marble bench beneath the painting, Pandora explains to Henry that she wanted to see Montreal and be with him one last time before she’s sent to prison. She also points out that she needs to catch the train back first thing in the morning. "I don’t have much time, but ..."

"Pandora, maybe they won’t ..."Henry interrupts.

"Of course they will. The judge will believe your testimony," she says.

Still he answers, "I know you want me to change my mind and tell them I saw nothing."

"No Henry. You have to tell the truth. I’ve learned to accept that."

Then she informs him of her readiness to attend confession, take communion and embrace the church. "I want to see the priest, the one you told me about, the father prefect who is so wonderful and who will understand."

"Father Benoit?

"Yes. That one."

"But he’s no longer here. He has left for South America. We have a new prefect now and he’s ... well he’s not very nice."

Tears form in Pandora’s eyes. Quietly, she mumbles an apology for bothering him. "I remembered this was your vacation week and I was hoping you would introduce me to the Father, show me the St. Joseph’s Oratorio and perhaps we could have dinner at my hotel."

Anxious to avoid a scene in front of the administration office, Henry interrupts, "Except for seeing Pere Benoit, we can do all that. I’ll get my coat." In a few minutes, they have exited the college and boarded a tramway at the rear of the building for the five minute ride to St. Joseph’s.

After entering the chapel, Henry explains to Pandora how the magnificent cathedral was built through the efforts of Brother André who had a vision in 1924 of creating the largest cathedral in North America. Henry describes how the inspired Franciscan succeeded and how thousands of people underwent miracle cures each year simply by visiting the holy shrine. "Some were cured after climbing the 1200 steps to the top of the cathedral on their knees," he explains.

"But why on their knees?" Pandora asks.

"Its a form of penance. The pain and suffering helps bring about the miracle," Henry answers matter-of-factly, sensing her beauty and once again wanting to hold her in his arms.

Pandora takes his hand and whispers: "I"m glad to see you again.. Its not California, but at least we’re together.". As they stroll through the vaulted hallways lined with discarded crutches of believers who were miraculously cured by visiting the holy Shrine, Pandora asks if all these people were really cured of actual infirmities or whether they only imagined themselves to be sick. He pulls his hand from her grasp and responds brusquely, "People are cured here after their doctors have given up. It happens all the time."

"So its true then. It really can happen, can’t it? I mean Henry, perhaps I too can be saved."

"Of course you can," Henry answers.

The sky has turned dark gray when they end their tour of the Oratory and hail a cab for the ride to the Regina Hotel where Pandora has made reservations. At her suggestion, they take a seat in the corner of the hotel lobby and she orders two champagne cocktails. "We need to celebrate my first visit to Montreal," Pandora announces, smiling and flinging her arms in the air. Henry hesitates but she fingers the sleeve of his coat and easily coaxes him to try one or two sips of the bubbly liquid.

As they talk, a handsome man with dark hair and a double-breasted pin-stripe suit stares at Pandora from the bar. She aims a quick smile at him and in a few minutes, the waiter appears with two more glasses of champagne plus the man’s calling card.

"Excusez moi, Madame, but the gentleman at the bar sends you his compliments.

"He has? Oh how lovely." She exclaims while waving a forefinger at the admiring gentleman. "You see, Henry, I haven’t lost my allure, have I?"

As she fingers the thin glass, Pandora explains that she has told only one person of her trip to Montreal. "Professor Metzger knows I’m here. He sends his best," she says, careful to omit the advice of her wise neighbor.

The champagne, with its atrophying cube of sugar, soon has its effect on Henry who has never drunk champagne before. He laughs easily and when she places her hands on his arm, he moves closer to her, glancing down the front of her red blouse with its three open buttons hoping that she will soon suggest they go up to her room. Desire is rapidly overtaking his need for denial and sacrifice. The all-too familiar urge to hold her in his arms brings memories of the hot afternoon in the woods when Pandora walked out to the spring and cried on his shoulder, the aborted picnic by the creek when the horse ran away, the rain-soaked embrace in the Air Patrol shed.

"Henry, let’s go up to my room so I can change into something comfortable. Then we can go for dinner," Pandora suggests. Dazed and rapidly losing a sense of direction, Henry merely nods and follows her as they walk out of the lounge. The champagne has done its work. Pandora looks again at the gentleman at the bar who has spun around on his stool to stare at her. She smiles seductively and wiggles her fingers at him but when they reach the hallway, she drops his card in an ashtray.

"Why did you take the card?" Henry asks.

"He was so charming. I love it when men make a fuss over me," she says as they walk down the heavily-carpeted hallway to the elevator.

"Maybe you better go back and ask for his room number," Henry retorts angrily.

Pandora leans toward him, plants a quick kiss on his cheek and whispers, "I have a date. Its you!"

They ride up the elevator in silence and despite several momentary attempts to turn back and descend to the lobby, Henry follows her to the room where a large Queen-sized bed stands next to a blue-curtained window. As Pandora disappears into the bathroom, Henry looks out the window where he can see the lights of St. Joseph’s oratory glowing from the distant summit of Mt. Royal. For a moment, the lights spin slightly and he blinks as tries to maintain control over the effects of the champagne.

"Henry" Pandora whispers into his ear. He turns to see her standing next to him wearing a thin negligee, He draws back but her arms immediately encircle him and her lips are pressed against his mouth. In a moment, they have fallen on the bed and Pandora’s hands are pulling at his shirt. Henry responds awkwardly, as Pandora cries into his ear, "Oh Henry, I love you so much." Then sleep envelopes him and he remembers nothing more until late the next morning when he wakes and realizes Pandora is gone. He steps from the bed and finds a note on the nightstand.

Dear Henry,

Thank you for last night. You are truly wonderful. I have given you one last kiss before leaving but now I must hurry to catch the train. Soon we shall meet briefly in the courthouse and I know that after that, we shall never see each other again.

Please remember that I am not bitter at what you must do. I realize now that saving me would require too great a sacrifice by you, Henry, and I would not want you to do that.

Good luck in your career as a Jesuit.

I love you,

Pandora.

Henry carefully folds the letter, dresses and quickly leaves the room. Outside, snow is beginning to fall and the cold slate-blue skies promise a heavy blizzard before the end of the day. As he boards the tramway, his hand holds her letter tenderly in his pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The two weeks before his departure for the hearing pass quickly for Henry. The night with Pandora preys on his mind, raising questions about his testimony, tempting him to reconsider what he will tell the judge. Yet, the daily routine of attending early matins, morning classes, and long afternoons on the ice enable him to put aside many of his fears of the appearance he must shortly make in the courtroom. It is at the evening vespers, however, when the organ music fills the chapel and Henry can feel the euphoria of prayer and contemplation swelling through his tired brain that he knows how important it is to testify truthfully. Eternal damnation is a very long time, far longer and more painful than one life spent in prison.

Then its time to leave ,to leave Montreal for the long trip south. Once again, he boards the train for New York from Windsor Station. However, this time there is no expectancy of a happy summer. Henry is in a daze during the two days of traveling. He arrives at home and after brief supper with his parents, he goes to bed. The hearing will be held at 2 p.m. the next afternoon.

The following morning, Henry is wakened early by a single crow calling from the chestnut tree outside his bedroom window. The bird leans back and forth in synchronization with its shrill warning call. With one eye open, Henry watches it through the open window. Then something apparently moves in the street below and the crow suddenly lifts up from the branch and with several quick calls, disappears for the safety of the nearby fields and woods.

The noisy bird had done its work. Henry is awake and a sudden awareness of the hearing scheduled for nine o’clock hits him like a sickening blow to the stomach. Jeremiah opens the debate.

"Tell the Judge you saw nothing and everyone can get on with their lives."

"I can’t. It would be an unpardonable sin. That means no salvation."

"What about the others. Pandora. Your parents. You want them to go through the ordeal of a murder trial?"

Once again, Henry thinks of Pere Benoit and longs for his advice. He would like to be in church now, to have the opportunity for one last prayer before the trial begins. Then, the idea of going to the barn for a final visit flashes into his consciousness. Perhaps, there he could find a moment of help before the court trial gets under way.

Within minutes, he dresses and races down the stairs, through the kitchen and out to the shed where the Schwinn is parked next to the lawnmower and garden tools. He pushes it out to the street and jumps on the seat. Standing on the pedals, pumping as hard as possible, Henry races through the sleeping town. Soon, women would be leaning out of their kitchen doors to pick up milk bottles delivered before dawn, old men would be raking leaves over their Victory gardens behind their houses and children would be hiking toward school. The streets give way to the country road and soon he’s sailing past the shorn wheat fields and naked rows of yellow corn stalks now ripped of their yellow seed-lined cobs.

The familiar silence of the barn engulfs him the moment the bike is leaned against a musty cobweb-covered wall. Henry walks slowly toward the bales of hay. The pigeons and sparrows are gone for a morning of foraging in the surrounding fields and trees. Even Daisy is strangely quiet in the stall below.

Slowly he drops to his knees and places his elbows on the hay bale. The sharp stems of the alfalfa cuttings send shivers of pain through his arms. The prayer beads came out and slowly he begins rolling them through his fingers.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God please tell me what to do. There is not much time. Can there be forgiveness for a deliberate lie? Is redemption possible for a blatant reversal of the truth told before a judge in a court of law?"

Only silence emerges from the dusty rafters. Then, Jeremiah’s voice seeps through his troubled thoughts, "of course not. You lie, you pay. Its that simple."

Tears come to his eyes. He had hoped for indulgence but even Jeremiah refuses to suggest that mercy is possible for a liar. Henry’s hands clasp tightly together. His eyes search the murky quiet of the barn’s wooden roof. "What can I do?" he whispers between clenched teeth, realizing once again that to reveal what he has seen will cause so much suffering to Pandora while giving false testimony will assure him of eternal damnation.

Almost a minute of silence passes. Then, suddenly, several words drift his consciousness. It seems to be Jeremiah. The words are in Latin. At first, he can’t understand. Then a voice repeats the phrase with a mixture of sorrow but not a hint of compromise.

"Major sacrificio major gloria Dei."

Familiar words! How well Henry remembers what Pere Benoit said the night they went to the hockey game and saw Maurice Richard.

"The greater the sacrifice, the greater gory to God."

Suddenly, the message is clear. Henry understands the sacrifice he must make. Like a condemned prisoner leaving the courtroom on the way to a bare courtyard where a firing squad awaits with loaded rifles, Henry slowly pulls himself up and walks across the barn floor. From downstairs, he hears Daisy kick against his stall door. General Lee would no longer need a courier. The surrender papers had been signed at the Appamatox courthouse. Slowly, Henry pushes the Schwinn outside and carefully, so no one can observe him, returns to the road and begins peddling back to town where his parents are waiting to drive him to the hearing.

Henry’s father has given up on his son. Realizing that nothing can be done and that Pandora has accepted her fate, he has turned strangely affectionate. As they leave the car and step across the courthouse parking lot, the Doctor turns to Henry and with his hand firmly on his shoulder, he says, "I know this will be difficult for you Henry. I suppose there has to a limit to how much a person can give up for someone else." His father’s advice passes over Henry like a harmless cloud scudding across a windy sky in early spring. No wordily thoughts can affect him now. He is beyond all that, secure in the knowledge that a decision has been reached from which there is no retreat.

"Thanks Dad," he replies.

Henry’s right hand is in his coat pocket, slowly rolling the string of prayer beads through his fingers as he silently pleads, "Holy Mary, mother of God please pardon Pandora for killing her husband. She did not know what she was doing."

A fan turns slowly from the ceiling of the large Victorian era courtroom. Next to the Judge’s bench a fat, pear-shaped stenographer sprawls on a chair ready to record the day’s testimony in shorthand. Charley Pearson is standing by the door. His uniform has been freshly pressed and his mustache is newly clipped and waxed. He winks as Henry walks into the room with his father and mother. Sitting at the rear of the room, with her hair combed in a tight French twist around her head, Pandora looks straight ahead with no trace of emotion on the bare skin of her perfectly formed face which no longer carries the bright beauty enhancing colors of make-up and lipstick she once applied with such dexterity.

The spectators, older men and women from the town who come each day to be entertained by the proceedings of the court, all stand as the Judge enters and takes his seat. A small, gnome like tipstaff with huge glasses and a permanent scowl on his dour face calls Charley Pearson to come forward. The police chief limps down the aisle between the spectator benches and stops in front of the stenographer. For several minutes, he points out the reason for the hearing, explaining that a final determination in the cause of Jake’s death has been requested by the county prosecutor. The Judge orders Charley to submit a copy of his investigation and the physician’s report for the record. The police chief hands a sheaf of papers to the stenographer. Then the Judge asks, "Now Chief Pearson, do you have any witnesses who should be called for this hearing?"

"Yes sir. I do," he says, turning to Henry.

The wooden floor creaks beneath his steps as Henry approaches the witness chair. The courtroom reminds him of the school chapel with its eerie silence, rows of benches and narrow nave where the principal players, judges and judge fulfill their ritual roles like priests and choirs. The bearded tipstaff shows Henry to the chair next to the judge’s bench. Then his thin, raspy voice pares through the silent room, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God."

For a moment, Henry hesitates. No one told him there would be an oath in the name of God Himself. "Just a couple a questions" is what Charley Pearson had predicted.

The judge nods to the police chief and tells him to go ahead with the questioning. Charley hobbles to the witness chair and asks Henry to tell the court where he was on the afternoon of Jake’s death. Looking out over the small audience of his parents and Pandora, Henry tells them he was riding Pandora’s horse.

"Were you in the house that afternoon?" Charley asks.

"No, I was not," Henry answers emphatically.

Silence hangs over the crowd of spectators and for a moment, Henry entertains the hope that nothing more will be asked. If Charley would cease posing any more questions, Henry could still be saved. It was true, he had not been in the house. The hearing would be over. Everyone could leave and he would not have to undergo the ordeal of committing a sin for which no pardon could ever be granted. No such luck takes place. The police chief steps away from the witness chair and looks out the window as he poses his next question, "Henry, while you were in the barn putting the horse away, did you hear or see anything unusual?"

"Yes," Henry replies.

"Can you tell the court what that was?"

The words flow quickly without hesitation. Sin is easily committed. As Pere Benoit once said, it seeks you out, you don’t have to go looking for it.

"There is a window between the barn and the house," Henry replies.

There is still one more second to change the story, to tell the truth. But the decision has been made. The ultimate sacrifice must be undertaken. Giving up a brilliant career playing professional hockey as Father Benoit did, would be a welcome exchange for the testimony Henry is about to offer. He realizes he will have to undergo far more than Father Brebeuf experienced when he was tied to the stake for a last fiery ordeal of suffering. The excruciating pain incurred by Father Joques as his nails were bitten from his fingers will seem like a minor bee sting in comparison with what Henry is destined for.

"By looking through this window, you can see into the bathroom of the house. While I was putting the saddle away, I happened to look through the window and I saw Jake."

"And can you tell the court what he was doing." Charley asks.

"He was taking the German Luger from a drawer. It was a pistol he often used for shooting in the shale pit behind the barn."

"Go on," Charley says.

"H e took the pistol out of the drawer and placed a bullet in the chamber. Then, he pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. It was over just like that."

"You mean he killed himself. He committed suicide."

"Yes sir."

"Then what did you do, Henry?

"I was really scared, so I went downstairs in the barn, got on my bike and rode home."

"That all. You didn’t tell anyone. You just rode your bike back…"

"Yes sir. I saw you on the way and I figured you were going to investigate what happened."

The Judge interrupts, "So you saw Jake commit suicide, is that what you’re saying."

"Yes sir." Henry says, looking directly into his eyes. "That is what I saw. There was no one else in the bathroom. He put the gun to his head and fired."

The hearing is over. Henry’s father and mother start toward the door. Pandora is still sitting in her seat. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. Without hesitating, Henry slides down the narrow space between the seats. She stands and silently places her arms around him.

"Thank you Henry," she whispers.

"Go to the tack room and look for a hole in the floor at the rear of the room. Pull up the board. You will find a box. Its for you," Henry says.

"Why. What is it?" she asks.

"Your freedom. Your opportunity to go to Hollywood and become an actress."

As he turns to go, Pandora suddenly places her hands on his shoulder and leans toward him. "Henry, I know what you have sacrificed. I’m sorry."

"There was no choice. It had to be done," Henry replies. Then he turns and joins his parents as they descend the courthouse stairs. Nothing is said as they walk directly to the parking lot and the car in which they will drive Henry to New York where he will catch the evening train back to College Jean de Brebeuf.

Postscript

The two priests walk slowly along the crowded street of downtown Montreal towards the movie theater. Father Benoit, an older man with wire-rimmed glasses and straight shoulders, reaches into his cassock to retrieve a billfold. The young priest protests. "No, please Father." Father Benoit smiles and steps toward the ticket counter. "Remember this is my treat to celebrate your ordination. You’re a Jesuit now, Henry. I‘ve waited a long time for this."

From inside the ticket booth, a thin young woman with a heavily-roughed face looks up in surprise at the two men, "You sure you wanna see this. Its kinda raunchy."

"Yes. Its a very special movie," Father Benoit replies.

As they cross the heavy, red carpeting of the foyer, the priests stop for a moment to look at a large poster in which the beautiful movie star is jumping her horse over a stone fence. In the background, the handsome face of the leading man, mustached and smiling, watches her from the steps of a huge mansion.

"Does it look like Pandora?" Father Benoit asks.

"Yes. Yes. But she’s more beautiful than ever," Henry answers. Then the two Jesuits turn and walk into the darkness of the theater.

- - - - -

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY