It was very hot for nine o’clock in the morning.
People had come to the chapel all morning, from the moment Cyrus McGillicuddy opened the doors at seven A.M. McGillicuddy was pleased and he stood on the front steps, nodding and smiling at the throng passing through the chapel doors. The bishop had been a problem, of course; but for the moment, the bishop was Martin Foley’s problem. McGillicuddy had decided to defer to the man from Rome when the bishop called up.
What was going on down there, McGillicuddy? So the bishop had asked in his usual peremptory way. McGillicuddy said there was nothing going on and then said, oh — you mean that, and then said the bishop might want to speak to the Vatican representative who had come to stay at the motherhouse. The bishop had said, somewhat flabbergasted, that he was not aware of any Vatican representative in his diocese and…
McGillicuddy gave the phone to Martin Foley and left the room. Later, Foley had recounted the conversation in diplomatic words. The matter in the motherhouse of the Order of the Holy Word Fathers was one of extreme delicacy.
But, the bishop had insisted, he had heard that the old Mass was being said again, the ritual of the Tridentine Mass of the Middle Ages. An exception was being made, for the moment, Foley said.
Foley had decided at last to forbid Tunney to say the Mass. Much to his surprise, Tunney had shown an Oriental stubbornness on the matter. Tunney did not oppose Foley but he bent away from his orders. It was upsetting him, he told Foley; he was having trouble completing the journal. Foley understood the blackmail and accepted it. Again and again, he had felt himself caught in the middle of a situation beyond his grasp; the orders from Cardinal Ludovico were general and vague, yet the matter was important. That much had been made clear to him. It was important to have Tunney’s information. And Tunney had implied that the information might not be forthcoming if he were interfered with. And so Foley found himself placating the bishop and Tunney and warning McGillicuddy not to make a public fuss about Tunney saying the Latin Mass.
Of course not, McGillicuddy agreed. He denied ever talking to reporters and he did not understand why the Clearwater Sun had sent a reporter to the chapel.
So, in an uneasy way, forces counterbalanced each other inside the rectory. In the morning, Tunney said his Mass; in the afternoons, he wrote — for hours until exhaustion claimed him — in the red leather journal, filling page after page in his cramped hand.
And no one could see the journal until it was finished.
All of which was satisfactory for the time being from McGillicuddy’s point of view. People at Mass meant money at Mass; the publicity was not hurting him either.
This morning, the stream of people going up the three steps into the chapel divided around the slow-moving young woman lurching forward on her aluminum canes, her head bent and her brown hair tied back severely. She had a transparent chalk-white complexion. Her spine curved oddly in two places and made her shoulders seem somehow detached from it. Shoulders and arms were one segment of the body, spine and lower back another, useless legs a third.
McGillicuddy watched her and was struck with pity. He made way for her and led her inside the church to a front pew.
“Y’all Father Tunney I read ’bout?” Her voice was low and scratching and ugly, a voice out of the swamps of Florida’s backlands.
“No, no, ma’am,” McGillicuddy said, helping her settle in the narrow pew. Her canes clattered against the hardwood. She leaned against the back of the pew ahead of her, half resting her behind against the seat, her legs propped on the rubber kneeler on the floor. “Father Tunney’ll offer Mass in a little while.”
“I ain’t Catlik,” she said. The voice moved slowly like water disturbed in a rain-forest pool. “Heard about him, read about him in that paper and come to see this. This service I ain’t never seen before. I ain’t Catlik. God knows, I pray all day but I ain’t Catlik.”
She suddenly fastened one very strong hand on his arm and looked into his face. He stared at her and could see the veins working beneath the translucent whiteness of her forehead. Her eyes were black and muddy and her eyebrows had been plucked and painted, as though all the deformity of the body was to be mitigated by a little cosmetics on her face.
“Baptist,” she said. “I been washed in the Blood of the Lamb and born again when I was seventeen.”
“Yes.” He half turned, started to move away from her, but the strong hand held his arm.
“All right then I come down to see him?”
“Yes. Certainly.” He tugged away from her. “All faiths are welcome to worship with—”
“Father Tunney’s holy man,” she said, holding on to him. “Holy in the Lord. He be blessed.” The voice was dead and deep and McGillicuddy pulled hard against her touch, panicked for a moment by her words.
She released his arm suddenly and slumped back in the pew, pushing her soft, deformed body against the hard wooden surfaces.
McGillicuddy turned and hurried back down the aisle to the rear of the church. At the far door, he saw Foley standing beneath the plaque of the Ninth Station of the Cross. As always since his arrival in the motherhouse, Foley wore a sports shirt, which annoyed McGillicuddy; everything about Foley annoyed him.
Tunney appeared at the door of the sanctuary, dressed in the robes for Mass, holding the covered chalice in his hand. The Mass began.
The middle-aged man who had been at early Mass the first morning was serving the Mass with the priest. He wore a black cassock and white surplice and his hands were folded in front of him. He had chosen to serve because he knew the old Latin prayers from when he was an altar boy. None of the regular altar boys at the chapel knew the old words.
“Gloria in excelsis Deo.
“Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
“Laudamus te. Benedicumus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter.…”
Leo Tunney pronounced the words of the Gloria slowly and precisely in his slight, whispery voice. As the Mass proceeded, the voice would grow stronger. McGillicuddy had noticed that.
Because it was Sunday morning, a sermon was usual in the middle of the Mass. Tunney had insisted he would deliver it and McGillicuddy, worried about the old man’s frailty, had reluctantly agreed.
Now Tunney broke from the prayers of the Mass and turned to the congregation. He stepped down the three steps of the altar and moved to a lectern used as a pulpit. He rested his bony hands on the wood for a moment, his face pale and his head trembling slightly.
He blessed them with the Sign of the Cross and began.
“My dear friends in Christ,” he said, his blue eyes searching from face to face as though he were looking for someone he knew.
McGillicuddy had opened the windows of the church so that the overflow congregation gathered on the lawn outside could listen to the Mass.
Sweat formed a line across Tunney’s temples. He brushed once at his short white hair and then let his hand fall again on the wooden lectern.
“I would like to speak to you of forgiveness.”
Silence settled on the crowd.
“None of us, least of all me, is worthy of God’s mercy or His forgiveness. None of us, least of all me, is deserving of a first chance, let alone a second chance. None of us—”
He paused, looked up at the ceiling and then stared at the back door of the church where Foley stood and waited.
“God who made us,” he began again. “God has loved us in the act of creation. Creation is love. And we are not worthy of His love and—”