equivalent.”
“Well, say the rough equivalent, then, man. And follow me!”
They met Pastor Sheldon, going into the library as he was coming out.
“It’s no use,” said the pastor, smiling, as he examined the fever in their faces. “You won’t find it in there.”
“Won’t find what in there?” Father Brian saw the pastor looking at the letter which was still glued to his fingers, and hid it away, fast. “Won’t find what, sir?”
“A rocket ship is a trifle too large for our small quarters,” said the pastor in a poor try at the enigmatic.
“Has the Italian bent your ear, then?” cried Father Kelly in dismay.
“No, but echoes have a way of ricocheting about the place. I came to do some checking myself.”
“Then,” gasped Brian with relief, “you’re on our side?”
Pastor Sheldon’s eyes became somewhat sad. “Is there a side to this, Fathers?”
They all moved into the little library room, where Father Brian and Father Kelly sat uncomfortably on the edges of the hard chairs. Pastor Sheldon remained standing, watchful of their discomfort.
“Now. Why are you afraid of Father Vittorini?”
“Afraid?” Father Brian seemed surprised at the word and cried softly, “It’s more like angry.”
“One leads to the other,” admitted Kelly. He continued, “You see, Pastor, it’s mostly a small town in Tuscany shunting stones at Meynooth, which is, as you know, a few miles out from Dublin.”
“I’m Irish,” said the pastor, patiently.
“So you are, Pastor, and all the more reason we can’t figure your great calm in this disaster,” said Father Brian.
“I’m California Irish,” said the pastor.
He let this sink in. When it had gone to the bottom, Father Brian groaned miserably. “Ah. We forgot.”
And he looked at the pastor and saw there the recent dark, the tan complexion of one who walked with his face like a sunflower to the sky, even here in Chicago, taking what little light and heat he could to sustain his color and being. Here stood a man with the figure, still, of a badminton and tennis player under his tunic, and with the firm lean hands of the handball expert. In the pulpit, by the look of his arms moving in the air, you could see him swimming under warm California skies.
Father Kelly let forth one sound of laughter.
“Oh, the gentle ironies, the simple fates. Father Brian, here is our Baptist!”
“Baptist?” asked Pastor Sheldon.
“No offense, Pastor, but we were off to find a mediator, and here you are, an Irishman from California, who has known the wintry blows of Illinois so short a time, you’ve still the look of rolled lawns and January sunburn. We, we were born and raised as lumps in Cork and Kilcock, Pastor. Twenty years in Hollywood would not thaw us out. And now, well, they do say, don’t they, that California is much …” here he paused, “like Italy?”
“I see where you’re driving,” mumbled Father Brian.
Pastor Sheldon nodded, his face both warm and gently sad. “My blood is like your own. But the climate I was shaped in is like Rome’s. So you see, Father Brian, when I asked are there any sides, I spoke from my heart.”
“Irish yet not Irish,” mourned Father Brian. “Almost but not quite Italian. Oh, the world’s played tricks with our flesh.”
“Only if we let it, William, Patrick.”
Both men started a bit at the sound of their Christian names.
“You still haven’t answered: Why are you afraid?”
Father Brian watched his hands fumble like two bewildered wrestlers for a moment. “Why, it’s because just when we get things settled on Earth, just when it looks like victory’s in sight, the Church on a good footing, along comes Father Vittorini—”
“Forgive me, Father,” said the pastor. “Along comes reality. Along comes space, time, entropy, progress, along come a million things, always. Father Vittorini didn’t invent space travel.”
“No, but he makes a good thing of it. With him ‘everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.’ Well, no matter. I’ll stash my shillelagh if he’ll put away his rockets.”
“No, let’s leave them out in the open,” replied the pastor. “Best not to hide violence or special forms of travel. Best to work with them. Why don’t we climb in that rocket, Father, and learn from it?”
“Learn what? That most of the things we’ve taught in the past on Earth don’t fit out there on Mars or Venus or wherever in hell Vittorini would push us? Drive Adam and Eve out of some new Garden, on Jupiter, with our very own rocket fires? Or worse, find there’s no Eden, no Adam, no Eve, no damned Apple nor Serpent, no Fall, no Original Sin, no Annunciation, no Birth, no Son, you go on with the list, no nothing at all! on one blasted world tailing another? Is that what we must learn, Pastor?”
“If need be, yes,” said Pastor Sheldon. “It’s the Lord’s space and the Lord’s worlds in space, Father. We must not try to take our cathedrals with us, when all we need is an overnight case. The Church can be packed in a box no larger than is needed for the articles of the Mass, as much as these hands can carry. Allow Father Vittorini this, the people of the southern climes learned long ago to build in wax which melts and takes its shape in harmony with the motion and need of man. William, William, if you insist on building in hard ice, it will shatter when we break the sound barrier or melt and leave you nothing in the fire of the rocket blast.”
“That,” said Father Brian, “is a hard thing to learn at fifty years, Pastor.”
“But learn, I know you will,” said the pastor, touching his shoulder. “I set you a task: to make peace with the Italian priest. Find some way tonight for a meeting of minds. Sweat at it, Father. And, first off, since our library is meager, hunt for and find the space encyclical, so we’ll know what we’re yelling about.”
A moment later the pastor was gone.
Father Brian listened to the dying sound of those swift feet—as if a white ball were flying high in the sweet blue air and the pastor were hurrying in for a fine volley.
“Irish but not Irish,” he said. “Almost but not quite Italian. And now what are we, Patrick?”
“I begin to wonder,” was the reply.
And they went away to a larger library wherein might be hid the grander thoughts of a Pope on a bigger space.
A long while after supper that night, in fact almost at bedtime, Father Kelly, sent on his mission, moved about the rectory tapping on doors and whispering.
Shortly before ten o’clock, Father Vittorini came down the stairs and gasped with surprise.
Father Brian, at the unused fireplace, warming himself at the small gas heater which stood on the hearth, did not turn for a moment.
A space had been cleared and the brute television set moved forward into a circle of four chairs, amongst which stood two small taborettes on which stood two bottles and four glasses. Father Brian had done it all, allowing Kelly to do nothing. Now he turned, for Kelly and Pastor Sheldon were arriving.
The pastor stood in the entryway and surveyed the room. “Splendid.” He paused and added, “I think. Let me see now …” He read the label on one bottle. “Father Vittorini is to sit here.”
“By the Irish Moss?” asked Vittorini.
“The same,” said Father Brian.
Vittorini, much pleased, sat.
“And