Chapter 51

The bases were fully loaded. Eric sat in the second row on the hard bleachers, his sunglasses hiding his eyes from the early March sun, and watched Moss Gouda take a swing. The kid missed.

Eric felt a pang of embarrassment for the boy. Moss had struck out his first time up to bat, so when he now missed a second time, Eric winced. He almost didn't want to watch the third pitch. In fact, he didn't. He closed his eyes behind his sunglasses, but that was when he heard the loud crack as ball hit bat.

Eric's eyes flew open and followed the ball as it soared over the fence. He didn't see the guy on third running home, but he saw Moss pass second and then third and make his way home. Eric stood with the small crowd in the bleachers to clap. Decorum Academy had beat its competition, a mid-size public school, by 3.

Eric came down from the bleachers and leaned over the low chain link fence as Moss was heading out to the locker room. "Gouda," he hollered, and jerked his head in a gesture that called Moss over.

Moss jogged over with a smile. "Coach Taylor, what are you doing here?"

"Came to see you play, of course," he said. "I guess you picked it up pretty damn fast. You're a regular Bo Jacskson."

Moss grinned. "I think I was better at football."

"Another year with me, and you have no idea how good you would have been. I still wish I'd had a chance to coach you longer."

"But you're leaving, aren't you?"

Eric was surprised that rumor had spread to Moss, but he supposed the kid still had some friends at Oliver Loving. "Got a job in a town called Dillon. You want to get a coke or something after you change?"

They talked for an hour at an old-fashioned style soda fountain three miles from the school. Moss told Eric he and his long-distance girlfriend had broken up, because she was indeed cheating, and he was now dating another girl at the new school. "I don't think she's the one," he said. "But she's fun. And cute."

"You've got your whole life ahead of you. You don't need to find the one in high school, Moss."

"You did."

"That's rare. It was rare a generation ago and it's even more rare now. My brother didn't find his one until just recently. They're getting married in a couple weeks. He's forty-three."

"I saw the news," Moss said. "Your brother and the shooting and your wife. Is she okay?"

"She's fine."

"Your brother in trouble? They were asking him all sorts of questions, like…I don't know."

"He didn't do anything wrong," Eric said. "He was on administrative leave for a bit, but he was restored to his position. You thinking about colleges? Aggies have a good baseball team."

Moss laughed. "I'm thinking St. John's College."

"Never heard of it," Eric admitted.

"It's a private school in Maryland. It has a Great Books program. You take a core curriculum, read original sources and classics in all the liberal arts, and there's a lot of discussions."

"How's its baseball team?"

"They don't really have sports teams."

"What?" Eric asked. Whoever heard of a college without sports teams?

"They have a fencing club. I might take up fencing there. Or croquet."

"Croquet? Croquet is not a sport, son. Croquet is a lawn game."

"They have a crew club. And a sailing club."

Eric scratched his head. "No insult intended, but this sounds like a school for spoiled, east coast kids. You sure that's what you want?"

Moss laughed. "You forget I am a spoiled, east coast kid. I grew up in the D.C. metro area, remember? And my dad is not lacking for money. It's the program that attracts me though. Great books. It's deep and broad at the same time and it's almost all papers and discussion instead of tests."

"Actually sounds like a school my brother would have loved." Dale never could have afforded such a thing back then. "What about baseball, though? I mean, you seem to have a talent there. It needs shaping, but it's there."

Moss shrugged. "I like trying different things. I'm not aspiring to be a college athlete, and certainly not a professional one. Almost no one ever makes the pros. You know that."

Eric looked into his now empty chocolate malt glass. He knew all right. He looked back at Moss. "But it's good to be a part of a team, don't you think? And don't you love being out there on that field?"

"Yeah. And guess what?" Moss smiled. "Girls like baseball players. Especially when there are no football players around."

[FNL]

"Dad," Julie said as she looked out the living room window. "There's a priest in a bright red convertible Mustang in the driveway."

"What?" Eric stood behind her and looked over her head out the window. She wasn't kidding. The priest was getting out of the car.

It was 7:45 PM on Friday. Dale's groomsman Mikey was supposed to pick Eric up at 8:00 PM to drive him to the bachelor's party in Dallas. It was still three weeks until the wedding, and Cleo was not yet in America, but the timing for the party had worked best this way.

"He's at the door now," Julie said.

Tami opened it on the first knock.

"Hello, there," the priest said to her. "I'm here to retrieve Eric Taylor?"

Eric walked hesitantly to the door. "You're Mikey?" he asked.

"Mikey, Mike, Michael, Father Mike, Father Michael, Father Mikey, whatever you want." He extended his hand. "Eric, I presume?" Eric nodded and they shook.

"I'm Eric's wife, Tami," Tami said. Eric was too dazed to introduce her. Dale had not mentioned that the man organizing his bachelor's party was a priest. What kind of party was this going to be?

"Sorry for the uniform," Father Mike said. "I came straight from work so I wouldn't be late."

"You live nearby?" Tami asked.

"Waco. It's where I'm from originally. Less than an hour from here."

"I thought it was an hour and a half," Tami said.

"Not the way I drive."

"You have your bag, sugar," Tami asked Eric, "since you're staying at Dale's tonight?"

"Dale took it last week. It's at his place."

Tami kissed him on the cheek and he followed the priest to the convertible and hopped in the passenger side.

Father Michael started driving and said, "I need to stop by an adult toy store on the way. Do you know where the closest one is?"

"Uh….I…..no."

"That's all right. I'm sure they'll be billboards on the highway between here and Dallas. We'll find one."

Eric put his sunglasses on. The sun was setting, but he didn't want the priest to see the look in his eyes. "This is a nice car," Eric said. "For a priest."

"It's a rental."

"You are a priest, right?"

"No," Dale's friend said. "I'm a male stripper. This is my costume."

Eric looked straight ahead at the road. The wind whipped through the open top.

Mikey laughed. "I'm kidding you. You think male strippers wear priest costumes? That's not what women want. They want firemen. Cowboys. Police men. Although…some of the women in my parish do call me Father What-a-waste. I think unavailability turns them on."

What Dale had told Eric about Mikey did not seem to comport with the priestly profession. "Are you the same guy who set Dale's apartment on fire because …" Eric thought it better not to complete that sentence.

"Because I was fooling around with a cheerleader while surrounded by twenty candles?"

"Dale said forty."

"Dale always exaggerates his stories. And, yes, that was me. But she was not putting on a show for me jumping naked on the bed and tumbling, if that's what Dale told you. That's not how those first candles got knocked over. She threw a pillow at me, and it landed on top of a bunch of them, caught right on fire. Maybe because some massage oil got on it."

"How long have you been a priest?"

"About ten years," he said as he pulled on the highway and began to raise the hood of the convertible. The whipping wind died. "You know, I used to work with Dale at the DEA. I was the one who told him about the application process. But I tell you what. You sure get religion fast when you're working deep undercover and you get found out and strapped to a chair and you have to wait until the head guy decides how slowly to kill you."

"Jesus," Eric muttered and then realized he'd taken the Lord's name in vain right in front of a priest. "Sorry."

"That's what I was saying. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus get me out of this! My mother was a devout Catholic, and I was an altar boy, but I tossed all that when I went to college. I tell you what, though, I never prayed so deeply in my life as I did at that moment. And you know how the Lord answered my prayer?"

"How?"

"Guy decided just to slap me around a little before shooting me. He'd only punched me twice before he had a heart attack. And then, while the other two guys were trying to help him and figure out what to do, I got my legs the rest of the way loose – those weren't strapped too well - stood up in the chair – my arms were still strapped - ran backwards, and smashed through a window. The windows were blacked out, so they weren't worried about being seen in there. Place used to be a sketchy bar, but it was empty and up for lease."

"This is better than one of Dale's stories."

"Oh, Dale's got nothing on me. So I crash through the window, which was surprisingly easy to do, because it already had a hairline crack. Fortunately, there were occupied businesses on either side, and people on the street, and they weren't going to kill me at that point, with witnesses. But I promised God if I got out alive, I would dedicate my life to him somehow or another. So I started going back to church, eventually quit the DEA, and went to seminary."

Eric shook his head.

The priest took an exit onto a frontage road. Eric did not believe this was the right time to be getting off the highway. Dallas was still miles up the road. But then the priest pulled off the frontage, went down another road, and pulled into the parking lot of a white building bearing a large, black-letter sign that said, "Adult Store. XXX. Ladies and couples welcome." He put the mustang into park and said, "I told you there'd be a billboard."

Eric thought he had been joking about stopping at an adult toy store.

"Couples welcome," Father Mikey read. "So they won't be surprised by us."

"Uh…I uh….I think I'll just wait in the car."

"Suit yourself. I better take this off before I go in." He pulled his white collar out and tossed it in the back seat. "People can get so uncomfortable around priests." Then he pulled his black shirt over his head and tossed it too. He had a white t-shirt on underneath.

Eric sunk down into the seat of the car and prayed that no one he knew saw him here.

When the priest returned, he tossed a brown paper bag in Eric's direction. It landed right in his lap. Eric quickly put it on the floor between his feet and did not ask what it contained.

"This party is going to be a lot of fun," Father Mikey said as he started driving again. "You looking forward to this?"

"Ummm…."

"You know a lot of the people who are coming?"

"I don't even know how many people are coming."

"Just nine. You, me, Dale, three guys Dale and I both went to FLETC with - that's the academy - a guy from his current office I've never met, some guy he knows who owns a gun range around here – "

" - I met him," Eric said. "He let us shoot on New Year's."

"And some Dallas cop he's buddies with. We've got a nice room at the lounge. You like bourbon?"

"I'm more of a scotch man, but I like it well enough."

"I was supposed to be Dale's best man."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step on any toes, but he asked and – "

" - No. I mean the first time. When he was going to marry Cindy."

"Ah."

"I never did like her all that much, but you don't tell your best friend that. I mean, she was clever. He's always liked smart women. But she struck me as a bit selfish from the start. Have you met this woman he's marrying now?"

Eric nodded.

"She good for him, you think?"

"I think so," Eric said. "She's definitely not selfish. She's leaving a lot behind for him."

The priest reached into the console and began to thumb through some CDs he had stacked there. "You like Metallica?" he asked.

"Uh…."

"Probably not. You look like more of a classic rock guy. He fumbled with a CD case in the console, pulled it out, and slid it in. Something that sounded like a chanted mass began. "Oh hell," Father Mike said. "I must have put one of the church recordings in that case by mistake."