Reborn

1

"Father Bill! Father Bill!"

Father William Ryan, Society of Jesus, recognized the voice. It was Kevin Flaherty, St. Francis's six-year-old town crier and tattletale. He looked up from reading his daily office to see the little redheaded fellow running down the hall at top speed.

"They're fighting again, Father Bill!"

"Who?"

"Nicky and Freddy! And Freddy says he's going to kill Nicky this time!"

"Just tell them I said to stop fighting immediately or it will mean the Bat for both of them."

"There's blood, Father!"

Bill sighed and snapped his Breviary closed. He'd have to deal with this personally. Freddy had two years and about forty pounds on Nicky, with a bully's temperament to boot. It sounded like Nicky's mouth had brought him a pack of trouble again.

As he strode from his office, he picked up the dreaded red whiffle bat from its place in the corner by the door. Kevin ran ahead, Bill walked quickly after him, hurrying but trying his best not to appear so.

He found them in the hall outside the dormitory section, encircled by the rest of the boys in a shouting, jeering group. One of the onlookers glanced up and saw him approaching.

"It's Big Bad Bill! Beat it!"

The circle evaporated, leaving the two combatants wrestling on the floor. Freddy was atop Nicky, raising his fist for another blow at the younger boy's already bloody face. When they saw Father Bill, they suddenly forgot their differences and joined the others in flight, leaving Nicky's glasses behind on the floor.

"Nicholas! Frederick!" Bill shouted.

They skidded to a halt and turned.

"Yes, Father?" they said as one.

He pointed to a spot on the floor directly in front of him.

"Get over here! Now!"

They approached and stood before him, looking at their shoes. Bill lifted Nicky's chin. The ten-year-old's normally misshapen face was bruised and scraped. Blood was smeared over his left cheek and chin and still trickled slowly from his left nostril.

Bill felt the anger rise in him. It flared higher when he lifted Freddy's chin and saw that the older boy's round, freckled, blue-eyed face was unmarked. He had an urge to give Freddy a taste of his own medicine. Instead he forced himself to speak calmly through his tightly clenched teeth.

"What have I told you about bullying people?" he said to Freddy.

"He called me a dirty name!" Freddy said, his lower lip quivering in fear.

"He knocked my books out of my hand!" Nicky said.

Bill said, "Now wait a—"

"He called me a scrofulous!"

Bill was struck dumb for a second. Then he turned to face the smaller boy.

"You called him what?" he said, biting his cheek. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. This kid was too much! "Where did you hear that word?"

"I read it in a book once," Nicky said as he wiped the blood from his nose onto the sleeve of his white shirt.

Once. Nicky never forgot anything. Anything.

"Do you have any idea what it means?"

"Of course," he said offhandedly. "It's a tuberculous condition characterized by chronically swollen glands."

Bill nodded vaguely. "Right."

He had known little more than that it was some sort of disease, but he couldn't allow Nicky the slightest hint that he might be one up on him. The kid could be a terror if he sensed that.

Bill lifted the red whiffle bat and slapped it softly against his left palm.

"All right. You guys know what's next. Frederick, you call out the troops while Nicholas retrieves his glasses."

Freddy blanched and ran toward the dorm doors. Nicholas turned and picked up his thick, black-rimmed glasses.

"Aw, they broke again," Nicholas said, holding up the left earpiece.

Bill held out his hand. "Give it to me. We'll fix it later." He slipped them into the side pocket of his cassock. "For now, get over by the wall and wait for Freddy."

Nicky gave him a look, as if to say, You're not really going to do this to me, are you?

Speaking in a low voice, Bill said, "Don't expect special treatment, Nicholas. You know the rules, so you take your lumps just like everybody else."

Nicky shrugged and turned away.

Is this why I joined the Jesuits? Bill thought as he stood in the middle of the hall and fought to keep his personal frustration from turning into anger at the boys. Playing nursemaid to a bunch of wild kids was not the future he had envisioned for himself.

No way.

The writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., had directed him to the Society. Bill had already known he had a vocation for the priesthood, but he found de Chardin's work of such staggering intellectual scope that he knew he had to join the order that had produced such a mind—the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were giants in both the religious and secular spheres, striving for—and achieving—excellence in all their endeavors. He had wanted to be a part of that tradition, and now he was.

Sort of.

The Society was changing as rapidly as the Church itself— and the world around them all. But he was cut off from most of that here.

Well, this wouldn't last forever. Repeating that thought over and over in his mind was the personal litany that got him through each day here at St. F.'s.

Prefect of Discipline—that was his title. What it really meant was that he played nursemaid and father figure to the residents of one of the last Catholic boys' orphanages in New York.

Me, a father figure! That was a laugh.

Bill looked up and saw the residents of St. Francis, two and a half dozen boys between the ages of six and thirteen, arrayed before him in the hall. Freddy had already taken his place next to Nicky near the window. All were silent.

Showtime.

This was an aspect of his position as prefect of discipline that Bill particularly disliked. Wielding the Bat. But it was a tradition at St. F.'s. There were rules of conduct here, and it was his job to enforce them. If he didn't, the place would quickly degenerate into anarchy.

As much as he would have liked to try it, he knew democracy wouldn't fly here. Although most of its residents were good kids, some of them had been through a child's version of hell and were pretty tough cases. Given free rein, they would turn the home into a little corner of hell. So there were rules that needed to be strictly and evenly enforced. And someone had to do the enforcing. Every boy knew where the lines were drawn, and each one knew that if he stepped over those lines he risked a date with the Bat. And in the rule against fighting was the understanding that no matter who had started it, both combatants would be punished.

"Okay, guys," he said to Freddy and Nicky. "You both know what to do. Drop trow and assume the position."

They both reddened and began loosening their belts. With excruciating slowness, they dropped their dark blue uniform trousers to the floor, turned, bent over, and grabbed their ankles.

A small brown stain became visible on the back of Freddy's jockey shorts as they stretched over his buttocks. Somebody said, "Hey, skid marks!" and the audience laughed.

Bill glared at them. "Did I hear someone say he wanted to join them over against the wall?"

Dead silence.

Bill approached Freddy and Nicky and readied the Bat for a swing, thinking how absurd it was to punish them this way for fighting.

Not exactly Gandhian, is it?

But not totally useless, either. If the rules weren't too restrictive, if the punishments weren't too harsh, Big Bad Bill and the Bat could push the boys closer to each other without crushing their spirit. He could help bond them, make them brothers of sorts, give them a sense of community, a feeling of unity. That was good. St. F.'s was the only family they had.

He started with Freddy. The Bat was hollow, made of lightweight vinyl. He swung it across the backs of the older boy's thighs once. The slap of the plastic against flesh echoed loudly in the hall.

It stung, Bill knew, but not much. In the hands of someone with a sadistic streak, this could be a painful punishment. But physical pain was not the object here. The embarrassment of dropping and bending before their assembled peers would probably be enough, but he had to use the Bat. It was the symbol of authority at St. F.'s and couldn't be allowed to gather dust when rules were broken.

He gave Freddy a total of four shots; the same for Nicky, although he backed off his swing a little on Nicky.

"All right," Bill said as the sound of the last slap echoed away. "Show's over. Everybody back to the dorm."

The kids broke and ran for their quarters with Freddy hurrying after them, buckling up as he ran. Nicky stayed behind.

"You going to fix my glasses, Father?"

"Oh, right." He'd forgotten about that.

Nicky looked stranger than usual without his specs. He had a misshapen head that bulged above his left ear. His records showed that his mother had been unwed and had tried to flush him down the toilet as a newborn, fracturing his tiny skull and nearly drowning him. Nicky had been a ward of the state and the Catholic Church ever since. Besides the misshapen skull, he had bad skin—his face was stippled with blackheads—and poor vision that required Coke-bottle lenses for correction.

But it was his intellect that truly set Nicky apart from the other kids. He tested in the genius range, and Bill had detected an increasingly scornful attitude toward lesser minds. That was what got him into fights and added to the already difficult task of finding him a home—he was far brighter than many of the prospective adoptive parents who applied to St. F.'s.

But despite the fact that Nicky acted like an insufferable, pint-sized intellectual, Bill could not deny his fondness for him. Maybe it was a sense of kinship»—Nicky's intellect set him apart from the other boys just as Bill's calling had set him apart from his own generation. At least once a week they played chess. Bill managed to win most of the games, but he knew that was due only to his greater experience. In another year he'd be lucky to play a draw against Nicky.

Back in his office, Bill took out a small tool kit and set about trying to repair the eyeglasses. Nicky wandered away, poking into the corners of the tiny room. Bill had noticed during his time at St. F's that although Nicky seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about the world and how things worked, he had no interest whatsoever in actually making things work.

"How about a game?" Nicky said from over by the chessboard.

"That's 'How about a game, Father,' and I'm a little busy right now, as you can see."

"Spot me a knight and I'll whip you in twenty minutes!" Bill gave him a look. "… Father," Nicky finally added. It was a game Nicky played, trying to see how far he could push their familiarity. As much as Bill liked the boy, he had to keep a certain amount of distance. St. F.'s was a way station. He couldn't allow the boys to feel that leaving here was leaving home. They had to feel they were going to their home.

"Not a chance, kid. We play on Saturdays. And besides, you need to be spotted a piece like Cassius Clay needs to be spotted a right to the jaw."

"He calls himself Muhammad Ali now."

"Whatever. Just keep quiet while I try to fix this."

Bill concentrated on rethreading the screw that held the earpiece to the front of the frame. He just about had it in place when he heard Nicky say:

"So. I see Loyola turned you down."

Bill looked up and saw Nicky holding a sheet of paper. He recognized it as Loyola College stationery. Anger flared.

"Put that down! That's my personal correspondence!"

"Sorry."

Bill had requests in to the Provincial for transfer to a college campus and had queried Fordham, Georgetown, B.C., and others about positions as instructor. He was qualified in history and philosophy. As soon as something opened up, he would be out of here and on his way to the academic life he had dreamed of through all those years in the seminary.

Serving God through man's intellect—that had been his personal motto since his second year in the seminary.

He had expected to find little at St. Francis for the intellect. Two interminable years here as prefect of discipline had confirmed it.

A mind-numbing job. He could feel his creative juices dripping away, evaporating. He was twenty-six years old and wasting what should have been the most productive years of his life. Momentous changes were taking place out there in the real world, especially on the college campuses. The whole society was in ferment, the very air alive with ideas, with change. He wanted to be part of that process, wanted to fight his way to the heart of it.

Stuck here as he was in this anachronism called St. Francis Home for Boys, he could only grasp the hem of what was going on. Last weekend he had managed to get away for two days. He and some friends from his seminary days had dressed in civvies and driven all night to campaign for Eugene McCarthy up in New Hampshire. The primary was only a few weeks away and it looked as if Senator Gene might give President Johnson a real run for his money.

God, the excitement up there! All the young hippie types shaving their beards and getting their hair cut short—"Get clean for Gene" was the slogan of the day—and canvassing neighborhoods door to door. The air had rippled and vibrated with a sense of purpose, with a feeling that history was being made. He had been depressed on Sunday night when they'd had to leave.

To return to this. This. St. Francis Home for Boys.

Bill firmly believed that there was something to be gained, some wisdom to be gleaned from any experience. Although he wasn't exactly sure what it was, he was certain he had derived whatever wisdom St. F.'s had to offer. From here on it was just more of the same. So now he wanted to get himself out of neutral and start moving forward.

All right, Lord. I've paid my dues. I'm through with this chapter. Let's turn the page and move on to the next, okay?

But he had to wait until he was given the green light. In addition to vows of poverty and celibacy, he had also taken a vow of obedience when he had become a Jesuit. He had to go where the Society of Jesus sent him. He just hoped the Society sent him away from here soon.

"You've got no business going through my papers."

Nicky shrugged. "Yeah, but it helps to know that we kids aren't the only ones around here who get rejected. Don't feel bad. Look at me. I'm a pro at being rejected."

"We'll find you a place."

"You can be honest with me, Father. I know you've been trying to bail out since you arrived. It's okay. You're no different from anyone else under a hundred years old who comes through here."

Bill was stung. He thought he had been pretty discreet.

"How do you know?"

" Ve haf verrry interrresting vays of learning zings ve vish to know," he said in a fair imitation of Arte Johnson's German soldier.

Bill had noted that Nicky never failed to be in the first row when the boys watched Laugh-in on Monday nights. He couldn't be sure if the attraction was the quick humor or the bodypainted girls in bikinis.

The phone rang.

"Oh, hello, Mr. Walters," Bill said when he recognized the voice.

Immediately he wished he hadn't spoken the man's name. Nicky's head snapped around. Bill could almost see his ears pricking up with interest. Mr. and Mrs. Walters were interested in adopting a boy, and Nicky had spent a few days with them this week.

The story Mr. Walters told was a familiar one: Yes, Nicky was a nice enough boy, but they just didn't think he'd fit in with their way of life. Now they were reconsidering the whole idea of adopting. Bill tried to reason with the man as best he could with Nicky listening to every word, but finally he was forced to allow the conversation to end. The Walters would call back when they had thought it over some more.

Nicky's smile was forced. "George and Ellen don't want me either, right?"

"Nicholas…"

"It's okay, Father. I told you. I'm a pro at rejection."

But Bill saw the boy's lips quivering and tears welling in his lower lids. It broke his heart to see this happen time after time. Not just with Nicky but with some of the other boys too.

"You intimidate people, Nicky."

There was a sob hiding within Nicky's voice. "I… I don't mean to. It just happens."

He threw an arm over Nicky's shoulder. The gesture felt awkward, stiff, nowhere near as warm as he would have wished. "Don't worry, kid. I'll find you a place."

Nicky pulled away, his expression shifting quickly from misery to anger.

"Oh, right! Sure you will! You don't care about us! All you care about is getting out of here!"

That hurt. Bill was speechless for a moment. Forget the disrespect. That didn't matter. What did matter was that the kid was speaking from the heart—and speaking the truth. Bill had been doing a half-assed job here. Not a bad job, but certainly not a good one.

That's because I don't belong here! I wasn't cut out for this type of thing!

Right. Granted. But at least he could give it his best shot. He owed the kids and the Society at least that much. But something about Nicky's extraordinary run of bad luck bothered Bill.

"Tell me, Nicky: Are you trying?"

"Of course I am!"

Bill wondered about that. Had Nicky been rejected so many times in the past that he was now deliberately sabotaging the trial visits? In effect, rejecting the prospective adoptive parents before they could reject him?

On impulse Bill said, "I'll make you a promise, Nicky. I'm going to see you adopted before I leave here."

The boy blinked. "You don't have to do that. I didn't mean what I—"

"But I've got to see you trying a little harder with people. You can't expect people to warm up to you if you go around acting like Clifton Webb playing Mr. Belvedere."

Nicky smiled. "But I like Mr. Belvedere!"

Bill knew that. Nicky had watched Sitting Pretty at least a dozen times. He scanned TV Guide every week to see if it was on. Lynn Belvedere was his hero.

"But that's not real life. No one wants to live with a ten-year-old who's got all the answers."

"But I'm usually right!"

"That's even worse. Adults like to be right once in a while, too, you know."

"Okay. I'll try."

Bill sent up a silent prayer that he wouldn't regret his promise to Nicky. But it seemed like a safe bet. He wasn't going anywhere. Every place he had contacted so far about an instructorship had turned him down. It looked like he was going to be at St. F.'s for some time to come.

The intercom buzzed. Sister Miriam's voice said:

"A young couple is here and they want some information from the old adoption records. Father Anthony is out and I'm not sure what to do."

Bill quickly tightened the earpiece screw on Nicky's glasses and scooted him out of the office.

"I'll be right down."