Fourteen.

WHEN THE MEETING IN the church basement broke up, Runty sprinted down River Street to the Longdock. In a few minutes, Moose and Jimmy, having chosen a more circuitous route, joined him. None of the customers around the bar had been to the meeting, but it was a live subject in their minds. Each one had decided for himself how he was going to handle it. Old man Gallagher, for instance, who knew and liked Moose, barely grunted a greeting and edged away so as not to be drawn into conversation. He lived in the same house with the Doyles and liked them; his big-hearted wife Mary would do anything for them; all the more reason for Marty Gallagher to be careful.

Runty, Moose and Jimmy felt themselves a three-cornered island connected to the others by underwater reefs of experience and even sympathy, but separated by channels of caution and self-preservation. As the three downed their drinks and talked among themselves they knew they were being both respected and resented, as anyone with the courage to stand up is respected on the waterfront, and as anyone who dares to tamper with the delicate status-quo is bitterly resented.

The meeting of a dozen longshoremen with an agitating priest was a tiny pebble tossed into the river. But even a pebble can set up an ever-widening circle of ripples. Already it was all over Bohegan that Father Barry's pitch had been to urge the boys to co-operate with the Crime Commission as the only way to blast the corrupted union and clear the way for a new organization. In a few hours the name of Father Barry had become a dirty word to the waterfront bosses, and even the ordinary dock wallopers were wondering out loud why he had to go pushing his nose into their business.

Truck Amon and Gilly Connors, after beating their pavement chorus outside the church, had watched for Runty to come out and had tailed him to the Longdock. They took up a strategic position at the short side-section of the bar where they could keep an eye on Runty, Moose and Jimmy. On any ordinary night they were to be found over at Friendly's. The musclemen never entered the Longdock unless they were tracking trouble. Runty caught them out of the corner of his eye and went right on making his jokes and laughing his chesty laugh.

He was rebel Irish to his toenails, and the blood quickened in him, made him feel desperately, gaily alive at the prospect of a good scrap.

Moose was different. He had a family and his hulking, over-two-hundred-pound physique concealed an unexpectedly nervous temperament. The needle of his courage swung the full arc from hurricane to doldrum. He had nights when, impulsively lion-hearted, he would get up and tell off his persecutors in loud heroics, be beaten down the stairs into the street, rise and try to fight his way back into the hall again. Next morning all the nerve would be out of him and he'd be riding the rim of fear, bruised and muscle-sore and terrorized by the possible consequences of his resistance. Nor would his wife, Fran, shore up his spine by bawling him out for messing himself in "politics" when there were five mouths to feed, and healthy eaters all of them, no matter who ran the waterfront. Then big Moose McGonigle would be a good boy until the next time something set him off again.

Jimmy Sharkey was still another kind of fish. He was straight, tough, quiet, direct. He never went looking for fights like Runty and never exploded into them like Moose. He simply took them as they came, as hard, unavoidable facts of life in the harbor.

The two groups, goons and rebels, were like actors on a stage, laughing and drinking and small-talking and once in a while casually glancing over at one another, while the rest of the drinkers made up the audience, watching intently though pretending not to. The trio from the church meeting had three or four more drinks, kidding with Shorty, the night bartender as if this was just another good-time evening. Then they said their good nights and strolled out. Truck and Gilly finished their drinks, left a fat tip on the bar and followed them out.

Outside, Runty, Moose and Jimmy started down River Street toward their homes. Runty walked along with them although he lived in a furnished room only a few doors down from the Longdock. The footsteps of Truck and Gilly were behind them. The night was cold and Runty blew a little cloud of his own warmer air into it. Suddenly, in his best bravadeero manner, he stopped and turned around and waited for the well-named Truck and his rangy side-man to approach.

"Whad d'ya say, fellers?" Truck said, the bristle skin around his eyes crinkling into a slit-eyed smile. His tone sounded like a bass gargle but was meant to be friendly.

"Hiya, Truck, Gilly," the three muttered.

"Lissen, we'd like t' talk t' ya a minute," Truck said.

"Ye're talkin' to us right now, aintcha?" Runty said.

"Wise-guy," Gilly growled.

Runty was midget-sized alongside Gilly's six-foot-one. Gilly glared at his dwarf antagonist and then appealed to Truck: "What's with this little bassard? Always has to be such a wise-guy."

"What do you want to give us so much trouble for?" Truck asked earnestly. Any defiance of power disturbed him. "No kiddin', you better straighten yourself out, Runty." Truck was almost pleading with him. "You'd be working three-four days if you could only learn to keep that big yap of yours shut."

"It's the fault o' the nuns," said Runty, laughing.

"Nuns?" Truck grumbled. "What the hell've nuns got to do with it?"

"When I was knee-high to a bar-stool," Runty went on, enjoying this skating on thin ice, "the nuns used t' say t' me in school, 'Runty, we can't understand a word you're sayin'. Ye're talkin' through yer teeth like you got a mouth full o' fish-cakes. When ye're talkin', Runty me lad,' they said, 'talk with yer mouth wide open.' So tha's all I'm tryin' t' do-folly the advice o' the nuns an' talk with me mouth wide open."

Runty winked at his friends and the three of them laughed.

"You better not talk so the boss c'n hear you," Truck said, a little confused by Runty's eloquence. "You know how Johnny is."

Moose looked at Runty with a warning in his eyes. There were Fran and the kids home waiting for money he'd have to borrow off the shylocks. Johnny's shylocks. What was he doing here sticking himself out in front of all the rest of them anyway? What was he doing letting the priest get him all worked up? Why buck for the bottom of the river? Would the rest of the boys appreciate it when he took the knocks for them? Did they appreciate it when Andy Collins got himself killed or Peter Panto over in Brooklyn? Why couldn't he stay away from Runty Nolan, who was so brave he was crazy? Forget about Joey Doyle. Listen to Fran and make his peace like so many other longshoremen who had no love for Johnny Friendly or Charley the Gent, but who went along to keep food on the table. There was no law said you had to like Johnny, but it sure made life simpler if he liked you.

"C'mon, Runty, le's go home," Moose said.

"Good idea," Truck said. "Go home 'n stay home. Next time that priest calls his little prayer-meetin', you stay home, unless you wanna eat cobblestones."

"Definitely," Gilly seconded.

Runty hated Gilly. He could almost taste it and enjoy how much he hated the whole stinking crew of them right up to Big Tom McGovern.

"Y'know why ye're so tall," Runty shouted up at his towering opponent. "Your mother was constipated the night she had you and you come out like ..."

Gilly took a vicious swipe at Runty. Runty was hard to hit because he was so short. He had become a rough-and-tumble expert at fighting men who stood over him a good foot or more and outweighed him a hundred pounds. He timed a short, mean uppercut to Gilly's groin and Gilly reeled back, holding himself.

"You dumb harp, you must like gettin' hit in the head," Truck said, moving in heavily, feet apart to set himself to punch with his two hundred and fifty pounds swinging with him. Runty raised his knee and caught Truck. Truck bellowed like a wounded bull and made a club of his fist and swung it at Runty's head, From somewhere behind them reinforcements arrived. Sonny and Barney came into it in time to clobber Jimmy and Moose. "Run!" Runty yelled when he saw them out-numbered.

They took off down the street and around the corner. Runty lost track of the rest of them as he ran like a prairie dog into the park. In his youth he had been a sprinter for his neighborhood club and at fifty-five he could still run with his knees high. But Gilly was known for his accuracy with a blackjack used as a hurling piece and he was on his target this time again. Runty stumbled and skidded forward. After a few seconds, like a dead-game boxer, he started rolling over and crawling to one knee. But before he could gain his feet Sonny and Gilly were on him, holding him for the slow-moving Truck who went about his business with methodical brutality, working Runty over with those club-like fists while Sonny and Gilly held him in position.

Runty let out a yowl like an embattled tom-cat and kicked at Truck's shins and tried to bite Truck's hand slippery with Runty's blood. Then the little man was down on the ground, fighting a wounded animal's way, grabbing and biting at legs, kicking, scratching, while the heels of the Friendly boys came smashing down on him. "Wise-guy ... son-of-a-bitch ..."

The park closed in, around and over him like an ether cone. Then a sharp, nasal voice was saying, "Here, use this." He looked up and saw a white handkerchief. "Where the hell did you come from?" The face looking down at him, lean and aroused, said, "I could hear the yelling from my room. I figured this might happen."

"Them dirty bastards," Runty said. " 'Scuse me, Father."

"Hell, I agree with you," Father Barry smiled. "Open your mouth."

Runty obliged and the priest looked in at the bloody mess. "Not too bad," he said. He wiped the blood of an extra mouth that had been cut into Runty's forehead, and like a boxer's second pressed the lips of the wound together. "How's the rest of you? Your ribs?"

Runty tried to laugh. "Could be worse. Considerin' they were usin' 'em for a football." He spit into the priest's bloodied handkerchief, and chuckled. "A hell of a thing to happen to a ladies' man."

"And you're still D 'n D?" Father Barry said. "You still call it ratting?"

Runty was sitting up now and he looked at the angry priest for perhaps five seconds without saying anything. Then he said slowly, "Are you on the level, Father?"

"What do you think?" Father Barry tossed it back at him.

Runty shrugged. "Don't get sore, Father. We've seen an awful lot of phonies on the waterfront. Politicians. Mayors. Police commissioners. D.A.'s. Even some priests."

"I know," Father Barry said.

Runty wiped the warm blood away from his mouth. The handkerchief was a bloody wet clot now.

"If I stick my neck out and they chop it off, would that be the end of it?" Runty kept after the priest. "Or are ya willin' to go all the way?"

"Down the line, down the line," Father Barry said impatiently.

"I wonder," Runty said. Forty years on the waterfront, he had seen a lot of good men crumble. That's why Runty had stopped believing in anybody but Runty-and then only in Runty Nolan's ability to fight a lost cause to the losing, bloody end. "They'll put the muscle on ya too, turned-around collar or no turned-around collar."

"Come on across to the house," Father Barry said. "Get yourself cleaned up." As he helped the battered, gnome-like figure to his feet, the priest said, "You stand up and I'll stand up with you."

"Right down to the wire?" Runty asked. He was a hard man to convince.

"So help me God," Father Barry said.

Runty was on his feet now, a little unsteady, with blood still trickling down his chin from the gash inside his mouth. He nodded toward the rectory beyond the west entrance of the park.

"Ya got any beer in there?"

Father Barry nodded. He always kept a few bottles cached away for himself, to sneak into his room and drink before going to sleep. "I think I can dig up a bottle or two," he said.

Runty's grin was a smear of blood, but the thought of cold beer was reviving. "What're we waitin' for?"

The tall, rapid-talking priest and the battered featherweight docker kept the narrow, unadorned bedroom hot with talk until two in the morning. At first it was Runty's way to suck on his beer bottle and listen. This priest had made a good start, but Runty still wanted to see what other cards he had in his hand. Runty had played a lone game too long to trust himself to anyone merely because he meant well or sounded right. He wanted to see how savvy the priest was. After all, if he went along with what the Father had in mind he was putting his life in the man's hands. Sure, he always boasted he was on borried time and a bravadeero, but if he was going to go he wanted to have a voice in how and when. It was a deliberate game he had played with Johnny Friendly all these years. He was still alive because he was resourceful as well as almost miraculously enduring and lucky. No sense in letting a well-meaning amateur mess him up now.

The men felt each other out like boxers in the early rounds. The priest kept probing for the reasons behind the waterfront wall of silence. Runty told him it went deeper than simple fear. Everybody on the waterfront had a lining of guilt; it ran all the way from murder and wholesale pilferage to the petty, habitual filching of whiskey, perfume, coffee, steaks, flight jackets. Runty's room, he admitted, was full of the loot he had lifted over the years. It didn't seem like stealing when you saw so much of it going by the truckload to the boys on top. The stuff was lying around begging to be taken. Like the bananas all over the deck. Is it stealing to take a pocketful home when the sweepers would only have to clean them up if they were left behind? In the hold, on the dock, in the loft you lived among abundance, mountains of oil, sardines, imported chocolates, portable radios, gloves, cases of Havana cigars. The pier was a giant grab-bag, Runty said, and you were either a big operator like Friendly or Charley the Gent, or a petty heister like Runty. "But God c'n strike me dead if I ever in me life lifted anything t' sell," Runty said righteously. "That's what we call larceny down here. The stuff for your own house-we don't consider that stealin'. That's like a little extra bonus comin' to us."

But, Runty explained, it all helped to keep them secretive, to feel that no matter how much they might hate the unequal way things worked out on the dock, their fate, their infinitesimal guilt was linked to the greater, blacker guilt of the big boys. That was as much a part of the code as the actual, physical fear. Take Runty's own case. Nobody hated the "high-ocracy"-as he called them-more than he did. "Tom McGovern, Willie Givens, Johnny Friendly, the whole, stinkin' high-ocracy, I hate 'em winter 'n summer, all day 'n all night. The day I don't take some sort of poke at 'em I figure is a day lost. But Father, if you gotta know the truth, I did a little time meself once, when I was a kid an' even stupider 'n I am now. And Moose, same thing with him, when he was an overgrown kid. Get 'im t' tell ya about it one of these days. So we feel kinda funny runnin' to the State with our troubles. We'd rather just battle it out on our own."

Father Barry opened another beer for Runty and told him a story. It took him back to a hungry time when the priest was twelve and his old man had been dead for a year or more. His mother was cleaning the police station, for a few dollars a week, and barely getting by on the little pension and some help from Family Aid. Christmas was coming up and the kid brother, Connie, wrote Santa Claus for a big red fire engine. His mother read the letter and cried. December was a hard month, with the need for winter clothes the kids were always growing out of. And the need for good substantial food, meat and chicken broths to keep them from catching colds. So a big fire engine, or any toy over a few pennies, was out of the question. Connie would just have to be disappointed.

But little Connie kept asking about his fire engine. And every time he mentioned it, it made Pete wince. Pete felt bitter about it. Christmas had started out as the most joyous of all birthdays, but in Bohegan it looked more like a dirty trick played on the slum kids. Father Barry could still remember how he brooded about it more and more as the day approached. In this mood he hit upon a plan. By God, Connie was going to have his fire engine.

Two days before Christmas he went up to the toy department of the biggest department store in town. "I figgered they could afford it better than some little joint," was his rapid aside to Runty. "I looked around until I saw just what I was looking for. A glittering red fire engine three feet long, with a ladder you could wheel up into the air-a beauty. I went up to the sales lady and priced it. Three bucks. Wow! My mother gave me ten cents a week allowance and I made a dime an hour helping in Mr. Kanzanjian's grocery store. Three bucks! Well, I went into the men's can and I waited until the store closed for the night. Then I came out and went over to the cash register. I knocked it hard with my fists on both sides, the way little Frenchy had taught me. He's away in Sing Sing now doing life as a three-time loser. We were raised two doors from each other. I always liked him. Well, anyway, the third time I tried it the gag worked and boom! out shoots the drawer. It looks like all the money in the world, right there in front of me. For a second, I've got to admit it, it crosses my mind to clean out the drawer. Boy, what we could do with that money! That's what I mean when I say a lot of us could have gone either way. That's why I feel for those fellers doing time. Yes, and even for Johnny Friendly. I know how it feels to want things so bad you c'n taste 'em. So you start grabbing with your own hands and the hell with everybody else. Isn't that Johnny Friendly?

"But I'm getting off my story. The cash register. The drawer open in front of me with all that cabbage. I finally decide to settle for the three singles. Then I try to get out of the store, but every door is locked, in some fancy way I can't unlock it from the inside. I'm scared to death. I find a phone and call the grocery store to send word up to my old lady I'm okay and staying overnight with a friend. Then I hide in the men's room for the night. I c'n hear footsteps coming. The night watchman. I go into the toilet partition and stand on the seat hunched down so he wouldn't see my legs if he looked under. But if he comes in there I'm a goner. My heart was going like a pile driver. Bam bam bam. But the watchman just took a leak at the urinal and went on out again to make his rounds. In the morning when the store opened I bought the fire engine. Then I asked the janitor to keep it for me in the cellar until Christmas Eve. I was afraid my old lady would guess what happened and make me give it back.

"Christmas morning I got my reward. Connie just about split a gut, he was so happy. But I could see my mother looking at me. I kept looking away. Finally she told me to follow her into the kitchen and she put it to me on the line. 'Where would you get the money for a toy like that?' I couldn't tell her. 'All right,' she said, 'as long as you tell Father Meehan. You'd better make a good confession.'

"Waiting to see Father Meehan-I always call that my first visit to Purgatory. What if he made me give it back? It was Connie's now. The best Christmas present he ever had. I made up my mind waiting in line-I'll never forget it-if the priest gives me too much hell I'm through with the Church. I couldn't believe it was such a terrible sin if it made Connie so happy.

"Well, Meehan was okay. Oh, sure he warned me not to do it again and he threw the seventh commandment at me pretty hard, but he didn't say anything about my having to bring it back. Just six Hail Marys and three Our Fathers. Whew! I walked out of there with both feet off the ground." Father Barry laughed his sudden, hearty laugh.

"So Runty, I'm in no position to sit in judgment on you when it comes to taking something home that doesn't belong to you. I know the temptations, plenty. I know how it feels when they push you into a corner and lean on you until you feel you've just got to break out. That's how a lot of these neighborhood punks feel. I figure our job isn't to judge them, high and mighty, but to help 'em. I don't want to act for you-but maybe I can fill the vacuum your union leaders would've filled if they were legitimate. I don't want to try and lead you, but maybe I can give you a little more confidence to help yourselves."

Runty could feel himself slowly coming over to the priest. The first one he had ever known man to man. Father Barry was sitting on the bed with his collar and his jacket off, in his undershirt and suspenders, his balding head glistening with perspiration from the excitement of the talk. Runty told him of his lone-wolf efforts to spike the intrenched union mob. Like the time Willie Givens came down to the local to sit in on one of 447's rare meetings. When it came time for "Good and Welfare," President Willie was a master at chewing up the time with long-winded assurances of how much he loved the men and of the extent of his devotion to their welfare. The men would begin to yawn and get thirsty. By the time Willie was raising his voice to an eloquent peroration, most of his audience was in the saloon on the corner raising their whiskey glasses. Johnny Friendly would bang his gavel to adjourn the meeting and the pension, vacation and overtime ideas would be out the window for another year. No wonder the shippers were so fond of Weeping Willie.

So, Runty was saying, this particular time he heard Willie through to the last flowery, whiskey-blown phrase. Whereupon Runty got the floor by saying he wanted to put in the form of a motion a brief tribute to President Givens. Johnny Friendly winked at Charley. So this little bundle of trouble was learning his lesson at last!

"Mr. Chairman," Runty began. "Our esteemed international president has only one fault. He gives too much of himself. He is so devoted to our interests that he don't hesitate to stand on his feet to the point of exhaustion, ours as well as his, tellin' us about it. So I'd like to make a motion, to protect the voice and strength of our esteemed president, that he never be allowed to talk to a meetin' of Four-Four-Seven for more than five minutes at any one time."

The high-ocracy on the platform had been caught off balance. The fifty or so who were still present couldn't help laughing and there were spontaneous cries of "Second the motion." Charley the Gent, always the diplomat, tried to out-parliamentary the motion but Runty had boned up on his Rules of Order. On a point of order, he called for a vote. The question then had to be put and all in favor carried by a shouted vote of Aye! "It couldna gone through nicer 'n smoother if it had all been rehoised by a Commie fraction," Runty chuckled. As Runty was well aware, Willie Givens was particularly unpopular in Four-Four-Seven, even among Johnny's supporters, because he had gotten his start in this local. Oldtimers like Runty knew what a four-flushing wind-bag he was. Plenty of them respected Johnny Friendly for being tough and competent. But Willie, the International president, was just a blarney boy, a suck- around the higher-ups who had nothing but a lot of Irish oratory and some opportunistic good-time-charleying to go on. He needed the executive power of a Tom McGovern above him and the naked strength of a Johnny Friendly below him to prop him up to his exalted position as nominal head of all the dockworkers from Bangor to New Orleans.

Runty told his story with relish. "So it's still on the books of Four-Four-Seven that Willie Givens is limited to five minutes. Every time he speaks I take a seat in the front row and hold up the biggest Elgin I c'n find. Ho ho ho. Every time Willie looks down he gets poiple in the face. After it's over his boys usually folly me out 'n beat the bejesus outa me. I tell 'em it's worth it jus' t' see the poiple look on Weepin' Willie's face." Runty laughed again and felt the coagulated blood on his forehead.

Father Barry had a good laugh too at the way Runty, like a flea, had worked his way under Willie Given's oratorical armor. Runty's staggering up onto his feet and asking the big boys to knock him down again was real comedy, of the bloody, gadfly kind the Irish have a knack for understanding.

"But Runty," Father Barry asked, "when it's all over what'll you have done to Johnny Friendly, or Willie, or Big Tom? Won't the murders still go on at the bottom and won't McGovern keep soaking up that million-dollar gravy off the top? That's why it seems to me your best bet is to break the silence and testify. The Crime Commission is willing to unlock the door for you. But what's the good of opening a door if nobody's willing to walk in?"

"If you testify, you might as well stick your head in the cement yourself and save them the trouble," Runty said. "You wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in a blast furnace."

But, Father Barry argued, if Runty had defied the waterfront powers all his life, if he was on borried time as he was always saying, why not strike a single, effective blow that might add up to more than all the bravadeero escapades put together? "If you really hate those fellers, here's a chance to make 'em look bad in the papers, where it really hurts," Father Barry said. "Baiting them in a bar and getting your head staved in, what good does that do?"

"In me own soul it does me good," Runty laughed. That one was hard to answer. "What makes you so hot for this investigation?" the old longshoreman asked.

"Because I can see the Joey Doyle case will wind up a hush-up job. This whole mess down here is being smothered in silence like a-a pillow held over the mouth of the harbor. And on the other hand here is the State setting up machinery and begging you to come forward. If it worked, if enough of you put the story together it could change the whole direction of this thing. The mob would be publicly discredited-instead of hiding behind a phony trade-union respectability."

"I know enough to send Tom McGovern and Willie Givens away for years," Runty boasted. "I go all the way back to when Tom was hijacking meat trucks with his own hands. Yes, and killing with them too. Now he's got a manicurist come up to his penthouse to paint his nails and he's chairman of the Mayor's Harbor Improvement Society, God help us all. I seen him come up from the gutter. I seen how it happened."

"Runty, get your story down," Father Barry said excitedly. "I think you've got a hell of a chance to knock Johnny Friendly out of the box. Maybe Willie and McGovern too. And Donnelly and the Mayor over here. This investigation is a stick of dynamite. And you guys are too stupid to light the fuse."

"God Almighty, Father," Runty said, half-impressed. "You make it sound like the second comin'."

"Look, why don't we do this?" Father Barry said, talking fast. "I'll get in touch with the Commission. Set up an executive session for you. You can testify on the q.t. The Commission doesn't want to come out in the open anyway until they're sure they've got enough stuff to make a case. By that time you've got them on the run. I'm going to bring a lawyer in on this. I c'n see a petition in the courts for an on-the-level election. The rest is up to you. Only don't back away from this and come crying to me that you want my help. I'll probably catch enough hell as it is. I'm thumbing you into the game, Runty. You c'n take it or leave it."

Runty said, "Cripes, I oughta have me head examined."

Father Barry prodded him. "Listen. I'll line it up for you in the morning. I don't like big government any more 'n you do. But in this thing I can't see any other way. Without government implementation, you boys haven't a chance."

"Balls to government impleme-whatever that is," Runty said. "Don't give me any of those ten-dollar-Willie-Givens' woids. I'll buy the rest of it."

"Amen," Father Barry grinned. He took a good look at Runty's bruises. "You're sure you're okay now?"

"Hell, lemme outa here," Runty said. "It's a quarter after two. I gotta get to the Longdock before they close."

Father Barry had to choke back the warning-How can you go back into the streets and ask them to clobber you again? He gulped the words down because he knew the man who would go back onto River Street, not to be brave but just for another couple of shots of thirty-five-cent whiskey, was the same man who might have the spirit-with Father Barry's help-to get the waterfront on the side of decency.

"Take it easy now," Father Barry said as he walked Runty down to the front door of the rectory. "You're gonna be valuable merchandise."

Runty looked out into the cool, moonless night. There were snow flurries in the air. General Pulaski was a brooding shadow of iron in the park.

"Don't worry, Father. I don't think they're gonna folly me no more t'night." He tapped his wounded head humorously. "They had their fun."

"Tomorrow we get our turn at bat," the priest said. "Take care now. Stay out of the gin mills."

"I aint afraid to go anywhere in Bohegan," Runty boasted.

"I know that," Father Barry said. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to keep you in one piece, at least until we get this thing on the road."

Runty went boldly out into the night, his hands pushed deep into his windbreaker pockets, his hard, bantam chest thrust defiantly forward.

A noble little lush, Father Barry thought to himself as he watched him go.

Father Barry felt pleased with himself all the way up the stairs and into the bathroom he shared with Father Vincent It was rather a primitive bathroom, with an old-fashioned tub. Father Barry had been trying to promote a stall shower ever since he reported to St. Tim's. He liked his bracing morning shower. When the Pastor had turned this down as an unnecessary luxury he had gone so far as to pray to St. Jude to intercede for him. Only the Saint of the Impossible, Father Barry had decided, could work such an innovation in habit-set Father Donoghue's rectory. The Pastor had spent his boyhood in the old country and was not at all sure that hot water, stall showers and the like were necessary to salvation. In fact it was one of his notions that Americans were too clean. "Rub all the natural protective oils off their skins, they do for a fact."

Father Barry was leaning over the sink and staring at his hairline in the small mirror, wondering if his hair was indeed receding as alarmingly as it seemed to be, when Father Vincent came in, in his plaid bathrobe, sleepy-eyed and grouchy.

"Pete, isn't it bad enough to drag this thing into the church?" Father Vincent began, standing at the toilet and continuing to talk over his shoulder. "Are you going to start dragging these drunks in at all hours of the night?"