6. THE FIRE-TOWER ROAD winds through a longleaf-pine forest to a gentle knoll perhaps fifty feet above the surrounding countryside. Beyond, fronting a meadow, stretches a spacious low building with a small central steeple, which looks stuck on, and far-flung brick wings. The building looks deserted. The meadow is overgrown. Half a dozen Holstein cows graze, all facing away from the bright afternoon sun.

There is a single metal utility shed straddled by the legs of the tower, fitted with two aluminum windows. A chimney pipe of bluish metal sticks through the roof.

Not a soul is in sight. I roll down the Caprice window and listen. There is no sound, not even cicadas. No breeze stirs the pines, which glitter in the sunlight like steel knitting needles.

Getting out, I walk backward, the better to see the tower. It is an old but sturdy structure of braced steel, perhaps a hundred feet tall. The cubicle perched on top looks like a dollhouse. One window is propped open. Shading my eyes against the sun, I yell. My voice is muffled. The air is dense and yellow as butter.

A bare hand and arm appear at the window. It is not a clear gesture. It could be a greeting or summons or nothing. I will take it that he is waving me up. I climb a dozen steep flights of green wooden steps smelling of paint. Presently the crowns of the longleafs are beside me, then below me. The heavy shook sheaves of needles, each clasping a secret yellow stamen, seem to secrete a dense vapor in which the sunlight refracts.

Thumbtacked to a post at the foot of the tower are three cards, two ordinary business cards and an old-fashioned holy picture of the Sacred Heart, each with the scribbled note: “Thanks for favors granted.” On the metal upright of the tower I notice several penciled crosses, like the plus signs a child would make.

The stairs run smack into the floor of the tiny house. The trapdoor is open. Father Smith gives me a hand.

I haven’t seen him in months. We were both in Alabama, he almost next door on the Gulf Coast at a place named Hope Haven for impaired priests, mostly drunks. I used to attend his Mass, not for religious reasons, but to get away from Fort Pelham, the golf course, the tin-roofed rec hall, the political arguments, and the eternal stereo-V.

He has aged. He still looks like an old Ricardo Montalban with a handsome seamed face as tanned as cordovan leather, hair like Brillo, and the same hairy futbol wrists. His chest is a barrel suspended by tendons in his neck. Emphysema. As he pulls me up past him, his breath has an old-man’s-nose smell. But he is freshly shaven and wears a clean polo shirt, unpressed chinos, and old-fashioned sneakers.

He is different. It comes to me that the difference is that he is unsmiling and puzzled. He inclines his head to the tiny room. The gesture is not clear. It could mean make yourself at home.

Home is exactly (I find out) six feet square. He is more than six feet tall. I see a bedroll against the wall. I reckon he sleeps on the floor catercornered.

The room is furnished with a high table in the center, two chairs like barstools, in one corner a chemical toilet, and nothing more. Mounted on the table is a bronze disk azimuth, larger than a dinner plate, fitted with two sighting posts and divided into 360 degrees. The four sides of the cubicle are glass above the wainscot except for a wall space covered by a map. Hanging from the map are strings weighted by fish sinkers. Next to the map is a wall telephone.

Outside, the gently rolling terrain stretches away, covered by pines as far as the eye can see. In the slanting afternoon sun the crowns of the pines are bluish and rough as the pile of a shag rug. The countryside seems strangely silent and unpopulated except toward the south, where the condos and high-rises on the lakefront stick up like a broken picket fence.

“It’s good to see you, Father.” I offer my hand, but he does not seem to notice. Perhaps he regarded his pulling me up through the trapdoor as a handshake. Then I see that something is wrong with him. He is standing indecisively, fists in his pockets, brows knitted in a preoccupied expression. He does not look crazy but excessively sane, like a busy man of the world, with a thousand things on his mind, waiting for an elevator. Then suddenly he snaps his fingers softly as if he had just remembered something, seems on the very point of mentioning it, and as suddenly falls silent.

We stand so for a while. I wait for him to tell me to sit. But he’s in a brown study, frowning, hands deep in pockets, making and unmaking fists. So, why not, I invite him to have a seat. He does.

We sit on the high stools opposite each other, the azimuth between us.

“Allow me to state my business, Father. Two pieces of business. Father Placide wanted to know how you were and wanted me to inquire whether you might help him out. Dr. Comeaux wanted to know whether you have decided to recommend his purchase of the buildings and property of St. Margaret’s.”

Again he gives every sign of understanding, seems on the point of replying, but again falls silent and gazes down at the azimuth with terrific concentration, as if he were studying a chess board.

“Father,” I say presently, “I know you must be upset about the hospice closing.”

Nodding agreeably, but then frowning, studying the table.

“I know how you feel about the Qualitarian program taking over, the pedeuthanasia, the gereuthanasia, but—”

“No no,” he says suddenly, but not raising his eyes. “No no.”

“No no what?”

“It wasn’t that.”

“Wasn’t what?”

“They have their reasons. Not bad reasons, are they? They make considerable sense, wouldn’t you agree? They’re not bad fellows. They make some sense,” he says, nodding and repeating himself several times in the careless musing voice of a bridge player studying his hand. “Well, don’t they?” he asks, almost slyly, cocking his head and almost meeting my eyes.

“It could be argued,” I say, studying him. “Then are you going to approve the sale to Dr. Comeaux?”

“Hm.” Now he’s drumming his fingers and tucking in his upper lip as if he had almost decided on his next play. “But here’s the question,” he says in a different, livelier voice—and then hangs fire.

“Yes?”

“Tom,” he says, nodding, almost himself now, but concentrating terrifically on each word, “what would you say was wrong with a person who is otherwise in good health but who has difficulties going about his daily duties, that is—say—when he is supposed to go to a meeting, a parish-council meeting, a school-board meeting, visit the nursing home, say Mass—his feet seem to be in glue. He can hardly set one foot in front of the other, can hardly pick up the telephone, can hardly collect his thoughts, has to struggle to answer the simplest question. What would you say was wrong with such a person?”

“I’d say he was depressed.”

“Hm. Yes. Depressed.”

I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t.

“Were you, are you, able to say Mass?”

“Mass,” he repeats, frowning mightily. “Yes,” he says at last in his musing voice. “Oh yes.”

“Could you preach?”

“Preach.” Again the cocked head, the sly near-smile. “No no.”

“No? Why not?”

“Why not? A good question. Because—it doesn’t signify.”

“What doesn’t signify?”

“The words.”

“The words of the sermon, of the Mass, don’t signify?”

“That’s well put, Tom,” he says, not ironically. “But the action does.”

“Why don’t the words signify?”

“Let me ask you a question as a scientist and a student of human nature,” he says, almost in his old priest-friend-colleague voice.

“Sure.”

“Do you think it is possible that words could be deprived of their meaning?”

“Deprived of their meaning. What words?”

“Name it! Any words. Tom, U.S.A., God, Simon, prayer, sin, heaven, world.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

“Here’s the question,” he says in a brisk rehearsed voice. Again, for some reason, he reminds me of a caller calling in to a radio talk show. He almost raises his eyes. “If it is a fact that words are deprived of their meaning, does it not follow that there is a depriver?”

“A depriver. I’m afraid—”

“What other explanation is there?” he asks in a rush, as if he already knew what I would say.

I always answer patients honestly. “One explanation, if I understand you correctly, is that a person can stop believing in the things the words signify.”

“Ah ha,” he says at once, smiling as if I had taken the bait. “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“What’s the point?”

“Don’t you see?” he asks in a stronger voice, eyes still lowered, but hitching closer over the azimuth.

“Not quite.”

“It is not a question of belief or unbelief. Even if such things were all proved, if the existence of God, heaven, hell, sin were all proved as certainly as the distance to the sun is proved, it would make no difference, would it?”

“To whom?”

“To people! To unbelievers and to so-called believers.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because the words no longer signify.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the words have been deprived of their meaning.”

“By a depriver.”

“Right. Once, everyone admits, such signs signified. Now they do not.”

“How do you mean, once such signs signified?”

Again he smiles. Again it seems I have fallen into his trap. He rises, stands to one side, hands in pockets making fists. “I’ll show you. Do you see that?” He nods to the horizon.

I look. There is nothing but the shaggy sea of bluish pines. My nose has started running. The air is yellow with pollen.

“Right there.” He nods, hands still in pockets.

I look again. There is a straight wisp of smoke in the middle distance, as insignificant-looking as a pile of leaves burning in a gutter.

“Yes.”

“As a matter of fact, would you help me report it? My hands are a bit unsteady.”

Perhaps that is why he keeps his hands in his pockets, to hide a tremor.

“Sure. What do I do?”

“Line up the sights on the smoke.”

I rotate the azimuth and sight along the upright posts to the wisp of smoke. “I make it eighty-two degrees.”

“Very good. Wouldn’t you agree that there is no question , about what the smoke is a sign of?”

“Yes, I would.”

“What is it a sign of?”

“Fire.”

“Right!”—triumphantly. “Now would you hang up the reading?”

I turn to the wall map, which is encircled by pins like the Wheel of Fortune. I pick up a weighted string and hang it over pin number 82.

“Very good!” says the priest. He’s looking over my shoulder. “Now what do we have here?”

“We have the direction of—”

“Right! We have one coordinate, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not enough to locate the fire, is it?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What else do we need?”

“We need another coordinate.”

“All right! And how do you suppose we get it?”

All at once I know what he reminds me of. He’s the patient priest-teacher teaching the dumb section at Holy Cross Prep.

I am willing to play dumb. “I don’t know. I don’t see how we can get a triangulation fix from here.”

“And you’re right! So we need a little help, don’t we? So—” He picks up the wall phone and dials a number. “Emmy,” he says in a different voice, “give me a reading on that brush job in 5-9. Okay, Blondie, I read. How goes it in Waldheim? All right. That’s a fiver-niner. You call it in. Over.”

He speaks easily, good-humoredly. No, he’s not a priest-teacher. He’s a ham operator, one of those fellows who are shy up close but chummy-technical with a stranger in Bangkok.

He turns to me. “Her reading is 2-9-2. She’s in the Waldheim tower.” He shows me a pin. “Here. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

I pick up the string and the Waldheim sinker and hang it over pin 292. The weighted strings intersect at a crossroad on the map. The priest, I can see, is pleased by the elegance of the tight intersected strings. So am I.

The priest is pushing one fist into the other hand, hard, taking turns. I realize he is doing isometric exercises. Now he is pulling against interlocked fingers.

“We know what the smoke is a sign of. We have located the sign,” he says between pushes and pulls. “Now we are going to act accordingly. That’s a sign for you. Unlike word signs.”

“Right.” I look at my watch. I’m afraid he’s going to get going on the Germans. “It’s good to see you, Father, but I have an appointment. Do you wish me to tell Father Placide or Dr. Comeaux anything?”

“Sure,” says the priest, who is back in his place across the azimuth. “Now here is the question.” There’s a lively light in his eye. He’s out to catch me again. He has the super-sane chipperness of the true nut.

“Can you name one word sign which has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived?”

“I don’t think I can. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid that—” Again I look at my watch.

Two things have become clear to me in the last few seconds.

One thing is that Father Smith has gone batty, but batty in a way I recognize. He belongs to that category of nut who can do his job competently enough, quite well in fact, but given one minute of free time latches on to an obsession like a tongue seeking a sore tooth. He called in the forest fire like a pro, but now he’s back at me with a mad chipper light in his eye.

The second thing is that I promised Father Placide to make an “evaluation” of Father Smith’s mental condition. Can he do priestly work?

No, three things.

The third thing is that all at once I want badly to get out of here and see Lucy Lipscomb.

“Can you name the one word sign,” Father Smith asks me, leaning close over the azimuth, “that has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived by a depriver?”

“I’m not sure what the question means. Later perhaps—”

“Will you allow me to demonstrate,” says the priest triumphantly, as if he had already demonstrated.

“Of course,” I say with fake psychiatric cordiality.

“The signs out there”—he nods to the shaggy forest—“refer to something, don’t they?”

“Right.”

“The smoke was a sign of fire.”

“That is correct.”

“There is no doubt about the existence of the fire.”

“True.”

“Words are signs, aren’t they?”

“You could say so.”

“But unlike the signs out there, words have been evacuated, haven’t they?”

“Evacuated?”

“They don’t signify anymore.”

“How do you mean?” From long practice I can keep my voice attentive without paying close attention. I wonder if Lucy—

“What if I were to turn the tables on you, ha ha, and play the psychoanalyst?”

“Very good,” I say gloomily.

“You psychoanalysts encourage your patients to practice free association with words, true?”

“Yes.” Actually it’s not true.

“Let me turn the tables on you and give you a couple of word signs and you give me your free associations.”

“Fine.”

“Clouds.”

“Sky, fleecy, puffy, floating, white—”

“Okay. Irish.”

“Bogs, Notre Dame, Pat O’Brien, begorra—”

“Okay. Blacks.”

“Blacks?”

“Negroes.”

“Blacks, Africa, niggers, minority, civil rights—”

“Okay. Jew.”

“Israel, Bible, Max, Sam, Julius, Hebrew, Hebe, Ben—”

“Right! You see!” He is smiling and nodding and making fists in his pockets. I realize that he is doing isometrics in his pockets.

“See what?”

“Jews!”

“What about Jews?” I say after a moment.

“Precisely!”

“Precisely what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about Jews?”

“What do you think about Jews?” he asks, cocking an eye.

“Nothing much one way or the other.”

“May I continue my demonstration, Doctor?”

“For one minute.” I look at my watch, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“May I ask who Max, Sam, Julius, and Ben are?”

“Max Gottlieb is my closest friend and personal physician. Sam Aaronson was my roommate in medical school. Julius Freund was my training analyst at Hopkins. Ben Solomon was my fellow detainee and cellmate at Fort Pelham, Alabama.”

“Very interesting.”

“How’s that?”

“Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“Unlike the other test words, what you associated with the word Jew was Jews, Jews you have known. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Yes,” I say, pursing my mouth in a show of interest.

“What you associated with the word sign Irish were certain connotations, stereotypical Irish stuff in your head. Same for Negro. If I had said Spanish, you’d have said something like guitar, castanets, bullfights, and such. I have done the test on dozens. Thus, these word signs have been evacuated, deprived of meaning something real. Real persons. Not so with Jews.”

“So?”

He’s feeling so much better that he’s doing foot exercises, balancing on the ball of one foot, then the other. Now, to my astonishment, he is doing a bit of shadowboxing, weaving and throwing a few punches.

“That’s the only sign of God which has not been evacuated by an evacuator,” he says, moving his shoulders. “What sign is that?”

“Jews.”

“Jews?”

“You got it, Doc.” He sits, gives the azimuth a spin like a croupier who has raked in all the chips.

“Got what?”

“You see the point.”

“What’s the point?”

He leans close, eyes alight, “The Jews—cannot—be—subsumed.”

“Can’t be what?”

“Subsumed.”

“I see.”

“Since the Jews were the original chosen people of God, a tribe of people who are still here, they are a sign of God’s presence which cannot be evacuated. Try to find a hole in that proof!”

I try—that is, I act as if I am trying.

“You can’t find a hole, can you?” he says triumphantly.

“But, Father, the Jews I know are not religious. They either do not believe in God or, like me, they don’t attach any significance beyond—”

“Precisely!”

“Precisely?”

“Precisely. Probatur conclusion as St. Thomas would say.” He seems to have finished.

“Right,” I say, reaching for the rung of the trapdoor. I think I know what to tell Father Placide.

“Hold it!” He waves an arm out to the wide world. “Name one other thing out there which cannot be subsumed.”

“I can’t.”

“Pine tree?”

“How do you mean, pine tree?”

“That pine tree can be subsumed under the classes of trees called conifers, right?”

“Right.”

“Try to subsume Jews under the classes of mankind, Caucasians, Semites, whatever. Go ahead, try it.”

“Excuse me, Father, but I really—”

“Do your friends still consider themselves Jews?”

“Yes.”

“You see. It does not matter whether they believe. Believe or not, they are still Jews. And what are Jews if not the actual people originally chosen by God?”

“Excuse me, Father, but is it not also part of Christian belief that the Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah and that therefore—”

“Makes no difference!” exclaims the priest, throwing a punch as if this were the very objection he had been waiting for.

“It doesn’t?”

“Read St. Paul! It is clear that their inability to accept Jesus was not only foreordained but altogether reasonable and is not to be held against them. Salvation comes from the Jews, as holy scripture tells us. They remain the beloved, originally chosen people of God.”

“Right. Now I—”

“It is also psychologically provable.”

“It is?”

“Jews are naturally skeptical, hardheaded, and, after all, what Jesus was proposing to them was a tall order.”

“Yes. Well—” He’s standing on the trapdoor and I can’t lift it until he gets off.

“What do you think Peres would say if Begin claimed to be the Messiah?”

I have to laugh.

“No no.” The priest hunches forward, almost clearing the trapdoor. “You’re missing the point.”

“I am?”

“How many times in your work have you encountered someone who claims to be Napoleon, the Messiah, Hitler, the Devil?”

“Often.”

“How often have you encountered a Jewish patient who claimed to be the Messiah or Napoleon?”

“Not often.”

“You see?”

“Yes.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t?”

“You still don’t see the bottom line psychologically speaking?” My nose has started running seriously. He is standing on the trapdoor and my nose is dripping.

“One, a Jew will not believe another Jew making such a preposterous claim, right? But—But—!” Now he has come to the bottom line sure enough. For he has stopped doing isometrics and throwing punches and has instead placed both hands on the azimuth and lined me up in the sights. He speaks in a low intense voice, pausing between each word. “Is it not the case, Doctor, that if a Jew speaks to a Gentile, speaks with authority, with sobriety, as a friend—the Gentile—will—believe—him! Think about it!” He has leaned over so close I can see the white fiber, the arcus senilis, around his pupil.

I give every appearance of thinking about it.

“Even an anti-Semite! Did you ever notice that an anti-Semite who despises Jews actually believes them deep down—that’s why he hates them!—and isn’t that the reason he despises them?”

I eye him curiously. “May I ask you something, Father?”

“Fire away.”

“Do you still regard yourself as a Catholic priest?”

For the first time he seems surprised. He stops his isometrics, cocks his head. “How do you mean, Tom?”

“Why are you?”

“Why am I what? Oh. You mean why am I a Catholic—Tom, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you remember what a sacrament is?”

I smile. “A sensible sign instituted by Christ to produce grace. I can still rattle it off.”

The priest laughs. “Those sisters did a job on us, didn’t they?”

“Yes. Maybe too good.”

“What? Oh. Yes, yes. Do you remember the scriptural example they always gave?”

“Sure. Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you will not have life in you.”

“Same one!” says the priest, again laughing, then falls to musing. “Life,” he murmurs absently and under his breath. “Life. But that’s the trouble, the words—”

“What’s that?” I ask the priest, wondering if he’s still talking to me.

“Oh,” he says, giving a start. “I’m sorry. To answer your question—” He frowns mightily.

What question?

“Are you forgetting about the ancient Romans?”

The ancient Romans. My nose is running badly. I have to go.

“Aren’t you forgetting that the ancient Romans, who were, after all, not stupid people and were right about most things though not very creative, were also right about us.”

“I suppose I had forgotten.”

“The historians say they mistook us for a Jewish sect, didn’t they?”

“Sure.”

“Was it a mistake?”

Now he’s clear of the trapdoor. I give the rung a yank.

“The Jews as a word sign cannot be assimilated under a class, category, or theory. No subsuming Jews! Not even by the Romans.”

“Right.” I yank again. What’s wrong with this damn thing?

“No subsuming Jews, Tom!”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“This offends people, even the most talented people, people of the loftiest sentiments, the highest scientific achievements, and the purest humanitarian ideals.”

“Right.”

“You have to turn it,” he says, noticing my efforts to open the trapdoor.

“Thank you.” No, that doesn’t work either.

“The Holocaust was a consequence of the sign which could not be evacuated.”

“Right.”

“Who remembers the Ukrainians?”

“True.”

“Let me tell you something, Tom. People have the wrong idea about the Holocaust. The Holocaust, as people see it, is a myth.”

Oh my. My heart sinks. On top of everything else, is he one of those? I try harder to open the damn door.

While he is talking, he has taken hold of my arm.

I remove his hand. “Goodbye, Father.”

“What’s the matter, Tom?”

“Are you telling me that the Nazis did not kill six million Jews?”

“No.”

“They did kill six million Jews.”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that the origins of the Holocaust are a myth—”

“Never mind. I’m leaving.”

“Very well. What are you going to tell Father Placide and Dr. Comeaux?”

“I am going to tell Father Placide that you are too disturbed to be of any use to him at St. Michael’s. I am going to tell Dr. Comeaux that you are also too disturbed to operate the hospice and that I hope you will sell it to him. Now will you let me out of here?”

“I appreciate your frankness,” says the priest, nodding vigorously, hands making and unmaking fists in his pockets. “Shall I be frank with you?”

“Sure, if you’ll open this damn door.”

“I will. But please allow me to tell you something about yourself for your own good.”

“Please do.”

“You are an able psychiatrist, on the whole a decent, generous, humanitarian person in the abstract sense of the word. You know what is going to happen to you?”

“What?”

“You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind—and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of The New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you?”

“No,” I say, relieved to be on a footing of simple hostility, “—even though I did not graduate from Harvard, do not read The New York Times, and do not belong to the Ford Foundation.”

The priest aims the azimuth at me, but then appears to lose his train of thought. Again his preoccupied frown comes back.

“What is going to happen to me, Father?” I ask before he gets away altogether.

“Oh,” he says absently, appearing to be thinking of something else, “you’re going to end up killing Jews.”

“Okay,” I say. Somehow I knew he was going to say this.

Somehow also he knows that we’ve finished with each other. He reaches for the trapdoor, turns the rung. “Give my love to Ellen and the kids.”

“Sure.”

At the very moment of his touching the rung, there is a tapping on the door from below. The door lifts against his hand.

“That’s Milton,” says Father Smith in his workaday ham-operator voice and lifts the door.

A head of close-cropped iron-gray hair pops up through the opening and a man springs into the room.

To my astonishment the priest pays no attention to the new arrival, even though the three of us are now as close as three men in a small elevator. He takes my arm again.

“Yes, Father?”

“Even if you were a combination of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Charles Kuralt rolled into one—no, especially if you were those guys—”

“As a matter of fact, I happen to know Charlie Kuralt, and there is not a sweeter guy, a more tenderhearted person—”

“Right,” says the priest ironically, still paying not the slightest attention to the stranger, and then, with his sly expression, asks, “Do you know where tenderness always leads?”

“No, where?” I ask, watching the stranger with curiosity.

“To the gas chamber.”

“I see.”

“Tenderness is the first disguise of the murderer.”

“Right.”

The stranger has sprung up through the opening with no assistance, even though he’s carrying a plastic pail of water in one hand and an A&P shopping bag in the other. Evidently he’s used to doing this.

“Well—” I say, stepping down. We needn’t shake hands.

“Here’s the final word,” says the priest, taking hold of my arm.

“Good,” I say.

Now we three are standing facing in the same direction, the stranger evidently waiting for me to leave, not even having room to set down pail and shopping bag.

“If you are a lover of Mankind in the abstract like Walt Whitman, who wished the best for Mankind, you will probably do no harm and might even write good poetry and give pleasure, right?

“Right.”

“If you are a theorist of Mankind like Rousseau or Skinner, who believes he understands man’s brain and in the solitariness of his study or laboratory writes books on the subject, you are also probably harmless and might even contribute to human knowledge, right?”

“Right.”

“But if you put the two together, a lover of Mankind and a theorist of Mankind, what you’ve got now is Robespierre or Stalin or Hitler and the Terror, and millions dead for the good of Mankind. Right?”

“Right,” I say indifferently.

Now the stranger places the pail in a corner and lines up items from the bag on the table next to the azimuth: two bars of soap, a pack of small Hefty bags, a double roll of Charmin toilet paper, three large boxes of Sunkist raisins, half a dozen cans of food, including, I notice, Vienna sausage and Bartlett pears.

The priest introduces me. “Dr. Thomas More, this is Milton Guidry, my indispensable friend and assistant. He keeps me in business, brings me the essentials, removes wastes, serves Mass. Unlike me, he is able to live a normal life down there in the world. He used to run the hospice almost single-handedly, plus milk the cows. He still milks the cows. Now he works as a janitor at the A&P. Between his small salary there and my small salary from the forestry service and selling the milk, we make out very well, don’t we, Milton?”

The newcomer nods cheerfully and stands almost at attention, as if waiting for an order. Milton Guidry is a very thin but wiry man of an uncertain age. He could be a young-looking middle-aged man or a gray-haired young man. His face is unlined. His neat flat-top crewcut, squared at the temples, frames his octagonal rimless glasses, which flash in the sun. The bare spot at the top of his head could be the result of a beginning of balding or a too-close haircut. He wears a striped, long-sleeved shirt and a bow tie—he could have bought both at the A&P—neatly pressed jeans, and pull-on canvas shoes. He is of a type once found in many rectories who are pleased to hang around and help the priest. In another time, I suppose, he would be called a sacristan. He listens intently while the priest gives him instructions. It does not seem to strike him as in the least unusual that Father Smith is perched atop a hundred-foot tower in the middle of nowhere and giving him complicated instructions about getting cruets, hosts, and wine. This, Milton’s attentive attitude seems to say, is what Father does.

“Do you say Mass here?” I ask the priest. We stand at close quarters, our eyes squinted against the sun now blazing in the west.

“Oh yes. Every morning at six. And Milton has not been late yet, have you, Milton?”

Milton nods seriously, hands at his sides. “It is easy,” Milton explains to me, “because I have an alarm clock and I live in the shed below.” He points to the floor. “I set the alarm for five-thirty.”

“I see.”

“I used to set my alarm for five-forty-five, but I felt rushed. I like to give myself time.”

“I see.” I really have to get out of here.

“Milton has to work mornings next week,” says the priest, eyeing me. “Would you like to assist?”

“No thanks.”

The priest seems not to mind. In the best of humors now, he holds the trapdoor open for me and again sends his love to Ellen and the children.

“Tom,” he says, holding the door in one hand and shaking my hand with the other, “take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

“Let me say this, Tom,” he says in a low voice, not letting go of my hand, pulling me close.

“What?”

“I think you’re on to something extremely important. I know more than you think.”

I look at him. The white fiber around his pupils seems to be spinning.

“I have great confidence in you, Tom. I shall pray for you.”

“Thanks.” I am working my hand free.

“Did I ever tell you that I had spent a year in Germany before the war in the household of an eminent psychiatrist whose son was a colonel in the Schutzstaffel?”

“Yes, you did. Goodbye, Father.”

“Last night I dreamed of lying in bed in Tübingen and listening to church bells. German church bells make a high-pitched, silvery sound.”

“Goodbye, Father.”

“Goodbye, Tom.” He lets go. Both he and Milton stand clear. They are smiling and nodding cheerfully. “There are dangers down there, Tom, you may not be aware of. Be careful.”

“I will,” I say, stepping down, wanting only to be on my way.