Priest

By Marcia Davey

This is a story about a young Roman Catholic priest who has been transferred out of his familiar New York routine to Stellarton, the town where he was born, where his sister Patty and his brother Tim still live.

Coming back to his childhood parish, to the Stella Maris church, should have been a joyous homecoming. For more than a century, this beloved stone structure has guarded the entrance to the harbor, a beacon as familiar as the lighthouse to the fishermen of the North Atlantic, and Father Jim Cameron will take its stewardship seriously.

He will see fewer familiar faces attending his Masses at Stella Maris, and his liturgy will echo amid empty pews. He will be challenged by Lieutenant Mark Campbell, a Vietnam veteran, at the Rehabilitation Hospital where his high school crush, Peggy, is now a nurse. But he has moved beyond all that, hasnt he?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453549490

Marcia Davey

Marcia Davey graduated from Acadia University and Providence College. Her first book, Three Stories, was published in 2004. Camille’s Fond Embrace was published in 2004, Gallivanting in 2008, Priest in 2010, Chevy Blues in 2013, and now in 2016, Isabella.

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Copyright © 2010 by Marcia Davey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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FOR JIM

You opened doors for me, and

helped me walk through.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

Stella Maris was not my first parish, but it would be my most challenging assignment. Yes, in those days we were assigned at the pleasure of the bishop, and our personal requests held little merit. A small committee somewhere in the chancery in Boston had shuffled my personnel file on a regal oak table, and I was officially drafted to serve as pastor in this established parish by the sea in the town where I was born. Perhaps they decided that I spoke the language of the sailors and fishermen there, and would be a compassionate shepherd to the diverse flock. I hope that’s how the decision was made. Or was it because they thought I had the best chance of survival?

I’d been tested, after all, in the streets of New York city.

My family was delighted (or so they said) to have me north of Boston instead of in New York. My mother began preparations for the feasts to come. She claimed I was ‘Jesuit thin’, and was determined to turn me into a fatted calf. My older brother Timmy was a fisherman with his own trawler, and my sister Pat ( she was born on March seventeenth) was a teacher in the public high school, the school from which we had all graduated. My parents were ambivalent about my wanting to be a Catholic priest because our parish had experienced a financial scandal, and they wondered why I wanted to throw myself into such a difficult life.

Tim and Patty were not ambivalent. They did everything they could to keep me from entering the seminary. They told me I wasn’t holy enough and they set me up on dates when I was in high school, hoping that some girl would derail my ambitions. They almost succeeded. After Peggy, I vowed to refocus on a celibate life. But I must have had a true calling because I still wanted to dedicate myself to God’s work. Nobody influenced this decision . . . no mortal that is.

Some yearnings defy logic, and my wanting to be a Roman Catholic priest was one of them.

My spiritual life and my intellectual life were entwined and secure as I celebrated my first Mass as pastor at Stella Maris. This would not always be the situation, and one of the challenges ahead would be coping with the loneliness. For six years, I had lived with other priests in an inner-city college atmosphere, a band of spiritual brothers, teaching at a small college, and befriending the disenfranchised of the city. But we were immune to the pressures of managing a large parish. We were removed from the day-to-dayness of spiritual leadership combined with systems management, dropping attendance at Mass( which meant less money for more bills), a climbing divorce rate with more fractured families, and a new sexual morality. I was soon to be more aware. And older parishes like Stella Maris were seeing the effects of the exodus to the suburbs. Christmas Masses were now sprinkled with children and grandchildren home to visit the elders for the holidays.

But there were still many people in this seaside town who knew my parents and my grandparents, and remembered me. I was the youngest Cameron kid, the skinny one who didn’t get into mischief like the other two, and I was remembered as such when I returned home. I didn’t get into mischief because I had an older brother and sister blazing my trail and protecting my interests.

‘Jim is the gentle one,’ my mother would tell my grandmother who would agree, ‘just like your brother Pete, rest his soul.’ So I was known as the skinny, gentle kid who never—almost never—got into trouble. I loved school and did well, but I loved the Church more.

The church looks different from the altar than it does from the pews, and now that the celebrants are facing the congregation there are more distractions. We have had to train ourselves to focus on the Sacrament of the Eucharist and ignore the fidgety children and adults, the coughing and sometimes talking, and the new more relaxed dress code. Heads are no longer covered, of course, and sometimes there is not much else covered either, especially in summer. (My friend Father Marty, in a lighter moment, offered to vote for the burqua.) It is an improvement not to hear the seat offerings clanging into the money box near the front door, and yes, there were handfuls of coins. But during my first Mass at Stella Maris, I was trying to ignore a rhythmic splash of water into a trash can in the sacristy. It was a sharp echo in perfect four/four time. I remember this moment as an indicator of what was to come. My whole tenure at Stella Maris would be in four/four time.

Because of the rain my mother had moved the party into the house, already full of food with little room for people. My brother Tim asked if it was okay to call me Father Jim or did that sound like a cheap cigar. I said he could call me anything he liked if he would come to Mass. He said he couldn’t promise, but if he wasn’t setting traps he could probably make the early Mass. I expected that my mom and dad still attended regularly. I don’t know; I try not to pry. I wondered if having me back in town, ensconced in the rectory on Telegraph Hill, was going to be a burden more than a blessing for my family. They said that they were looking forward to having me home; I believed them.

Tim said he had a new Dave Rawlings recording: A Friend of a Friend. I confessed that I hadn’t heard of Dave Rawlings.

He came out of Berklee . . . Boston. He and Gillian Welch teamed up in college and they sound awesome together. Sort of blue grass, sort of young James Taylor. They write most of their own stuff. He is mostly alone on this one for the first time, but when they harmonize you can’t tell who’s who . . . they are perfect together.

Tim knows more about current popular music than I will ever know. I got lost somewhere along the way . . . somewhere among quartets singing songs like I Saw You Crying in the Chapel, and tears of joy.

Can I borrow it and play it tonight? The rectory is way too quiet.

Sure . . . here, take it.

I hoped my Bose music player could capture Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch harmonizing about being young.

Did you see Peggy at Mass? he asked me.

Peggy? I didn’t remember.

Oh come on . . . Peggy. She was sitting in the second or third pew with her daughter Meagan who looks just like her mother.

Sorry . . . I was too distracted by the waterfall in the sacristy to notice anything. Who did she marry, anyway?

She married that jerk Ronnie MacKenzie, you know, the guy with the red Camaro.

Sorry. I can’t place him.

Well, they married in haste as we say and it didn’t last long. She’s a nurse at the Veterans. Now I think she’s shacked up with some guy from the staff there. I don’t know his name. I don’t think he’s from around here. She lives over on Gainesborough, near the rink.

In our town there is a rehabilitation hospital for wounded veterans. Most of the wounded are from the war in Iraq, but some are from Vietnam, still being treated for wounds from a forgotten war. Forgotten by everybody but them, and the army of professionals still trying to treat their wounds. The hospital is the major employer of local people.

So how’s the fishing this summer? I asked Tim.

Good. The weather’s been good, but we have a quota you know. So no matter how hard we work we can’t make what we used to a few years ago. But I have a steady market. Pier Four restaurant is still buying from me.

Yes, Mom told me about that.

But I have to do something else. I might get with the fire department. They might be putting on some new people.

Really? Aren’t you too old?

Too old? Too old? Hell no! Sorry. No, I’m in great shape.

I wasn’t convinced that the fire department would hire a forty year old lobsterman, but I accepted the possibility.

Well, good luck to you then. Lobstering is tough duty. I could really use somebody at the rectory to help with the everyday fix-ups. Bill Prevost is retiring to Florida. And, by the way, do you know any roofers who can handle an old tile roof? It’s an emergency.

I’ll ask around.

This banter with my brother sounded familiar and comforting. My family had been out of my loop for some time. It felt good to be with them.

Oh, we are so pleased to have him back, my mother was telling my aunt Gert. I plan to fatten him up. There’s no cook at the rectory, you know. Father Murray’s sister left with him. I don’t know how they expect him to eat. And he is so thin already. Did you notice how thin he is? The roof is leaking and the furnace needs to be replaced. The place is a mess. I think Father Murray was just too tired to deal with it. What a mess. Of course, money is a problem. Like everything else now-a-days.

I knew that as long as my mother was upright . . . food at the