In the Still of the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

sedated sleep on the divan.
    Most Sundays Father Morrissey said the Spanish language mass at twelve-thirty. The monsignor insisted. He was very proud of him, his non-Hispanic assistant pastor who had learned the language of the growing majority of their congregation. When Morrissey pulled a blooper during his homily, the Old Man said of the barely suppressed giggles, “Never mind. It keeps them alert waiting to catch you up.” These Sundays Morrissey had more to overcome than his mistakes in Spanish grammar. He had no choice, he told himself, but to say mass: the people expected it of him, and too, a priest, once ordained, never lost the power of his priesthood, no matter into what delinquency he strayed. He could be forbidden to use the power, but he could not be deprived of it, and the bread and wine he consecrated in the Lord’s name became the living presence as truly as if St. Peter himself stood at the altar.
    Robed in the purple of Advent, he waited at the back of the church with the new priest and the readers and servers taking their places for the processional. In the sanctuary, the musicians were tuning up, the choir arranging chairs to their liking. He watched the latecomers scrambling for seats. The youngster José came with his mother. If the boy had not looked around at the assembling processional, Morrissey might have happily missed him. His mother dragged him forward and then pushed him ahead of her into a pew. While she covered her face in prayer, he turned and stared back blatantly at the priest.
    To Morrissey’s dismay, Kate entered the church. She was alone. He had never seen her at this mass before. She generally attended the eight o’clock with Martin or the ten-thirty if she came on her own. If she saw him, she gave no sign. She sat near the back, but close enough to José for him to see and recognize her. Surreptitiously, his hand half-hidden by his shoulder, he waved at her. The little demon had a crush on her. Whether or not Kate saw him, the priest couldn’t tell. She gave no sign of it. He tried then to convince himself that José might well be waving to someone else. Everybody knew everybody in their community, and the latecomers were still scrambling into the church, dodging the barricades set up to protect the restoration riggings. The monsignor himself was routing traffic.
    The musicians struck up, the pandereta, the maraca, the guitars, and the fervent, harsh voices of the choir. As the monsignor had said to him once: if they couldn’t beguile you into heaven with their singing, they could scare you half the way. The congregation rose and sang with the choir as the procession got under way, white-robed servers, girls and boys, readers, the new associate just up from Puerto Rico, and the censor-swinging acolyte, laying down a smoke screen before him.
    Morrissey sat, three-quarter face to the congregation, the young associate at his side. There was so little for the celebrant to do in the contemporary mass, so much of the ritual given up to the lay participants, with a solacing share to the women. Clouded with incense before reading the gospel, he lost his concentration. There would be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars … the roaring of the sea, men fainting for fear and for expectation … they will see the son of man coming upon a cloud with great power and majesty…. He stumbled over the Spanish word, and the new priest whispered it, the loudspeaker picking up his voice as he had not intended.
    With the offertory of the mass finally upon him and with effort beyond what he had been equal to until that moment, he said the words of the consecration—This is my body … this is my blood—words he knew the Lord himself would keep pure.
    As far as he could see, Kate was not among those who thronged to the sanctuary steps to receive communion. He would not have expected her to, but suddenly before him was José, his small hands fisted at his side when the priest offered him the