Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [29]
There were those among his parishioners who secretly resented Monsignor Creedon s serving on non-sectarian committees in community activities, but this sort of criticism could be traced to disgruntled Knights of Columbus. The Coal & Iron was ruled by the Masons, who admired Monsignor Creedon, and who tolerated the Knights of Columbus. The latter felt that their pastor ought to use his influence more frequently in advancing Knights. He never did. He used his influence in coaxing better company houses for the miners families out of the directorate; or in wangling contributions for poorer parishes than his own. The U.M.W.A. organizers and field workers hated Monsignor Creedon because he was so close to the bigwigs of the company. On the other hand, he did sometimes use his influence to help a Protestant. He got them bail, helped them get jobs. He had bought a Cadillac from Julian, instead of a Lincoln from the Ford dealer, who was a Catholic. He bought three Fords for his curates to atone for patronizing Julian s business. Three years ago he had driven his car, a Buick, to Julian s garage and went in Julian s office and said: Good morning, son. Do you have any nice black Cadillac sedans today? He bought a car right off the floor and paid cash for it. His curates cars went to the Ford dealer for repairs and service, but he always bought his tires and other needs at Julian s garage. Julian wanted to go to the bathroom after the dinner party stood up, and on his way to the men s locker room he had to pass Mrs. Gorman s table. He looked at Mrs. Gorman and she did not speak to him, but that was not unusual. But he felt the chill that passed between him and the men at the table. Kirkpatrick nodded politically and showed his teeth, but the doctors frankly snubbed him, and Monsignor Creedon, whose round, bluish face usually smiled sadly above that purple thing he wore under his Roman collar, nodded just once and did not smile. It took Julian a few seconds to figure it out, because in his dealings with Catholics he so often forgot to consider the Catholic point of view. But by the time he was alone in the men s room he had it figured out: they all regarded his insulting Harry Reilly as an insult to themselves. There was no other reason why he should throw a drink at Reilly, so it must be because he was an unattractive Irish Catholic whom he could insult freely. He did not believe they were quite right. But one thing he knew; if the Catholics had declared war on him, he was in a tough spot. In the Smith-Hoover campaign two men, one a jeweler and the other a lime and cement dealer, had let it be known that they were members of the Ku Klux Klan and were outspokenly against Smith because he was a Catholic. Those two were the only Gibbsville business men who had come out in the open. And now both of them were bankrupt. Drying his hands Julian thought it might be a good idea to sound out Monsignor Creedon, and he sat down to wait for the priest to come back to the locker-room. He pushed the button and told William, the locker-room waiter, to get a bottle of Scotch out of his locker and put it with two glasses and ice and clubsoda on a small table near the locker. He poured himself a mild drink and lit a cigarette. Men and boys wandered in, making cracks about his being exclusive. Bobby Herrmann came in and before he could say anything Julian told him to keep his trap shut. One or two of the younger kids showed by the expression of their faces when they saw the extra empty glass and the bottle of Scotch that they thought Julian was being ignored. It was pretty funny. They wanted to be nice, he could see, and they wanted to have a drink, but their wanting to be nice and their wanting a drink were not enough to make them associate with an outcast. What the hell had he done? he wondered. He had thrown a drink in a man s face. An especially terrible guy who should have had a drink thrown in his face a long while ago. It wasn’t as if Harry Reilly were a popularity contest winner or something. If most people told the truth they would agree that Reilly was a terrible person, a climber, a nouveau riche even in Gibbsville where fifty thousand dollars was a sizable fortune. Julian thought back over some other terrible things, really terrible things, that people had done in the club without being made to feel they had committed sacrilege. There was the time Bobby Herrmann or Whit Hofman or Froggy Ogden no one knew which wanted to test a carboy of alcohol which Whit had bought. One of the three (they all were very drunk at the time) touched a match to the alcohol to see if it was genuine, and a table, chairs, a bench, and part of a row of lockers were ruined or destroyed before the fire was extinguished. There was the time a member of a visiting golf team was swinging a mashie in the locker-room and Joe Schermerhorn walked into the swing and got a broken jaw, lost his beautiful teeth and went a little bit nuts so that two years later, when his car went off the Lincoln Street bridge, people said it was suicide. Did they hold that against the visiting golfer? Hardly. He still visited the club and got drunk with the boys. There was the time Ed Klitsch wandered stark naked upstairs to the steward s living quarters and presented himself, ready for action, to the steward s wife. That was remembered as a good joke. There were innumerable vomitings, more or less disastrous. There was the hair-pulling, face-scratching episode between Kitty Hofman and Mary Lou Diefenderfer, after Kitty heard that Mary Lou had said Kitty ought to be suppressed by the vice squad. There was the time Elinor Holloway heroine of many an interesting event in club history shinnied half way up the flagpole while five young gentlemen, standing at the foot of the pole, verified the suspicion that Elinor, who had not always lived in Gibbsville, was not naturally, or at least not entirely, a blonde. There was the time, the morning after a small, informal party for a visiting women s golf team, when a Mrs. Goldorf and a Mrs. Smith, and Tom Wilk, the Reverend Mr. Wilk s son, and Sam Campbell, the caddymaster, all had to have the stomach pump. That was complicated by the fact that they were all together, in bed or on the floor, in Sam s room upstairs in the caddyhouse. There was the time Whit Hofman and Carter Davis got so sore at a New York orchestra that wanted too much money to play overtime, that they broke all the instruments and pushed the bass drum all the way down the club hill to the state highway. The result of that was a nice suit, some Philadelphia publicity, and a temporary blacklisting of the club by the musicians union. There were numerous physical combats between husbands and wives, and not always the husbands that matched the wives. Kitty Hofman, for instance, had been given a black eye by Carter Davis when she kicked him in the groin for dunking her head in a punch bowl for calling him a son of a bitch for telling her she looked like something the cat dragged in. And so on. Julian had another drink and a fresh cigarette. And then there were people. Terrible people, who didn