Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [42]
When he first left the party, he thought he must be sick, coming down with something, since he hadn’t knowingly drunk alcohol. However, by the time he had gotten off of the main road and was having such a hard time concentrating while he drove, he knew what was happening. The punch was spiked, and he was definitely intoxicated. He thought the people standing around the bowl of punch seemed oddly delighted that he was enjoying so much of it. He thought it had been a bit strange that everyone stopped talking to watch him as he poured himself a glass. He was not the reason for the tainted drink, but he was certainly an entertaining consequence. The people at the party, members of his parish, had watched their priest unknowingly get drunk. The room spun as George realized what had happened and suddenly remembered the only other time in his life when he had had that much alcohol. Like this one was sure to become, it wasn’t a memory he cherished.
George moaned, jumping up from the bed to run to the bathroom. He was going to be sick. “What on earth did I drink?” he asked out loud. After thirty minutes of vomiting up everything he had eaten for the entire day, he crawled to the kitchen, pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and headed back to his bed. He sat on the edge and took a few swallows of water. The room kept spinning. He closed his eyes and leaned forward over his knees, dropping his head in his hands. Voices and bits of conversations floated across his mind.
“Get some boots,” he recalled somebody saying. “You two just seem to show up everywhere together,” the same voice commented. “You believe in angels?” a girl asked. “Altar Guild . . . that skunk seemed to take up with the priest . . . den of rattlesnakes at the parish house . . . cancel Mass. . . .” The voices just kept resounding, getting louder and louder. He ran back to the toilet.
Father George Morris had been planning to be a priest since he was eight years old. That was the year his family moved into the downstairs apartment in a house that was right beside St. Peter’s Church. He discovered the way to the altar on the day they moved in, and once he found that the side door was always unlocked, the one next to the priest’s private office, George spent more time at the church than he did in the apartment.
He loved everything about the place. The music, the chanting, the silence, the incense, the candles, the order of things, and mostly the relief he felt when he entered. It became his own private sanctuary, his solace, his home. Since his parents were either fighting or working late hours or drinking until they passed out, neither of them seemed to mind or notice that their only son was becoming so pious. They didn’t say a word when the priest would let him stay over for meals or even sleep in the parish hall, or when he made arrangements for the boy to start parochial school. After all, it didn’t cost them anything. They were just glad not to have to worry about bus schedules or even teacher-parent meetings, since the priest handled them. George was out of their way, and that was all that seemed to matter to them.
George flourished in the church and in the parish school. In his early years as a student in public school, teachers had assumed something was wrong with the boy. He was too quiet, too sullen, too withdrawn, and they were always having him tested for disabilities or assessing him for special needs. One teacher thought he might be deaf. Another was convinced he was autistic. They would arrange for doctors and clinical trials, and as long as they were free and held during regular school hours, his parents never interfered. They didn’t share the teachers’ concerns about their son and yet didn’t mind the special attention. Since they weren’t