contact he’s had in five years who hasn’t had to pay him. Why, God only knows.” Father Hands studied Dickon’s face.
“Take the rest of the day off,” he said to Dickon. “You’ve got some praying and penance to do.” He saw a student approaching. She often came to debate theology with either Dickon or Father Hands. “Not today, Ophelia,” he said. “Reverend Shayne is not well.”
“No, I’m not, Ms. Payne,” Dickon forced out. “I think I will go home, Father Hands.” He got up slowly. Pressure still squeezed his chest until he thought his lungs would collapse. “Please excuse me,” he said, and walked toward the door and the impossibly bright sunshine burning outside the Eleemosynary Eel.
La Señora was waiting for him when he got to the Mission. She looked stern and her eyes glittered. Dickon thought of the three Fates, especially Lachesis, who wields the shears that cut the thread of a man’s life.
“Come in to my office,” she said. Her tone was neutral, as if she had forced all feeling from her voice. “Sit down,” she said, indicating the chair she reserved for guests and interviews.
“I’ve just got off the phone with Father Hands,” she said. “He has told me quite a tale involving you and a male prostitute.” She frowned. Dickon felt a blush begin somewhere in his bowels and rise up his body to flush his face. He sat still, waiting for a blow to fall.
“Was this your first foray into such a relationship?” La Señora’s voice had an edge to it now that brooked no evasion.
“Yes,” Dickon said. He choked the word out and cleared his throat. “I didn’t know Vin was a hustler.” He looked up at La Señora. “I thought Vin was an answer to a prayer.”
“Oh? Explain.” La Señora’s eyes were steadily studying her fingernails.
“When I went to see Dr. Sicknell, she told me I was homosexual. And should be locked up for it.”
“Yes. I remember your caustic comment on her compassion in your report to the Presbytery that you showed me.”
“I should have been nicer.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, she had a point. I’d tried to change myself for years. I put a lot of prayer and psychology into changing. Soon after I saw Dr. Sicknell, I just asked God to give me a sign, so I’d know whether I should be forever celibate, find a boyfriend, or try another girlfriend. I thought Vin was the sign.”
“Did the sex seem natural to you?”
“Yes, more than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“You got your answer, then. Dangerous thing, leaving things up to a god. Too much truth involved, I think.” She smiled at Dickon, a smile at once rueful and kindly.
“Do you have any way to make a living besides being a preacher?”
“No.”
“Look for one, then. You will probably need it at some point. Not because I’m going to say anything. I’m nobody to judge somebody else’s way of loving. Leave that to whatever gods may be. The world’s a dangerous place, Dickon Shayne, and sometimes you are awfully naïve. Go to your room. You’ve got room and board here, as long as you need them, in exchange for your work with the derelicts we serve. Don’t worry about Father Hands. He’s got too much darkness in his own past to pass trouble along for anybody else.” She waved toward the door.
“Get some sleep, brood, weep, whatever you need to do. Just don’t get drunk. Our clients do enough of that.”
Dickon got up to go. “Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He left the office and went to his room.
Trial
Dickon’s year of introspection had been tumultuous. He grieved he could not share so much of his spiritual growth, especially with Vin. Presbytery had no tolerance for that kind of spiritual growth. He had worded his Statement of Growth very carefully. He hoped it was sufficient.
Presbytery had gone through another of its frequent re-organizations, and now the Ministerial Commission consisted of three permanent members and two members appointed for a year. The three permanent members were Reverend Phil E. Buster, Reverend Shea Mauna Hughes, and Ruling Elder Andy Maime. Anne Tenor and Bobbo Link were no longer part of the Commission. In their places were the Reverend Thruston Pyston, a beaming blond side of beef, and Ruling Elder Chuck Lett, a pinched cruet of vinegar, neither of whom Dickon knew. Thruston Pyston had only recently joined the Presbytery from the Central Valley, and Chuck Lett was serving his first term as an ordained elder. Dickon wondered how two such newcomers had gotten appointments to one of the Presbytery’s most sensitive committees.
Something cold wandered through the Sunday School room where the Commission was doing its business. It clashed oddly with the frolicking lambs and beaming children pictured on the pale green walls. It seemed to settle in an icy halo around the print of Salsman’s Head of Christ mounted over the door.
“Let us pray,” Phil began, bowing his head. Everyone else in the room bowed their heads. “Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, grant that we do justice here today, to glorify Thy name. Amen.”
“Let it be recorded,” Phil intoned, “that this meeting has opened with prayer.” Andy Maime made a note on the yellow legal pad before him.
“Dickon Shayne,” Phil went on, “you have had the year this Commission promised you for introspection and self-examination. You have submitted, as we requested, a paper describing your spiritual exploration over the past year. We have all read that document, and prayerfully considered it.” Dickon wondered why Phil had to orate to a few people around a table in the same orotund oratorical style he used for a congregation of one thousand plus on Sunday morning.
“In addition we have consulted your employer, Señora Salvación Mandor, as to her estimate of your progress. She thinks you have done well.” Dickon responded with a brief smile to Thurston Pyston’s grin that seemed permanently frozen on his fleshy lips. No one else smiled.
“We have also received information from other sources,” Phil went on, “information that troubles us deeply.” He coughed into his hand; some frog had interrupted the flow of oil in his throat. He extracted a snowy handkerchief from his dark suit coat pocket and coughed again, using the handkerchief to cover his mouth.
“Perhaps you will continue, Shea?” he said. “I’m having allergy troubles.”
“Certainly.” The lace Reverend Hughes wore with her black dress today was either ecru or deliberately coffee-stained to resemble ecru. It was uneven in color. Her pigeon pout bosom heaved as she sighed.
“We have first the report of Dr. Senda Sicknell,” Shea said. “She notes in her interview your distress over your divorce, and pays particular attention to your repeated statements about not finding another woman to replace your wife.”
Dickon raised an eyebrow. He knew what was coming. He stared at the frolicking lambs and found no help in them.
“Dr. Sicknell,” Shea said, homing in on her point like a falcon dropping on a rabbit, “suggests in the strongest terms this attitude indicates a latent homosexuality.”
“So she said to me,” Dickon replied with a flash of anger. “She also said I should be locked up in a mental ward because of it. I disagreed.” He spoke through tight lips. He was keeping his control as smooth as he could.
“She notes you were not receptive to therapy on this point.” Andy Maime scratched notes on his legal pad. His voice was dry as desert sand.
“I thought she was out of line,” Dickon said, “in her approach, and I don’t agree with her assessment that homosexuality is a mental disorder.”
“It is a sin, not a sickness,” Thruston Pyston said, his voice a pale golden echo of honey.
“And one you are guilty of,” Chuck Lett said as he thumped his fist on the table. His voice was gravel and grating hinges.
“What?” Dickon said. The attack was a complete surprise to him. None of these people could know about Vin Decatur. That episode in his life was completely distinct from all the rest of i
t, and thoroughly private.
“We have a document accusing you,” Phil said, his voice box recovered. “From your ex-wife.”
“Vanna? She communicated with the Presbytery? How did you make that happen?”
“She wrote voluntarily. Read the document, Andy.”
“We had offered her the chance to tell her side of the breakup,” Andy said. He spoke slowly. “She responded several months after your last session with us. She wrote this letter to us.”
Commissioners of Presbytery, I have been reluctant to respond to your inquiry about my broken marriage with the Reverend Dickon Shayne only because I wish him no more harm than he has already caused himself.
Briefly, while the law allowed me to cite incompatible differences, you should know that Reverend Shayne’s sexual predilections do not tend toward the normal, but toward the perverse. He has fixed his affections on men. I did not understand this was the root cause of our disharmony until some months after I had chosen to leave him. I observed him one night at a restaurant in the City in the company of a certain Vincent Decatur. I would not have thought much about this, except that this same Vincent Decatur came to me soon afterward to consult me in my role as a City social worker.
It seems Reverend Shayne, whom Mr. Decatur did not know was my former husband, had seduced him into a perverted sexual relationship. Sadly, I suspect Reverend Shayne is not suited to ministry in the Presbytery.
Andy Maime looked up. “She gave