Ed Gorman - Save The Last Dance For Me

Reverend Courtney was sitting on his church steps talking to a dowager in a summer frock and a large summer hat. They looked quite handsome, the church of native stone magnificent in the afternoon light, the large front lawn well-tended and very green, a watercolor cover from The New Yorker perhaps, even a breeze cooperating by fluttering the long blue ribbon that trailed from the dowager’s hat.

Her name was Helen Prentice, and she and her husband were not only wealthy but also generous. There wasn’t a hospital, library, or auditorium within a hundred miles in any direction that the Prentices hadn’t contributed substantially to.

“Hello, Sam,” Helen said, extending her hand. We shook. I’d met her at various soirees at Judge Whitney’s house.

“Afternoon, Helen.”

She checked her watch. “I need to run.”

Courtney, now in dark slacks and a white shirt, started to raise himself from the church step but she stopped him with a gloved white hand.

“The last time I checked, Reverend, I wasn’t royalty. There’s no need to stand.” She smiled at me. “George and I really enjoyed sitting with you at the Judge’s dinner table last month. You’re a very funny young man.” Then back to Courtney. “See you in the morning at the ten o’clock service.”

When she was out of earshot, or so he assumed, he said, “There goes one very rich lady, McCain.”

“I’d think that a man who’d dedicated himself to following in the footsteps of Jesus might also point out that she’s a very decent person, too. Very generous with her riches.”

“Nice to know you’re not afraid of being pompous.”

I said, “How was the food at The House today?”

He wasn’t intimidated. “I knew you were an unsuccessful lawyer. I guess I’d forgotten that you were an unsuccessful gumshoe, too.”

“You and Sara Hall just happened to be driving around last night and ended up at Muldaur’s church completely by coincidence?”

“That’s right, McCain.”

He looked vital and modern standing against the massive medieval-style doors of the church.

“I’m sorry I got you Catholics in a tizzy by quoting Dr. Peale. It’s a free country, you know. Or so they tell me, anyway.”

“Right now, I’m more interested in you and Sara Hall. What were you really doing out there last night?”

He smiled. He had great teeth, of course.

Movie-star teeth. “As I said, I’m told it’s a free country. Or didn’t they teach you that in that second-rate law school you went to?”

He came down off the steps and walked over to where a rake leaned against an elm. From his back pocket he took a pair of brown work gloves, cinched them on, and started raking.

As I walked back to my office, I noticed leaflets on car windows, placed under windshield wipers. A block before I reached my place I saw a boy of maybe twelve toting an armload of the leaflets and getting punched in the face by a much bigger kid. The Flannagan boy. Flannagan was no doubt displeased with the anti-Catholic nature of the leaflets. But mostly he just liked punching kids smaller than him. Flannagan, who’d played fullback on the Catholic school junior varsity squad until they realized he didn’t have any talent, was born to bully.

I got between them and gave Flannagan a shove.

“What’re you stoppin’ me for, McCain? You see that shit he’s got about Catholics? He says we ain’t Americans.”

“You’re a lot bigger than he is,

Flannagan.”

“I don’t care. He still deserves to be punched.”

Nice to know that Muldaur’s work was living on beyond him. He’d brought the town to a boil in life -andthe water was still hot now that he’d died.

“Who told you to pass these out?” I said to the kid. He wore bib overalls with a striped T-shirt. He had freckles and a cowlick and a squirt of blood in his right nostril from Flannagan’s fist. And bare feet. I was surprised he wasn’t dancing a jig.

“God told me to,” he said.

I almost laughed.

“God,” Flannagan said. “My ass.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that. Dirty, I mean,” the kid said. “My mom says Catholics and Jews talk like that all the time.”

Now I’ll double back on what I said earlier about the foolish side of evil. There’s nothing more frightening than a youngster who has been completely indoctrinated by his parents. He’s as soulless as a robot and as deadly as an assassin. You can’t reason with him because the “on” switch in his brain doesn’t operate. His parents turned it off permanently long ago.

“Why don’t you let me take those?” I said.

I reached for the leaflets and he jumped back a foot.

“No! You’re a dirty Catholic just like Flannagan here.”

“You call me a dirty Catholic again and I’ll knock you out.”

“Shut up, Flannagan,” I said. “Kid, I want the leaflets.”

“They’re mine and you can’t take them away from me.”

“Let me handle him, McCain,”

Flannagan said, “c’mon.”

And with that, not unexpectedly, the kid took off running down the sidewalk. Flannagan lunged, as if he were going after him. I grabbed him by the shoulder.

“I should be able to hit him if I want to,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s one of your inalienable rights. Punching kids who weigh forty pounds less than you do.”

“He hates Catholics.”

“Or at least his parents do.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

His moon face tightened into a sneer. “You mind if I go now, your royal highness?”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Flannagan.”

There are some people you just don’t want on your side.

As I climbed into my ragtop and headed home, I tried not to think about some of the feelings that Jack Kennedy seemed to stir up. Otherwise reasonable, decent people still had their bias toward Catholics in office. William Jennings Bryan always said that he wished he hadn’t run for president because it taught him just how deep anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish bias ran in this country. Things had improved since then but, as with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, even respectable ministers felt safe in talking about Kennedy as a stalking horse for the pope.

Then there were the unrespectable people-the Klan, the Nazi sympathizers left over from the American Bundt days of the big war, the small-town radio ministers, the pamphleteers of every description. There’d been an article in Time magazine a few years back noting that any fund-raising letter or pamphlet with the word “Jew,” “Communist,” “Catholic,” or

“Negro” in its headline would earn twice as much money as a letter or pamphlet without. Judging by the entertainment shows on the tube, everything was just okey-dokey here in the land of Lincoln. But we knew better, didn’t we?

I parked in back of my apartment house, meaning to wash my car the way I usually did on late Saturday afternoons. Mrs. Goldman had a nice two-stall garage with a hose.

I was about halfway to the house when I heard the music. It wasn’t all that loud but it was an odd choice for Mrs. Goldman. Miles

Davis. I wondered when she’d gotten interested in jazz. She liked Broadway tunes and singers like Patti Page and Kay Starr.

I had just reached the stairs that run up the back and lead to my apartment when I realized that the music was coming from my place, not Mrs. Goldman’s.

The windows were open and so, partially, was the back door. I went inside.

She sat in the big leather armchair. She wore a white blouse that displayed her lovely breasts discreetly, a pair of dark blue shorts that did equally nice things for her long legs, and a pair of white tennis shoes.

She had a tanned, tight body and that impish damned face that could go sentimental on you all of a sudden and make you sad. I’d never had a crush on a married woman before and I didn’t want to now. But here she was in my apartment. There was a half-full bottle of JandBut scotch and a Peter Pan peanut-butter glass sitting on the arm of the chair.