Paul Theroux: My Secret History

The correct name was Our Lady’s Sodality, but as it was all women I usually saw it written in my mind as Our Ladies’ Sodality.

“Beautiful day for a boat ride,” he said, and switched on the car radio.

My father’s old Dodge did not have a radio. Father Furty’s was a fancy-looking one, and I was grateful for it, because it took the place of conversation.

“Come-on-a my house,” it played.

It seemed messy, sinful, human.

“What kind of a tie is that?”

I had worn it to impress him. I had bought it in a joke shop on School Street with my birthday money.

“Look,” I said, and squeezed the battery pack in my pocket. “It lights up.”

“It’s fabulous,” Father Furty said, and laughed — his face swelled up when he laughed, as it had when he prayed. “I want one of them for myself.”

We moved slowly through the sunny streets, the car filling with heat, and the radio still going.

“I love this tune,” Father Furty said. And he sang, “Skylark — Have you seen a valley green with spring?”

The radio replied, “Where my heart can go a-journeying—”

He was more tuneful singing this than he had been singing the high mass. I sat listening, enjoying it. We were in Charlestown, in heavy traffic, and the car was growing hotter as we crawled along, the metal and paint and even the yellow veiny plastic of the dashboard giving off the scorched odor of heat.

“What do you need a gun for?” he said suddenly.

“Breaking bottles. Target practice.”

“And what sort of work do you do?”

This questioned embarrassed me, because he was continuing the conversation we had started in the confessional.

“Paper route?” he said, pronouncing it rowt instead of root .

“I’m a lockerboy, up at Wright’s Pond.”

“You brought a book, I see.”

He twisted his head around in order to get a look at the paperback in my lap.

“Danny,” he said. “Like it?”

I riffled the pages of the Inferno , not knowing what to say. I saw my underlining and stopped riffling. If he saw the ink he might ask me what I had marked, and why. That passes shit to the bung , one said, and another Spews forth his stinking vomit .

“Hell’s shaped like a funnel,” I said at last.

“That what Danny says?”

His hand went to the radio.

“It’s a classic,” he said, and then a song seemed to come out of his forehead, “Blue Skies — smiling at me—”

Afterwards he lit a cigarette and kept driving, exhaling through his clenched teeth. I loved the smell of tobacco smoke — cigarettes especially; it lingered in my face and found its way into my head and made me dizzy. Father Furty’s brand was called “Fatima”—a yellow-orange pack with a woman’s thin face on the front.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, seeing me staring at his pack of cigarettes on the seat. “No, it’s not Our Lady.”

Father Furty’s boat was named Speedbird —white with blue trim, and before we cast off he shut his eyes and put his big hands together and said, “Let us pray.”

His sleeves flapped, he looked gray and sorrowful, the wind stirred his short hair; but when his lips stopped moving and he blessed himself and said “Amen,” he began to smile and seemed intensely happy.

He was tidy and fussy in a boat-owner’s way, and he had the skipper’s habit of coiling every line and clearing the decks and putting things away—“Let’s stow this,” he said, and he also said “starboard” and “port” and the rest of them.

What made all of this somewhat unusual were the women, six or so, from the Sodality — they were dressed as if for church, they wore hats and pearls, they carried black plastic handbags.

Father Furty said, “Stow the baloney sandwiches aft,” and the women giggled. He said, “We’ll keep the sodas fo’rard.”

The women laughed even harder at this.

“We don’t call it soda,” I said, because I hated to see him being laughed at by those women. “We call it tonic.”

“Tonic?” He laughed so hard he started to cough. Whenever he coughed he lit a cigarette, always a Fatima.

When we were under way, plowing through the harbor under a blue sky, Father Furty had a peaceful, distant look on his face. I was happy, too. On this boat everything seemed possible, the world was simpler and brighter, and Boston was not a hot dirty city but a much bigger place, rising out of the sea — with a huge and busy harbor, and islands; it was visited by vast ships. I saw that the city was also the water around it — so it was freer and had more space.

Father Furty said, “There are so many islands in this harbor — that’s another reason you get so many strange currents running around here.”

I thought he was going to say more. Any other priest would have. But Father Furty did not say of the islands and the currents They’re like life . They were no more than they seemed; they represented only themselves — which was plenty. They did not need any other significance.

He said you had to be careful here, what with all the shipping, but that there was nothing to be afraid of.

“She’s a sturdy boat. She’s all mahogany.” That made him more human too, calling the boat she .

The Sodality women had also brought food; and it was clear that there was too much of it. Each woman had a basket or a bowl with salad or chicken or a homemade cake or cookies. Mrs. DePalma, Chicky’s mother, had a parcel of cold cuts and pickles which she arranged in a fan on a plate. Mrs. Prezioso had stuffed peppers. Mrs. Corrigan had tunafish casserole, and on the top, she said proudly, instead of crumbs she had sprinkled crushed potato chips. Mrs. Palumbo brought celery sticks with cream cheese pressed into the grooves.

“From my own garden,” Mrs. Prezioso said, and fed a stuffed pepper to Father Furty.

The other women urged him to have a bite of their food. They did not eat anything themselves — they said they weren’t hungry.

Father Furty said, “Aren’t I a lucky guy?”

He said it as if he really meant it, and he was chewing something the whole time. The women stayed in or near the cabin, admiring him, as he steered Speedbird through the outer harbor.

“Shipping lanes,” he said. “Very tricky.”

He inhaled smoke, drank some Moxie and then exhaled the smoke. “See. I keep it in my lungs, so I can swallow.” He tried to blow smoke rings at Mrs. Palumbo’s request, but couldn’t. “Too much wind,” he said.

The women giggled when he did something funny, and they screamed when the spray flew up and wet them. They wore good shoes, but tottered on them. They wet their blouses, and Mrs. Corrigan got spray on her hat and the salt dried and sparkled on her veil. They offered to help, but Father Furty would not let them.

“This is my first mate,” he said, meaning me. “His tie lights up.” He made me flash the bulbs for them. “Andy, get me my other chart of the harbor.”

The women did not like this, I could tell, and they resented my being there. Several times I was in the cabin, and Mrs. Hogan or Mrs. DuCane pushed me aside and said, “Show me how to steer, Father!”

Each time I backed up and started climbing the ladder, but before I took two steps I heard Father Furty’s voice.

“Stick around, Andy. You’re my right-hand man.”

I could sense waves of anger coming at me from the women, like an odor in wiggly lines.

“He’s reading Danny,” Father Furty said.

They didn’t care. They showed no interest at all in my book.

We moored the boat for a while near an island and during a lull in the conversation, Mrs. DuCane said, “Tell us about the sacrifice of the mass, Father. It’s so complicated.”