Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

with fear when his sister, little *

Siobhan, took the controls of the Cessna. She had waited long for this golden moment and flew it high and down into Troublesome’s dirt runway flawlessly.

Another surprise—an apartment, Scan’s apartment, had been added to the ranch house! It had everything from his own vehicle to a futuristic sound system, to a mighty fireplace, to a veranda which afforded a grand vista.

At the fire, Father Scan’s initial fire, they gathered around. Siobhan unlaced her brother’s shoes and slipped his feet into a pair of woollies. He groaned with delight, and soon the smoke of his pipe danced with the smoke of the fire.

“How’s it going to go?” Dan asked.

“Cardinal Watts is the kind of man you want to work hard for.”

Scan sipped a rare velvety cognac, audible in his contentment, then stared from one to the other.

“Siobhan, you’ve been back to Brooklyn how many times?”

“Eight, ten. I don’t know exactly.”

“Everyone glories in the life you’ve made in Colorado. But that room at the end of the hall stays locked.”

“You know what happened,” Dan said. “For a time I traveled to God knows where to see fertility doctors. I even dropped my pants for Jewish doctors. They all said sterility from mumps is rare, and there is a chance I may become whole again.”

“How long do you plan to wait?”

Dan’s paws fell into his lap, and he lowered his eyes. “We may be ready to adopt,” he said in a whisper.

“We looked into our Catholic agency. Somehow, it seems very risky, getting an ill child, and after months, maybe years, of waiting,” Siobhan said.

Father Scan tapped out his pipe. “I did some investigating of my own,”

he said. “Cardinal Watts’ closest aide is a Monsignor Gallico. He is

the diocese fixer. When I told the cardinal of your situation, he

said, “Why don’t you talk it over with the mon signor Both of them tensed noticeably.

“You don’t have to do much more than meet Monsignor Gallico to realize he is a wheeler-dealer, a real Jesuit. In the past few weeks he showed me a number of infants, but I just couldn’t square any of them in terms of the ranch and the mountains. Just before I was to fly out here, Gallico called me, very excited. One particular baby he had been tracking was found. The child had lived with his birth parents for its first year and was placed in a convent with special attention told to be given. I have a suspicion that the mon signor might have known about this child all along and showed me the others as a straw man. You know the church, we’ve got to play out our mysteries and secrets.”

Siobhan roused herself more than once. Father Sean filled and lit his pipe again.

“What do you know about this child?” Dan asked tentatively.

Sean shrugged. “The church has a massive bureaucracy for handling orphans, welfare, and foster homes. I am sad to report that most of our infants up for adoption are from unwed and often underage mothers. Fathers gone. The trick is,” he went on, “if you don’t take a newly born, you should know as much as possible about the child’s first year.”

“How so?” Dan asked, puzzled.

“In the first year human-to-human touch is paramount. It is nearly always the key to future behavior. I do know that this was a wanted child and the object of great affection. He trusts the nuns, who do a great deal of fawning over him.”

“Sounds to me like the mon signor might have known this child from the beginning,” Dan said. “Is he the father, Sean?”

“I don’t know. I am barred from asking. However, when Gallico brought

this child to see me, there was no further reason to wonder why he is

so special. He’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s cuddly. The child is

wonderful with the infants at the orphanage, a little gentleman. There is a glow about him I can’t put into words.”

Sean dug into his worn wallet, torn and with green spots from African fungus. Siobhan reminded herself to get him a new one tomorrow. Sean held the billfold up to the light and drew out a photograph.

“Oh, God, he’s beautiful!” Siobhan cried. Dan knew, from her reaction, it was a done deal, beyond his input or personal reaction. He took the photograph and he, too, melted.

“I’m going to have to ask you, Father Sean, are we to know nothing about his parents?”

“Nothing.”

“How was Monsignor Gallico mixed up in this?” Dan wondered aloud. “I love my church. The ranch is filled with shrines. But I don’t fancy getting mixed up in secrets and deceit. Are they covering the child so because it was conceived by a priest or a nun?”

“ClanI” Siobhan snapped. “You know the rules.”

“It will be pretty much the same with any child you adopt,” Father Sean said.

Dan took the photograph again. He never again wanted to see the anguish on Siobhan’s face when she had learned her husband was sterile.

“It may sound cruel, but the more you and a child know of its past, the more you open your doors for strangers to come and live in the house. I’ve been there when children meet a birth parent, and it can shatter a life. It wrecks dreams that should be left as dreams.”

“And who makes that judgment?”

“Centuries of a priesthood charged with men’s and women’s most sacred and secret problems.”

“Secrets to the grave. Lies to the grave.”

“If you don’t know and tell your son you don’t know, you’ll be telling him the truth.”

“God damned, Galileo’s Jesuit double-talk.”

“Dan,” Siobhan said, “what is tomorrow night and the nights thereafter going to be like if we turn this down?”

“I can’t tell you how many times I passed the fishing hole and saw myself with my son. How many times we were at the ball games together. How many times . , . these things are always complicated, aren’t they, Father?”

“Life is complicated.”

“All right, Siobhan, we have a son,” Dan said.

“I’m glad, and let his life begin the moment he steps foot on the ranch. I caution you that sometimes a child’s drive to find his birth parents is insatiable. The only thing you can do is raise him with wisdom and love. His life can be made so full, his need to know may simply fade. Make it so he won’t want any parents but you.”

Dan leaned against the fireplace. The mantel, the picture gallery of all Irish homes, was empty.

“God has given us everything,” Dan said. “We can’t take our failings out on the child. What is his name?”

“The sisters call him Patrick.”

“That’s Irish enough.”

“Patrick O’Connell,” Siobhan said three times over.

“You know,” Dan said, “in the Corps we almost entirely knew each other by our last name. Do you suppose we might ;| call our son Quinn Patrick O’Connell?”

“That was in my line of thinking as well,” his wife said.

WASHINGTON, D.C.” 2008

It is nearly three o’clock. Nothing makes time pass more slowly than waiting for a cold pot to boil.

“Get me Whipple,” I ordered over the phone.

“Whipple here, Mr. President.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just a few minutes ago the O’Connell people called a news conference for tomorrow at one P.M. Rocky time.”

“Sounds like O’Connell is burning the midnight oil.”

“Yes, sir. The press corps is heading for Troublesome Mesa en masse.”

“Contact my staff advisers. We’ll watch the press conference in the Situation Room. Christ, what’s going on?”

“A lot of rumors. One here is interesting. A New York Times correspondent, June Siddell, spotted someone she knew debarking at the Denver airport. She got to the manifest and confirmed the passenger was a fairly well-known police detective by the name of Ben Horowitz. He was met by O’Connell’s staff, and they headed from the airport in the direction of Troublesome Mesa. Reporters at Troublesome confirm Horowitz’s arrival, where he was taken straight up to the O’Connell ranch.”