Advertisement
Published: January 20th 2008
Edit Blog Post
FICTION
CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 3
DONEGAN
Finbar received a magnificent education at Boston College.
Not formally, of course.
He had a gargantuan appetite for knowledge. He devoured facts and ideas gluttonously during the thirty-four years that he was employed there. No matter that he was a grounds keeper, a planter of roses, a fertilizer of fuchsia, a mower of lawns. He asked questions of students and professors alike, and listened to answers intently, his eyebrows knit in amazing concentration. He and the Jesuits were a perfect match.
He learned to use the library, reading voraciously. He scanned microfilm of old newspapers, attended lunchtime lectures, conquered computers, became facile with the nascent internet. When he retired, his girls bought him his own laptop and he searched topics like a scholar.
Finbar’s appetite was innate; it did not need cultivation. But he was shy when first employed at BC. He was a new immigrant, after all, with the muck of Ireland still on his boots. He would have considered himself highly unworthy to use the magnificent facilities, he being a lowly groundskeeper, if it were not for the man he met that cold day in April of 1967, just a few months into
FICTION
MORE TO COME his employ at Boston College.
Finbar was fertilizing rose bushes, cultivating the soil surrounding the still dormant plants. His thick hands were wrapped around a pitchfork, the feel so familiar to him. His head was down, absorbed in the task, feeling fortunate. His countrymen were forever reminding him of the masterful stroke of luck.
“By Jesus, you’ll be wantin’ to hang on to that job Finbar,” they said, their voices rising soprano-like with jealousy.
Every task he was given he performed to perfection. He brought with him his considerable knowledge as a farmer, but was careful to stay in the background, never to out shadow any superior, or any of the men who had worked there for years. He was happy to be used for his considerable strength whenever necessary, to move a boulder or heft a log, and he never criticized any botanical decisions, even if he was sure he knew a better way. He already had one daughter at home and another child on the way. Finbar knew the stakes.
Finbar was hefting a large bag of fertilizer out of his wheelbarrow when he heard a deep voice rise behind him, from someone passing on the walk that ran among the campus buildings.
“Weather reminds you of home I suspect,” the voice said.
Finbar, bent low with the weight of the bag, placed it on the cold soil. He straightened, brushing the dirt from his fingers and pulling at the brim of his cap as he turned. He immediately saw the Roman collar and then the flutter of the long black cassock in the wind.
“God morning Father,” he said, instinctively tipping his cap and asking “What was that you said?”
“Weather reminds you of home?”
Finbar laughed softly then answered, “I suppose it does at that Father, but to tell you the truth I haven’t given it a thought. It’s just me and the roses for the moment.”
The priest looked younger than Finbar, but in fact was ten years Finbar’s elder. He was a handsome man, with thick black hair that seemed barely combed, running in tumultuous waves over his large head. He had a ruddy complexion, as if he had been working outdoors, although Finbar knew this was unlikely. He looked more like an athlete or a famous American movie star than a priest. In fact the collar and cassock looked so terribly misplaced on this man that he seemed to be in costume. He had a kind, remarkably open face, the kind Finbar was drawn to immediately.
“Joe Donegan,” the priest said, stepping forward and reaching out to Finbar, their hands meeting in the cold air above the wet clods of earth.
“A pleasure to meet you Father,” Finbar said, “Finbar Joyce is my name.”
“Finbar Joyce?” the priest said, “Now that’s a name to live up to. Where are you from in Ireland?”
“Oh, it’s little town you’ve surely never heard of Father, Cornamona. It’s in the west.”
“Beautiful place. Joyce’s Country,” the priest said. “Are you related to James?”
Finbar looked at this man carefully. The fact that he not only knew the little village of Cornamona, but also knew that the area was known as “Joyce’s Country,” earned him immediate respect in Finbar’s mind.
“No relation,” Finbar laughed. “Sure there’s no end to the number of Joyce’s in that part of the country Father.”
“Joe’s fine Finbar. Just call me Joe.”
And so it was that Finbar and Father Donegan began their long and interesting friendship. Tutors to one another it might be said. Finbar, however, could never bring himself to call the priest “Joe,” no matter how much the cleric persisted. Joe Donegan, although totally devoted to the priesthood, had a difficult time with the title. He was a worldly man with a very unusual pedigree for a Jesuit.
He first studied science and philosophy at Fordham University in New York, then went to dental school. His father was a dentist, and as it happens in some families, the profession, indeed the business, was to be generational. Joe Donegan joined the Army during the Korean War and practiced dentistry as an officer for four years. His passion, however, was always spiritual, and as long as he could not pursue that totally, he was an unfulfilled man. It had nothing to do with a dream of being a parish priest, or a missionary, or even an ascetic. He yearned to delve deep into the mysteries of faith. He had a desire to mine the metaphysical the way scientists, his contemporaries, yearned to blast apart the atom and see its soul. Mystery was Joe Donegan’s master, and the Catholic religion, at its deepest level, was where he wanted to dwell. Joe Donegan was a uniquely brilliant man, not just as a man might display brilliance as a chemist or a physicist, or even a musician. After he mastered a subject, and he was master of more than a few, he was driven to weave it through other subjects like a tapestry. He was determined to find the common threads, or to speak medically or musically as Joe Donegan often did, to palpate the separate pulses, to hear the various chords and find rhythm and harmonic convergence. The Mystery.
The Jesuit who first interviewed Joe Donegan recognized the steeped quality of the man sitting across from him. The old priest was like a fine chef who had been brought the most amazing ingredient, one for which he had been searching for years. Jesuits are like that.
So Father Donegan, despite the fact that his mind so often dwelt in ethereal territory, made little distinction between the otherworldly and the worldly. And there was certainly nothing more worldly than this vision of Finbar Joyce breaking up clods of spring earth with his pitchfork. It was not difficult to tell that Finbar was an Irishman. Certainly not for Joseph Donegan. After all his mother’s maiden name was Murphy, and she herself came from the village of Touramkeady, just a few miles from Finbar’s own Cornamona.
Finbar and Joe Donegan slowly established a bond that was more like one of brothers. The priest, who forever missed the secular friendships of his military days, always sought Finbar out. Finbar, familiar only with the cold distance that existed between parishioner and pastor, appreciated the honest ease with which their friendship developed. Moreover, he was ceaselessly intrigued by how Joe Donegan could hop between the secular and religious worlds with dazzling fluidity, like the nimblest of step dancers, He could easily imagine Joe Donegan filling a gold chalice with whiskey, and then solidly explaining the lack of any contradiction. But what especially thrilled Finbar was Donegan’s unveiled joy in answering the mountains of questions that Finbar presented to him.
In the evening after work, as Finbar walked home down Commonwealth Avenue, he often pondered his luck in finding such a friend - a priest no less - and the tears came.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.667s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 8; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0238s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb