The Fancy Dancer

strange wavering shadows on the mural, making the Indians’ robes and feathers move as if alive.
    I wondered who the strange young man was.
    We didn’t often see somebody new appear in this church. It was more usual to see them disappear—to another state where there were better jobs, or to the cemetery.
    I flicked on the switch, and the old organ started to pulsate deep in its wind-chests. Now the whole building felt alive.
    The organ was supposed to be the finest in the state, finer even than the one in the Helena cathedral, which I’d also played. It had been imported from Germany as a gift to the church by the very Pawling family, silver-mine owners, whose descendant I’d argued with all afternoon. Its curlicued gold pipes and its banks of painted cherubs seemed more fit for an eighteenth-century German baroque church. Ever since the quake, the organ hadn’t been quite the same either—the vox humana and a few other stops were knocked out. I had lobbied in vain to have Father Vance get a doctor of infirm pipe organs to examine it. The church hadn’t even had a regular organist since old Mrs. Seckle took to her bed two years ago. So now the parishioners heard it only when I played it— which was during Father Vance’s high mass on Sunday and before my confessions. They told me they liked my playing—except when I did those awful modem things.
    I sat down and pulled out the stops for one of the few Bach fugues that I remembered. Then I glanced up into the flyspecked mirror over the console.
    The mirror gave the organist a clear view to the front, so he didn’t have to twist around like a pretzel to keep track of what the priest was doing at the altar. The strange young guy was right there in the mirror. He was sitting slumped over, playing nervously with his hat. I wondered if he was feeling poorly, or was crushed by some despair that I’d hear about shortly.
    It was one confession that I was looking forward to. Something in me rushed out to embrace him, and to say, “I’m here. I can help.”
    My hands came down on the yellowed ivory keys, for the opening voice of the fugue. Behind the dusty painted cherubs, the old pipes opened their throats and split the silence like a lovely earthquake. In the mirror, I could see the kneeling people turn and look up at me, wreathed in smiles. The young man turned and looked up too. When the others had turned back, he stayed twisted around, still looking up at me. I was glad he was listening.
    As the fugue grew and boiled in the church, I had a sudden rush of exhausted feeling.
    Ever since my own 7:30 mass that morning, I had 5
    been running around like a crazy man. With Father Vance so arthritic, I was the only priest within a fifty-mile radius of Cottonwood. I made half a dozen visits to parishioners’ homes. I worked with the boys’ football team, for which I doubled as chaplain and coach. I hassled with Mrs. Pawling about the money. I drove up the valley to the tiny community of Hem-ville, to give the last sacraments to a dying sheep-herder, and drove down the valley to Whalen to visit a sick old lady. I went over the bills, and had an argument with Father Vance about the size of my phone bill. There was no time to eat any lunch.
    Now the day came over me like a cloud shadow over a wheatfield, and I thought the buttons on the front of my cassock would fly right off. It was a pretty funny kind of exhaustion, because I was only twenty-eight, and built like a halfback, and I had no business being tired.
    The ambitious thought entered my head (it wasn’t the first time) that I wasn’t doing the right thing by wanting to serve God in a small town, through everyday folks. The right thing was to try to climb the diocesan ladder, to try for monsignor, maybe even for bishop. That way I would have more power to deal with the Father Vances of this world, and to help all the confused young people who were leaving the church or hesitating at the door.
    I put these thoughts down as venial sins of pride. I had already confessed these little sins to my confessor when he heard my monthly confession. I saved them up for my once-a-month trip to Helena to see my parents—my old confessor and spiritual director was there, teaching Thomist theology now at Carroll College.
    I kept looking at the young man in the mirror. He looked familiar—had I seen him before? I wondered what he was going to tell me. Was he truly sorry he’d balled his girl friend? Had he been guilty of