The Fancy Dancer

life is in danger, and you talk to her mother about your sacred obligations. I have a notion to have you both prosecuted for withholding information from the police. Especially priests like you who say nothing about the immoral books in our school.”
    Father Vance lifted his eyebrows. “St. Mary’s does not have an imprimatur on what books can be put in the library, or sold in the Safeway ..
    Mrs. Shoup turned to me, her eyes blazing. For the first time in my life, I looked into the kind of eyes that must have lighted the faggots in the Middle Ages.
    “Father Meeker,” she said, “you are one of the frivolous young priests that our seminaries turn out nowadays. You have no sense of what’s right and what’s human. I intend to expose you if it’s the last thing I ever do in this town.”
    She stormed out, and her pipe-smoking husband strolled absently out after her.
    Father Vance looked at me and lifted his brows again. At that moment, I came close to a feeling of affection for the old man.
    “With laymen like that,” he said, “who the hell needs the Holy Office?”
    But the incident troubled me. I now had a deadly enemy in the town—one who made the school system, the newspaper, even the police cringe.
    a a a
    On Wednesday evening, Vidal called me up.
    “I’m okay now,” he said. “When can I come see you?”
    Checking my appointment book, I found it booked up solid through the weekend.
    “Tell you what,” said Vidal. “Why don’t you have breakfast with me tomorrow morning? I always eat at Trina’s about eight-thirty.”
    Trina’s Cafe was on the bar side of Main Street, about five doors north of the movie theater. Behind the silver-and-red name TRINA’S painted on the dusty window stood a rubber plant so big that Adam and Eve must have shoplifted it out of the garden of Eden. Inside, in the pink glare of the fluorescent lights, at the big formica tables, all sorts of people got a big breakfast under their belts.
    Having breakfast with someone in Cottonwood is as solemn a rite as having lunch or dinner in the big cities. The only difference is, no liquor is served. Ranchers and farmers, especially, have learned that it is the one time of day when they might be around town. Over the ham and eggs, real estate deals are closed, cattle bought and sold, horses discussed, sheepshearers contracted, ranch hands hired, farm machinery ordered. When the wheeling and dealing is done and the second cup of coffee is poured, everybody settles back for a discussion of the terrible state of the world.
    When I walked into Trina’s the next morning, Vidal was already there.
    He was already having a cup of coffee, and pushed out a chair for me with his foot. He looked at my trousers and turtleneck sweater.
    “What?” he said. “No skirt during the day?”
    Vidal ate there every morning, so the waitress didn’t have to ask him what he wanted. She brought him a platter of bacon and frijoles and eggs over light and extra toast.
    “I’ll have the same,” I told her, “only with fried eggs and hold the frijoles.”
    After first looking casually over my shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to read the title, I pushed the little yellow booklet across the table to Vidal. The nearest men were three tables away, and they were talking in loud voices about the fifty-mile Helena-Cottonwood endurance race for horses that was going to be a feature of the Cottonwood rodeo and fair this September.
    “Did you ever see this?” I asked.
    After a deliberate pause, Vidal also raised his eyes to make the same sort of paranoid reconnaissance around the cafe. Then he settled back in his comer and looked at it.
    “I never read any theology and stuff,” he said. “All I know was how I was made to feel. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I tried to talk about it to a priest that I really liked and trusted. But he screamed and yelled and abused me so much that he scared me off. I really felt betrayed.”
    He read the booklet right through, while his eggs got cold on the platter. The waitress brought my order, and I started eating. Now and then Vidal made a wry face, or gave a soft snort. One of the ranchers at the nearby table, a big man in a tan hat, went over to the jukebox. After pondering a little, he put in a quarter. The jukebox lit up, and Patti Page started to sing ‘The Tennessee Waltz.”
    Vidal finished the booklet.
    “This thing blows my mind,” he said.
    “Well, if you want me to help you, this is what