The Fancy Dancer

spot?” he said.
    “Yeah, and no Mrs. Shoup around,” I said.
    The hot sun beat delightfully through my cassock. It was amazing how fast my feeling of physical wellbeing could come back when I got away from St, Mary’s.
    I looked around. A little ditch of sparkling green water ran along the edge of the field, past the trees. The field had been mowed, and the grass lay drying in windrows. The men would come back and bale it in a day or two, if the good weather held. But right now no one was around. The air had that classic smell of drying clover, alfalfa and wild grass.
    “It’s not bad,” I said grinning.
    Vidal was looking at my cassock, laughing. I looked at it too. It was gray with dust. We both howled.
    “I’ll have to get into my clean one before Father Vance sees that,” I said.
    Feeling silly as a little kid, I ran gently off across the field, jumping over the windrows. Vidal chased after me. We started playing tag. As we tried to dodge each other, our shoes would slip on the stubble, and one of us would fall flat. In no time, the curate of St. Mary’s was not only dustier, but stuck with bits of dry grass.
    We wound up having a wrestling match on the
    86
    ground, gasping and laughing our heads off. Since we were pretty evenly matched, neither of us could keep the other one down. Finally we gave up and just lay there, tangled together, Vidal half on top of me. Our arms were around each other, and we were panting.
    The July sun poured down on us from a cloudless sky. His whole body seemed to pulsate against mine. Even his thigh, which lay heavily across my legs, moved with a deep, tidal rhythm. His head lay on my chest, and the breeze stirred his hair against my face. I could feel the sweaty heat of him through my clothes. A dizzy contentment went over me like a single gust of breeze.
    But then it passed. Somewhere back in my mind were the urgencies of who I was.
    “We better eat,” I whispered. “I gotta get back.”
    Slowly we got up and brushed ourselves off.
    We sat under the little aspen trees, and leaned on their gnarled green trunks. The leaves fluttered and twisted in the breeze in their typical way, making a shade that seemed to sparkle with light. We could smell the moist earth along the ditch.
    Vidal’s sack yielded two cans of beer, still cold, and four meat sandwiches made to go at the drugstore counter near the garage. We ate and drank, not saying much. Vidal was sitting close to me. When he finished, he stretched and yawned. Then he lay down against me again, and pillowed his head on my chest.
    “Shut-eye time,” he said.
    I laughed a little. “Nothing doing. We have to leave in a couple of minutes.”
    His hair still had grass stuck in it, so I brushed it out. The waves and loose curls were hot and had a rainbow iridescence where the sunlight dappled them. When the grass was gone, I just ran my fingers through the curls gently. Vidal’s eyes were closed.
    “Did you hear me?” I said.
    “You’re doing a good job of putting me to sleep.”
    He slid one hand up and rubbed my arm in its black sleeve, slowly, fondly. I studied his broken black fingernails and remembered seeing those fingers clenching through the lattice of the confessional.
    “Come on,” I said. “Shake your ass, fancy dancer.”
    87
    He raised his head until his face was opposite mine, and almost touching it. His eyes were still shut. “No,” he said with soft defiance.
    Just then he kissed me on the mouth, gently, almost chastely. It would almost qualify for a kiss of peace between two cardinals. For a moment, my mind went almost blank. Nothing was there but comfort and brightness. I didn’t turn my lips away. His hand was still rubbing my arm slowly.
    Then his hand slid up to my shoulder. Without really moving, his body tensed until the tendons creaked like rope. His fingers moved over to my chest, to the buttons of the cassock.
    My responsibilities rushed back into my mind.
    I drew back. “What’s going on here?” Out of habit, I tried to sound like I was kidding.
    His eyes were open now, looking directly into mine. The pupils were very wide and black with excitement, like a cat’s are before it pounces. For the first time, his eyes looked the same color.
    Now I was feeling a strange and terrible panic, which I covered up by looking at my watch. “Look, I’m late,” I said. “Let’s go back.”
    Without a word, Vidal drew away, then got up. He didn’t look at me. We picked up our lunch