The Fancy Dancer

papers, got back on the bike and went back down to Cottonwood.
    All the way down, I was cursing myself. I had only meant to express my friendly feelings for him, and he would interpret my innocent action in his own way. How could I have been so dumb? I held on to him less tightly now—just tight enough to stay on the bike.
    He dropped me at the church and said, “See you tomorrow.” He looked hurt, but also a little amused as he drove off.
    At the rectory, Father Vance was waiting for me, furious. His eyes took in my dusty cassock. “Where have you been?”
    I looked at my watch. We’d been gone only thirty-five minutes.-
    “I wasn’t on duty, so I went off for lunch. I’m only; five minutes late.”
    Father Vance had the kit with the holy oils, and looked like he’d just been leaving in a hurry. He shoved the kit at me.
    “Get right up to the Malley ranch,” he said. “You’ve got a faster car. Clem Malley just had a terrible accident with a baling machine. .His wife called.”
    Panic-stricken at the mess I was in, I jumped in my sports car. In another five minutes, I was out on the north side of town and gunning up Interstate 10. This was certainly a day for moving fast around the county.
    Six miles north, I went off the exit with a shriek of wide-track tires, and onto a long stretch of county road, and then into the barnyard of a small ranch. Clem Malley’s weeping young wife was waiting in front of the frame house, and she jumped into my car.
    “Out in the west hayfield, Father,” she sobbed.
    We jounced along a dirt road. In two more minutes, I was back in a hayfield, with the same hot sun pouring down on me. The baling machine sat still halfway along a windrow, with a half-loaded wagon hitched behind it. The ambulance and the squad car were there, red lights blinking. Clem’s teen-age son and two ranch hands were standing stunned while the medical people bent over the bloody form on the ground.
    Clem’s body was so mangled that it no longer looked human. Even his head had been hacked nearly in half, and his eyes were falling out of their sockets. A blood-soaked packet of Bull Durham had been torn out of his shirt pocket and lay gently on an exposed lung. Baling twine was tangled around him.
    I nearly gagged. No auto accident that I’d ever been called to was as hideous as this. But, recovering myself, I went through the rubric of the holy oils.
    John Winter had taken Clem’s wife and son aside and was questioning them gently.
    “He’d been having some dizzy spells,” she said. “I wanted him to go to the doctor. But he was too busy. He was only thirty-two years old . ..”
    “We didn’t really see what happened,” said his son.
    “Stu and I were back on the wagon, stacking bales. I guess he must have had a spell and fallen off right in front of the conveyor. By the time we noticed, it was too late. The conveyor took him up into the cutters there...”
    I looked at the machine. The conveyor fed the windrow up into powerful choppers that whacked the hay into lengths, then into a ram that made the bale and tied it. The whole apparatus was splashed with black sun-dried blood.
    The ambulance took Clem Malley’s body into town. I stayed a while with his family. Then I drove slowly back to Cottonwood, feeling dizzied and drained.
    At the rectory, Father Vance was still mad as a hornet.
    “You were five minutes late coming back,” he said. “The soul stays in the body for fifteen or twenty minutes. The faculty of hearing is the last to go. Clem might have heard you if you’d been there to confess him sooner. Your carelessness might be the difference between his going to heaven or going to hell. Or the degree of grace he might have in heaven. Or the amount of time he’ll spend in purgatory. Take your pick, young man.”
    I was upset enough to lose my temper.
    “May I ask why you didn’t take the call? You were on duty.”
    “I went out on a sick call. When I got back, Mrs. Bircher told me that Mrs. Malley had called five minutes earlier. I was just leaving when you came. If you’d been here ...”
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “With all due respect, Father, not even the Pope knows how long the soul hangs around in the body before it takes off. Second, I was not on call. You were. Your judgment in leaving was just as bad as mine was in coming back late.” “Get out of my sight,” he raged, “and don’t let me see you for the rest of the day.” As I left his office, he fired a