The Fancy Dancer

parting shot at me. ‘You’re running around just a little too much with that half-breed gunsel friend of yours.”
    I turned to offer the usual lie. “We were talking about..
    “Counseling, my foot,” said Father Vance. “You smell of beer. I’ve probably lost a soul because of »
    you.
    a a a
    Late that night, I kneeled in the dark church for a long time. The place was lit only by a few flickering votive candles and silent as a tomb. I prayed for Clem Malley’s soul.
    Then I repented heartily of my error in judgment with Vidal, and expressed to God the hope that I hadn’t done him any harm. Since I hadn’t meant him any harm, I probably wasn’t guilty of a grave sin, just a venial sin. If I ever committed a grave sin in Got-tonwood, I would have to carry it around with me for a month until the next trip to Helena, or else make a special trip there. Meanwhile I would be compounding the sin by saying mass, receiving communion, absolving penitents, et cetera, while fallen from grace. Luckily my next trip was coming up next week.
    All the neat theological phrases ran through my head. It had been a close call. I prayed for Vidal, and decided that maybe it would be better not to see him for a few days.
    But when I’d locked the church and gone to bed in my lonely little back room, I remembered those few minutes of warmth and closeness out in the field, and a lump came into my throat.
    The “Late Late Show” that night was The Thing.
    7
    On Thursday and Friday I didn’t go to Trina’s for breakfast. I didn’t go on Saturday either. Too yellow to tell Vidal why, I simply stayed away.
    Father Vance must have noticed that on, Saturday morning I ate breakfast at the rectory for the third time in a row, but he didn’t comment—partly because he still wasn’t speaking to me. All I could think of was splitting for Helena on Sunday to see my parents. There wouldn’t be much comfort in seeing Father Matt either, because I hadn’t decided whether or not to tell him about my slip with Vidal.
    At lunch Saturday, Father Vance said, “John Winter told me that Vidal got drunk as seven hundred dollars last night. He got in a big fight in Brown’s, and he damn near wrecked the place. John had to put him in jail for the night to cool him off.”
    At that, I exploded again.
    “Doesn’t his soul matter, Father? I haven’t seen him since Wednesday out of respect for you, and he probably thinks I’ve abandoned him.”
    “You can’t baby him along the rest of his life,” said Father Vance calmly, spreading mustard on a hot dog. “Sooner or later he has to stand on his own two feet.”
    I was so mad that I got up and left the table.
    Striding into the church, I kneeled in a comer by the altar rail and put my head in my hands to think. The thing to do was to go see him. Winter would have released him in time to go to work. Or at least I should call him up at the garage.
    But suddenly I realized that I was afraid to see him again. Just the sight of his face, the sound of his voice, might call up that feeling of warmth again. Worst of all, the sight of me might stir him up, and as a priest I had no right to tempt him.
    Strictly speaking, I couldn’t see him anymore, ever —not if I was going to be true to the things I believed in.
    That night my confessions were from eight to nine, and I wasn’t even in the mood to play the organ. In the state I was in, I was a little harsh with a couple of penitents, and slapped them with heavier penances than usual. The hour dragged on, and I was just thinking that there were only fifteen minutes to go, when the next voice at the lattice made my stomach jump like an antelope.
    ‘Tom.”
    My whole physiology reacted violently. My heart pounded, sweat sprang out all over me, my nerves buzzed with emotional electricity.
    “Vidal, I’ve stayed away from you for your own good...”
    I'm not in the mood for any of your priest bullshit tonight.”
    We were both whispering, when we might have been yelling at each other. Father Vance’s anger was nothing compared to the almost Biblical blaze of wrath that Vidal poured through the lattice at me. After I’d heard a few sentences, I was so stunned that I didn’t speak anymore.
    “Don’t you give me that Catholic morality bullshit, you faggot. You’re as big a faggot as me, but you don’t have the balls to admit it to yourself. My own good, huh? You love me, don’t you? You’re a Christian, you love everybody, you love God, you