The Risk Pool

in a nutshell.
    “I doubt your mother would approve of your operating heavy machinery,” the old priest continued, still not looking at me. “After all, you are only a boy, and not a very large boy at that. If you happened to be injured, we could be held legally liable. We could be sued. As it is, the rectory has sustained damage, though that is not the issue.”
    He then discussed the price of stained glass so thoroughly that I thought perhaps it might be the issue after all.
    “Operating a powerful mower is a hazardous occupation, as Mr. Donovan is well aware,” he went on. “A paperboy in Poughkeepsie was killed last summer when a stone flew across the street and knocked him off his bicycle. You can appreciate how your mother would feel if I had to inform her this evening that you had been killed while in our care. Knowing the sort of man your father is I doubt any of us would be safe, assuming
he
could be located and informed.”
    Had it been anyone but the Monsignor I might have taken up one or two issues. Though hardly a skilled debater or thinker, I remember wanting to point out that the dead paperboy would still be alive had he been pushing the mower instead of delivering papers across the street. Indeed, the present circumstance, viewed objectively, suggested that the Monsignor himself, indoors and nearly fifty yards away, had run a greater risk than I. If one insisted on drawing a moral from the stained glass window and the dead paperboy, it might have been that life was quirky at best and that being careful wasn’t much of a guarantee.
    I don’t know what Father Michaels thought of the Monsignor’s logic, but when he heard the remark about my father, he colored and quickly came to my defense. “I think Ned just wanted to help. He’s not the sort of young man who just accepts hospitality without giving something back,” he said quietly. He didn’t look up either, and the conversation, one of the longest ever conducted at table that summer, was made the more bizarre by the fact that nobody looked at anybody else. “His mother was pleased when I told her how much he was helping out around the rectory. Ned and his mother are fine people.”
    “Then you were aware the boy was operating machinery?”
    “The mower? Yes. I thought you were as well. He passed right in front of the library window last week when we were discussing consubstantiation.”
    The Monsignor stopped spooning broth. “I assure you I did
not
know. It would have been good of you to bring it to my attention. You bring other unpleasant matters to my attention.”
    Father Michaels folded his napkin carefully. “Your wedding soup was splendid, Mrs. A,” he said. And then he did a thoroughly unexpected thing. With the Monsignor still seated and soaking up the last of his puddle with black bread, and before grace could conclude the meal, the young priest got up and left the room.

6
    I had mixed feelings about the possibility that my father had returned to Mohawk. I doubted he was quite as dangerous as my mother said. Or maybe I just concluded he wouldn’t be dangerous to me. As with the mower, it was largely a matter of positioning. Still, life had become comfortable and happy without him. My mother was clearly happier than ever before, and she seldom even complained about the phone company. I enjoyed my long days at the rectory. They started with the early morning mass, and most of the time my mother accompanied me. We liked the walk together past the bakery, which at that hour was awash in lovely aromas. In church, my mother sat closer to the altar now, but still off to one side, between the first and second stations of the cross. She still did not receive communion, and most mornings she was the only person in Our Lady of Sorrows who did not.
    After mass, Father Michaels and I would sometimes give her a lift home in the parish station wagon before returning to the rectory for breakfast, and then the day would stretch out before me. Part of it I would spend on Spindrift Island, part helping Skinny tend the grounds. Once the storm of indignation over the stained glass window blew over, I even started mowing again, this time with the Monsignor’s blessing, which was secured indirectly through Father Michaels. He called it interceding, like what the Virgin did with her Son, and he interceded for Skinny too, so he could come out of hiding and do
some
work at least.
    In short, life seemed pretty much the way it should be, and while