The Thanatos Syndrome

longer a boozer. Between the two of them they could and did take up the slack. Father Smith ran the hospice out by the fire tower and the little mission “under the hill” and helped out at St. Michael’s with Masses, meetings, confessions, CYO, and such. Now, it seems, Father Smith has conked out, leaving Placide holding the bag.
    â€œDoctor,” says the priest, his hollow white eyes not quite focused, “I can’t do it all. We’ve been promised a pastor this month. We were promised a pastor last month and the month before. It would be very helpful if Father Smith would help out here. I understand y’all are old friends, so I was wondering if you might see him, talk to him, give him—ah—whatever therapy he might need, tell him I need him. The deacons here, they’re fine, they’re doing a tremendous job, but they can’t do Masses, confessions, funerals, weddings, and suchlike. Doc, I’m going to tell you something, listen: I’ll serve the good Lord and His people as long as I can, but, Doc, I’m going to tell you, they ’bout to run this little priest into the ground.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with Father Smith? Has he started drinking?”
    â€œNo.” Father Placide gives a great shrug, holds it, looks right and left. “Who knows? He says he’d like nothing better than to help out but he can’t.”
    â€œWhy can’t he?”
    â€œI’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know.”
    â€œIs he sick?”
    â€œNot that I know of. Not in the usual sense. Maybe in your sense.” He taps his temple. “That’s why I need you to talk to him.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œI’m not quite sure. Father Smith is a remarkable man, a gifted priest, as you well know. He’s always been a role model for me. In fact, he’s gotten me past some bad moments. But—” Again he shrugs and falls silent.
    â€œI don’t think I understand what the problem is,” I say, wondering whether we’re supposed to be out of earshot of the women and whether they’re waiting for Father Placide. But he speaks in an ordinary voice and pays no attention to the women or to the deacon in the hall.
    â€œLook, Doctor, you’re an old friend of Father Smith’s, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œYou know that for years he has lived out in the woods at the hospice near the fire tower and that he has never given up his part-time job as fire watcher for the forestry service.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNot that I don’t sympathize with him. I mean, how would you like to live here? Ainh?” He opens his hands to the cluttered office and the oval print of the Sacred Heart with a dried-up palm frond stuck behind it.
    â€œNot much.”
    â€œLook, Doc,” says the priest, rubbing both eyes with the heels of his hands. “Look, I’m not the best and the brightest. I finished in the bottom third of my seminary class. I don’t know whether Father Smith is a nut or a genius, or whether he has some special religious calling. It’s out of my league, but I can tell you this, Doc, I need help. Me, I’m not going to be much help to the Lord if they have to peel me off the wall and carry me off, ainh Doc?”
    Father Placide talks in an easy colloquial style, hardly distinguishable from any other U.S. priest or minister, except that now and then one hears a trace of his French Cajun origins. It is when he shrugs and cocks a merry eye, hollow but nonetheless merry, and says ainh? ainh? His three is just noticeably t’ree.
    â€œI understand, Father. What do you want me to do?”
    â€œI ask you, my friend, to speak to Father Smith, persuade him to come down and help me out. For just a few weeks.”
    â€œCome down?”
    â€œFrom the fire tower.”
    â€œIn a manner of speaking, you mean.”
    â€œNot in a manner of speaking, cher. He won’t come down.”
    â€œWon’t come down from what?”
    â€œFrom the fire tower.”
    â€œLiterally?”
    â€œLiterally. He has a man bring up his groceries and empty his camp toilet.”
    â€œHow long has he been up there?”
    â€œThree weeks. Since the hospice was closed.”
    â€œWhy was the hospice closed?”
    A shrug. “The government. You know, they cut Medicare for hospices but not for Qualitarian centers.”
    â€œThen is he staying up there as a