Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 13:25:40 -0500 From: edcwriter@yahoo.com Subject: THE PRIEST & THE PAUPER - 1 THE PRIEST & THE PAUPER - 1 Copyright 2005 by Carl Mason and Ed Collins All rights reserved. Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without the written permission of the authors. However based on real events and places, "The Priest and the Pauper" is strictly fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. As in real life, however, the sexual themes unfold gradually. If you would like to read other Mason-Collins stories, you might turn to "Out of the Rubble" and "Castle Margarethen," both of which are archived in Nifty's "Historical" section. Comments on the story are appreciated and may be addressed to the authors at edcwriter@yahoo.com This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both adults and teenagers. As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults. If you are not of legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral dilemmas in your life, please leave. Finally, remember that maturity generally demands that anything other than safe sex is sheer insanity! CHAPTER 1 (Father Tom Arrives in Sherburne) At about 7:00 p.m. on Monday, 10 November 1952, the Hartford-Providence bus pulled into the nearly deserted station at Sherburne, Connecticut. Long past its days of glory as an important town manufacturing cotton products, Sherburne was today a small, bitterly depressed mill town in the eastern part of the Nutmeg State. It was an absolutely miserable night - dark as the Ace of Spades with a frigid, wind-swept rain pouring down in torrents. The only passenger who departed the bus at Sherburne was a young priest. Quietly, he gathered his two pieces of black leather luggage and began walking down Main Street. Shortly after seven o'clock on a Monday night and it was virtually deserted! A few street lights and the light from several bars cut feebly through the rain and gloom, but building after building appeared to be empty and boarded up. Their wet bricks gleamed in the faint light as his shoes were slowly inundated by the water flowing down the street and sidewalks. Clearly, it did not seem that he had been posted to one of the "garden spots" of the Diocese! (Father Tom Burke, a young, newly ordained priest would probably would have been sent to a large parish as an assistant had the Bishop not promised St. Patrick's the next available priest. It had not seen anything other than "supply priests" for two years.) Looking up a side street, he notices the great bulk of Ste-Anne's, the French parish. Remembering the town from a lunch stop during a boyhood trip, he sees that Its twin towers are missing! Man, these people STILL haven't recovered from the terrible damage done this area by the 1938 hurricane - the fifth worst ever to hit the United States. (Fr. Burke is a native New Englander, though he hails from Pawtucket, a major mill city in neighboring Rhode Island.) Further down the street, he reaches St. Patrick's whose size hints at the population of Sherburne during the height of the mill towns earlier in the century. At the rectory, he is greeted by the elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Eileen Murphy. After a snack and a drop of good whiskey, the weary traveler completes his devotions and turns in. (The First Full Day) As Father Tom rose from his knees before the altar and turned to face the congregation in St. Patrick's cavernous nave, he was a little surprised to see a couple of dozen elderly parishioners plus all twelve nuns who lived in the convent located adjacent to the church (with its basement church hall), the rectory, and the K-8 parochial school. (Obviously, the supply priests had been doing SOMETHING right. St. Pat's may have gone through a difficult two years, but it was still alive!) As he greeted HIS parishioners and religious at the back of the church after Mass, he delighted in their warm greetings and good wishes. It felt so "right." He was almost disappointed when Sister Superior reminded him that there would be no 8:00 a.m. Mass for the school children inasmuch as it was Armistice Day, a holiday celebrated in New England with nearly as much dedication as Christmas! (Within two years, the name would be changed to "Veterans' Day.") Inasmuch as the downpour had stopped, the gray, cold, and windy skies would not keep him from getting a look at his new community, at least after breakfast. Fr. Tom first stopped to pay his respects to, as well as to enjoy a cup of coffee and a bit of gossip with Fr. Conor O'Herlihy, the rector of Ste-Anne's. Irish, in his late 50s, he spoke the Quebecois dialect fluently and served a large and overwhelmingly French Canadian parish. Fr. Tom was pretty much up on "inside story" in southern New England, but Fr. Conor quickly filled him in on much of what he had missed during his college and seminary days. In the main, today's Church money was going to the new suburbs that had been springing up like mushrooms since the War! There were times, Fr. Conor related, when one and two new parishes were being established each WEEK...right smack in the middle of the new suburbs where the people (and the money) were. The old mill town parishes were so far down on the list of priorities that it was difficult to find them! He had been told quite bluntly by the Bishop, for instance, that no Diocesan moneys would be available to help repair Ste-Anne's towers toppled in the 1938 hurricane. They were the parish's problem! Two years ago the heating plant in his grammar school built in 1893 had failed. The kids wore coats for the entire winter - and THEN they trucked in an old heating plant from a closed parish! Worse, decades of depression had come close to destroying the integrity of the family. Single-parent families were all too common - and drunkenness held many of them in its grasp. Several bands of homeless children roamed the area, raising the petty crime level and providing targets for perverts of every type. The situation had disintegrated far beyond the powers of the county's truant officers and police to control it. The public schools were in complete disarray - and there were severe problems in all area parochial schools. The one Diocesan secondary school in the area was on the verge of closing. The only public answer seemed to be to send the worst offenders to reform schools. Did Father Tom realize (the good Father murmured as he poured a drop of good whiskey into his guest's third cup of strong black coffee) that last year's State budget for reform schools was higher than the budget for their entire county! The young priest could only shake his head and murmur that Fr. Conor would have his full support with the Bishop and in the area. Once again on his way, the young priest began simply walking about the small town - small, that is, if one didn't count the ACRES of dilapidated, mostly deserted factory buildings that lay on either side of the small stream bisecting Sherburne. Somehow the whole area reeked of despair and lost promise. Sherburne had been a center for the production of cotton goods since the early 1800s. In the early years of the century, the town had been dominated by English-Americans, but in the decades shortly before and after the Civil War, a flood of Irish and French Canadian immigration completely changed the ethnic complexion of the area, indeed, of large sections of southern New England. When labor unrest swept the Northeast in the 1830s, mill owners turned to immigrant labor, hiring French-Canadian and Irish workers to replace the native-born labor force. Increasingly, strikes and riots reflected disputes between labor and management as well as nativist anger over the hiring of immigrants. There were also labor gluts during the period, and management played one group of workers against another: immigrants versus the native-born, men versus women, adults versus children. Given these conditions, along with periodic economic downturns and scant experience with organization, labor won few victories. In the 1880s a shift in location began to occur. Small textile mills moved south. Overall, labor could do little to influence management's long-range operations. If labor got too powerful in one location, the firms simply moved. The Federal response in the twentieth century to the introduction of synthetic fibers and increasing international competition was woefully inadequate, and many manufacturers shut down, left the industry, or moved south. By the 1920s, New England textile towns were in a severe depression. Though in microcosm, nowhere were the results seen more graphically than in Sherburne, Connecticut. Back on Main Street, Fr. Tom suddenly noticed that there were people on the street, including youngsters. Why weren't they at work or in school? Oh, yes, Armistice Day... He also noticed a "mom & pop grocery" that was still doing business. Several bins of fruit and vegetables stood outside the main entrance to the store. Lurking in the vicinity was a small band of young teens, apparently headed by a redheaded waif who boldly 'lifted" several apples from one of the bins. As an elderly women - Eileen Murphy, his volunteer housekeeper who had greeted him the night before at the rectory! - hurried out of the store with an upraised broom handle, the boy turned abruptly and ran smack into Fr. Tom. His scholarship wrestling days at Holy Cross still fresh in his mind, the priest applied a headlock on the redhead and waited until Mrs. Murphy roared up with blood in her eye! Convincing her that the boy was one of their fellow parishioners, he got her to agree to release him to his care with the promise that he would protect her interests more effectively than the police could! "You ok, boyo?" Fr. Tom grunted as Mrs. Murphy retreated back into the store. "Yeah, Father," came a somewhat muffled response. (It sounded more like "Fodduh," but we'll stay with the standard spelling.) "If I let up on your ears, will you stand still and talk with me for a minute?" the young priest inquired. "Yeah, Father." Though he kept one hand securely locked on the teen's collar, Father Tom slowly discontinued the headlock and stepped away slightly. Still standing relatively close together, each young man contemplated the individual who had intruded on his life space. "Fourteen," Fr. Tom thought, "sturdy...too developed for 13, maybe 5'5" - even beginning to bulk up a bit for the 'Big-15' growth spurt - dark red hair, slightly curly...and those eyes. Oh, my God, those eyes...GREEN! - and not a pale, washed out grayish-green, but a REAL green!" About to respond with an impudent grin as the priest's eyes surveyed him, Shane McGuire stopped dead in his tracks, even blushed slightly, and looked down at his feet. Slowly raising his head, he gazed intently at the black-clad athletic young man with the turned-around collar who was looking at him with curiosity, but without apparent anger. Could it be that he saw some CONCERN in the priest's eyes? "NAH...," he thought, "that's not the way this world acts. It'll fuck you every time! Be careful, Shane-boy." "I'm Father Tom Burke. You are?" "Shane McGuire, Father," the boy said with uncharacteristic passivity - and what was it...just a note of hope? Continuing to stare intently at the youngster, Fr. Tom's voice took on a quietly commanding tone. "Ok, Shane, you will return the two apples in your pockets - plus the one lying over there on the sidewalk - to Mrs. Murphy. You will apologize for taking the apples and you will promise to pay her back with some help in the store. Then you will return here." With that he dropped his hand from the boy's collar and fell back another step. Scarcely believing what he was doing, the young man began to do exactly as he had been ordered. Though he was slightly disturbed by an immediate sense of physical and emotional attraction to the youngster, Fr. Tom was also well aware that the "Shanes" of this world were one of the reasons he had entered the priesthood. After all, not too many years ago, he had been an orphan in a similarly depressed mill area. (A mill conflagration had wiped out his entire family - and over one hundred fifty other souls. A distant cousin took his baby sister, but no one could afford a hungry teen.) The Church had saved his life - and he had freely accepted the obligation to repay his debt. When the boy returned from the store, Fr. Tom gave him the choice between a talk with him in his office at the Church or a trip to the police station. Knowing that one more conviction for petty theft would send him to a reform school - and feeling a strange, albeit undefined attraction to the young priest - Shane opted for the talk. Munching on sandwiches and drinking Cokes, the duo sat in the priest's small study just off the "Mary Chapel" in the Church. "So you and your entire "Gang of Six" are living on the streets?" Fr. Tom inquired. "Well, Father, Mel's 15, almost 16, but he's a little...slow. He's got a home, but he likes us more than his father, or most of the big guys, and sticks pretty close. A lot of the guys he grew up with are already in reform school. Paddy's only 13. He just showed up one day. The Gang kept some other kids from...hurting him...and he's been running with us ever since. The rest of us, all 14, don't have anyplace else to go - but we manage," Shane responded with just a trace of adolescent swagger. "You may have noticed that the weather's getting pretty miserable around these parts. It may be harder and harder to 'manage'," the priest murmured. "Tell you what. I've just been posted here, and I already know I face a raft of repair problems. Nobody's TOUCHED St. Pat's for several years, and the winter's almost here. Would you and your boys be interested in a short- term job plus a small salary, food, and a bed?" "Wow..." Shane mused. Grinning, he added - with just a trace of attitude - "They might have some problems if they were always being 'preached at', but otherwise it sounds fantastic. If it's ok with you, Father, I'll talk with them this afternoon and get back to you tomorrow morning after early Mass." Matching attitude with attitude, Father Tom grunted that he didn't "preach at" ANYONE and reached out to run his hand lightly through Shane's red hair. The young lad who might have been expected to react negatively (after all, he WAS a 14 year old, gang-leading, street kid!), grinned softly, murmured "tomorrow," and disappeared out into the chapel. After spending the afternoon getting his papers and books in order, Tom Burke's first full day as pastor of St. Patrick's ended with Vespers (attended by a goodly congregation of religious and elderly parishioners), a light supper, and devotional reading and prayer. By any measure, it had been a GOOD day! (To Be Continued)