The Jew's Wife & Other Stories Read online

  FATHER WALTHER’S TEMPTATION

  by Thomas J. Hubschman

  Copyright © 2012 Thomas J. Hubschman

  Published by Savvy Press at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-939113-01-6

  Cover art by Eric Black

  All rights reserved.

  All the characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published by:

  Savvy Press PO Box 63

  Salem, NY 12865

  http://www.savvypress.com

  Other Books by Thomas J. Hubschman

  Available at Smashwords:

  Song of the Mockingbird (Novel)

  Look at Me Now (Novel)

  My Bess (Novel)

  The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

  Billy Boy (Novel)

  FATHER WALTHER’S TEMPTATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  Diocesan rules forbid going about the streets of one’s parish in sport shirt and slacks. But there was no rule governing the sort of attire a priest should wear when he set out on his vacation. Many men kept the roman collar on until they were safely out of the diocese, then changed to casual dress. Father Walther was of two minds on the subject: if parishioners saw him drive off in a Hawaiian print, there was no telling if the story would include a sexy blonde by the time it finished its rounds. On the other hand, a priest had as much right as the next person to a life of his own. If some busybodies wanted to gossip, they would find opportunity to do so, no matter how well or badly he behaved. He liked to think he was striking a small blow for clerical liberation by leaving town in mufti. But he also realized that few of the tongues that could be expected to wag were up and about at one o’clock on a Monday morning.

  He liked driving at night. There was less traffic, it was cool, and there was no glare to contend with. He got to see little scenery, but how much countryside was there to observe along the turnpikes and interstates that connected the cities of the eastern seaboard? A mechanic had pronounced his Ford aging but healthy. That was like telling a ninety-year-old there was nothing wrong with his heart. The mechanic gave, or pretended to give, a break on labor he did on the car, making it difficult for the priest to dispute his diagnoses. It was just one of the many special considerations a cleric suffered at the hands of the laity. Someone was always trying to do you a favor—the milkman who left a free quart of orange juice, then looked as if you had run over his dog when you turned down his offer to sell you twice the cream you needed (at a discount, of course); the used car dealer who always had a “clean” heap stashed away on a corner of the lot that he was saving for the pope, Jesus Christ or, in the event either of those two preferred public transportation, yourself.

  The swamps of Secaucus were behind him. So were the refineries and other evil humors of central Jersey. It was clear sailing all the way to Baltimore. He had been holding the Ford to fifty-five miles an hour, not out of respect for the legal speed limit but to lessen the strain on its organs. The distance between exits was steadily lengthening. Half the traffic consisted of long-distance trucks cruising along at sixty-five and seventy, creating a turbulence as they passed that caused the Ford to veer skittishly from one side of its lane to the other. New York stations had disappeared from the radio dial, replaced by hillbilly music and all-night preachers.

  It was as if the bonds that tied him to his parish were loosening. Maybe that was what he liked about these night journeys to his mother’s. Everything and everyone, from the huge tractor-trailers that tried to sweep him off the road to the sleepy waitress in the Howard Johnson’s he had stopped at for coffee a few exits back, took him for what he seemed to be—a (young) middle-aged man on an indeterminate journey. No one tipped his hat in deference to the roman collar he wore the other fifty weeks of the year. No one felt an urge to make inane conversation or abrupt confession. And, perhaps best of all, no one felt obliged to censor his or her behavior and vocabulary. It was like being a spy in a foreign country without any of the risks. If someone should take a heart attack at a lunch counter or fall asleep at the wheel, he had only to reach into his glove compartment for the narrow satin stole that proved his priestly identity. The rest of the time he was Joe Schmoe.

  The coffee he had drunk an hour ago was beginning to wear off. If he didn’t get more soon, the temptation to close his eyes would become acute. But even if he pushed the Ford to an even sixty miles an hour, he would have to keep awake another half hour without the benefit of caffeine. He should have asked his housekeeper to fill a thermos for him. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep and run the car off the road. Of all ways to die, that surely was the most senseless.

  He pumped the brake pedal to alert the huge tractor-trailer in his rearview mirror that he was slowing down. The truck’s massive grille, headlights blazing like the eyes of some angry monster, closed to within a few feet of his rear bumper, then swerved into the outside lane and all but blew him off the road. He pulled cautiously onto the shoulder, his own headlights scarcely able to penetrate the darkness.

  Even before he had come to a full stop and turned on his flashers, the sweet damp smell of open country filled the car. He rolled up the windows and reached into the back seat for the gray cardigan he kept there. Then he folded his arms and inclined his head against the backrest. He expected to fall asleep immediately, but the sounds outside the car, not just crickets but a kind of muted primeval chatter broken irregularly by the roar of a passing truck, kept him awake. He felt no fear of anything that might be concealed beyond the low scrub bordering the roadway, but the unfamiliar noises kept a part of his mind alert when the rest wanted badly to grab forty winks. It seemed a long time before he finally felt himself drift off.

  The tapping noise made no sense at first, nor did the bright light shining in his eyes. Then he saw the head of the flashlight. As he rolled down his window he noted with relief the gray uniform behind it.

  “Anything wrong?” the trooper asked.

  He responded with a sleepy version of his clerical smile, designed more to offer reassurance than to receive that comfort.

  “Just taking a nap, Officer. My eyes were getting heavy.”

  He only remembered there was nothing visible to indicate his priesthood when the trooper directed his flashlight into the back seat, then trained it on the unoccupied place beside him, and finally onto his lap where, he only then realized, an erection was subsiding.

  “There’s a rest stop down the road where you can get coffee,” the trooper said, mercifully pointing the light away before he had had time to notice the priest’s blush. Father Walther had a chance now to see his face. It looked surprisingly young.

  “I’ll do that. Thanks very much for stopping.”

  The trooper hesitated, then nodded cautiously and returned to the white patrol car parked behind the Ford. He got in, said something into his car radio and pulled back onto the Turnpike.

  It was one thing to wake up with an erection caused by a full bladder. Even that rarely occurred anymore, and besides, he had taken care to relieve himself at his last stop. When he was younger, in his teens and twenties, he rarely awoke without a stiff penis. He used to wonder if it wasn’t a sign he might not have a vocation after all. But his confessor and, later in the seminary, his spiritual mentors assured him there would only be something wrong if he did not get erections. His vocation did not mean he was not a sexual being. What mattered was how he controlled these libidinous forces, whether or not he sublimated them (as a psychologist once put it to him and his fellow seminarians) into “productive channels.” He had known priests well into their thirties and forties who were still troubled by sex. But once he had decided on
a celibate life it was as if he had been granted a dispensation from that burden. His sexual self did not disappear (the occasional wet dream was enough to dispel that illusion), but his sexual self became like a talent he simply chose never to exercise, like being able to throw a baseball ninety miles an hour or lift great weights. He liked to think that if he had been called to a non-celibate life, he would be one of those men who never gave a second thought to any woman but his wife.

  He turned the ignition key, but nothing happened, not even the groan of a dying battery. He switched off and tried again, with the same result. He tried his headlights. They too were dead.

  He fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment and got out to have a look under the hood. Apart from the dipstick, radiator cap, and battery leads, an automobile engine was foreign territory to him. His most recent problems with the car had been in the transmission and suspension, not with anything that could conceivably cause sudden death. He closed the hood, then realized he should leave it open and attach a white rag to his radio antenna. He still could not believe that if he just turned the ignition key one more time, the engine would not start as usual. But it did not.

  He waited the better part of an hour for a trooper to arrive—the same who had stopped earlier. He explained the problem, half-expecting the cop to have a look at the engine himself. But the young man only glanced contemptuously at the car’s ragged interior, returned to his patrol car, and sent a radio message.

  “They’ll be a tow along.”

  “I’m sure it’s only a loose wire.”

  The trooper gave the Ford another look, this time noting a rusty dent in the front fender. The look seemed to say that anyone who took a wreck like this out on the highway, his highway, could expect to get just what he deserved. The priest wanted to point out that the car’s beat-up condition was the result of long service in the Lord’s work. But he doubted that fact would make any difference to the cop (whom he took for Protestant, in any case, because of the English name on his ID plate).

  They sat, the trooper in his patrol car, Father Walther in the Ford, until the tow truck arrived. By then it was past four a.m. Even if the serviceman could fix the car right there on the highway (he could not) he would still be late getting to his mother’s. The best he could hope for was a prompt repair at the garage.

  “Tore through here like a cyclone,” the tow driver said, his fat pink arms encircling the truck’s steering wheel. “Lost power three hours.”

  They were racing along an unlit country road. Father Walther could see the Ford in the sideview mirror bouncing behind like a trussed animal. His experience of country places was limited to Boy Scout hikes and seminary picnics. There was scarcely a vacant lot left in the northern New Jersey suburb where his parish was located.

  “You get many of them—thunderstorms?”

  “Sure do,” the youth replied, a shy grin creasing his mouth. Earlier, when the boy was hooking up the Ford to the winch, Father Walther had been too preoccupied with his delay to pay much attention to his surroundings. But with nothing but dark cornfields all around and this country boy at the wheel, it seemed as if he had just stepped out of the real world and onto a movie set. The Turnpike he had ridden so many times without a thought for what occurred beyond its well-patrolled macadam now seemed a right of way through a land more foreign than he had ever imagined, an American autobahn linking enclaves of civilization inhabiting the periphery of a vast alien hinterland.

  “You from these parts?” the youngster asked after they had traveled the next mile in silence. Father Walther gave the name of the town where his parish was located. The young man had never heard of it. “I could tell you’re from up that way, though. I’m pretty good at figuring where people are from. Are you Jewish?” he asked, then blushed so deeply at his indiscretion that the glow of his cheeks was visible in the dashboard’s dim reflection. “I just heard there’s a whole mess of them up to New York is why I asked.” They road in silence for another half mile. Then, as if in apology for his earlier gaff, the boy screwed up his face and said, “I had me a black girlfriend once.”

  Without seeming to slow down, the truck veered into a service station that appeared suddenly in the middle of a cornfield. The boy parked the truck next to the men’s room at the side of the station, jumped down from the cab and disappeared inside.

  The station’s mechanic was on his break. The tow driver professed ignorance about how long repairs might take. His interest in his customer seemed to have vanished once they had reached the garage. He had retreated to the shadows of the hydraulic lift and a heavily-thumbed porno magazine. A radio blared country music to the cornfields.

  The closest Father Walther had ever come to his present predicament was the occasional blowout, a mishap usually remedied with the help of a passing motorist even before he had a chance to roll the spare out of his trunk. If he were in his own parish now, or anywhere near it, he would simply call Father George and ask for a lift, leaving his disabled machine for the garage to tow away—probably the same garage that had just given the Ford a clean bill of health. But here he had no such recourse. He had no idea what parish he was in—or what diocese, for that matter. Large tracts of the U.S. were still “mission territory,” but he wasn’t sure if southern New Jersey qualified as such. In any event, he hadn’t lit out on his own sans roman collar only to yell for help at his first brush with misfortune. But as he sat in the service station’s office, watching the sky lighten above the cornfields, he resolved never again to take for granted those Good Samaritans who were so willing to come to his aid.

  It was half an hour before the mechanic showed up, picking his teeth with a bent wire. He was even fatter than his apprentice, and wore the same dungaree overalls. The two of them conferred for a while, then the mechanic gave the priest a hostile glance as if he were a bill collector or door-to-door salesman. He finally condescended to disconnect the Ford from the tow truck but ignored the priest’s attempts to explain what happened. He asked for the ignition key and, with his assistant’s help, moved the car nearer the repair shop. Then his head disappeared under the hood and Father Walther was left to endure the loud country music.

  A few minutes later the mechanic told him the battery was run-down, but Father Walther couldn’t tell if this was the cause or just a symptom of the problem. It seemed inconceivable that a battery could just up and die. He had had no difficulty starting the engine after he stopped for coffee on the Turnpike, and there had been no indication of a discharge.

  “What happens now?” he asked as the mechanic connected leads from the battery to a charging machine.

  “See if she takes a charge. All we can do, mister.”

  It was now six a.m., two hours behind his original schedule. The sky was fully light. Cornfields stretched for miles in every direction. Crows glided lazily across them, looking huge and predatory. His body was demanding sleep. Even if the car was repaired by seven, he didn’t see how he would be able to drive for another three hours.

  He decided to call his mother from the pay phone beside the road. Traffic had begun to appear, sleepy men in ten-year-old cars off to do a day’s work. His mother was too groggy herself to appreciate his predicament. He told her he expected to be back on the road shortly. She said not to worry about being late and generally seemed unconcerned by his plight. Even though this was precisely the attitude he had hoped to encourage in her, when she sounded downright cheerful he felt irritated.

  At six-thirty the mechanic pronounced the battery dead. Father Walther protested, again citing the absence of any sign of electrical trouble. The mechanic was unmoved: the car needed a new battery.

  “How much will it run me?”

  The mechanic stared up at the garage ceiling, pursing his lips as if the price of a battery were something he hadn’t calculated for some time.

  “I could let you have one for eighty.”

  “Eighty dollars?”

  The man wiped his hands on an already greasy
rag.

  “That’s if I had one.”

  Eighty dollars was a large chunk of his vacation money.

  He followed the mechanic into the office and watched him sit down on a low stool, his huge bottom spilling over it like blue pudding. He pulled a telephone directory toward him and thumbed his way to a page already blackened by other greasy thumbs. Then he reached for the receiver and dialed with cretin-like precision.

  “No answer.” Until now the priest wasn’t even sure the call had something to do with his Ford. It was as if the mechanic had dismissed that matter and gone on to other business. “There’ll be someone by and by,” the man said, finally showing some hint of sympathy for his customer’s predicament. The priest smiled but decided that once this episode was over he would write a letter of protest to whatever state agency had charge of assigning tow contracts for the New Jersey Turnpike.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A new battery would not arrive before midday. A new battery should solve the problem, the mechanic told him after they had shared some donuts and day-old coffee. But there was no guarantee something else might not also be on the fritz. They wouldn’t know until the new battery was in stalled.

  Meanwhile, the priest had to think about how he was to get some sleep. The easiest way was to call a nearby parish and explain his situation. But he wanted to rule out that option until he was faced with an actual emergency. He could check into a motel for a few hours, but that would mean using some of his meager funds, thus curtailing his activities after his visit to Maryland—golf and other R&R in the Cat skills. He decided to wait to see if the battery arrived by noon.

  It did, but after the mechanic installed it he said there also seemed to be a problem with the alternator and possibly with some other part of the engine Father Walther had never even heard of. He had no way of knowing if the man was telling the truth. He had come to expect a certain amount of gulling by merchants even when he was wearing his roman collar. But this was the first time he had felt as if he were completely at someone’s mercy. He could take his chances with just a new battery, but if the mechanic was not deceiving him, he might only have to go through this rigmarole a few miles down the road. Besides, he was too tired to drive.