Sudden Death Read online

  There was little banter from the players already in various stages of showering. Even if some, like Hoffer, had been only brief participants in the game and felt like engaging in some horseplay, they would display only somberness. The coaches, especially Bradford, would appreciate the funereal atmosphere a loss should engender.

  Hoffer stepped into the steamy, powerful stream of water. It pounded through his hair and into his face, and flowed down his body. It felt good, as hot showers do, but there was nothing special about it. From the days when he was a little kid playing football in the Catholic Youth Organization, through high school and college, he’d taken his lumps in games. And always in the shower he had assessed the damage the foregoing game had caused. Athletes generally experience an automatic sort of self-hypnosis during competition—unless the injury is very serious. Then, of course, they know immediately they’re in trouble. But the usual bruises and nicks would present themselves to be recognized only as the soothing hot water found them.

  It had been a very long time since Hoffer had gone through such an accounting. Too long. He had not been noteworthily hurt since training camp. Which spoke volumes about his playing time during the succeeding games.

  As far as his pro career was concerned, if Hoffer had not had bad luck he would not have had any luck at all. Twice he had been cut from teams before the season began. That both cuts had occurred in the final days of training camp was little consolation. But the Turk had visited him twice. And both times he was cut not because he was less talented than his competition for the position. No, the first time, his mother’s death had cost him a week of training-camp time. This, coupled with the fact that his competition had no-cut contracts and the head coach had no alternative but to retain the players whose contracts bound them to the team. The second time it was because he had been injured.

  This year had been different only to the extent that while Hunsinger had the precious no-cut contract, no other lineman had one. So Coach Bradford, knowing the Hun was nearing the end of his career, and aware of Hoffer’s great natural talent, had kept him on the team.

  But Hoffer, though technically still a rookie, had already lost two years in a profession that was notoriously brief. And he was rapidly losing a third year. Nothing stood between him and fame—and with it, big money—but Hunsinger.

  Hoffer stepped out of the shower’s steady stream. He felt physically fine—unfortunately. Well, he asked himself, how many bruises do you expect to pick up running just a couple of plays and carrying a record of no passes caught?

  But he had plans. It would be different. And soon.

  “Do you know how many nudes there are in here?”

  Father Koesler smiled. He and Father McNiff had just been seated in the lounge area of the Machus Sly Fox, not far from the Silverdome. Koesler would have preferred the main restaurant area. But he knew they were lucky to be seated anywhere. The restaurant was packed, mostly with fans fresh from the game.

  Of course Koesler had noticed the large painting of a voluptuous nude hanging in the lounge. It dominated the room. Being oblivious to the painting would require an ability to overlook the Grand Canyon.

  But he had to smile at his friend, Pat McNiff, a typical Irish-American priest obsessed with all the evils that could be laid at the door of sex—read Women. As long as Koesler had known McNiff—and that had been forty-two of their fifty-five years of life—Pat had always been at least slightly more conservative than any of their confreres. McNiff usually caught up with the rest of the world, eventually; but he always arrived late, kicking and screaming.

  “I give up.” Koesler had not tried counting. “How many nudes are there in this room?”

  “Twenty!”

  “Twenty?”

  “Twenty!”

  Until now, Koesler had been unaware of the exact nature of any of the other paintings hanging in the lounge. Alerted by McNiff s curiosity, Koesler began gazing more intently at the other paintings.

  “Don’t look,” McNiff cautioned in a stage whisper. “People will notice you’re looking at naked women.” He always pronounced it “nekkid.”

  “What do you mean, don’t look? You looked.”

  “That’s different. I counted. You’re looking. There’s a difference.”

  A waitress came to take their drink orders. She smiled at Koesler. She had seen him looking at the paintings. Koesler blushed.

  McNiff ordered a martini; Koesler a bourbon manhattan. Neither priest smoked. Koesler had quit several years before. McNiff had surrendered the habit more recently, in deference to triple-bypass heart surgery.

  “Don’t you recall the sage advice of our old speech professor. Father Sklarski?” Koesler reminded. “‘Look, but don’t touch.’”

  “Sure. I just prefer the advice of our old rector, Henry Donnelly, ‘The look is father to the touch.’”

  “You would.” Koesler began studying the menu. McNiff did the same.

  “God, what a game!” McNiff commented from behind his menu.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah ... a real barnburner.”

  They returned to their menus for several minutes until, simultaneously, they decided what they would order.

  “If only the Cougars could have held onto the ball,” McNiff said, shaking his head. “We had that game in the bag.”

  “It happens. Frankly, I thought we were playing too conservatively.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake, what did you want them to do—pass?”

  “Even though I know in advance that you are not going to like this very much. . .yes.”

  McNiff flung his napkin the short distance from the table to his lap. “Isn’t that just like you! Taking chances, not going with the percentages.”

  “Sometimes the dramatic pays off. Don’t you remember how bunched up the Chicago team was the last time we had the ball, everybody crowding around the scrimmage line? They not only wanted to hit the ball carrier, they were up there to strip the ball away.”

  “We’re pros. We’re paid to hold onto the ball.”

  “But,” Koesler continued, “just think what might have happened if Cobb had faked a running play, then dropped back and passed.”

  “It probably would have been intercepted.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It could have been a touchdown. Then the game would have been iced.”

  “Or it would have been intercepted,” McNiff repeated.

  “We lost the ball anyway.”

  “That’s hindsight.”

  “The Monday morning quarterback is always right.”

  The waitress brought their drinks and took their dinner orders. Koesler ordered ground round, medium. The Machus Sly Fox would join the considerable list of restaurants about whose hamburgers Koesler could testify. McNiff would have scrod. Having so said, he glanced at Koesler. Silently, they shared the old joke that scrod was the pluperfect of screw. One of the consequences of their long and close friendship was the ability to communicate wordlessly.

  Koesler cupped his manhattan in both hands, trying to help the ice melt. With his index finger, McNiff began stirring the ice in his martini. Just as he always did. Just as he always had, beginning with his very first taste of hard liquor. That epic event had taken place in Koesler’s suite at Sacred Heart. At the time, each had been a priest for ten years. And thereby hung the tale.

  When Koesler and McNiff were ordained as priests, they and their entire class had taken—been forced to take—a pledge that for a period of ten years each would drink no alcoholic beverage more powerful than beer or wine. Such a pledge had been required of everyone ordained by Cardinal Edward Mooney.

  Long before the ten years had passed, most of their classmates had rationalized their way around that pledge.

  After eight years as a priest, Koesler had been appointed editor-in-chief of the archdiocesan newspaper, the Detroit Catholic. In his new role, Koesler found it necessary—or thought he did—to join his new colleagues in newsgathering, reporting, commenting, and drinking. If that was the bad news, the good news was that Koesler soon learned, through the school of honest mistakes, the necessity for moderation.

  In any case, after the allotted ten-year period, McNiff presented himself to Koesler for his baptism in hard liquor. As was the case in all McNiff s more important endeavors, he imbued the occasion of his first serious drink with a melodramatic ambiance. One could, in one’s imagination, hear the roll of kettledrums.

  McNiff, solemnly announcing that he was placing his immediate alcoholic future in Koesler’s trusted hands, warned, “You ain’t gonna play fool-around with me!”

  Koesler assured him that no horseplay would mar this sacred moment. He repaired to his inner sanctum, where he prepared McNiff’s first drink. He dropped several ice cubes in the glass, poured in a few drops of Scotch, and filled the considerable remaining space with water. Technically, it was an alcoholic drink—the lightest McNiff would ever taste.

  The presentation was suitably solemn. McNiff sat pondering his initiation into the realm of serious drinkers. He once again extracted Koesler’s assurance that there had been no hanky-panky in the drink’s preparation.

  McNiff stirred the ice with his index finger; for years, he’d been watching confirmed drinkers do that. Finally, he took a sip, rolled it around his palate, swallowed it, looked up brightly, and commented, “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Now, as Koesler watched McNiff stir his martini, a drink considerably stronger than his first, the long-ago scene flooded his memory.

  “Besides,” McNiff picked up the thread of their conversation, “any offensive chance we had in that game was shot when Hunsinger got thrown out.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Pat; the Cougars’ entire offense isn’t tied up in one player.”

  McNiff nodded gravely. “Who does Bobby Cobb go to when we need the big play? Nine out of ten times,” he answered his own question, “it’s the Hun. If he’d been in the game at the end, I’d almost go along with your crazy pass play.”

  Koesler smiled. “For you, that’s a real act of faith.”

  “The Hun can get the job done. He’s been doing it for years. I don’t know what we’re going to do when the Hun hangs it up, as, inevitably, he must.”

  “There’ll be someone else, Pat. There always is.”

  “Who’s the Hun’s backup now?”

  “Hoffer. Kit Hoffer.”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. What’d he do today? One incompleted pass!”

  “The ball was thrown behind him! Good grief, what do you expect!”

  “The Hun would have caught it.”

  “Oh, sure, and then made it disappear.”

  “You mark my words, Bobby: Kit Hoffer is never going to fill the Hun’s shoes. And remember, you heard it here.”

  “Please, Pat,” Koesler said lightheartedly, “don’t be so hard on Hoffer. He’s one of my parishioners.”

  There was that moment of genuine surprise that, from long association, Koesler recognized.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He moved in earlier this year, when he won a spot on the team.”

  “No kidding! You got a pro football player in your parish!” McNiff s childlike awe was manifest.

  “Not only is he a parishioner; he got me involved in a Bible discussion group.”

  “A Bible discussion group! What happened? Did you find a spare moment that wasn’t filled in with meetings, Masses, or paperwork?”

  The waitress brought their salad. Koesler noticed for the first time her clinging black dress with its fetching décolletage.

  He ordered a bottle of Blue Nun. He had never taken enough interest in wines to become an oenologist. Someone had once mentioned that Blue Nun could accompany meat, fish—anything. Since he was having meat and McNiff fish, he quickly decided on the easiest solution. Besides, for two men in clerical suit and roman collar, Blue Nun had a nice ring.

  He could not help reflecting on McNiff’ s questions. Koesler had always considered the priesthood a hard-working, busy profession. But how priestly occupation, as well as the world, had changed since they had been ordained in the mid-fifties! Then, Catholicism had found itself in the middle of a rhythm-only baby boom, campaigns against steady dating and a nefarious new publication called Playboy; the beginning of what might become either the newest or the ultimate technological explosion; and the last throes of a climate in which “Father” knew best.

  How things had changed in thirty years!

  Now, few could remember why steady dating had been a problem. Teenagers of the fifties had passed along that victory, as well as the triumph of their music, to their children. If steady dating was no longer a problem, undesired pregnancies, as well as abortions, the occasional consequences of steady dating, now were.

  Catholics, by and large, had settled the issue of family planning to the satisfaction of their own “informed” consciences. Almost the only Catholics who still found a problem with most means of birth control were a few priests, many bishops, and, of course, the Pope. With almost all these gentlemen, the problem remained no more than theoretical.

  Playboy, despite all Catholic efforts to have it removed from store shelves, was alive and well. The magazine had spawned so many imitators that had, in turn, so strained the limits of decency that the mother of them all was now quite bland by comparison.

  Word processors were ubiquitous. Long ago, they had put the final nail into the coffin of that noble instrument, the Linotype machine. And now so many children had computers that these electronic wonders had replaced books, comic books, Big-Little Books, television, and, of course, outdoor exercise. The nuclear club had grown by the year. So much so that most first-world countries as well as some second-world countries had the capability to at least initiate the final holocaust. And in all this technological race there was no semblance of a contemplative balance. Reflecting on the present state of affairs, Koesler concluded that the seven last words of Western Civilization might well be, We Have the Technology to Do It.

  Finally, as far as Koesler was concerned, the day of “Father”—in the sense of the good old parish priest—knowing best was irretrievably gone. There had been a time, spanning centuries, when the local priest had been the best—, sometimes the only, educated person in an area. The serfs worked while the monks studied. Ethnic immigrants to the USA clustered in their ghettos around their priests. Even in the 1950s, the parish priest had been the general practitioner who instructed, counseled, mediated, arbitrated, processed, and at times acted as an employment agent. Now, in this age of specialization, Catholics, like nearly everyone else, took their problems to specialists. The priest as amateur marriage counselor and seat-of-the-pants psychologist gave way to the professional.

  Koesler stabbed a piece of lettuce and dabbed it in the house dressing. “As far as our time being overscheduled with meetings and Masses, I’ll give you that one. God knows, between parochial and diocesan meetings, there’s not an awful lot of time left over. And with the priest shortage, each of us has more Masses to say than ever before. We used to be able to at least take turns with all the weddings and funerals. Now, there’s hardly anyone around to take a turn.

  “But the other thing you mentioned, Pat, the paperwork, the administration; I think we can get rid of a hell of a lot of that.”

  Finished with his salad, McNiff cracked a bread stick. “Oh, you do, do you? Well, it’s not going to go away. So who’s going to do it? Who’s going to be around running the plant? Who’s on duty at the door? Who’s available in case of emergency? Who’s there when the parishioners need somebody?”

  “The ultimate answer to most of those questions is, our business manager.”

  “Business manager! You got a business manager? When did you get a business manager? Where did you get a business manager?”

  “About, let’s see, maybe six months ago.” Koesler sensed McNiff s pique over not having been told. “It just never came up in any of our discussions.”

  Koesler waited while this new information was assimilated. McNiff did not adjust easily to surprises. “It’s one of the men from the parish,” Koesler explained. “Ed Dorsey. I don’t think you’ve met him. A little while back, he retired from Ford. He was an executive there. It was his idea; he didn’t know what to do with all that time. He suggested he take over the office. So now, between him and our secretary, Mary O’Connor, the parish is doing better than ever. We give him a little stipend. It isn’t much . . . but then, he doesn’t need much. We just wanted to show him our gratitude.”

  McNiff was not at all sure he liked the idea. But then, he seldom liked any new idea at first blush. “But who takes care of the parishioners, their spiritual needs? Neither what’s-his-name—Mr. Dorsey—nor Mary can confer sacraments. Neither of them is trained to give spiritual advice.”

  Koesler chuckled. “I didn’t abdicate, Pat; I just hired a business manager. I’m around much of the time, catching up on odds and ends, preparing homilies . . . like that. And if I’m not at the rectory, I call in periodically to get any messages. And if someone wants to see me, he or she makes an appointment. Just as they do with their doctors, dentists, and lawyers.

  “You ought to try it, Pat. In a parish like yours, you’ve got to have a number of retirees who could step in and help. They’d probably be grateful to be asked. It would free you up. All those Masses and meetings make demands on us that we can’t escape. But there’s no reason we have to add to the burnout the rest of the time.”

  The waitress cleared away the salad dishes—my, that was a décolletage!—and served the pièces de résistance. McNiff was still digesting the business manager concept. “Okay, so the business manager relieves you from hours of answering phones, taking care of the books, managing the janitor, ordering supplies, making sure equipment is kept in good repair”—McNiff was unaware that he was enumerating tasks he would be relieved of if he had a business manager—“but what do you do with the time you’ve saved? What do you do, Father, all day ... I mean, after you’ve said Mass?”

  Koesler smiled. “There’s lots of things, Pat. I go back to the seminary, audit some classes. Bone up on some of the new theological trends. Spend a bit more time visiting ill parishioners. There’s a nursing home in our parish. I go there every once in a while. Those folks really need company. We’ve started a few prayer groups in the parish. And,” he paused and chuckled, “then there’s the Bible discussion group . . . how’s the fish?”