Punish the Sinners Read Free Page A

failed marriage was nothing to make light of.
    “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said quickly. “Of course the whole thing has been very painful, and I’m afraid it will take time.” A lot of time, he thought to himself, but the priest seemed mollified.
    “Of course,” Vernon said, his voice suddenly taking on a fatherly quality Balsam had never heard before. “If there’s anything I can do … “ He trailed off and then he suddenly shifted in his chair. When he spoke again, it was with annoyance.
    “I wish you’d told me all this before,” he said. “Such things make a much bigger difference in towns likeNeilsville than they do in bigger cities. It isn’t going to make things easier for either of us.”
    My God, Balsam thought, is he going to fire me before I even get a chance? Aloud he said, “I don’t really see why my marital status is anyone’s business but my own.”
    Vernon smiled tolerantly at him. “I’m afraid you have a lot to learn about Neilsville. Here, such matters are everybody’s business. Well, I don’t really see that there’s anything to be done about the situation, I mean, here you are, and Linda isn’t here, and that’s that, isn’t it?”
    Balsam hoped his sigh of relief wasn’t audible. “Pete,” he began, but broke off when the priest held up his hand.
    “Since we’re talking about the less pleasant aspects of Neilsville, there are one or two more things I should tell you right now. First, while we’re old friends, and it’s perfectly natural for you to call me Pete, in this parish we tend to be a bit on the formal side. Everybody, and I mean everybody, calls me Monsignor. It may seem stiff to you, but there are reasons for it. So I’d suggest that you try to get into the habit of using my title yourself.” He smiled wryly at the look of stupefaction on Balsam’s face. “I wish it weren’t necessary,” he said, “but Pm afraid it is. If people overheard you calling me Pete instead of Monsignor, they’d take it as a sign of disrespect”
    “I see,” Balsam said slowly, hoping he’d matched the tone that Vernon had achieved earlier with the same phrase. “Doesn’t that sort of thing tend to isolate you from everyone?”
    Vernon shrugged helplessly. “What can I do? That’s the way things have always been done here, and that’s the way the people here like it We have a duty to ourflock, don’t we?” Before Balsam could reply, the priest stood up. “Suppose I take you on a little tour?” he suggested. “We might as well get you used to the lay of the land.” He smiled warmly, but Peter Balsam suddenly wondered just how much of that warmth was real.
    Monsignor Vernon led Peter Balsam from the rectory across the tennis courts to the school building. The four girls who had been playing doubles stopped their game and stared at the two men. Peter Balsam grinned at them self-consciously, while the priest studiously ignored them.
    The fifth girl, absorbed in trying to serve balls against the wall of a handball court, didn’t seem to notice them at all.
    “They really gave me the once-over,” Balsam commented when the two men were inside the school building.
    “It was me they were staring at,” Monsignor Vernon said stiffly. “They do it on purpose. They think it embarrasses me.”
    “Does it?” Balsam asked mildly, and was surprised when the priest grasped his arm and turned to face him.
    “No,” he said, his dark eyes boring into Peter’s. “It doesn’t bother me at all. Will it bother you?”
    “Why should it?” Balsam asked in confusion, wondering why the priest was reacting so strongly.
    The Monsignor dropped his arm as quickly as he’d grasped it. “No reason,” he said shortly. “No reason at all.”
    But as they began their tour of the school, Peter Balsam was sure that there
was
a reason. He told himself it was nothing more than a function of their common background. Growing up in the convent, neither of them had ever learned