Mating Season

Father Carrigan Knew Terry Dinneen as a string of a boy nearly six feet tall for all he was only seventeen, dark Irish with a snub nose, a length to his upper lip that gave him an impudent look, and such lashes to his blue eyes that the girls glanced sly and with hope when they passed him on the street. In truth, though, the lad was neither impudent nor paying attention to the girls, but serious and overly fond of reading books.

It was the books that were causing the difficulty.

" 'Tis not," said Terry's mother to Father Carrigan through the grill of the confessional, "that Terry shouldn't read, oh no, 'tis not against reading I am. His father, God rest his soul, was a great reader in his last days when the sickness was on him. But a very full-blooded man with color in his face Mr. Dinneen was, as you'll remember." She sighed a breath of memory and hitched her shawl tighter.

"A strong man was Dinneen," agreed Father Carrigan, remembering well Michael Dinneen and his carryings on with the bottle and the barmaids, but also generous with the plate on Sundays.

"Terry's not like his father at all, at all," went on Mrs. Dinneen. "No more color in his face than a peeled potato, and mooning around the house day and night wearing out his eyes with the reading. He takes no exercise and he's eating poorly, very poorly. Is it time for supper and the very things he likes on the table and I'll call and call and there he is with his nose in a book. Oh, he's not a minute of trouble to me. A saintly boy if ever there was one, and good to me. But the reading ..."

"It's a phase he's going through, and you shouldn't be worrying," said Father Carrigan clicking his beads impatiently. Mrs. Dinneen was taking up too much time, with four more waiting to get into the confessional and his five o'clock tea getting cool in the parlor.

"A what?" she asked, anxiously.

"A phase," said the Father. "He'll get over it. There's worse things a boy of his age could be doing than reading. Of course he wouldn't be reading any of the books on the List now, would he?"

"Ah, no, sure he wouldn't, Father," she said quickly. "My Terry has not a wicked thought, let alone reading sinful. Reverence he has for the Holy Father, and he's never after the girls like that Cassidy boy who lives down the street. No, he'd not be reading anything on the List."

Father Carrigan moved restlessly and fiddled with the shutter, thinking idly that if he slid it quick across the grill he might cut off the tip of Mrs. Dinneen's (continued on page 39)Mating Season(continued from page 25) nose – an impious thought. "What is it he's reading now?" he asked.

"A nice green book, it is," said Mrs. Dinneen.

"What is the title?"

She clicked her tongue in apology. "That I can't remember now. 'Tis about bees."

"Bees," said Father Carrigan. "There's no harm in bees."

"There's harm in reading so much that the blood gets sluggish and with no color in the face at all. I wouldn't want him to go consumptive on me," she protested, plaintively.

"All right," said Father Carrigan, giving in. "Send the boy around to see me on Saturday early and I'll have a talk with him."

• • •

All of this was on a Thursday and that night Mrs. Dinneen said not a word until after supper and the dishes done. Terry had the shade tipped on the kitchen lamp and was hunched close over the table, elbows all spraddled, reading in the oval of yellow light.

"'Tis about bees, now, isn't it?" she asked.

"'Tis," said Terry, not taking his eyes from the page.

"You're sure it's not one of the books on the List?"

He looked up startled. "Ah," he said, his voice raw-edged with impatience. "How would it be on the List and me getting it from old Miss Lucey at the Public Library."

"I'm asking only for the good of your soul, Terrence," she said, apologetically.

There was silence in the kitchen again for a moment while Terry tried to pick up where he'd left off reading and his mother, sitting outside the circle of light with her hands in her lap, looking at him fondly and worrying that she'd offended him.

"Oh," she said. "I near forgot. You're to see Father Carrigan on Saturday early."

"And why should I be going to see Father Carrigan?" he asked in mild alarm, the while his mind ran quick over his small sins.

"He wants to see you about your phase."

"My what?"

"Your phase. It's a phase you're in, Terrence. But there'll be no more talk about it now. Be at the Father's door on Saturday, around nine is the best time to catch him, and mind you take the book with you for he wants a look at it."

• • •

Saturday morning Terry walked down the block with the book under his arm, heeding not the invitation of Kate O'Hara – the one with the green eyes and the gold hair and bold ways – to sit on the steps with her awhile. Nor paying mind to the thrill and screeches of the football match at Kings Crossroads.

He knocked timidly on Father Carrigan's door.

"Come in, come," said the Father, giving the boy a critical eye and seeing the tall good looks of him, even though there was no color in his face. "Sit down, sit down."

Terry sat on the edge of the chair in front of Father Carrigan's desk. He fixed his gaze luke-warm on the picture of Saint Sebastian stuck through with arrows and with eyes rolled to heaven – a sad sight.

"Your mother says you're eating poorly, and I agree from the looks of you," said the Father, coming right to the point. "She says it's reading, reading, all the day and night, with never a bit of football, fresh air, or sunshine."

Terry said nothing.

"Are you in any trouble?" asked Father Carrigan, kindly.

"I'm not," said Terry.

"Would it be a girl that's worrying you?" asked the Father in a man-to-man tone, trying a random shot but not so random considering the age of the boy. And in the back of his mind was that self-same Kate O'Hara, that very pretty girl who lived within a stone's throw of the Dinneens. Ah, there'd been a bit of talk about her saucy ways, but likely no more than jealous gossip which was a scald on all and a sin too.

"There's no special girl," said Terry, his voice as short as a bitten finger nail.

"Not even the O'Hara, the one with the bright hair?"

The Father was teasing now, joking a bit, for he could see the clear innocent look of the boy's eyes. No trouble there yet about girls, no trouble at all.

Terry's voice was cool. "Sometimes I see Kate at the Library," he said. "She's got the intelligence and likes reading. She puts me on to the books she fancies, and I put her on to the books I fancies. That's how it is, and nothing else at all, Father."

"Good, good." He put out his hand for the book still clutched under Terry's arm. "What's it you're reading now? Did she put you on to this one?"

"She did, Father."

"Ah," said the Father, his face all smiles when he saw the title. "'Tis Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee. Now, there's a grand book. I read it myself when a lad, and it sent me to catching insects, butterflies and moths, all put in a jar of preservatives and stuck through with a pin on the chart for my collection. That's grand play, for it teaches you nature. It's exercise in the sunshine to put color in your face, and you learn, too, for there's more to the ways of life than is to be found in books."

Terry's face showed interest. "Father," he said. "I'd like to catch a queen bee."

"You could, you could," said the Father, warming to the idea of it, and idly flipping the pages of the book looking for a familiar part to make conversation with. "Ah, here's a marvel now. The part that tells of the wedding flight of the queen bee. You remember that part?"

Terry nodded.

"That's nature, boy. That's the male and the female, and the wonder of God in the making."

Terry's eyes opened a bit and he took a quick gnaw at the corner of his lip. (continued on page 44)Mating Season(continued from page 39) " 'Tis the part I like the best," he said. "The queen comes out of the hive and the bees all after her, and she flies higher and higher ..."

"There you have it!" cried Father Car- rigan. "A marvel, a marvel! Far up in the air she flies, higher than the sight of the eye can follow, and there she marries with that one bee who has the strength and swiftness in him to reach her. A grand and wonderful thing, the way of nature." He closed the book and finished with reverence in his voice. " 'Tis part of the Grand Plan of God, and this Maeterlinck, for all he was neither Irish nor a man of the Church, got the very idea of the miracle of it."

"Father, do you think bees, being so little and all, have the intelligence?"

"Now," said the Father, puckering up his brow with thinking. "I judge they do, and then again they don't. They're part of nature and there's intelligence in nature. I have it that the Holy Father himself is the only one that can explain it right, but, man, you know he has little time for explanation with the whole of St. Peter's at Rome to keep straightened out. But nature is good, boy, and what's good is Godly."

"It's Kate O'Hara's favorite book, this one on the bees," said Terry. "And I'm thankful she put me on to it."

"Yes, yes," said the Father, the thought in his mind trying to get ahead of his words. "Here's my idea. This very afternoon I've a notion to walk down by Donovan's brook. To be honest, it's for cooling my feet I go and let the dear water run over my toes and they aching from my tramping the Parish over day after day. Now, from what your mother says, you're needing fresh air, and from what you tell me of yourself and Kate you've both an interest in the marvels of nature, bees, butterflies, and the like. So, this afternoon about three o'clock the both of you meet me here and I'll take you down to Donovan's brook and the small meadow where the pretties are. I'll lend you and Kate my old butterfly net and you can catch what you fancy there. You'll ask Kate O'Hara to come with us, straight off?"

"I'll ask her," said Terry, getting up. "And I'm thankful to you, Father."

" 'Tis nothing, nothing at all. Be here at three o'clock and we'll have a grand rare afternoon with nature."

• • •

They met at three o'clock and Kate O'Hara was there, a ribbon in her hair and a smile on her red lips, with her voice so quiet and polite that Father Carrigan said to himself, "There's no harm in the girl at all, and bad luck to the old women who gossip so."

It was a day clear as spring water and none prettier, with the wind full and light, and the grass and wild flowers dancing in the meadow.

Donovan's brook comes down through the glen and turns in a grand sweep at the foot of the high cliff overlooking the meadow. At the turning is a pool, shallow and quiet, with the bank low and a favorite place for cooling the feet.

When they reached the spot Father Carrigan sat down and took off his pinching shoes and his black socks and wiggled his toes in the air.

"Away now," he said over his shoulder to Terry and Kate. "See what pretty you can catch with the net while I rest myself here a while."

They left him, walking down the side of the brook and crossing over to the little meadow at the base of the cliff. He saw Terry make a lunge 'with the net and heard Kate laugh at the miss.

The Father held the skirt of his cassock up with both hands, feeling the round smoothness of the little pebbles on the bottom of his feet, with the prickly cold water nipping at his shins. "Ah," he muttered, shutting his eyes with the bliss of it. "Praise God."

There was a splatter of stones slipping and he turned his head and saw Kate, her hair shining yellow as brass, leaping up the path that went to the top of the cliff a hundred feet above.

It was clear that Kate was not for the meadow, but for the adventure of the cliff, and Terry wild after her with a shout. No matter. Let them play. A grand sight they made, her hair flying in the wind and the limber Terry, with the old butterfly net in one hand, all eager and swift to catch her.

"Youth it is," he said, smiling to himself. "A run like that will put the color in the boy's face. That's what he needs, a bit of run and tag in place of wearing out his eyes at home."

They were nearly at the top now, and the Father bent his head back looking at them as they climbed higher and higher in the sunshine, zig-zagging up, with Kate still leading and Terry close after, like frolicking goats or soaring (concluded on page 62)Mating Season(continued from page 44) bees.

The shocking fear came to Father Carrigan so suddenly that he dropped the hem of his cassock into the water.

"Terry!" he yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. "Terrence Dinneen! Come back at once. Come back, I tell you."

It was useless, for the wind was against him and blew his words away and across the meadow where they were lost among the wild flowers.

He saw Kate gain the flat summit of the cliff and he saw her glance back with that come-hither look the gossips talked about, and he saw Terry reaching for her. And he saw the triumph in Terry's face and the high color, no longer pale but full – blooded like his father Michael Dinneen before him.

He stood helpless, knowing full well what was going to happen up there so high in the deep bed of warm grass atop the cliff.

"The wedding flight of the queen bee," he moaned, wringing his hands with the bitter irony of it. "And me telling him it was not wrong, but natural, good and Godly. Ah, will the almighty forgive me for what I've done now?"

A bee buzzed past him. He watched it hover over a flower and then enter it as if in answer.