Make The Man

I believe it was in the fall of 1984 when I visited Savannah, Georgia for the first time.

I went with three other Marines to explore the old city. We were stationed at Parris Island and I was the only one in our quartet who was not a Drill Instructor. The four of us decided to take weekend liberty and check out the storied cemeteries and streets and pubs. I wanted to prowl through a city I’d heard so much about, and they wanted to be away from the bumbling mobs known as recruits.

Two of my buddies were off that Friday, but one of them was still “on the street” with his platoon until about 1500. As soon as he was released by the Senior DI, he hotfooted it over to his quarters, tore off his uniform, donned civvies, and called to say that he was ready. By 1600 we were on the road, and shortly after 1700, we were parked in a lot and strolling along the streetcar track-slashed bricks of River Street.

We checked into our hotel and then started walking the district. It was a lovely evening, as I recall, the sun still just a bit above the horizon. We poked around a few shops, and I remember in one of them seeing for the first time one of those curious beeswax candles constructed of a long tube of yellow beeswax looped around in the shape of a skep, with a faucet-looking doohickey at the top to hold the end of the candle and control the rate of burn. I came close to buying one for my mother, but then decided she would be impatient with how it operated, and then I’d never be able to convince her that I hadn’t purchased it in some Yankee hellhole, so I passed on.

Happy hour was hastening on, and being Marines, we made for a bar and had a beer. The food didn’t look particularly appetizing at the first place, so we went on a short pub crawl and sampled beers while poring over the bar menus. Finally, we found a place we liked and decided to eat at the bar, given the vivacious nature of the Georgia barmaids who were attending to us.

While we were eating and talking and having a fine time, I had to use the restroom, and while walking to the back of the bar, my attention was captured by two men sitting in a booth. The two men were Catholic priests.

They were wearing the cassock, which to a Marine seemed the height of effeminacy, but unlike so many other priests I have encountered, there was nothing soft or fruity about this pair. What really drew my eye was the fact that they were drinking beer and one of them was smoking a cigarette.

This was in the Eighties, before longnecks had made their comeback, and beer bottles were squatty little glass barrel-looking things. The priests each had a bottle of Budweiser, and the one who was smoking, a dark-haired fellow of about thirty, looked to be holding a Camel; it was the first unfiltered cigarette I had seen in years.

The other thing I noticed with just my one look was how intense these priests looked. They were in a deep discussion, one of those talks that looks like it might spill over into an argument at any minute. I went on to the head, did my business, and returned to the bar. The priests were still jousting, and a bar girl was serving them a fresh round of Buds. They were friendly to her and seemed genuinely interested in whatever she was saying.

From where I sat, I watched the two men as surreptitiously as I could. I was fascinated with the idea that two professional clerics could sit in a bar, doing the two things that everybody knew good Christians didn’t do, and that they were openly advertising their vocation with their cassocks, and absolutely no one in the bar seemed to give a hoot about two priests sipping beer and taking drags on a Camel.

At one point, I said to one of my buddies, “Do you see that? Priests! Drinking! Smoking!”

He looked at me with a cocked head. “So? My parish priest [he was an old Southie, from Boston’s Hell’s Kitchen] used to have a beer and smoke a cigar. Played poker, too. Used to whip my old man’s ass in five card draw.”

I sat and gaped at him. “Your priest? And your dad didn’t mind? The priest’s….boss? He didn’t mind?”

He looked at me as if I’d asked him to help me load some magazines and climb the nearest tower. “Why would anyone care?”

“Because it’s a sin, that’s why!”

That’s when I noticed that the other two Marines were watching our exchange, and they were wearing expressions that mingled amusement with pity. They were watching the redneck display his ignorance, and they were enjoying it. So I shut up.

But I kept watching the priests. They laughed uproariously at one point, sharing a good moment together, and right after that they drank up and paid up and stood up. They passed us on the way to the door and I noticed that one of them, the blonde nonsmoker, had calluses on his knuckles, the type that karateka often sport. The same type that were on my knuckles. The other one saw me staring at them, and recognizing my high & tight haircut, said, “Evening, Marine,” as he passed. Then they were out the door and swallowed by the night, the night that had crept in on us.

Later that night, I sat up and watched television while my buddies snored. And I kept thinking about the priests, and I kept feeling that I had missed something important in my upbringing, in some of the things I’d been taught. But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know for certain that I was wrong. I also kept trying to picture in my mind one of the Baptist preachers or deacons that I’d grown up around…trying to imagine one of them with a Budweiser in his fist or squinting through a cloud of cigarette smoke as he exhaled. It was an odd mental exercise.

Sunday morning, when we were up and getting ready to go get some breakfast, my Southie friend said, “Hey, maybe we should go to Mass?”

I looked at him quickly, figuring that I was being teased, but his face was somber. I shook my head. “No, thanks,” I said.

He shrugged. “Just as well. I don’t have any good clothes to wear.” And then he jerked his thumb towards the door, and we left to go get breakfast. The other two Marines were waiting for us outside, talking to a female police officer. They were chatting her up fiercely and she was giggling and blushing and completely flustered. We ended up at a waffle restaurant and sat at a table near the window, a table with a blue and white checked vinyl tablecloth. While we were eating, I looked out the window and saw the dark-haired priest walking by, carrying what looked to be a slim briefcase. He was wearing the cassock again, and his gait was steady and purposeful. I remember thinking, “He has the bearing of one of us,” meaning a Marine.  I also remember thinking that the cassock didn’t look as girly as I’d once thought. Clothes make the man, sometimes.

I looked over to see if Southie had seen what I was looking at through the window. As far as I know, he didn’t. I wish I could call him up and catch up with him. I’d tell him that I finally made it to Mass, many years later. But I cannot call him, because he died in a car wreck near Oceanside, California about a year after our Savannah weekend. Whenever I see a photo of a priest in a cassock, or whenever I hear someone with a strong South Boston accent, I think of my friend. And I hold within my heart a hope that on the other side of all this, we’ll see each other again. Who knows what talks we’ll have?

~ S.K. Orr