Made it throught another round...
So I made it through Challenge 4 of stargate_LAS and Challenge 2 of originalfic_LAS. Here are my two stories:
The challenge: "[character] at age 10"
Story Title: Left Waiting (Samantha Carter at age 10)
Show/Characters: Stargate SG-1 (Samantha Carter, Mark Carter, Jacob Carter, Mrs. Carter and a couple original characters)
Rating: PG
Warnings/Notes: Brief mention of vehicular animal fatality. Since some people who are less familiar with the show may be voting, show canon has it that fourteen-year-old Samantha Carter’s very career-focused father, Jacob Carter, had been late to pick up his wife, and, having taken a taxi, Mrs. Carter was killed in an ensuing automobile accident. Sam and her brother Mark blamed their father for their mother’s death for a long time. While Sam had forgiven Jacob “a long time ago” by the time he blended with the Tok’Ra symbiote Sel’mak, Jacob and his son, Mark, had never reconciled. (Episodes: Seth, Jolinar’s Memories, The Devil You Know)
10pm
“They could have been seriously injured, Jacob! At the very least, Mark could have been cited for driving without a license.”
“I know. I can’t believe he-”
“If it had been me - fine. I can call a cab,” his wife interrupted. “But Sam? She’s only ten! She worships you, despite how little you or your CO apparently care how frightened she must have felt, left waiting there all alone.”
“I said I was sorry, Honey. Sam’s fine. She’s tough. Gonna hafta be if she wants to become an astro-”
Samantha Carter hated when her parents argued, especially when they argued about her.
***
Earlier (4:15pm)
“Dad’ll be here any second, Mrs. Foster. Probably just got held up at the base.” Sam smiled confidently at her Girl Scout leader, even if partly to convince herself. She waved to her friend Jenny as they pulled out of the now-empty school parking lot. Sitting on a cement ledge by the steps, Sam pulled Black Beauty out of her school bag; she had a book report to write and 50 pages left to read. Might as well make use of the time, she thought.
4:45pm
Sam closed Black Beauty and put it away. Slipping her jacket on to ward off the autumn chill, she regretted not having taken Mrs. Foster up on her offer to wait. From Jenny, Sam knew, however, how Colonel Foster treated his wife when she didn’t have dinner ready when he got home. Sam walked along the concrete ledge, arms outstretched for balance, pretending to walk the beam like Nadia Comăneci or Olga Korbut.
5pm
Sam moved up to sit in the doorway, out of the breeze. She folded in on herself - both physically and mentally - pulling her knees up to hug them and silently listing the NASA astronauts, first in alphabetical order then chronologically by mission. One day that roster would include Samantha Carter!
Where *is* he? she asked for the umpteenth time.
5:30pm
Sam discovered the coins in her bag - change from the dollar Dad had given her for hot lunch. With one last look up and down the street for Dad’s car, she walked three blocks to a corner gas station to use the pay phone to call home.
“Mark, I don’t know what to do. Everybody else left an hour ago,” Sam whined. She bit her nails and waited for her older brother to come up with something.
“I could try calling his office,” Mark offered, “But if he’s left already, that won’t help.”
Sam stared at the darkening sky and sighed. A loud knock on the phone booth glass caused her to jump, and she almost wet herself. A bum, his brown-bagged bottle in hand, glared at her. Why did Mom have to go help Uncle Irving *this* week? she wondered. Any other Friday besides Girl Scout meeting week, Sam could have taken the bus home. Dad had *promised* to leave work early to come get her. Instead, she stood here in a phone booth while a derelict tried to reclaim his “home”.
“Mark, I’m *scared*. Some drunk wants in here. What should I do?”
“Wait right there. Don’t open the door.” The line went dead as Mark hung up on her.
5:45pm
Sam’s jaw dropped, as Mark drove up in the family station wagon. At fourteen, he had no permit, much less a driver’s license. Fortunately, a growth spurt this year made him at least *look* old enough. Good thing Mom flew to her brother’s, Sam thought, or what car would Mark have taken?
Sam struggled with the phone booth door and pushed past the bum. She realized two blocks later she had left her bag in there, but she didn’t tell Mark. The bum could have it - Black Beauty and all! Seeing Mark clutch the wheel with white knuckles and his brow furrowed in concentration, Sam said nothing for fear of distracting him and causing an accident. All the way home, she split her attention between him driving and the passing scenery, watching for police to arrest them.
6pm
They almost made it home without incident. Just as Mark pulled onto their street, Jasper, the neighbor’s dog, ran out in front of them. Mark slammed on the brakes. They both flew forward - Sam into the dashboard, and Mark into the wheel - and THUD, trapped between the grill and a telephone pole, Jasper went to the great kennel in the sky. The horn stuck; neighbors came pouring out of their houses to check out the ruckus.
Their Dad arrived just as Mr. Jenkins got the horn to stop. He came screeching to a halt behind the station wagon. Sam hid behind the pole as Dad laid into Mark as if he were one of Dad’s men, in front of everybody. Neighbors retreated to let them to settle this “family matter”. Staring at the ground, Mark just stood there, arms crossed, taking it.
“Dad, he drove the car to come get me because *you* didn’t,” Sam finally worked up the courage to say. She watched their father look back and forth between them. Hands on hips and eyes locked with her father’s, Sam eventually growled at him and stomped up to the house. Her dramatic exit benefited from her having already pressed the garage door opener - or GDO, she liked to call it, like NASA acronyms - before the accident. She marched through the inside door, which she slammed to effect.
Sam locked herself in her room and refused to let her Dad in to apologize or even to come out for dinner. Eventually, she dozed off on her bed, snuggled with her cat, Einstein. She didn’t know when Dad got home from the airport with Mom and only awakened when she heard her parents’ raised voices.
It might be a girl’s wishful and worshipful thinking, but after her Mom’s tirade, Sam guessed that her Dad would never leave her - or any of them - waiting like that again.
Story Title: Take a Right Just Past Hell
Rating: PG
Warnings: use of the words “hell” and “dam” (Yes, it’s spelled correctly! ;p) Word Count: 666
PROMPT: “If you are going through Hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill
“What is it about men stopping to ask directions?” Kyra Gilliam inquired of her gorgeous new husband, who sighed behind the wheel. The couple, who had just celebrated their three-month anniversary, had less than thirty minutes to get to her college roommate’s wedding rehearsal. As the matron of honor, tardiness was not an option.
Julie Reeves, Kyra’s roommate at Berkeley for all four years, came from a little town in Michigan. She had performed maid-of-honor duties at Derek and Kyra’s wedding in California earlier in the summer, and Kyra would return the favor as Julie married her high school sweetheart. The Gilliams had flown into Ann Arbor from San Francisco, obtained a rental car and a map and headed northwest. With Julie’s detailed directions for the half-hour trip, they had declined the GPS system at the Avis counter.
Now, however, with the heat of Indian Summer and the exhaust from the tractor they’d been following forever on County Road D32, they - at least Kyra - regretted the decision. Even the boon of a convertible failed to improve her spirits.
From the airport, they had taken Highway 94 going west and then turned off on Baker Road to go north to Dexter, where Julie insisted they stop to buy a scarf to save her hairdo from the convertible. After Dexter, though, they had turned off on the wrong road and once they corrected course, they had lost half an hour. Apparently some prankster - or the persistent wind - had reversed the sign where the Dexter-Pinckney Road intersected D32 because they realized too late they were headed back east rather than west on Darwin Road. (There might have been a comment about survival of the fittest at that point when Kyra wanted to ask directions and Derek just turned and drove back the other way.)
Now pointed in the right direction, the Gilliams sped along “like a herd of turtles” on D32, which had changed names to Patterson Lake Road. Kyra’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Julie,” she announced, looking at the caller id before flipping her phone open. “Hi, Hon!”
“Hi. Where *are* you guys? Everyone else is here.” Even over the road noise and wind, Kyra heard laughter in the background to confirm that.
“Yeah, I think we’re almost there, maybe another couple miles. Oh, wait! There’s the sign - only half a mile,” Kyra assured her friend. “We got turned around a couple of times. And you know men…”
“Wouldn’t stop and ask, right?”
“Uh-huh. Oh, okay. We’re at the edge of town. There’s the country store ‘Hell in a Handbasket’ and ‘Screams Ice Cream Parlor’ is dead ahead.” Kyra rolled her eyes at Derek when he glanced in her direction.
“Excellent. If you’re going through Hell, keep going,” Julie said. “The bar I mentioned - the Dam Site Inn…”
“I see it.” Kyra also saw the sign for Hell Creek, which runs through town and over a dam there by the Inn, Julie had said.
“Take the turn up ahead, and try not to get lost again. We’ll see you in about ten minutes!” Kyra remembered her own recent stint as Bridezilla, and she smiled at Julie’s relaxed, good humor.
“Okay, great. Bye.” Kyra turned to Derek and added, “Who else can say they went through Hell…Michigan…to get to their best friend’s wedding?”
“Everyone else who’s attending?” Derek deadpanned. Kyra slapped his arm.
“Go to Hell, Derek.”
“Okay, let me just turn around…” Derek pretended to start to make a U-turn.
“You do, and…and…” threatened Kyra.
“There’ll be Hell to pay?”
Kyra groaned.
“Just drive, Derek, or you’ll find things a bit frosty in Hell tonight, maybe even frozen over completely,” she joked. They both chuckled, and Derek took the turn just as Kyra pointed it out. “From what Julie told me, next weekend the place will be really hopping. They have some kind of annual hearse convention…the ‘Last Rides Reunion’, I think she called it.”
“Let me guess… People are just dying to come back every year?”
If anyone has any constructive criticism on either piece, I'm open to it. I'm not getting many votes one way or the other on my pieces. At least I'm not getting voted out, but one can't improve without feedback.
Oh, and here was my alternative for the Stargate Challenge 4, which I didn't title because I didn't submit:
Rating: PG-13ish (just for inference)
Warnings: None, really
Notes: We have so little background on O'Neill's childhood - just that he was born in Chicago and raised in Minnesota. Someone said they had read the character background (which they *thought* was official from show or RDA), which stated that his parents had divorced. At first I was going to have the mom widowed, but I changed it.
“Jonathan James O’Neill, get your behind in here for dinner, NOW!” his mother bellowed.
Jack winced. The use of his full name meant trouble. She had called previously, possibly several times. Mother O’Neill allowed her only son a lot of latitude, but she didn’t expect to have to call twice. Back in Chicago, young Jack had never wandered too far from their block, so she rarely had that issue. Once they had moved to Minnesota, however, he had explored the large property; his investigations took him further and further from home over the summer. Sometimes he didn’t hear the call to supper.
Jack ran full bore, sliding to a stop on the soft, wet grass near the hose and spigot, where he attempted to wash off as much as he could of the “sweaty boy smell”, as his older sisters called it, before bounding up the back steps. He kicked off his muddy sneakers and dried his head, face and hands on a towel held out the door by next older sister Bridget, who, at sixteen, seemed the only one to like him in the least.
As expected, though he had tried, the hens clucked for a good five minutes about “the stinky boy”. Jack’s cheeks burned. Eventually, his mother shushed them, but she also ordered a post-dinner bath. He didn’t argue because he knew a lost cause when he saw it. Besides, he had to serve at altar for Mass in the morning anyway; Father Fitzpatrick would brook no dirty, smelly altar boys.
Jack loved and admired Father Fitzpatrick. Since his parents’ separation, Jack had felt lost among all the women in the house, especially since they had moved from Chicago to live with his widowed grandmother - and away from all his school and neighborhood chums. With no neighbors close by and having missed the Little League tryouts, serving as an altar boy had provided Jack with a way to meet other boys his age, maybe make a friend or two, before he started at a new school in the fall. In addition he found comfort in the familiarity - perhaps in the discipline - of the tasks even in a new parish.
Jack had served two years already under Father MacInerny in Chicago and had felt confident in his ability to serve, if on occasion he had suffered rebuke for his somewhat casual attitude. (He took God seriously, just not anyone else, including himself.) Father Fitzpatrick had not just accepted him without his having to prove himself, though. Jack felt like a greenhorn again at first, repeating his Latin responses, but now he and Father Fitzpatrick were fast friends.
The priest regularly came out to fish in their pond, despite the glaring flaw that there weren’t really any fish in it. Father Fitzpatrick had explained it wasn’t about the fish; it was about fish-ing. If Jack hadn’t adored him already, he would have from that moment on. They spent many an hour in each other’s company, poles in the water, talking about God and guy stuff or just letting their hats slip down over their eyes and taking a nap. From Father Fitzpatrick, Jack also learned to be comfortable with his own thoughts and company. That helped when he missed Chicago and his dad.
It also prepared Jack for dealing with Father Fitzpatrick’s abrupt departure. Jack arrived at the church early the next morning only to find Father Fitzpatrick not in his vestments but in his everyday slacks and shirt. He held a suitcase and his hat and stood next to his black Ford. Jack approached, but Bishop Shannon caught him by the shoulder and told him to go get changed into his cassock and surplice.
While he retrieved his cassock from its hook, one of the other altar boys his age, Frankie Byrne, told Jack that some older boys had accused Father Fitzpatrick of inappropriate behavior, whatever that meant. He had defended his friend. When the talk persisted among the boys and Jack continued to stand up for Father Fitzpatrick, Bishop Shannon had ordered them all to drop the matter.
Jack didn’t understand being told not to stand up for his friend’s reputation. He ripped off cassock and surplice and refused to wear them - or to go to church, where truth really should mean something, he thought - ever again.
The challenge: "[character] at age 10"
Story Title: Left Waiting (Samantha Carter at age 10)
Show/Characters: Stargate SG-1 (Samantha Carter, Mark Carter, Jacob Carter, Mrs. Carter and a couple original characters)
Rating: PG
Warnings/Notes: Brief mention of vehicular animal fatality. Since some people who are less familiar with the show may be voting, show canon has it that fourteen-year-old Samantha Carter’s very career-focused father, Jacob Carter, had been late to pick up his wife, and, having taken a taxi, Mrs. Carter was killed in an ensuing automobile accident. Sam and her brother Mark blamed their father for their mother’s death for a long time. While Sam had forgiven Jacob “a long time ago” by the time he blended with the Tok’Ra symbiote Sel’mak, Jacob and his son, Mark, had never reconciled. (Episodes: Seth, Jolinar’s Memories, The Devil You Know)
10pm
“They could have been seriously injured, Jacob! At the very least, Mark could have been cited for driving without a license.”
“I know. I can’t believe he-”
“If it had been me - fine. I can call a cab,” his wife interrupted. “But Sam? She’s only ten! She worships you, despite how little you or your CO apparently care how frightened she must have felt, left waiting there all alone.”
“I said I was sorry, Honey. Sam’s fine. She’s tough. Gonna hafta be if she wants to become an astro-”
Samantha Carter hated when her parents argued, especially when they argued about her.
***
Earlier (4:15pm)
“Dad’ll be here any second, Mrs. Foster. Probably just got held up at the base.” Sam smiled confidently at her Girl Scout leader, even if partly to convince herself. She waved to her friend Jenny as they pulled out of the now-empty school parking lot. Sitting on a cement ledge by the steps, Sam pulled Black Beauty out of her school bag; she had a book report to write and 50 pages left to read. Might as well make use of the time, she thought.
4:45pm
Sam closed Black Beauty and put it away. Slipping her jacket on to ward off the autumn chill, she regretted not having taken Mrs. Foster up on her offer to wait. From Jenny, Sam knew, however, how Colonel Foster treated his wife when she didn’t have dinner ready when he got home. Sam walked along the concrete ledge, arms outstretched for balance, pretending to walk the beam like Nadia Comăneci or Olga Korbut.
5pm
Sam moved up to sit in the doorway, out of the breeze. She folded in on herself - both physically and mentally - pulling her knees up to hug them and silently listing the NASA astronauts, first in alphabetical order then chronologically by mission. One day that roster would include Samantha Carter!
Where *is* he? she asked for the umpteenth time.
5:30pm
Sam discovered the coins in her bag - change from the dollar Dad had given her for hot lunch. With one last look up and down the street for Dad’s car, she walked three blocks to a corner gas station to use the pay phone to call home.
“Mark, I don’t know what to do. Everybody else left an hour ago,” Sam whined. She bit her nails and waited for her older brother to come up with something.
“I could try calling his office,” Mark offered, “But if he’s left already, that won’t help.”
Sam stared at the darkening sky and sighed. A loud knock on the phone booth glass caused her to jump, and she almost wet herself. A bum, his brown-bagged bottle in hand, glared at her. Why did Mom have to go help Uncle Irving *this* week? she wondered. Any other Friday besides Girl Scout meeting week, Sam could have taken the bus home. Dad had *promised* to leave work early to come get her. Instead, she stood here in a phone booth while a derelict tried to reclaim his “home”.
“Mark, I’m *scared*. Some drunk wants in here. What should I do?”
“Wait right there. Don’t open the door.” The line went dead as Mark hung up on her.
5:45pm
Sam’s jaw dropped, as Mark drove up in the family station wagon. At fourteen, he had no permit, much less a driver’s license. Fortunately, a growth spurt this year made him at least *look* old enough. Good thing Mom flew to her brother’s, Sam thought, or what car would Mark have taken?
Sam struggled with the phone booth door and pushed past the bum. She realized two blocks later she had left her bag in there, but she didn’t tell Mark. The bum could have it - Black Beauty and all! Seeing Mark clutch the wheel with white knuckles and his brow furrowed in concentration, Sam said nothing for fear of distracting him and causing an accident. All the way home, she split her attention between him driving and the passing scenery, watching for police to arrest them.
6pm
They almost made it home without incident. Just as Mark pulled onto their street, Jasper, the neighbor’s dog, ran out in front of them. Mark slammed on the brakes. They both flew forward - Sam into the dashboard, and Mark into the wheel - and THUD, trapped between the grill and a telephone pole, Jasper went to the great kennel in the sky. The horn stuck; neighbors came pouring out of their houses to check out the ruckus.
Their Dad arrived just as Mr. Jenkins got the horn to stop. He came screeching to a halt behind the station wagon. Sam hid behind the pole as Dad laid into Mark as if he were one of Dad’s men, in front of everybody. Neighbors retreated to let them to settle this “family matter”. Staring at the ground, Mark just stood there, arms crossed, taking it.
“Dad, he drove the car to come get me because *you* didn’t,” Sam finally worked up the courage to say. She watched their father look back and forth between them. Hands on hips and eyes locked with her father’s, Sam eventually growled at him and stomped up to the house. Her dramatic exit benefited from her having already pressed the garage door opener - or GDO, she liked to call it, like NASA acronyms - before the accident. She marched through the inside door, which she slammed to effect.
Sam locked herself in her room and refused to let her Dad in to apologize or even to come out for dinner. Eventually, she dozed off on her bed, snuggled with her cat, Einstein. She didn’t know when Dad got home from the airport with Mom and only awakened when she heard her parents’ raised voices.
It might be a girl’s wishful and worshipful thinking, but after her Mom’s tirade, Sam guessed that her Dad would never leave her - or any of them - waiting like that again.
Story Title: Take a Right Just Past Hell
Rating: PG
Warnings: use of the words “hell” and “dam” (Yes, it’s spelled correctly! ;p) Word Count: 666
PROMPT: “If you are going through Hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill
“What is it about men stopping to ask directions?” Kyra Gilliam inquired of her gorgeous new husband, who sighed behind the wheel. The couple, who had just celebrated their three-month anniversary, had less than thirty minutes to get to her college roommate’s wedding rehearsal. As the matron of honor, tardiness was not an option.
Julie Reeves, Kyra’s roommate at Berkeley for all four years, came from a little town in Michigan. She had performed maid-of-honor duties at Derek and Kyra’s wedding in California earlier in the summer, and Kyra would return the favor as Julie married her high school sweetheart. The Gilliams had flown into Ann Arbor from San Francisco, obtained a rental car and a map and headed northwest. With Julie’s detailed directions for the half-hour trip, they had declined the GPS system at the Avis counter.
Now, however, with the heat of Indian Summer and the exhaust from the tractor they’d been following forever on County Road D32, they - at least Kyra - regretted the decision. Even the boon of a convertible failed to improve her spirits.
From the airport, they had taken Highway 94 going west and then turned off on Baker Road to go north to Dexter, where Julie insisted they stop to buy a scarf to save her hairdo from the convertible. After Dexter, though, they had turned off on the wrong road and once they corrected course, they had lost half an hour. Apparently some prankster - or the persistent wind - had reversed the sign where the Dexter-Pinckney Road intersected D32 because they realized too late they were headed back east rather than west on Darwin Road. (There might have been a comment about survival of the fittest at that point when Kyra wanted to ask directions and Derek just turned and drove back the other way.)
Now pointed in the right direction, the Gilliams sped along “like a herd of turtles” on D32, which had changed names to Patterson Lake Road. Kyra’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Julie,” she announced, looking at the caller id before flipping her phone open. “Hi, Hon!”
“Hi. Where *are* you guys? Everyone else is here.” Even over the road noise and wind, Kyra heard laughter in the background to confirm that.
“Yeah, I think we’re almost there, maybe another couple miles. Oh, wait! There’s the sign - only half a mile,” Kyra assured her friend. “We got turned around a couple of times. And you know men…”
“Wouldn’t stop and ask, right?”
“Uh-huh. Oh, okay. We’re at the edge of town. There’s the country store ‘Hell in a Handbasket’ and ‘Screams Ice Cream Parlor’ is dead ahead.” Kyra rolled her eyes at Derek when he glanced in her direction.
“Excellent. If you’re going through Hell, keep going,” Julie said. “The bar I mentioned - the Dam Site Inn…”
“I see it.” Kyra also saw the sign for Hell Creek, which runs through town and over a dam there by the Inn, Julie had said.
“Take the turn up ahead, and try not to get lost again. We’ll see you in about ten minutes!” Kyra remembered her own recent stint as Bridezilla, and she smiled at Julie’s relaxed, good humor.
“Okay, great. Bye.” Kyra turned to Derek and added, “Who else can say they went through Hell…Michigan…to get to their best friend’s wedding?”
“Everyone else who’s attending?” Derek deadpanned. Kyra slapped his arm.
“Go to Hell, Derek.”
“Okay, let me just turn around…” Derek pretended to start to make a U-turn.
“You do, and…and…” threatened Kyra.
“There’ll be Hell to pay?”
Kyra groaned.
“Just drive, Derek, or you’ll find things a bit frosty in Hell tonight, maybe even frozen over completely,” she joked. They both chuckled, and Derek took the turn just as Kyra pointed it out. “From what Julie told me, next weekend the place will be really hopping. They have some kind of annual hearse convention…the ‘Last Rides Reunion’, I think she called it.”
“Let me guess… People are just dying to come back every year?”
If anyone has any constructive criticism on either piece, I'm open to it. I'm not getting many votes one way or the other on my pieces. At least I'm not getting voted out, but one can't improve without feedback.
Oh, and here was my alternative for the Stargate Challenge 4, which I didn't title because I didn't submit:
Rating: PG-13ish (just for inference)
Warnings: None, really
Notes: We have so little background on O'Neill's childhood - just that he was born in Chicago and raised in Minnesota. Someone said they had read the character background (which they *thought* was official from show or RDA), which stated that his parents had divorced. At first I was going to have the mom widowed, but I changed it.
“Jonathan James O’Neill, get your behind in here for dinner, NOW!” his mother bellowed.
Jack winced. The use of his full name meant trouble. She had called previously, possibly several times. Mother O’Neill allowed her only son a lot of latitude, but she didn’t expect to have to call twice. Back in Chicago, young Jack had never wandered too far from their block, so she rarely had that issue. Once they had moved to Minnesota, however, he had explored the large property; his investigations took him further and further from home over the summer. Sometimes he didn’t hear the call to supper.
Jack ran full bore, sliding to a stop on the soft, wet grass near the hose and spigot, where he attempted to wash off as much as he could of the “sweaty boy smell”, as his older sisters called it, before bounding up the back steps. He kicked off his muddy sneakers and dried his head, face and hands on a towel held out the door by next older sister Bridget, who, at sixteen, seemed the only one to like him in the least.
As expected, though he had tried, the hens clucked for a good five minutes about “the stinky boy”. Jack’s cheeks burned. Eventually, his mother shushed them, but she also ordered a post-dinner bath. He didn’t argue because he knew a lost cause when he saw it. Besides, he had to serve at altar for Mass in the morning anyway; Father Fitzpatrick would brook no dirty, smelly altar boys.
Jack loved and admired Father Fitzpatrick. Since his parents’ separation, Jack had felt lost among all the women in the house, especially since they had moved from Chicago to live with his widowed grandmother - and away from all his school and neighborhood chums. With no neighbors close by and having missed the Little League tryouts, serving as an altar boy had provided Jack with a way to meet other boys his age, maybe make a friend or two, before he started at a new school in the fall. In addition he found comfort in the familiarity - perhaps in the discipline - of the tasks even in a new parish.
Jack had served two years already under Father MacInerny in Chicago and had felt confident in his ability to serve, if on occasion he had suffered rebuke for his somewhat casual attitude. (He took God seriously, just not anyone else, including himself.) Father Fitzpatrick had not just accepted him without his having to prove himself, though. Jack felt like a greenhorn again at first, repeating his Latin responses, but now he and Father Fitzpatrick were fast friends.
The priest regularly came out to fish in their pond, despite the glaring flaw that there weren’t really any fish in it. Father Fitzpatrick had explained it wasn’t about the fish; it was about fish-ing. If Jack hadn’t adored him already, he would have from that moment on. They spent many an hour in each other’s company, poles in the water, talking about God and guy stuff or just letting their hats slip down over their eyes and taking a nap. From Father Fitzpatrick, Jack also learned to be comfortable with his own thoughts and company. That helped when he missed Chicago and his dad.
It also prepared Jack for dealing with Father Fitzpatrick’s abrupt departure. Jack arrived at the church early the next morning only to find Father Fitzpatrick not in his vestments but in his everyday slacks and shirt. He held a suitcase and his hat and stood next to his black Ford. Jack approached, but Bishop Shannon caught him by the shoulder and told him to go get changed into his cassock and surplice.
While he retrieved his cassock from its hook, one of the other altar boys his age, Frankie Byrne, told Jack that some older boys had accused Father Fitzpatrick of inappropriate behavior, whatever that meant. He had defended his friend. When the talk persisted among the boys and Jack continued to stand up for Father Fitzpatrick, Bishop Shannon had ordered them all to drop the matter.
Jack didn’t understand being told not to stand up for his friend’s reputation. He ripped off cassock and surplice and refused to wear them - or to go to church, where truth really should mean something, he thought - ever again.