Dark Mondays by Kage Baker Page B

it. Father Souza had used to play ping-pong with Father Connolly, until the old man had passed away. Now he got his exercise most afternoons by walking down the hill and out onto the pier, as far as the end, and back.
    He never power-walked. He idled. Sometimes he chatted with the fishermen; today he leaned on the rail and watched the surfers riding the long white combers into land or more often idling themselves, floating on the swell, resting on their boards. Some of the surfers were girls. The black neoprene suits made them look like seal-women out of Celtic legend, strangely arousing. Father Souza watched them regretfully, and lifted his head to stare far down the beach. Just visible at the edge of the dunes was a grove of dead trees, with silvered and twisted trunks. It was a white and silent place. When he had been a child, he had thought that God lived there.
    Sighing, he put his hands in his jacket pockets and moved on. Salt mist was beading on his clothes, chilly and damp.
    The arcade that used to be at the foot of the pier was gone, had been gone since a long-ago winter storm sent waves over the seawall and collapsed its roof. There was a doughnut shop there now. Father Souza stopped in and bought a latte, and settled into a vacant booth.
    He warmed his hands on the cup and watched the early twilight falling. Something came rolling down the sidewalk, on a wobbly trajectory: a cocoanut. It came to rest against a planter containing a skimpy date palm, as though huddling with a fellow exile from tropical climes. Father Souza wondered how it had got there.
    A woman was sitting in the booth across from him, sipping coffee and making notes on something with a red pen. Grading papers? Yes. He recognized Ms. Washburn.
    He cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said. “You teach at the public school, don’t you?”
    She lifted her eyes to his, and he had a mental image of a figure in armor going on guard. Her eyes were gray as steel.
    “I do, yes.”
    “You’re Patrick Avila’s teacher?”
    “Ah,” she said. “I imagine I know what this is about.”
    He smiled awkwardly and extended a hand. “I’m Father Souza. I guess you did me a favor; one of my parishioners actually got upset enough about something to ask my advice. Can I hear your side of the story?”
    But he could tell his attempt at self-depreciating charm was wasted. It was plain, from the look on her face, that she saw a host of blood-drinking popes and Inquisitors in phantom form standing at his shoulder.
    “I don’t particularly see any need to defend my actions to you,” she said. Her accent was patrician, with a certain New England starch.
    “Defend, no, no. I just thought you could enlighten me a little,” said Father Souza. “Patrick was pretty upset.”
    “Patrick had a violent episode in class,” said Ms. Washburn.
    “So I gathered.”
    “I’ve made a recommendation that he should be tested for Attention Deficit Disorder.”
    Father Souza winced. “I wouldn’t have said Patrick’s problem was paying attention, would you? Just the other way around. He was able to keep focused on the monkey thing for five months.”
    “Are you an educator, Father Souza?” inquired Ms. Washburn.
    “No,” he admitted. “But I know it’s not a good idea to be in a hurry to pin a label on a child.”
    “Neither is it a good idea to let a condition go undiagnosed,” said Ms. Washburn. “The sooner Patrick can undergo corrective counseling, the better.”
    Father Souza sat back and stared at her, baffled. “What exactly did he do that was so bad? Did he hit you?”
    “Not physically, no. He resorted to verbal abuse. He kicked a chair across the room. He disrupted class to the extent that a full hour of the school day was lost,” said Ms. Washburn.
    “Sounds like a pretty angry young man,” said Father Souza. Ms. Washburn flushed and took a sip of her coffee.
    “Patrick was clearly acting out,” she said. “His home life, possibly. I