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"Brothers and Sisters in Christ," Chester began his sermon the Sunday aft er his visit with Pamela Singleton. "It is Jesus' commandment that we love one another. He did not say that we should limit our love to the Catholic. He did not say that we shoul d limit our love to those whose skin color is the same as ours. He said, simply, that we mu st love one another. We must love the Jew no less than the Christian, the Protestant no less than the Catholic. We must love black people the same as white. We must love one an other. This is what Jesus commands us to do." Chester paused. d he knew The congregation was now one-quarter its former size an

there would be even fewer families in the Sundays to come. Chester was no longe r naive enough to believe that his words would make a difference, but he felt, at least and at last, that he had to try. The faces that remained looked up at him, but most seemed f rozen as if already far away. "It is said that we live in a 'changing neighborhood,' and this is said a s if change can only be for the worse. Yet we know that it is in the nature of things to change . To change is to grow. To change is to adapt, to evolve. It is our duty to see to it that the changes we are experiencing are for the better. Black families"--there he had said it!--"a re moving into Austin. Only a few of them are Catholic. But they are all God's children. It is Jesus' commandment that we love them. It is a sin to treat them differently because th eir skin is black. Make no mistake about it. This is a moral issue. Sin is sin. ot our job to It is n

judge. That job is already taken. That job belongs to Somebody Else. He will judge us and he will judge us all, white and black, and, when he does, he will judge us,

in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not on the basis of the color of our skin but on the basis of the content of our character. Now may Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, and our Redeemer, be with us 278 all, now and forever, in the name of the Holy Trinity, One and Indivisible, worl d with out end. Peace be with you. Amen." That evening Monsignor Maguire made a weak attempt to chastise him. Ches ter had been to the cinema with Father Sanders, an assistant pastor at St. Edmund's in n earby Oak Park. They had seen a Japanese film, Brothel 8. It told the story of a far m girl sold by her family to serve in the government run brothels that accompanied the Japan ese armed forces as first they advanced and as later they retreated during World War Two. "Monsignor Maguire always said the Japanese are barbaric," Chester remark ed on the ride home. "Perhaps he has a point." "We should hold the sons responsible for the sins of their fathers? Is t hat what you're suggesting?" Father Sanders replied. "Not exactly," Chester said. "But what if the sons continue to benefit f rom their fathers' sins? What then?" "Are you proposing that we give California back to Mexico?" "Maybe not such a bad idea, Father," Chester answered. Jonathan Edwalds father was sitting in his rocking chair on his Race Avenue front porch, the red cooler at his feet. "I have never succeeded in thinking of one good thing that came from Cali fornia, and I have been trying for years!" The other priest thought for a moment. "California is giving the nation

right turn on red." "Literally or metaphorically?" "Both." Father Sanders laughed and Chester laughed with him. Now Monsignor Maguire wobbled at the foot of the rectory's staircase, han ging on to its post as if it were a streetlamp. "I heard all about your sermon on sin, 279 Father," he said. "Apparently you have forgotten that disobedience is a sin, to o." Chester pushed by him to go to his room. "Father Sanders has already he ard my Confession," he said. "Besides, there are worse sins than disobedience." "Satan disobeyed," Monsignor Maguire shouted back. "Adam and Eve disobey ed." "The Japanese you are so fond of didn't." slammed its Chester went to his room and

door behind him. An hour later, as he was reading his breviary, Mrs. McGrath kn ocked at his door. "Mr. Burdine is here to see you, Father, if it's not too late. He's been calling all afternoon." "No, it's all right," Chester said. "Tell Mr. Burdine to wait in the rec eption. I'll be right down." Jack Burdine stood as Chester appeared. Jack had gone straight from Aus tin High School to the Chicago Daily News, starting as a janitor and working his way up t o pressman. He had been at the newspaper ever since--thirty-four years. He was a paunchy man in his fifties. What remained of his hair, on the sides of his head , was a silver fleece. He had a large nose and bright blue eyes. Except for his face a nd the top of

his head, his skin was as white as white paper. For some inexplicable reason, f or Jack Burdine was the lightest of drinkers, he was iodine red in color from the neck u p. His wife, Marcey, joked that her husband was thoroughly and naturally patriotic. "What can I do for you, Mr. Burdine?" "It's about your sermon today, Father," the older man said. "Me and da m issus have been talkin' about it ever since dis morning. Marcey said I should come see you first ting." Chester sensed the other man's anxiety. "Well, I'm glad you did come, Ja ck. I 280 promise that I will accept sincere praise." Jack Burdine did not catch Chester's attempt at humor. "Oh, it was a goo d sermon, Father, the words and all. For sure it was. I'm not saying anything different. I mean, it sounded good and everything like dat. But you see, Father, the ting about it is dat I got three daughters. Never was blessed wid a son, Father, but I wouldn't trade dem for da world, Father, not for da world." "I'm sure you wouldn't," Chester said softly. "An' you knows, Father, well, when all da big shots started leavin' an' s uch, da missus, God bless her, Father, she's a fine woman, well, she says how we was goi n' to stick it out an' all dat, dat we'd get by, dat somehow tings would work out. Da t's what she said, my Marcey. She's da tough one, Father, she really is. Me, I'm just a cre am puff compared to her! So I went along. I mean, we been in da house ever since we wa s married and all like dat. But all da time I was feelin' like we was makin' a mi stake. I mean half da houses on our block are already sold and people's just waitin' fer dem t o close and

de udder half, except ours and old Mrs. Sweeney's, dere all up for sale, Fathe r. You'd think somebuddy named 'For Sale' was running for Mayor the way de signs are all up and down de street. And de block across from our alley, Father, Parkside Avenue, dat's all gone." Gone. How can one small syllable contain such a world of loss? Gone. "But surely Parkside Avenue is still there!" Chester joked. Now the older man's turmoil expressed itself in anger. "Don't be making jokes about it, Father. It ain't funny. Dere's nobody left hardly. Our garage has been br oken into and dey took my girls' bikes. Just before Tom and Mildred Casey moved, dey knocked Mildred down on her way back from da Jewels Foods and snatched her purse. He ankle got busted up and all. Tings like dat never used ta happen around 281 here, Father. You know dat. Austin! We don't want ta move, Father, we really don't. But I just don't know how I'd go on livin' if anything happened ta one of my girls, really, Father, I don't. You won't like dis here, Father, and it's a sin and all, I knows dat, but I will kill anybuddy dat touched one of my girls, Father, I really would and I mean it. Don 't try to tell me nuttin' different." Chester saw that Jack Burdine had tears in his eyes. He knew that he sho uld reach out, that he should offer comfort, that he should provide answers. But there we re no answers, none that he could think of. "We must leave judgment--and punishment--in God's hands," he said. "Meanin' no disrespect, Father," Jack Burdine replied, "but dat's easy fo r you ta say. You don't have no daughters." ars The silence between them now was like grief. Te

poured down the older man's cheeks. Jack Burdine brought his hands to his face and sobbed. "All my life I've tried ta be a good Catholic, Father," he said. eally have. "I r

Dat's how I was raised ever since I was a little boy. I don't want my Immortal Soul ta burn in da fires of Hell forever. I tole da missus she don't have nuttin' ta worry a bout cause a wife's duty is ta obey her husband. And so, no matter what, Marcey's soul is go nna be okay. Ain't dat right, Father?" Chester had no idea what Jack Burdine was talking about. Then it came to him. His words from the pulpit that morning, which he had in their saying thought inspire d and insightful, now seemed flaccid and faint. "This is a moral issue, " he had lect ured then. "Sin is sin. Make no mistake about it. It is a sin to treat our new nei ghbors differently because their skin is black." In Jack Burdine's tears it came to hi m that all his sermon had accomplished was to increase Jack Burdine's turmoil. Now, thanks to Chester's lofty words, in addition to confusion, abandonment, and fear, Jack Bur dine was assaulted as well by guilt, and for circumstances that were beyond his or any on e 282 person's control. "You said it is a sin not to love 'em, Father, and, sure you're right and all, but you are askin' too much, Father, you may not know it, but you surely are. I drive to wo rk late at night when I'm on da graveyard shift an' I see dem hangin' around on da corner, drinkin' beer and dressin' all funny, and dere's little children and all an' I kent help it, Father, but I don't love 'em. No, what I'm feelin' ain't nuttin' like love, far from it, Fath er, nuttin' like love at all. Why kent dey be like us?"

Chester thought of Pamela Singleton. "Maybe if you give it a chance." "No, Father," Jack Burdine answered. "I kent. I just kent. I never taut I would say dis, Father, but I'm afraid. Me, an ex-marine. I'm afraid." "It is natural to fear the unknown." "Well, you're wrong dere, Father. I can tell you dat much. It ain't da unknown dat I'm afraid of. It's da known. Just drive east of here, Father. It's all tore up. You know dat, Father. Garfield Park used ta be all so grand. We used ta sleep dere outsides sometimes when we was kids, before dere was air-conditioning, on dose r eal hot summer nights, Father, before dey moved in and pushed us out over here. Jess lo ok at Garfield Park now, Father, all tore-up. Dey throw de garbage out de windows and everythin' like dat." Chester uttered a few more clichs, about casting the first stone, about ha ting the sin but loving the sinner, about Ruth and the alien corn. But he knew he was just g oing through the motions. He could not find it in himself to condemn the simple man whose soul cried out in pain. The largest pile of dirty clothes always was the in-bet weeners. Might as well get on with it. Jack Burdine had stopped crying. He raised his h ead and looked at the priest the way a patient in a cancer ward looks at her doctor. 283 "When we are faced with conflicting responsibilities," Chester said, "we must give priority to our primary responsibility. family. As God Your primary responsibility is to your

watches over His people, as the father of your family, you must watch over your wife and daughters. God will not punish you for doing what in your heart of hearts you t hink best

for them."

There. It was done.

The older man sprang to his feet. "Oh, thank-you, Father. Thank-you. M arcey said you'd have da right answer. You always was da smart one, Father, even when you was workin' over dere at Freeman's Clothing on Chicago Avenue. Thank-you, Father, t hankyou." Happiness bubbled on Jack Burdine's face like that of a child's on Halloween. "Curtis Champion was by again just yesterday. He says we still got time if we hurry. We should list da house before it's too late, he says. You know him, Fa ther. He used ta have his office over dere on Waller Avenue across from where Mahoney's F lowers used ta be." "Yes," Chester replied. "I know Curtis Champion of Champion's First Cho ice Realty only too well." For years one of Monsignor Maguire's golfing buddies. Chester remembered what Barbara Jean Benedetto had told him. Curtis Champion had warned her that she should get her house on the market "before it's too late." Her sta tely Victorian was on Superior Street, just one block south of Chicago Avenue. The black tsunam i had breached the natural barrier of the Lake Street Elevated embankment four blocks to the south; soon, he said, it would jump Chicago Avenue. If Champion's First Choice Realty listed her house immediately, Curtis could still tell black families they were m oving into an "integrated" neighborhood. "And they are," Curtis laughed to his wife, Roseanne, in their new home in Hoffman Estates, one of the instant subdivisions that were sprouting like weeds on the f ormer farmlands to Chicago's west. "It's integrated from the time the first black 284

family moves in until the time the last white family moves out, usually six mont hs." For Curtis Champion those were six fecund months. Twice a year he leapfrogged his o ffice ten blocks to the north to open virgin territory. Yes, Chester thought, I know Curtis Champion only too well. "Course he says we won't get as much as da first ones got," Jack Burdine said. "But, still, at least it ain't too late. Dat's what he says. Do you tink he's right, Father?" Chester did not answer. After Jack Burdine departed, Chester sat in his rocking chair for a long time. Were front porch neighborhoods like Austin things of the past, anachronisms, destined by interstates and inner states of mind to go the way of the horse and buggy? Were Hanover Acres and Cottonwood Estates historical inevitabilities? Would Americans ever l earn to live together? Or, constricted by economics and ethnicity, are all doomed to qu arantine themselves in paranoid enclaves of perceived self-preservation? Wasn't it his j ob to liberate people, people like Jack Burdine, from the imprisonment of the past, fr om the imprisonment of fear? Chester thought of the look on Jack Burdine's face as the older man had waited for Chester's magisterium. Who am I to have such power? r was Cheste

supposed to be God's intermediary, but he knew, despite the Cardinal's hands, de spite the incense and holy water, that he was simply a man. Had he done the right thi ng? Or had he given into weakness and rationalized his capitulation as mercy? It had a ll been so easy that morning pontificating from the pulpit. But, face to face with Jack Bu rnine, he was quick to blink. Was there any hope? Was there any hope at all?

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