Father Briar and The Angel (2 page)

But Paul Bunyon was a myth,
a tale told to inspire people to work hard in the face of nature’s
capriciousness. Julianna’s father had been a real man of flesh and
blood and flannel and whiskers and gun oil and chainsaw grease.
He’d been across the country twice and worked in a dozen of
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal labor projects. He’d dammed rivers in
the West, strung power lines through the Midwest, and logged dark
forests from Maine to Washington State.

He had shoulders as wide as
a Burma Shave billboard and an equal way with silly rhymes and
terrible puns. Terribly entertaining in a corny way, his laughter
and goofiness were infective. Despite the brutal toll a life of
hard, physical work had taken on his body, he was in constant
good-spirits, if hyper-critical at times. His criticism was just
motivated by his perfectionism, she knew, so most of the time she
was able to forgive him for it.

Gordon was a natural born
entertainer and had entertained the rough men of the logging camps
with ribald stories and songs. To this day, he was prone to telling
an off-color joke in the presence of his daughter, just to see her
blush, and then laugh in spite of her churchy decency. He favored
Aqua Velva cologne, already iconic by then and nice ties, but
oddly, he was indifferent to the quality of his suits.

Of all of the influences on
her life, her father was the greatest. Gordon was big and lusty and
hilarious; he was at the same time humble and smart and
self-deprecating. She always tried to emulate him when she was in
situations where she felt as though she was in over her head or
uncomfortable, not knowing what to say.

When she’d joined Women’s
Auxiliary Corps in 1944, he’d bubbled over with support for her.
His left leg had been partially crippled during his tenure as a
lumberjack when a tree had been felling came down upon it. This had
excluded him from military service, much to his everlasting
regret.

“
You are going to be the
jewel of the Armed Services,” he’d told her.

“
Aw, dad, it’s not really
the Armed Services,” she said. “They’ll do some testing and see
what sort of job I’m fit for.”

“
It is great nonetheless.
You aren’t a shirker.”

Her father couldn’t abide
by “shirkers” and spent a great deal of his post-retirement time
ridiculing them. He’d scour the newspapers looking for them,
usually in the government or local sports teams, then spend the
rest of the day ridiculing them.

Her mother, Angeline (the
family had a tradition of names ending in “ine,” as her sister was
Geraldine and her auntie was, somewhat awkwardly, Bernardine), was
a reticent beauty, shy and retiring by radiant anyway. A staunch,
proud, and devoted Catholic, her three kids were her
raison d’être,
her
reason to exist, her pride and joy.

She’d wanted more but
making it through the depression with that large a brood was still
a remarkable accomplishment. Her husband having to travel the
great, groaning nation meant that she was alone a great deal while
raising them. She met this considerable challenge with both grit
and grace without so much as a complaint.

Faith had done her right,
rewarded her, and filled her life. She volunteered every Monday and
Tuesday at the parish office, answering phones and filing papers.
She volunteered Wednesday and Thursday at the church library,
shelving concordances and confirmation texts and calling folks
whose books were overdue. She worked (without pay) Friday and
Saturday at the Catholic Charities Branch #3 Food Bank, stocking
cans of bean and corn for the neediest of families.

Sunday was for
mass.

Mass was still said in
Latin and none of them could imagine it any other way. The priests
retained an air of mystery as they went about their duties.
Julianna had always loved the arcane rituals of the church and was
happy every time the service began.

There was real comfort in
the ancient words, the endings were rhythmic and lilting, their
cadences repetitive and trance-like. There was a little hidden
menace in them, too. Anything you don’t understand can mean
whatever you want it to, manifesting your desires and your fears
equally. She often wondered if the priests were cussing at her,
secretly, or gossiping amongst themselves about which of the
parishioners was most sinful and which ones the most reverent and
godly.

Julianna inherited so much
of her mother’s attractiveness. They had the same wide, round eyes
that gave them a perpetual look of joyful surprise. Their hair
curled in the same coy way, in soft rivulets and graceful curves,
down around their swan-like necks and onto their shoulders. When
they wore it up it was equally elegant, showcasing their high and
intelligent foreheads and dimpled temples.

While the family rarely had
money to spare, Angeline was crafty with a needle and thread and
was able to stitch and stretch them into fashionable, if
conservative, clothes. Busty and tall, Julianna wore them well and
was popular with the boys. Popular but untouchable, their
old-school Catholicism saw to that.

“
I’m proud, too; I am just
worried something bad is going to happen to you,” she’d fussed over
her daughter the evening before she left for training
school.

That was understandable. It
was wartime, and there were constant rumors about Japanese
submarines being sighted off shore, of scout planes and long-range
bombers bearing the rising sun of the Imperial Flag on their wings,
of foreign spies posing as fishermen with plans to bomb the
port.

“
Oh, mom,” she’d shushed,
“I’m not going overseas! I’ll be just down the road,
really.”

And so in March of 1944,
she packed up and went to the Women’s Auxiliary Corps training
center in Spokane, Washington, farther away from home than she’d
ever been, but closer to her destiny.

The WAC girls were first
trained in three major specialties.

Young women who’d tested in
as the brightest and nimblest were trained as switchboard
operators. Switchboards and the telephones they controlled were
becoming indispensible to modern life in general and the war effort
specifically.

Next came the mechanics,
who had to have a high degree of mechanical aptitude and problem
solving ability. Julianna had been classified as a mechanic and she
threw herself into her job with typical enthusiasm.

Last were the bakers, poor
girls who had difficulty with reading and numbers. This was later,
as America’s appetite for war remained un-satiated and its endless
list of enemies unconquered, expanded to dozens of specialties like
Postal Clerk, Driver, Stenographer, and Clerk-Typist. These workers
were sometimes stereotyped as dumb or lazy by their fellow WACs,
but Julianna Warwidge, good girl, was careful never to indulge in
such nasty gossip.

She’d gossip about other
things, sure! She loved the movies and the magazines that covered
them. Her father had been a voracious reader of pulp magazines and
she picked those up whenever she saw them, too, although due to
rationing, paper was sometimes scarce or expensive. But she’d keep
up with the screen idols and chat about their romantic
(mis)adventures with the machinists and her fellow WAC
mechanics.

Although it sometimes
sounds, if not idyllic, at least egalitarian, that is true, to a
degree. But these were remarkably different times; different even
from 1954. The war had ushered in so many changes and the role of
women in the workplace was just one of them. About 150,000
American women eventually served in the WAC
during World War II. They were the first women other than nurses to
serve with the Army. Julianna was always proud of that
fact.

While most women, like
Julianna, served stateside, some went to various places around the
world. She was sometimes jealous of these girls, but not often.
They got to go to interesting and exciting places, including Europe
and North Africa, and some girls even landed on Normandy Beach just
a few weeks after the initial invasion!

But Julianna was content
there in Seattle, and like all Americans, happy when the war ended.
And like a lot of female Americans, she was ready to find a
man!

So many of the boys had
been away, been overseas, and been gone so long, so many of them
were ready, randy, and pent-up, and so many of them were single and
unattached to anything for the first time in years.

Cedric Briar wasn’t one of
those men.

He was committed to his
Order.

Chapter Two: On the
Origins of Small Things Like Great Men.

Ignore the white clerical
collar; it didn’t stop him from being a man.

Cedric Briar was a handsome
man in the Great American sort of way, conventional, dignified, and
enduring. His hair was brown and wavy, the kind that would’ve been
called “unruly” had he let it grow even a fraction of an inch too
long, which, being both a Jesuit and a Navy man, he never, ever,
ever did.

Father Briar filled out
both uniforms like the tailor intended, like a man ought to, like
the ladies liked. His chest was broad and although it lost
definition over the years, he was never out of shape; instead of
fat, he tended towards thickness, even in his happy and well-fed
later years.

He was gentle with babies
and old women. He was quick with a sports analogy with the men, a
commiseration about “this miserable weather,” with the farmers, and
somehow even the teenagers found him funny.

Cedric Briar had been born
the fourth of six children in a family as duty bound to God and
Country as any America family has ever been.

The brood of kids consisted
of Catherine, whom everybody called Kay as a child, later she
became Sister Catherine. Next came Margaret (Maggie) who was slow
to develop, both mentally and physically, and lived at home for the
bulk of her life. She was followed by the family’s first son, John,
who became Captain Jake and was killed in action in Guadalcanal.
Then came Joan, who was Sister Joan from the time she was eighteen
years old, and Cedric, who became Father Briar.

Cedric Briar’s heritage was
a reflection of the American Immigrant’s Experience. His maternal
grandparents had come as children from Cork Co. Ireland, and their
daughter and Cedric’s mother Mary, still spoke with an Irish brogue
so thick her children often struggled to understand her.

Mary was the defining force
in Cedric’s life. A large, redheaded woman of indomitable will and
a devotion to community almost as strong, she shepherded her brood
through childhood and into lives of obligation and duty and still
managed to have a few laughs along the way.

Cedric was a typical lad in
a typical, big Catholic family in pre-Depression and Depression era
America. He loved playing with his siblings, especially the doomed
and rowdy John. They invented all manner of games to keep
themselves occupied, one or two of which didn’t even involve
punching. Apples were his favorite food and he’d sneak them from
the neighbor’s trees whenever they were ripe in the autumn. He also
loved popcorn and corn on the cob, which he considered to be as
close as he and his brother John.

The family was poor, even
before the Depression, but somehow never went hungry. Later in
life, Father Briar would attribute this to their deep ties with the
Church. Educated by Jesuits from the time he could walk, Cedric and
the rest of the Briar lot spent a great deal of time at school and
there was always food around, scavenged and cooked by charitable
and caring nuns.

“
There were potatoes.
Sliced so thin as to be almost translucent,” he’d later tell
Julianna, “but still, potatoes. For us Irish, that was necessary.
For some reason, I remember there being an abundance of carrots and
that Maggie’s pee turned orange one winter month from eating so
many of them. Could that be real, could that be true? Or is my
memory playing fun little games with my childhood?”

Although his upbringing was
scholastic, his rough and tumble siblings ensured that he had
physical intelligence and toughness as well. He grew up tall and
hit puberty early; his chest broadened and his voice deepened. He
started beating John, three years his senior, at their constant
punch-ups. By the time he was twelve, it was clear he’d be an
athletic star at Central Catholic High.

And that he was, playing
quarterback and middle linebacker. Already hugely attractive to
girls because of his light Irish brogue, excellent morals, and
early manliness, his athletic accomplishments made him
irresistible. But Cedric was a good boy, and even after he’d
quarterbacked his team to a 9-1 record as a senior, he never did
much more than kissing.

There was never any
question of a steady girlfriend or college athletic scholarships,
he was going to concentrate on his studies at Creighton University
and enter the seminary after that.

The Catholic Church that
Cedric had been baptized into shortly after his birth and the one
that he found upon her ordination into the priesthood were
fundamentally different institutions.

The growth of the American
Catholic Church in terms of membership, as well as its slow but
genuine acceptance and assimilation into the culture had given it
much more influence.