Free The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) by Alan K Baker Page B

than one young priest, whose mind and soul had yet to be tempered in this unholy forge, which was why he made a point of visiting each new arrival in the city. These visits gave him an opportunity to see how they were settling in, to listen to their hopes and fears, and to gauge their strengths and weaknesses. It was important work – at least as important as ministering to the spiritual needs of his flock – and Father O’Malley was nothing if not mindful of his responsibilities.
    He had grave concerns about the young priest, Father Desmond Maguire, whom he had just left. The lad was barely out of the seminary, and here he was already in the panting maw of New York, with a head full of dreams about offering salvation to the heaving, self-obsessed masses. Optimism and high ideals were fine – essential, in fact – but the greatest test for a man of God was how he handled the situations in which those ideals seemed doomed to failure and irrelevance.
    When that happened (and he believed it was when , not if) he would see the real Desmond Maguire.
    As he walked along Richards Street toward the Columbia Street upway station, O’Malley became aware that he was being followed. A glance in the wing mirror of a parked car told him that there were two of them: rough-looking types, unshaven and shabbily-dressed, a pair of street hoodlums, the dregs of humanity drifting along the street the way excrement drifts along a sewer pipe.
    Forgive me, Father , O’Malley thought. I know I should not consider them that way. They are your errant children, as are we all …
    ‘Hey, Father!’ called one of the men.
    O’Malley stopped and turned to face them. ‘Yes, my son?’
    ‘Me and my buddy, we got a question for you.’
    ‘And what is your question?’ O’Malley asked.
    The other man grinned at him. ‘How much you got in your wallet?’
    Suddenly, they lunged at him, sweeping him off the street and into a narrow alley filled with stinking garbage. They thrust him against a wall, and while one held O’Malley’s throat in an iron-fast grip, the other started to search his pockets. He could smell their whisky-tainted breath, the stink from their unwashed bodies, and he pitied them.
    ‘Where’s your fuckin’ wallet, Father, huh?’ said one.
    ‘Hurry it up!’ said the one who was holding O’Malley by the throat.
    ‘I have little money,’ said O’Malley, struggling to get the words out past the hoodlum’s grip.
    One of the men found what he was looking for in the back pocket of O’Malley’s pants. He held up the wallet for his friend to see, and then grinned at the priest. ‘See, Father?’ he said. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
    The one who was holding O’Malley drew back his arm, made a fist and said: ‘Lights out, Father.’
    O’Malley smiled at him and brought his knee up sharply, directly into the man’s crotch. The man gasped and dropped instantly to his knees, while O’Malley whipped his elbow around and struck the other hoodlum square in the face, flattening his nose with a crunch like that of walnut shells crushed underfoot. O’Malley then launched himself from the wall against which he had been pinned and aimed a powerful uppercut to the man’s solar plexus which lifted him clean off his feet. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and writhed on the filthy ground.
    ‘Do you still think that wasn’t so hard?’ said the priest.
    ‘Son of a bitch!’ gasped the other man, who was still holding his genitals, his eyes tightly shut. ‘You fuckin’ bastard!’
    ‘Your profanity is an insult to God!’ shouted O’Malley as he leaned forward, grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and yanked up his head. ‘As is your very life!’
    He punched the man three times, shattering his jaw and knocking out several of his teeth.
    ‘What the fuck you doin’?’ gasped the other hoodlum, who had managed to get some of his breath back.
    O’Malley glanced at him. He was still holding his ruined nose with one