Banishment

I was seated at the high table, but just barely. Newly minted Bishop McLeod—Andy to me in moments of privacy—was four seats to my right, at the center of the table. I couldn't have achieved eye contact with him, if I'd wanted to. I wondered if Crandel, seated to the bishop's right, the dean of the college, had arranged that seating that on purpose. Crandel was the organizer of Belmont Abby College here in Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as its eyes and ears. I wonder if he had divined the relationship I shared with the bishop and even now, when Andy had been elevated and changes were inevitable, was intervening.

I tried the words, "Bishop McLeod," out again, silently, on my tongue, and the man next to me turned and smiled, saying, "I know. Such a privilege for the college to have provided a bishop." I just smiled back wanly, not realizing I'd said it out loud, and pretended that I saw the honor in this elevation as well. The title "bishop" still seemed strange. It had been barely a month since his elevation, and this was his celebration banquet. We were sending him off to Charleston to ascend to the bishopric of the Charleston Diocese. Until then he had been Monsignor McLeod, president of Belmont Abby College, and I had been simply Father Blackwood, the lowest-ranked assistant professor of English at the school, in my first, trial year here.

Everyone was having such a jolly time at the banquet and my jaw was getting tired from the false smiles I had to set to pretend that everything was all right—better than all right. James Crandel had been named earlier today as the school's new president. Everything was so "all right" about that that I thought I might be sick. I started to tell the head of the English department, sitting next to me, that I felt slightly ill and thought I'd take my leave early, but Dixon's attention was completely devoted up table, where he was prepared to laugh at the joke that Crandel was making, no matter what the punch line was. The ranks were already falling into line behind the new president.

I slipped out of the banquet room, with no one noticing, I thought, until I looked back at high table and saw Crandel's eyes on me. He was telling a joke and his mouth was set in a sly, I'm-so-clever smile, but the smile didn't extend to his eyes. The joke was for the table, but I knew that the eyes were for me.

I went to my apartment at the top of one of the resident halls, using the back stairs so that none of the students would realize I had returned and took advantage of that to come to me with one of their petty concerns. As junior faculty, I was a resident counselor as well as an instructor. I stripped out of my black cassock—trying to draw my thoughts where they should be by thinking on the Savior as I released the thirty-three buttons, each button representing a year in Jesus's life, although only being able to conjure up the image of the last time the buttons had been undone by someone other than me. I showered and lay down on the bed in the nude. The image of the kiss and having my cassock unbuttoned and of what came afterward when it was revealed I wore nothing underneath it caused my hand to move to my crotch, for me to moan, and for me to arch my back.

I had to think. I couldn't stay here after Andy had gone. Crandel hated me—and suspected me, I was sure. In fact, he probably knew. There were other possibilities. But I was in orders and chained to the Charleston Diocese. Andy was walking into a position where he had complete control of my life and could reassign me at his will. Would he take me to Charleston with him? These last two weeks he'd been referring to the elevation to bishop as the opportunity of a new life, of dedicating himself even more closely to God's work and a pure life.

"I will be the first black Bishop of Charleston," he had said. "Can you have any idea what an opportunity that provides to be a leader for tomorrow, Matt?"

I could certainly see that the elevation had changed him—that he no longer was just Andy, to me, or even Monsignor McLeod, the president of the first college I was teaching at. He was a bishop, and not just any bishop. He was the bishop of the order I was married to. Our relationship inevitably was changed.

I heard the door to the back stairs landing open, and there he was, in his new trappings, the black cassock, with the red trim and red sash. I rose from the bed, erect and lightly panting, and walked to him. He had seen me leave the banquet hall after all. And he had left earlier than he needed to, as well, and had come to me. He was in the middle of the celebration of his elevation, but he had broken off from that and come to me.

We embraced and our lips met. I untied his red sash as we stood close together, clinging to each other, me trembling and he towering over me. His hand was on my shaft, stroking it, as I unbuttoned his cassock, flared it open, and went down on my knees to him. He lifted his hand, and I kissed his ring, ever the signal between us of my total submission to him.

He was erect even before I took him in my hand and stroked him as I kissed the crease where his lower belly transitioned into the top of his left thigh. He was a bull of a man, both in size and musculature, but also in equipment. He was a black bull, the first black bishop of the Charleston Diocese, his balls meaty and hanging low and his cock hard as steel, thick, long, proudly protruding. When I took it into my mouth and he lay his hands on the back of my head to guide me, I gagged in the unsuccessful attempt to take it all inside me.

I was able to take it all inside me later, though, as I lay on my belly on the bed, raised on my knees, my pelvis elevated a bit to him, and he covered me close from above, one hand grasping my wrist over my head, and the other arm encasing my heaving belly, holding me in his total control, as he fucked me in long, thick, deep strokes. No man dominated me as this black bull did. No man satisfied me as Andy could. I opened completely to him, becoming soft and vulnerable inside, in the core of me, totally trusting he would be good to me, when, if he lost control, or became cruel, he could rip me to shreds inside with the monstrous club between his thighs. But he took me slow and easy, giving me time to open as much as I could to him, moving slowly inside me, gently going deeper rather than thrusting, and coming in a prodigious, peaceful flow rather than as a conqueror in pain.

As he was standing beside the bed, me collapsed on the bed on my belly, an arm draped over the side, knuckles dragging on the carpet, and me watching him rebutton the thirty-three buttons of his cassock in a worshipful daze, he said, "Come to my office at 9:00 in the morning. We must discuss your future."

The next morning, at 9:00, I was standing in front of the bishop's desk, behind which he was sitting, toying with a feather pin in his hands and framed by photographs of him with the pope and joking with the Archbishop of Atlanta. Already he no longer was Andy to me, or Monsignor McLeod. He wasn't the man who covered me close from above and possessed me deep with his monster cock as recently as the previous night. He was my bishop. He had told me where I was to go. There was no questioning his judgment or decision. But . . .

"Where is this Daufuskie Island? How many Catholics are there? You say I'll be the only priest?"

"Some would think the island is remote—it's off the South Carolina coast and is serviced by a ferry—but Hilton Head is just to the north of it and Savannah just to the south, so it is a restful place between activity," the bishop answered. He was looking at the feather he was spinning between his fingers. He wasn't looking up at me. "It doesn't matter how many Catholics are there now. You are being sent to build the church up. The church is St. Mary's. I understand it's in a bit of disarray. You are interested in working with your hands. I'm sure you will find it just the challenge you need."

Banishment was the word that went through my brain. He is sending me away to someplace so remote I'll never be heard from again. This is what his new life entailed. I should have heeded the feeling that last night, the most intense of our couplings, had been a farewell fuck. But, that hadn't proved to be the case.

"Yes, Reverend Father," I said and turned to leave.

"Matthew," I heard him mumble in a voice that sounded strange. I turned back. "Lock the door and come here, son," he murmured.

He pulled his chair back from the desk, took my hand when I came to the side of the desk, and pulled me around, facing him, between him and the desk. "Kneel to me, son," he whispered. I went down on my knees in front of him. He presented the ring on one of his hands, and I kissed it, as he unbuttoned his cassock with the other. He was naked underneath and in erection. I took his shaft in my mouth and he guided my head, making me take him to the root this time. He lifted me when he had engorged, unbuttoned and flared, my cassock. I stepped out of my briefs as he pulled them down my legs. It was my turn to moan and hold his head between my hands and luxuriate in his attentions as he took me in his mouth and gave suck.

"One last time," he murmured as he pulled away from me and nudged me onto his lap, holding his cock erect with one hand, guiding me with the other hand on the small of my back, as I positioned myself on the cock head and descended on the shaft. He leaned forward, burying his head into my sternum and grasped and separated my buttocks with his hands as, using the leverage of my feet on the floor on either side of his thighs, I raised and lowered my passage on his steel hard, black bull cock. He sucked the aureole of one of my nipples into his mouth, in its entirety, and flicked the nipple with his tongue as he sucked it. I moaned for that and then again when he did the same with the other nipple.

I tried to show him I no longer was as open to him as before—as I had been the previous night when I'd gone soft and spongy for him and opened for him to go deeper into the vulnerability of me than he'd ever sunk before—but my own needs defeated me. My passage opened right up for the thickness of him as he went deeper with each downward pull, controlled by the bishop now with hands gripping my hips.

My passage muscles rippled over the throbbing cock, blossoming open, stretching for him, coaxing him deeper and deeper inside me. I started to cry out in ecstasy, but sensing that, he gripped my face with a large, brown paw, forcing a thumb inside my mouth, which I sucked on as I rose and fell on the cock with muted sounds of groans and moans.

He turned me around on the cock, lowering my chest to the surface of the desk. My arms shot above my head, scattering framed photographs aside. I gripped the edge of the far side of the desk, as he crouched over me from behind, one hand grasping my mouth, the other hand gripping my waist. There was no peaceful end to this now. He was pounding my ass, deep and hard, fucking me with a fury as he'd never done before. I was gasping and groaning and moaning under his control, being fucked hard as he'd never done before. Being taken higher and higher. Gasping for breath, every ounce of my attention going to that huge cock battering at me deep inside, finding that I could take it. I could be soft deep inside again and still take his relentless pounding. Discovering that this was what I wanted from him, albeit having learned that too late.

We achieved a near-simultaneous ejaculation, the first time we'd managed it. The last time we'd try, we both knew.

We didn't look at each other or say anything while we stood half an office away from each other and rebuttoned and adjusted our cassocks. He wouldn't look at me directly as he restored his treasured photographs on his desk to their original positions—supplanting me with them for the ultimate time. Sometime in the next week they would be packed up and sent to Charleston. Sometime in the next week, I'd be packed out and sent to a remote island off the coast.

It was over and we both knew it. We also both knew that no matter how much closer to divinity McLeod's elevations would take him, he wasn't going to fundamentally change. Neither would I. We'd both try, but I wouldn't fool myself that it would work. I'm not sure he could fool himself either, but I wasn't going to be the one he discovered that with now. He might fool himself now, but his needs were insatiable. There would be some other young priest to be known biblically and used by him in the near future.

As I left the office, I encountered Crandel in the reception office, waiting to go in for his turn at submission to the bishop in an entirely different way. He smirked at me, no doubt knowing where my next parish assignment was. He'd probably even been the one to come up with the location. I was too sad to say to him all that I felt in my heart and so would have loved to say, but I would leave it to someone else to take that smirk off his face. I was too heartsick to take on that assignment.

* * * *

"Don't you find it a little too hot to be wearing a choke collar like that?"

I would have laughed if I hadn't been so hot from wearing this choking clerical collar when I stepped off the ferry at Daufuskie Island and into . . . what exactly? I had expected a town of some sort, not just a small collection of time-worn buildings on the wooded land running up from the public dock. There was a small marina next to the dock, but this looked more like a private home compound than the center of island life. It wasn't just the collar that chaffed; I was in a shirt and trousers rather than a cassock, but they were black. Black most certainly wasn't a color to be wearing on the South Carolina coast on a summer's day.

"It's a clerical collar. It identifies me as a priest," I answered. "You wouldn't be Frank Chisolm, would you, or know where I can find him?"

"Yes, that's me. Frank. You must be Mr. . . . Father Blackwood. The minister of my church wears a T-shirt and shorts in this weather. I figure you could do the same."

"Your minister? So you aren't Catholic?"

"We don't have any Catholics on the island, as far as I know—well, until you arrived just now—unless it be some those fancy people in the enclaves along the coast, who don't come further onto the island—just boat themselves over to Hilton Head or Savannah as they wish. Don't know what religion any of them are; we don't mix with them. This is a Gullah island and we're all Baptists here. Freewill Baptists back to the time when we were slaves."

"Well, you do have a Catholic now. A Catholic priest. And this, apparently, is Saint Mary's parish of the Charleston Diocese."

"Yes, I was told that when I was hired to meet you and help you get set up. That was news around here, I've gotta say. We had a good laugh at that. All this time we've been a Catholic parish, and we didn't know it. You could have seen me almost bend over laughing when I found out that the building our women had been using as a bingo hall is actually a Catholic church owned by the church. The ladies have been good about moving out, though. They even helped dig out the brush around it so you can get to it more easily. You've got a good line of credit to put the building to rights—and the house that goes with it."

That was the one good thing Andy had done for me. He'd set up a generous line of credit. I'd been told I'd need it too. And he'd had someone hired to help me get established here. I don't know if he realized that the man who was hired, this Frank Chisolm, was a hunk and a half. He was black, but of a mix with white. On him the mix looked good. He wasn't any older than I was, from the look of him, and muscular, but not overly developed. He was lanky and walked with grace. His hair was black and straight and came down to his shoulders when he didn't have it pulled back in a ponytail to keep it out of the way and him cooler, which he often did when he was working.

His smile was languid, sexy, his amusement contagious. The first thing he'd said to me coming off the ferry had been criticism of my dress—but he had said it in such a way that it hadn't offended me a bit. It also had signaled to me that saying the Catholic community here was inactive would be a gross understatement. My parish may not have anyone to serve but me. Of course, my sins were so numerous and deep, that I might be as much as the Lord could handle on this island.

I was surprised that our conversation was so easy as we walked up into the small group of buildings at the public dock, one of which was a combined grocery store and pharmacy, not much more than a convenience store and the other a larger souvenir shop. Frank told me that tourists coming over from Hilton Head provided most of the money that came into the island. Beyond that it was mostly subsistence farming among the Gullah community, the ancestors of the freed blacks from the Civil War who had remained in scattered communities across the Carolina coasts. The culture was no stronger anywhere than right here on Daufuskie Island, which had remained remote.

I could tell from Frank's drawl and the loose, but manly way he walked—more of a saunter—that the lifestyle of the island was laid back and slow moving. It also was easy going. It was clear from his response—the response of a Baptist, whose sect pretty much dominated the island—to a Catholic priest that he was accepting and unshockable. I wondered if he'd be shocked to know that I'd been sent here to hide away the sexual sin of a bishop. Well, to be fair, it was my sin too, and making the best of being banished to the edge of civilization here was a penance that I had decided to accept as no more than what I deserved to serve. I would be as celibate from henceforth, I had declared to myself, as the bishop no doubt believed—falsely—that he would be.

Still, that was hard to resolve as I followed the young Gullah half breed up the rise to the community buildings and watched the roll of his steel-like buns under the loose material of his shorts. He was wearing white cargo shorts and a very loose T-shirt. On his feet were skimpy rope sandals covering strong-looking feet with long, plump toes. He exuded sex, and, although I knew what he was wearing must have been cheap, I was equally sure that he could have been photographed for a yacht ad in a glossy magazine and been a sensation of style, grace, and sensuality.

"What are these?" I asked as we approached the souvenir shop building.

"Golf carts—or modified ones," Frank answered. "There are no cars on the island. We move in these. You'll want to buy one for your church and your own use. I could help you locate a used on in good condition. It isn't far from anywhere to anywhere on Daufuskie Island or any hurry to get there, so much of the transport is by foot. But transfers from elsewhere like you and the day tourists need these carts. And your luggage requires the use of one, of course."

It was only now that he seemed to notice that I was lugging two heavy suitcases. He hadn't offered to carry one or both for me. I actually had found that satisfying—that he didn't give me the impression of being subservient. In fact, if I were to guess, I would take him as a dominant—which was quite all right with me. Not that I assumed he was attracted to men, of course.

The cart ride wasn't long. The road—more like a narrow, shell-paved drive—entering the island from the public dock area was called Haig Point Road. Taking this for about a half mile to the Melrose Plantation area on the central-east shore of the island, one of eleven original plantations that covered the island at the time of the Civil War, we came to an intersection with the Avenue of the Oaks, which led into Melrose. Saint Mary's Church and rectory were located on the Avenue of the Oaks near this intersection. The landscape was almost all scrub, with scrawny pine trees. The few building in sight were weather-beaten and in an advanced stage of melting back into the scrub.