Do Not Do That

This had come up before, many years ago, so Ben and Sam were not totally surprised.

Herb Sheer had come to Doc first, and Doc had suggested he get Ben involved. Herb had long been a patient of Doc and a client of Ben.

The problem had originated, not surprisingly, with a new charismatic preacher in town. In the curmudgeons’ long experience such seldom heralded peace for parishioners.

Herb was, like Doc and Ben and most mature adults, loaded with guilt. Doc and Ben knew this was the condition of all men (and women). The preacher had convinced Herb he was special in his degree of sinning and should adopt extreme measures, confession of all to wife and children. Herb had turned to the preacher during a health crisis from which Herb had been blessedly relieved by further tests at Mayo that revealed a false diagnosis. This relief had tripped Herb’s rationality switch to the confession vulnerable setting, a setting Sam and Doc knew would yield good for no one if allowed to proceed.

“Oh my God,” Ben had said when Doc told him.

“Afraid so,” Doc replied.

The curmudgeons had agreed on a strategy session at 5pm in Ben’s library-conference room.

With Joanne departed and the drams of The Macallan poured, the old friends sat pondering.

“How can Herb imagine confession will do any good?” Ben asked.

“Temporary insanity,” Sam said.

“How do you cure that?” Ben asked.

“Only time or a good shock will, in my experience, “ Sam said.

“What sort of shock,” Ben asked.

“That is what we need to come up with,” Doc said.

So the curmudgeons screwed on their thinking caps and got down to serious study. Of course a fly fishing trip was their first and only solution. To where? If was August, so Montana, Wyoming or Colorado were the logical targets (and Herb’s jet the obvious conveyance). Sam had the leverage (he could always prescribe it for Herb’s health).

The curmudgeons picked a destination they had always wanted to fish and Sam went to work on his assigned duties. Wheels were up August 15. Stopping once to refuel, they made landing at 3pm and were soon in a chauffeured van to their destination. Dinner was served in their cabin by a boy and girl in their early twenties, handsome and cheerful and skilled, who made the three wistful, contemplating in memory what their lives must be like.

Good wine and good food topped with brandy and talk of shared memories got the three to where the curmudgeons had planned they should be. Then Ben opened, “Herb, I want you to imagine something. I know it could never happen, but just imagine it did and how you would feel. Suppose Millie (Herb’s wife of 52 years) came to you and confessed a 10-year affair with your principal professional rival (Herb had been a trial lawyer in Atlanta and a top one). Would you at this point in life want to hear that news, even accompanied with abject apology?”

Herb was silent five minutes, then said, “Hell no.”

That was the end of the crisis. The three enjoyed two days of good fishing, then flew home in Herb’s jet. On their drive home from Albany’s airport, Sam said to Ben (Herb was not with them), “The irony of that solution gave me the creeps.”

Ben said, “Me too. Too cute for our own good.”

In fact, Millie did have that affair, at the same time Herb was having the one with his rival’s wife he had almost confessed to. Ben and Sam had heard contemporaneous confessions by both Herb and his wife but had been professionally obligated by ethics to remain mute, thank goodness.

“Life,” Sam said, “is too strange to be real.”

The charismatic preacher was gone from the parish in six months, but not before provoking three divorces in the congregation, all caused by his confession advice, employed by him in search of affairs of his own the curmudgeons felt sure.