by J.F. Powers
His vices, his eating and drinking, did tend to silence the prophet in him, but so did common sense. He would persevere in his difficult situation, however, and if asked to explain himself would do so (as he already had to a couple of parishioners such as he’d had in mind when complaining to his old confessor) in very general terms. “The Church tells us to pray for things that lead to salvation, for grace and so on, but for temporal things only insofar as they conduce to that end.”
His situation had worsened, though, now that he’d been singled out and tied to the stake in Brad’s column—only anonymously, yes, but how long only anonymously? Already he could feel the heat. This, in a small way, could soon be one of those times, all too frequent in the history of the Church, when one had to be wise as a serpent, simple as a dove—as when Our Lord had called for a coin and asked whose image it bore and when told, “Caesar’s,” had said in reply, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” That reply, which had made war and misrule easier for tyrants down through the ages and the Church a sitting duck, had heretofore struck Joe as uncharacteristic, even unworthy, of Our Lord. But then Joe hadn’t heretofore been in Our Lord’s position vis-à-vis Caesar.
In the following days, Joe, though he was used to being noticed in public—he dressed as a priest—did get the impression he was being watched. “There he is,” he imagined people saying when he appeared on the Mall or, for that matter, at the altar, “the one who won’t pray for the success of HR 369.” All right. Those scandalized by him might be fewer than he imagined, but they weren’t all in his mind.
Perhaps a dozen people had approached him, or phoned (one anonymously), to complain, and Nan Gurrier had assured him of her support in the hearing of a few of her, by now, many ill-wishers. On the other hand, several people had commended him, and he hadn’t come under attack from Brad again, except for one glancing blow: “Our weather ball on a per capita basis . . . represents a greater community investment . . . and provides a greater public service . . . than the Eiffel Tower . . . or the Statue of Liberty.”
Then, one evening, Joe had a visit from Brad and saw him in the study in order to keep an eye on the Twins.
“Bad news,” said Brad, who, though pushing fifty, went around like a college kid with the sleeves of his cardigan shoved up to his elbows. “HR 369’s in trouble—in danger of being returned to committee.”
“That so?”
“Look, Padre. You had prayers for the crops last year and every year you have ’em for Hiroshima.” (Brad gave Joe a dirty look, reminding him of their argument, some years back, which had gone on and on until Brad said, “But for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I might not be here talking to you today,” and Joe fell silent.) “O.K., Padre. I admit we have prayers for all kinds of stuff at our church too.” (Brad was Episcopalian; his wife, Barb, and their sons, Scott and Greg, Catholic.) “Still, it does seem to me . . .”
“Brad, I still think these things are best left to the lobbyists.”
“I guess I don’t have your faith in lobbyists.”
“Well, I don’t have your faith in prayer.”
“Hold it, Padre.” Obviously Brad was scandalized, and delighted to be, but concerned that what he’d just heard might not be true. “You don’t have faith in prayer?”
“I don’t have your faith in prayer.”
“But shouldn’t you?”
Joe gravely replied: “The Church tells us to pray for things that lead to salvation, for grace and so on, but for temporal things only insofar as they conduce to that end.” Much as Brad deserved it, Joe was sorry to have to hit him in the face with a custard pie of theology.
But Brad took it surprisingly well and, after wiping his eyes, said, “I see. May I quote you?”
“No.”
“Look, Padre. What if I gave you a chance to put your case to the community in your own words? As you know, I sometimes open the column to guests when I’m off on an assignment.”
Joe was afraid there was going to be more about the weather ball from far-off places. “No, thanks, Brad.”
“Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime”—from his shirt pocket Brad removed a folded sheet of yellow paper—“here’s something for your church bulletin, a release I worked up from Scott’s last letter from Nam. I’d run it myself, only it might sound self-serving, and maybe I owe you something.”
“For giving me the business?”
Brad looked hurt but guilty. “If you’re talking about the column, I kept it pretty vague, you know.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyhoo”—Brad, having smoothed out the release, handed it to Joe—“it’s for your ‘In the Service’ department in the bulletin. Use it as you see fit, but as is might be best.”
Joe was reading between the dots: “. . . elder son of the popular Universe columnist . . . is now executive officer at one of our bases in Viet Nam . . . with the grim duty of meeting and escorting VIPs . . . Sec’y of State Rusk, Generals Taylor, Westmoreland, et al. . .. Scott awaits the arrival of his brother Greg . . .‘to help us end this mess in a hurry.’”
“We don’t have such a department in our bulletin,” Joe said, wondering that Brad hadn’t seen copies of it around the house.
“About time you had one then, don’t you think?”
“No.”
Brad sighed. “Seems like all you ever say to me is no, Padre.”
“Yes.”
Brad smiled. “O.K. So I was wrong. Look, Padre. If you said yes to this it’d mean a lot to Scott, to Barb, to Greg, to me, to plenty of people. I don’t have to tell you it’d help your image in the community.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, you don’t have to tell me, and no, I’m not saying yes.” Joe returned the release to Brad—at the risk, he supposed, of soon reading that “In the Service” departments appear in the bulletins of all local churches . . . except one.
Brad had got up and was leaving in a huff. “O.K., Padre. Go back to your game. I can find my way out. Ciao.”
“Same to you.”
Early the next morning there was a phone call from the pastor of the local Lutheran church. “Father, is it true you’re not having public prayers for HR 369?”
Not liking the sound of this, Joe stiffened. “It’s true, Pastor. I’m not.”
“Neither am I, Father.”
In the spirited conversation that followed, Brad wasn’t mentioned, but his column was, the Pastor referring to the little item that he, like Joe, had thought aimed at him alone. “A case of trying to kill two birds with one stone, Father,” to which Joe (recalling Brad’s “I kept it pretty vague, you know”) replied, “You can say that again, Pastor.” Joe and the Pastor promised to keep more in touch. Joe, hanging up, had never felt so ecumenical.
Later that morning there was a phone call from the Rector of the local Episcopal church. “I just got back from my vacation, Father, and I’ve discovered some of what’s happened in my absence. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, Father. I’m talking about public prayers for HR—or is it BS?—369.” The Rector said he’d chewed out the substitute priest—a good person, really, but deficient in churchmanship —and had also dealt with Brad, but over the phone, and would do more of a job on him if they ever met again, to say nothing of what he had in mind for the vestry when next he and they convened. “None of which I’d be telling you, Father, if I hadn’t spoken to the Pastor, who told me what you two have been through in my absence. My heart goes out to you both, Father.” “Thanks, Rector.” Joe and the Rector promised to keep more in touch. Joe, hanging up, had never felt so ecumenical.
That afternoon Joe ran into Brad on the Mall.
“Padre, you’ll be interested to know I’m no longer a member of the Episcopal Church.”
“That so? Excommunicated or what?”
“No, I left of my own free will.”
Joe, remembering how Brad had begun the
conversation (“Padre, you’ll be interested to know . . .”), said, “Well, we don’t want you.”
“We won’t get me. That’s a promise.”
“Promises, promises,” Joe said, and left Brad standing on the Mall, but called back to him, “Ciao.”
About a week later, Joe learned that Brad’s wife, Barb, whose pleasure it was to sip cordials in the early afternoon while watching soap operas and then to go out shopping, had fallen and broken her left leg. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that Barb had fallen from a children’s slide in the Humpty Dumpty department at the Great Badger. And what made it worse was that, only months before, the Draper’s mother-in-law (like Barb, the Catholic party in a mixed marriage) had dropped dead at the Great Badger, in household appliances. Joe, who’d had the funeral, knew that the Great Badger’s offer to pay the undertaker had been poorly received, and likewise the big wreath, by the Draper, his wife, and the Mall crowd. That Barb had declined the Great Badger’s offer to pay her medical expenses was in her favor, but nothing else was. (Joe was thinking along such lines when he consented to autograph her cast.) Barb had bravely insisted that Brad not be told of her accident, but her son Greg had cabled him, and Brad had caught an early flight home (from Guam). Joe hadn’t seen him, but had seen the column and had wondered whether Brad, perhaps from the strain of working off Barb’s culpability with the Mall crowd (which probably couldn’t be done), might be cracking up. “National Read Week . . . is fast approaching and . . . among the many fine things . . . to be read these days are . . . church bulletins”—there was MORE, but nothing about the local bulletins having or not having “In the Service” departments. There seemed to be even more than before about the weather ball, Brad now calling it “old girl” and “Spaceship Inglenook” and using more dots.
On the evening of the day that HR 369 was in the news—it had been returned to committee—there was a phone call from Brad.
“Father, did you know you belong to the first estate?” It had been a long time, Joe thought, since Brad had called him Father.
“How’s that, Brad?”
“Yeah. As a member of the clergy. It came out in my research.”
“Research, Brad?”
“I’m doing a think piece on the fourth estate—the press.”
“Is this for the column, Brad?”
“No, no. It’ll be too exhaustive for that.”
“Brad, why not run it in the column as a—serial? Give the weather ball a rest.”
In the ensuing silence Joe had time to regret his words.
“Father, I just thought you’d like to know you belong to the first estate. Did you know that?”
Joe did. “No, and it’s good to know, Brad. Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, I just thought you’d like to know, Father. Ciao.”
And that was all. Not a word about HR 369. Trying to mend fences. Poor devil.
10. GOOD NEWS
IN JANUARY, JOE had made it two to one against his getting a curate that year. Then, early in May, the Arch came out to see the new rectory and, in the office area, had paused before the doors PASTOR and ASSISTANT and said, “You’re mighty sure of yourself, Father.”
“I can dream, can’t I, Your Excellency?”
The subject hadn’t come up again during the visit, and the Arch had declined Joe’s offer of a drink, which may or may not have been significant—hard to say how much the Arch knew about a man—but after he’d departed Joe made it seven to five, trusting his old gambler’s instinct.
Two weeks later, on the eve of the annual shape-up, trusting his instinct again though he’d heard nothing, Joe made it even money.
The next morning, the Chancery (Toohey) phoned to say that Joe had a curate: “Letter follows.”
“Wait a minute. Who?”
“He’ll be in touch with you.” And Toohey hung up.
Maybe it hadn’t been decided who would be sent out to Joe’s, but probably it had, and Toohey just didn’t want to say because Joe had asked. That was how Toohey played the game. But Joe didn’t think any more about it then.
He grabbed a scratch pad, rushed upstairs to the room, now bare, that would be occupied by his curate (Who?), and made—his response to problems, temporal and spiritual, that required thought—a list.
That afternoon, he visited furniture stores in Inglenook, in Silverstream, the next suburb, and in the city. “Just looking,” he said to clerks. After a couple of hours, he had a pretty good idea of the market, but he was unable to act, and had to suspend operations in order to beat the rush-hour traffic.
On the way home he realized what was wrong. It was his list. Programmed without reference to the relative importance of the items on it, his list, instead of helping, had hindered him, had caused him to mess around looking at lamps, rugs, and ashtrays. It hadn’t told him that everything in the room would be determined, dictated, by the bed. Why bed? Because the room was a bedroom. Find the bed, the right bed, and the rest would follow. He understood where he was now, and he was glad that time had run out that afternoon. Toward the last, he had been suffering from shopper’s fatigue, or he wouldn’t have considered that knotty-pine suite, with its horseshoe brands and leather thongs, simply because it had a clean, masculine look that bedroom furniture on the whole seemed to lack.
That evening, he sat down in the quiet of his study (Twins rained out), with some brochures and a drink, and made another list. This one was different and should have been easy for him—with office equipment he knew where he was, probably no priest in the diocese knew so well—but for that very reason he couldn’t bring himself to furnish the curate’s office as other pastors would have done, as, in fact, he had planned to do. Why spoil a fine office by installing inferior, economy-type equipment? Why not move the pastor’s desk and typewriter, both recent purchases, into the curate’s office? Why not get the pastor one of those laminated mahogany desks, maybe Model DK 100, sleek and contemporary but warm and friendly as only wood can be? (The pastor was tired of his unfriendly metal desk and his orthopedic chair.) Why not get the pastor a typewriter with different type? (What, again? Yes, because he was tired of that phony script.) But keep the couch and chairs in the pastor’s office, and let the new chairs—two or three, and no couch—go straight into the curate’s office.
The next morning, Joe drove to the city with the traffic, and swiftly negotiated the items on his office list, including a desk, Model DK 100, and a typewriter with different type, called “editorial,” and said to be used by newscasters.
“Always a pleasure to do business with you, Father.”
The scene then changed to the fifth floor of a large department store, which Joe had visited the day before, and there life got difficult again. What had brought him back was a four-poster bed with pineapple finials. The clerk came on a little too strong.
“The double bed’s making a big comeback, Father.”
“That so?”
“What I’d have, if I had the choice.”
“Yes, well.” Joe liked the bed, especially the pineapples, but he couldn’t see the curate (Who?) in it. Get it for himself, then, and give the curate the pastor’s bed—it was single. And then what? The pastor’s bed, of unfriendly metal and painted like a car, hospital gray, would dictate nothing about the other things for the room. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to the curate, would it?
“Lot of bed for the money, Father.”
“Too much bed.”
The clerk then brought out some brochures and binders with colored tabs. So Joe sat down with him on a bamboo chaise longue, and, passing the literature back and forth between them, they went to work on Joe’s problem. They discovered that Joe could order the traditional type of bed in a single, in several models—cannonballs, spears, spools (Jenny Lind)—but not pineapples, which, it seemed, had been discontinued by the maker. “But I wonder about that, Father. Tell you what. With your permission, I’ll call North Carolina.”
Joe let him go ahead, after more
discussion, mostly about air freight, but when the clerk returned to the chaise longue he was shaking his head. North Carolina had gone to lunch. North Carolina would call back, though, in an hour or so, after checking the warehouse. “You wouldn’t take cannonballs or spears, Father? Or Jenny Lind?”
“Not Jenny Lind.”
“You like cannonballs, Father?”
“Yes, but I prefer the other.”
“Pineapples.”
Since nothing could be done about the remaining items on his list until he found out about the bed—or beds, for he had decided to order two, singles, with matching chests, plus box springs and mattresses, eight pieces in all—Joe went home to await developments.
At six minutes to three, the phone rang. “St Francis,” Joe said.
“Earl, Father.”
“Earl?”
“At the store, Father.”
“Oh, hello, Earl.”
Earl said that North Carolina could supply, and would air-freight to customer’s own address. So beds and chests would arrive in a couple of days, Friday at the outside, and box springs and mattresses, these from stock, would be on the store’s Thursday delivery to Inglenook.
“O.K., Father?”
“O.K., Earl.”
Joe didn’t try to do any more that day.
The next morning, he took delivery of the office equipment (which Mrs P.—Mrs Pelissier—must have noticed), and so he got a late start on his shopping. He began where he’d left off the day before. Earl, spotting him among the lamps, came over to say hello. When he saw Joe’s list, he recommended the store’s interior-decorating department—”Mrs Fox, if she’s not out on a job.” With Joe’s permission, Earl went to a phone, and Mrs Fox soon appeared among the lamps. Slightly embarrassed, Joe told her what he thought—that the room ought to be planned around the bed, since it was a bedroom. Mrs Fox smacked her lips and shrieked (to Earl), “He doesn’t need me!”
As a matter of fact, Mrs Fox proved very helpful—steered Joe from department to department, protected him from clerks, took him into stockrooms and onto a freight elevator, and remembered curtains and bedspreads (Joe bought two), which weren’t on his list but were definitely needed. Finally, Mrs Fox had the easy chair and other things brought down to the parking lot and put into his car. These could have gone out on the Thursday delivery, but Joe wanted to see how the room would look even without the big stuff—the bed, the chest, the student’s table, and the revolving bookcase. Mrs Fox felt the same way. Twice in the store she’d expressed a desire to see the room, and he’d managed to change the subject, and then she did it again, in the parking lot—was dying to see the room, she shrieked, just as he was driving away. He just smiled. What else could he do? He couldn’t have Mrs Fox coming out there.
