Wheat That Springeth Green

by J.F. Powers

  Well?

  Well, allowing for the circumstance that it was his own work, discounting some for that, he found that he was still very favorably impressed—yes, it was quite a letter.

  Why?

  Well, it stated the facts, its language was well chosen, its tone was just right—courage in adversity and respect for authority. This was a letter that would not be read lightly and tossed aside. This was a letter that would certainly be pondered and possibly acted upon favorably.

  Was this a letter that was, perhaps, a little long?

  A little, perhaps, but then it had to be in order to cover the ground as it did, so well.

  The odd thing was that when you finally came to the end of the letter you wished, well, you hadn’t. And wanted to read it again. That was Joe’s experience anyway. He read it again. And again. He made himself a drink and—guess what?—he wanted to read the letter again. And did. It was quite a letter all right.

  Before he let himself read it again, he freshened his drink. It was then, soon after that, that he found himself first murmuring against the letter, then talking back to it, then mimicking it—“Thanking you in advance, Your Excellency, for any consideration you may see fit . . .”—literally incapable of reading it as it was meant to be read by the Arch, reading it, rather, as it might be read by, say, Toohey.

  Oh, no!

  Oh, yes.

  Tearing the letter into small, flushable bits, and likewise the carbon copy, he bolted up from his BarcaLounger to dispose of them and to freshen his drink.

  He’d had a narrow escape.

  The next day (Sunday), after the last Mass, Joe told Bill to look after Father Felix until it was time for his bus and to drive him to it. “Here,” he said, and gave Bill a twenty. “See that you both have a very tasty meal. Don’t count on me. Still have work to do, owing to the retreat.”

  “Anything I can do to help, Joe?”

  “No.” Short of robbing a bank. “Thanks.”

  So Joe went down to his office and, playing a long-shot hunch, spent a couple of hours trying to write a short letter— “. . . difficult if not impossible in the circumstances, Your Excellency, but rest assured I’ll”—and tore it up. Having made two trips to the kitchen he made a third for beer, this time picking up the paper (Bill and Father Felix had gone out), and returned to his office to read the one while drinking the other. His horoscope said: “Don’t let irritation shake you from a methodical approach to a financial problem or property deal you are involved in. Your love life is confused but very happy now. Take thought.” He lay down on the couch to take thought, or a nap, and was soon hotly engaged in conversation with Mayer, Mayer and Maher, their Mr McMaster.

  JOE: Look. All I want to know from you is (a) are Mayer, Mayer and Maher taking their cut off the gross—projected or actual?; (b) what is that cut percentagewise?; and (c) is it deductible? Speak.

  McM: Deductible from what, Father?

  JOE: From my nut if I make it without calling in you frickers.

  McM: Monsignor, Father called me a name.

  TOOHEY: No, no, Mac. Frick, you see, wrote a textbook in use at the sem in our time. His name, for that reason, became a byword among us.

  JOE: All right, Catfish. What’s the cut and is it deductible?

  TOOHEY: Busy here. Hey, Ordinary! It’s frickin’ Joe Hackett. You better talk to him. It’s about you-know-what. Fry his ass.

  ARCH: Don’t tell me you clowns sent that frickin’ form letter to Joe! He’s special! Thought you at least knew that! Hello, Joe. This is your Ordinary. About that letter, look, I’m sorry. It was never meant for you, Joe. A frickin’ clerical error. Forget it, Joe, if you can.

  JOE: I’ll do my best, Your Excellency.

  ARCH: Just call me Arch, Joe.

  JOE: Arch.

  ARCH: Or Albert.

  JOE: I’d rather not.

  ARCH: Joe, though it does have its disadvantages at a time like this, I’ve long been an admirer of your system —did you know that our dear brothers in Abraham, in this as in everything else, were first in the field?—and I only wish more of my men had a modicum of your guts and pizzazz. Hell, send in whatever you can—spiritual bouquets if you’re really strapped. Tear up that frickin’ letter. O.K., Joe?

  JOE: O.K., Arch. What about others in the same boat?

  ARCH: What others?

  JOE: Smiley and Cooney.

  ARCH: Smiley? Is he still in the Church? Puts ice cubes in his beer.

  JOE: I know. But he’s got the same system I have, and likewise Cooney.

  ARCH: Joe, we can’t let everybody off.

  JOE: Not exactly fair, is it, Arch?

  ARCH: Not exactly, but that’s life in the Archdiocese, Joe.

  JOE: I’m not trying to tell you how to run the Archdiocese, Arch.

  ARCH: Might not be a bad idea if you did, Joe. I don’t say that to everybody in lower middle management.

  JOE: I know. Thanks.

  ARCH: Say, how’s about us breakin’ bread sometime?

  JOE: Where?

  ARCH: I’d say here. Only you know how it is here. Always a crowd.

  JOE: Catfish, you mean?

  ARCH: Ho, ho. Joe, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.

  JOE: Shoot.

  ARCH: Why do you call Kissass Catfish?

  JOE: Because of his fat face, and big mouth, his little eyes. Started when we were kids. You know how cruel kids can be.

  ARCH: “Shorty,” you mean?

  JOE: “Half-Pint” and so on. However, where Cat-fish is concerned, there may be more to it than meets the eye.

  ARCH: How so?

  JOE: Catfish feeds on the dreck in organized religion —mummery, mobbery, robbery, finkery, fear. He’s a bottom feeder, Arch.

  ARCH: Wham!

  JOE: Often wonder what you see in the guy, Arch.

  ARCH: He has his uses, Joe.

  JOE: Like the pilot fish.

  ARCH: Don’t get you.

  JOE: Photo-essay in the paper today on pilot fish. Didn’t you, see it?

  ARCH: Haven’t seen the paper, Joe. Always let the housekeeper have it first.

  JOE: Well, these pilot fish, they hang around big, person-eating sharks—great whites, hammerheads, and so on. Do odd jobs for ’em, point out prey, clean up the mess, and can’t type.

  ARCH: Joe, if he’s a pilot fish, what does that make me? A hammerhead?

  JOE: Don’t push it too far, Arch.

  ARCH: Joe, what’s the trouble between you two?

  JOE: It goes way back. His father worked for mine.

  ARCH: “Hockitt’s Cull Iss Hut Stoof.”

  JOE: Right. In grade school we were rivals—at least in his view—but the good nuns thought more of me. Understandably, what with free coal, capons at Christmas, and all those dimes and quarters for the Missions that came so easily to and from me. Not to mention my sunny disposition, my natural good looks (as a boy), and my athletic prowess. Can’t blame ’em, the nuns. They’re women, after all. Catfish couldn’t keep up. He’s had it in for me ever since. Oh, I know it’s his job to be as excrementitious as possible within reason—probably I’d be the same, to some extent—but he goes too far. Why, when I call the Chancery and he answers, I want to hang up. And I’m not alone.

  ARCH: Tsk, tsk.

  JOE: He runs a lousy office, Arch.

  ARCH: Joe, and I speak not so much as your pal as your Ordinary, if there’s anything irregular about his conduct in future—anything at all—I want to know. Let me give you my unlisted number.

  JOE: Let me give you an example, Arch. I thought, since you liked the new rectory so much, you might be interested in blessing it.

  ARCH: Why not?

  JOE: So I called the Chancery and got Catfish. “We bless one, we have to bless ’em all,” he says. “Wait a minute,” I said. “How many new rectories are there nowadays?” “You could start a trend. Bless it yourself,” he says and hangs up. How ’bout that?

  ARCH: Tsk, tsk
.

  JOE: Don’t suppose he mentioned it.

  ARCH: No, but I’m glad you did, Joe. Methinks Kissass needs a change.

  JOE: What I was thinking, Arch.

  ARCH: Up and out.

  JOE: Hate to see him a bishop, Arch.

  ARCH: In some respects, this is still an imperfect world, Joe. Ever think of going into administration yourself?

  JOE: Who hasn’t, Arch, in this diocese? But I’d like to see a new church out here before I move on, or kick off, which may come first.

  ARCH: How is your health these days, Joe?

  JOE: Not bad, everything considered—like ARF.

  ARCH: ARF? Oh, you mean Arf. That’s what we call it here at headquarters, Joe—after my dog.

  JOE: “Arf” goes Sandy?

  ARCH: Exactly. But you just forget the whole thing, Joe.

  JOE: Thanks a mil, Arch. Fifty thou, I mean.

  ARCH: My pleasure, Joe. Say, how’s about us breakin’ bread sometime.

  JOE: Where?

  ARCH: I’d say here. Only you know how it is here. Always a crowd.

  JOE: Catfish, you mean?

  ARCH: Ho, ho.

  Joe woke up in the dark and was annoyed that Bill hadn’t thought, or bothered, to look in on him. Or had he? Joe hoped not.

  The next morning, after making a list, the first item on which required that he find out what others in his narrow category were thinking, Joe called Silverstream, learned that Smiley was attending a workshop in Chicago, and so spoke to the curate (Miller), which was better as things were in that parish since what the curate might say, if anything (that was the difficulty with the curate), would come from the horse’s mouth, as would not have been the case with the pastor, far from it.

  “Arf,” Miller said. “It’s a real problem for us, Father, and would be even if we didn’t have the setup we have over here.”

  “We have the same system over here, Father. That’s why I called.”

  “It’s not working over here, Father.”

  “It’s working over here, Father.”

  “The pastor’s thinking of dropping it, I understand. At least for the time being.”

  “What d’ya mean, ‘for the time being’? You either have it or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways, Father.”

  “Then we just might be able to handle our assessment”—Miller, ignoring Joe’s objections, was used to dealing with Smiley—“like other parishes, Father.”

  “And bring in the mercenaries?”

  “Who?”

  “The fund-raisers.”

  “It’s my impression the pastor’s thinking along such lines, Father.”

  “What about your good, loyal, paid-up people, Father?”

  “They’d understand, I’m sure, once the urgency of the matter is explained to them. In any case, the decision rests with the pastor.”

  Joe had to respect the curate for playing the game. “So the pastor’s taking a dive?”

  “That’s all I can say, Father, at this juncture.”

  “Nice talking to you, Father, at this juncture,” Joe said, and hung up.

  He called Cooney and told him that Smiley was taking a dive.

  “I’m not surprised,” Cooney said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Joe said. “Smiley’s a reed.”

  “A what?”

  “Shaken in the wind.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  They discussed ARF, saying that it wasn’t the same for them as for others, that they might have been shown some consideration, that they might have been consulted before-hand, that they should not have been sent a frickin’ form letter. They criticized its style (“Manifest!”—“Manifold!”) and its content, saying that if there was such a money crisis in the diocese then things like the Institute should be closed down and not, for God’s sake, expanded, that if there was such a priestpower shortage in the diocese, then men off getting degrees and men off serving in the armed forces and men off goofing off (on so-called leaves of absence, which usually ended badly) should come home and go to work. Cooney proposed a halt in all new construction, but Cooney already had a new church, and Joe, rather than spoil what until then had been a perfect meeting of minds, was silent—they’d got pretty far afield.

  “Well, anyway, whatever others do, we won’t, Lou.”

  “Won’t what, Joe?”

  “Take a dive.” Joe wondered if they’d been cut off. “Lou?”

  “Joe, what else can we do?”

  After that, the conversation got confused. Cooney wouldn’t admit that he was thinking of taking a dive, though obviously he was, and Joe really went to work on him. “Lou, you’ll be letting your people down, your good, loyal, paid-up people. You’ll be no better than Smiley. You’ll be worse, Lou. Because, Lou, even if you”—in case this was going to be his out—“don’t bring in the mercenaries, you’ll know in your heart what you’re doing, Lou.”

  “Look, Joe. It’s my parish. They’re my people.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Lou, for them and you.”

  “Joe, you don’t know my assessment.”

  “And you don’t know mine.”

  “Joe, what’s your assessment?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

  “I’ll tell you this, Lou—it’s a lot. More than double what I expected.”

  “And you think you’ll make it by going after dp’s?” Delinquent parishioners.

  “I’m thinking of everything, Lou.”

  “Bank loan?”

  “Everything, Lou.”

  “Swallow your pride, Joe. Do what I’m going to do. Put it to your people—up to your people, I mean.”

  “A distinction so fine as to make no difference. I’m sorry, Lou.” And Joe hung up.

  Addressing himself to his list—he had let irritation shake him from a methodical approach to his problem—he drew a line through (A) OTHERS?, underscored (B) PEOPLE, NO!, and circled (C) DP’S. And—knowing where he stood now, alone—tore up his list.

  22. ROOMY TWO-HEARTED RECTORY

  SO JOE’S EVENING routine had to change and did.

  After dinner, as heretofore, he’d work a few innings in the yard with Bill and take a much needed bath, but then instead of retiring to the study he’d go off in his car with his list, having told Bill only “Some calls to make.”

  His list, comprising over a third of the families in the parish, was alphabetical. But his modus operandi, after a week, was still random: to cruise around until he sighted the man or woman of the house out on the lawn, or a child (“Hi, cowboy, what’s your name?”) who might lead him to them. Before he got down to business, he was not above saying where circumstances warranted it, “Heard you went to Europe,” or “See you had the house painted,” or “Thought only golf courses had mowers like that.”

  This, then, was what he’d come to, because he’d hoped to spare himself and his parishioners money talk from the pulpit. And because he who seeks to save his life shall lose it? And because, if an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, the Chancery was an industrial park? He could hear it now. “Hey, Ordinary, ’member what Denver told you at the National Con and you laughed in his face? Says here he made it with half a mil to spare.” “Well, I’ll be fricked. Get me Denver, honey. Truck? Albert here. Congrats. Off the record, those numbers for real? O.K., O.K. Relax. I didn’t say you’re a liar. What’s the story? Use electric canes, or what? M, M and M, Chicago, huh? Will do, Truck, and thanks a mil—make that two.”

  He was averaging only three calls an evening. At first, he was slow to get down to business, and now, knowing that nothing much happened when he did, he was slower. He would begin by suggesting that failure to keep up payments, or to contribute at all, was probably an oversight—this was generally rejected, not, he thought, for its mendacity but for the obligation there was in it to do better in future. He was hindered, sometimes, by the absence of the spouse who ran the show (who, in one c
ase, to judge by what Joe could hear of the telephone conversation, was being warned, for a change, not to come home right away). In any case, people had all kinds of reasons for being dp’s.

  “I’m gonna be transferred again, knew all along I would be”; “My wife’s not a Catholic, Father”; “My husband’s not a Catholic, Father”; “We don’t know how long this marriage will last, do we, dear?”; “If the kids were school age, Father, it’d be different”; “Neither one of us is what you might call devout, Father, and with no kids”; “Just haven’t got it, Father, and don’t know what you can do”; “Glad you don’t talk about money in church, Father, want you to know that”; “Father, you should talk about money in church—it’d be more like church—and I guess that’s my advice to you”; “Sure, I signed up, but it didn’t work out, and now I just contribute when and what I can”; “You find a five-dollar bill in the flower collection, Father, that’s probably mine”; “Father, you say the Church always comes last, and you may be right about that, but not when you say people have money for everything else—we don’t”; “My husband and I haven’t recovered from the rectory yet. Pretty roomy, seems to us, for two bachelors. So you lived in a room in the school. Big deal. You should be living in a tent.”

  Yes, there were times when Joe felt like tearing his garments and, for an encore, singing “Laugh, Clown, Laugh.”

  After his last call, thank God, he sped home to his reward—a drink or two or three, maybe an old movie on TV, or the Twins if they were playing on the West Coast, and yes, priestly fellowship, in which Bill, for some reason, was showing more interest these nights, trying, it seemed, to learn from Joe. This was only as it should be in the pastor-curate relationship, but was new and different in theirs, making for more give and take, Joe doing his best for Bill, even if he sometimes lost by it, by telling the truth.

  One night he confessed that, in the matter of taking up the collections on the day of his first Mass, he had attempted to buy off the pastor, and furthermore would do so again if he had his life to live over, but would not, he hoped, grab the empty envelope again, or hole up in the boys’ washroom. “‘Joseph, you should be ashamed of yourself,’ he said. Those were his last words. He hasn’t spoken to me since.” “But at your Mass you did take up the collection?” “Thanks to Toohey, yes. I didn’t see any way out of it. I still don’t.”