Wheat That Springeth Green

by J.F. Powers

  The real hero if there was one said modestly, “Too bad the assholes got away.”

  After the three other customers, whose names, addresses, and phone numbers were taken down, had left (the woman slow to leave, seeming to regard Lefty and Joe as a couple of colorful TV-type troubleshooters), Mr Barnes politely declined payment for a bottle of bourbon and two of gin, saying the management, Mr Brock, wouldn’t want it otherwise. Joe paid for his gin, but Lefty didn’t for his bourbon, and went into unnecessary detail about his address with Mr Barnes. “Holy Resting Place, it’s called now, but Holy Sepulcher will always get me.”

  On the way home, Joe switched on the car radio, the convention, and Lefty got out his cigar.

  “Afraid Gene won’t make it, Joe.”

  “Could’ve told you that, Left.” Uh-huh. One grand.

  When Joe switched off the convention, Lefty put away his cigar.

  “Joe, did you know—your old pastor’s in the hospital.”

  “Dollar Bill. He’s been in for some time.”

  “No, Van.”

  “Oh, Van.”

  “They’ve got him in an oxygen tent.”

  Joe, after a moment of reflection, said, “He’s been in one for years.” Cruel.

  “Joe, I’m not so sure about that as I used to be. I’ve just about had it with life here below. More and more, I find, my heart’s in the highlands, my heart’s not here.”

  “I know what you mean, Left.” Joe turned into his driveway, giving the accident-prone Impresario a wide berth, and came to rest in the garage, where he turned off the car lights and said in the dark: “Look, Left. I may’ve given Bill the idea I was cutting down, and I don’t want him to think I made a special run. So we won’t say anything about the holdup.”

  “We won’t, huh?”

  “No, we’ll just say you brought ’em—the bottles.”

  “You know what, Joe?”

  “What?”

  “I’d hate to be a pastor again, with a candy-ass assistant.”

  “You will be, Left.”

  “You hear something, Joe?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  As it happened, nothing was to be gained by misrepresenting the bottles to Bill, for he was on the phone in the study with (he whispered to Joe) Security at the Great Badger. Joe took over then. “No, offhand, I’d say they were Caucasians. No, I doubt it was stolen, from the look of it. Model? That I couldn’t say. No, he’s right here. No, no”—Security, it seemed, had already spoken to one of the other witnesses—“he’s not my partner.” Lefty took over then. “No, if I saw ’em again—and the wheelman I didn’t see—I wouldn’t recognize ’em—just assholes. The heap I would. Old Biscayne four-door, green repaint, and no plates I could see. That’s right, Holy Sepulcher, but for the next hour or so I can be reached at this number.”

  While Joe made drinks (Bill stayed with beer), Lefty told Bill about the attempted holdup . . . but worse things were happening in Chicago, on TV, police rioting in the streets, peaceniks, innocent bystanders, and even media people getting beat up, Senator Ribicoff (D., Conn.) protesting these outrages from the convention platform and being barracked from the floor by Mayor Daley and his claque.

  Lefty got so worked up over what was happening inside and outside the convention that he, now occupying the BarcaLounger and over Joe’s tacit disapproval, called Chicago, the Cardinal (“You know him?” said Bill—“What’s that got to do with it?” said Lefty), but somebody else answered the phone, and while Lefty was willing to identify himself (“Don’t worry, Monsignor. I’m a priest in good standing. I’m in the Directory”), he wouldn’t entrust his message to anyone but the Cardinal, would only say it was a matter of faith and morals, was put on hold, lost the connection, called back (“It’s not a matter for my Ordinary, Monsignor. It’s a matter for yours, the Cardinal. Why d’ya think I’m calling him? Retired? Who you kiddin’? Oh, gone to bed. No, if he’s in delicate health, don’t wake him. First thing in the morning then. Here it is. Quote: Respectfully submit, indeed urge, that His Honor and others of the Faith among the police and National Guard be exhorted privately to do public penance for their sins against society or be duly excommunicated. Unquote. Monsignor, what’s happening in Chicago tonight, I hope I don’t have to tell you, is a scandal to the jaybirds”), lost the connection again, but didn’t call back because Bill, who must have heard the doorbell, brought two deputies into the study. After Joe offered them refreshments (politely declined) and he and Lefty were questioned by them, Lefty, now out of the BarcaLounger and walking the floor like some great caged beast with a drink in one paw and a rubber cigar in another, lectured the deputies on the crimes of the fuzz in particular and of the establishment in general (“Sure, I’m a radical, but what’s that mean—look it up—it means going to the roots of the problem”), after which, having heard Lefty prophesy revolution, “Red or green, take your choice,” and heard Joe, who was watching the convention, exclaim, “Get those mothers out of the government,” the deputies soberly left, escorted by Bill, who, it occurred to Joe later, hadn’t returned to the study.

  In Bill’s absence, Joe and Lefty, both collarless and in one case shoeless (always, Joe thought, a sour note somewhere, even when this life was most harmonious), blasted off into the empyrean of priestly fellowship. Confiding in each other as they ordinarily wouldn’t, they spoke the truth, the language of God, which was all the more cleansing and refreshing after what they’d said to each other, and not said, earlier. Lefty admitted that he wouldn’t mind being a pastor again, indeed desired it, and to that end when appearing before the Arch (Nijinsky having booked a hurry-up appointment for him) had appeared to bow before superior wisdom as well as authority and to forswear his declared intention to sue the state, which he’d already to himself, at the moment he’d broken the case, forsworn. “I could see it made Big Albert’s day, but I don’t feel so good about it, Joe. Pretty tricky,” Lefty confessed.

  “You’re too hard on yourself, Left,” said Joe, absolving him.

  “Not hard enough, Joe.”

  Moved by such probity and given an unfair moral advantage he wished to neutralize in the interest of truth and priestly fellowship, Joe admitted that he too had been approached by the state department of health and—“Left, here’s why I didn’t tell you”—had gone and taken a physical. “Like Horse, I caved in, Left. I should’ve come to you,” Joe confessed.

  “Sure, but, like Horse, how were you to know you weren’t alone, Joe?” said Lefty, absolving him.

  Lefty spent the night at Joe’s, ultimately in the guest room.

  The attempted holdup was featured in the NS, where the emphasis was on the heroism of Joe and Lefty, in that order, and on the robbers’ panic-stricken flight. “‘Spooks!’ they gasped when confronted by the doughy [sic] clergymen. Sheriff Shorts Morsberger, when asked if the wanted persons are thought to be devout Catholics, said: ‘We can’t rule it out. We’re looking at all the angles.’” The story, ignored by the Universe, was picked up nationally and internationally. Brad phoned to say he was proud of it, except for the typo (“Doughty, Father”), and hoped Joe would take it as “a peace offering, like.” Joe, trying to change the subject but perhaps revealing his concern that the story would damage him with the Mall crowd, inquired after Barb’s left leg.

  28. THE GEEK ACT

  WHEN JOE CAME IN, the Arch, in his usual chair, looking up from his reading matter, cried out, “Hail, the conquering hero!”

  Joe, blushing, made for his usual chair and barber, murmuring rather stagily, “Oh, oh,” when the Arch asked if anyone there hadn’t read about the abortive holdup out in Inglenook, his barber interpolating, “Sir, it was on TV too,” other barbers confirming this and, where necessary, filling in their clients.

  “Over here!” cried the Arch, after speaking to the barber belonging to and sitting in the next chair.

  So Joe and his barber moved over to it.

  “Well, well, Father. How�
�s it going otherwise?”

  “No problems to speak of, Your Excellency.” Joe was relieved that he wasn’t being asked for a firsthand account of his heroism—that it had happened where it had and not, say, in a bank was probably as incriminating in the eyes of the many who didn’t know him (and Lefty) as it was in the eyes of some doughy clergymen who did, they thought, know him (and Lefty) all too well.

  “Hmmm,” said the Arch. “Arf?” he barked.

  Joe, trying to relax, tightened up. “We’re doing as well as can be expected in our circumstances”—a veiled, double-barreled reference to his system and his assessment.

  “What’s that mean?” Blunt.

  “No problem.” Brazen.

  “Good. You run a tight ship, Father.”

  “Thanks, Your Excellency. I try.”

  “You must be doing more than that.”

  Well, yes, I am—at the moment I’m lying in my teeth. “No problem, Your Excellency.”

  “Music to my ears these days, Father.”

  “That so?” Was the Arch in trouble with Arf? Joe hoped so, and while he hadn’t expected the Arch, an Ordinary’s Ordinary, moderate in all but moderation (and extortion), to reel off the names of delinquent pastors, he had expected his concerned “That so?” to be acknowledged in some way—the ensuing silence was embarrassing to Joe.

  Presently: “Little bone to pick with you, Father.”

  “Oh, oh.” The bad publicity arising out of his heroism? The bad company he kept (Lefty)? His refusal to cooperate with Mac? With Tom? With—but surely not, for even if the Arch did know of Joe’s involvement with the state department of health, which was doubtful, he, Joe, like Horse but unlike Lefty, had done the right thing, had caved in, had gone and taken and, furthermore, passed a physical . . .

  “Thought you’d invite me out to bless your new rectory.”

  “Oh, oh. Well, you see . . .” You see, I called the Chancery about this very thing, Arch, and Catfish turned me down flat. Bless one, have to bless ‘em all, he said, to which I—mindful of the material as well as the spiritual well-being of the Church—in this, if only in this, like you, Arch—sadly replied, How many new rectories are there nowadays? Busy here, bless it yourself, snapped he, and hung up. Typical. “I’m sorry, Your Excellency.”

  “Bless it yourself, Father?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Like me to come out sometime?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a deal. Monsignor Toohey’ll let you know when.”

  That I doubt, Joe thought, tempted again to tell all, to get Toohey. “Thanks a lot, Your Excellency.”

  The Arch, descending from his chair in the odor of witch hazel and talcum powder, dropped his reading matter in Joe’s lap, Forbes.

  A couple of days later, Bill, having learned only that evening (when Potter called him) that Joe had been under suspicion at the state health department but was now considered “clean,” was able to explain why Conklin had borne false witness against Joe. It went back to that bad day at the Bow Wow. What Bill had told Joe at the time was substantially true, but not the part about Bill waiting in his little car for Conklin to come out of the Bow Wow—Bill had gone in after him; and Bill had omitted the next part entirely, the part where Dom called Joe a saint “in no uncertain terms” and Conklin laughed in Dom’s face. That was when Dom and the kitchen help completed the job begun by Father Beeman and Father Power on Conklin’s mustache. “Bill, what d’ya mean, Dom called me a saint ‘in no uncertain terms’?” “He put it very strongly.” “C’mon, Bill.” “Joe, he called you ‘a fuckin’ saint.’” “Yeah? What if Conklin was laughing at that?” “No, I think it was the whole idea, Joe.” “Yeah, it is funny, in a way.” Bill had minimized Dom’s loyalty to and respect for Joe because Bill hadn’t wanted Joe to feel responsible for even one of the day’s events. “Thanks.” Bill hadn’t foreseen the consequences—had, in fact, regarded the final, total loss of Conklin’s mustache as a good thing—and had been shocked to hear (from Potter) that Conklin had blamed Joe, along with Father Beeman and Father Power, and to hear that even in their case he’d taken such revenge.

  “The thing is, Joe, I feel responsible for what you’ve been through. After all, Conklin was—is, I guess—my friend.”

  “Forget it, Bill.”

  “I’d like to, Joe, but I can’t. And Pot says to tell you Conklin wants to personally beg your forgiveness.”

  “That won’t be necessary. He has my forgiveness, tell him. No, tell Potter to tell him.”

  Joe got up to freshen his nightcap, and bet himself, when the phone rang (considering the hour), it would be LBJ, but lost. It was Mac, in his cups. “Joe, my hat’s off to you . . . if I can ever be of any service . . . my hat’s off to you, Joe.”

  Joe managed, in a nice way, to terminate the call. “Mr McMaster,” he told Bill. “His hat’s off to me.”

  “The holdup?”

  “What else?”

  Joe’s heroism had been commented on by others far and near. Mrs P., Steve, Big Mouth, Patton. Dave Brock, in a letter of thanks. The Licensed Vintner’s wife (after Sunday Mass): “We miss your custom, Father, but it’s all his fault for letting nice Mr Barnes go.” Nan Gurrier, whose Jim still had his inventory and house, but was now gainfully employed in Shipping at Great Badger, owing to the intercession of the editor of the NS, which stood ready to mount an all-out campaign against it should there again be talk of expanding the dump: “We see you and the whole wide world with new eyes these days, Father.” Earl, another family man soon to better himself by making a change, by moving to Great Badger, Home Furnishings, in a managerial capacity, having responded to an ad in the issue of the NS that featured the holdup story: “Wow, Father. Hey, when it came out in the interview that I knew you personally and did your rectory, I was in.” Smiley of Smiley’s Shell, whose brother, Ed, pastor in name only, had eloped in July and of whom Smiley had then said, “Ed wasn’t fit to wear the uniform he didn’t wear,” and now said (of the holdup), “Nice going, Father. It may interest you to know Ed’s back in uniform—got himself a desk job with the Seattle P.D.” Father Day: “Joe, what a gas! By the way, Dollar Bill and Van, they’re both doing poorly.” Joe’s folks, now living year-round in Florida, who’d advised him, in effect, to let the robbers have it next time, life being more important than moola. Likewise Sister Agatha, in a note (with holy card enclosed), from retirement in her order’s motherhouse and possibly living in the past: “God bless you, my boy.” Uncle Bobby, in a wire from Honolulu, currently his base of operations: POUND THAT BEER. From LBJ, though, before Joe hung up on him again: “They caught you red-handed, huh?”

  “No word from Toohey,” Joe said to Bill. “Well, I’m not surprised.”

  Bill stared at Joe. “You expected him to say something?”

  Joe stared at Bill and gradually understood. “About the holdup—hell, no. About the Arch coming out.”

  “Oh.”

  “To bless the rectory—I told you that.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Look. I’m not surprised. I don’t see how Catfish could queer the deal, but I never made it better than even money he wouldn’t.”

  At first, Joe had wondered how Toohey, when and if he called, would eat crow. Would he act as if he hadn’t said no earlier, or not disguise the fact that he had and be hard-assed about it, or would he get someone else at the Chancery—maybe one of the women—to do the job? At first, Joe thought he’d just wait and see. But with each passing day he thought it more likely he’d just wait and not see. Call the Arch, tell all, get Toohey? This was a recurring fancy, building up, gathering force when, suddenly, early one morning, Catfish was calling.

  “Don’t know what the hell you’re up to now”—alluding to Joe’s heroism?—“but we’ll be out there tomorrow. Eleven A.M. That’s sharp. He’ll do the other first. Five minutes for that. No more. Then the blessing.”

  “‘The other’? What ‘other’?” Joe was saying when To
ohey hung up.

  Later that morning when Bill arrived at his office—he’d had a tooth pulled—Joe went over to see him.

  “Any pain?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Good. I had a call from Toohey.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh?” Had Bill been given a mind-altering medication? “The Arch’s coming out to bless the rectory. Remember?”

  “Joe, I guess I figured since it hadn’t happened, it wouldn’t . . . like the end of the world.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s happening. Tomorrow. Eleven A.M.”

  “Joe”—Bill still seemed to find it hard to believe—“you want me to be present?”

  “If you don’t mind,” Joe said with, he thought, sarcasm, which didn’t seem to get through to Bill. Joe told him about the conversation, such as it was, with Toohey. “Any idea what he could mean by ‘the other’?” But Bill was no help.

  So Joe retired to his office to do some thinking, which went on, off and on, all day. Just before closing time, he called the Chancery, hoping to get an explanation from someone else if Toohey wasn’t there, but determined, if Toohey was there, to get it from him, and if hung up on, to call, or maybe go and see, the Arch and tell all—I’m tired of covering for that horse’s ass, Your Excellency.

  But Toohey was there, and when Joe, his tone intimidating, asked about “the other,” Toohey was surprisingly civil.

  “Some group he’s supposed to have his picture taken with. Wait a minute. Here it is. ‘Mr Lane, Cones, Casing,’ it says here. ‘Cheerleaders.’ Cheerleaders?”

  Joe was silent.

  “That mean anything to you?”

  Joe was silent.

  “You don’t know anything about this?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Joe replied, and hung up.

  Joe’s first thought was to call the Arch right away and let him know what he’d be doing if he had his picture taken with the Cheerleaders: repudiating one of his best men (“You run a tight ship, Father”), who’d said no to the Cheerleaders for much the same reason that some aborigines, he’d read, refuse to be photographed, fearing loss or diminution of being.