by J.F. Powers
Myles was beginning to see what Mac had in mind.
“As I understand it, you don’t have to be a priest to baptize people,” Mac continued. “Anybody can do it in an emergency. You know that, of course.”
Myles, just a step ahead of him, was thinking of the pastors who’d been deceived into giving Mac the pledge. It looked a lot like the old package deal.
“We could go over there,” Mac said, glancing at the washbowl in the corner. “Or there’s my room, if it’d be more appropriate.” He had a bathroom.
Myles hardened. “If you’re asking me to do it,” he said, “the answer’s no.” Myles was now sure that Mac had been baptized before—perhaps many times, whenever he had need of it. “I couldn’t give you a proper certificate anyway,” Myles added. “You’d want that.”
“You mean if I wanted to go on with it and come into the Catholic Church? All the way in? Is that what you mean?”
Myles didn’t mean that at all, but he said, “I suppose so.”
“Then you do get me?” Mac demanded.
Myles stiffened, knowing that he was in grave danger of being in on Mac’s conversion, and feeling, a moment later, that this—this conversion—like the pledge and baptism, must have happened before. He hastened to say, “No. I don’t get you and I don’t want to.”
Mac stood before him, silent, with bowed head, the beaten man, the man who’d asked for bread and received a stone, who’d asked for a fish and got a serpent.
But no, Mac wasn’t that at all, Myles saw. He was the serpent, the nice old serpent with Glen-plaid markings, who wasn’t very poisonous. He’d been expecting tenderness, but he had caught the forked stick just behind the head. The serpent was quiet. Was he dead? “I give you my word that I’ll never tell anybody what you’ve told me,” Myles said. “So far as I’m concerned, you’re a Catholic—a cradle Catholic if you like. I hold no grudge against you for anything you’ve said, drunk or sober. I hope you’ll do the same for me.”
“I will that,” Mac said, and began to speak of their “relationship,” of the inspiration Myles had been to him from the very first. There was only one person responsible for the change in his outlook, he said, and it might interest Myles to know that he was that person.
Myles saw that he’d let up on the stick too soon. The serpent still had plenty left. Myles pressed down on him. “I want out, Mac,” he said. “I’m not a priest yet. I don’t have to listen to this. If you want me to spill the beans to the Fathers, just keep it up.”
The serpent was very quiet now. Dead?
“You do see what I mean?” Myles said.
“Yeah, now I see,” Mac said. He was looking only a little hurt; the flesh above his snow-white collar was changing pinks, but he was looking much better, seemingly convinced that Myles, with an excuse to harm him, and with the power to do so, would not. Mac was having his remarkable experience after all—almost a conversion. “Had you wrong,” he confessed. “Thought sure you’d squeal. Thought sure you’d be the type that would. Hope you don’t mind me saying that. Because you got my respect now.”
Myles could see, however, that Mac liked him less for having it. But he had Mac’s respect, and it was rare, and it made the day rare.
“Until I met you, why— Well, you know.” Mac stopped short.
Myles, with just a look, had let him feel the stick.
“We’ll leave it at that,” Mac said.
“If you will, I will,” said Myles. He crossed the room to the washbowl, where he began to collect his razor, his toothbrush, and the shaving lotion that Mac had given him. When he turned around with these things in his hands, he saw that Mac had gone. He’d left a small deposit of gray ash on the rug near the spot where he’d coiled and uncoiled.
Later that morning Myles, as a last service and proof of good will, went to the garage and brought Mac’s car around to the hotel door, and waited there with it until Mac, smoking his second cigar of the day, appeared. Myles helped him stow his luggage and refused his offer to drive him to the railroad station, if that was where Myles wanted to go. Myles had not told Mac that he intended to hitchhike back to the last town, to confront the difficult bishop and strike the rock a second time. After shaking hands, Mac began, “If I hear of anything—” but Myles silenced him with a look, and then and there the team split up.
Mac got into the Cadillac and drove off. Watching, Myles saw the car, half a block away, bite at the curb and stop. And he saw why. Mac, getting on with the Work, was offering a lift to two men all in black, who, to judge by their actions, didn’t really want one. In the end, though, the black car consumed them, and slithered out of view.
A LOSING GAME
FATHER FABRE, COMING from the bathroom, stopped and knocked at the pastor’s door—something about the door had said, Why not? No sound came from the room, but the pastor had a ghostly step and there he was, opening the door an inch, giving his new curate a glimpse of the green eyeshade he wore and of the chaos in which he dwelt. Father Fabre saw the radio in the unmade bed, the correspondence, pamphlets, the folding money, and all the rest of it—what the bishop, on an official visitation, barging into the room and then hurriedly backing out, had passed off to the attending clergy as “a little unfinished business.”
“Yes? Yes?”
“How about that table you promised me?”
The pastor just looked at him.
“The one for my room, remember? Something to put my typewriter on.”
“See what I can do.”
The pastor had said that before. Father Fabre said, “I’m using the radiator now.”
The pastor nodded, apparently granting him permission to continue using it.
Father Fabre put down the old inclination to give up. “I thought you said you’d fix me up, Father.”
“See what I can do, Father.”
“Now?”
“Busy now.”
The pastor started to close the door, which was according to the rules of their little game, but Father Fabre didn’t budge, which was not according to the rules.
“Tell you what I’ll do, Father,” he said. “I’ll just look around in the basement and you won’t have to bother. I know how busy you are.” Father Fabre had a strange feeling that he was getting somewhere with the pastor. Everything he’d said so far had been right, but he had to keep it up. “Of course I’ll need to know the combination.” He saw the pastor buck and shudder at the idea of telling anyone the combination of the lock that preserved his treasures.
“Better go with you,” the pastor said, feeling his throat.
Father Fabre nodded. This was what he’d had in mind all the time. While the pastor was inside his room looking for his collar (always a chance of meeting a parishioner on the stairs), Father Fabre relaxed and fell to congratulating himself. He had been tough and it had worked. The other thing had proved a waste of time.
After a bit, though, Father Fabre took another view of the situation, knowing as he did so that it was the right one, that the door hadn’t just happened to shut after the pastor, that the man wasn’t coming out. Oh, that was it. The pastor had won again. He was safe in his room again, secure in the knowledge that his curate wouldn’t knock and start up the whole business again, not for a while anyway.
Father Fabre went away. Going downstairs, he told himself that though he had lost, he had extended the pastor as never before, and would get the best of him yet.
Father Fabre sensed John, the janitor, before he saw him sitting in the dark under the staircase, at one of his stations. He might be found in this rather episcopal chair, which was also a hall-tree, or on a box in the furnace room, or in the choir loft behind the organ, or in the visiting priest’s confessional. There were probably other places which Father Fabre didn’t know about. John moved around a lot, foxlike, killing time.
Father Fabre switched on the light. John pulled himself together and managed a smile, his glasses as always frosted over with dust so that he seemed to be watching
you through basement windows.
“John, you know that lock on the door to the church basement?”
John nodded.
“It’s not much of a lock. Think we can open it?”
John frowned.
“A tap on the side?”
John shook his head.
“No?”
“Sorry, Father.”
“So.” Father Fabre turned away.
“Will you need a hammer, Father?”
“Don’t think I’ll need one. Sure you won’t come along?”
“Awful busy, Father.” But John found time to get up and accompany Father Fabre to the iron staircase that led to the church basement. There they parted. Father Fabre snapped the light switch on the wall. He wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. He left the door open for light. A half flight down, pausing, he hearkened to John’s distant footsteps, rapidly climbing, and then he went winding down into the gloom. At the bottom he seated himself on a step and waited.
Soon he heard a slight noise above. Rounding the last turn, descending into view, was the pastor. “Oh, there you are,” said Father Fabre, rising.
The pastor voiced no complaint—and why should he? He’d lost a trick, but Father Fabre had taken it honorably, according to the rules, in a manner worthy of the pastor himself.
Father Fabre was up on his toes, straining to see.
The pastor was fooling with something inside the fuse box on the wall, standing up to it, his back almost a shield against Father Fabre’s eyes. Overhead a bulb lit up. So that was it, thought Father Fabre, coming down to earth—and to think that he’d always blamed the wiring for the way some of the lights didn’t work around the church and rectory, recommending a general checkup, prophesying death by conflagration to the pastor. Father Fabre, rising again, saw the pastor screw in another fuse where none had been before. That would be the one controlling the basement lights.
The pastor dealt next with the door, dropping into a crouch to dial the lock.
Father Fabre leaned forward like an umpire for the pitch, but saw at once that it would be impossible to lift the combination. He scraped his foot in disgust, grinding a bit of fallen plaster. The pastor’s fingers tumbled together. He seemed to be listening. After a moment, he began to dial again, apparently having to start all over.
“There,” he said finally. He removed the lock, threw open the door, but before he went in, he stepped over to the fuse box. The overhead light went out. Father Fabre entered the basement, where he had been only once before, and not very far inside then. The pastor secured the door behind them. From a convenient clothes tree he removed a black cap and put it on—protection against the dust? Father Fabre hadn’t realized that the pastor, who now looked like a burglar in an insurance ad, cared. The pastor glanced at him. Quickly Father Fabre looked away. He gazed around him in silence.
It was impossible to decide what it all meant. In the clothes tree alone, Father Fabre noted a cartridge belt, a canteen stenciled with the letters U.S., a pair of snowshoes, an old bicycle tire of wrinkled red rubber, a beekeeper’s veil. One of Father Fabre’s first services to the pastor had been to help John carry two workbenches into the basement. At that time he had thought the pastor must have plans for a school in which manual training would be taught. Now he felt that the pastor had no plans at all for any of the furniture and junk. A few of the unemployed statues when seen at a distance, those with their arms extended, appeared to be trying to get the place straightened up, carrying things, but on closer examination they, too, proved to be preoccupied with a higher kind of order, and carrying crosiers.
The pastor came away from a rack containing billiard cues, ski poles, and guns.
“Here,” he said, handing an air rifle to Father Fabre.
Father Fabre accepted the gun, tipped it, listening to the BB shot bowling up and down inside. “What’s this for?”
“Rats.”
“Couldn’t kill a rat with this, could I?”
“Could.”
But Father Fabre noticed that the pastor was arming himself with a .22 rifle. “What’s that?” he asked covetously.
“This gun’s not accurate,” said the pastor. “From a shooting gallery.”
“What’s wrong with trapping ’em?”
“Too smart.”
“How about poison?”
“Die in the walls.”
The pastor moved off, bearing his gun in the way that was supposed to assure safety.
Father Fabre held his gun the same way and followed the pastor. He could feel the debris closing in, growing up behind him. The path ahead appeared clear only when he looked to either side. He trailed a finger in the dust on a table top, revealing the grain. He stopped. The wood was maple, he thought, maple oiled and aged to the color of saddle leather. There were little niches designed to hold glasses. The table was round, a whist table, it might be, and apparently sound. Here was a noble piece of furniture that would do wonders for his room. It could be used for his purposes, and more. That might be the trouble with it. The pastor was strong for temperance. It might not be enough for Father Fabre to deplore the little niches.
“Oh, Father.”
The pastor retraced his steps.
“This might do,” Father Fabre said grudgingly, careful not to betray a real desire. There was an awful glazed green urn thing in the middle of the table which Father Fabre feared would leave scratches or a ring. A thing like that, which might have spent its best days in a hotel, by the elevators, belonged on the floor. Father Fabre wanted to remove it from the table, but he controlled himself.
“Don’t move,” said the pastor. “Spider.”
Father Fabre held still while the pastor brushed it off his back. “Thanks.” Father Fabre relaxed and gazed upon the table again. He had to have it. He would have it.
But the pastor was moving on.
Father Fabre followed in his steps, having decided to say nothing just then, needing more time to think. The important thing was not to seem eager. “It isn’t always what we want that’s best for us,” the pastor had said more than once. He loved to speak of Phil Mooney—a classmate of Father Fabre’s—who had been offered a year of free study at a major secular university, but who had been refused permission by the bishop. Young Mooney, as the pastor said, had taken it so well . . . “This—how about this?” said Father Fabre. He had stopped before a nightstand, a little tall for typing. “I could saw the legs off some.”
The pastor, who had paused, now went ahead again, faster.
Father Fabre lifted his gun and followed again, wondering if he’d abused the man’s sensibilities, some article of the accumulator’s creed. He saw a piano stool well suited to his strategy. This he could give up with good grace. “Now here’s something,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind having this.” He sounded as though he thought he could get it too.
The pastor glanced back and shook his head. “Belongs upstairs.”
“Oh, I see,” said Father Fabre submissively. There was no piano in the rectory, unless that, too, was in the pastor’s room.
The pastor, obviously pleased with his curate’s different tone, stopped to explain. “A lot of this will go upstairs when we’re through remodeling.”
Father Fabre forgot himself. “Remodeling?” he said, and tried to get the pastor to look him in the eye.
The pastor turned away.
Father Fabre, who was suddenly seeing his error, began to reflect upon it. There was no material evidence of remodeling, it was true, but he had impugned the pastor’s good intentions. Was there a pastor worth his salt who didn’t have improvements in mind, contractors and costs on the brain?
They moved deeper into the interior. Above them the jungle joined itself in places now. Father Fabre passed under the full length of a ski without taking notice of it until confronted by its triangular head, arching down at him. He shied away. Suddenly the pastor stopped. Father Fabre pulled up short, cradling his gun, which he’d been using as a cane. Som
ething coiled on the trail?
“How’s this?” said the pastor. He was trying the drawers of a pitiful old sideboard affair with its mirrors out and handles maimed, a poor, blind thing. “Like this?” he said. He seemed to have no idea what they were searching for.
“I need something to type on,” Father Fabre said bluntly.
The pastor hit the trail again, somehow leaving the impression that Father Fabre was the one who was being difficult.
They continued to the uttermost end of the basement. Here they were confronted by a small mountain of pamphlets. In the bowels of the mountain something moved.
The pastor’s hands shifted on his gun. “They’re in there,” he whispered, and drew back a pace. He waved Father Fabre to one side, raised the gun, and pumped lead into the pamphlets. Sput-flub. Sput-flub. Sput-spong-spit.
Father Fabre reached for his left leg, dropped to his knees, his gun clattering down under him. He grabbed up his trouser leg and saw the little hole bleeding in his calf. It hurt, but not as much as he would’ve thought.
The pastor came over to examine the leg. He bent down. “Just a flesh wound,” he said, straightening up. “You’re lucky.”
“Lucky!”
“Tire there at the bottom of the pile. Absorbed most of the fire power. Bullet went through and ricocheted. You’re lucky. Here.” The pastor was holding out his hand.
“Oh, no,” said Father Fabre, and lowered his trouser leg over the wound.
The pastor seemed to be surprised that Father Fabre wouldn’t permit him to pinch the bullet out with his dirty fingers.
Father Fabre stood up. The leg held him, but his walking would be affected. He thought he could feel some blood in his sock. “Afraid I’ll have to leave you,” he said. He glanced at the pastor, still seeking sympathy. And there it was, at last, showing in the pastor’s face, some sympathy, and words were on the way—no, caught again in the log jam of the man’s mind and needing a shove if they were to find their way down to the mouth, and so Father Fabre kept on looking at the pastor, shoving . . .
