by J.F. Powers
Billy thanked Father Urban for the load of wood, saying it had come as a great surprise to him, and suggested a ride in the country. They went down to the car he’d just bought, a flaming red convertible, motor running and double-parked, but with a friendly policeman watching over it. Billy, paying more attention to the car than to Father Urban, drove east, then north, and onto the Outer Drive. Weaving from lane to lane in defiance of the law and safety, and without a word of explanation to Father Urban, who had fallen silent, he passed everything in sight, and when a squad car zoomed out of ambush and came into contention, he smiled at the officers and—pointed to Father Urban in his clericals. The squad car dropped away and the red convertible went on for a while as before. “I hope you didn’t mind that,” Billy said presently. He was now driving at a reduced speed, and Father Urban took this into consideration. “Oh, I guess not,” he replied, with a laugh. He had minded, though, and still did. When they had passed Evanston, and seemed to be heading for nowhere in particular, though again at a very brisk clip, Father Urban suggested a visit to the Novitiate, which lay a few miles to the east of them. “Why not?” said Billy.
The Novitiate was a major and minor seminary, a home for aged and invalid Clementines, a haven for missioners between engagements (“We’re primarily a preaching order, Mr Cosgrove, preaching and teaching, you might say”), and the headquarters of the Chicago province (“I’ve always thought this one should be known as the Western, or the other one as the New York or Boston instead of the Eastern province, as it is. One way or the other, Mr Cosgrove, don’t you think? Just the two provinces, yes. Separate but equal. No, actually, we’re the stronger. Iron Curtain? I suppose you could say it’s something like that, yes—administratively, that is—but in recent years I’ve traveled all over the country. No, at the moment, I’m about the only one who does that as a regular thing. Yes, I realize you meant that as a compliment, but I don’t think unfair competition is quite the term, or even competition. There’s a fine, open spirit between our two provinces, just as there is between provinces in other orders, and likewise between our order and others. We’re all in this thing together—one big happy army, you might say.”).
The Novitiate was also the source of the split oak logs that had gone to Billy Cosgrove’s house on the North Shore, but only after a struggle, for although there was an abundance of wood at the Novitiate, and no shortage of slave labor, the farm and the woodpile were in the hands of hairsplitters. It would have been much easier to get a cord of books out of the library. Oh no, Father Urban had been told, the wood might not be missed, but this didn’t mean that outsiders were entitled to it, and Father Provincial was the only one who could dispense largesse on such a grand scale, and so on. Father Urban had offered to pay for the wood out of his own pocket, and might have done so. As a Clementine, he possessed nothing, and the cassock he wore around the Novitiate was pocketless—St Clement of Blois, the Holy Founder of the Order, having regarded pockets rather than money as the root of evil—but Father Urban was away from the Novitiate most of the time, and while he was away his pockets filled up. Nevertheless, he was true to his vow of poverty—to the spirit, though, rather than the letter. For someone in his position, it could not very well be otherwise. Always, after an accounting at the Novitiate, there would be a surplus: not Mass stipends, which had to be turned in and processed, but personal gifts from grateful laymen and understanding pastors, fives, tens, and twenties literally forgotten among Father Urban’s effects or prudently held out because traveling first-class cost so much more than a tight-fisted bursar could be expected to make allowances for without losing respect for himself and his job.
Father Urban got the wood, however, after he said, “I happen to know that the Dalmatians are making a play for this man.”
Showing Billy around the grounds, he met two of his late antagonists, now all smiles, and said, “Yes, Mr Cosgrove, when they found out the wood was going to you, they were afraid it wouldn’t be good enough.”
“We have more than we can use,” said one.
“You’re welcome to more,” said the other.
Father Urban, moving on, guided Billy to Our Lady’s Grotto. They knelt for a moment in prayer. Then they drank from the spring.
“You ought to bottle it,” Billy said.
“Think it would pay?”
“No.”
Father Urban laughed. “I see our good friends the Dalmatian Fathers are now selling hams.”
“They should.”
Father Urban laughed again. “Good enough,” he said. Although more and more orders were finding it necessary to go into business, there were still laymen, and not all of them crackpots, who took a dim view of this development. Billy Cosgrove, it seemed, was one of them.
Father Urban returned to Chicago with Billy, dined at L’Aiglon with him, and then caught a sleeper for Cincinnati—still not knowing what to make of the man. Their talk had turned to trains, on which Billy was an expert, and there it had stayed. Father Urban had expected something of a delicate nature to come up when he was invited to go for a ride, and again when he was invited to dinner, but Billy, a widower and childless, didn’t seem to have a problem in the world. In a way—because so many problems were simply insoluble—Father Urban was glad.
Toward the end of October, when Father Urban was back in Chicago for a few days, Billy had taken him to lunch in the Pump Room. Afterward, they walked to an address near by, a half-timbered store front with a mullioned bow window. “No questions?” Billy asked.
“Lead on,” said Father Urban.
Billy took him inside, into a display room which, to judge by a couple of cardboard signs, had been vacated by a manufacturer or distributor of longhair phonograph records—“¡Panache Ltd!” Father Urban followed Billy down a corridor to the rear where there was a stockroom. On the way back, Billy threw open doors to the rooms that led off the corridor, three on each side—offices. Leaving the display room by a side door, they were in the lobby of an apartment building of the better class. They went up in a self-operating elevator, and presently they were strolling around on the roof. Father Urban asked no questions, and Billy, who was obviously enjoying the pantomime, offered no explanations.
They were gazing down upon Chicago and Lake Michigan when, at last, Billy spoke, saying that the roof could be put to some use, perhaps recreation. Then, after a pause, he said, “This would be a prestige address for any concern.” Father Urban looked far out across the water, where a sail was coming in, and thought that this was the longest buildup to nothing in his experience. He was disappointed that Billy’s intentions, so long a mystery, had come to this, for, of course, Billy was wasting his time if he hoped to rent the property to the poor Clementines. He might have the right man in Father Urban, but he had the wrong order. Father Urban wondered if he himself weren’t partly responsible. He had painted a pretty rosy picture of the Order of St Clement, and Billy might have taken, say, “far-flung,” one of Father Urban’s favorite terms, to mean, say, “flourishing,” and so on, right down the line. Just as Father Urban was opening his mouth to tell Billy that he’d talk it over with the fathers (Don’t call us, we’ll call you), he heard Billy say, “I’ll let you have it for a song—for a prayer, Father.”
Billy had meant exactly what he said.
At the next chapter meeting, which was preceded by an inspection tour of the property, the Clementines voted to accept Billy’s rather medieval terms. He was to receive three cords of oak firewood annually from the Clementines and to share, as many lay people did, in the spiritual fruits of their work.
It was to be expected that Father Boniface, the Provincial, would want everything in writing, but he harped on this point until he spoiled an otherwise happy occasion for Father Urban.
Not long after they’d left their old quarters in the Loop, Billy showed Father Urban around an apartment on the top floor of the new location. That apartment, with its easy access to the roof and its wonderful view, was now occupied
by the Clementines—by the office staff during the week, by men in town for the day, or between trains. Unfortunately for Father Urban, he was usually out of town on weekends, when the apartment was empty, and, when it wasn’t, when he was there with the office staff, well—even at the Novitiate, where there were several kindred souls, he had found in recent years that a little bit of community life went a long way with him. And still the apartment was fulfilling its purpose. It wasn’t the apartment that had disappointed Father Urban at the new location.
He had wanted the handsome room facing the street to be a showplace—mellow prints, illuminated manuscripts, old maps, calf-bound volumes, Persian carpets, easy chairs, and so on—everything in keeping with the oak-paneled walls, the bow window, and the fireplace. He had wanted the room to be a rendezvous where passers-by would always be welcome to drop in and chat, to peruse the latest in worth-while books and periodicals. Famous visitors to Chicago might be induced to show themselves there, and talks might be given too, not all on religious subjects and none on narrow, controversial lines. A surprising amount of good might be accomplished in that way, indirectly. Of course, it would always be possible for anyone so desiring to sit down with one of the fathers. If converts were made in such surroundings, they would probably be of a type badly needed and generally neglected—the higher type.
But Father Boniface had said no to all this—the idea of such a nook was associated in his mind with Christian Science—and the room was furnished with junk trucked in from the Novitiate: claw-footed tables and chairs, inhumanly high and hard, and large, pious oils (copies of Renaissance masterpieces, executed by a now departed Clementine) in which everybody seemed to be going blind. The room could have been a nuns’ parlor at the turn of the century. And lying about in the noble bow window were poisonous pamphlets (“Who, Me? A Heretic?”), issues of the Clementine (that wholesome monthly devoted to the entire family and therefore of interest to nobody in particular), and a number of unpopular popular histories and biographies from the Millstone Press (a millstone having been the means of St Clement’s death at the hands of Huguenots).
In Father Urban’s opinion, these products had only a limited appeal in the vestibules of churches, and none at all in that neighborhood. Doubtless Divine Providence played a big part in what success they had, and the same might be said of the radio program (“God Is Our Sponsor”), but there, on the near North Side, more would depend on the Clementines themselves, Father Urban felt. Failure would be noticeable there. Not only should the window and the room be made attractive but men assigned to this location should be attractive too—picked men, men able to get through to the kind of people residing or working in the district: worldly executives who liked it for its atmosphere, neurotics engaged in the lively arts, retired crooks and politicians, and the womenfolk belonging to all these—not exactly a family audience. Perhaps it was a job for the Jesuits, as Father Boniface said, but the Clementines were there on the spot, weren’t they? Why should it always be left to the Jesuits to be all things to all men? So Father Urban had argued, but he had got nowhere.
It seemed to him that the Order of St Clement labored under the curse of mediocrity, and had done so almost from the beginning. In Europe, the Clementines hadn’t (it was always said) recovered from the French Revolution. It was certain that they hadn’t ever really got going in the New World. Their history revealed little to brag about—one saint (the Holy Founder) and a few bishops of missionary sees, no theologians worthy of the name, no original thinkers, not even a scientist. The Clementines were unique in that they were noted for nothing at all. They were in bad shape all over the world. The Chicago province was probably better off than the others, but that wasn’t saying much. Their college was failing, their high schools were a break-even proposition at best, and their parishes, except for a few, were in unsettled parts of Texas and New Mexico where no order in its right mind would go. The latest white elephant was an abandoned sanitarium in rural Minnesota! But that was typical of Father Boniface and the rest of them. They just didn’t know a bad thing when they saw it—or a good one.
Father Urban was annoyed that so few of the men seemed to appreciate the new location, except for its nearness to the lake. They went out for their interminable walks just as if they were at the Novitiate. Among themselves they jeered at the neighborhood’s smart shops, at its restaurants with foreign names, at the little galleries where, of course, there were pictures of the sort one had to expect to see nowadays. Father Urban was annoyed and hurt, yes, but not surprised. The Order did little scouting, being content with the material that came its way—mostly graduates of its high schools and readers of its advertisements (“Be a Priest!”) in the Clementine and similar magazines. Men like Father Boniface talked of “beefing up” the Order, but Father Urban had another idea—to raise the tone by packing the Novitiate with exceptional men. He had overshot the mark on occasion—two of his recruits had proved to be homosexual and one homicidal—and most of them, of course, simply came and went. But there were three or four lads out at the Novitiate, superior lads hanging on for dear life in difficult surroundings. What hope Father Urban had for the Order was in them, and in a few others younger than himself but safely ordained, and in himself.
Father Urban knew (none better) that the Order wasn’t up to the job of being an effective influence for good on the near North Side, or anywhere else in the fast-changing world of today, and it never would be, he knew, with men of Father Boniface’s stamp calling the shots. There had to be a new approach. Ideally, it should be their own, recognizably theirs. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time before the Order died on its feet. Possibly the end would be sudden, by decree—a coup de grâce from Rome—for it was rumored that there might be a re-evaluation of religious orders, a culling out of the herd. If this ever happened, it was Father Urban’s fear that the Clementines would be among the first to go.
If this ever happened, though, it wouldn’t be Father Urban’s fault. While others talked of more—more time on the air, more publications, more schools, ever more activity of the kind that had already overextended their lines—Father Urban stumped the country, preaching retreats and parish missions, and did the work of a dozen men. And still he found the time and energy to make friends, as enjoined by Scripture, with the mammon of iniquity.
1. THE GREEN BANANA
FATHER URBAN, FIFTY-FOUR, tall and handsome but a trifle loose in the jowls and red of eye, smiled and put out his hand. He wondered, though, if he shouldn’t discontinue the practice of shaking hands with Billy Cosgrove’s chauffeur. It had begun as a democratic gesture on Father Urban’s part, but for some time he had felt that it was being wasted on Paul, a tough little Sicilian.
“The Boss, he’d be here, Fahdah, only he had to go out East. Put him on the New England States Monday. Back tomorrow.”
Father Urban relinquished his traveling bag. “No, I’ll carry this one,” he said, keeping the attaché case. “How was he feeling, Paul?” Billy had had a cold.
“Good. Too goddamn good, if you ask me. Tried to give me a raise. You know what I told him, Fahdah?”
“No,” said Father Urban, but he thought he did. It had happened once in his presence—Billy threatening Paul with more money and Paul threatening to hand in his resignation because he had enough income tax to pay as it was, and so on.
They were descending to the lower level of the LaSalle Street Station. “I told him I wouldn’t change places with him for a million bucks.”
Father Urban deliberately missed his cue but let it appear that he was concentrating on the steps.
“That’s what I told him.”
“What’d he say to that, Paul?”
“I meant it, Fahdah.”
“I’m sure you did, Paul. Was anyone with him at the time?”
“Some guy. I don’t know.”
Father Urban had thought so. He had an idea there was always somebody else present when Billy and Paul put on their little show.
&nb
sp; The gray Rolls was parked under a “No Parking” sign. Paul opened the rear door for Father Urban and pushed the bag in after him. When Paul was seated behind the wheel, Father Urban leaned forward, opened the glass partition, and stuck a Dunhill Monte Cristo Colorado Maduro No. 1 in the slot between the chauffeur’s head and ear. As usual, Paul made too much of it. He was accustomed to Billy, though, and Billy was a stickler for gratitude. Of course, where Billy was concerned, there was much to be grateful for.
“Tell me, Paul. Have you seen anything of Father Gabriel?”
“Naw,” Paul said, as if Father Urban and the Clementines had nothing to fear from Father Gabriel and the Dalmatians.
“Nice man,” said Father Urban, trying to throw Paul off the scent.
For a few minutes in the Loop, Paul was quiet, fencing with traffic. At one corner, at the last possible moment, he gave way to a truck driver who called his bluff, but at the next corner he was himself again, cutting the Rolls through a soft surf of pedestrians. On Michigan Avenue, he relaxed and said to Father Urban, “Hey, the Chief ran into the Super Chief. It was awful.”
“Too bad.” Paul was only talking about Billy’s electric trains, but it did seem a shame to Father Urban that wrecks were so frequent on Billy’s railroad. (The ballroom of his big house was given over to it.) It made Father Urban nervous to watch Billy perform split-second maneuvers with the little trains. It was almost as if he expected them to save themselves.
