by J.F. Powers
“So I put ’em in the basket.”
“Too bad.” Father Urban had seen the basket—a large laundry basket filling up with damaged equipment to be taken out to the veterans’ hospital for repairs.
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Those boys make out all right.”
“I know.” Father Urban knew that Billy supplied the vets with the tools and materials they needed to rehabilitate the little trains for him, and that he was always thinking of things to brighten their days—color TV sets, for instance—and still. . . .
Paul, waiting for a light to change, raced his motor at a pedestrian. Instead of hurrying across the street, the pedestrian, an elderly, well-dressed man, stopped directly in front of the Rolls just as the light turned green and, with gestures, appeared to be inviting Paul to run over him. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction!” Paul yelled out the window. The old pedestrian smiled and held his position. Cars in the next lane proceeded while those behind Paul were honking. Then the light changed to red again, and the pedestrian continued on his way, leaving Paul to sit through another light.
“How do you like that?” he said.
Father Urban said nothing. He rather admired the pedestrian for standing up to Paul and the Rolls—after all, they had started it.
“Ever see anything like that, Fahdah?”
“Oh well,” said Father Urban, and fell silent. Billy made just such demands on him—demands that couldn’t quite be met in conscience. In restaurants, when Billy made a disturbance and sent back the steak, Father Urban would say, “Oh well,” and try to smile. He was reluctant to admonish Billy and hoped that the day would come when he’d know how to bring out the best in the man. Some of the most powerful figures in history had been spoiled children like Billy, but humble monks had brought them to their knees and turned their bloody hands to the service of God. Not running off the mouth at every opportunity, but knowing when to cast one’s pearls, and how—that, in the best sense of the word, was priestcraft. So, until Billy was ready, it was important not to antagonize him. As for Paul, he was only an aspect of Billy, and would come later, as Constantine’s legions had come later. Nevertheless, Father Urban wished that he could exercise more power over Paul. The obscene noises the chauffeur made when he saw a pretty girl were disturbing (after all, Paul was a husband and a father) and hard to ignore. Father Urban was always pleased when Billy said something, as he did now and then: “Grow up, Greaseball,” or “Why don’t you check yourself into a nice, quiet institution, friend?”
There was a parking place near the new location, but Father Urban was firm about being let out in the street. He was afraid that Paul, if he got the car parked, would recall his first impressions of the firetrap formerly occupied by the Clementines. “In there?” Paul had said to himself when he saw the building, “In that?” when he saw the old bird-cage elevator, and “Down there?” when he saw the dim corridor at the end of which the Clementines had their offices. Father Urban hadn’t minded hearing it the first couple of times but would hold still for it now only when Billy was present. Father Boniface, along on one such occasion (the first and last for him), had left in the middle of it, which must have looked like ingratitude to Billy.
“Not like the old days, huh, Fahdah?”
“Thanks a lot, Paul,” said Father Urban, and made off with his attaché case and bag. Paul hadn’t reminisced under such circumstances before—he was blocking traffic—but apparently he had been about to try.
In the reception room, Father Urban met Father John, an older man for whom, in a way, he had a lot of respect. “How’s it going, Jack?”
“Not so good, Urban.”
“I don’t believe it.” Father Urban did, though. Jack should have been taken off the road long ago—put to teaching, or encouraged to write again, as he had in his youth. Now and then Father Urban threw him an engagement, but he didn’t like to do it. Jack didn’t generate much heat from the pulpit, and a number of pastors who had booked him for a mission were never heard from again.
Jack had removed his bifocals and was polishing them on his not too clean handkerchief. Without them he was almost blind, and that part of his face ordinarily under glass looked indecently exposed. “In town long, Urban?”
“Leaving tomorrow. St Paul.”
Jack was staring at Father Urban, pretending that he could see. He had been about to say something, it seemed, but had changed his mind.
Father Urban laid a hand on his arm, rather startling him, for he hadn’t seen it coming. “I’ll be seeing you,” Father Urban said. As he was leaving the room, he glanced back and thought how well poor Jack, with his glasses off, went with the pictures.
Father Urban picked up his mail from Father Boniface’s secretary. “How’s everything with you, Brother?”
“Fine, thank you, Father,” said Brother Henry.
“Good, good,” said Father Urban, looking through his mail. He was about to leave when he spotted an envelope in the outgoing basket, an envelope addressed to him. “I might as well take this,” he said. He removed the envelope from the basket.
“It was my understanding,” Brother Henry was saying, “that Father Provincial wanted you to get that in St Paul.” Brother Henry had addressed these words more to his typewriter than to Father Urban, and now, with his fingers trembling on the keys, he seemed to be waiting for Father Urban to return the envelope.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Brother, if I were you,” said Father Urban, coldly smiling. He was thinking how much more he used to enjoy his days in Chicago, before Father Boniface came to power. Respect for Father Urban was still there, but something negative had been added, or was showing itself. In Brother Henry’s case, it was probably only envy—the ground crewman’s envy for the man who actually did the flying—and what might be called puritanism. Father Urban had tried to interest Brother Henry in pipe-smoking, saying that it would help his digestion. “Take it easy, Brother,” he said now, and went and stuck his head into Father Boniface’s office.
The Provincial, a lean, pale, damp-looking Pole with a hairline winding up and around like the endless seam on a baseball, sat at his desk cleaning his fingernails with a letter opener. On the wall behind him, just as in their old quarters, hung a crucifix and part of the propeller from the airplane in which his brother, a chaplain in the First War, had perished. Father Boniface had been a chaplain himself in the Second War. “How’s it going, Father?” he asked, and went right on with his nails.
“I can’t complain.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be seeing you,” said Father Urban, withdrawing his head. He wouldn’t be seeing Father Boniface, though, if he could help it, until he stuck his head into the office again, after his next trip. He reported not to the man but to the authority vested in him, but this, too, was hard for Father Urban. He felt that the authority might have been his if the members of the Order had only known that by electing him Provincial they would not be losing him in the field. He would have carried on as always, as a fighting general, you might say. Unfortunately, there was no precedent for such an arrangement, and there hadn’t been a discreet way to suggest it. At least none had occurred to Father Urban at the time. Before the next election rolled around, however, he meant to go into the whole matter with Father August, his old confessor, who, though rather inclined to take everything with a grain of salt, including the future of the Order, was popular with the younger element at the Novitiate and wasn’t partial to the present administration. Father August, if he so desired, could talk up the idea in a quiet way. It would be up to the others then.
On his way back to the stockroom, Father Urban met Brother Henry in the corridor, smiled, and said, “This way, you see, you save a stamp.”
“Yes, Father.”
In the stockroom, Brother Lawrence, who had found his vocation late in life, got up from his chair by the window and came to the counter, asking, “Where you off to this time, Father?” He had been a brakeman in the world and
took a lively interest in Father Urban’s travels.
“St Paul.”
They discussed the merits of the railroads running between Chicago and the Twin Cities, and the possibility of a merger between two of them that Brother Lawrence had heard of, and then Father Urban checked off the pamphlet titles he’d need on his next trip.
“You don’t take this any more, Father.” Brother Lawrence held up a copy of a pamphlet written years ago.
Father Urban knew that Brother Lawrence was trying to help Jack—who had figured in his vocation, the two of them having enjoyed many quiet talks between Galesburg and Quincy, Brother Lawrence’s old run on the C.B. & Q.—but this was asking too much. Even elderly pastors pathologically sympathetic to Jack’s message (temperance) complained about the outdated language, words like “flapper” and “sheik” and “applesauce” (as an oath), and about the art work on the cover, where a coal-burning train and a touring car were engaged in what was obviously going to be a photo finish at the crossing. The young people in the touring car, one of whom sat on the tonneau and kicked up a pretty leg, held champagne glasses out of which bubbled the words of the title, “Danger Ahead!” Father Urban shook his head. “I wish he’d revise.”
“This just came in,” said Brother Lawrence, having done what he could for Jack. He reached under the counter and came up with a pamphlet on mercy killing by Father Clem, a nom de plume in general use in the Order. In this instance, the author was Father Boniface himself. For many years, “Help, Murder!” had disintegrated in vestibules and then it had entirely disappeared, but now here it was again. Father Urban wasn’t fooled by the flashy new cover, nor, he thought, would the big dealers, the priests and nuns who could make or break a pamphlet, be fooled by it. Brother Lawrence didn’t seem to realize that this was the second time around for “Help.”
“Is it moving at all, Brother?”
“It just came in, Father.”
Father Urban nodded. Loyal, he thought—all of ’em loyal to Father Boniface. “I’ll think about it,” he said, going back to the chair by the window. After removing Brother Lawrence’s reading matter—a paperback by Erle Stanley Gardner—he sat down to his mail. He re-read Billy’s postcard (a view of Faneuil Hall, Boston): “N.E. States on time. Merchants to N.Y. tomorrow. Back on Friday, Century. Lunch with you? Just—Billy.” Father Urban’s cards to Billy came to much the same thing, even to the self-effacing “Just,” which Billy had appropriated. Father Urban then discarded the second-class stuff unopened and got down to the usual requests for his services in the future, several of them from pastors who’d had him before. Remembering the food and accommodations at one place, inexcusable for such a well-to-do parish, he resolved what would have been a conflict of dates. Then he opened the envelope lifted from Brother Henry’s basket, and groaned, wadded up the letter, and groaned again.
Brother Lawrence, at the counter, turned and stared—as if to see whether Father Urban was all right, or was having a heart attack.
Father Urban gave him a discouraging look. Then he uncrumpled the letter, laid it on his knee, and ironed it with the palm of his hand. He had opened the envelope, expecting to read that he was asked to pray for this or that, for somebody dead or dying, or was asked to call on some friend of the Order in the Twin Cities, for such was the stuff of Father Boniface’s correspondence with Father Urban. But here was a letter saying that Father Urban’s engagement in St Paul would be his last on the road, that “someone” would take his itinerary from there. Here was a letter ordering him to report to the newest white elephant, the new foundation, as it was called in the letter, near Duesterhaus, Minnesota. No, it didn’t make sense, even by Clementine standards, which had been hard enough to fathom before but which had now become positively inscrutable, and why had the matter been handled in this manner, by letter? Because Father Boniface was afraid of him! Or at least was afraid of a scene. Go and see him then! Have it out! And be asked how he came into possession of the letter? Or not be asked, and have his little transgression hanging over him, detracting from whatever he might say?
Father Urban restored the letter to its envelope, and put the envelope in his pocket. As he saw it, the letter had been coming for a long time, from the moment Father Boniface came to power. It had been on the way for two years, and now, finally, it had arrived. How did a man like Father Boniface ever get elected? Simple. Nature might abhor a vacuum, but the Order of St Clement didn’t. It was as simple as that.
But Father Boniface would regret this. When the word got around that Father Urban was unavailable, and his long-standing engagements were assigned to another, to Jack, say, and the cancellations rolled in, then Father Boniface would know what he’d done when he gave his best man the green banana.
Jack, who had entered the stockroom, and was talking trains with Brother Lawrence, suddenly caught sight of Father Urban and came back to him. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you this before, Urban,” Jack said. “But I’ve been transferred.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. To this new place in Minnesota.”
Father Urban gazed out the window at a row of garbage cans in the alley—all the ground-floor windows in the neighborhood had steel bars over them, another sign of the times, he thought—and felt that he should say something encouraging, but he wasn’t up to it. “Will you be in charge up there?” he asked. Anything was possible.
“Oh no. Nothing like that.” Jack said he understood that Father Wilfrid, the man now in charge, was staying on. The other two men there, though, were being sent elsewhere—where, Jack didn’t know, nor did he know who would be replacing him on the road. “Maybe nobody,” he said, as if he had no illusions about himself.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear it,” Father Urban said. In the circumstances, Jack’s transfer was almost as much of a blow to him as his own. Why did it have to happen this way? Why did it have to happen to them both at the same time? Why did they have to go off together like two men sentenced by the same judge, on the same day, to the same institution? “But I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Father Urban, again gazing through the bars at the garbage cans in the alley. “As soon as a man’s any good to himself and the Order, you can be sure he’ll be given something else to do. I’ve seen it happen too often. That’s one reason we’re where we are today—nowhere.”
Jack glanced around. He probably meant that Brother Lawrence shouldn’t be hearing such talk.
“Well, you know, in a thing like this, Urban . . .”
“Ours not to reason why? Is that it?”
Jack, it seemed, had something to say, but didn’t care to say it and was giving the world every possible chance to end first. “No, Urban, it’s not for us to say, and you know it. Not in a thing like this.” Jack had spoken with surprising firmness for him and now appeared anxious to leave.
“Have it your way,” Father Urban said, releasing him. He watched Jack depart and noted that his rubber heels were worn down to the leather. Jack’s attitude was the right one, of course, but it must come easier for someone like him. What did he have to lose?
Father Urban knew that he’d have to do better with Billy. We go where the Lord willeth, and all that, but could he do it? Wouldn’t it be easier to phone Billy’s office and call off their next day’s luncheon date? If they met, and it came out how Father Urban really felt about the transfer, Billy might take it as an act of ingratitude to him, which in a way it was, and try to throw his weight around with Father Boniface. Nothing good could come of that. It would be much easier to give Billy the bad news, and show the right attitude, in a letter. So there was really nothing to keep Father Urban from leaving for St Paul on the Zephyr that afternoon. If he hurried, he could catch the North Coast Limited. And if he left that afternoon, he’d be well out of an evening at the apartment or at the Novitiate, an evening of pretending that all was well with the world.
But then Jack entered the stockroom again, and came back to him again, and, for several moments, just stood there loo
king down at him in a benign manner, which Father Urban found nerve-racking. He was afraid that Jack had somehow found out what he obviously hadn’t known before: that he wasn’t the only one ticketed for Minnesota. For reasons of pride, Father Urban hadn’t told Jack before, and for the same reasons, and also because he hadn’t told him before, he didn’t wish to now. Yes, he knew that he was making it harder for himself later. “Well, Jack?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before,” Jack said. “I just want to say that in a thing like this I don’t much care what happens to me, but it’s nice to know somebody else does.”
“Oh?” said Father Urban, but he nodded—as if to say yes, he had spoken as he had not out of a mean spirit of criticism, which ill became one under a vow of obedience to his superiors, but out of an excess of brotherly love. What the hell else could he do? Tell the truth? Now? The truth, if it came out now, would hurt Jack more than it would Father Urban, which was saying a great deal, and that was why Father Urban allowed the misunderstanding to go on. It meant a lot to a poor soul like Jack. You could even say it was serving a very good purpose. Going a step further, Father Urban said, “Jack, if you don’t have another engagement, I’d like to take you out to lunch.”
As it happened, Jack didn’t have another engagement.
They were sitting in the Pump Room, dining on champagne and shish kebab, one of Billy Cosgrove’s favorite combinations, and the spirit of Billy, powerful if not all-protecting (it couldn’t be invoked against unjust superiors), seemed to watch over them there. At the next table, coffee was being served by a colored boy got up in turban, white breeches, and green hose, the first of his brilliant kind to come within range of Jack’s limited vision. Jack aimed a finger, from what he seemed to think was a concealed position on the table, in the boy’s direction.
