by J.F. Powers
“In,” Father Urban would say if Wilf and Brother Harold were up in the Rec Room—where they went not to work but to commune with the job. They stood, and sat, and squatted, and stood again. They smoked and talked. They doodled with tools—Wilf was very fond of the steel tape measure, fed it in and out by the hour, measuring his shoe, the distance between his toe and his knee, between his nose and the floor. Father Urban, who had looked in on them a couple of times, didn’t understand it. (“What you’re thinking of, Brother, is Rockite. That’s not asbestos board. Oh, sure, they call it that.”)
Father Urban steered clear of the Rec Room after working hours, and so did Jack. Since the lighting in the refectory—two bulbs in a five-bulb chandelier—wasn’t ideal for reading, they played checkers. Conversation was incidental. Jack concentrated on the game. This was probably just as well, because he had a way of running any subject that interested him into the ground.
On the evening after Thanksgiving Day (for which Wilf had procured an old hen, very tasty as prepared by Brother Harold, especially after so much fish), Father Urban said, “Ever think of revising ‘Danger Ahead!,’ Jack?”
“Not much demand for it nowadays, Urban.”
“There could be,” said Father Urban, rising to turn off the radio. Besides the usual hum, there didn’t seem to be much on the radio but accident reports and warnings to drive safely. “Bring it up to date, why don’t you?”
“Your move, Urban.”
“I only mention it because I feel you should be doing something while you’re here. Don’t just let yourself go. A man can go nuts in a place like this.”
“I’ve been thinking of doing some writing, Urban.”
“That’s what I mean. Otherwise this’ll just be a big slice out of your life. My God!”
“It may turn out all right in the end, Urban. Are they in or out?”
“Out,” Father Urban said on that evening, and shook his head in sorrow.
When Wilf and Brother Harold were out, they were over in Olympe in connection with a crusade to get people to go to church more and to shop less during the Christmas season. Wilf was not the leader of the crusade, in which Protestants were participating on a separate-but-equal basis, but he was evidently high up in its councils. He called on merchants in their homes and asked them to point up the true meaning of the season in their window displays and advertising, and Brother Harold reported to headquarters (the Catholic high school in Olympe) where he and other artists produced “Put Christ Back into Christmas” signs, which were hung in the windows of stores and homes.
None of this was new to Father Urban. He would grant that there were abuses of the Christmas spirit (he felt that merchants should hold off until after Thanksgiving, or at least until after Halloween), but he also believed that whatever was done, or not done, should be done under the auspices of the hierarchy. If Wilf had hoped for his support, or Jack’s, he must have been disappointed, for they had let him see that they were just not interested. Father Urban had gone further than that. “How many are you sending to your brother?” he’d asked, seeing Wilf with a stack of “Put Christ Back into Christmas” signs. “Heh, heh,” said Wilf, whose brother, Rudy, ran a variety store in Berwyn, Illinois. And then he came around later, carrying a big brown envelope, saying (in the smarmiest voice you ever heard) that he was sending a supply of signs to Rudy—and saying this not to Father Urban, though he was in the refectory at the time, but to Brother Harold!
It bothered Wilf that Father Urban’s cap didn’t fit him, but until there was occasion to make another purchase at the lumberyard in Duesterhaus, which was also the source of the spatulas, Wilf couldn’t very well ask for another cap, he said. At one time, he had dealt exclusively with the lumberyard. Of late, though, hardly at all—for the Rec Room job only a pint of turpentine had come from the lumberyard, and on the strength of this purchase he had asked for two caps and a spatula. “Ticklish situation,” he said. He was afraid that the people at the lumberyard knew of his recent dealings with a Minneapolis discount house, since the latter shipped by rail. “Wacker at the station—he’d tell ’em. Don’t think he wouldn’t.”
Father Urban didn’t mind wearing a cap with the sides turned up, but he did feel that Wilf would do well to patronize local concerns. “There is such a thing, you know, as being penny wise and pound foolish.”
“Yes, I know. But those people at the lumberyard are way out of line pricewise. Too bad. They’ve got a little shaker there that really does the job. I wish you could see it. Ugh,” he said, for the discount-house paint, which was described in the catalogue as war-surplus stock, was very hard to stir. Wilf attributed the paint’s stiffness not to old age but richness. “Plenty of lead in this, Fathers. High government specifications.”
Wilf cut the first cans with thinner until the contents took on the consistency of paint, but by going over and over the replastered place in the ceiling, he committed them to giving the entire ceiling three coats. Even then, it didn’t look right. “She didn’t dry the way I thought she would,” he said. Suddenly—or so it seemed—he was down to one can of paint. This one he cut and cut until it tinkled like water. The situation got so bad that he didn’t really trust anybody else to paint. “Stretch it on,” he said, bearing down on his roller. “It’s that old plaster!” he cried. And finally: “Nobody could figure a job like this to the last drop.”
“I take it we’re out of paint,” said Father Urban.
“Well, we needed a little breathing spell anyway.”
The little breathing spell proved little indeed. Wilf went downstairs to the typewriter, Brother Harold shot off to the post office a few minutes later, and, before Father Urban could get out of his clown suit, Wilf was back up in the Rec Room—saying he’d changed his mind and they’d begin work on the floor at once, so as not to lose what he called valuable time. They’d remove what remained of the original varnish and prepare the floor for refinishing.
“But shouldn’t the floor be done last, after the walls?” said Father Urban.
“It’s usually done last,” Wilf said. “Not always.”
So, for the next two days, they messed around with varnish remover and scrapers, and then came Saturday. That afternoon and evening, and Sunday morning, the three priests were away from the Hill, as usual, working in another capacity—as priests. They returned to the Hill on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday morning they were back up in the Rec Room, with a fresh supply of paint.
And then once again, with only one wall to go, sentiment began to build up against the old plaster. “I knew it,” Wilf said. “I knew we should’ve given it a coat of sealer. It would’ve been money saved in the end.” And a few minutes later, turning on Brother Harold (of all people), he cried, “What! No thinner?” No, said Brother Harold, there wasn’t a drop left in the house. “Turpentine then!” This didn’t last him long, not the way he used it, and when it was gone, he cried for more. “But there must be some around the place somewhere!” But there wasn’t, no, not a drop. “Oh, damn the cost!” Wilf cried then and, wearing his coveralls, drove to town for more. He returned with a bottle, a spatula, and, yes, a cap for Father Urban, a perfect fit. But he wore a worried look.
“Oh, it’s no use!” he said a little while later. “It’s as I feared. She’s bleeding. We’ll just have to reorder. Brother, this is what we get for trying to call it too close.”
“If it hadn’t been for that old plaster . . .” said Brother Harold.
Wilf talked of calling long distance, but in the end he fired off a letter, marking the envelope Rush-Urgent, and again Father Urban was wrong in thinking they’d have to stop work until more paint arrived from Minneapolis.
“We can do one of two things,” Wilf said. “We can apply the mahogany varnish you see in those cans over there—it’s the quick-drying type, three or four hours at the outside. That was my original plan, but I’ve since been thinking . . .”
Everybody stood by, waiting to hear the alternative.
At this, Brother Harold nodded.
“If we do that, we’ll have a floor we can really be proud of.”
“Let me understand you,” said Father Urban.
“Yes?” said Wilf, with a laugh—as if he didn’t see what was so difficult to understand. “Oh, I can return the varnish for credit, if that’s what’s bothering you, Father. Or we can keep it and use it elsewhere—where it won’t be so noticeable.”
“That isn’t what bothers me,” Father Urban said. “Don’t you need a machine of some kind for sanding a floor?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Do it by hand, you mean?”
“Why not? It isn’t as if there were only one or two of us.”
Father Urban had nothing to say to this, and the other two, of course, had nothing to say at all.
“You can rent machines,” Wilf said. “But there’s more to it than that. This paint may look dry, but it really isn’t. It takes paint months to dry—to really dry. You bring in a sander, and kick up a lot of dust, and the walls and ceiling would pick it all up—and then where would we be?”
“God, I don’t know,” said Father Urban. “But I’m for varnishing the floor.”
“You don’t see so much varnish nowadays. You take the floors in your nice new homes, they’re not varnished. You just have the natural beauty of the wood.”
“Yes, but are you sure we’ve got the wood for it?”
Wilf stared down at the old floor, as did the others.
“What is this stuff anyway?” said Father Urban. It looked like the kind of wood he’d seen on back porches.
“It’s fir.”
“Is that what they’re using in these new homes?”
“Mostly they’re using oak and maple.”
“Not fir?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are.”
“I was just thinking it would look better some other way.”
“You’d soon change your mind if you saw this old floor treated like something it obviously isn’t. It’s always been varnished. It wouldn’t look right any other way. It’d look—funny.”
Wilf was silent, staring down at the floor.
Father Urban stole a glance at Brother Harold and decided to take a chance on him. “What’s your opinion, Brother?”
“It’s up to Father Wilfrid.”
“At one time I was considering asphalt tile,” Wilf said. “You see a lot of that in your new buildings. Pretty expensive, though, and we don’t own a blowtorch.”
“Blowtorch?” said Father Urban.
“You heat your tile with a blowtorch as you lay it.”
Father Urban shook his head. He didn’t feel that Wilf should be trusted with a blowtorch.
“It’s really quite simple.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m for varnishing it. This is an old floor and should be treated as such—in my opinion.”
“One thing is certain,” Wilf said. “We don’t want it to look—funny.”
“No,” said Brother Harold.
“No,” said Jack.
“No,” said Father Urban.
And so they varnished it.
The following morning, it was dry to the touch, and so they put down the tarpaulin and newspapers and gave the trim around the windows and doors another coat—the original ivory trim no longer peeked through the blue. Finding themselves with time on their hands, and blue paint to spare, they did over a few rocking chairs. (“They’ll go in better now.”) Then the paint for the wall arrived from Minneapolis—very little time had been lost—and they finished the job. However, when they took up the newspapers, there was a certain amount of adhesion. (“Drying conditions are never ideal in cold weather.”) But the newsprint, where it stuck to the floor, was easily removed with thinner—as was the varnish. Wilf, touching up these places, and going beyond them, seemed in danger of repeating the mistake he’d made earlier, in the case of the ceiling, but he caught himself. “We’ll leave the rest to the shoes of retreatants,” he said. “And with throw rugs . . .” He stood back, brush in hand, and said, “Well, what d’ya think?” But before anybody could say, he went on. “Of course, these bright lights show up everything.” Yes. The salmon pink walls and ceiling spoke to them eloquently of the fat and lean days. “But with proper lighting . . . Well, what d’ya think?”
“Looks fine to me,” said Jack.
“Yes,” said Brother Harold.
Father Urban made a suitable noise.
“It’s been a long haul,” Wilf said, “but we made it.”
Made what? So many times Father Urban had been tempted to take Wilf aside and say, Look. Why not talk to a few people who make a business of this sort of thing? Get some estimates. Then tell ’em how it is with us at the moment, say we’ll take care of ’em as soon as we can put this place on a paying basis, and make ’em feel a part of that. Actually, in this kind of an operation, it’s unhealthy not to be in debt. If you want me to do the talking, I will. The point is we can do better than this. Now how about it? But Father Urban hadn’t taken Wilf aside and said this. Father Urban had scarcely complained. Seeing what he saw, and knowing what he knew, and doing nothing about it—it wasn’t easy, not for him. In this way, though, if there was any purpose in his present situation, it would be revealed to them all, for better or worse. He was only one of the hands. Let the captain sail the ship. Malice might play a part in such an attitude—a desire to see the ship go down with all aboard, himself included—but wasn’t it, except for that, the right attitude for one in his position?
5. A COUPLE OF NIGHTS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
AND THEN FATHER Urban weakened, but not as he’d been afraid he might. No, even though they were ripping up the old linoleum in the kitchen and the bathrooms at Major, and laying tile with a blowtorch (Wilf did find a place in Olympe that would rent him one, and allow him to apply the rent on a new one, should he decide to buy later), Father Urban didn’t take him aside, or rebel, or complain. No, Father Urban weakened in another way. He agreed to address the Great Plains Commercial Club at its annual Poinsettia Smorgasbord, and thus he put himself in a position to serve the Order as no other man could.
“I was hoping something like this would happen,” said Wilf, tying in the invitation with the interview he’d given the Duesterhaus Farmer on the subject of personnel changes and other improvements at the Hill. The Farmer, a weekly, had printed quite a lot about Father Urban (“whose presence at St Clement’s Hill will come as a pleasant surprise to many in Duesterhaus and surrounding trade area”) and very little about Jack (“also well known”), and so perhaps Wilf was right in taking credit for the invitation.
The Poinsettia Smorgasbord, held in the Greenwich Village Room of the General Diggles Hotel, was the only Club event to which members (professional as well as businessmen) brought their wives. It certainly lived up to its billing as a very nice affair. First came the cocktail period (Father Urban, assured that soft drinks were being served to those who preferred them, said, “Oh, fine. Well, maybe a little scotch and soda—Johnnie Walker, Black, if you please”), then came the smorgasbord itself, and then came Father Urban who, as the toastmaster said afterward, gave them all a very rich experience. In the course of Father Urban’s talk, which he called “Christmas down through the ages, a travelogue in time,” he not only related stories from history and legend but sang snatches of carols from far-off lands. Never once did he strike a partisan note. Jews could have heard him, and perhaps a few did, without taking offense. He closed with a rousing recitation of “The Night Before Christmas.”
Unfortunately, the members of the Club were in the habit of hearing from atomic scientists and foreign-policy experts, and so there was a question period. Right away some fool wanted to know what the speaker thought of “this here campaign to put
Christ in Christmas.”
“I’m glad you asked that,” Father Urban said. “For my part, I find Christmas as it’s celebrated nowadays still pretty much to my liking. I will say, though, that I like my Christmas trees green.” He was applauded for his stand. He wanted to leave it at that, but could see that more was expected of him. Obviously, the crusade had roused feelings of animosity in many present. He went on—as though he’d meant to go on. “As I see it, merchants—to mention only one group—are paying homage in the way best suited to them and their real talents.” This was better, he could see, but it still wasn’t good enough. He tried again, citing the example, from literature, of the mute tumbler whose prayer took the form of acrobatics before the altar of Our Lady. This was an example he’d used many times, but never before in that connection. Pressed for details, he told the whole story, adding a few touches of his own—and, if anything, improved the story. They loved it.
That should have ended the matter. But the man who’d asked the original question was still alive and kicking. He wanted to know whether Father Urban’s position wasn’t different from that held by “some leaders in the Catholic Church—I’m talking about the man in charge out there where you are.”
“And I’m glad you asked that,” Father Urban said. “To begin with, I don’t think the man in question, able though he is, can be regarded as one of the leaders in the Catholic Church. He’d tell you that himself, if he were here.” And thank God he isn’t! “Now what you refer to as my ‘position’ is hardly that. It’s only an opinion, and opinions differ. Let me explain. As you know, I’m a Catholic, and as such I believe in the infallibility of the Pope—in certain matters. In other matters, even those relating to religion, ‘Je ne sais,’ as the French say, is sometimes the right answer. I don’t know. Why, until a few years ago, the doctrine of the Assumption—that is, the ascent of Our Lady into Heaven—was no more than an opinion. Oh, a most trustworthy opinion, to be sure, and held by some of the wisest and holiest men in Christendom, but still only an opinion. Why, the infallibility of the Pope—the doctrine we were just discussing—was just a matter of opinion a hundred years ago. (Actually, you know, the area it covers is quite small.) So, if any of you good people should happen to be in Rome, and you hear the Holy Father say he believes it’s going to rain, you don’t have to believe it—no, not even if you’re a Catholic.”
