Wheat That Springeth Green

by J.F. Powers

  Before that night in Father Van Slaag’s room, Joe had tried to do the job he’d been ordained to do for God and humanity while also trying, for the sake of the former, to preserve himself to a degree from the latter, but afterward there was a change in him. Without exactly going ape, Joe let down the barrier and no longer distinguished as he had before, sharply, between the religious and the social demands of parishioners. Mrs Cox noticed it. “What?” she’d say. “Stepping out again?”

  In this change in him there was a certain despair, a giving up on himself and the contemplative life. Why not? When he tried to look down as God must and saw one man fending off Boots with a cane, the other allowing himself to be savaged by her, amortizing the world’s great debt of sin a little, deferring foreclosure—really, there was no comparison. In that kind of company, Joe just didn’t figure. Still, you never knew where you were in the spiritual life; that was the hell of it—only God knew. Joe’s hope had to be that he was, without knowing it, a sleeper. He thought of Cardinal Merry del Val, who, as Pius X’s secretary of state, was another overworked assistant to a saint, and perhaps one himself; among his personal effects, after his death, had been discovered (a shock to his friends in high places and low, these instruments of penance) two barbed-wire undershirts and a scourge with dried blood on it. But that sort of thing, though still nice to know—edifying—was discouraging if dwelt on, intimidating, like Father Van Slaag’s ankles and knees. Joe took more comfort in Scripture—in “Whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it,” in “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” though this too was pushing it in his case. The truth was he hadn’t sacrificed his spiritual life—it had been done for him, by his appointment to Holy Faith. All he’d done since then, and might deserve credit for, was to stop grudging the time spent in doing the routine work of the parish, the time he might have spent in prayer. The old prie-dieu, which he’d been carrying back up to his bedroom one morning when the office phone rang, was still where he’d left it then, on the stair landing where he’d first found it, and since Mrs Cox had come along before he could get back to it, it was serving as a plant stand again. He didn’t mind. Though praying a lot less these days, he prayed harder when he did (as recommended by Merry del Val), and though working harder and seeing more people, he had more appetite for them. The truth was, he’d always had a weakness for people, a weakness suppressed at the seminary but now indulged and transformed into a strength, a virtue.

  He was good with people when he wished to be, as he did now. He sparkled in maternity wards (“Bring us another round of orange juice, Sister, and this time put something in it”); sparkled at parish meetings, of which there were more since he’d decided to come to grips with Youth, Young People, and Young Marrieds (“What are we waiting for? I’m here”); sparkled at home (“My compliments to the chef, Mrs Cox”). Occasionally, he even sat with Mrs Cox in the evening if there was a game of some kind on TV; at first he had to get her to switch channels and to instruct her, but now he had to do neither, and it was gratifying to see her interest in sports quicken and to know it was genuine (with so many women it wasn’t)—to come in from a meeting and find her and Boots watching the NBA play-offs. With Boots, however, Joe was still persona non grata, and still went about the house with his cane, which he left on the back porch when he stepped out and picked up when he returned.

  But the best times for Joe were those times when he could be of real use to people as a priest—those times of trial, tragedy, and ordinary death—into which he entered deeper than he had before. “After years of trying to walk on the water, you know,” he told Bob, who was increasingly impatient with parishioners (and Mac), “it’s good to come ashore and feel the warm sand between my toes.”

  This was not to say that Joe couldn’t get enough of people. He could. And when he did, after a tough day, or when he just craved faster company, he went to play poker with Cooney and the gang at St Isidore’s, a hard-drinking rectory, and the next morning it wasn’t easy for him to get going. (He did not believe in Beeman’s solution: “Weak drinks, more of ’em—that way you get more liquids into your system.”) All in all, though, he felt better about himself both as a priest and as a person, as others appeared to these days—certainly Mrs Cox, and even Cooney, who was becoming his best friend again.

  “Joe,” Cooney said one night at St Isidore’s, “know who you are?”

  “Who?”

  “Lemme put it another way. Know who Van is?”

  “Who?”

  “Mary. You’re Martha, Joe.”

  Only now and then, late at night before he got to sleep, or early in the morning before he got going, did Joe look back and regret the change in himself.

  A tough day. Coming to breakfast, talking to himself, Joe had simply said, “Somebody ought to poison that bitch,” meaning Boots, and now Mrs Cox wouldn’t speak to him. Later that morning, while trying to sparkle in a maternity ward, he’d simply said, “So that’s the little bastard,” and had been asked to leave by its mother. That afternoon, he had a visit from a young lady in real estate whom he’d just about enticed into fleeing the world and joining the Carmelites, and learned that she’d received a big promotion and would be staying in the world after all. Early that evening, two converts in the making, Tex and Candy, who’d been taking instructions with a view to marrying Margie and Mike, failed to show, and it developed after a couple of phone calls that they’d eloped together. While Joe was working this out for Margie and Mike in the office, on hold in the living room he had an old parishioner who was upset over a nine-dollar error in his account—under Joe’s new system, actually Bob’s, receipts were mailed out to contributors at the end of the fiscal year—and who, though Joe tried everything, even offering to reimburse the old devil on the spot, wouldn’t go away until he’d seen the pastor.

  “He’s in the church,” Joe said, and fled.

  Later, Joe went over to St Isidore’s for poker, and it turned out to be a tough night too. He was there to relax, but the others wouldn’t let him. Bob, who had just come from driving Mac to the sanitarium (and felt a little sad about it, though it was all for the best), kept after Joe to talk to Van about checking in to a cloister. Beeman, not for the first time, advised Joe just to look Boots in the eye, which was what he’d always done at Holy Faith. “And don’t let her see you’re afraid of her,” he said, and suggested (though he admitted he had only heard about this, hadn’t done it himself), “Chuck her lightly under the jaw. Try it.” When Joe mentioned the nine-dollar bookkeeping error, Beeman advised him in future just to say, “We all make mistakes. That’s why they put erasers on lead pencils,” which was what he always did in such a case. “Try it.” When Joe mentioned the young lady who’d received a big promotion and let him down, Bob said, “Hell, you can’t blame her,” and then, presumably referring to his two weeks as a contemplative, had the nerve to misquote Joe without attribution, “It’s kind of lonely out there, dangerous too, trying to walk on the water, and it’s good to come in and feel the warm sand under your feet.” Joe was grateful for Cooney’s comment, “Bob, you never went out without your water wings,” but a moment later he applied it to himself, with remorse. And Cooney, perhaps sensing this, tried to do his “Know who you are?” business with Joe again, but Joe foiled him by answering right away, “Martha.” Then Cooney’s pastor, one of the few really good poker players in the diocese and MC of its weekly TV program, said to Joe, “Found y’self, baby,” and asked him if he’d ever considered how much he owed the Arch for sending him to Father Van Slaag at Holy Faith. Joe said he had, but unfortunately didn’t leave it at that.

  “Just one thing wrong with Van,” he said. “Not doing his job.” Joe had never said this, or anything like it, before, and immediately regretted it. Only the truth, yes, and they all knew it, but from him a betrayal.

  From that point on, Joe, who hadn’t taken a pot, won steadily. Later, much later, after a lot of standing around,
though Joe himself was sitting down, and a lot of talk about cars and driving, Joe left St Isidore’s with Bob, he thought, and the next thing he knew, not counting a bad dream—“Mrs Boots, come and get Cox!”—he was in bed and it was morning. He couldn’t remember how the night had ended, and didn’t want to, but had the presence of mind not to phone the police after he looked out the window and saw his car was missing from its usual place in the driveway. He took a hot bath, and in the course of it, soaping himself, he discovered and examined the marks on his right ankle—superficial wounds, five in number. They made him think of Our Lord but otherwise didn’t hurt. He painted them with antiseptic, dressed, and went downstairs, armed only with a ruler (his cane was on the back porch), and got going again.

  7. CARRYING ON

  THE END OF another day, another month, another year, the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, and the rest of the staff at Archdiocesan Charities had left early, or so Joe had thought until Mrs Hope looked in on him.

  “A young priest to see you, Father.”

  Joe was glad to see a young priest dressed like a priest.

  “Ed Butler, Father.”

  The name meant nothing to Joe, but for the young man’s sake he said, “Oh, yes. Sit down.”

  “It’s not about Charities, Father.”

  “Good.”

  “Father, I’m here to ask your advice.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t?”

  “That’s it—my advice.”

  Father Butler frowned, disapproving of such levity or taking it seriously, in either case proving that he was, though properly dressed, of his generation. “Then I’m afraid it’s too late, Father.”

  “Yes, well, it usually is.”

  Father Butler frowned. “The pastor’s retiring, you know.”

  Joe nodded, hoping the pastor’s identity would soon be made known to him.

  “I got the idea”—the young man seemed to regret the idea—“of collecting a purse for him. The opposition—Father, you wouldn’t believe it—from the people.”

  Thus the pastor’s identity was, almost certainly, made known to Joe. “I’d believe it,” he said.

  Father Butler frowned. “Reason I came to you, Father, you’re from the parish, the pastor says.”

  “Hold it. Is he in on this?”

  Father Butler blushed. “Oh no, Father.”

  “Didn’t put you up to it?”

  “Oh no, Father.”

  “But knows about the purse?”

  “Father, that’s what makes it so bad—so sad.”

  Yes and no, Joe thought. “Seen Toohey yet? He’s from the parish, you know.”

  “Just talked to him at the Chancery, Father. Form a committee was his advice. Only I already tried that. Nobody’d be on it.”

  “Hah. What’d Catfish say to that?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “What’d Toohey say when you told him that?”

  “I didn’t tell him that, Father.”

  “Should’ve, Father. You had him and you let him get away. He give you anything—except advice?”

  Father Butler blushed. “That’s all I went to him for, Father. That’s all I’m here for, believe me.”

  Joe did. “O.K. The advice here is forget the whole thing. This could be one of those odd times when the voice of the people really is the voice of God. They still call him Dollar Bill?”

  “They may.”

  “They do, you mean.”

  “Father, if you’d been the pastor there as long as he has—thirty-six years—and this happened to you . . .”

  “I can think of worse things.”

  “Maybe you have to be in parish work to see what I mean.”

  Joe sniffed, resenting the young man’s proud humble attitude—it was typical of men in parish work and had once been his own. “I was in it for a while, Father—not long, only five years. How long you been in it?”

  Father Butler frowned. “Seven months and thirteen days,” he said solemnly—then had to laugh at himself.

  Joe liked him for that. “Doing hard time, Father?”

  Father Butler smiled and got up. “It’s been nice meeting you, Father.”

  “No, it hasn’t, and I’m sorry about that.”

  Joe walked the young man to the elevator and pushed the down button for him. “Seven months and how many days?”

  The elevator came down. “O.K., Father. I’m doing hard time.”

  “Yes, well, you’re not alone.”

  When Joe had been due for a change the last time, after five years at Holy Faith, the clergy all—all of the few who gave Joe a thought—said he should be given a parish of his own. His youth, though, was against him—and the Archbishop’s patriotic but idiotic practice of making pastors of honorably discharged chaplains. So Joe, the clergy said, would probably be sent out as an assistant again, probably to a big plant where the pastor was slipping, or fighting with his curates, or both. (One such pastor, with three curates, was known to be in the market for Joe, offering the Chancery two for one.) So, in view of the pastoral promise Joe had shown at Holy Faith, it made no sense, the clergy said, when Joe was sent to Charities, unless he was destined to take over the Director’s job there—in which case, though, wouldn’t it be better if he had a degree in social work? A good question, Joe had thought at the time, unless he was destined to move on and what the Arch had said to him (they’d run into each other in the barbershop in the First National Bank Building) meant that he’d been sent to Charities as a troubleshooter.

  “Fresh battles, fresh victories, Father?”

  “We’ll see, Your Excellency.”

  Battles? Was the Arch thinking of Joe as he’d been in his last years at the sem, when a character sketch of him might have read, “Bright, good family, dough, but unbalanced on subject of sanctity (also pacificism), gets on your nerves,” when feeling against Joe had run high—high enough, though, to reach and engage the archiepiscopal mind? Victories? Did the Arch maybe talk like that to any man taking up a new appointment, unless the man was a rolling stone, or boulder, like lefty Beeman, and maybe even then? Was Joe’s idea—that he’d been sent to Charities as a troubleshooter—maybe not the Arch’s idea at all?

  Possibly not, but Charities had never had two priests on its staff before, which suggested that the trouble, if trouble there was at Charities, might be with the other one, the Director.

  “Paddy says use his office for the time being,” Joe had been told on his first day at Charities, and was still using that office, Paddy’s, the Director’s, now, seven years later. (Joe had immediately made a point of calling Paddy Monsignor in front of the staff, but hadn’t kept it up and had himself become Joe to the staff, which he found he preferred to Shorty and the like behind his back and no longer heard.) He had discovered that the Director was both liked and respected (two very different things where clergy and laity are concerned and working both ways), that the trouble with the Director, a trim diabetic when Joe arrived and now a wispy one, was that even when he wasn’t in the hospital or convalescing at the Athletic Club, where he lived, he wasn’t often at Charities (a bad thing in any concern), and that certain members of the staff, as Joe learned, not from the Director, were into him for “loans” (a bad thing in any concern, not excepting charitable ones). Not that there weren’t instances in Scripture of favoritism, not that there was any question of peculation.

  Paddy, with family money (oil), was very well off, which Joe, unlike some of the clergy, didn’t hold against him. And Paddy, to Joe’s knowledge, was the only priest in the diocese who called the Arch by his first name—this, since it was Albert, said plenty, in Joe’s opinion. So Paddy had a thing or two going for him. And really, except for his absenteeism and favoritism, Paddy couldn’t be faulted as Director.

  Evidently Paddy’s connections, a must for one in his position, were excellent—always an anonymous gift at the end of the year to cover the deficit to the penny.

  It was also to Padd
y’s credit, after seven years, that Joe still liked him (and probably vice versa). Joe, after seven years, couldn’t see that replacing Paddy with a younger man, or, for that matter, that anything would make any difference at Charities. Its mission was large, actually, as things were nowadays, preposterous—the rehabilitation and preservation of the family—and its means were small, a shoestring operation against the heartbreaking realities of life here below. Charities was just doing its best, no better and no worse than it had before Joe arrived.

  What Joe had seen—“We’ll see, Your Excellency”—was how little he could do (as the Arch must have known). Except for adding a couple of phones, getting in some new secondhand desks, increasing the face value of meal vouchers for derelicts (inflation), and putting up a suggestion box for clients (“Drop dead”), Joe had changed nothing at Charities. It, though, had changed him. It had certainly played hell with any idea he might have had of himself as a troubleshooter.

  “Joe, your time’ll come,” Lefty Beeman said early that evening, New Year’s Eve, in the Robin Hood Room of the Hotel Garrison, while, instead of dessert, they were having another drink, after which, if they didn’t have another, they’d go on to St Isidore’s for poker. “Sure, you were let down when this kid, What’s-his-name, that was getting his degree in social work, went over the hill. Never should’ve been ordained, of course. [“Or, anyway, allowed to travel without a companion,” Joe said.] Joe, when I heard he had his own apartment in D.C.—Joe, the greatest occasion of sin in the world today is the apartment, not the parked car. Could do more good, they say, these kids, if they didn’t live in rectories. Depends what you mean by good, I tell ’em. Too bad, I tell ’em, St Francis Assisi, and the other one, the Apostle of the Indies (they never heard of him or the Indies), didn’t have their own apartments—could’ve done more good. Not criticizing you, Joe, though I was surprised when you moved out of Trinity, but that was before I got transferred there. I’d move out and live at the Athletic Club myself if beggars could be choosers, which they can’t under our lousy system. Don’t get me started on that. [“I won’t,” Joe said, beckoning to the waitress before asking Lefty, “Care for another?”] Thanks. Joe, be happy where you are. And don’t think you’d be happier in parish work. You wouldn’t. Lots of changes since you were in it, all for the bad. I fear for the future of our parishes. So be happy where you are, Joe. I would. I know, I know, don’t tell me—it’d never do to have a radical at Charities. Don’t get me started on that. [“I won’t.”] Joe, when you were sent to Charities after you did so well at Holy Faith (and, frankly, I didn’t), I said to myself, ‘Joe was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and Big Albert’”—the Arch’s middle name was Magnus—“‘wants him to have a taste of the other.’ But that doesn’t explain why you’re still there. [Joe shook his head.] Joe, you must be the only guy from your class still without a parish, not counting that prick Toohey at the Chancery. [Joe nodded.] Well, Joe, I think I may have the answer. You see, something you said a while ago started me thinking—about this anonymous gift that comes in every year about this time and takes care of the deficit to the penny. Oh, sure, it could be some kind of bequest—some angel, dead or alive—that Paddy’s keeping to himself. But that’s not what figures, Joe. You know what figures, Joe? [“What?”] Paddy. An inside job. And I’ll tell you why—anonymous and to the penny. Are you runnin’ with me, Joe? [Joe shook his head, and before the waitress, about to drop the check on the table halfway between him and Lefty, could do so, Joe took the check from her and palmed it.] Thanks. Here’s what it comes down to, Joe. Big Albert just wants somebody that’s not a radical and can pick up the tab. Not a bad idea, Joe. And you’re the best he can do. You’ll never be in Paddy’s class as a capitalist, but you’re—correct me if I’m wrong—you’re an only child. And under our lousy system—maybe in your case it’s a good thing—you should be rolling in it someday. By the way, how’re the folks? [“Fine. In Florida now.”] Good for them. So, when this other kid, What’s-his-name, gets back from Catholic U. with his degree—and there’s a good chance he will—I understand he doesn’t have his own apartment—he’ll step into your shoes and you’ll step into Paddy’s. That’s my prediction, Joe. Sort of a bombshell to you, huh?”