by J.F. Powers
“So what’s the answer?” said Potter. “Watch the Twins?”
“Those bores,” said Conklin.
Hennessy reproved them with a look, and spoke with his future authority. “What’s the answer, Father?”
Eyeing Father Felix’s glass on the coffee table, Joe said, “A few monks saved civilization once. Could be the answer again. Principle’s sound. You’d have to work out the details. Wouldn’t have to be monks. Could happen right here.” Joe reached for Father Felix’s glass, the last of the wine, and swirled it clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, denying himself before downing it. “Wanna see how Father is,” he said. “Be right back.” At the door, as he was about to leave them, he turned and said, “How can we make sanctity as attractive as sex? Answer I got was ‘Just have to keep trying.’ Not much of an answer. Nobody remembers it—just the question. Guess it’s the answer to all these questions. Be right back.”
The monk’s eyes opened when Joe approached the bed. “Get you anything, Father?”
“All right.”
“Drink of water?”
“All right.”
Joe administered water to Father Felix, flipped his pillow, eased him down. “Want your shoes off?”
“Is the party over, Joe?”
“No, not yet.”
“Then,” said the monk, his eyes closing, “why is everybody leaving?”
“Not yet,” Joe said patiently.
But when he returned to the study he saw that he was wrong.
Hennessy—he was the only one left—said, “How is he?”
“All right.”
Led by voices to a window on the street side, Joe looked down and saw Bill, Potter, and Conklin talking to a young woman—older than they were, though—in a convertible.
“Conklin had to leave,” Hennessy said.
Joe came away from the window.
“Want to thank you, Father,” Hennessy said.
“It was Bill’s party.”
“All the same.” Hennessy seemed to know what it was like to be a pastor. “Oh, and I should thank the housekeeper.”
“Good idea.” Joe saw Hennessy, who’d go far, off to the kitchen, and came back to the window. The young woman moved over on the seat and the cruel mustache took the wheel. Potter and Bill then fell all over themselves saying good- bye, making it look hard to do. The convertible drove away. Then, to Joe’s surprise—he had meant to say something about coming again, soon—Hennessy appeared below, having, it seemed, left the rectory by the back door. Without a word or sign to Potter and Bill, who stood together talking, Hennessy got into the driver’s seat of the black sedan at the curb. Potter and Bill then parted, rather solemnly, Joe thought, and Potter got into the backseat of the black sedan. It drove away. A few moments later Bill entered the study, and Joe said:
“Who was that?”
“His mistress.”
Joe stared at Bill. “Say that again.”
Bill said it again.
“That what he calls her? How d’ya know that?”
“He told us.”
“He did, huh?” Joe was thinking if he had a mistress he wouldn’t tell everybody.
“He’s honest about it, Father. You have to give him credit for that.”
“I do, huh?”
Father Felix came in, looking much the same.
“You missed your bus,” Joe said, and then to Bill, “Why don’t they get married?”
“Complications.”
“Like what?”
“She’s already married.”
Joe sniffed. “Great.”
“Her husband won’t give her a divorce. He’s still a Catholic.”
“Say that again.”
Bill said it again.
Joe turned away. “And now you wanna get back to your monastery—right?”
“How?” said Father Felix.
“I’ll drive you.”
“Eighty miles?” said Bill. “Can’t he stay overnight?”
“He wants to get back to his monastery. He’s not happy away from it. And I need the air. Well, what d’ya say, Father?”
“All right,” said Father Felix.
19. BAD NEWS
EARLY IN THE evening on the following Sunday, after sending out for and enjoying a very tasty dinner with Father Felix and Bill, Joe took leave of them for a few days and drove off to the seminary to make his annual retreat, having explained that Bill was to carry on as usual, keep regular office hours, not throw any parties, or go to any, and not to give scandal (“i.e., stay away from Potter” and, it was implied, Conklin), and that Father Felix was to have the use of the pastor’s office and study (TV) and was to act (implied) as turnkey in the pastor’s absence.
At the seminary, in his room—it might have been better or worse—Joe right away opened his bag and hung two summerweight cassocks in the closet (a few wire hangers); opened the bottle of Airwick he’d brought along and started it off in the closet; opened one of the fifths of gin (not his usual brand but chosen for its handy cup cap, his answer to the glass problem at the sem). He poured himself a cup and sat down with it in the one sittable chair, his head nesting for a moment where another had nested during the academic year. He finished his drink standing, put the cup, now the cap, back on the fifth and it back in his bag, covering it with socks and underwear, thus uncovering, but covering again, the poker chips, the decks of cards, and hoped he wouldn’t have to use them, would be invited to play elsewhere, as he had the previous year, and would do as well again.
The annual retreat for diocesan clergy (from which Bill was excused that year because he’d made one with his class before ordination) could be more of a social than a spiritual occasion for men of Joe’s vintage and older, and since it was given twice in successive weeks so both pastors and curates could attend (the week coming up was the repeat) there was always an element of chance in it—as to who’d be there and who wouldn’t—an element that Joe, by discreet, early inquiries, might have resolved to his advantage as a gambler but would not as a priest and also as a gambler.
He moved the Airwick to another location, the sittable chair, and went down to join the retreatants standing around in front of the Administration Building, to see who was there, to watch cars arrive and depart for the new parking lot (as Joe had) after the long-haired seminarian in overalls spoke his piece—“The Rector wants the entrance kept clear this year.” Joe was in time to see Father Stock arrive in a flashy old black Chrysler and walk away from it with his Gladstone bag, ignoring the seminarian and everybody else, the sidewalk clearing for him.
Pogatznick, one of the little group, all pastors, that Joe had joined, said to the seminarian, “See if he left the key in it.”
“You kiddin’?” said Schwinghammer, once a curate under Father Stock.
“Still,” Mooney said, “you have to hand it to him for coming to the retreat at his age, retired and all.”
“He comes for the group picture,” said Schwinghammer.
Joe nodded, and asked, “What’s the word on Po?” (The retreatmaster, an order man, was billed as Demetrius Po.)
“Not good,” said Cooney.
“What I hear,” said Rooney.
“Not what I hear,” said Mooney.
“Hey, what kind of name’s that?” said Schwinghammer.
“Well, there’s the river Po,” said Cooney.
“And Edgar Allan Poe,” said Mooney, “but that’s with an e.”
“Could be anything, a name like that,” said Rooney.
“He could’ve changed it,” said Schwinghammer.
“Shortened it, you mean?” said Pogatznick.
A black Continental pulled up to the entrance, which the driver, Monsignor Egan, after listening to the seminarian, appeared to agree with the Rector should be kept clear this year, and got out of the car. He asked the seminarian his name, his home parish, praised his pastor, and feared, he said, there were two large bags in the trunk, Rooney then coming forward for them. “Oh,
thanks, Bob,” Monsignor Egan said to him. “And Lawrence,” he said to the seminarian. And nodding to some, greeting a few by name, among them Joe, and followed by Rooney with the bags, Monsignor Egan moved toward the Administration Building—from which the Rector swiftly emerged with his hand out—while Lawrence drove off to the parking lot with a funny look on his face.
The next ones to arrive, two country pastors in a dusty Chevrolet equipped with a long waving aerial and an outsize bug screen into which a small yellow bird had flown and stuck as if mounted there, were wary when told by Schwinghammer and others that the Rector wanted the entrance kept clear this year. (“Yeah, sure”—“What about that old heap?”) And seemed to doubt that Lawrence existed and would be right back. (“From parking a car?”—“Yeah, sure.”) The Chevrolet, motor off and radio on (the Twins game), waited, and when a dusty Ford arrived, made common cause with it.
Joe had to leave the scene because Rooney came out of the Administration Building (which Joe had been keeping an eye on) and signaled to him with a card-dealing gesture.
So, that evening and thereafter, as at the last retreat, Joe and Rooney sat down with Monsignor Egan and his set, Fathers Keogh, Kling, and Moore, products of the twenties, solid, pink, white-haired or balding pastors, exactly the sort of men Joe had once scorned—too many like them cluttering up the priesthood, he’d thought—but now thought, when he saw them around a table at a restaurant, or, for that matter, around a green baize table at the seminary with their collars off and, in Kling’s case, shoes, What an impressive group of men! And considered himself fortunate. Playing in ordinary company at the retreat could be debilitating and risky—last year at one of the conferences, which were held in the chapel, a man suffering from poker fatigue had fallen out of his pew—whereas playing with Egan’s set was safe and salubrious: a man had maybe three drinks, began fasting at midnight, closed down at one, had a good night’s sleep, and was ready for morning when it came, early. Joe liked the strict regimen—wished he could run his life on such lines the rest of the year—and he also liked playing in the distinguished visitor’s suite, where the likes of G.K. Chesterton, Jacques Maritain, and Frank Sheed had stayed and where the Rector had put Egan again, with private bath, air conditioning, refrigerator, and glasses, and sent Lawrence up nightly with a platter of snacks.
So there were a number of advantages for Joe and Rooney as members (pro tem) of Egan’s set—whose practice it was, however, to attend every conference, alas.
Father Demetrius, who worked in the peppery, hard-sell style of Walter Winchell, warned the retreatants not to expect much from him in the usual way of retreats, “moral, ascetics, liturgy, what have you,” which sounded promising. A prison chaplain of many years’ standing, Father Demetrius owed his current assignment to the state of the nation, he said. “I’m hot now, and if I know you bankers you’re worried about the rising tide of crime.” Insights, however, positive insights into the rising tide and practical suggestions as to how to stem it were not immediately forthcoming from Father Demetrius.
He devoted his first conference to reading statistics from the FBI and had everybody yawning. While some of the younger men said this was needed—a nonmythological approach to everyday problems—Joe had to admire Father Demetrius for not trying, as so many retreatmasters did, for a knockout in the first round. At the next conference, beginning again with the statement (soon to become tiresome) “The proper study of man is crime,” and citing the case of Cain and Abel (having cited the case of Adam and Eve at the first conference), Father Demetrius told true-life stories from the pen, some of them pretty rough, some merely heartwarming. At the next conference, he told more stories. At the next, more.
The retreatants had expected to hear stories from an ex-chaplain, but not so many. What they came down to was that Father Demetrius, though part of the establishment as chaplain, had been closer to the inmates, the big fish and the small, some of whom had “formed the habit” of saying the rosary under his guidance—“Some, not all, life’s not like that, my friends”—and were now doing very well on the outside, a surprising number as hoteliers, moteliers, and restaurateurs. “Come what may, I’ll never want for bed and board”—this, with a bitter laugh, implied that the retreatants might so want, or that Father Demetrius was having trouble with his superiors. In any case, the man certainly knew a lot about prime cuts, shellfish, bar equipment, laundry service, pilferage, and protection, all matters in which Joe was interested. Most retreatants, however, seemed to feel that Father Demetrius’s stories had little or no application to them—all those breaks, rumbles, and hits, all that gunfire, “Root-a-toot-toot!” But Father Demetrius was there, he said, to shake them up, which he occasionally did—“Floyd, a three-time loser, white slavery, as nice a fella as you’ll ever meet on the outside”—and, sensing their disapproval, would refer them again to the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, associating himself with the humble publican, the retreatants with the proud Pharisee, and pharisaically seeing nothing wrong with that. The retreatants no longer smiled when he called them bankers.
Delinquency, always a problem, was rife that year, claiming those it never had before, iron pastors, responsible first assistants, and the kind of men who take notes (who were spelling each other). Most delinquents had the decency to stay in their rooms, out of sight, during conferences, but some of the younger men, the very ones who’d first said that the retreatmaster was following a course that would soon become clear, and then that he was simply doing his thing (not a bad thing, they said, since the Church was “overstructured”), they were all over the place during conferences, in the Rec Room shooting pool, out on the lake in boats, giving scandal to Lawrence and the kitchen help.
Joe had to keep telling himself how good it would be when the retreat was over, like this life, if one persevered now; that it wasn’t the singer, or even the song, that mattered, that the Church wouldn’t be the Church if she relied upon such things; that what mattered, what was part and parcel of reality, what could always be counted on to show itself in human affairs, the one constant, in which the Church had her reason for being, was the Cross.
It was good to see Egan’s set accepting it, to see those old boys coming and going, never missing a conference, and good to be one of them.
The retreat had been mentioned among them (in Joe’s presence) only once, one night two or three days out, between deals.
“Well, it’s a change,” said Egan.
“That’s what I say,” said Moore.
Keogh nodded.
“Queen bets,” said Kling.
Joe and probably Rooney, in ordinary company, would have criticized the retreatmaster and the Chancery for booking him, but they said nothing, Joe enjoying, after a moment’s discomfort, the strange sensation of not speaking his mind to no avail, and thinking there was something to be said for whatever it was, charity, or despair, or a blend of both—wisdom?—that moved old men to silence.
On the next to last day, the retreat, making for port like a crippled ship, hit a mine: word came that assessments for the ARF—the Archdiocesan Renewal Fund—had gone out from the Chancery, and all hell broke loose.
While the sound of a siren came and went, men milled about in the corridors, going from room to room, drinking from vessels of various kinds—a real glass crisis at the seminary. Of the men who managed to call home (the switchboard was overloaded), some immediately packed up and left, some stayed and raved as they would in their own rectories, some went quietly into shock, some tried to carry it off (“I knew this was coming”). Most were closemouthed about their assessment (as Joe would have been if he’d known his), but some were not. The figures Joe heard were all sky-high and, quite apart from that, some were out of line, causing tension and worse between pastors of similar or adjoining parishes—Joe had to step between Mooney and Rooney, remind them that their quarrel was not with each other but with Toohey and the Chancery. Every pastor (and his flock) was in trouble, for now there would have
to be constant strafing from the pulpit, house-to-house searches for pledges, and possibly the use of hardened mercenaries. But there could be none of that in Joe’s parish, or Cooney’s, under their fiscal system (unless they welshed on their parishioners). So Joe and Cooney were in more trouble than most, in that confused and confusing scene.
And yet there was Joe moving about with his bottle, his last one, sharing it with others, knocking back drinks from its handy cup cap, giving what succor he could to others, not once speaking of his own plight, which nobody else did either, even parenthetically, until . . .
“Boy, oh boy! Am I ever glad now!” cried Schwinghammer, who’d planned to install Joe’s fiscal system until talked out of it, told in a nice way he just didn’t have the parish for it, by Joe. Nothing about that now, no thanks, no sympathy, from Schwinghammer, just gloating, neighing. “Boy, oh boy!”
Examined by Schwinghammer, who was drinking from a murky cut-glass vase, and by a responsible first assistant with a bad cigar, Joe did his best to defend his system without running down theirs (Sunday envelope/special collections unlimited). “I try to budget for everything that comes along.”