by J.F. Powers
“Mechanical horse—for kids. Have ’em in supermarkets.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Have one in my bedroom. Muscle model. Runs on two-twenty current. Knock the shit out of you. What you need.”
“That so?”
“If you can pass a physical, which I doubt.”
“That so?” Joe—he’d had enough of this—rose to go, but noticed his thumb, numb in its pink plastic sheath thing, and wondered what the prognosis was for it. “Won’t be deformed, will it? Gnarled?”
“Shit, no,” said Dr Wylie.
Joe, dying for a drink when he got back to the rectory, had to deny himself, for Bill was in the study with a big, heavy, white-haired, red-faced type in a summerweight business suit with flared trousers.
“Mr McMaster,” Bill said. “Mayer, Mayer, Maher, Chicago.”
Mr McMaster, having heaved himself up from the couch with his right hand out, put it away. “Hurt your hand, Father?”
“Thumb.”
“Car door?”
“No.”
“Sorry,” Bill murmured to Joe, nodded to Mr McMaster, and left them alone.
Mr McMaster was sitting down again, but Joe—significantly, he thought—remained standing.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Father.”
“Thanks. Nothing special about it except the office area—in the basement but surprisingly bright and airy.”
“So I’ve been told, Father.”
Joe, hoping to hear more, sat down in his BarcaLounger.
“Understand you built the rectory, Father.”
“Also the school and convent.”
“That I didn’t know.” Mr McMaster, in dismay, his big fat head cocked back, his pop eyes popping, then winked one of them. “And all paid for, Father?”
“No.”
Mr McMaster smiled, nodding, as if he could never be so blunt and honest but would certainly like to be. “Father, wherever your name comes up—for example, at the Chancery—I’ve heard nothing but good.”
“That so?”
“Indeed. Oh, indeed.”
Joe—he’d had enough of this—said: “What can I do for you, sir?”
Mr McMaster, in dismay again, said: “Father, you took the words right out of my mouth!”
“That so?”
“Indeed. It’s part of my job, or I wouldn’t dare ask, but how’s the program going here?”
“If you’re talking about Arf, Mr McMaster, there’s no program here.”
Mr McMaster was obviously in pain. “Why’s that, Father?”
“Thought you knew.” And still thought so. “My assistant didn’t tell you?”
“I wasn’t here very long, Father, before you came.”
So Joe, though doubting it was necessary, explained his fiscal system to Mr McMaster. “You must’ve run across something of the sort in your travels.”
“Yes and no, Father. Exceptions are often made when it comes to a big-ticket item like this. Pastors, God love ’em, aren’t so rigid then.”
“Sell out, you mean.”
“Father”—Mr McMaster shaking his big fat head—“I couldn’t —and wouldn’t—say that about any of the many fine men like yourself it’s been my good fortune to meet.”
Joe sniffed. “I try to budget for everything that comes along. There’ll be no thermometer on my church lawn.”
“That’s optional!”
“Not here.”
“Father, how can you budget for this?” In his professional capacity, Mr McMaster would know Joe’s assessment.
Joe had weakened at the thought of it. “Fortunately, it’s spread over three years.”
“Three years! You could wrap it up in three weeks!”
“Sorry. I’ll do it the hard way.”
“Too bad.” Mr McMaster was staring at Joe’s thumb. “Keeps you from saying Mass?”
“Afraid so.” Not many laymen would have thought of that, it occurred to Joe. “Look, Mr McMaster.”
“Just call me Mac, Father. All my other friends do.”
“Uh-huh. Look, Mac, we can’t do business, but I can make you a drink.” To say nothing of myself.
“Thanks. Bourbon, if you’ve got it, and water.”
While Joe was occupied in the bathroom, with the door open, Mac spoke to him of a certain Monsignor Pat (“in another diocese, Father, so I’m not talking out of school”) who, being shafted with a ball-breaking assessment and being a poor administrator for a pastor in the modern world of today, had spurned outside help (Mac?) and had then suffered a massive stroke—which, however, had become the balls of the program in his parish. “Over the top, Father.”
Joe, who’d had his hands—hand—full making drinks, brought them out of the bathroom on a tray. “How about Monsignor Pat? He make a miraculous recovery?”
“No, I’m sorry to say.” Mac bowed his big fat head in grief, but snapped out of it, scooted forward on the couch, the toes of his tasseled loafers pointing at Joe. “Father, in my humble but expert opinion—and they don’t call me the Grand Old Man of Fund-Raising for nothing—an exception could and should be made here. This is a hardship case. Sometimes, Father, it’s the little things that count.” Mac was staring at Joe’s thumb.
Joe poked it at him. “What if I told you I got this little thing playing catch? Hard-ball.”
Mac merely nodded. “So what? It’s not the same, no, as a massive stroke. But, Father, the fact is—You. Can’t. Say. Mass. Can you think of anything worse for a priest? I can’t. Everybody in the parish with kids, or without ’em—everybody who was ever a kid—would get behind you and the program. It’d fly, Father, believe me. Over the top!”
“Sorry, Mac.”
“Father, could I say something—with your kind permission?”
Joe kindly gave it with a nod.
“Father, go ahead, go it alone—it’s no skin off my ass. But whatever you do, Father—go it alone, or go with the program—I want you to know my hat’s off to you.” Turning over his gray enameled straw hat, which was cooling upside down on the end table by the couch, Mac raised it to Joe and let it drop right side up on the table as though resting his case. “Father, if it’s not asking too much, I’d like to see the office area before I leave.”
“Why wait?”
So, carrying their drinks, they went down to the office area, with which Mac was anything but unimpressed (unlike some of the clergy), as he was (“Indeed! Oh, indeed!”) with Joe’s office/offices lecture, after which, saying it had made him think, he appeared to be depressed.
“Father, I’m worried about the Church these days. So many changes, and not all of ’em, I’d say, for the best.”
“Hardly any, I’d say.”
“No, but I shouldn’t say it.”
“Why not? Who cares?”
“Father, I’m a convert.”
“Hard to believe.” (Mac, smiling, appeared to take this as a compliment.) “Convert from what?”
“Nothing much.”
Joe nodded. “In that case, you should feel right at home these days.”
Mac grinned. “Not many left like you, Father.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mac.”
“I do, Father—going from diocese to diocese, the things I hear and see.”
“We just have to hang in there, Mac.” The phone rang. “St Francis.”
“Father, I know it’s late and I don’t want to say who I am, but my husband and I, we’re not regular contributors, and now we wonder if we should be. The other one was here a while ago and said if people give to the church and anybody knows about it, except God, it’s not true charity. That’s what he said, Father.” (A man, presumably her husband, came on the line: “If you ask me, the other one’s full of shit.”) “We thought you should know this, Father.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Anything else, ma’am?”
“No, Father.”
“Thanks for calling. G’night.”
Unfortunately, before Mac could leav
e he had to return to the study for his hat, with which he then—having to rest for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs—sat fanning his face. “For some reason, Father, I keep thinking of my friend Lou.”
“Lou?”
“Cooney.”
“Cooney? Oh, you mean Father Cooney.” Joe had expected this to have (on a layman and a convert of Mac’s vintage) more of an effect than it did.
“That’s right. Lou, if you don’t know, Father, had your system, but he couldn’t sleep nights. A bad case of the shakes—moneywise, Father. The same with Lad—Ladislaw, Lou’s assistant. Poor guys, Lou and Lad. Out every night beating the bushes for bucks, trying to make their assessment.” (Mac shook his big fat head.) “It’s not a ballbreaker like some—like yours, for instance, Father—but it’s still a nice piece of change. Naturally, I wanted to help, but Lou can be a very stubborn individual, Father. I left my card. ‘Call me if you change your mind, or even if you don’t—we can always have a drink.’ A couple of days later Lou did call me—in the middle of the night. I got dressed and went to see him. Something I’d said made him rethink his situation, he said, namely that it wasn’t hopeless, that he could wrap it up in a matter of weeks without really going against his system—against the letter, maybe, but not the spirit. That’s what counts, as I understand it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So Lou’s all fixed up now. He’s got a twelve-man pledge team—three of ’em women, a nice mix—who, for the purposes of the program, take the names of the twelve apostles and wear badges to that effect, which they get to keep. One of my ideas.”
“Who’s Lou—Judas?”
Mac answered the question substantially. “Lou and Lad don’t go out, Father—just the ‘apostles,’ all parishioners in good standing.”
“I see. And how’re the others—the other parishioners in good standing—taking it?”
Mac answered the question with a nod and asked Bill, who’d come into the study, “How’d it go, son?”
Son, thought Joe, how’d what go?
From the bathroom, where he was making himself a drink, Bill said, “Not good.”
Mac shook his big fat head.
So, thought Joe, he knows.
Mac then heaved himself up from the couch and had the nerve to leave his card on the end table. “Sorry about your hand, Father, but it could be a plus, if you know what I mean. Call me if you change your mind, or even if you don’t—we can always have a drink, Joe.”
Joe, thought Joe.
Joe saw the man out, returned to the study, poured himself a much needed drink, settled himself in his BarcaLounger, and after a moment of silence, another, another, spoke to Bill. “O.K. Let’s have it.”
“Only made three calls,” Bill said, looking up from Sports Illustrated. “Went 0 for 3.”
“Not talking about that. Why’d you let that man, of all people, know how we spend our evenings?” Now the interested, the oh so interested clergy (“How’ll you handle this one, Joe?”) would also know. Poor guys, Joe and Bill. Out every night beating the bushes for bucks, trying to make their assessment. Ugh. And all—like Joe’s thumb—Bill’s fault.
“I just told him the truth, Joe. You ashamed of it?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. You think I want the Chancery, Catfish Toohey, Judas Cooney, and everybody to know we’re out every night beating the bushes for bucks?”
“But we are, Joe—most nights. I’m not ashamed of it.”
Joe sniffed. “It’s not the same for you, Bill.”
“No?” As if Joe didn’t appreciate him, what he went through most nights.
“All I mean is I’m the pastor here, you’re not. The joke’s on me, not you.”
Bill looked as though he’d like to, but couldn’t, argue with that. “I’m sorry, Joe, if that’s the way you see it.”
Joe sniffed. “Is there another way?”
“Look, Joe. You made a promise to your parishioners—no special collections, no matter what—and you’re keeping it. The clergy respect you for this—maybe they don’t want to, but they do. Even that man respects you, Joe. His hat’s off to you, he told me.”
“His hat’s off to everybody.”
“O.K., Joe, for what it’s worth, I respect you. And so do you, Joe. So who cares who the joke’s on?”
Joe was silent, thinking that respect for him might not be as widespread as Bill said, might not, in fact, go beyond the two of them, but that it was certainly good of Bill to say it did, that Bill hadn’t known what he was doing when he gave them away to Mac, that Bill might have done so even if he had known, that discretion, not loyalty, was what Bill lacked, that Joe, not Bill, would pay for this, would be, to the clergy, for all their respect for him, if any, a figure of fun, and that there would be justice in this, justice exacted by the very ones he’d tried to deceive (“I try to budget for everything that comes along”), retributive justice . . .
“Am I right, Joe?”
“I guess so.”
“So there you are.” Bill finished his drink and stood up.
“G’night, Joe. Oh, how’s the hand?”
“Thumb. Numb.” But starting to feel, to hurt.
“My fault, Joe, but I’ll say your Mass until such time as you can.”
“Thanks.”
“G’night, Joe.”
“G’night, Bill.”
25. ANOTHER INSPECTOR CALLS
JOE REACHED FOR the phone, switched hands, and got it with his good one. “St Francis.”
“Barb, Father. The FBI was here.”
“That so?”
“Nice young man, Southerner, very polite and friendly—his name’s Tom—but I thought I’d better warn you, Father.”
“You’re a little late.” Joe assumed she’d had a cordial or two first.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“O.K. I’ll talk to you later. Somebody here now.” Joe hung up and nodded to Tom. “You were saying?”
“Shame we can’t get in touch with Greg, sir.”
“‘In touch,’ huh? So you can lock him up?”
“Not necessarily, sir. Fine family and all—Brad I haven’t met, but Barb I have, and with Scott already serving it’s possible the court would be lenient with Greg, sir, providing he reports for induction.”
“Why would he do that? That’s why he’s on the run.”
“He could change his mind, sir. Hopefully, he already has.”
“That I doubt. It’s a matter of conscience with him.”
“Sir, can you tell me why he didn’t register as an objector?”
“I can. I asked him. When he registered for the draft, he said, he didn’t know what he was doing, and later, when he did, he didn’t want to upset his folks. His father’s mental about the war.”
“Sir, how do you mean that?”
“He’s very enthusiastic about it.”
“A lot of people are, sir.”
“A lot aren’t. I’m not. Greg was hoping it would just go away. A lot of people were. General Maxwell Taylor, some years ago, gave it six months.”
Tom changed the subject. “Barb says you did your best with Greg, sir.”
“That’s what Greg told her.”
“You didn’t do your best, sir?”
“I did. But that wasn’t what his mother thinks it was.”
“May I ask, sir, what it was?”
“You may. I don’t have to tell you, but I will. I advised Greg to follow his conscience, not that he was inclined to do otherwise. I’d tell you—or anybody who came to me for advice—the same thing.”
Tom smiled. “Fortunately for me, sir, I’ve come to you for information, not advice.”
“You’ve had it, anyway.”
Tom shrugged. “No idea, then, how we can get in touch with Greg, sir?”
“No, I can’t help you there.”
“Would you, sir, if you could? That’s just a hypothetical question.”
“Not if it meant Greg would be put aw
ay—as it would. That’s just a hypothetical answer.”
Tom smiled. He stood up and went for his briefcase, which was on the desk. “That’ll be all, sir.”
“Not quite.”
Tom left the briefcase on the desk and sat down. “At your service, sir.”
“Is my phone tapped?”
“Not that I know, sir.”
“Would you know if it is?”
Tom shrugged. “I’ll be frank with you, sir. I might, but I don’t.”
“O.K. I’ll be frank with you too. If my phone’s tapped and I can prove it, I’ll sue your ass off.” But how? “How about the mail?”
Tom shrugged.
“Likewise,” Joe said.
“Likewise, sir?”
“I’ll sue your ass off.” How?
“Look, sir, you may not believe it, but this is a national emergency.” As if this, much as Tom wished he could go on being very polite and friendly, might bring Joe to his senses.
Joe sniffed. “You really believe that? Or’s that what you have to say?”
“I really believe that, sir.”
“Shame you’re here then.”
“If called, sir, I’ll go.”
“Great. Not much chance of that, though, is there?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.” Tom stood up. “If that’s all, sir.” Joe, switching hands, beat him to the briefcase. “What I said about the phone and the mail goes for this thing too, if it’s wired.” With his good hand Joe then shoved the briefcase across the desk to Tom.
“Thank you, sir. Have a good day, sir.”
“I’ll think about it. That’s the best I can do.”
The next morning, throwing out the mail, Joe came upon a postcard from Canada: “Tell mom and dad I’m all right—not to worry. Have good job. Eating balanced diet for them, tying shoes for you. G.”
“Oh, it’s you.” Barb seemed unhappy to see him—had Tom been in touch with her?—but she unlocked and opened the screen door. “Oh, your poor hand!”
“Thumb.”
Barb seemed to think he’d come to tell her about it, and so he did, briefly. “Oh, you poor man!” Barefooted and in shorts —not bad but with a slight skiing movement of her left leg—she led him down into the sunken living room where they sat across from each other in leopard skin–look chairs. “Brad’s not here, Father.”