by J.F. Powers
“Didn’t think he would be.” It was only a little after three. “Should he be?”
Barb made a face—no, dear God, she was crying. “Father, they let Brad go yesterday, but he went back this morning to clean out his desk, and that’s the last I saw of him. When I called the paper around noon—‘He’s no longer with us.’ Oh, Father! What if it’s true!” Barb broke down then, wailing.
Joe had to raise his voice to be heard. “Why wouldn’t it be true?”
“Father, what if he’s no longer with us?” Barb broke down again.
Joe had to yell to be heard. “Shut up! He stopped for a drink. He ran into friends. He’ll be here any minute. You’ll see him all too soon.”
“Father, I’ve been so worried about Brad.”
“I know. You told me the other day. Trouble at the paper.”
“But then I didn’t know why.”
“Brad’s too controversial, you said.”
“No, it’s all my fault, Father. Brad told me last night—they’ve had it in for him ever since my accident at Badger.”
Joe, though he didn’t doubt this (and had been shocked the other day, and was perhaps not the only one—parking lots have eyes—to see Barb, of all people, at Badger), said, “That I doubt, Barb. Brad’s just too controversial. It’s as simple as that.”
But Barb knew better, it seemed, knew he was trying to absolve her, and broke down again.
This time Joe didn’t interrupt her, waited in silence.
“Father, how can people be so shitty?”
“It’s how they’re—we’re—made.”
Barb broke down again, and Joe waited.
“Father, did you ever think life would be like this?”
“Not exactly, no.”
Barb suddenly got up and padded over to the picture window.
“What’d I tell you?” Joe said, and thought, watching Barb return to her chair looking cross, That’s humanity for you.
Brad came into the living room, tossed a couple of magazines on the sectional sofa, and then, only then, noticed that he wasn’t alone. “Hey, look who’s here! I mean me. Ho, ho, ho.”
“Brad, you said you wouldn’t.”
“And didn’t, Buttercup. But now I will. What can I bring you, Padre? Hey, what’s with the hand?”
“Thumb.” Joe told him about it, briefly.
“Well, well. Let’s hope you don’t lose it. In the meantime, what can I bring you?”
“Just a beer, if you’ve got one, and a glass.”
“I shall return,” Brad said, which he did with drinks on a tray—a shot glass and a bottle of Kahlua for Barb, to whom he said, “Ho, ho, ho.”
“Brad.”
Having thoughtfully served others before himself, Brad sat down on the sectional sofa and raised his highball to them, saying, “To me.”
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“Barb, I think Brad’s trying to tell you something.”
“Clever people, these Romans,” said Brad. “O.K. I’ll begin at the beginning.” He said he’d cleaned out his desk and kissed the other cheap help good-bye and was about to leave the office for the last time when the phone rang. Could he have lunch that day with the personnel manager of a large local concern in its canteen? He could. [Barb: “What concern?”] “Wait.” So there he was with the p.m., not a bad-looking woman, another with a game leg, when who should join them in their booth but the c.e.o. himself. [Barb: “C.e.o. of what?”] “Wait.” The p.m. finished her tea and green salad and excused herself—significantly, Brad thought, but after she left, the conversation continued as before, on very general lines. As it did when the c.e.o. showed Brad around the various departments—in automotives, they sat talking in the backseat of a car that was in for a lube job, even when it went up on a lift—“I kid you not”—and in home furnishings they lay talking on water beds, first on twins, then on a double. They were getting to know each other and, at least in Brad’s case, getting to like each other. But the conversation was still on very general lines and going, as far as Brad could tell, nowhere. In the end, though, they had holed up in the c.e.o.’s office. “And well, the upshot is I’ve accepted the editorship of the Great Badger’s Shopping News.”
“Oh,” Barb whispered, “no.”
“Wait. At more—quite a bit more—than I made at the paper.”
“No, Brad.”
“Wait. I’ll have my column under my name, and it won’t be cut. My readership will go up—way up.”
“Readership! Nobody reads that thing.”
“Nobody does, Buttercup, but everybody will.”
“Because of your column? Oh, Brad.”
“No, Buttercup. Not because of my column. Not that it won’t help.”
“What else?” Joe asked.
“Wait.” Brad got up and went off with his glass, saying, “I shall return.”
“Oh,” Barb whispered, “God.”
“Wait,” Joe replied. He felt that more than met the eye, more than Badger’s policy of employing the elderly and handicapped—proselytism at the Mall’s expense might figure in Brad’s case (as in Mr Barnes’s).
“I’ll tell you what else,” Brad said when he returned. “Plenty.” The Shopping News would be renamed and restructured, would become the New Shopper and a tabloid. It would still run Badger’s ads, of course, but ads as well from other local concerns and (these at cost) from the general public—classifieds, wedding announcements, obits, eck cetera, eck cetera. “Wait.” [Barb was making noises.] Why would other local concerns and the general public advertise in the NS? Circulation. Yes, the old SN had had that. Circulation, yes; readership, no. The NS would have both. It would have circulation because, like the old SN, it would be a throwaway, and it would have readership because, unlike the old SN, it would have readability, would be unthrowawayable. The NS would not be like the lousy Universe, full of crap about the school board and widening the highway. The NS would give people what people want, in easy-to-take capsule form, from the world of politics, sports, crime, space, women, TV, dieting. Furthermore, the NS, unlike the old SN and the lousy Universe, would be controversial. “Controversial but fair,” to quote Dave (the c.e.o., Mr Brock). “He reads these”—Brad held up the Nation and the New Republic. “He reads books.”
“Hmmm,” Joe said.
Barb was silent, perhaps coming around.
“Now hear this,” Brad said. “Dave wants me to go to Nam for the NS. ‘See what’s going on over there, Brad, and while you’re at it see your boy.’ Earlier, I’d told him about Scott.”
Barb clutched her head. “I hate to say this, Brad, but what about . . .”
Brad shuddered. “Hardest thing I ever had to do, Butter-cup, but I thought I’d better and I did. I told Dave about Greg. And you know what? He was very understanding. How about that?”
Joe nodded in approval—what he’d dropped in to tell Barb could now be told to Brad, thanks to Dave, or could it?
Barb poured herself a shot of Kahlua.
Brad tossed back what was left of his drink. “You know what else Dave said? ‘Find out how high up she is and how big around, and we’ll do better.’ He was talking about the weather ball.”
“Oh oh,” Barb said.
“Oh,” Joe said.
Brad got up, saying, “I shall return.”
“Wait,” Joe said. “I’ve had word from Greg—just a card.” Standing up, switching hands, Joe got the card out of his coat pocket but held on to it, keeping the view of Montreal toward him, his fingers clamped down over the stamp and postmark, while Barb and Brad read the message and had the reference to shoes explained to them.
“Yeah, yeah,” Brad said, going for the card. “Where the hell is he?”
Joe, shaking his head and moving away, put the card in his pocket.
“I don’t get it,” Brad said, looking from Joe to Barb.
“Brad, he’s afraid if he tells us where Greg is we’ll tell Tom.”
“Yeah? You know what? I th
ink we should. Come on, Padre. Give.”
Joe, not caring for this at all, sniffed. “I don’t know how you—or Tom—can get in touch with Greg. I don’t have his address. If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. This is how Greg wants it, and my responsibility is to him. He asked me to tell you he’s all right. I’ve done more than that.”
“We’re his parents,” Barb said. “What about your responsibility to us?”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “What about that?”
“I was coming to that.” Joe then came to it. “I thought Greg would tell you this, but he didn’t—probably for my sake. I advised him to follow his conscience—in this matter, as in others. Not that he was inclined not to. And Tom knows this, so you don’t have to tell him.”
Brad, it seemed, was under so much stress he had to sit down, which he did, croaking, “Advised him not to report for induction?”
“I’m sorry,” Joe said to Barb. “I should’ve told you this before.”
“You didn’t have to tell me,” Brad said. “I knew it in my bones. And you know what else, Padre? Padre, hell! The trouble in Nam’d be all over now if it weren’t for pricks like you!”
Joe, rising swiftly, said, “If I hear from Greg again, I’ll let you know,” and swiftly departed, hearing them call after him:
“Don’t bother!”
“Do!”
26. ANOTHER INSPECTOR CALLS
THERE HADN’T BEEN any more anonymous complaints about Bill. In fact, one night after he’d gone to bed, there had been an anonymous compliment for Bill, which Joe, remembering it the next night, passed on to him. “Some woman phoned to say the Church could do with more young priests like you, Bill. And old ones, I told her. She agreed wholeheartedly.” Bill: “Joe, you’re not so old.” This, though well meant, hardly needed saying, Joe thought, and got up immediately, which he hadn’t meant to do, to freshen his drink. He didn’t know what had appealed to the woman—she’d told him only what he’d told Bill—but he was afraid it might be the same thing that had scandalized the other woman (and her husband), “true charity.” If so, if this thing got going, parishioners, and not only dp’s, would be asking themselves and each other, “Hey, whose writ”—the pastor’s or the assistant’s—”runs here?”
Speak to Bill? And say what? Just tell him in a nice way to go easy on Scripture. Just renege in a nice way, you mean. You’re the one who set him off, you know, with your Scripture’s rough and tough and hard to stay with, people can’t have it both ways, and the clergy can’t, though God knows we try. And thy Father, who sees in secret, will reward thee—right, Joe? Not necessarily, Bill. You see, we have to distinguish between what we might call acts of true charity and simply contributing to the support of the Church, the former not to be performed at the expense of the latter. The faithful are obliged to maintain the Church’s mission, ministers, real estate, and so on, according to divine positive law. The Lord ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel—1 Cor. 9:14. This, if read both ways, covers laity and clergy alike. This is also one of the Precepts of the Church, Bill. Joe, I know that. We had it at the sem, right after finger painting. But if people can’t afford to pay the going rate, let ’em give what they can—it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? And if it’s done on the Q.T. so much the better—thy Father, who sees in secret, will reward thee. Go easy on that, will you, Bill? Joe, I only say it to those who can’t pay the going rate. What’s wrong with that? Let God, who numbers the hairs on our heads, do the bookkeeping, Joe. Great, Bill. But if this thing spreads, if paid-up parishioners get wind of it, what happens to our fiscal system—the parish? Joe, you mean the parish as we know it, don’t you? Well, yes, Bill, I do. Oh, that. One of the turning points in ecclesiastical history, Your Holiness, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, a case, you might say, of an idea whose time has finally come—and none too soon for me. I’d never been happy with the business side of the Church. Even as a child, when an altar boy and my mind was often elsewhere during sermons, I still heard too much about the Dollar-a-Sunday Club—an upgraded version of the envelope system, up from a dime (“A few lire, Your Excellency”). The day I celebrated my first Mass in my home parish will live in infamy. So, when I got my own parish, meaning to spare myself and my people all talk of money from the pulpit (“Why, Your Excellency? I guess you might say I’m funny that way”), I installed the country club, California, or game sanctuary system (also known as the table d’hôte). With this I did as well as could be expected but not well enough, owing to the greed of the Archdiocese. Desperate to make my nut and deaf to the siren song of the fund-raiser, thanks to the prophetic counsel of my curate (as His Eminence then was), I installed the honor system, that is, no system at all, which, need I say, is now in use by dioceses everywhere and by not a few civil governments inspired, perhaps, by the success of our own IRS? We all know how this system works, but a word on why. People—and not just deep-seagoing saints and mystics—have always tried to make contact with God, especially in time of trouble. But most have had to settle for the ordinary, the all-too-ordinary, consolations of religion, among these the respect and sympathy of other believers (once a minority). Religion, in our time, had lost its clout, had become the victim, as “science” was the beneficiary, of changing fashions in credulity. Who, then, would have dreamed that religion could become what it is today—a matter of giving blindly, of sacrificing secretly, for the love of God? Could this be what the Great Bookkeeper—so jealous of his prerogatives and oh so mum since Old Testament times—has been waiting and hoping for? My view is that bookkeeping is bad for people, for those who do it and even for those who don’t if they take pleasure in thinking they aren’t like those who do. A plague on both your houses, I say. Sursum corda, folks!
“By the way, Bill, any ideas about those fives and tens in the flower collection lately?”
“No. But that’s good, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Thanks to the honor system and to my young curate (as he then was) for his faith in it, in me, and in people (of whose magnanimity I confess I saw only the tip of the iceberg), I now have no money problems, I let God do the bookkeeping, I eat like a horse, I drink like a fish, I sleep like a log, I wish everybody did, or, anyway, wouldn’t call me at all hours of the night. “St Francis.”
“You’re St Francis, I’m Lyndon B. Johnson.”
“It’s a deal. What’s on your mind, Lyndon?”
“Been readin’ the Good Book and don’t like how you’re runnin’ things over there.”
“That so?”
“Hate your methodology.”
“I’m beating my breast. What else can I do for you?”
“Ask not what you can do for me. Ask what you can do for yourself.”
“O.K. What?”
“You need a role model. We all do. Yours may not be mine. Mine may not be yours.”
“Who’s yours?”
“Talkin’ about yours. Know who it should be?”
“Offhand, no.”
“Give you a clue. He’s right out of the Good Book and so’s his methodology.”
“Hit me again, Lyndon.”
“You should be his assistant.”
Joe pushed the button, terminating the call, and left the phone off the cradle. “The Repeater,” he said to Bill, and then, since Bill was going to bed: “Some woman and her husband phoned to complain about you—and true charity.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’d go easy on that if I were you, Bill. Remember what Our Lord said about celibacy, and what somebody else said about reality—not that they’re the same, though maybe they are—few can take it.”
Bill, after a moment of introspection, nodded. “See what you mean, Joe. Thanks. Actually, I knew that. G’night, Joe.”
“G’night, Bill.”
The next afternoon, a few minutes after Joe called a number and gave his own to the answering service and hung up, his phone rang. “St Francis.”
“Dom, Fath
er.”
“Oh, Dom. Say, a friend of mine wants the price on Gene.”
“For the nomination, Father?”
“And the election.”
“Both, Father?”
“Both, Dom.”
“Father, how much your friend want?”
“Just a g, Dom. He’s got a cash-flow problem.”
“Hold on, Father.”
Joe, holding on, heard a knock, but it was next door.
“Come in,” Joe heard Bill say.
“You Hackett?” Joe heard a man say.
“Me Schmidt—Father Schmidt,” Bill said. (Nice going, Joe thought, hit him again.) “Father Hackett’s in the other office.”
“Entrez,” Joe said to the knock at his door—a young man with a briefcase. “Sit down. I’ll be with you in a minute. Yes, Dom.”
“Nomination ten, election even, Father.”
“Hmmm. My friend was hoping you’d do better, Dom—on the election.”
“Sorry, Father. But that’s where your friend could collect.”
“Dom, what about a parlay—a double?”
“Hold on, Father.”
“What’s on your mind?” Joe asked the young man.
“State Board of Health.” The young man got up, with his wallet out, evidently meaning to show Joe his identification.
Joe waved him down. “Dom, would you mind repeating that?”
“Eleven and six to five, Father.”
“That’s it, huh?”
“Best I can do, Father. Vigorish.”
“You’d lay it off?”
“The second leg, if there is one, Father. Your friend know something?”
“Just what a little bird told him, Dom. I don’t put much stock in it myself.”
“Father, if I have to insure it I won’t get no six to five.”
“O.K., Dom. My friend wants in.”
“One g on Gene, eleven and six to five, parlay.”
“Right. Nice talking to you, Dom.”
“Nice talking to you, Father.”
Joe, doing some calculations, found that he stood to win a little better than a third of his assessment. “Sorry,” he said, “to keep you waiting. What is it? Something about the school?”