by J.F. Powers
Immediately, Mac, who had not been paying much attention, released an ear for listening. He appeared ill-disposed toward Myles’ reluctance to serve in the armed forces, or, possibly, toward such frankness.
“I can’t serve two masters,” Myles said. Mac was silent; he’d gone absolutely dead. “Are you a veteran?” Myles asked.
“Since you ask,” Mac said, “I’ll tell you. I served and was wounded—honorably—in both World Wars. If there’s another one, I hope to do my part. Does that answer your question?” Myles said that it did, and he could think of nothing to say just then that wouldn’t hurt Mac’s feelings.
That night, Mac, in his cups, surpassed himself. He got through with the usual accusations early and began threatening Myles with “exposure.” “Dodgin’ the draft!” Mac howled. “I oughta turn you in.”
Myles said he hadn’t broken the law yet.
“But you intend to,” Mac said. “I oughta turn you in.”
“I’ll turn myself in when the time comes,” Myles said.
“Like hell you will. You’ll go along until they catch up with you. Then they’ll clap you in jail—where you belong.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Myles said, thinking of St Paul and other convicts.
“Then you’ll wish you were in the Army—where you belong. I’m not sure it’s not my duty to report you. Let’s see your draft card.”
Myles let him see it.
“‘Flynn, Myles’—that you? How do I know you’re not somebody else by the same name?”
Myles made no reply. Had prohibition been so wrong, he wondered.
“Don’t wanna incriminate yourself, huh? Hey, you’re 1-A! Didja see that?”
Myles explained, as he had before, that he was awaiting his induction notice.
“Bet you are! Bet you can hardly wait! I’d better hold onto this.” Mac slipped Myles’ draft card into his pocket.
In the morning, Myles got the card back. Mac, sober, returned it, saying he’d found it in his room, where Myles (who had not been there) must have dropped it. “Better hold on to that,” Mac said.
The next night Myles managed to stay in a rooming house, out of reach, but the following night they were together again, and Mac asked to see Myles’ draft card again. Myles wouldn’t give it up. “I deny your authority,” he said, himself emboldened by drink—two beers.
“Here’s my authority!” Mac cried. He loosened his trousers and pulled up his shirt in front, exposing a stomach remarkably round, smooth, veined, and, in places, blue, like a world globe. There was a scar on it. “How d’ya think I got that?”
“Appendicitis,” Myles said.
There was no doubt of it. The scar testified to Mac’s fraudulence as nothing else had, and for once Mac seemed to know it. He’d strayed into a field in which he believed Myles to be supreme. Putting his stomach away, he managed a tone in which there was misgiving, outrage, and sarcasm. “That’s right. That’s right. You know everything. You were a bedpan jockey. I forgot about that.”
Myles watched him, amused. Mac might have saved himself by telling the truth or by quickly laughing it off, but he lied on. “Shrapnel—some still inside,” he said. He coughed and felt his stomach, as if his lungs were there, but he didn’t get it out again. “Not asking you to believe it,” he said. “Won’t show you my other wound.”
“Please don’t,” said Myles. He retired that night feeling that he had the upper hand.
One week later, leaving a town in Minnesota where they had encountered a difficult bishop, Mac ordered Myles to stop at a large, gabled rectory of forbidding aspect. As it turned out, however, they enjoyed a good dinner there, and afterward the pastor summoned three of his colleagues for a little game of blackjack—in Mac’s honor, Myles heard him say as the players trooped upstairs.
Myles spent the evening downstairs with the curate. While they were eating some fudge the curate had made that afternoon, they discovered that they had many of the same enthusiasms and prejudices. The curate wanted Myles to understand that the church was not his idea, loaded up, as it was, with junk. He was working on the pastor to throw out most of the statues and all the vigil lights. It was a free-talking, free-swinging session, the best evening for Myles since leaving the seminary. In a nice but rather futile tribute to Myles, the curate said that if the two of them were pastors, they might, perhaps, transform the whole diocese. He in no way indicated that he thought there was anything wrong with Myles because he had been asked to leave the seminary. He believed, as Myles did, that there was no good reason for the dismissal. He said he’d had trouble getting through himself and he thought that the seminary, as an institution, was probably responsible for the way Stalin, another aspirant to the priesthood, had turned out. The curate also strongly disapproved of Mac, and of Myles’ reasons for continuing in the Work. He said the Clementines were a corny outfit, and no bishop in his right mind, seeing Myles with Mac, would ever take a chance on him. The curate thought that Myles might be playing it too cautious. He’d do better, perhaps, just to go around the country, hitchhiking from see to see, washing dishes if he had to, but calling on bishops personally—as many as he could in the time that remained before he got his induction notice.
“How many bishops have you actually seen?” the curate asked.
“Three. But I couldn’t say anything with Mac right there. I would’ve gone back later, though, if there’d been a chance at all with those I saw.”
The curate sniffed. “How could you tell?” he asked. “I thought you were desperate. You just can’t be guided entirely by private revelation. You have a higher injunction: ‘Seek, and you shall find.’ Perhaps you still haven’t thought this thing through. I wonder. Perhaps you don’t pray enough?”
Myles, noticing in the curate a tendency to lecture and feeling that he’d suffered one “perhaps” too many, defended himself, saying, “The man we met today wouldn’t let us set foot on church property in his diocese. What can you do with a bishop like that?”
“The very one you should have persevered with! Moses, you may remember, had to do more than look at the rock. He had to strike it.”
“Twice, unfortunately,” murmured Myles, not liking the analogy. Moses, wavering in his faith, had struck twice and had not reached the Promised Land; he had only seen it in the distance, and died.
“It may not be too late,” the curate said. “I’d try that one again if I were you.”
Myles laughed. “That one was your own bishop,” he said.
“The bishop said that?” The curate showed some alarm and seemed suddenly a lot less friendly. “Is that why you’re here, then—why Mac’s here, I mean?”
“I couldn’t tell you why I’m here,” Myles said. In Mac’s defense, he said, “I don’t think he’s mentioned the Work here.” It was true. Mac and the pastor had hit it off right away, talking of other things.
“I heard him trying to sell the pastor a new roof—a copper one. Also an oil burner. Does he deal in those things?” the curate asked.
“He has friends who do.” Myles smiled. He wanted to say more on this subject to amuse the curate, if that was still possible; he wanted to confide in him again; he wanted to say whatever would be necessary to save the evening. But the shadow of the bishop had fallen upon them. There were only crumbs on the fudge plate; the evening had ended. It was bedtime, the curate said. He offered Myles a Coke, which Myles refused, then showed him to a couch in the parlor, gave him a blanket, and went off to bed.
Some time later—it was still night—Mac woke Myles and they left the rectory. Mac was sore; he said he’d lost a bundle. He climbed into the back seat and wrapped himself in the car rug. “A den of thieves. I’m pretty sure I was taken. Turn on the heater.” And then he slept while Myles drove away toward the dawn.
The next day, as they were having dinner in another diocese, another town, another hotel—Mac looked fresh; he’d slept all day—Myles told him that he was quitting.
“Soon?” said Mac.
“Right away.”
“Give me a little time to think about it.”
After dinner, Mac drew one of his good cigars out of its aluminum scabbard. “What is it? Money? Because if it is—” Mac said, puffing on the cigar, and then, looking at the cigar and not at Myles, he outlined his plans. He’d try to get more money for Myles from the Fathers, more take-home dough and more for expenses. He’d sensed that Myles had been unhappy in some of those flea bags; Myles might have noticed that they’d been staying together oftener. Ultimately, if the two of them were still together and everything went right, there might be a junior partnership for Myles in the store. “No,” Mac said, looking at Myles. “I can see that’s not what you want.” He turned to the cigar again and asked, “Well, why not?” He invited Myles up to his room, where, he said, he might have something to say that would be of interest to him.
Upstairs, after making himself a drink, Mac said that he just might be able to help Myles in the only way he wanted to be helped. He was on fairly good terms with a number of bishops, as Myles might have gathered, but an even better bet would be the Clementines. Myles could join the order as a lay brother—anybody could do that—swiftly win the confidence of his superiors, then switch to the seminary, and thus complete his studies for the priesthood. “I might be able to give you such a strong recommendation that you could go straight into the seminary,” Mac said. “It would mean losing you, of course. Don’t like that part. Or would it? What’s to stop us from going on together, like now, after you get your degree?”
“After ordination?” Myles asked.
“There you are!” Mac exclaimed. “Just shows it’s a natural—us working as a team. What I don’t know, you do.”
While Mac strengthened his drink just a little—he was cutting down—Myles thanked him for what he’d done to date and also for what he was prepared to do. He said that he doubted, however, that he was meant for the Clementines or for the community life, and even if he were, there would still be the problem of finding a bishop to sponsor him. “Oh, they’d do all that,” Mac said. Myles shook his head. He was quitting. He had to intensify his efforts. He wasn’t getting to see many bishops, was he? Time was of the essence. He had a few ideas he wanted to pursue on his own (meaning he had one—to have another crack at the curate’s bishop). The induction notice, his real worry, might come any day.
“How d’ya know you’re all right physically?” Mac asked him. “You don’t look very strong to me. I took you for a born 4-F. For all you know, you might be turned down and out lookin’ for a job. In the circumstances, I couldn’t promise to hold this one open forever.”
With the usual apprehension, Myles watched Mac pour another drink. Could Mac want so badly for an underpaid chauffeur, he wondered. Myles’ driving was his only asset. As a representative of the Fathers, he was a flop, and he knew it, and so did Mac. Mac, in his own words, was the baby that delivered the goods. But no layman could be as influential as Mac claimed to be with the Fathers, hard up though they were for men and money. Mac wouldn’t be able to help with any bishop in his right mind. But Mac did want him around, and Myles, who could think of no one else who did, was almost tempted to stay as long as he could. Maybe he was 4-F.
Later that evening Mac, still drinking, put it another way, or possibly said what he’d meant to say earlier. “Hell, you’ll never pass the mental test. Never let a character like you in the Army.” The Fathers, though, would be glad to have Myles, if Mac said the word.
Myles thanked him again. Mac wanted him to drive the car, to do the Work, but what he wanted still more, it was becoming clear, was to have a boon companion, and Myles knew he just couldn’t stand to be it.
“You’re not my type,” Mac said. “You haven’t got it—the velocity, I mean—but maybe that’s why I like you.”
Myles was alone again with his thoughts, walking the plank of his gloom.
“Don’t worry,” Mac said. “I’ll always have a spot in my heart for you. A place in my business.”
“In the supermarket?”
Mac frowned. Drinking, after a point, made him appear a little cross-eyed. “I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” he said distinctly. “If y’wanna know, your trouble’s words. Make y’self harda take. Don’t have to be jerk. Looka you. Young. Looka me. Dead. Not even Catholic. Bloody Orangeman. ’S truth.”
Myles couldn’t believe it. And then he could, almost. He’d never seen Mac at Mass on Sundays, either coming or going, except when they were working, and then Mac kept to the vestibule. The bunk that Mac had talked about Myles’ being a cradle Catholic began to make sense.
“Now you’re leaving the Work, I tell you,” Mac was saying “Makes no difference now.” They were in Minnesota, staying in a hotel done in the once popular Moorish style, and the ceiling light and the shades of the bed lamps, and consequently the walls and Myles’ face, were dead orange and Mac’s face was bloody orange.
Myles got up to leave.
“Don’t go,” Mac said. He emptied the bottle.
But Myles went, saying it was bedtime. He realized as he said it that he sounded like the curate the night before.
Ten minutes later Mac was knocking at Myles’ door. He was in his stocking feet, but looked better, like a drunk getting a hold on himself.
“Something to read,” he said. “Don’t feel like sleeping.”
Myles had some books in his suitcase, but he left them there. “I didn’t get a paper,” he said.
“Don’t want that,” Mac said. He saw the Gideon Bible on the night stand and went over to it. “Mind if I swipe this?”
“There’s probably one in your room.”
Mac didn’t seem to hear. He picked up the Gideon. “The Good Book,” he said.
“I’ve got a little Catholic Bible,” Myles said. The words came out of themselves—the words of a diehard proselytizer.
“Have you? Yeah, that’s the one I want.”
“I can’t recommend it,” Myles said, on second thought. “You better take the other one, for reading. It’s the King James.”
“Hell with that!” Mac said. He put the King James from him.
Myles went to the suitcase and got out his portable Bible. He stood with it at the door, making Mac come for it, and then, still withholding it, led him outside into the corridor, where he finally handed it over.
“How you feel now, about that other?” Mac asked.
For a moment, Myles thought he was being asked about his induction, which Mac ordinarily referred to as “that other,” and not about Mac’s dark secret. When he got Mac’s meaning, he said, “Don’t worry about me. I won’t turn you in.”
In the light of his activities, Mac’s not being a Catholic was in his favor, from Myles’ point of view; as an honest faker Mac was more acceptable, though many would not see it that way. There was something else, though, in Mac’s favor—something unique; he was somebody who liked Myles just for himself. He had been betrayed by affection—and by the bottle, of course.
Myles watched Mac going down the corridor in his stocking feet toward his room, holding the Bible and swaying just a little, as if he were walking on calm water. He wasn’t so drunk.
The next morning Mac returned the Bible to Myles in his room and said, “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but I’m sorry about last night. I guess I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I won’t stand in your way any longer.” He reached into his pocket and took out his roll. “You’ll need some of this,” he said.
“No, thanks,” Myles said.
“You sure?”
Myles was sure.
“Forget anything I might have said.” Mac eased over to the window and looked out upon the main street. “I don’t know what, but I might have said something.” He came back to Myles. He was fingering his roll, holding it in both hands, a fat red squirrel with a nut. “You sure now?”
Myles said yes, he was sure, and Mac reluctantly left him.
Myles was wondering
if that had been their good-bye when, a few minutes later, Mac came in again. His manner was different. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he said. “You don’t say anything about me and I won’t say anything about you. Maybe we both got trouble. You know what I’m talking about?”
Myles said that he thought he knew and that Mac needn’t worry.
“They may never catch you,” Mac said, and went away again. Myles wondered if that had been their good-bye.
Presently Mac came in again. “I don’t remember if I told you this last night or not. I know I was going to, but what with one thing and another last night, and getting all hung up—”
“Well?”
“Kid”—it was the first time Mac had called him that—“I’m not a Catholic.”
Myles nodded.
“Then I did say something about it?”
Myles nodded again. He didn’t know what Mac was trying now, only that he was trying something.
“I don’t know what I am,” Mac said. “My folks weren’t much good. I lost ’em when I was quite young. And you know about my wife.” Myles knew about her. “No damn good.”
Myles listened and nodded while all those who had ever failed Mac came in for slaughter. Mac ordinarily did this dirty work in the car, and it had always seemed to Myles that they threw out the offending bodies, one by one, making room for the fresh ones. It was getting close in the room. Mac stood upright amid a wreckage of carcasses—with Myles.
“You’re the only one I can turn to,” he said. “I’d be afraid to admit to anyone else what I’ve just admitted to you—I mean to a priest. As you know, I’m pretty high up in the Work, respected, well thought of, and all that, and you can imagine what your average priest is going to think if I come to him—to be baptized!”
The scene rather appealed to Myles, but he looked grave.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mac said. “Don’t think I don’t know the awful risk I’m taking now, with my immortal soul and all. Gives me a chill to think of it. But I still can’t bring myself to do the right thing. Not if it means going to a priest. Sure to be embarrassing questions. The Fathers could easily get wind of it back in Chicago.”