by J.F. Powers
“I had a chance to buy that property long before it was the Gun Club’s, and I wish I had,” said the Bishop.
“Things go on there at night,” said Monsignor Gau.
“What kind of things?”
Monsignor Gau didn’t seem to know how to put it. “Shenanigans,” he said.
The Bishop just looked at him.
“Cars drive in and park,” Monsignor Gau explained. “In fact, there have even been trespassers in the cemetery.”
The Bishop sighed. He had heard that such things happened, but not in Ostergothenburg. A high wall? A night watchman? He thought of the cost to the diocese, and sighed again.
“Bishop, don’t say yes or no to this right away,” said Monsignor Gau. Proceeding slowly, with great caution—as well he might, if the Bishop understood him—Monsignor Gau offered a solution to the problem. For the sake of the town and the diocese, for the sake of the living and the dead, said Monsignor Gau, the Bishop should move the cemetery.
“No, no.”
“Frankly, I don’t see what else we can do, Bishop,” said Monsignor Gau.
“Wait a few years,” said the Bishop, finally.
“I just thought now, rather than in a few years or ten years from now, might be better, all things considered.”
Monsignor Gau, it seemed, hadn’t given any thought to the possibility that the Bishop might not be around in ten years. This was comforting, in a way, but it also forced the Bishop to recognize, as he hadn’t before, clearly, that it had been his intention to leave the problem of the cemetery to his successor, and, seeing this as a defect in himself, he took another look at Monsignor Gau’s solution. No, all the Bishop liked about it was being able to thwart the desires of trespassers. That was all. That, however, appealed to him strongly. “Where?”
“I was thinking of the old airport—high, level ground, good visibility from the road. Hilly, secluded cemeteries were all right in the past.”
The Bishop just looked at Monsignor Gau.
“Think of the mower, Bishop.”
When the Bishop noticed where they were in the conversation, he didn’t want to be there. “The cemetery’s consecrated ground,” he said.
“Yes,” said Monsignor Gau—and did not (which was wise) point out to the Bishop that consecrated ground could be deconsecrated and put to other use in case of necessity. Instead, he spoke of the capacity crowds on Sundays in all four churches in Ostergothenburg, and of the parking problem he had at the Cathedral, which he could do nothing about because of his downtown location. “Oh, I’m not at all enthusiastic about moving the cemetery.” (The Bishop hadn’t realized that they were coming back to that, and sighed.) “Still, if it has to be done, it has to be done.”
The Bishop agreed with that statement, in principle, but gave no indication that he did.
“Bishop, don’t say yes or no to this right away,” said Monsignor Gau, and, having offered his solution to the problem of the cemetery, now offered his solution to his solution: on the consecrated ground, once the mortal remains of the dead had been removed to another location, the Bishop should raise a great church and make it his cathedral.
The Bishop said nothing.
“Don’t say yes or no right away, Bishop.”
No more was said on the subject that evening.
The next morning, at the Chancery, Monsignor Gau entered the Bishop’s office saying, “Oh, Bishop, about relocating the cross in the cemetery . . .”
“Better hold off on that. Yes,” the Bishop said.
That very day, the Bishop called on Mumm, of Mumm and Muldoon, lawyers for the diocese, and went into the legal aspects of moving the cemetery. It wasn’t an easy interview, for Mumm, a man as old as the Bishop, kept coming back to all the paperwork there’d be, as if that were reason enough to abandon the idea. But since the diocese owned the cemetery land, and the graves were only held under lease, subject to removal in case of necessity, there was nothing to stop the Bishop from doing what he had in mind. “Legally,” said the old lawyer sadly.
At the Webb that evening, Monsignor Gau, who was working with Muldoon of Mumm and Muldoon, said that Muldoon, whose hobby was real estate, had learned that the old airport could be purchased for only a bit more than the going price for farmland in the area. “Dirt cheap, Bishop. But renting those big earth-moving machines is something else again. We’ll need ’em at the old cemetery.”
“There’ll be a lot of paperwork,” the Bishop said, preferring to think of that part of the operation. “And, of course, I’ll have to get in touch with Rome.”
This he did the next day—entirely on his own, because of a slight difference of opinion with Monsignor Gau over the means to be employed. The Bishop had been going to write to the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, but learned (from Monsignor Gau) that the Apostolic Delegate was in Rome. “Better cable,” said Monsignor Gau.
“No, it might give the wrong impression,” said the Bishop, who had never, so far as he knew, given Rome that impression.
“To save time,” said Monsignor Gau.
“No,” said the Bishop, and did not cable.
In his letter, however, he did request that a reply, if favorable, be cabled to him, in view of all that had to be done and the earliness and severity of winter in Minnesota.
After ten days, the reply came. The Bishop let Monsignor Gau read it.
“We’re in business, Bishop,” said Monsignor Gau. “You asked them to cable?”
“To save time,” said the Bishop, and their relationship, which had gone off a few degrees, was back to normal.
Things moved quickly then. Letters to the nearest living relatives of those buried in the cemetery and to those, like Mumm, who had contracted for space were drawn up by Muldoon and Monsignor Gau, approved by the Bishop, and dispatched by registered mail. After two weeks, the paperwork was well in hand. During the first week, Muldoon and Monsignor Gau purchased the old airport for the diocese, and the following week it was measured for fencing—galvanized chain link eleven feet high and, as a further discouragement to trespassers, an eighteen-inch overhang of barbed wire. “That should make it as hard to get in as to get out,” said the Bishop.
Next, Monsignor Gau and Muldoon, who had been seeing a lot of “the boys at the Gun Club,” came to the Bishop and proposed an agreement under which the diocese, soon to have more room than it would need for a new cathedral and perhaps a school later, and the Gun Club, soon to transfer its activities to a location farther up the river, would, for the sake of getting the best price, sell off two contiguous parcels of land as though they were one, as indeed they would appear to be when cleared and leveled, this tract to be restricted to high-class residences only and to be known as Cathedral Heights, with thoroughfares to be known as Cathedral Parkway, Dullinger Road, and Gun Club Memorial Lane. This agreement—over his protests against having a street named after him—was approved by the Bishop. So it went through June, July, and August.
And then, with September and cooler weather, came the hard part for the Bishop, although people who stopped him in the street would never have guessed it. Under his steady gaze, the question that was uppermost in their minds changed from “How could he?” to “How would he?” The Bishop didn’t say that he had responsibilities that the ordinary person was neither able to face up to nor equipped to carry out, but he let this be seen. “What has to be done has to be done,” he said, “and will be done with all due regard and reverence.” And so it was done, in September.
Trucks and earth-movers rolled into the old cemetery, and devout young men from the seminary did the close work by hand. The Bishop was present during most of the first morning to make sure that all went well. Thereafter, he dropped by for a few minutes whenever he could. The Bishop also visited the old airport, now consecrated ground, where clergy in surplices, as well as undertakers and seminarians, were on duty from morning till night. Everything had been thought of (Monsignor Gau, with his clipboard, was everywhere), and the operation
proceeded on schedule. After twenty-two days, it was all over, and there was a long editorial in the Times.
The Bishop was praised for what he’d done for his town and his diocese, and would do. It didn’t stop there. On the street and at the Webb, the Bishop began to see people who had been avoiding him, among them old Mumm, who said, simply, “I got to hand it to you.”
And the clergy, too. Men who had stayed away from the Chancery all summer came in again, and some of them, perhaps mindful of the assessments to be levied for the new cathedral, talked up the next parish as they never had before and belittled their own. Some of the Bishop’s callers found him not in but at the site of the new cathedral. As long as he had them there, he thought it well to put them in the picture. Pointing to one of the big yellow machines, he’d say, “That one’s costing us over two hundred dollars a day. I don’t know where it’s all coming from, do you, Father?”
On the good days in October and November, the Bishop spent many happy hours at “the job,” as it was called. Had bishops in the Middle Ages been so occupied, they might have saved a few years on cathedrals centuries in the building, he thought, for it seemed to him that the men accomplished more when he was around. Some of them he knew from other jobs, and called by name, and others he got to know. One day, he took aside a young workman who was to be married the following morning and spoke to him on the purpose of sex in God’s plan, and was so pleased by the response that he gave the young man the rest of the day off and also a cigar, which, since it was a good one, he advised him to save for his honeymoon. Others he spoke to on the purpose of work—a curse, yes, but also a means of sanctification—and cited the splendid example of St Joseph, a carpenter, the patron of workmen, or working-men. (The Bishop preferred those words to “worker.”) To give additional substance to his remarks, the Bishop spoke of the manual labor he had performed in the years when, home from the seminary for the summer, he’d driven an ice wagon and worked on a threshing crew, and also, though briefly, as a section hand on the Great Northern. “Between Barnesville and Moorhead—until I was overcome by the heat.”
By December, the foundation had been poured, the structural steel was in place, and the walls were rising—so slowly, though, that it didn’t pay the Bishop to visit the job daily. The men he knew were gone. A few masons drew $4.05 an hour. The Bishop was reluctant to interrupt them. Inside, the air smelled and tasted of oil. Outside, the ground was frozen. By the end of December, the architects—Frank and Frank, of Minneapolis—and the contractors—Beck Brothers, of Ostergothenburg—were feuding.
The Beck brothers (there were four of them) said that Frank and Frank, also brothers, were making too many changes in the plans. If Beck Brothers had known this was going to happen, they wouldn’t have bid on the job, they said. They hadn’t really wanted it. The plans called for a church such as Beck Brothers had never built before, or seen. “Too goddam modern,” they said.
None of this reached the Bishop directly, and almost all of it he discounted, having dealt with contractors for many years, but one evening at the Webb, early in February, he mentioned the part that did bother him.
“Frank and Frank are modern, all right, but they’re not too modern,” Monsignor Gau explained. “Contemporary” was the word for them. They believed in beautiful but simple structures, less expensive, but more impressive structures, and churches were their specialty. They’d done churches in such places as Milwaukee, Dallas, and Fargo, not to mention St Paul and Minneapolis. “They’re tops—and so, locally, are Beck Brothers,” said Monsignor Gau.
“Yes, I know,” said the Bishop.
“I can tell you what the trouble is, but you can’t do anything about it.”
“No?”
“Frank and Frank are from Minneapolis, if you know what I mean.”
The Bishop did. More than once, he’d heard the contractors refer to the architects as dudes.
The feuding continued into April. In April, the Bishop was planning to fly to Rome.
By then, the cathedral was beginning to look like something—a chasuble, said the architects; a coffin, said the contractors. It looked like neither, the Bishop thought, and it never would unless you viewed it from above, from an airplane. The Bishop thought that the little model of the cathedral in the contractors’ shack could be blamed for much of the trouble—it did look like a chasuble or a coffin—and so, on his last visit to the job, before leaving for Rome, he carried it off and locked it in the trunk of the car.
That evening, in the main dining room of the Webb, which he wouldn’t see again for perhaps a month, the Bishop got a pleasant surprise, for there, not too close to the organ, having a drink, and soon to break bread together, it seemed, were the two architects and the four contractors. Monsignor Gau was also there, but the Bishop had expected him.
“Well, well,” said the Bishop, joining the party. He sat at one end of the table, Monsignor Gau at the other. On the Bishop’s right sat an architect, on his left a contractor, and on Monsignor Gau’s right and left there was one of each. The seating arrangements had been worked out by Monsignor Gau, the Bishop felt, but how had Frank and Frank and Beck Brothers been brought together?
Presently, this question was answered for the Bishop—and for the Beck brothers, too, to judge by their faces. An architectural journal of excellent repute and wide circulation was planning an article on the new cathedral. If it followed the usual pattern of such articles, said one of the Franks, there would be photographs of the new cathedral and of those intimately associated with the job. “All of us here.”
“Why me?” said Monsignor Gau, with a surprised look that didn’t fool the Bishop, for obviously Monsignor Gau had heard the good news earlier, had talked it over with Frank and Frank, and on the strength of it had arranged the evening.
“You’re rector of the Cathedral—that’s why,” said the Bishop. “But why me?”
“It’s your church,” said Monsignor Gau. This was true. In fact, without the Bishop it wouldn’t be a cathedral.
The evening now went better. The Beck brothers, who were rather shy men away from their work, opened up as they hadn’t before. Frank and Frank said that the food at the Webb surpassed anything Minneapolis could offer and, a little later on, that they wished there were contractors like Beck Brothers in Minneapolis. At that point, the Bishop called for a round of Danish beer, a new thing at the Webb, and they drank a toast to the job.
The Bishop, trying to hold the attention of those at his end of the table, said that they might be interested to know that he had at one time given some thought to building the cathedral out of fieldstone. Yes, plain, ordinary, everyday stones, just as they came from the hand of God and were collected by farmers from their fields. The true and special character of the diocese and its people might be expressed in a cathedral of fieldstones. Monsignor Gau, however, had more or less discouraged the idea, saying that he doubted if fieldstones would look good in a structure of such size, or if fieldstones would hold together as well as, say, bricks. The Bishop had had nothing against bricks, but for a cathedral he preferred stone—good, honest stone. Yes, he was happy with the gray stone that had been chosen. He had wanted a rough finish, yes, until he had learned that this would be too hard to clean, and now he was happy with the smooth. For some reason, perhaps because of his romantic ideas about cathedral-building, he was sorry that the walls wouldn’t be solid stone—that the stone slabs, which were being anchored to the steel structure, were only two inches thick. Yes, he’d have reason to be sorry if the walls of the cathedral were solid stone—no air space, no insulation. He knew how buildings were constructed now, and wouldn’t have it any other way. He wasn’t complaining. Yes, he knew that they were doing things with stone that had never been done before, using it as if it were plywood, saving time, labor, and stone, and he was happy. He wasn’t complaining. Why should he? He was getting everything he’d ever wanted in a cathedral. It would be ideal for processions—wide aisles, assembly space, space to maneuv
er in. He was getting landscaped parking lots. He wasn’t getting as high a structure as he’d wanted at first, but, as Monsignor Gau had pointed out to him, the site would do a lot for the cathedral. From across the river, from the new highway, it wouldn’t look anything like Mont-Saint-Michel—another idea the Bishop had had in the very beginning and recognized as crazy even then. In short, he was getting a fine contemporary building with a distinct Romanesque flavor. He was getting real arches. “Oh, I’ve entirely given up the idea of fieldstones. I wouldn’t want ’em now if I could have ’em. But from what I know now, I think it might have been possible.”
“Anything’s possible, if you’re talking about the facing,” said the architect on the Bishop’s right. “What counts in a building, be it skyscraper or cathedral, is the steel. That’s all that holds it together.”
“Oh, it’s safe,” said the contractor on the Bishop’s left. He must have seen that the Bishop could use a little reassurance on that point. “It’ll be good for fifty, seventy-five—maybe a hundred—years.”
The architect nodded.
Driving up to the job on his return from Rome (where, except for the Holy Father, nobody had seemed very glad to see him), the Bishop was pleased to note how much had been accomplished in his absence. But then, getting out of the car, coming closer and looking up at the arches, none of which had been completed when he last saw the cathedral, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Going inside, he found, of course, that what was true of one arch was true of all—those over the windows, those along the aisles, the one over the baptistery, and, worst of all, the one over the sanctuary. In the middle of every arch there were two stones—where the keystone should have been there was just a crack.