by J.F. Powers
Wilf shook off this remark and put out his arm to ward off any more of the same. He plopped down in his chair and swiveled himself around until Jack and Father Urban were out of his sight. “All right,” he said, swiveling back to them. “Sit down, will you?”
Father Urban and Jack sat down.
“Now this is what we’ll do.” Jack would give Father Chmielewski’s pants to Brother Harold for pressing—and say nothing. No, Jack would give Father Chmielewski’s pants to Wilf, and he would give them to Brother Harold for pressing—and say nothing. Then the following week, Jack would return them to Father Chmielewski, with apologies. No, Jack would just hang them up in the closet of the bedroom he occupied at Father Chmielewski’s—and say nothing—and maybe nothing would be said to him. “If Father Chmielewski talks, we’ll be the laughingstock of the diocese!”
Jack looked miserable.
“What the hell,” said Father Urban.
“You’ll see,” Wilf said. He said that when he first spoke to Father Chmielewski, he had naturally been most concerned about Jack’s wallet (because of the pass), and Father Chmielewski had said that he’d send it over if it was there. That was before Father Chmielewski had gone upstairs to look for it, though, before he discovered what was now known to them all. What Father Chmielewski would do now, Wilf didn’t know. Father Chmielewski had sounded a little confused. “If he does send over the wallet—wallets—well, I’m hoping he doesn’t come himself. I don’t think he will. If he does, though, we’ll have to say something. And if he brings your pants, Father—we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Oh Lord!”
“You don’t think Father Chmielewski thinks we’re trying to steal his pants, do you?” said Father Urban. “Because if you do, the fact that Jack left his wallet—wallets—”
Wilf said, “Shhhh!”
Brother Harold appeared in the doorway. “I’ve made some coffee,” he said to Wilf, and then he stood there, waiting for them to come and get it.
So Wilf, though he doubtless had more to say, said no more then. He rose and led them to the refectory.
It wasn’t the custom for Brother Harold to serve coffee between meals, but perhaps he was being festive that day. He had put out a plate of graham crackers, too, and he had turned on the tree. Something more, however, awaited them in the refectory.
Wilf said, “Hey, where’d that come from?”
Father Urban said, “That’s a color set, isn’t it?”
Brother Harold, who seemed a little surprised that Father Urban would know this, said that there had been some question in his mind about accepting the set, since he had no idea where it had come from. All the dealer knew was that he’d been authorized by the manufacturer to deliver the set to the Hill on Christmas morning and to say that Santa Claus had sent it. (“Heh, heh,” said Wilf.) The dealer and one of his men had erected an antenna on the roof.
“Funny we didn’t notice it,” said Wilf.
“If we want one of those big poles in the yard, we can have one, they said, only we’ll have to wait until spring.”
“Until the ground thaws out, you mean?”
“Yes, Father.”
“But who could’ve sent it?” said Jack.
“Santa Claus.”
“A good question, that,” said Wilf, passing over Father Urban’s remark.
“Yes,” said Father Urban, not that he was in any doubt of the answer.
“Who it was we may never know,” Wilf said, “but I think it’s safe to say it was somebody who was here at some time and liked what he saw.”
“How about the man who gave you the mattress, Father,” said Brother Harold, and somehow conveyed the impression that Wilf was the likeliest object of anonymous benefactions, although such were unheard of at the Hill until now.
“Maybe,” Wilf said, “though I rather doubt it. It could’ve been anybody.”
“It’s better that we don’t know,” said Jack.
Father Urban had been holding back, waiting for the proper moment to enlighten them, but he could feel himself being sealed off. “I think it’s safe to say we have Billy Cosgrove to thank for this. I happen to know he’s given away color sets before—to orphanages, hospitals, and the like.”
“Maybe you’d better drop him a line, Urban, but be circumspect—in case you’re wrong. Of course, when and if it’s established we have Mr Cosgrove to thank, I’ll write him a nice letter.”
To Father Urban it was perfectly clear that Wilf believed Billy to be the donor, but couldn’t accept the implications, and, by making so much of the letter he would write, was trying to carve out more of a part for himself in their good fortune. “We should phone him,” said Father Urban.
“You can’t be that sure,” Wilf said, taking a cup of coffee from Brother Harold. “Careful, Father,” he said, speaking to Jack, whose cup rattled as he started across the room to join them.
“I was never surer of anything in my life,” said Father Urban.
“Well, if you really think Mr Cosgrove expects it . . .”
“Billy Cosgrove expects nothing.”
“Then to call him long distance seems a little extravagant . . .”
“He’s been a little extravagant himself, don’t you think?”
Wilf looked over at the set, a beautiful console model.
“As I see it,” Jack said, “whoever’s responsible for this gift doesn’t want us to know who he is. He isn’t seeking our appreciation, if you know what I mean.”
Father Urban gave Jack the merest glance. “You mean well, I’m sure.” Jack didn’t know Billy Cosgrove.
“It might be a mistake,” Jack said.
“I think you’re right,” Wilf said to Jack. “But you,” he said to Father Urban, “do what you think best.” Then, saying to himself, “Well, I’ll be darned,” he went over to the set. Unlike Jack, he had some idea of its worth. “And color, you say?”
“Yes, but there’s just black and white now,” Brother Harold said. “Tonight there’ll be color.”
“Let’s see what’s on now,” said Wilf.
“Not now,” said Father Urban to Brother Harold who was bringing him a cup of coffee, and stalked out of the room. Having said what he’d said—that they ought to phone Billy—what else could he do? He went to the office, sat in Wilf’s swivel chair, and put through the call. Presently, the operator informed him that Mr Cosgrove was in Florida—should she try to reach him there? Father Urban said, “Thanks—but that won’t be necessary,” and hung up. He hadn’t wanted to phone Billy. He had been driven to it—by fools.
None of the viewers at the Hill had enjoyed regular access to a TV set before, and so, for a while anyway, they watched the programs with a faith, hope, and charity that must have been rare at the time. “Let’s see what’s on now,” Wilf would say at the start of the evening, and read to them from the program resumés in the Record: “When hated gunfighter is wounded, townspeople bet on the hour he’ll be killed by dead man’s brother.” “In state institution, four old buddies are reunited for group therapy.” Wilf gave them a choice of programs on the two channels they could get, but Father Urban and Jack were glad to let Wilf run the set, and he was fair about it. “If you’d rather have the other one,” he’d say from time to time, or “Let’s see what the other one’s like.”
Father Urban found himself questioning some words of his uttered some years earlier, words widely quoted in the Catholic press. He had said that television, this new medium about which many seemed to be having doubts, could and would be a great force for good, and in saying this, he had more than anticipated the thought of the late pontiff (who was to say “could” but not “would”). Unlike Bishop Sheen who was to say, “Television is a blessing,” and who perhaps had his own program in mind, Father Urban hadn’t been in a position to know what he was talking about. His own work had kept him in ignorance of the new medium, and if he happened to enter a room when a set was on, the chances were it would be switched off—because he was rated
a greater attraction. Of course, he had watched such events as the World Series and the Kentucky Derby, but the regular fare, what he was seeing in the evenings now, no, he really hadn’t known about it.
But whatever one might think of the programs—and Wilf and Brother Harold seemed to think pretty well of them—there was no getting around the fact that television had come to stay. The problem it posed was an old one: how to make what was generally accepted more acceptable, i.e., how to make an honest woman of a whore. Probably no one man could do it. Obviously, Bishop Sheen hadn’t. Father Urban’s own opportunities had been all too few and slight: a prayer for use where it was the custom for a clergyman to sign off the station; a series of three-minute talks especially suitable for Lent, these on defective film to which the Order held residual rights; and two appearances “live,” making the Stations of the Cross and participating in a panel discussion of juvenile delinquency, the latter on educational TV. In short, Father Urban hadn’t had a decent chance to show what he could do in the new medium. It troubled him that a Billy Graham or an Oral Roberts was seen and heard by more souls in an evening than Our Lord and his disciples had preached to in all their travels—and, to tell the truth, Father Urban wasn’t too happy about Bishop Sheen, either. It could be that Father Urban would yet make the new medium his own, perhaps when his days of travel were over, assuming, of course, that they weren’t already over. And now—speaking to you from his study at the Novitiate of the Order of St Clement—Father Urban.
For the present, however, Father Urban was just another viewer. With Wilf at the controls, they went through the evening, through the prime time, through the news, weather, and sports, and into the old movies, which made it harder to get up in the morning. Perhaps the set’s living color left something to be desired, because they were in a fringe area, to say the least of it, but color programs were rare. The set gave them a good, clear picture of what there was to see, and it also threw off heat that even the refectory, the only warm room in the house, could use on those very cold nights right after Christmas. While viewing, they sampled the liqueurs and meats and cheeses from Billy’s hamper, and consumed kettles of popcorn fresh from Brother Harold’s kitchen. It was, after all, even there, the festive season.
The only light came from the set and the Christmas tree, and so it was no longer possible for Wilf to read the papers, for Brother Harold to do his homework, or for Father Urban and Jack to play checkers in the evening. Probably Jack was the only one to regret the passing of their old way of life. His eyes weren’t up to the strain of prolonged viewing, but fortunately he didn’t have the appetite for it that the others had at first. He’d doze off and come to saying, “What’s this?” And Wilf would say, “Oh, he’s a bush pilot, and he’s trying to find this girl’s father. She’s a Broadway star. Looks a lot like the country around here, doesn’t it?”
There were moments in the evening, though, when Father Urban, instead of being carried away on the wings or saddle of adventure, nodded in his chair, for the days right after Christmas were much like those that had gone before.
On the day after Christmas, early in the morning, Wilf led them to the rear of the corridor that ran between the parlors and the library on the one side and the chapel on the other, and revealed to them his plan for a sacristy. The plan called for the corridor to become a blind alley except in case of emergency, and for the back stairway to be abandoned (except in case of emergency), and for the solid wall between the corridor and the chapel to be breached for a doorway—all this for a temporary sacristy.
“Better no sacristy at all,” said Father Urban, when he’d heard Wilf’s plan.
“A religious community is judged by its facilities for worship,” Wilf replied. “We owe it to ourselves and visiting clergy to have a sacristy. And to Our Lord.”
Jack, by tapping on the wall, by pushing on it, and by shaking his head, had shown where his sympathies lay, but at the mention of Our Lord, Father Urban saw Jack drop his hands and take leave of his senses.
Wilf, however, wanted everybody on his side—as well he might for such a project. “What we should do, Urban, I agree, is add on.”
“Agree? Add on? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father.”
“Add on from the outside, Father. That was the original plan, and then, when winter snuck up on us, I hit upon the present plan—as a temporary solution.”
“As such it has its advantages,” said Father Urban, feeling that any more discouraging comment from him might drive Wilf back to the original plan, and then where would they be? They’d be working outdoors in the middle of winter, taking on the exterior wall, a wall of stone. Why, if they disturbed the vines, they might even bring the house down.
And so Father Urban went along with the others, and with hammer, scout ax, hacksaw, in a cloud of dust and grit he worked along with them. But he wasn’t the team man he’d been on the previous job. During his lunch hour, he took a nap from which he sometimes had to be summoned by Brother Harold (“Father wonders if you’re all right, Father”), and sometimes, during working hours, he went up to his room, and made no bones about it, for a snort (“I find it cuts the dust”). A good part of his working day was spent in wandering back and forth between the lavatory and the job. Yes, he knew what he was, a disgruntled employee blowing himself to a bit of company time, but he didn’t care, and he didn’t give the boss quite enough cause to complain. However, it got so that the employee knew what to expect if, in his journeys to and from the lavatory, he paused too long at a window for a look at the outside world. He knew that the boss would soon come along and offer him a cigarette—there was no use trying to smoke a cigar if you did the kind of work they did—and then a light. There they’d be, then, just a couple of average guys such as they saw in the evening on television, taking their well-earned break, smoking the right brand of cigarette and married to a couple of average gals who, at that very moment, on another channel, were washing their husbands’ dirty work clothes with the right brand of detergent. And the chances were that the employee would make the first move back to the job. Mighty clever people, these Bohunks!
Father Urban worked, when he worked, in a quiet rage. In any other time and place, it seemed to him, a man like Wilf would have known better than to enter religion, or, having made that mistake, would have been required to make the best of it. As it was, Wilf was doing pretty well as a workman—more than should be expected of a priest—and as a priest, you might say, he was doing pretty well for a workman. Even a day laborer, and certainly a carpenter or a painter, had to measure up to the competition—otherwise he’d be out of a job, and his wife and family would suffer. Why shouldn’t Wilf, as priest and rector, be subject to the same law? In a very real sense, Wilf had a family now, and they were suffering. Didn’t he know this? Didn’t he care?
“You know it doesn’t hurt for the laymen to see us like this,” he told his dirty charges toward the end of their first day on the sacristy job. They’d just had a visit from a roofing salesman. “Too many of ’em think the priesthood’s a bed of roses.”
On the other hand, when Father Chmielewski appeared, as he did on the following afternoon, Wilf, forewarned, wore a cassock, met him at the front door, ushered him into the office, and kept him there for the duration of the visit. “I thought of bringing him back here to meet you, Urban, but I didn’t want him to see you like this.”
“Thanks,” said Father Urban.
“He’s definitely a pastor of the old school, and in view of all that’s happened lately, I thought I’d better not risk it. I wanted to, in a way. Too many of the secular clergy think we have it too easy.”
Father Chmielewski had delivered Jack’s wallets but not his pants, Wilf was happy to say, and since Father Chmielewski hadn’t mentioned them or his own (and certainly Wilf hadn’t) it only remained for Jack to return Father Chmielewski’s on Saturday. Jack should hang them up neatly when he arrived. Jack should not spill any more coffee. Jack should not get Father Ch
mielewski’s mixed up with his own when he dressed on Sunday morning. Unless Father Chmielewski said something, and this now seemed very unlikely, Jack should say nothing.
In the days right after Christmas, Father Urban received a half-dozen requests for his services as a speaker—and turned them all down. To give Wilf no serious trouble, but also to lay no golden eggs for him, was once again Father Urban’s policy. Since Wilf prized the workman in Father Urban above all else, that was what he would get.
Wilf knew what was happening, too, for he made it his business to answer the telephone, and he had a way of loitering in the office when the call was for Father Urban. Maybe he figured that a man who drank on the job might have a girl friend, but probably he was just curious. In any case, there was too much of the house dick about Wilf to suit Father Urban—who, however, spoke freely in his presence. “No, I’m sorry. Maybe one of the other fathers could make it. Oh, you wouldn’t? I see. Ill? No, just don’t feel up to it. We’re taking the house apart here. That’s right. Renovations. Why don’t you call back in a month or two? Thanks for calling.”
“Another minor group with major program problems,” he’d say to Wilf, and wouldn’t be able to tell him exactly who had called. That was what got Wilf, you could see, really got him, though he tried not to show it. Opportunities to speak (outside of church) were rare in Wilf’s experience, and he would’ve snapped them all up, but he couldn’t very well act like it.
The secretary of a Catholic business and professional women’s group in Great Plains had the nerve to solicit Father Urban’s services on a post card, which was like trying to take a whale on a bent pin. He tossed the card into Wilf’s wastebasket. “Hey, that’s an important organization!” cried Wilf who, it appeared, had read the card. “Then we’ll be hearing from her again,” Father Urban said, and he was right. A few days later, the secretary phoned to find out whether Father Urban had received her card.
“Oh, a card,” he said, watching Wilf squirm. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning then. I see. You meet once a month except during the summertime, and the Bishop’s your moderator. Did you talk this over with him? Well, you’d better do that. He’s asked you not to call him—why’s that? Trusts you to carry on your fine program, to check with him only when it’s necessary. He hasn’t been able to come to the last two meetings? I see. But you’re sure there’ll be no objection from him. Well, now, I’ll tell you what to do. You get in touch with your moderator, if possible, and get him to write to the rector here. That’s Father Wilfrid. His name is spelled with two i’s—two i’s as in Ignatius. And try to give us a choice of dates. Of course I know the Bishop’s busy—he’s the busiest priest in the diocese, you might say—but we’re pretty busy ourselves. Still, one of us might be able to make it. Me? That’ll be for Father Wilfrid to decide. Won’t be any trouble about transportation, will there? From Duesterhaus? About a mile from downtown Duesterhaus. That’s right. So you get in touch with your moderator, and after we hear from him, if it’s at all possible, I’ll come. Father Wilfrid. That’s right. Two i’s. And thanks for calling.”