Morte D'Urban

by J.F. Powers

  Paul saw it last. After watching for a moment, he said, “Hey, how about that?”

  Billy was trying to count the points on the antlers. “He’d look all right on your wall, Father.”

  “Oh, for a camera!” said Father Urban.

  “Brother Whatsit could see what a deer really looks like,” Billy said. “Go over to him. Want to say hello.”

  The deer was making for a little peninsula of sand and gravel. Father Urban, mindful of the fishing lines, let the deer get between the boat and the shore before coming alongside. The deer kept going, as if following a narrow path in the water. Billy reached out and touched the antlers. Seizing one, he ducked the deer’s head under the water, which was easier done than Father Urban would have imagined. Billy did it again—and Father Urban, who hadn’t liked it the first time, said nothing. Then he realized that Billy was trying to drown the deer.

  There was power in the deer’s neck, but there was no foundation for it. When Billy braced his elbows on the gunwale, he was able to turn the deer by its antlers. When he got the animal squared away from the boat, he pressed down. Father Urban saw the deer’s eyes—big black bubbles—watching him, he thought, and he looked away. He heard bubbles then, and heard the antlers rubbing against the boat. He was feeling strongly what he’d felt only slightly on several occasions in the last three days. He was feeling cheap. The night before, when Billy had introduced him to the Inglises and the Bobs, Father Urban had felt like a poor slum kid who was being treated to a few days of “camp.”

  Father Urban threw the motor into high. The boat stood up in the water. He hadn’t counted on that, but he held on, and Paul held on. Billy, holding on to the deer, left the boat on its way up. When it came down, which it did in a loud belly flop, Father Urban reduced speed and circled back. The deer was now swimming for a point farther up the shore. Billy was treading water, apparently in no difficulty, waiting to be picked up.

  Father Urban brought the boat slowly alongside Billy and then leaned away while Billy was climbing aboard, with Paul’s help.

  Father Urban sensed that the next few minutes would be crucial—that his relationship with Billy was going to be a lot better or a lot worse from now on. The situation was so bad that it might be good. That was really looking on the bright side, of course, but this might be one of those times when Billy would decide he ought to pick up the pieces. With God’s help, it might be so. Billy might respect Father Urban all the more for acting so boldly, for defying him in a good cause, and he might even thank Father Urban for saving him from himself. What Billy had been up to was not, after all, the sort of thing a self-respecting sportsman could look back upon with pleasure. Father Urban might say, “I know, Billy. You wanted to have it stuffed for us. I don’t quarrel with your motives. As a matter of fact, I don’t know where we’d be without them . . .” But it probably wouldn’t go like that.

  “I’m sorry, but I had to do it,” Father Urban said. He started to remove his sweater, meaning to give it to Billy.

  Billy indicated that he didn’t want the sweater, and then that he wished to run the motor.

  Father Urban got the impression that Billy wasn’t talking to him yet—that the situation was still dangerous, but that Billy was making a tremendous effort to control himself. Getting up to change seats, Father Urban saw Paul slipping back into the bow with the life-preserver cushion, and thought, yes, that would be Billy’s way of paying them back—Father Urban for dunking him, Paul for being a witness. They were in for a rough ride, Father Urban was thinking, when Billy pushed him overboard.

  Father Urban, an able swimmer, came smiling to the surface, returning good for evil. He stopped this, though, when Billy and Paul, reeling in their lines, drove off without him.

  About an hour later, Chester and Honey came along in the boat and found Father Urban sitting on the shore. He waded out to them.

  “We heard about it from Paul,” Chester said. “But we had to wait until they left.”

  Father Urban got into the boat. “How did they leave?” he asked.

  “Mad.”

  This didn’t answer Father Urban’s question. He was thinking about the station wagon.

  “And he didn’t pay up,” Chester said. “Told me I could take it out of the piano. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “You can send me my part of the bill.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Chester said. “Unless you insist.”

  “I insist.”

  “He’ll be back,” Honey said. She was sitting up in the bow of the boat, facing out like a figurehead. “In the spring, I’ll bet. When the trout are up.”

  Chester thought this over. “I’ll sell the piano, and get a good secondhand one,” he said. “In case he comes back.”

  “He’ll come back when the trout are up,” Honey said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do,” Chester said.

  Honey turned toward them. “What will you do?” she asked Father Urban.

  “I’ll think of something,” he said.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, he was standing in the little park across from the bus station in Great Plains. He was wearing light cotton slacks, a white sports shirt, no hat, damp socks, and wet shoes, having taken only one pair with him on the trip north. So far, though he’d been waiting around the park for about an hour, and though he’d been a familiar figure in Great Plains only a few months before, nobody had recognized him. He was waiting for a Buster Blue bus, this being the line that served Duesterhaus and surrounding trade area, when a woman in a white convertible pulled up to the curb and spoke to him: “Father Urban?”

  He smiled back, and, trusting his memory of the car, he took a chance: “Mrs Hopwood?”

  14. BELLEISLE

  “YOU’LL BE HAPPY to hear Katie got what was coming to her,” Sally said.

  “I was hoping she would,” said Father Urban.

  “We’ve had this kind of trouble before—before Katie. In fact, Norris is getting used to it. I can’t say that I am.”

  Father Urban smiled. “But how’d you know I’d be happy to hear this? For that matter, how’d you know me?”

  “That morning you left the house—in a taxi—I saw you from my window. And Katie told me how you went to bat for her with Mother.”

  “And struck out.” Or had he? Was it too much to hope that all might yet be well between him and Mrs Thwaites?

  “You were trying the impossible, Father, if that’s any consolation to you.”

  “One never knows about these things,” he said. Sally could be wrong.

  “Norris and I had to pay Katie.”

  “Oh?” said Father Urban. “Oh, I see.”

  “Now tell me how you knew me?”

  “By the car, I confess.” Father Urban laughed at himself. “Not entirely, though.”

  “No?”

  “No, there is a certain resemblance. And, yes, I saw you in the distance, when you went out in the launch. From my window.”

  A Buster Blue bus pulled up behind Sally’s car. Father Urban signaled that he was a passenger, but the driver was getting out to have a cigarette in the park, and so Father Urban did not say good-bye to Sally. She was well preserved for a woman easily thirty-five, possibly forty, small, finely made, attractive. She had a new-old quality that Father Urban had often noticed in children and in other young animals, a fey quality. He could see her in the red pony cart. He liked her as a person and could understand why Monsignor Renton called her the best of the lot. Father Urban felt that she liked him, too, or anyway was curious about him.

  “You’re going back where you go?” she said.

  “That’s right. I’ve been up in the northern part of the state for a few days. On a fishing trip.” He was trying to account for his appearance, but he knew it still sounded odd, for although there might be many parts of the world where people went on fishing trips by bus, Minnesota was not one of them. “I saw some beautiful country up there.”

  “Is someone meeting y
ou in Duesterhaus?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I could drive you to your door. I couldn’t take you there right away, though. Are you in a hurry to get back?”

  “Not a-tall,” said Father Urban. He was in no hurry to face Wilf without the station wagon, and signaled to the driver that he was not a passenger.

  Sally advised him to put his bag in the trunk of the car. “I have to pick up someone,” she said.

  Just as they were pulling away, Sylvia Bean went by in her little Barracuda. Father Urban waved, but Sylvia cut him dead.

  A few blocks away, Sally stopped in front of a run-down apartment building and honked the horn. Presently a woman came out of the building. “This is the person who’s taking care of Mother now,” Sally said, her tone suggesting that she wished it weren’t so.

  “Katie’s gone then?” said Father Urban. He got out of the car. He didn’t want to be sitting between two women.

  “Yes, Katie’s gone back to Ireland.”

  Father Urban had advised Katie to get in touch with him if she wished to leave Mrs Thwaites’s employment and couldn’t for lack of funds, but he really hadn’t known what he’d do if it came to transporting her to Ireland—unless, perhaps, Monsignor Renton could have been interested in the underground-railroad aspects of her case.

  “This is a friend of the family,” Sally said, introducing him to the woman, and not otherwise identifying him—on account of his casual dress, he guessed, and current low rating in Mrs Thwaites’s hit parade of priests. “Mrs Leeson’s taking care of Mother now.”

  Mrs Leeson climbed into the car, saying, “We have a lot of fun.” Sweet-smelling and made up like a birthday cake, she was a large-boned, muscular brunette somewhere between fifty and seventy-five. “Did you catch the Paar show last night?”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” Father Urban said, when he realized that Mrs Leeson was talking to him.

  “He just got back from a fishing trip up north,” Sally said.

  “Now don’t tell me about the big one that got away,” Mrs Leeson said gruffly.

  After more of the same, they arrived at Lake Lucille. Mrs Leeson, saying good-bye to Father Urban, expressed the hope that they’d meet again someday, and Sally said, “I’ll be out in a minute.” Father Urban sat in the car, wondering whether Mrs Leeson would mention him to Mrs Thwaites, and, if so, whether the old lady would roll over to a window to see who he might be, this friend of the family, and, if so, whether this was desirable or not. So far as he could tell, though, without staring, he was not observed from above. When Sally came out of the house, she said, “This must be yours,” and handed Father Urban one of his collars.

  “Thanks. I’m always losing them.”

  “Can I offer you a drink—or don’t you have time for one?”

  “It isn’t a question of time,” Father Urban said, and looked up at Mrs Thwaites’s room—and thought he saw a curtain tremble.

  Sally smiled. “No, I was thinking of the castle,” she said. She gazed away in the direction of the lake and the sun. “I saw Norris a while ago. There. I think I see him. I do, yes.”

  Father Urban shaded his eyes. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “He’s way out.”

  “What’s he doing? Fishing?”

  Sally nodded. “Come on, before he moves. Hadn’t you better leave that here?”

  Father Urban had overlooked the collar in his hand. He deposited it on the seat of the car, and then he followed Sally down to the water. He was still trying to see Norris. They boarded the launch, Sally going to the helm, starting the motor, and Father Urban casting off. They headed straight out into the lake. Soon they were among islands that Father Urban had seen only in the distance, since always before, when he’d sailed under Mrs Thwaites’s command, the launch had pursued a coastal course.

  “You really think it’s safe in here?” he asked. There were rocks all around them.

  “No,” she said. “Not really. These are the Spice Islands. That’s what they were on Dickie’s map, when we were kids. This lake was the whole world then.”

  “What was that big island ahead?”

  “Australia. No, he’s moved, I guess,” Sally said. “If we go around Australia, we may not catch him. No, we’ll go back the way we came, and maybe we’ll see him when we reach the castle.”

  Sally worked back through the Spice Islands, and Father Urban was glad when they were gone. When they reached the castle, however, there was no sign of Norris. “He’s stopped in some inlet,” Sally said. “But he’ll see the smoke and come.”

  “Smoke?”

  “You need a fire in the castle these days.”

  “Don’t overdo it,” Sally said, coming back from the decanter with their glasses.

  “Too much, you think?” said Father Urban, and, with the poker, pushed aside some of the green rushes they’d gathered before entering the castle. The rushes made the fire smoke, and Father Urban felt a certain obligation to keep applying them to the burning logs.

  “He won’t see the smoke anyway, if he’s still out there,” Sally said.

  Father Urban glanced at the sky darkening in one of the slit windows. “He may not be out there then?”

  “No.”

  “But if he went in, wouldn’t he see the launch was gone, and come here?”

  “He might not.”

  “He wouldn’t worry?”

  “No. I often come here. Sometimes I sleep here.”

  “You do?”

  “Is that so odd?”

  “No, I guess not,” said Father Urban, smiling. Really, it was quite comfortable in the castle, with a fire. It was just a one-room castle with an open iron stairway winding up to a trapdoor. There was a bed, or couch, woven of willow and shaped like a swan, tinted powder blue. In two of the slit windows there were screens to let in air and keep out insects. No electricity or water (except for the lake, which lapped against one wall of the castle), but there was firelight, and, on the chimney piece, if more light were required, there was a lamp. The ashes and stones of the fireplace had been warm when they arrived. There was a wind-up phonograph in one corner, and, on the floor, in front of the fireplace, a polar-bear rug with a number of burned spots in it. There were tinned snacks—smoked turkey such as they were having—and there was scotch. “Say, this is good stuff,” Father Urban had said when he tasted it—how good he hadn’t realized until Sally told him it was thirty years old and a hundred and fourteen proof, which made Father Urban feel a lot better about mixing it with lake water. He’d hesitated at that, as he had about eating one of the tiny red berries from a bush by the castle door. The berry had tasted sweet and then bitter.

  “What’d you say this is?” he asked, raising his glass.

  “Old Excellency.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “What was your impression of Mrs Leeson?”

  “Well, she’s nothing like Katie.”

  “No, I’m afraid not. She’s a beautician by trade—a trained operator.”

  “That I can believe.”

  “So Mother’s had her hair dyed.”

  “What? I mean—what color?”

  “Same as mine.”

  Sally’s hair was mahogany. Father Urban shook his head in sorrow. Mrs Thwaites must look like hell.

  “Father Udovic says it looks just fine.”

  “Is that what it used to be—the color of yours?”

  “No, it was black.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Mrs Leeson and Mother watch for a certain commercial on television—one of those mother-and-daughter soap commercials. When it comes on, Mrs Leeson says, ‘My, you two look just like those two.’”

  Again Father Urban shook his head in sorrow.

  “Young Mrs Oscar Holmgreen and her daughter Debbie, of Fargo, North Dakota.”

  “What?”

  “They’re the ones we look like.”

  Sally seemed to find this amusing, but Father
Urban did not find it so. “How is your mother, Sally?” He hadn’t called her Sally before.

  “Happy as a clam.”

  “Is Dickie still away?”

  “Yes.”

  Father Urban waited for more.

  “Dickie and two friends have opened a bookshop in Des Moines.”

  “What? You mean he’s gone back to that?”

  “I gather it’s not like the last one—not Catholic.”

  “And Dickie’s backing it?”

  “Oh no. No more than the others. Dickie isn’t very well off, you know.”

  “Is that so?” Is that so?

  Sally said that Dickie had to get along on the interest from his inheritance, that he’d made over the principal to his mother when he first entered religion. “As he calls it. It was either that or give what he had to them—first it was the Dolomites—or otherwise dispose of it. Naturally, Mother was opposed to that. She was right, of course, as she has been since—a number of times.”

  “So Dickie’s in Des Moines.”

  “‘A Winter’s Tale.’”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they call the place.”

  “Doesn’t sound very good, does it? No wonder his mother’s worried.” With Dickie not very well off, and with Mrs Thwaites sore at Father Urban, was there any hope for Eight Seasons Editions? “Your mother’s happy then? No regrets?”

  “About Katie?”

  “Well, yes,” said Father Urban, though he meant more than that.

  “None.”

  Father Urban looked at Sally—her eyes were actually dark brown but appeared black.

  “And none where you’re concerned. Mother’s a hard, hard old woman. You don’t want to believe that, do you?”

  “Let’s just say she’s an old woman.”

  “A hard, hard old woman.”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s so hard where you’re concerned. You know she worries a lot about you.”

  Sally picked up their glasses. “I wouldn’t count on that, if I were you,” she said, and went over to the decanter.

  “And what was your impression of Norris?” she asked later on. She had just lit the lamp and placed it on the bookcase, by the phonograph, so the light wouldn’t shine in their eyes. They were sitting before the fire in comfortable chairs made of woven willow like the swan but painted a glossy orange that picked up the firelight.