by J.F. Powers
So he placed the screen in front of the fire, extinguished the lamp, and checked out of the castle. At the end of the stone pier, he sat down and removed his shoes and socks. No stars, only a cloudy half-assed moon, and the lake more or less invisible. It was very definitely there, though, in motion, noisy with waves, waiting for him. After tying his shoes together, and then to his belt, he slipped down into the cold, cold water, and struck out for the mainland. It was perhaps fifty yards away.
He soon discovered that the wind, like everything else that day, was against him. Somewhere between the island and the mainland, when he could see neither very well, and the waves seemed to shove him down, he sensed the beginnings of a cramp, panicked, and, feeling that it was him or them, he got rid of his shoes. He did go along better after that, but when he reached the other shore—when this was no longer his only objective in life—he knew what he’d done. Even as a child, he hadn’t liked going barefooted, and what he’d felt then, the innate cruelty of sticks and stones, he felt again. This, though, was nothing now. Wet and woebegone and shivering, he sat on a fallen birch and put on his socks and hid the whiteness of his feet from himself.
He was down the shore about two hundred yards from the Thwaites house. He was tempted to head for the main road, to go on without his bag, and hope that it would somehow reach him later, but this, he realized, could be a bad mistake, the same kind of mistake he’d made when he’d jettisoned his shoes. He would just be letting himself in for more trouble, trouble that could easily be avoided—easily, that is, if all his instincts weren’t for getting off Mrs Thwaites’s property before something worse happened to him.
But he did go to the car and he did get his bag out of the trunk. Then he thought of his collar, left on the front seat, but it wasn’t there. He felt around on the floor. Not there, either. So he went on without it. If Sally had taken it, he was afraid that more was wrong with her than he’d thought.
On the main road, cars passed him by. He didn’t blame them. When he came to a filling station, with a nice warm stove in it, and a pay telephone, he didn’t blame the attendant for looking at him as he did: Think he’d sell his bag before his shoes. “Use this one,” the attendant said, pointing to the telephone on the desk. “It won’t cost you.”
“Well, I must say that’s nice of you,” said Father Urban. There was only one person he could call, once he really thought about it, and fortunately that one was in. “And don’t send anybody else,” Father Urban said. “Come yourself.”
“Holy Paul!” said Monsignor Renton when he saw what he’d come for. “You look like you spent the day barking at the bottom of a well.”
15. ONE OF OUR BEST MEN
AFTER A DRINK at Monsignor Renton’s (“Bourbon, Red, and no ice”), Father Urban was driven back to the Hill in the Imperial. His bag was heavy with wet clothing—how much Monsignor Renton didn’t know, for Father Urban hadn’t mentioned his earlier mishap. He was wearing his own damp underwear, shirt and trousers from Monsignor Renton, socks and shoes from Cox’s room (Cox was away, attending a convention of youth specialists), and a suede jacket from Box, to whom Monsignor Renton had explained, “It wasn’t so cold when Father Urban left the cloister.”
“Well, of course, it was no way for her to act,” Monsignor Renton said, on the way to the Hill, “but if you ask me, she’s still the best of the lot.” “You may be right,” said Father Urban. He had told Monsignor Renton that Sally had left the castle in a huff, and, thinking of her honor as much as his own, he had let Monsignor Renton assume that Norris had been there at the time. Monsignor Renton was under the impression that Norris was still there. “You say there’s a place to sleep?” “Oh yes.” “Well, I suppose he’ll be all right then. She’ll cool off by morning.” “Oh yes.” “I wouldn’t take it so hard, if I were you. It may not have been your fault at all. In fact, I’d say it was a lovers’ quarrel, and you got caught in the middle.” “You may be right.” “If I’d been in your shoes, though, I would’ve stayed with Norris.” “Yes, well, I was in a hurry to get home.” “Good shoes, were they?” “Pretty good.” “Too bad. Say, I shot one of those Dunlop Maxfli’s today. Ever use ’em?” “I have, yes.” “Good ball.” “Yes.” “And how was the fishing up north?” “Not too good.” “I’m told you have to go farther north, almost to the Arctic Circle, if you want to catch anything.” “You may be right.” “Coming back to the other, though, I’d say the moral, if any, is stay away from people.”
Father Urban told Wilf that Billy and Paul had left rather suddenly, no more than that, but that was enough for Wilf. According to Wilf, traveling by car was faster than going by train, or even by plane, from remote points. When Wilf asked how the fishing had been, Father Urban said, “Lousy.” Wilf said it had been unusually good at home, that Brother Harold had frozen about seventy pounds in the past two days, including one walleye, an eight-pound lunker.
“You should’ve stayed here,” Wilf said.
Father Urban went around with a numb feeling, nursing a cold. He preached when asked, but not too well. He passed up an important funeral in Great Plains. In general, he neglected his contacts. Had there been any occasion to do so, he could not have said “Hello—hello!” with gusto. He wasn’t himself. He even stayed away from the course.
Naturally, he wondered what had become of the station wagon, and thought of various heartbreaking ways in which Billy might dispose of it, or render the Order’s title to it useless. For two weeks, though, he held Wilf off, with Wilf’s help. Traveling (Wilf said) was much faster by car than by train, or even by plane, from remote points, and “business,” which had made Billy hurry back to Chicago, was keeping him there and holding him incommunicado. Toward the end of this period, however, Wilf did say it was lucky they hadn’t traded in the pickup truck.
And then a notice came from the Minnesota State Highway Department starting that the Wisconsin State Highway Department had reported a station wagon—Rambler, brown, registered in ownership of Order of St Clement, Duesterhaus, Minnesota —parked at Chicago & North Western R.R. Station, Ashland, Wisconsin. Keys, found in car, in possession of Police Department, Ashland, Wisconsin.
“What a man!” said Wilf. “He forgot all about it!”
When Father Urban heard the news, his heart gave a little leap, and a little voice said, “All is not lost!” But another little voice said, “Aw, shut up!”
The next morning, Brother Harold was dispatched to Ashland by bus. He was carrying his lunch and a letter for the Chief of Police, a letter in which Wilf explained everything.
And that morning Father Urban joined Jack in the garden where they toiled at getting in the “swedes” and other root crops. Father Urban, who hadn’t set foot in the garden since his picture was taken for the brochure, was trying to lick his cold, trying to sweat it away. His cold had hung on, and lately it had descended into his chest from which, from time to time, there now came odd noises, as if he were digesting his lungs. Soon after he began working in the garden, he realized how weak he was, and was ready to quit, but he didn’t, and presently he swooned dead away.
When he came to, Jack walked him to his room. Wilf called the doctor. That afternoon, Father Urban was admitted to the hospital in Great Plains and placed in an oxygen tent. That was the last he saw of himself for a while. Crazy dreams—his father raking a sand trap that wouldn’t stay raked, his mother playing the square piano by the light of the swan’s-head gas jet that had been in the kitchen, over the pump. He spent a great deal of time back in Illinois, in a land of pumps, cisterns, grape arbors, outhouses, lush cemeteries, and rain. The rain went on and on, and then it stopped. When he came to, though, it was there outside his window.
“No,” said Monsignor Renton, his first visitor. “We haven’t had any rain to speak of until today. Actually, it began late last night. I’d say you missed the best week of the year. You won’t see another like it until next year.”
“If then,” said Father Urban. That was how he felt.<
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Four days later, he was strong enough to return to the Hill, but he was still pretty weak. His headaches were still with him, and had joined forces with whatever ailed him gastrically, so that they were now sick headaches. He had no appetite for food, or anything. Even reading was too much for him. When he was up—he was in and out of bed all day—he just sat in his chair (again on loan to him from the Rec Room) and watched the wind and the rain strip the trees, all but the red oak, and wondered how many old paupers before him had watched the coming of winter from that window.
There hadn’t been much mail for him when he got out of the hospital, a bill (forty-two dollars) from Henn’s Haven, with a note at the bottom, “Just a friendly hello from the north woods, and that goes double for Mother. Deer season starts Nov. 11 but still time to make reservations if you hurry. Get up a party. Group rates. As always, Dad Henn”; a letter from Father Excelsior saying he’d written, as advised, to the address in Des Moines, but had received no reply—any other suggestions?; and a ballot from the Novitiate.
Father Urban tried to discuss the election with Jack, who, with Rex, visited him in the evening, but it wasn’t easy. About all Jack would say was that Wilf seemed to think it would be Father Boniface again. “He would,” said Father Urban. “Or,” said Jack, “Father Siegfried.” “Yeah?” said Father Urban. “I’d say we need more of a change than that. An older man, I’d say. Look at the job Pope John’s doing.” Father Urban, in a futile gesture, marked his ballot for Father August, and would’ve advised Jack to do likewise if he hadn’t already voted. “I hope you didn’t go for Boniface.” Jack didn’t respond at all to this, and thus adhered to the letter of the Rule. The Holy Founder, who had lived for some years in Rome, and had seen plenty of dirty pool in his day, was very strict on that point—no politicking, fratres.
When the weather turned clear and cold—it was now late in October—Wilf got out his devil’s-food coat, Brother Harold put discount-house anti-freeze in the pickup truck and station wagon, and Father Urban plugged in the electric heater. “I’m afraid there’s another overshoe down there somewhere,” he told Wilf.
“Run it on low, will you?” said Wilf. He was busy with retreatants these days, and only stopped in to see Father Urban for a few minutes in the evening. If Jack and Rex happened to be there, Wilf, when he left, took Rex with him. “Heat’s bad for a dog like this.” There was more to it than that, though. Rex had become attached to Jack, and Wilf was jealous. “C’mon, boy!” and “Here, boy!” he’d cry, with a dubious look in his eye. Rex and Wilf would go away together, but Rex soon returned to Father Urban’s room and Jack. There wasn’t much Wilf could do about it. He’d read about a rabid skunk in the Farmer, and didn’t care to have the dog out at night, unattended, or to be out very long himself. “You know where that wind’s coming from, don’t you? Hudson Bay.”
Jack brought his manuscript to Father Urban’s room in the evening, and worked on it there, in comfort. The first time Father Urban got a look at it, he was alarmed. A huntress, chasing a deer, had shot an arrow into Sir Launcelot by mistake, the arrow going into him past the barb, “in such a place,” Jack had written, “that he might not sit in no saddle.”
“Hey,” said Father Urban. “What kind of English is that?”
“Malory kept the double negative to preserve the spirit of the original French,” Jack said. “And that’s what Mr Thwaites wants to do—to preserve the spirit of the original English.”
“Should be great for children.”
“We’ll have an explanatory note, of course.”
“‘That he might not sit in no saddle’! Let’s face it, Jack. It sounds like hell.”
“It did to me at first.”
Father Urban was pretty sure that Jack was wasting his time with Sir Launcelot—as Jack called him. Father Urban called him Lancelot. “Have you heard from Dickie lately?”
“Mr Thwaites? No, not lately.”
“Have you done anything with St Adalbert?”
“I still have some way to go with this, and this comes first.” Poor Jack!
There were five hundred seven chapters in Malory, and even those dealing directly with Sir Launcelot were too many for the planned edition. It was necessary, too, to treat of such events as the coming of Arthur, and the founding of the Round Table, and such characters as Merlin, Guenever, Morgan le Fay, Sir Gawaine, and Sir Galahad. Jack regarded Sir Galahad as the real hero of the book, and had given him the full treatment. He had wished to do more for Sir Percival and Sir Tristram, whom he rated next to Sir Galahad in holiness, but this was impossible, for reasons of space. The biggest problem for Jack, though, was Sir Launcelot.
“There are times when I don’t know where I am with him,” Jack told Father Urban. “He’s the Hamlet of the book.” Jack could find no evidence that Sir Launcelot and Lady Elaine had been married before a priest. Sir Launcelot had been under a spell when he begat the child of their union, but the same could not be said for Lady Elaine. Why hadn’t their union been regularized later? With another Elaine, the fair maid of Astolat, Sir Launcelot had been chaste enough—she had literally died as a result. What Sir Launcelot had to say, by way of explanation, was certainly to his credit: “She would none other ways be answered but that she would be my wife, outher else my paramour; and of these two I would not grant her, but I proffered her, for her good love that she showed me, a thousand pounds yearly to her, and to her heirs, and to wed any manner knight that she could find best to love in her heart . . . I love not to be constrained to love; for love must arise of the heart, and not by no constraint.” This, though, was no help where the first Elaine was concerned. Young Galahad, through the negligence of both parents, relatives on both sides, and the clergy, too, it would appear, had been born a bastard.
This was a matter that would not be dealt with in the planned edition, but it did worry Jack. Had he been able to understand it, then he thought he might have understood the relationship between Sir Launcelot and Guenever. This would have to be dealt with somehow, for it was this relationship that had led to war between King Arthur and Sir Launcelot (a war fortunately nipped in the bud by the Pope), to the dissolution of the fellowship of the Round Table, to King Arthur’s death, to Sir Gawaine’s death, to Guenever’s entering a nunnery (as a nun), and to the vocation of Sir (later Father) Launcelot.
“I see what you mean,” Father Urban said. “What do they usually do in children’s editions?”
“One I have refers to ‘sinful love.’”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’ve thought of ‘untrue love.’”
“That’s better.”
“Or ‘high treason.’”
“I’d say that’s it.”
Jack, however, didn’t regard Sir Launcelot guilty as charged. “Malory seems to be of two minds about the Queen, too.” Jack read a couple of passages to Father Urban. “See?” he said.
“Look. I don’t know anything about this,” Father Urban said. “I’ve always heard that Sir Lancelot and the Queen were that way, but I don’t know.”
“There’s good evidence that Sir Launcelot, on the night he was surprised by Sir Agravaine and others, was innocent. I could show you where.”
“No, thanks,” said Father Urban, and went back to his own reading. He had brought up several volumes from The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the few sets in the Hill’s library that was all there, and was enjoying a respite from the Dark and Middle Ages. It was surprising, though, how often he came across passages that started him thinking on his own life. “Killing a deer from a boat while the poor animal is swimming in the water, or on snowshoes as it flounders helplessly in the deep drifts, can only be justified on the plea of hunger. This is also true of lying in wait at a lick. Whoever indulges in any of these methods, save from necessity, is a butcher pure and simple, and has no business in the company of true sportsmen.” And sometimes just a word would start Father Urban thinking: “ . . . we are glad to sit b
y the great fireplace, with its roaring cottonwood logs”; “. . . spangled with brilliant red berry clusters”; “Sometimes we racked, or shacked along at the fox trot, which is the cow-pony’s ordinary gait.”
A couple of evenings later, though, Father Urban was drawn into the question of Sir Launcelot’s guilt or innocence. In the end, after considering the text, he was inclined to agree with Jack. Sir Launcelot’s past performances with the Queen were against him, it was true. Yes, even if, as Malory said, “love that time was not as is nowadays,” Sir Launcelot had “brast” the iron bars clean out of the window to Guenever’s chamber on one occasion, and had taken his “pleasance and liking” until dawn. But on the night he was surprised by Sir Agravaine, Sir Mordred, Sir Colgrevance, and others, Father Urban found him not guilty. “He says he’s innocent, and I, for one, believe him,” said Father Urban.
“My, I’m glad to hear you say that,” Jack said. He had been bogged down in the book, and now went on swiftly, writing that Sir Launcelot and the Queen were “wrongly accused of high treason on this occasion,” rushing through the battle scenes, and on to the hermitage where the Archbishop of Canterbury was hermit in residence. There Sir Launcelot died to the world and, after the customary six years of study, took Orders and was instrumental in the vocations of Sir Bors, Sir Galihud, Sir Galihodin, Sir Blamore, Sir Bleoberis, Sir Villiers, Sir Clarras, and Sir Gahalantine. “And there was none of these knights but they read in books,” Jack wrote, “and holp for to sing Mass, and rang bells, and did bodily all manner of service. And so their horses went where they would, for they took no regard of no worldly riches. For when they saw Sir Launcelot endure such penance, in prayers, and fastings, they took no force what pain they endured, for to see the noblest knight of the world take such abstinence that he waxed full lean.”
“You’ve lost some weight,” said Mr O’Hara, who owned the barber shop in the General Diggles Hotel. Mr O’Hara was a good barber, good enough to hold a chair in the Palmer House, but he wouldn’t leave it at that. His real love was medicine, and if you were ignorant of his profession’s history, in this respect, he told you about it. He had prescribed “Restorine” for Father Urban’s gray hair, and a girdle for Father Urban’s pot, “not that you really need one.” (Father Urban hadn’t done anything about these vital matters.) Mr O’Hara also prescribed for the world’s ills. Give Arizona more water, and you wouldn’t know it from Wisconsin. Heat the Yukon—or even the South Pole, which, unlike the North Pole, had land under it—and evaporate any surplus water atomically, or pipe it up to Arizona in light plastic pipes. Regulate the Gulf Stream. Give the world what it needed, and it would be all right, and do the same for people. Very few of the world’s leaders were properly mated, and Great Plains was no different. Ray Bean wasn’t good for Sylvia, and Marge, the wife of George, Father Urban’s friend in the bank, was bad for him. Mr O’Hara’s new shoeshine boy was another who needed help. “Much as I’d like to tell him what to do, I can’t. He’s a strict Lutheran.” For an Irish Catholic, Mr O’Hara was an odd duck. He got a lot out of Life, and was so sincerely interested in the physiology of the world and its people, and was so humorless, that Father Urban, when he felt that some objection, or modification, was in order, didn’t know how to put it. So he said nothing. Every time he went to Mr O’Hara he thought of going elsewhere for his next haircut, but he always returned to Mr O’Hara—he was such a good barber. Others went to him as they would to a physician. You couldn’t quite hear what was being said at Mr O’Hara’s chair, which was at the rear of the shop, but you could see Mr O’Hara listening to the patient describe his ailment in his own words. You could see Mr O’Hara nodding and gravely inquiring. Sometimes Mr O’Hara’s razor would fall silent on the strop, while he listened, or his scissors would hang open, poised between snips. But then would come the diagnosis, shnip, snip, snip, prognosis, shnip, snip, snip, and cure, if any, and, finally, as the patient left the chair, “Feel free to call me at the house, Bill. Next.”