The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (17 page)

She played for blood, no bones about it, but for her there was no other way; it was her nature, as it was the lion’s, and for this reason he found her ferocity pardonable, more a defect of the flesh, venial, while his own trouble was all in the will, mortal. He did not sweat and pray over each card as she must, but he did keep an eye out for reneging and demanded a cut now and then just to aggravate her, and he was always secretly hoping for aces.

With one card left in her hand, the telltale trick coming next, she delayed playing it, showing him first the smile, the preview of defeat. She laid it on the table—so! She held one more trump than he had reasoned possible. Had she palmed it from somewhere? No, she would not go that far; that would not be fair, was worse than reneging, which so easily and often happened accidentally, and she believed in being fair. Besides he had been watching her.

God smote the vines with hail, the sycamore trees with frost, and offered up the flocks to the lightning—but Mrs Stoner! What a cross Father Firman had from God in Mrs Stoner! There were other housekeepers as bad, no doubt, walking the rectories of the world, yes, but . . . yes. He could name one and maybe two priests who were worse off. One, maybe two. Cronin. His scraggly blonde of sixty—take her, with her everlasting banging on the grand piano, the gift of the pastor; her proud talk about the goiter operation at the Mayo Brothers’, also a gift; her honking the parish Buick at passing strange priests because they were all in the game together. She was worse. She was something to keep the home fires burning. Yes sir. And Cronin said she was not a bad person really, but what was he? He was quite a freak himself.

For that matter, could anyone say that Mrs Stoner was a bad person? No. He could not say it himself, and he was no freak. She had her points, Mrs Stoner. She was clean. And though she cooked poorly, could not play the organ, would not take up the collection in an emergency, and went to card parties, and told all—even so, she was clean. She washed everything. Sometimes her underwear hung down beneath her dress like a paratrooper’s pants, but it and everything she touched was clean. She washed constantly. She was clean.

She had her other points, to be sure—her faults, you might say. She snooped—no mistake about it—but it was not snooping for snooping’s sake; she had a reason. She did other things, always with a reason. She overcharged on rosaries and prayer books, but that was for the sake of the poor. She censored the pamphlet rack, but that was to prevent scandal. She pried into the baptismal and matrimonial records, but there was no other way if Father was out, and in this way she had once uncovered a bastard and flushed him out of the rectory, but that was the perverted decency of the times. She held her nose over bad marriages in the presence of the victims, but that was her sorrow and came from having her husband buried in a mine. And he had caught her telling a bewildered young couple that there was only one good reason for their wanting to enter into a mixed marriage—the child had to have a name, and that—that was what?

She hid his books, kept him from smoking, picked his friends (usually the pastors of her colleagues), bawled out people for calling after dark, had no humor, except at cards, and then it was grim, very grim, and she sat hatchet-faced every morning at Mass. But she went to Mass, which was all that kept the church from being empty some mornings. She did annoying things all day long. She said annoying things into the night. She said she had given him the best years of her life. Had she? Perhaps—for the miner had her only a year. It was too bad, sinfully bad, when he thought of it like that. But all talk of best years and life was nonsense. He had to consider the heart of the matter, the essence. The essence was that housekeepers were hard to get, harder to get than ushers, than willing workers, than organists, than secretaries—yes, harder to get than assistants or vocations.

And she was a
saver
—saved money, saved electricity, saved string, bags, sugar, saved—him. That’s what she did. That’s what she said she did, and she was right, in a way. In a way, she was usually right. In fact, she was always right—in a way. And you could never get a Filipino to come way out here and live. Not a young one anyway, and he had never seen an old one. Not a Filipino. They liked to dress up and live.

Should he let it drop about Fish having one, just to throw a scare into her, let her know he was doing some thinking? No. It would be a perfect cue for the one about a man needing a woman to look after him. He was not up to that again, not tonight.

Now she was doing what she liked most of all. She was making a grand slam, playing it out card for card, though it was in the bag, prolonging what would have been cut short out of mercy in gentle company. Father Firman knew the agony of losing.

She slashed down the last card, a miserable deuce trump, and did in the hapless king of hearts he had been saving.

“Skunked you!”

She was awful in victory. Here was the bitter end of their long day together, the final murderous hour in which all they wanted to say—all he wouldn’t and all she couldn’t—came out in the cards. Whoever won at honeymoon won the day, slept on the other’s scalp, and God alone had to help the loser.

“We’ve been at it long enough, Mrs Stoner,” he said, seeing her assembling the cards for another round.

“Had enough, huh!”

Father Firman grumbled something.

“No?”

“Yes.”

She pulled the table away and left it against the wall for the next time. She went out of the study carrying the socks, content and clucking. He closed his eyes after her and began to get under way in the rocking chair, the nightly trip to nowhere. He could hear her brewing a cup of tea in the kitchen and conversing with the cat. She made her way up the stairs, carrying the tea, followed by the cat, purring.

He waited, rocking out to sea, until she would be sure to be through in the bathroom. Then he got up and locked the front door (she looked after the back door) and loosened his collar going upstairs.

In the bathroom he mixed a glass of antiseptic, always afraid of pyorrhea, and gargled to ward off pharyngitis.

When he turned on the light in his room, the moths and beetles began to batter against the screens, the lighter insects humming . . .

Yes, and she had the guest room. How did she come to get that? Why wasn’t she in the back room, in her proper place? He knew, if he cared to remember. The screen in the back room—it let in mosquitoes, and if it didn’t do that she’d love to sleep back there, Father, looking out at the steeple and the blessed cross on top, Father, if it just weren’t for the screen, Father. Very well, Mrs Stoner, I’ll get it fixed or fix it myself. Oh, could you now, Father? I could, Mrs Stoner, and I will. In the meantime you take the guest room. Yes, Father, and thank you, Father, the house ringing with amenities then. Years ago, all that. She was a pie-faced girl then, not really a girl perhaps, but not too old to marry again. But she never had. In fact, he could not remember that she had even tried for a husband since coming to the rectory, but, of course, he could be wrong, not knowing how they went about it. God! God save us! Had she got her wires crossed and mistaken him all these years for
that
?
That!
Him! Suffering God! No. That was going too far. That was getting morbid. No. He must not think of that again, ever. No.

But just the same she had got the guest room and she had it yet. Well, did it matter? Nobody ever came to see him anymore, nobody to stay overnight anyway, nobody to stay very long . . . not anymore. He knew how they laughed at him. He had heard Frank humming all right—before he saw how serious and sad the situation was and took pity—humming, “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.” But then they’d always laughed at him for something—for not being an athlete, for wearing glasses, for having kidney trouble . . . and mail coming addressed to Rev. and Mrs Stoner.

Removing his shirt, he bent over the table to read the volume left open from last night. He read, translating easily, “
Eisdem licet cum illis
. . . Clerics are allowed to reside only with women about whom there can be no suspicion, either because of a natural bond (as mother, sister, aunt) or of advanced age, combined in both cases with good repute.”

Last night he had read it, and many nights before, each time as though this time to find what was missing, to find what obviously was not in the paragraph, his problem considered, a way out. She was not mother, not sister, not aunt, and
advanced age
was a relative term (why, she was younger than he was) and so, eureka, she did not meet the letter of the law—but, alas, how she fulfilled the spirit! And besides it would be a slimy way of handling it after all her years of service. He could not afford to pension her off, either.

He slammed the book shut. He slapped himself fiercely on the back, missing the wily mosquito, and whirled to find it. He took a magazine and folded it into a swatter. Then he saw it—oh, the preternatural cunning of it!—poised in the beard of St Joseph on the bookcase. He could not hit it there. He teased it away, wanting it to light on the wall, but it knew his thoughts and flew high away. He swung wildly, hoping to stun it, missed, swung back, catching St Joseph across the neck. The statue fell to the floor and broke.

Mrs Stoner was panting in the hall outside his door.

“What is it?”

“Mosquitoes!”

“What is it, Father? Are you hurt?”

“Mosquitoes—damn it! And only the female bites!”

Mrs Stoner, after a moment, said, “Shame on you, Father. She needs the blood for her eggs.”

He dropped the magazine and lunged at the mosquito with his bare hand.

She went back to her room, saying, “Pshaw, I thought it was burglars murdering you in your bed.”

He lunged again.

ALL THEM THAT dropped in at Bullen’s last night was talking about the terrible accident that almost happened to Clara Beck—that’s Clyde Bullen’s best girl. I am in complete charge of the pool tables and cigar counter, including the punchboards, but I am not at my regular spot in front, on account of Clyde has got a hot game of rotation going at the new table, and I am the only one he will leave chalk his cue. While I am chalking it and collecting for games and racking the balls I am hearing from everybody how Clara got pulled out of the river by Sleep Bailey.

He is not one of the boys, Sleep, but just a nigger that’s deef and lives over in jigtown somewhere and plays the piano for dances at the Louisiana Social Parlor. They say he can’t hear nothing but music. Spends the day loafing and fishing. He’s fishing—is the story—when he seed Clara in the river below the Ludlow road bridge, and he swum out and saved her. Had to knock her out to do it, she put up such a fight. Anyways he saved her from drownding. That was the story everybody was telling.

Clyde has got the idee of taking up a collection for Sleep, as it was a brave deed he done and he don’t have nothing to his name but a tub of fishing worms. On the other hand, he don’t need nothing, being a nigger, not needing nothing. But Clara is Clyde’s girl and it is Clyde’s idee and so it is going over pretty big as most of the boys is trying to stay in with Clyde and the rest is owing him money and can’t help themselves. I chipped in two bits myself.

Clyde is just fixing to shoot when Skeeter Bird comes in and says, “Little cold for swimming, ain’t it, Clyde?”

It upsets Clyde and he has to line up the thirteen ball again. I remember it is the thirteen ‘cause they ain’t nobody round here that’s got the eye Clyde has got for them big balls and that thirteen is his special favor-ite, says it’s lucky—it and the nine. I tell you this on account of Clyde misses his shot. Looked to me and anybody else that knowed Clyde’s game that what Skeeter said upset his aim.

“What’s eating you?” Clyde says to Skeeter, plenty riled. I can see he don’t feel so bad about the thirteen getting away as he might of, as he has left it sewed up for Ace Haskins, that claims he once took a game from the great Ralph Greenleaf. “You got something to say?” Clyde says.

“No,” Skeeter says, “only—”

“Only what?” Clyde wants to know.

“Only that Bailey nigger got hisself scratched up nice, Clyde.”

“So I am taking up a little collection for him,” Clyde says. “Pass the plate to Brother Bird, boys.”

But Skeeter, he don’t move a finger, just says, “Clara got banged up some, too, Clyde. Nigger must of socked her good.”

None of us knowed what Skeeter was getting at, except maybe Clyde, that once took a course in mind reading, but we don’t like it. And Clyde, I can tell, don’t like it. The cue stick is shaking a little in his hand like he wants to use it on Skeeter and he don’t shoot right away. He straightens up and says, “Well, he hadda keep her from strangling him while he was rescuing her, didn’t he? It was for her own good.”

“Yeah, guess so,” Skeeter says. “But they both looked like they been in a mean scrap.”

“That so?” Clyde says. “Was you there?”

“No, but I heard,” Skeeter says.

“You heard,” Clyde says. He gets ready to drop the fifteen.

“Yeah,” Skeeter says. “You know, Clyde, that Bailey nigger is a funny nigger.”

“How’s that?” Clyde says, watching Skeeter close. “What’s wrong with him?” Clyde holds up his shot and looks right at Skeeter. “Come on, out with it.”

“Oh, I don’t know as they’s a lot wrong with him,” Skeeter says. “I guess he’s all right. Lazy damn nigger is all. Won’t keep a job—just wants to play on the piano and fish.”

“Never would of rescued Clara if he didn’t,” Clyde says. “And besides what kind of job you holding down?”

Now that gets Skeeter where it hurts on account of he don’t work hisself, unless you call selling rubbers work or peddling art studies work. Yeah, that’s what he calls them. Art studies. Shows a girl that ain’t got no clothes on, except maybe her garters, and down below it says “Pensive” or “Evening in Paris.” Skeeter sells them to artists, he says—he’ll tell you that to your face—but he’s always got a few left over for the boys at Bullen’s.