The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (2 page)

It is the priests’ pretense that every constituent of their lives is transparent that gives this exchange its comic poignancy: “. . . but bowed his head in silent grace.” Look how the fish live: look how the priests live. What has happened to the impulses and the spiritual visitations, the qualms and scruples, that must have directed curate and pastor in earlier years toward the priesthood? And now they are embroiled in a little play of power about a key. Was it for this that Christ was crucified and Paul set up a church? James, in writing “The Turn of the Screw,” determined that instead of supplying instances of the evil deeds of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, he would “make the reader
think
the evil.” “Make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.” Similarly, Powers—precisely by keeping everything he shows visible, external, and conventional—makes the reader think the forces that are not on show, the spiritual experiences that started out so compellingly and have issued in these penuries.

Not all of these stories are about priests. My favorite story, “Renner,” is entirely secular: we are shown an eating house in a Midwestern city. There are seven characters: the narrator, his colleague Renner, the waiter Emil, a patron named Ross, a not-entirely-sober Irishman, a German, and “the fat one.” Nothing much happens, there is no plot, there are no dramatic climaxes or crises. Some of the characters are merely playing cards at a table. They are nearly anonymous. But they, and the lives they lead, are revealed by small gestures and silences, minute changes of tone. It is not a typical story of Powers’s. His talent may have been startled to find itself taking this form. But the story is, in its quiet way, thrilling. The first time I read it, I knew I was reading the work of a master. A work of literature is a book you’d be happy to read again and again—like the book in your hand.

—D
ENIS
D
ONOGHUE

THE TREES HAD the bad luck to be born mulberry and to attract bees. It was not the first time, Father said, and so you could not say he was being unfair. It was, in fact, the second time that a bee had come up and stung him on the front porch. What if it had been a wasp? How did he know it was one of the mulberry bees? He knew. That was all. And now, Sister, if you’ll just take the others into the house with you, we’ll get down to work. She had ordered the others into the convent, but had stayed to plead privately for the trees. The three big ones must go. He would spare the small one until such time as it grew up and became a menace.

Adjusting the shade, which let the sun through in withered cracks like the rivers on a map, she peeked out at the baking schoolyard, at the three trees. Waves of heat wandered thirstily over the pebbles, led around by the uncertain wind. She could see the figure of Father walking the heat waves, a fat vision in black returning to the scene of the crime, grabbing the axe away from the janitor . . . Here, John, let me give her the first lick! . . . And so, possibly fancying himself a hundred years back, the most notable person at the birth of a canal or railroad, and with the children for his amazed audience, he had dealt the first blow. Incredible priest!

She left the room and went downstairs. They were waiting in the parlor. She knew at a glance that one was missing. Besides herself, they were twelve—the apostles. It was the kind of joke they could appreciate, but not to be carried too far, for then one of them must be Judas, which was not funny. In the same way she, as the leader of the apostles, feared the implication as blasphemous. It was not a very good joke for the convent, but it was fine to tell lay people, to let them know there was life there.

She entered the little chapel off the parlor. Here the rug was thicker and the same wide-board floor made to shine. She knelt for a moment and then, genuflecting in the easy, jointless way that comes from years of it, she left. Sister Eleanor, the one missing, followed her into the parlor.

“All right, Sisters, let’s go.” She led them through the sagging house, which daily surpassed itself in gloominess and was only too clean and crowded not to seem haunted, and over the splintery floor rising and sinking underfoot like a raft. She opened the back door and waited for them to pass. She thought of herself as a turnkey releasing them briefly to the sun and then to their common, sudden doom. They proceeded silently across the schoolyard, past the stumps bleeding sap, the bright chips dirtying in the gravel, a few twigs folded in death.

Going under the basketball standards she thought they needed only a raven or two to become gibbets in the burning sun. A pebble lit in the lacings of her shoe. She stopped to free it. She believed she preferred honest dust to manufactured pebbles. Dust lent itself to philosophizing and was easier on the children’s knees.

They climbed the cement steps, parting the dish towels on the porch as portieres, and entered the rectory. The towels were dry and the housekeeper would be gone. She sensed a little longing circulate among the sisters as they filed into the kitchen. It was all modern, the
after
for the
before
they would always have at the convent. She did not care for it, however. It hurt the eyes, like a field of sunny snow. A cockroach turned around and ran the other way on the sink. At least he was not modern.

The dining room was still groggy from Sunday dinner. They drew chairs up to the table in which the housekeeper had inserted extra leaves before taking the afternoon off. The table was covered with the soiled cloth that two of them would be washing tomorrow. They sighed. There, in the middle of the table, in canvas sacks the size of mailbags, were the day’s three collections, the ledgers and index cards for recording individual contributions. They sat down to count.

With them all sitting around the table, it seemed the time for her to pray, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts . . .”

Sister Antonia, her assistant, seized one of the sacks and emptied it out on the table. “Come on, you money-changers, dig in!” Sister Antonia rammed her red hands into the pile and leveled it off. “Money, money, money.”

“Shall we do what we did last week?” asked Sister Florence. She looked hopefully at Sister Antonia.

“Cubs and White Sox?” said Sister Antonia. “O.K., if it’ll make you happy.” Sister Antonia dumped out the other sack. The winner would be the one counting the most money. They chose up sides and changed seats accordingly, leaving Sister Antonia and herself to do the envelopes.

Sister Louise and Sister Paula, who could remember several regimes before hers and might have been mothers superior themselves, constituted a resistance movement, each in her fashion. Sister Louise went to sleep in a nice, unobtrusive way, chin in wimple. But Sister Paula—Sister Cigar Box to the children, with whom she was
not
a great favorite—stayed awake to grumble and would touch only the coins that appeared old, foreign, or very new to her. She stared long and hard at them while Sister Louise dozed with a handful of sweaty nickels.

It was their way of informing everyone of their disapproval, of letting her know it had not been like this in former times, that Sunday had been a day of rest under other leadership. They were right, she knew too well, and was ashamed that she could not bring herself to make a stand against Father. Fortunately, the two old sisters could not carry the resistance beyond themselves. She left them to Sister Antonia. The others, to make the contest even, divided the dead weight between them. The Cubs got Sister Louise and Sister Paula went with the White Sox.

A horn tooted out in front of the rectory, and from his room upstairs young Father shouted, “
Cominnggg!
Tell him I’m coming!” The shout sailed down the stairway and out to Father on the porch.

“He’s coming,” Father called to the car. “How’s your health?”

She could not catch the reply for the noise young Father made running around upstairs. He had on his shower clogs and was such a heavy man.

Finally the ceiling settled, and young Father came clattering down the front stairs, dragging his golf clubs behind him. He spoke to Father on the porch.

“Want me home for Devotions, Father?”

“Oh hell, Bill, have a good time. Won’t anybody come in weather like this but the nuns. I’ll handle it.”

“Well—thanks, Boss.”

“Look out for that nineteenth hole; that’s all I got to say. Have a good time.”

“You talked me into it.”

Sister Cigar Box dropped a half dollar from an unnecessary height and listened to the ring. “Lead! And I suppose that was that Father O’Mammon in his new machine out waking the dead! I’m on to him. I had him in school.”

“O’Hannon, Sister,” corrected Sister Antonia.

“Of St Judas’s parish. I know.”

“Of St Jude’s, Sister.”

“Crazy!”

Father’s radio woke up with a roar.

“The symphony!” breathed Sister Charlotte, who gave piano lessons to beginners six days a week.

“It’s nice,” Sister Cigar Box rasped when Father dialed away from it. “W
as
n’t it?”

Now Father was getting the news and disputing with the commentator. “Like hell you say!” Father had the last word and strode into the dining room with his collar off, bristling.

“Good afternoon, Father!” they all sang out.

“We’ll have to fight Russia,” he said, plunging into the kitchen. She heard him in the refrigerator and could tell that, rather than move things, he squeezed them out. He passed through the dining room, carrying a bottle of beer and a glass.

“Hot,” he said to nobody.

The radio came on again. Father listened to an inning of the ball game. “Cubs are still in second place!” he shouted back to them.

“Thank you, Father,” said Sister Florence involuntarily.

Sister Cigar Box said, “Humph!”

Now she could tell from the scraping noises that Father was playing himself a game of checkers. Periodically the moves became more rapid, frenzied, then triumphant. He was winning every game.

She asked Sister Eleanor how the map was coming.

“All in except Rhode Island and Tennessee. I don’t know what’s keeping them.” They all knew Sister Eleanor was putting together a map from free road maps she got from the oil companies. She had been unable to get an appropriation from Father for a new one. He said they had a map already and that he had seen it a few years back. She had tried to tell him it was too old and blurry, that Arizona and Oklahoma, for instance, had now been admitted to the Union. Who cares about them? said Father. Give the kids a general idea—that’s all you can do in the grades. Same as you give them catechism. You’d have them all studying Saint Thomas in the Latin.

“How big’s it now?” asked Sister Antonia.

“Enormous. We’ll have to put it up in sections, I guess. Like the Eastern states, the Middle Atlantic, and so on.”

“You could hang it in the gym.”

“If Father moved out his workshop.”

“Some of the maps don’t dovetail when they come from different companies. But you get detail you wouldn’t get in a regular map. It’s just awkward this way.”

Father appeared in the door of the dining room. “How’s she look?”

“More envelopes this week, Father,” said Sister Antonia.

“Guess that last blast got them. How’s the hardware department?”

Three sisters saw each other about to speak, gulped, and said nothing. “It’s better, isn’t it, Sister?” inquired Sister Antonia.

“Yes, Sister.”

Father came over to the table. “What’s this?” He picked up a Chinese coin with a hole in it that Sister Cigar Box had been glad to see earlier. “Well, we don’t get so many buttons nowadays, do we?” Father’s fingers prowled the money pile sensitively.

“No, Father,” said Sister Florence. “One last week, one today.” She looked like a small girl who’s just spoken her piece.

“One again, huh? Have to tell the ushers to bear down. Here, Sister, you keep this.” Father gave the Chinese coin to Sister Cigar Box. “For when you go on the missions.”

Sister Cigar Box took the coin from him and said nothing—about the only one not smiling—and put it down a trifle hard on the table.

Father went over to the buffet. “Like apples? Who wants an apple?” He apparently expected them to raise their hands but did not seem disappointed when no one did. He placed the bowl on the table for them. Three apples on top were real, but the ones underneath were wax and appeared more edible. No one took an apple.

“Don’t be bashful,” Father said, straying into the kitchen.

She heard him in the refrigerator again.

In a moment he came out of the kitchen with a bottle of beer and a fresh glass, passed quickly through the room, and, hesitating at the door, turned toward them. “Hot weather,” he said. “Makes you sleepy. That’s all I got to say.” He left them for the porch.

The radio went on again. He had the Catholic Hour for about a minute. “Bum speaker,” he explained while dialing. “Else I’d keep it on. I’ll try to get it for you next week. They’re starting a new series.”

“Yes, Father,” said Sister Florence, not loud enough to be heard beyond the table.

Sister Cigar Box said, “Humph!”

Father could be heard pouring the beer.

Next he got “The Adventures of Phobe Smith, the Phantom Psychiatrist.” It was better than the ball game and news.

But Phobe, if Muller wasn’t killed in the plane crash and Mex was really working for British Intelligence, tell me how the heck could Colonel Barnett be a Jap spy and still look like—uh—the real Colonel Barnett? Plastic surgery. Plastic surgery—well, I never! Plus faricasalicasuki. Plus farica—what! Faricasalicasuki—a concentrate, something like our penicillin. And you knew all the time—! That Colonel Barnett’s wife, Darlene, was not . . . unfaithful? Yes! I’m afraid so. Whew!

An organ intervened and Father turned off the radio.

She recorded the last contribution on the last index card. The money was all counted and wrapped in rolls for the bank. The White Sox had won. She told them to wait for her and ventured out on the porch, determined to make up for the afternoon, to show them that she knew, perhaps, what she was doing.