The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (21 page)

“Oh, they’re an old-line firm,” Mr Newman said.

“I’ll have to pack you a lunch then, Charley,” she said. She had finally got into the adventure with him.

“I bought a paper tonight,” he said. “It’s in the other room.”

With a little excited movement she parted the organdie curtains at the window. “My, Charley, just look at that!” Snowflakes tumbled in feathery confusion past the yellow light burning in the court, wonderfully white against the night, smothering the whole dirty, roaring, guilty city in innocence and silence and beauty.

Mr Newman squirmed warm inside the thought of everything he could think of—the snow falling, the glow in the kitchen, landing the job, Christmas coming, her . . .

Their supper got cold.

She let the curtains fall together, breathing, “My!”

Reluctantly Mr Newman assumed the duty he had as husband and only provider—not to be swept away by dreams and snowflakes. He said with the stern wisdom of his generation:

“Keeps up much longer it’ll tie up transportation.”

“But do you like that kind of work, Charley?”

He assured her most earnestly that he did, knowing she knew he’d do anything to get into an office again. He caught himself on the verge of telling her that working in the shipping room was just the way the company, since it was so old and reliable, groomed its new employees for service in the office. But that sounded too steep and ultimately disastrous. He had to confess it was only temporary work. This pained her, he could see, and he tried to get her mind on something else.

“I’ll bet you had no idea your husband was so handy with rope.”

He told her how it came on big spools, like telegraph wire. But she did not think this important.

“The people,” he said, “the ones I’ve met at least—well, they all seem very nice.”

“Then maybe they’ll keep you after Christmas, Charley!”

He looked sharply at her and could tell she was sorry she’d said that. She understood what must follow. He opened his mouth to speak, said nothing, and then, closing his eyes to the truth, he said:

“Yes. You know, I think they will. I’m
sure
of it.”

He coughed. That was not the way it was at all. It had happened again. He was the bad actor again. His only audience smiled and loved him.

I. Morning

“I SHOULD’VE KNOWN you’d be eating breakfast, Father. But I was at your Mass and I said to myself that must be Father Burner. Then I stayed a few minutes after Mass to make my thanksgiving.”

“Fine,” Father Burner said. “Breakfast?”

“Had it, Father, thanking you all the same. It’s the regret of my life that I can’t be a daily communicant. Doctor forbids it. ‘Fast every day and see how long you last,’ he tells me. But I do make it to Mass.”

“Fine. You say you live in Father Desmond’s parish?”

“Yes, Father. And sometimes I think Father Desmond does too much. All the societies to look after. Plus the Scouts and the Legion. Of course Father Kells being so elderly and all . . .”

“We’re all busy these days.”

“It’s the poor parish priest’s day that’s never done, I always say, Father, not meaning to slight the ladies, God love ’em.”

Father Burner’s sausage fingers, spelling his impatience over and over, worked up sweat in the folds of the napkin which he kept in view to provoke an early departure. “About this matter you say Father Desmond thought I might be interested in—”

“The Plan, Father.” Mr Tracy lifted his seersucker trousers by the creases, crossed his shining two-tone shoes, and rolled warmly forward. “Father . . .”

Father Burner met his look briefly. He was wary of the fatherers. A backslider he could handle, it was the old story, but a red-hot believer, especially a talkative one, could be a devilish nuisance. This kind might be driven away only by prayer and fasting, and he was not adept at either.

“I guess security’s one thing we’re all after.”

Father Burner grunted. Mr Tracy was too familiar to suit him. He liked his parishioners to be retiring, dumb, or frightened. There were too many references made to the priest’s hard lot. Not so many poor souls as all that passed away in the wee hours, nor was there so much bad weather to brave. Mr Tracy’s heart bled for priests. That in itself was a suspicious thing in a layman. It all led up to the Plan.

“Here’s the Plan, Father . . .” Father Burner watched his eye peel down to naked intimacy. Then, half listening, he gazed about the room. He hated it, too. A fabulous brown rummage of encyclopedias, world globes, maps, photographs, holy pictures, mirrors, crucifixes, tropical fish, and too much furniture. The room reproduced the world, all wonders and horrors, less land than water. From the faded precipices of the walls photographs viewed each other for the most part genially across time. Three popes, successively thinner, raised hands to bless their departed painters. The world globes simpered in the shadows, heavy-headed idiot boys, listening. A bird in a blacked-out cage scratched among its offal. An anomalous buddha peeked beyond his dusty umbilicus at the trampled figures in the rug. The fish swam on, the mirrors and encyclopedias turned in upon themselves, the earless boys heard everything and understood nothing. Father Burner put his big black shoe on a moth and sent dust flecks crowding up a shaft of sunlight to the distant ceiling.

“Say you pay in $22.67 every month, can be paid semi-annually or as you please, policy matures in twenty years and pays you $35.50 a month for twenty years or as long as you live. That’s the deal for you, Father. It beats the deal Father Desmond’s got, although he’s got a darned good one, and I hope he keeps it up. But we’ve gone ahead in the last few years, Father. Utilities are sounder, bonds are more secure, and this new legislation protects you one hundred per cent.”

“You say Ed—Father Desmond—has the Plan?”

“Oh, indeed, Father.” Mr Tracy had to laugh. “I hope you don’t think I’m trying to high-pressure you, Father. It’s not just a piece of business with me, the Plan.”

“No?”

“No. You see, it’s more or less a pet project of mine. Hardly make a cent on it. Looking out after the fathers, you might say, so they’ll maybe look out after me—spiritually. I call it heavenly life insurance.”

Slightly repelled, Father Burner nodded.

“Not a few priests that I’ve sold the Plan to remember me at the altar daily. I guess prayer’s one thing we can all use. Anyway, it’s why I take a hand in putting boys through seminary.”

With that Mr Tracy shed his shabby anonymity for Father Burner, and grew executive markings. He became the one and only Thomas Nash Tracy—T. N. T.. It was impossible to read the papers and not know a few things about T. N. T.. He was in small loans and insurance. His company’s advertising smothered the town and country; everybody knew the slogan “T. N. T.. Spells Security.” He figured in any financial drive undertaken by the diocese, was caught by photographers in orphanages, and sat at the heavy end of the table at communion breakfasts. Hundreds of nuns, thanks to his thoughtfulness, ate capon on Christmas Day, and a few priests of the right sort received baskets of scotch. He was a B.C.L., a Big Catholic Layman, and now Father Burner could see why. Father Burner’s countenance softened at this intelligence, and T. N. T.. proceeded with more assurance.

“And don’t call it charity, Father. Insurance, as I said, is a better name for it. I have a little money, Father, which makes it possible.” He tuned his voice down to a whisper. “You might say I’m moderately wealthy.” He looked sharply at Father Burner, not sure of his man. “But I’m told there isn’t any crime in that.”

“I believe you need not fear for your soul on that account.”

“Glad to hear it from you, a priest, Father. Ofttimes it’s thrown up to me.” He came to terms with reality, smiling. “I wasn’t always so well off myself, so I can understand the temptation to knock the other fellow.”

“Fine.”

“But that’s still not to say that water’s not wet or that names don’t hurt sometimes, whatever the bard said to the contrary.”

“What bard?”

“‘Sticks and stones—’”

“Oh.”

“If this were a matter of faith and morals, Father, I’d be the one to sit back and let you do the talking. But it’s a case of common sense, Father, and I think I can safely say, if you listen to me you’ll not lose by it in the long run.”

“It could be.”

“May I ask you a personal question, Father?”

Father Burner searched T. N. T..’s face. “Go ahead, Mr Tracy.”

“Do you bank, Father?”

“
Bank?
Oh, bank—no. Why?”

“Let’s admit it, Father,” T. N. T.. coaxed, frankly amused. “Priests as a class are an improvident lot—our records show it—and you’re no exception. But that, I think, explains the glory of the Church down through the ages.”

“The Church is divine,” Father Burner corrected. “And the concept of poverty isn’t exactly foreign to Christianity or even to the priesthood.”

“Exactly,” T. N. T.. agreed, pinked. “But think of the future, Father.”

Nowadays when Father Burner thought of the future it required a firm act of imagination. As a seminarian twenty years ago, it had all been plain: ordination, roughly ten years as a curate somewhere (he was not the kind to be sent to Rome for further study), a church of his own to follow, the fruitful years, then retirement, pastor emeritus, with assistants doing the spade work, leaving the fine touches to him, still a hearty old man very much alive. It was not an uncommon hope and, in fact, all around him it had materialized for his friends. But for him it was only a bad memory growing worse. He was the desperate assistant now, the angry functionary aging in the outer office. One day he would wake and find himself old, as the morning finds itself covered with snow. The future had assumed the forgotten character of a dream, so that he could not be sure that he had ever truly had one.

T. N. T.. talked on and Father Burner felt a mist generating on his forehead. He tore his damp hands apart and put the napkin aside. Yes, yes, it was true a priest received miserably little, but then that was the whole idea. He did not comment, dreading T. N. T..’s foaming compassion, to be spat upon with charity. Yes, as a matter of fact, it would be easier to face old age with something more to draw upon than what the ecclesiastical authorities deemed sufficient and would provide. Also, as T. N. T.. pointed out, one never knew when he might come down with an expensive illness. T. N. T.., despite him-self, had something . . . The Plan, in itself, was not bad. He must not reject the olive branch because it came by buzzard. But still Father Burner was a little bothered by the idea of a priest feathering his nest. Why? In other problems he was never the one to take the ascetic interpretation.

“You must be between thirty-five and forty, Father.”

“I’ll never see forty again.”

“I’d never believe it from anyone else. You sure don’t look it, Father.”

“Maybe not. But I feel it.”

“Worries, Father. And one big one is the future, Father. You’ll get to be fifty, sixty, seventy—and what have you got?—not a penny saved. You look around and say to yourself—where did it go?”

T. N. T.. had the trained voice of the good and faithful servant, supple from many such dealings. And still from time to time a faint draught of contempt seemed to pass through it which had something to do with his eyes. Here, Father Burner thought, was the latest thing in simony, unnecessary, inspired from without, participated in spiritlessly by the priest who must yet suffer the brunt of the blame and ultimately do the penance. Father Burner felt mysteriously purchasable. He was involved in an exchange of confidences which impoverished him mortally. In T. N. T.. he sensed free will in its senility or the infinite capacity for equating evil with good—or with nothing—the same thing, only easier. Here was one more word in the history of the worm’s progress, another wave on the dry flood that kept rising, the constant aggrandizement of decay. In the end it must touch the world and everything at the heart. Father Burner felt weak from a nameless loss.

“I think I can do us both a service, Father.”

“I don’t say you can’t.” Father Burner rose quickly. “I’ll have to think about it, Mr Tracy.”

“To be sure, Father.” He produced a glossy circular. “Just let me leave this literature with you.”

Father Burner, leading him to the door, prevented further talk by reading the circular. It was printed in a churchy type, all purple and gold, a dummy leaf from a medieval hymnal, and entitled, “A Silver Lining in the Sky.” It was evidently meant for clergymen only, though not necessarily priests, as Father Burner could instantly see from its general tone.

“Very interesting,” he said.

“My business phone is right on the back, Father. But if you’d rather call me at my home some night—”

“No thanks, Mr Tracy.”

“Allow me to repeat, Father, this isn’t just business with me.”

“I understand.” He opened the door too soon for T. N. T.. “Glad to have met you.”

“Glad to have met you, Father.”

Father Burner went back to the table. The coffee needed warming up and the butter had vanished into the toast. “Mary,” he called. Then he heard them come gabbing into the rectory, Quinlan and his friend Keefe, also newly ordained.

They were hardly inside the dining room before he was explaining how he came to be eating breakfast so late—so late, see?—not
still
.

“You protest too much, Father,” Quinlan said. “The Angelic Doctor himself weighed three hundred pounds, and I’ll wager he didn’t get it all from prayer and fasting.”

“A pituitary condition,” Keefe interjected, faltering. “Don’t you think?”

“Yah, yah, Father, you’ll wager”—Father Burner, eyes malignant, leaned on his knife, the blade bowing out bright and buttery beneath his fist—“and I’ll wager you’ll be the first saint to reach heaven with a flannel mouth!” Rising from the table, he shook Keefe’s hand, which was damp from his pocket, and experienced a surge of strength, the fat man’s contempt and envy for the thin man. He thought he might break Keefe’s hand off at the wrist without drawing a drop of blood.