The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (22 page)

Quinlan stood aside, six inches or more below them, gazing up, as at two impossibly heroic figures in a hotel mural. Reading the caption under them, he mused, “Father Burner meets Father Keefe.”

“I’ve heard about you, Father,” Keefe said, plying him with a warmth beyond his means.

“Bound to be the case in a diocese as overstocked with magpies as this one.” Father Burner threw a fresh napkin at a plate. “But be seated, Father Keefe.” Keefe, yes, he had seen him before, a nobody in a crowd, some affair . . . the K.C. barbecue, the Youth Center? No, probably not, not Keefe, who was obviously not the type, too crabbed and introversive for Catholic Action. “I suppose,” he said, “you’ve heard the latest definition of Catholic Action—the interference of the laity with the inactivity of the hierarchy.”

“Very good,” Keefe said uneasily.

Quinlan yanked off his collar and churned his neck up and down to get circulation. “Dean in the house? No? Good.” He pitched the collar at one of the candles on the buffet for a ringer. “That turkey we met coming out the front door—think I’ve seen his face somewhere.”

“Thomas Nash Tracy,” Keefe said. “I thought you knew.”

“The prominent lay priest and usurer?”

Keefe coughed. “They say he’s done a lot of good.”

Quinlan spoke to Father Burner: “Did you take out a policy, Father?”

“One of the sixth-graders threw a rock through his windshield,” Father Burner said. “He was very nice about it.”

“Muldoon or Ciesniewski?”

“A new kid. Public school transfer.” Father Burner patted the napkin to his chin. “Not that I see anything wrong with insurance.”

Quinlan laughed. “Let Walter tell you what happened to him a few days ago. Go ahead, Walter,” he said to Keefe.

“Oh, that.” Keefe fidgeted and, seemingly against his better judgment, began. “I had a little accident—was it Wednesday it rained so? I had the misfortune to skid into a fellow parked on Fairmount. Dented his fender.” Keefe stopped and then, as though impelled by the memory of it, went on. “The fellow came raging out of his car at me. I thought there’d be serious trouble. Then he must have seen I was a priest, the way he calmed down, I mean. I had a funny feeling it wasn’t because he was a Catholic or anything like that. As a matter of fact he wore a Masonic button.” Keefe sighed. “I guess he saw I was a priest and ergo . . . knew I’d have insurance.”

“Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor scrip,” Quinlan said, “words taken from today’s gospel.”

Father Burner spoke in a level tone: “Not that I
still
see anything wrong with insurance. It’s awfully easy,” he continued, hating himself for talking drivel, “to make too much of little things.” With Quinlan around he played the conservative; among the real right-handers he was the
enfant terrible
. He operated on the principle of discord at any cost. He did not know why. It was a habit. Perhaps it had something to do with being overweight.

Arranging the Dean’s chair, which had arms, for himself, Quinlan sank into it, giving Keefe the Irish whisper. “Grace, Father.”

Keefe addressed the usual words to God concerning the gifts they were about to receive. During the prayer Father Burner stopped chewing and did not reach for anything. He noted once more that Quinlan crossed himself sloppily enough to be a monsignor.

Keefe nervously cleared the entire length of his throat. “It’s a beautiful church you have here at Saint Patrick’s, Father.” A lukewarm light appeared in his eyes, flickered, sputtered out, leaving them blank and blue. His endless fingers felt for his receding chin in the onslaught of silence.

“
I
have?” Father Burner turned his spoon abasingly to his bosom. “
Me?
” He jabbed at the grapefruit before him, his second, demolishing its perfect rose window. “I don’t know why it is the Irish without exception are always laying personal claim to church property. The Dean is forever saying
my
church,
my
school,
my
furnace . . .”

“I’m sorry, Father,” Keefe said, flushing. “And I’ll confess I did think he virtually built Saint Patrick’s.”

“Out of the slime of the earth, I know. A common error.” With sudden, unabated displeasure Father Burner recalled how the Dean, one of the last of the old brick and mortar pastors, had built the church, school, sisters’ house, and rectory, and had named the whole thing through the lavish pretense of a popular contest. Opposed bitterly by Polish, German, and Italian minorities, he had effected a compromise between their bad taste (Saint Stanislaus, Saint Boniface, Saint Anthony) and his own better judgment in the choice of Saint Patrick’s.

Quinlan, snorting, blurted, “Well, he did build it, didn’t he?”

Father Burner smiled at them from the other world. “Only, if you please, in a manner of speaking.”

“True,” Keefe murmured humbly.

“Nuts,” Quinlan said. “It’s hard for me to see God in a few buildings paid for by the funds of the faithful and put up by a mick contractor. A burning bush, yes.”

Father Burner, lips parched to speak an unsummonable cruelty, settled for a smoldering aside to the kitchen. “Mary, more eggs here.”

A stuffed moose of a woman with a tabby-cat face charged in on swollen feet. She stood wavering in shoes sliced fiercely for corns. With the back of her hand she wiped some cream from the fuzz ringing her baby-pink mouth. Her hair poked through a broken net like stunted antlers. Father Burner pointed to the empty platter.

“Eggs,” he said.

“Eggs!” she cried, tumbling her eyes like great blue dice among them. She seized up the platter and carried it whirling with grease into the kitchen.

Father Burner put aside the grapefruit. He smiled and spoke calmly. “I’ll have to let the Dean know, Father, how much you like
his
plant.”

“Do, Father. A beautiful church . . . ‘a poem in stone’—was it Ruskin?”

“Ruskin?
Stones of Venice
,” Father Burner grumbled. “
Sesame and Lilies
, I know . . . but I never cared for his
style
.” He passed the knife lovingly over the pancakes on his plate and watched the butter bubble at the pores. “So much sweetness, so much light, I’m afraid, made Jack a dull boy.”

Quinlan slapped all his pockets. “Pencil and paper, quick!”

“And yet . . .” Keefe cocked his long head, brow fretted, and complained to his upturned hands. “Don’t understand how he stayed outside the Church.” He glanced up hopefully. “I wonder if Chesterton gives us a clue.”

Father Burner, deaf to such precious speculation, said, “In the nineteenth century Francis Thompson was the only limey worth his salt. It’s true.” He quartered the pancakes. “Of course, Newman.”

“Hopkins has some good things.”

“Good—yes, if you like jabberwocky and jebbies! I don’t care for either.” He dispatched a look of indictment at Quinlan.

“What a pity,” Quinlan murmured, “Oliver Wendell couldn’t be at table this morning.”

“No, Father, you can have your Hopkins, you and Father Quinlan here. Include me out, as Sam Goldwyn says. Poetry—I’ll take my poetry the way I take my liquor, neat.”

Mary brought in the platter oozing with bacon and eggs.

“Good for you, Mary,” Quinlan said. “I’ll pray for you.”

“Thank you, Father,” Mary said.

Quinlan dipped the platter with a trace of obeisance to Father Burner.

“No thanks.”

Quinlan scooped up the coffeepot in a fearsome rush and held it high at Father Burner, his arm so atremble the lid rattled dangerously. “Sure and will you be about having a sup of coffee now, Father?”

“Not now. And do you mind not playing the wild Irish wit so early in the day, Father?”

“That I don’t.
But a relentless fate pursuing good Father Quinlan, he was thrown in among hardened clerics where but for the grace of God that saintly priest, so little understood, so much maligned
. . .” Quinlan poured two cups and passed one to Keefe. “For yourself, Father.”

Father Burner nudged the toast to Keefe. “Father Quinlan, that saintly priest, models his life after the Rover Boys, particularly Sam, the fun-loving one.”

Quinlan dealt himself a mighty
mea culpa
.

Father Burner grimaced, the flesh rising in sweet, concentric tiers around his mouth, and said in a tone both entrusting and ennobling Keefe with his confidence, “The syrup, if you please, Father.” Keefe passed the silver pitcher which was running at the mouth. Father Burner reimmersed the doughy remains on his plate until the butter began to float around the edges as in a moat. He felt them both watching the butter. Regretting that he had not foreseen this attraction, he cast about in his mind for something to divert them and found the morning sun coming in too strongly. He got up and pulled down the shade. He returned to his place and settled himself in such a way that a new chapter was indicated. “Don’t believe I know where you’re located, Father.”

“Saint Jerome’s,” Keefe said. “Monsignor Fiedler’s.”

“One of those P.N. places, eh? Is the boss sorry he ever started it? I know some of them are.”

Keefe’s lips popped apart. “I don’t quite understand.”

Quinlan prompted: “P.N.—Perpetual Novena.”

“Oh, I never heard him say.”

“You wouldn’t, of course. But I know a lot of them that are.” Father Burner stuck a morsel on his fork and swirled it against the tide of syrup. “It’s a real problem all right. I was all out for a P.N. here during the depression. Thought it might help. The Dean was against it.”

“I can tell you this,” Keefe said. “Attendance was down from what it used to be until the casualties began to come in. Now it’s going up.”

“I was just going to say the war ought to take the place of the depression.” Father Burner fell silent. “Terrible thing, war. Hard to know what to do about it. I tried to sell the Dean the idea of a victory altar. You’ve seen them. Vigil lights—”

“At a dollar a throw,” Quinlan said.

“Vigil lights in the form of a V, names of the men in the service and all that. But even that, I guess— Well, like I said, I tried . . .”

“Yes, it is hard,” Keefe said.

“God, the Home, and the Flag,” Quinlan said. “The poets don’t make the wars.”

Father Burner ignored that. “Lately, though, I can’t say how I feel about P.N.’s. Admit I’m not so strong for them as I was once. Ought to be some way of terminating them, you know, but then they wouldn’t be perpetual, would they?”

“No, they wouldn’t,” Keefe said.

“Not
so
perpetual,” Quinlan said.

“Of course,” Father Burner continued, “the term itself, perpetual novena, is preposterous, a solecism. Possibly dispensation lies in that direction. I’m not theologian enough to say. Fortunately it’s not a problem we have to decide.” He laid his knife and fork across the plate. “Many are the consolations of the lowly curate. No decisions, no money worries.”

“We still have to count the sugar,” Quinlan said. “And put up the card tables.”

“Reminds me,” Father Burner said earnestly. “Father Desmond at Assumption was telling me they’ve got a new machine does all that.”

“Puts up card tables?” Quinlan inquired.

“Counts the collection, wraps the silver,” Father Burner explained, “so it’s all ready for the bank. Mean to mention it to the Dean, if I can catch him right.”

“I’m afraid, Father, he knows about it already.”

Father Burner regarded Quinlan skeptically. “Does? I suppose he’s against it.”

“I heard him tell the salesman that’s what he had his assistants for.”

“Assistant, Father, not assistants. You count the collection, not me. I was only thinking of you.”

“I was only quoting him, Father.
Sic
. Sorry.”

“Not at all. I haven’t forgotten the days I had to do it. It’s a job has to be done and nothing to be ashamed of. Wouldn’t you say, Father Keefe?”

“I dare say that’s true.”

Quinlan, with Father Burner still molesting him with his eyes, poured out a glass of water and drank it all. “I still think we could do with a lot less calculating. I notice the only time we get rid of the parish paper is when the new lists are published—the official standings. Of course it’s a lousy sheet anyway.”

Father Burner, as editor of the paper, replied: “Yes, yes, Father. We all know how easy it is to be wrathful or fastidious about these things—or whatever the hell it is you are. And we all know there
are
abuses. But contributing to the support of the Church is still one of her commandments.”

“Peace, Père,” Quinlan said.

“Figures don’t lie.”

“Somebody was telling me just last night that figures do lie. He looked a lot like you.”

Father Burner found his cigarettes and shuffled a couple half out of the pack. He eyed Quinlan and the cigarettes as though it were as simple to discipline the one as to smoke the others. “For some reason, Father, you’re damned fond of those particular figures.”

Keefe stirred. “Which particular figures, Fathers?”

“It’s the figures put out by the Cardinal of Toledo on how many made their Easter duty last year.” Father Burner offered Keefe a cigarette. “I discussed the whole thing with Father Quinlan last night. It’s his latest thesis. Have a cigarette?”

“No, thanks,” Keefe said.

“So you don’t smoke?” Father Burner looked from Keefe to Quinlan, blacklisting them together. He held the cigarette hesitantly at his lips. “It’s all right, isn’t it?” He laughed and touched off the match with his thumbnail.

“His Eminence,” Quinlan said, “reports only fifteen percent of the women and five percent of the men made their Easter duty last year.”

“So that’s only three times as many women as men,” Father Burner said with buried gaiety. “Certainly to be expected in any Latin country.”

“But fifteen percent, Father! And five percent! Just think of it!” Keefe glanced up at the ceiling and at the souvenir plates on the molding, as though to see inscribed along with scenes from the Columbian Exposition the day and hour the end of the world would begin. He finally stared deep into the goldfish tank in the window.