The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (50 page)

“
And
women,” he added. He had almost left women out, and they belonged in. They were responsible for the children and the success of
Queen for a Day
.

“And men,” he added when he caught Mr Hahn smiling at the mention of women. Men were at the bottom of it all.

“That doesn’t leave much, does it?” said Mr Hahn.

“No.” Who
was
left? God. It wasn’t surprising, for all problems were at bottom theological. He’d like to put a few questions to God. God, though, knowing his thoughts, knew his questions, and the world was already in possession of all the answers that would be forthcoming from God. Compassion for the Holy Family fleeing from Herod was laudable and meritorious, but it was wasted on soulless rabbits fleeing from soulless weasels. Nevertheless it was there just the same, or something very like it. As he’d said in the beginning, he was sick of it all.

“There he is now!” cried Mrs Hahn.

He saw the black-and-white cat pause under the fallen oak.

“Should I get my gun?” said Mr Hahn.

“No. It’s his nature.” He stamped his foot and hissed. The cat ran out of the yard. Where were the birds? They could be keeping an eye on the cat. Somewhere along the line they must have said the hell with it. He supposed there was a lesson in that for him. A man couldn’t commiserate with life to the full extent of his instincts and opportunities. A man had to accept his God-given limitations.

He accompanied the Hahns around to the front of the house, and there they met a middle-aged woman coming up the walk. He didn’t know her, but the Hahns did, and introduced her. Mrs Snyder.

“It’s about civil defense,” she said. Every occupant of every house was soon to be registered for the purposes of identification in case of an emergency. Each block would have its warden, and Mrs Snyder thought that he, since he lived on this property, which took up so much of the block . . .

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” He couldn’t think of a job for which he was less suited, in view of his general outlook. He wouldn’t be here anyway. Nor would this house, these trees.

While Mr and Mrs Hahn explained to Mrs Snyder that the place was to become a parking lot for the college, he stood by in silence. He had never heard it explained so well. His friends had been shocked at the idea of doing away with the old house and trees—and for a parking lot!—and although he appreciated their concern, there was nothing to be done, and after a time he was unable to sympathize with them. This they didn’t readily understand. It was as if some venerable figure in the community, only known to them but near and dear to him, had been murdered, and he failed to show proper sorrow and anger. The Hahns, however, were explaining how it was, turning this way and that, pointing to this building and that, to sites already taken, to those to be taken soon or in time. For them the words “the state” and “expansion” seemed sufficient. And the Hahns weren’t employed by the college and they weren’t old grads. It was impossible to account in such an easy way for their enthusiasm. They were scheduled for eviction themselves, they said, in a few years.

When they were all through explaining, it must have been annoying to them to hear Mrs Snyder’s comment. “Too bad,” she said. She glanced up at the old red house and then across the street at the new dormitory going up. There had been a parking lot there for a few years, but before that another big old house and trees. The new dormitory, apricot bricks and aluminum windows, was in the same style as the new library, a style known to him and his wife as Blank. “Too bad,” Mrs Snyder said again, with an uneasy look across the street, and then at him.

“There’s no defense against that
either
,” he said, and if Mrs Snyder understood what he meant, she didn’t show it.

“Well,” she said to Mr Hahn, “how about you?”

They left him then. He put the shovel away, and walked the boundaries of the yard for the last time that day, pausing twice to consider the house in the light of the moment. When he came to the grave, he stopped and looked around for a large stone. He took one from the mound where the hydrant was, the only place where the wild ginger grew, and set it on the grave, not as a marker but as an obstacle to the cat if it returned, as he imagined it would. It was getting dark in the yard, the night coming sooner there because of the great trees. Now the bats and owls would get to work, he thought, and went into the doomed house.

IN JANUARY, JOE, who had the habit of gambling with himself, made it two to one against his getting a curate that year. Then, early in May, the Archbishop came out to see the new rectory and, in the office area, which was in the basement but surprisingly bright and airy, paused before the doors
“PASTOR”
and
“ASSISTANT”
and said, “You’re mighty sure of yourself, Father.”

“I can dream, can’t I, Your Excellency?”

The subject didn’t come up again during the visit, and the Archbishop declined Joe’s offer of a drink, which may or may not have been significant—hard to say how much the Arch knew about a man—but after he’d departed Joe made it seven to five, trusting his instinct.

Two weeks later, on the eve of the annual shape-up, trusting his instinct again though he’d heard nothing, Joe made it even money.

The next morning, the Chancery (Toohey) phoned to say that Joe had a curate: “Letter follows.”

“Wait a minute. Who?”

“He’ll be in touch with you.” And Toohey hung up.

Maybe it hadn’t been decided who would be sent out to Joe’s (Church of SS. Francis and Clare, Inglenook), but probably it had, and Toohey just didn’t want to say because Joe had asked. That was how Toohey, too long at the Chancery, played the game. Joe didn’t think anymore about it then.

He grabbed a scratch pad, rushed upstairs to the room, now bare, that would be occupied by his curate (who?), and made a list, which was his response to problems, temporal and spiritual, that required thought.

That afternoon, he visited a number of furniture stores in Inglenook, in Silverstream, the next suburb, and in the city. “Just looking,” he said to clerks. After a couple of hours, he had a pretty good idea of the market, but he was unable to act, and then he had to suspend operations in order to beat the rush-hour traffic home.

Afterward, though, he discovered what was wrong. It was his list. Programmed without reference to the
relative
importance of the items on it, his list, instead of helping, had hindered him, had caused him to mess around looking at lamps, rugs, and ashtrays. It hadn’t told him that everything in the room would be determined, dictated, by the bed. Why bed? Because the room was a
bed
room. Find the bed, the right bed, and the rest would follow. He knew where he was now, and he was glad that time had run out that afternoon. Toward the last, he had been suffering from shopper’s fatigue, or he wouldn’t have considered that knotty-pine suite, with its horseshoe brands and leather thongs, simply because it had a clean, masculine look that bedroom furniture on the whole seemed to lack.

That evening, he sat down in the quiet of his study, in his Barcalounger chair, with some brochures and a drink, and made another list. This one was different and should have been easy for him—with office equipment he really knew where he was, and probably no priest in the diocese knew so well—but for that very reason he couldn’t bring himself to furnish the curate’s office as other pastors would have done, as, in fact, he had planned to do. Why spoil a fine office by installing inferior, economy-type equipment? Why not move the pastor’s desk and typewriter, both recent purchases, into the curate’s office? Why not get the pastor one of those laminated mahogany desks, maybe Model DK 100, sleek and contemporary but warm and friendly as only wood can be? (The pastor was tired of his unfriendly metal desk and his orthopedic chair.) Why not get the pastor a typewriter with different type? (What,
again
? Yes, because he was tired of that phony script.) But keep the couch and chairs in the pastor’s office, and let the new chairs—two or three, and no couch—go straight into the curate’s office.

The next morning, he drove to the city with the traffic, and swiftly negotiated the items on his office list, including a desk, Model DK 100, and a typewriter with different type, called “editorial,” and said to be used by newscasters.

“Always a pleasure to do business with you, Father,” the clerk said.

The scene then changed to the fifth floor of a large department store, which Joe had visited the day before, and there life got difficult again. What had brought him back was a fourposter bed with pineapple finials. The clerk came on a little too strong.

“The double bed’s making a big comeback, Father.”

“That so?”

“What I’d have, if I had the choice.”

“Yes, well.” Joe liked the bed, especially the pineapples, but he just couldn’t see the curate (who?) in it. Get it for himself, then, and give the curate the pastor’s bed—
it
was a single. And then what? The pastor’s bed, of unfriendly metal and painted like a car, hospital gray, would dictate nothing about the other things for the room. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to the curate, would it?

“Lot of bed for the money, Father.”

“Too much bed.”

The clerk then brought out some brochures and binders with colored tabs. So Joe sat down with him on a bamboo chaise longue, and, passing the literature back and forth between them, they went to work on Joe’s problem. They discovered that Joe could order the traditional type of bed in a single, in sev-eral models—cannonballs, spears, spools (Jenny Lind)—but not pineapples, which, it seemed, had been discontinued by the maker. “But I wonder about that, Father. Tell you what. With your permission, I’ll call North Carolina.”

Joe let him go ahead, after more discussion, mostly about air freight, but when the clerk returned to the chaise longue he was shaking his head. North Carolina had gone to lunch. North Carolina would call back, though, in an hour or so, after checking the warehouse. “You wouldn’t take cannonballs or spears, Father? Or Jenny Lind?”

“Not Jenny Lind.”

“You like cannonballs, Father?”

“Yes, but I prefer the other.”

“Pineapples.”

Since nothing could be done about the other items on his list until he found out about the bed—or beds, for he had decided to order two beds, singles, with matching chests, plus box springs and mattresses, eight pieces in all—Joe went home to await developments.

At six minutes to three, the phone rang. “St Francis,” Joe said.

“Earl, Father.”

“
Earl?
”

“At the store, Father.”

“Oh, hello, Earl.”

Earl said that North Carolina
could
supply, and would air-freight to the customer’s own address. So beds and chests would arrive in a couple of days, Friday at the outside, and box springs and mattresses, these from stock, would be on the store’s Thursday delivery to Inglenook.

“O.K., Father?”

“O.K., Earl.”

Joe didn’t try to do anymore that day.

The next morning, he took delivery of the office equipment (which Mrs P.—Mrs Pelissier—the housekeeper, must have noticed), and so he got a late start on his shopping. He began where he’d left off the day before. Earl, spotting him among the lamps, came over to say hello. When he saw Joe’s list, he recommended the store’s interior-decorating department—“Mrs Fox, if she’s not out on a job.” With Joe’s permission, Earl went to a phone, and Mrs Fox soon appeared among the lamps. Slightly embarrassed, Joe told her what he thought—that the room ought to be planned around the bed, since it was a
bed
room. Mrs Fox smacked her lips and shrieked (to Earl), “
He
doesn’t need
me
!”

As a matter of fact, Mrs Fox proved very helpful—steered Joe from department to department, protected him from clerks, took him into stockrooms and onto a freight elevator, and remembered curtains and bedspreads (Joe bought two), which weren’t on his list but were definitely needed. Finally, Mrs Fox had the easy chair and other things brought down to the parking lot and put into his car. These could have gone out on the Thursday delivery, but Joe wanted to see how the room would look even without the big stuff—the bed, the chest, the student’s table, and the revolving bookcase. Mrs Fox felt the same way. Twice in the store she’d expressed a desire to see the room, and he’d managed to change the subject, and then she did it again, in the parking lot—was
dying
to see the room, she shrieked, just as he was driving away. He just smiled. What else could he do? He couldn’t have Mrs Fox coming out there.

In some ways, things were moving too fast. He still hadn’t told Mrs P. that he was getting a curate—hadn’t because he was afraid if he did, she’d ask, as he had, “Who?” Who, indeed? He still didn’t know, and the fact that he didn’t would, if admitted, make him look foolish in Mrs P.’s eyes. It would also put the Church—administrationwise—in a poor light.

That evening, after Mrs P. had gone home, Joe unloaded the car, which he’d run into the garage because the easy chair was clearly visible in the trunk. It took him four trips to get all his purchases up to the room. Then, using a kitchen chair, listening to the ball game and drinking beer, he put up the curtain rods. (The janitor, if asked to, would wonder why, and if told, would tell Mrs P., who would ask, “Who?”) When Joe had the curtains up, tiebacks and all, he took a much needed bath, changed, and made himself a gin-and-tonic. He carried it into the room, dark now—he had been waiting for this moment—and turned on the lamps he’d bought. O.K.—and when the student’s table came, the student’s lamp, now on the little bedside table, would look even better. He had chosen one with a yellow shade, rather than green, so the room would appear cheerful, and it certainly did. He tried the easy chair, the matching footstool, the gin-and-tonic. O.K. He sat there for some time, one foot going to sleep on the rose-and-blue hooked rug while he wondered why—why he hadn’t heard anything from the curate.