The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (52 page)

The curate, who seemed to think that too much was being made of his disability, nodded.

“Hard to believe,” Joe said. “Why, you must’ve been the only guy in your class not to use a typewriter.”

“There was one other guy.”

Joe was somewhat relieved—at least the gambler in him was—to know that he hadn’t been quite as unlucky as he’d supposed. “But you must’ve heard guys all around you using typewriters. Didn’t you ever wonder why?”

“I never owned a typewriter. Never saw the need.” The curate sounded proud, like somebody who brushes his teeth with table salt. “I write a good, clear hand.”

Joe snorted. “
I
write a good, clear hand. But I don’t do my parish correspondence by hand. And I hope
you
won’t when you’re a pastor.”

“The hell with it, then.”

Joe, who had been walking around in a distressed state, stopped and looked at the curate, but the curate—pretty clever—wouldn’t look back. He was getting out a cigarette. Joe shook his head, and walked around shaking it. “Father, Father,” he said.

“Father, hell,” said the curate, emitting smoke. “You should’ve put in for a stenographer, not a priest.”

Joe stopped, stood still, and sniffed. “Great,” he said, nodding his head. “Sounds great, Father. But what does it
mean
? Does it mean you expect me to do the lion’s share of the donkey work around here? While you’re out saving souls? Or sitting up in your room? Does it mean when you’re a pastor you’ll expect your curate to do what you never had to do? I hope not, Father. Because, you know, Father, when you’re a pastor it may be years before you have a curate. You may never have one, Father. You may end up in a one-horse parish. Lots of guys do. You won’t be able to afford a secretary, or public stenographers, and you won’t care to trust your correspondence to nuns, to parishioners. You’ll never be your own man. You’ll always be an embarrassment to yourself and others. Let’s face it, Father. Today, a man who can’t use a typewriter is as ill-equipped for parish life as a man who can’t drive a car. Go ahead. Laugh. Sneer. But it’s true. You don’t want to be like Toohey, do you?
He
can’t type, and he’s set this diocese back a hundred years. He writes ‘No can do’ on everything and returns it to the sender. For official business he uses scratch paper put out by the Universal Portland Cement Company.”

Depressed by the thought of Toohey and annoyed by the curate’s cool, if that was what it was, Joe retired to his office. He sat down at his new desk and made a list. Presently, he appeared in the doorway between the offices, wearing his hat. “And, Father,” he continued, “when you’re a pastor, what if you get a curate like yourself? Think it over. I have to go out now. Mind the store.”

Joe drove to the city and bought a typing course consisting of a manual and phonograph records, and he also bought the bed—it was still there—the double, with pineapples. He was told that if he ever wished to order a matching chest or dresser there would be no trouble at all, and that the bed, along with box spring and mattress, would be on the Thursday delivery to Inglenook.

“O.K., Father?”

“O.K., Earl.”

And that afternoon Joe, in his office, had a phone call from Mrs Fox, She just wondered if everything was O.K., she said—as if she didn’t know. She was still dying to see the room. “What’s it
like
!” Joe said he thought the room had turned out pretty well, thanked Mrs Fox for helping him, and also for calling, and hung up.

Immediately, the phone rang again. “St Francis,” Joe said.

“Bill there?”

“
Bill?
”

“For
me
?” said the curate, who had been typing away, or, anyway, typing.

Joe tried to look right through the wall. (The door between the offices was open, but the angle was wrong.)”Take it over there,” he said, and switched the call.

There were no further developments that day.

None the next day.

And none the next.

No more phone calls for the curate, and no mail addressed to him, and nothing in the diocesan paper, and no word from Toohey. And Mrs P. with her “he” and “him” was no help, nor was the janitor with his “young Father,” and Father Otto wouldn’t be there until Saturday. But in one way or another, sooner or later, perhaps in time for the next parish bulletin, though the odds were now against that, Joe hoped to learn Bill’s last name.

SOME TIME LATER when Jean and I had both gotten married and our husbands had been brought into our very close relationship, we disclosed our early experiences one night. When our husbands first heard our story, they were not only shocked but disbelieving. However, they believed readily when Jean went over and sat on my husband’s lap while I beckoned her husband into the other room. Since then we have swapped regularly and have recently added two more couples. We are all very close friends so have no special rules. All four couples met recently in a big cabin in the mountains and it worked so successfully that we plan to try it for a full week next summer
.
*

Dear Lloyd and Jean:

I am doing my Xmas letters, and Les says not to forget you folks, and so here I come. It’s almost a year since you moved away, and all I can say is we sure do miss you both. I wish you could see our tree. Les got it from the same guy down at the plant. We added more lights and now have 128. The whole block agreed not to have roof displays this year. Lloyd’s bad fall last year had a lot to do with this decision. Only Bensons held out. They would. They have a new Snow White but the same old dwarfs. He came to Les about using ours, said since we wouldn’t be needing them this year. Of course Les had to turn him down. We were all worried about the couple that moved into your house, since he is an electrician, but they promised they wouldn’t have a roof display. Now it looks like they won’t even have a tree. She works, I guess. Both of them nice-looking, but Les thinks they don’t get along. They sure keep to themselves.

Say, we were sorry not to see you at Rocky Ridge last summer, but didn’t expect you when you didn’t write. I remember Lloyd said he might have to take his vacation at a different time. Was that it? Well, after two days of pouring rain, we decided to drive up to Yellowstone. Just the two of us. Some drive, but this new wagon we have can really eat up the road. Came back through the Black Hills. They needed rain. I suppose you got the cards.

Say, the big tube burned out about ten days ago. Didn’t you say it was almost practically new? The serviceman (Red) tried to tell me it came with the set. Did you ever find the warranty papers? Les wanted to wait until we could afford color, but I didn’t think it would be fair to him, with the Bowl games coming up, and so we now have a new picture tube. How many channels where you are now?

Les is giving me a gift certificate that I may apply on a dryer. It is now definite we are getting natural gas in the spring. Do you have it there? He is getting an outboard motor from me. He says what should we do with that old kicker you forgot and left in our garage. Be glad to send it to you. Or if you want us to try and sell it for you, we will. Just let us know. By the way, what do you think we should do about the power mower? If you want to keep it, that’s O.K. with us. Or if you want to send it to us, that’s O.K., too. In that case, we would forward you your share in it ($44). Maybe you could let us know your decision when you write about the old outboard motor? Lloyd, will you get Jean to write? Les says he’s never heard of people like you folks for not writing, and I agree. Ha. Ha.

Hey, don’t get us wrong about the mower. If you want us to have it, we will forward you your share ($44) right away, but we don’t expect you to send it back unless you want to. Les says you might be smart to hold on to it, and not have to go to the trouble and expense of sending it back. Whatever you decide to do is O.K.

Les is talking about bed and so I’ll close with a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. Hope our card arrived safely. Yours hasn’t come as yet. As always.

Les and Lil

P.S. Les just called about the freight charges in case you decide to send it back. $5 or $6. You don’t have to crate it. We don’t want to tell you what to do, but it looks like you’d be smart to just forward our share ($44). We used Bensons’ last summer, but we hated to ask for it, and the grass got so long each time. Don’t want to go through that again and would appreciate hearing from you soon so we can make our plans for the coming year. Les says if you want to send it back we’ll split the freight with you—and of course forward you your full share ($44).

*
 From
Mr
, Vol. 4, No. 6, whose editors say: “Any assumption that we, because we have had the courage to present a factual and unemotional report, therefore sympathize with the points of view described is a complete misreading of our purpose.”

AT HIS DESK in the Chancery, the brownstone mansion that was also his residence, John Dullinger, Bishop of Ostergothenburg (Minnesota), was hard at work on a pastoral letter, this one to be read from the pulpits of the diocese in some five weeks. The Bishop was about to mention the keystone of authority, as he did so often in his pastoral letters, that stone without which . . . when Monsignor Holstein, Vicar-General of the diocese and rector of the Cathedral, a lanky man in his late sixties, arrived with the Minneapolis
Tribune
and a paper bag. “
Wie geht’s?
” said Monsignor Holstein, and deposited the bag on the desk.

The Bishop peeked into the bag, said “Oh,” and, with a nod, thanked Monsignor Holstein for his kindness—for the fine new appointment book. It was that time of year again.

“I hear Scuza’s worse, John,” said Monsignor Holstein.

The Bishop had heard this, too, but assumed that Monsignor Holstein had later word. New Pilsen, where Father Scuza lay dying, was Monsignor Holstein’s hometown.

“A bad month, John.”

The Bishop sighed. He figured to lose a couple of men every December, and had already lost one that year.

“Another foreign movie coming to the Orpheum, but I can’t find out much about it—only that it’s Italian,” said Monsignor Holstein.

The Bishop sighed.

Monsignor Holstein, who had rolled up the Minneapolis
Tribune
, whacked himself across the hand with it, but did not sit down. On mornings when there was clear and present danger in the diocese—a dance for ninth-graders scheduled for the Eagles’ Hall,
Martin Luther
coming to the Orpheum—Monsignor Holstein sat down and beat himself about his black shoes and white socks with the Minneapolis
Tribune
, while the Bishop, a stocky man, opened and shut his mouth like a fish, and said, “Brrr-jorrk-brrrr.” On such mornings, by the time the Bishop got the paper it was in poor shape, and so was he. But this wasn’t going to be one of those mornings. Monsignor Holstein was about to depart.

“Like me to take that over to the printer?” he asked, looking down at the pastoral letter.

“Not finished.”

When Monsignor Holstein was halfway to the door, he saw that he had the paper in his hand, and came back to deliver it. “Like me to wait a few minutes?”

“
No
.” There was more to writing a pastoral letter than getting it to the printer—a lot more than Monsignor Holstein would ever know. He’d never make a bishop.

“Hello, Tootsie,” said Monsignor Holstein when he opened the door, addressing the housekeeper’s kitten, whose name was not Tootsie but Tessie—and the Bishop wished the man would remember that. “
Raus
, Tootsie!”

“It’s all right,” said the Bishop, and the kitten came over Monsignor Holstein’s shoe, kicking up her heels.

While waiting for the kitten to come and sit on his lap—Monsignor Holstein had upset Tessie—the Bishop checked the helpful data in the new appointment book, as was his custom each year. He was sorry to see that the approximate transit time from New York to Minneapolis by air was still given as seven hours, which took no account of jet travel, and that among the cities with population over fifty thousand there were more places than ever that he hadn’t heard of, most of them in California, and that Fargo, North Dakota, which he regarded as his hometown, though he’d been brought up on a farm near there, was still not listed. Perhaps next year. He saw that young Kennedy was now among the Presidents—the youngest ever, except Theodore Roosevelt, to hold that high office—but that Alaska and Hawaii were not among the states. Otherwise—postage rates, stains and how to remove them, points of Constitutional law, weights and measures, weather wisdom, and so on—everything was the same as in the previous edition, including nicknames of the states and the state flowers (Alaska and Hawaii missing). Then, as was his custom, the Bishop examined his conscience:

To the extent that these rules could be made to apply to him—and all of them could, to an extent—the Bishop was doing pretty well, he thought. Presently, with the cat on his lap, he took a call from the editor of the diocesan weekly, Father Rapp, who said that Monsignor Holstein had just left, after giving him an argument over the spelling of “godlessness.” “I told him we never capitalize it,” Father Rapp said. “‘Then you better begin,’ he told me.”