J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

“ Miz ,” she said.

The pastor bowed his head in silent grace, as Simpson did then, and while they ate — hashed brown potatoes, scorched green beans, ground meat of some kind — Ms Burke set the table with things that should have been on it earlier (such as a napkin for Simpson), then appeared at intervals with a loaf of sandwich bread under her arm, put out some (the pastor ate a lot of bread), and disappeared into the kitchen, talking to herself.

“Still sore,” said the pastor, silent until then. “Sat where you’re sitting. Beeman.”

“Father Beeman?” Father Beeman was Simpson’s predecessor in the curate’s job, an older man, an ex-pastor with, it was said, personality problems.

“Know him, do you?”

“No, but I know what he looks like. I’ve seen him in processions. Big man.”

The pastor nodded. “Threw stuff. Threw his food on the floor.”

Simpson nodded.

The pastor shook his head. “At Holy Sepulchre parish now.”

“One of my classmates — Potter— he’s at Holy Sepulchre.”

There was no response from the pastor, and no more conversation.

Ms Burke came in with dessert — sliced canned peaches and cardboard Fig Newtons — and began to remove things from the table.

Simpson thanked her with a nod, almost a bow, when the meal was over, caught up with the pastor in the hallway, and got into step. “Ms Burke’s been with you for some time, Father?”

The pastor nodded, just perceptibly. “Take the eight o’clock Mass, Father. Weekdays.”

“Eight o’clock.” Simpson repeated it to minimize the chance of error. “Weekdays.”

“See about Sundays later.”

“Right.” It was Simpson’s impression that briefing had begun and would continue in the office, which they were approaching, but the pastor kept going, and at the head of the stairs it was Simpson’s impression that the man was about to leave him.

“G’night.”

“ Father ”—it came out sounding desperate—“I’ve been wondering about things.”

The pastor, on the point of entering the room at the head of the stairs, looked embarrassed. “Uh. Convert, aren’t you?”

“No, no. I mean — yes.” Simpson had answered the question in order to get back to the assumption underlying it — it was understandable — that he, as a convert, might be shaky in his faith. “No, no, Father, I was just wondering about things — you know, like what time I say Mass.” And, quickly, lest that be misunderstood: “Eight o’clock. Weekdays.”

“See about Sundays later.”

Simpson sort of nodded. “The rest can wait, Father?”

The pastor nodded, just perceptibly, opened the door but not much, and in a crabwise manner that aroused and thwarted Simpson’s curiosity, entered the room at the head of the stairs.

The next morning Simpson said the eight o’clock Mass and had breakfast (learned from Ms Burke that he got Wednesday afternoons off), went upstairs and brushed his teeth, but after that he didn’t know what to do. Ms Burke had made his bed. On the chance that he’d find his orders for the day in the office, he went downstairs and checked it. No, nothing for him. Acting then on information from Ms Burke, and again using the door he’d discovered, the door between the rectory and the church, he entered the sacristy, and was there when the pastor came in to vest for Mass, there with the idea of bringing himself to the man’s attention, and also of being useful, but was told when he attempted to help with the alb, “Not necessary, Father.” So he returned to the rectory and, because the pastor could have dropped something off there on his way to Mass, rechecked the office. No, nothing. He then went up to his room and sat down with his breviary, leaving his door open, though, because he was (he thought) on duty. But nobody called at the rectory, or at least nobody knocked, during this period. When he heard footsteps — another reason for leaving his door open — he got up and left his room, again with the idea of bringing himself to the man’s attention. He met the pastor at the head of the stairs, was nodded at in passing, nodded back, and went down and checked the office. Nothing.

He wanted to retire to his room and settle down with a good book, but thought it wouldn’t look or, perhaps, be right if he did. So he kept coming and going between his room, the office, and the church (with which he was familiarizing himself), and took a side trip down to the boiler room. In this fashion, moving about, looking for the action, he got through the morning.

In the afternoon — lunch, conversationally, wasn’t up to dinner the evening before — there were a number of developments:

Simpson dealt with several parishioners in the office, with all satisfactorily, he thought, though not to the satisfaction of one, who unfortunately couldn’t be helped (marriage case).

The pastor emerged from the room at the head of the stairs and left the rectory carrying a brown canvas suitcase such as students once used to mail laundry home.

Simpson visited the kitchen for the first time and learned from Ms Burke, who was having coffee with a middle-aged man to whom Simpson wasn’t introduced, that laundry was not sent out, was done right there, and that the pastor used the brown canvas suitcase “to carry his goddam envelopes”—“Oh,” said Simpson, and swiftly departed, under the impression that Ms Burke had been referring to collection envelopes, actually the contents thereof, and that the pastor had gone to the bank.

The pastor returned to the rectory with the brown canvas suitcase (but it was apparently no lighter) and entered the room at the head of the stairs.

Simpson discovered that the man he came upon (praying?) in the choir loft was the same man he’d seen earlier in the kitchen, and that this man was the janitor — who said he hadn’t introduced himself in the kitchen because he and Father Beeman, a real man whose guts Ms Burke, a holy terrier, hated, had been very close. “I didn’t want her to get any ideas about us , Father.”

Those were the developments that afternoon, some good, some not so good, and one puzzling to Simpson but probably none of his business (the brown canvas suitcase).

That evening, when Simpson came to the table, there was a bad development, a pamphlet— The Marks of the True Faith —by his plate.

“Uh. Might interest you.”

“Yes, well, yes . Thanks.”

The silence that set in then — to which Simpson contributed handsomely, rather than try to explain his words of the evening before, his “ Father , I’ve been wondering about things,” to which words he attributed the pamphlet — lasted until they rose from the table.

“Uh.”

“Oh.”

Simpson had almost gone off without the pamphlet!

At the head of the stairs, the pastor, silent since alluding to the pamphlet, said, “G’night.”

“Father, I’ve been wondering”—he’d stepped out for tobacco that afternoon, and rather than knock had entered the rectory through the church—“shouldn’t I have a key to the front door?”

“Uh. See about it,” said the pastor, and entered the room at the head of the stairs in a crabwise manner, the door closing after him.

Simpson waited a few moments there, just in case the door opened and a hand came out with a key, which didn’t happen, and so, treading softly, he went down the hallway to his room, his thoughts turning from the key to the pamphlet, which, after brushing his teeth and filling his pipe, he read at one sitting and found excellent.

After a few days, with the pastor keeping to the room at the head of the stairs, Simpson accepted the odd fact that he was on his own at Trinity, stopped looking for the action, and sometimes settled down with a good book — was reading Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion: With Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries , by Monsignor Knox (a convert), and shook his head at the hysteria in the Church then, as he did at the hysteria in the Church now, thinking, Plus ça change the more it’s the same, as he did after trying another position in the hard swivel chair.