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

Potter smiled— now he thought Joe was kidding.

“Not much you can do,” Conklin said. “Judah took possession of the hill country, but he couldn’t drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron.”

“That so?” said Joe, thinking, What is this? He tried his wine. “Not bad,” he said to Potter and Bill (who still had their drinks from Bill’s room), but he didn’t get through to them. Potter was a talker.

“What kind is it?” said Father Otto.

Joe, speaking through his nose, named the wine.

“Grape,” said Conklin, coming back from the table with the bottle from which only he and Joe had partaken so far, and sitting down with it, in the Barcalounger. “Anybody else?”

“No, thanks,” Joe said, and was silent for some time — until he heard Conklin refer to Beans McQueen as Beans. “You a friend of Father McQueen’s?”

“They taught this course together, at the Institute,” Bill said. “Scripture for the Laity.”

“That so?” said Joe.

And the talk went on as before, on two fronts, without Joe, leaving him free to go over to the table for the other bottle of wine. Hennessy wasn’t having any, but Father Otto was. “Grape, you say?” Joe served Father Otto, and also himself, and left the bottle on the coffee table in front of him, but beyond his reach — not that wine, unfortified wine, was really alcoholic, not that he was. He just had to watch himself. He wasn’t a wine drinker, but could see how he might have been one in another time and place — one of those wise old abbés, his mouth a-pucker with Grand Cru , his tongue tasting like steak, solving life’s problems by calling people “my son.”

Potter was telling Bill and Conklin that the clergy should cast off their medieval trappings, immerse themselves in the profane everyday world, and thus reveal its sacred character.

“That why you’re immersed in that shirt?” said Joe, but Potter just smiled and went on as before. It was odd the way Bill looked up to Potter, odder still the way they both looked up to Conklin — as what , a layman? It was a crazy world. Father Otto was telling Hennessy that the monastery should employ trained lay personnel in key positions, replace the kitchen, if not the laundry, nuns, and also certain brothers. “So Brother Gardener has to go?” said Joe.

Father Otto turned on Joe. “ You ,” he said, speaking with deliberation, as if the wine, and whatever he’d had in Bill’s room, and the beer before that, had suddenly gone to his head. “ You. Covered. Up. Those. Flowers .”

“Flowers?” said Joe, and listened to the silence in the study. For the first time since the party began, he felt that others were interested in what he might have to say. “Things like petunias,” he said, and started to tell them about the leftover sod. At once he saw that they already knew about it, that it was later than he’d thought, that he was not to escape the pastor’s fate, was already being discussed in his own rectory and therefore in others by curates and visiting priests, those natural allies. “Didn’t realize you felt that way about petunias, Father. Strawberries, yes.”

“Humph,” said Father Otto.

“Excuse me,” Joe said, feeling that everybody was against him, and went over to the table, where he had work to do. He had to fire up the chafing dish, pour the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer, place it directly over the flame, bring the juice to a boil, thicken with 1/2 tsp. of arrowroot dissolved in a little cold water, but Potter was telling the others that family life was in such tough shape today because Our Lord had been a bachelor, and so, carrying a dead match to the ashtray, Joe appeared among them again, saying, “We used to ask a lot of silly questions in the sem. Would Our Lord be a smoker, drive a late-model car, and so on. Kid stuff — nobody got hurt. But I wonder about some of the stuff I hear today.”

“People living normal lives can’t identify with Our Lord,” Potter said. “Or with us —because of the celibacy barrier.”

“That so?” said Joe. “And where you don’t have that barrier? I mean how well do we identify with Our Lord?” Joe put the question to Bill and Hennessy, too, with his eyes, passed over Conklin, tried but failed with Father Otto, who was spearing kernels of corn with his fork, making a clicking noise on his plate — rather annoying, since it broke what otherwise would have been an impressive silence.

“He’s got you, Pot,” said Conklin, and then to Joe: “We may be closer than I thought.”

Joe, not seeing why Conklin’s last words should cause Bill and Potter to look so sad, continued, “And when you consider we work at it full time, unlike the laity — well, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“It did me,” said Conklin

Bill sighed, and Potter held out his glass to Conklin for wine — a highball glass with ice in it. Joe said nothing about a proper glass, afraid that Potter (who’d said earlier that he longed for the day when he’d be able to say Mass with a beer mug, a coffee cup, a small flower vase of simple design, because such things were cheap and honest and made, like us, of clay) would refuse a proper glass and, furthermore, would say why . In that way, Potter could easily evade the issue he’d raised, the celibacy issue, as he had the egg. Potter was tricky, had to be watched, but Joe was doing that — and then Father Otto had to butt in.

“There’s been a lot of talk in the community about family life, but whatever the future holds for you fellas, I think it’s safe to say our status, or situation — some would say our lot — won’t change. When you get right down to it, a monastery’s no place for a family man.”

“I’ll buy that,” said Joe.

“Oh, well,” said Father Otto. “The community’s family enough for me.”

And that, Joe thought, is why you’re here.

“When you get right down to it,” said Conklin (to Father Otto), “a monastery’s no place for you . Priests weren’t meant to be monks, and monks weren’t meant to be priests — and weren’t in the Age of Faith.”

“We all know that,” Joe said — Conklin sounded just like an ex-seminarian, or an educated layman.

“Times change,” said Father Otto.

“Status-seeking,” said Conklin.

Joe gave Bill a look for grinning, and to make it absolutely clear where his sympathies lay, as between Conklin and Father Otto, who appeared to be slightly wounded, Joe fetched the bottle. “Father?”

“All right,” said Father Otto.

Joe filled the monk’s glass, also his own, and went back to the table, with Potter’s voice following him. “Why put such a premium on celibacy — on sex, really? Think of the problems it creates.”

“Think of the problems it doesn’t create,” said Joe, and while Potter and the others were thinking of those problems (Joe hoped), he poured the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer. That done, he appeared among them again, saying, “The premium isn’t on sex. It isn’t on celibacy. It’s on efficiency and sanctity.”

“Oh, no !” said Conklin.

“Oh, yes ,” said Joe. “Even if we don’t hear much about that aspect of the priesthood today.” And, having given them more food for thought, Joe left them again, for he still had work to do, but before he reached the table the impressive silence his words had produced was cruelly violated.

“ Father, how can we make sanctity as attractive as sex to the common man? ”

Joe had put that question to a Discalced Carmelite before an S.R.O. audience at the seminary during the war years, and Joe could hear it yet, that famous question, and had to expect to hear it yet from certain men — Potter’s permissive pastor was one — of that era, but not , Joe thought, from somebody like Conklin, and showed it.