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

In “One of Them” the curate, Father Simpson, has long tried to extract from the pastor a spare key for the front door of the rectory. The pastor is going away for a few days, and the question of a key arises again over the dinner table. As usual, the pastor has left an edifying pamphlet on Father Simpson’s plate, without comment:

“Father,” said Simpson, coming to dessert, and remembering how he’d phrased the question before (“Father, how long will you be gone?”) rephrased it, “will you be gone long?”

“Not long,” said the pastor, as before.

“Father,” said Simpson when he’d eaten his peaches, “while you’re away, if I have to go out at night — hospital or something — and the church is locked, I can knock or ring, I know, but I’d hate to disturb Ms Burke, if you know what I mean, Father?”

The pastor nodded, as if he did know, but bowed his head in silent grace.

So did Simpson then, and, when they rose from the table, did not forget the pamphlet by his plate. “So I should knock or ring, Father?”

“Ring,” said the pastor.

It is the priests’ pretense that every constituent of their lives is transparent that gives this exchange its comic poignancy: “… but bowed his head in silent grace.” Look how the fish live: look how the priests live. What has happened to the impulses and the spiritual visitations, the qualms and scruples, that must have directed curate and pastor in earlier years toward the priesthood? And now they are embroiled in a little play of power about a key. Was it for this that Christ was crucified and Paul set up a church? James, in writing “The Turn of the Screw,” determined that instead of supplying instances of the evil deeds of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, he would “make the reader think the evil.” “Make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.” Similarly, Powers — precisely by keeping everything he shows visible, external, and conventional — makes the reader think the forces that are not on show, the spiritual experiences that started out so compellingly and have issued in these penuries.

Not all of these stories are about priests. My favorite story, “Renner,” is entirely secular: we are shown an eating house in a Midwestern city. There are seven characters: the narrator, his colleague Renner, the waiter Emil, a patron named Ross, a not-entirely-sober Irishman, a German, and “the fat one.” Nothing much happens, there is no plot, there are no dramatic climaxes or crises. Some of the characters are merely playing cards at a table. They are nearly anonymous. But they, and the lives they lead, are revealed by small gestures and silences, minute changes of tone. It is not a typical story of Powers’s. His talent may have been startled to find itself taking this form. But the story is, in its quiet way, thrilling. The first time I read it, I knew I was reading the work of a master. A work of literature is a book you’d be happy to read again and again — like the book in your hand.

— DENIS DONOGHUE

THE TREES HAD the bad luck to be born mulberry and to attract bees. It was not the first time, Father said, and so you could not say he was being unfair. It was, in fact, the second time that a bee had come up and stung him on the front porch. What if it had been a wasp? How did he know it was one of the mulberry bees? He knew. That was all. And now, Sister, if you’ll just take the others into the house with you, we’ll get down to work. She had ordered the others into the convent, but had stayed to plead privately for the trees. The three big ones must go. He would spare the small one until such time as it grew up and became a menace.

Adjusting the shade, which let the sun through in withered cracks like the rivers on a map, she peeked out at the baking schoolyard, at the three trees. Waves of heat wandered thirstily over the pebbles, led around by the uncertain wind. She could see the figure of Father walking the heat waves, a fat vision in black returning to the scene of the crime, grabbing the axe away from the janitor… Here, John, let me give her the first lick!… And so, possibly fancying himself a hundred years back, the most notable person at the birth of a canal or railroad, and with the children for his amazed audience, he had dealt the first blow. Incredible priest!

She left the room and went downstairs. They were waiting in the parlor. She knew at a glance that one was missing. Besides herself, they were twelve — the apostles. It was the kind of joke they could appreciate, but not to be carried too far, for then one of them must be Judas, which was not funny. In the same way she, as the leader of the apostles, feared the implication as blasphemous. It was not a very good joke for the convent, but it was fine to tell lay people, to let them know there was life there.

She entered the little chapel off the parlor. Here the rug was thicker and the same wide-board floor made to shine. She knelt for a moment and then, genuflecting in the easy, jointless way that comes from years of it, she left. Sister Eleanor, the one missing, followed her into the parlor.

“All right, Sisters, let’s go.” She led them through the sagging house, which daily surpassed itself in gloominess and was only too clean and crowded not to seem haunted, and over the splintery floor rising and sinking underfoot like a raft. She opened the back door and waited for them to pass. She thought of herself as a turnkey releasing them briefly to the sun and then to their common, sudden doom. They proceeded silently across the schoolyard, past the stumps bleeding sap, the bright chips dirtying in the gravel, a few twigs folded in death.

Going under the basketball standards she thought they needed only a raven or two to become gibbets in the burning sun. A pebble lit in the lacings of her shoe. She stopped to free it. She believed she preferred honest dust to manufactured pebbles. Dust lent itself to philosophizing and was easier on the children’s knees.

They climbed the cement steps, parting the dish towels on the porch as portieres, and entered the rectory. The towels were dry and the housekeeper would be gone. She sensed a little longing circulate among the sisters as they filed into the kitchen. It was all modern, the after for the before they would always have at the convent. She did not care for it, however. It hurt the eyes, like a field of sunny snow. A cockroach turned around and ran the other way on the sink. At least he was not modern.

The dining room was still groggy from Sunday dinner. They drew chairs up to the table in which the housekeeper had inserted extra leaves before taking the afternoon off. The table was covered with the soiled cloth that two of them would be washing tomorrow. They sighed. There, in the middle of the table, in canvas sacks the size of mailbags, were the day’s three collections, the ledgers and index cards for recording individual contributions. They sat down to count.

With them all sitting around the table, it seemed the time for her to pray, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts…”

Sister Antonia, her assistant, seized one of the sacks and emptied it out on the table. “Come on, you money-changers, dig in!” Sister Antonia rammed her red hands into the pile and leveled it off. “Money, money, money.”

“Shall we do what we did last week?” asked Sister Florence. She looked hopefully at Sister Antonia.

“Cubs and White Sox?” said Sister Antonia. “O.K., if it’ll make you happy.” Sister Antonia dumped out the other sack. The winner would be the one counting the most money. They chose up sides and changed seats accordingly, leaving Sister Antonia and herself to do the envelopes.