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

He found Father Eudex reading The Catholic Worker one day and had not trusted him since. Father Eudex’s conception of the priesthood was evangelical in the worst sense, barbaric, gross, foreign to the mind of the Church, which was one of two terms he used as sticks to beat him with. The other was taste. The air of the rectory was often heavy with The Mind of the Church and Taste.

Another thing. Father Eudex could not conduct a civil conversation. Monsignor doubted that Father Eudex could even think to himself with anything like agreement. Certainly any discussion with Father Eudex ended inevitably in argument or sighing. Sighing! Why didn’t people talk up if they had anything to say? No, they’d rather sigh! Father, don’t ever, ever sigh at me again!

Finally, Monsignor did not like Father Eudex’s table manners. This came to a head one night when Monsignor, seeing his curate’s plate empty and all the silverware at his place unused except for a single knife, fork, and spoon, exploded altogether, saying it had been on his mind for weeks, and then descending into the vernacular he declared that Father Eudex did not know the forks — now perhaps he could understand that! Meals, unless Monsignor had guests or other things to struggle with, were always occasions of instruction for Father Eudex, and sometimes of chastisement.

And now he knew the worst — if Monsignor was thinking of recommending him for a year of study, in a Sulpician seminary probably, to learn the forks. So this was what it meant to be a priest. Come, follow me. Going forth, teach ye all nations. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils . Teach the class of people we get here? Teach Mr Memmers? Teach Communists? Teach Monsignors? And where were the poor? The lepers of old? The lepers were in their colonies with nuns to nurse them. The poor were in their holes and would not come out. Mr Memmers was in his bank, without cheer. The Communists were in their universities, awaiting a sign. And he was at table with Monsignor, and it was enough for the disciple to be as his master, but the housekeeper had used green olives.

Monsignor inquired, “Did you get your check today?”

Father Eudex, looking up, considered. “I got a check,” he said.

“From the Rival people, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, I think you might apply it on the car you’re wanting. A decent car. That’s a worthy cause.” Monsignor noticed that he was not taking it well. “Not that I mean to dictate what you shall do with your little windfall, Father. It’s just that I don’t like to see you mortifying yourself with a Model A — and disgracing the Church.”

“Yes,” Father Eudex said, suffering.

“Yes. I dare say you don’t see the danger, just as you didn’t a while ago when I found you making a spectacle of yourself with Whalen. You just don’t see the danger because you just don’t think. Not to dwell on it, but I seem to remember some overshoes.”

The overshoes! Monsignor referred to them as to the Fall. Last winter Father Eudex had given his overshoes to a freezing picket. It had got back to Monsignor and — good Lord, a man could have his sympathies, but he had no right clad in the cloth to endanger the prestige of the Church by siding in these wretched squabbles. Monsignor said he hated to think of all the evil done by people doing good! Had Father Eudex ever heard of the Albigensian heresy, or didn’t the seminary teach that anymore?

Father Eudex declined dessert. It was strawberry mousse.

“Delicious,” Monsignor said. “I think I’ll let her stay.”

At that moment Father Eudex decided that he had nothing to lose. He placed his knife next to his fork on the plate, adjusted them this way and that until they seemed to work a combination in his mind, to spring a lock which in turn enabled him to speak out.

“Monsignor,” he said. “I think I ought to tell you I don’t intend to make use of that money. In fact — to show you how my mind works — I have even considered endorsing the check to the strikers’ relief fund.”

“So,” Monsignor said calmly — years in the confessional had prepared him for anything.

“I’ll admit I don’t know whether I can in justice. And even if I could I don’t know that I would. I don’t know why… I guess hush money, no matter what you do with it, is lousy.”

Monsignor regarded him with piercing baby blue eyes. “You’d find it pretty hard to prove, Father, that any money in se is… what you say it is. I would quarrel further with the definition ‘hush money.’ It seems to me nothing if not rash that you would presume to impugn the motive of the Rival Company in sending out these checks. You would seem to challenge the whole concept of good works — not that I am ignorant of the misuses to which money can be put.” Monsignor, changing tack, tucked it all into a sigh. “Perhaps I’m just a simple soul, and it’s enough for me to know personally some of the people in the Rival Company and to know them good people. Many of them Catholic…” A throb had crept into Monsignor’s voice. He shut it off.

“I don’t mean anything that subtle, Monsignor,” Father Eudex said. “I’m just telling you, as my pastor, what I’m going to do with the check. Or what I’m not going to do with it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Maybe send it back.”

Monsignor rose from the table, slightly smiling. “Very well, Father. But there’s always the poor.”

Monsignor took leave of Father Eudex with a laugh. Father Eudex felt it was supposed to fool him into thinking that nothing he had said would be used against him. It showed, rather, that Monsignor was not winded, that he had broken wild curates before, plenty of them, and that he would ride again.

Father Eudex sought the shade of the porch. He tried to read his office, but was drowsy. He got up for a glass of water. The saints in Ireland used to stand up to their necks in cold water, but not for drowsiness. When he came back to the porch a woman was ringing the doorbell. She looked like a customer for rosary beads.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m Mrs Klein, Father, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”

Father Eudex straightened a porch chair for her. “Please sit down.”

“It’s a German name, Father. Klein was German descent,” she said, and added with a silly grin, “It ain’t what you think, Father.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Klein. Some think it’s a Jew name. But they stole it from Klein.”

Father Eudex decided to come back to that later. “You were wondering if I could help you?”

“Yes, Father. It’s personal.”

“Is it matter for confession?”

“Oh no, Father.” He had made her blush.

“Then go ahead.”

Mrs Klein peered into the honeysuckle vines on either side of the porch for alien ears.

“No one can hear you, Mrs Klein.”

“Father — I’m just a poor widow,” she said, and continued as though Father Eudex had just slandered the man. “Klein was awful good to me, Father.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“So good… and he went and left me all he had.” She had begun to cry a little.

Father Eudex nodded gently. She was after something, probably not money, always the best bet — either that or a drunk in the family — but this one was not Irish. Perhaps just sympathy.

“I come to get your advice, Father. Klein always said, ‘If you got a problem, Freda, see the priest.’”

“Do you need money?”

“I got more than I can use from the bakery.”

“You have a bakery?”

Mrs Klein nodded down the street. “That’s my bakery. It was Klein’s. The Purity.”

“I go by there all the time,” Father Eudex said, abandoning himself to her. He must stop trying to shape the conversation and let her work it out.