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

“I believe you need not fear for your soul on that account.”

“Glad to hear it from you, a priest, Father. Ofttimes it’s thrown up to me.” He came to terms with reality, smiling. “I wasn’t always so well off myself, so I can understand the temptation to knock the other fellow.”

“Fine.”

“But that’s still not to say that water’s not wet or that names don’t hurt sometimes, whatever the bard said to the contrary.”

“What bard?”

“‘Sticks and stones—’”

“Oh.”

“If this were a matter of faith and morals, Father, I’d be the one to sit back and let you do the talking. But it’s a case of common sense, Father, and I think I can safely say, if you listen to me you’ll not lose by it in the long run.”

“It could be.”

“May I ask you a personal question, Father?”

Father Burner searched T. N. T..’s face. “Go ahead, Mr Tracy.”

“Do you bank, Father?”

“ Bank? Oh, bank — no. Why?”

“Let’s admit it, Father,” T. N. T.. coaxed, frankly amused. “Priests as a class are an improvident lot — our records show it — and you’re no exception. But that, I think, explains the glory of the Church down through the ages.”

“The Church is divine,” Father Burner corrected. “And the concept of poverty isn’t exactly foreign to Christianity or even to the priesthood.”

“Exactly,” T. N. T.. agreed, pinked. “But think of the future, Father.”

Nowadays when Father Burner thought of the future it required a firm act of imagination. As a seminarian twenty years ago, it had all been plain: ordination, roughly ten years as a curate somewhere (he was not the kind to be sent to Rome for further study), a church of his own to follow, the fruitful years, then retirement, pastor emeritus, with assistants doing the spade work, leaving the fine touches to him, still a hearty old man very much alive. It was not an uncommon hope and, in fact, all around him it had materialized for his friends. But for him it was only a bad memory growing worse. He was the desperate assistant now, the angry functionary aging in the outer office. One day he would wake and find himself old, as the morning finds itself covered with snow. The future had assumed the forgotten character of a dream, so that he could not be sure that he had ever truly had one.

T. N. T.. talked on and Father Burner felt a mist generating on his forehead. He tore his damp hands apart and put the napkin aside. Yes, yes, it was true a priest received miserably little, but then that was the whole idea. He did not comment, dreading T. N. T..’s foaming compassion, to be spat upon with charity. Yes, as a matter of fact, it would be easier to face old age with something more to draw upon than what the ecclesiastical authorities deemed sufficient and would provide. Also, as T. N. T.. pointed out, one never knew when he might come down with an expensive illness. T. N. T… despite him-self, had something… The Plan, in itself, was not bad. He must not reject the olive branch because it came by buzzard. But still Father Burner was a little bothered by the idea of a priest feathering his nest. Why? In other problems he was never the one to take the ascetic interpretation.

“You must be between thirty-five and forty, Father.”

“I’ll never see forty again.”

“I’d never believe it from anyone else. You sure don’t look it, Father.”

“Maybe not. But I feel it.”

“Worries, Father. And one big one is the future, Father. You’ll get to be fifty, sixty, seventy — and what have you got? — not a penny saved. You look around and say to yourself — where did it go?”

T. N. T.. had the trained voice of the good and faithful servant, supple from many such dealings. And still from time to time a faint draught of contempt seemed to pass through it which had something to do with his eyes. Here, Father Burner thought, was the latest thing in simony, unnecessary, inspired from without, participated in spiritlessly by the priest who must yet suffer the brunt of the blame and ultimately do the penance. Father Burner felt mysteriously purchasable. He was involved in an exchange of confidences which impoverished him mortally. In T. N. T.. he sensed free will in its senility or the infinite capacity for equating evil with good — or with nothing — the same thing, only easier. Here was one more word in the history of the worm’s progress, another wave on the dry flood that kept rising, the constant aggrandizement of decay. In the end it must touch the world and everything at the heart. Father Burner felt weak from a nameless loss.

“I think I can do us both a service, Father.”

“I don’t say you can’t.” Father Burner rose quickly. “I’ll have to think about it, Mr Tracy.”

“To be sure, Father.” He produced a glossy circular. “Just let me leave this literature with you.”

Father Burner, leading him to the door, prevented further talk by reading the circular. It was printed in a churchy type, all purple and gold, a dummy leaf from a medieval hymnal, and entitled, “A Silver Lining in the Sky.” It was evidently meant for clergymen only, though not necessarily priests, as Father Burner could instantly see from its general tone.

“Very interesting,” he said.

“My business phone is right on the back, Father. But if you’d rather call me at my home some night—”

“No thanks, Mr Tracy.”

“Allow me to repeat, Father, this isn’t just business with me.”

“I understand.” He opened the door too soon for T. N. T.. “Glad to have met you.”

“Glad to have met you, Father.”

Father Burner went back to the table. The coffee needed warming up and the butter had vanished into the toast. “Mary,” he called. Then he heard them come gabbing into the rectory, Quinlan and his friend Keefe, also newly ordained.

They were hardly inside the dining room before he was explaining how he came to be eating breakfast so late — so late, see? — not still .

“You protest too much, Father,” Quinlan said. “The Angelic Doctor himself weighed three hundred pounds, and I’ll wager he didn’t get it all from prayer and fasting.”

“A pituitary condition,” Keefe interjected, faltering. “Don’t you think?”

“Yah, yah, Father, you’ll wager”—Father Burner, eyes malignant, leaned on his knife, the blade bowing out bright and buttery beneath his fist—“and I’ll wager you’ll be the first saint to reach heaven with a flannel mouth!” Rising from the table, he shook Keefe’s hand, which was damp from his pocket, and experienced a surge of strength, the fat man’s contempt and envy for the thin man. He thought he might break Keefe’s hand off at the wrist without drawing a drop of blood.

Quinlan stood aside, six inches or more below them, gazing up, as at two impossibly heroic figures in a hotel mural. Reading the caption under them, he mused, “Father Burner meets Father Keefe.”

“I’ve heard about you, Father,” Keefe said, plying him with a warmth beyond his means.

“Bound to be the case in a diocese as overstocked with magpies as this one.” Father Burner threw a fresh napkin at a plate. “But be seated, Father Keefe.” Keefe, yes, he had seen him before, a nobody in a crowd, some affair… the K.C. barbecue, the Youth Center? No, probably not, not Keefe, who was obviously not the type, too crabbed and introversive for Catholic Action. “I suppose,” he said, “you’ve heard the latest definition of Catholic Action — the interference of the laity with the inactivity of the hierarchy.”

“Very good,” Keefe said uneasily.

Quinlan yanked off his collar and churned his neck up and down to get circulation. “Dean in the house? No? Good.” He pitched the collar at one of the candles on the buffet for a ringer. “That turkey we met coming out the front door — think I’ve seen his face somewhere.”