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

So Father Burner was also known as “the circular priest” and he had not reviewed anything since for that magazine.

The mark of the true priest was heavy on the Dean. The mark was on Quinlan; it was on Keefe. It was on every priest he could think of, including a few on the bum, and his good friend and bad companion, Father Desmond. But it was not on him, not properly. They, the others, were stained with it beyond all disguise or disfigurement — indelibly, as indeed Holy Orders by its sacramental nature must stain, for keeps in this world and the one to come. “Thou art a priest forever.” With him, however, it was something else and less, a mask or badge which he could and did remove at will, a temporal part to be played, almost only a doctor’s or lawyer’s. They, the others, would be lost in any persecution. The mark would doom them. But he, if that dies irae ever came — and it was every plump seminarian’s apple-cheeked dream — could pass as the most harmless and useful of humans, a mailman, a bus rider, a husband. But would he? No. They would see. I, he would say, appearing unsought before the judging rabble, am a priest, of the order of Melchizedech. Take me. I am ready. Deo gratias .

Father Burner got out the money to pay and honked his horn. The woman, coming for the bottle and tray, took his money without acknowledging the tip. She stood aside, the bottle held gingerly between offended fingers, final illustration of her lambishness, and watched him drive away. Father Burner, applying a cloven foot to the pedal, gave it the gas. He sensed the woman hoping in her simple heart to see him wreck the car and meet instant death in an unpostponed act of God.

Under the steadying influence of his stomach thrust against the wheel, the car proceeded while he searched himself for a cigarette. He passed a hitchhiker, saw him fade out of view in the mirror overhead, gesticulate wetly in the distance. Was the son of a gun thumbing his nose? Anticlericalism. But pray that your flight be not in the winter… No, wrong text: he would not run away.

The road skirted a tourist village. He wondered who stayed in those places and seemed to remember a story in one of the religious scandal sheets… ILLICIT LOVE in steaming red type.

A billboard cried out, “Get in the scrap and — get in the scrap!” Some of this advertising, he thought, was pretty slick. Put out probably by big New York and Chicago agencies with crack men on their staffs, fellows who had studied at Time . How would it be to write advertising? He knew a few things about layout and type faces from editing the parish paper. He had read somewhere about the best men of our time being in advertising, the air corps of business. There was room for better taste in the Catholic magazines, for someone with a name in the secular field to step in and drive out the money-changers with their trusses, corn cures, non-tangle rosary beads, and crosses that glow in the dark. It was a thought.

Coming into the city limits, he glanced at his watch, but neglected to notice the time. The new gold strap got his eye. The watch itself, a priceless pyx, held the hour (time is money) sacred, like a host. He had chosen it for an ordination gift rather than the usual chalice. It took the kind of courage he had to go against the grain there.

“I’m a dirty stinker!” Father Desmond flung his arms out hard against the mattress. His fists opened on the sheet, hungry for the spikes, meek and ready. “I’m a dirty stinker, Ernest!”

Father Burner, seated deep in a red leather chair at the sick man’s bedside, crossed his legs forcefully. “Now don’t take on so, Father.”

“Don’t call me ‘Father’!” Father Desmond’s eyes fluttered open momentarily, but closed again on the reality of it all. “I don’t deserve it. I’m a disgrace to the priesthood! I am not worthy! Lord, Lord, I am not worthy!”

A nurse entered and stuck a thermometer in Father Desmond’s mouth.

Father Burner smiled at the nurse. He lit a cigarette and wondered if she understood. The chart probably bore the diagnosis “pneumonia,” but if she had been a nurse very long she would know all about that. She released Father Desmond’s wrist and recorded his pulse on her pad. She took the thermometer and left the room.

Father Desmond surged up in bed and flopped, turning with a wrench of the covers, on his stomach. He lay gasping like a fish out of water. Father Burner could smell it on his breath yet.

“Do you want to go to confession?”

“No! I’m not ready for it. I want to remember this time!”

“Oh, all right.” It was funny, if a little tiresome, the way the Irish could exaggerate a situation. They all had access to the same two or three emotions. They all played the same battered barrel organ handed down through generations. Dying, fighting, talking, drinking, praying… wakes, wars, politics, pubs, church. The fates were decimated and hamstrung among them. They loved monotony.

Father Desmond, doing the poor soul uttering his last words in italics, said: “We make too good a thing out of confession, Ernest! Ever think of that, Ernest?” He wagged a nicotined finger. Some of his self-contempt seemed to overshoot its mark and include Father Burner.

Father Burner honked his lips— plutt! “Hire a hall, Ed.”

Father Desmond clawed a rosary out from under his pillow.

Father Burner left.

He put the car in the garage. On the way to his room he passed voices in the Dean’s office.

“Father Burner!” the Dean called through the door.

Father Burner stayed in the hallway, only peeping in, indicating numerous commitments elsewhere. Quinlan and Keefe were with the Dean.

“Apparently, Father, you failed to kill yourself.” Then, for Keefe, the Dean said, “Father Burner fulfills the dream of the American hierarchy and the principle of historical localization. He’s been up in his flying machine all morning.”

“I didn’t go up.” Sullenness came and went in his voice. “It rained.” He shuffled one foot, about to leave, when the Dean’s left eyebrow wriggled up, warning, holding him.

“I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure.” The Dean gave Keefe to Father Burner. “Father Keefe, sir, went through school with Father Quinlan — from the grades through the priesthood.” The Dean described an arc with his breviary, dripping with ribbons, to show the passing years. Father Burner nodded.

“Well?” The Dean frowned at Father Burner. “Has the cat got your tongue, sir? Why don’t you be about greeting Father O’Keefe — or Keefe, is it?”

“Keefe,” Keefe said.

Father Burner, caught in the old amber of his inadequacy, stepped over and shook Keefe’s hand once.

Quinlan stood by and let the drama play itself out.

Keefe, smiling a curious mixture more anxiety than amusement, said, “It’s a pleasure, Father.”

“Same here,” Father Burner said.

“Well, good day, sirs!” The Dean cracked open his breviary and began to read, lips twitching.

Father Burner waited for them in the hall. Before he could explain that he thought too much of the Dean not to humor him and that besides the old fool was out of his head, the Dean proclaimed after them, “The Chancery phoned, Father Burner. You will hear confessions there tonight. I suppose one of those Cathedral jokers lost his faculties.”

Yes, Father Burner knew, it was common procedure all right for the Archbishop to confer promotions by private interview, but every time a priest got called to the Cathedral it did not mean simply that. Many received sermons and it was most likely now someone was needed to hear confessions. And still Father Burner, feeling his pocket, was glad he had not remembered to mail the letter. He would not bother to speak to Quinlan and Keefe now.