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

Myles restated his position. Mac, with noticeable patience, said that Myles was too hard on people — too critical of the modern world. “Give it time,” he said. When Myles persisted, Mac said, “Let’s give it a rest, huh? You wanna take it awhile?” He stopped the car and turned the wheel over to Myles. After watching him pass a Greyhound bus, he appeared to be satisfied that the car was in good hands, and went to sleep.

The first night on the road they stopped in a small town, at the only hotel, which had no bar, and Mac suggested that they go out for a drink. In a tavern, the bartender, when he found out they were from Chicago, showed them his collection of matchbooks with nudes on the cover.

“I have a friend that’ll get you all that you want,” Mac said to him. “You better avert your eyes, son,” he said to Myles. “This is some of that modern world you don’t like. He doesn’t like our modern world,” Mac said to the bartender.

“Maybe he don’t know what he’s missing.”

The bartender seemed anxious to make a deal until Mac asked him to put down a little deposit “as evidence of good faith.”

“Do I have to?”

“To me it’s immaterial,” Mac said. “But I notice it sometimes speeds delivery.”

“I can wait.”

“All right, if you’re sure you can. You write your name and address on a slip of paper and how many you want.” While the bartender was doing this, Mac called over to him, “Don’t forget your zone number.”

“We don’t have ’em in this town.”

“Oh,” Mac said. He gave Myles a look, the wise, doped look of a camel.

The bartender brought the slip of paper over to Mac. “They gotta be as good as them I got — or better,” he said, and walked away.

Mac, watching him, matched him word for step: “When-you-gonna-get-those-corners-sawed-off-your-head?”

Leaving the tavern with Mac, Myles saw the wind take the slip of paper up the street.

“My friend can do without that kind of business,” Mac said.

Mac began operations on a freezing cold day in central Wisconsin, and right away Myles was denied his first opportunity. While Mac went into a chancery office to negotiate with the bishop, who would (or would not) grant permission to canvass the diocese, Myles had to wait outside in the car, with the engine running; Mac said he was worried about the battery. This bishop was one with whom Myles had already corresponded unsuccessfully, but that was small consolation to him, in view of his plan to plead his case before as many bishops as possible, without reference to past failures. How he’d manage it with Mac in attendance, he didn’t know. Perhaps he could use the initial interview for analysis only and, attempting to see the bishop as an opponent in a game, try to uncover his weakness, and then call back alone later and play upon it. Myles disapproved of cunning, and rather doubted whether he could carry out such a scheme. But he also recalled that puzzling but practical advice, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves,” the first part of which the bishops themselves, he believed, were at such pains to follow in their dealings with him.

The next day Mac invited Myles to accompany him indoors when he paid his calls upon the pastors. The day was no warmer but Mac said nothing about the battery. He said, “You’ve got a lot to learn, son,” and proceeded to give Myles some pointers. In some dioceses, according to Mac, the bishop’s permission was all you needed; get that, and the pastors — always excepting a few incorrigibles — would drop like ripe fruit. Unfortunately, in such dioceses the bishop’s permission wasn’t always easy to obtain. Of course you got in to see bishops personally (this in reply to a question from Myles), but most of the time you were working with pastors. There were two kinds of pastors, Mac said — those who honestly believed they knew everything and those who didn’t. With the first, it was best to appear helpless (as, in fact, you were) and try to get them interested in doing your job for you. With the other kind, you had to appear confident, promise them the moon — something they were always looking for anyway — tell them a change might come over their people if they were exposed to the pamphlets and the Clementine . Of course, no pastor had a right to expect such a miracle, but many did expect it even so, if the pamphlets and the Clementine hadn’t been tried in the parish before. You’d meet some, though, Mac said, who would be cold, even opposed, to the Work, and offensive to you, and with them you took a beating — but cheerfully, hoping for a change of heart later. More than one of that kind had come around in the end, he said, and one of them had even written a glowing letter to the Fathers, complimenting them on the high type of layman they had working for them, and had placed an order for a rack of pamphlets on condition that Mac received credit for it. Then there were the others — those who would do everything they could to help you, wanted to feed you and put you up overnight, but they, for some reason, were found more often in the country, or in poor city parishes, where little could be accomplished and where you seldom went.

On the third day out, they came across one of the incorrigibles. He greeted them with a snarl. “You guys’re a breed apart,” he said. Myles was offended, but Mac, undaunted, went into his routine for cracking hard nuts. “Don’t know much about this job, I’m ashamed to say,” he said, “but it’s sure a lot of fun learning.” The pastor, instead of going out of his way to help a cheerful soul like Mac (and a nervous one like Myles), ordered them out of the rectory, produced a golf club when they didn’t go and, when they did, stood at the front window, behind a lace curtain, until they drove off.

Before the end of the first week, Myles discovered that Mac wasn’t really interested in getting permission to canvass a parish house-to-house. He said he just didn’t care that much about people. What he liked was cooperation; he liked to have a pastor in the pulpit doing the donkey work and the ushers in the aisles dispensing pencil stubs and subscription blanks, with him just sitting at a card table in the vestibule after Mass, smiling at the new subscribers as they passed out, making change, and croaking, “God love you.” That was what Mac called “a production.” He operated on a sliding scale — a slippery one, Myles thought. In a big, well-to-do parish, where the take would be high, Mac cut prices. He was also prepared to make an offering toward the upkeep of the church, or to the pastor’s favorite charity (the latter was often the former), and to signify his intention beforehand. He had to hustle, he said, in order to meet the stiff competition of the missionaries; a layman, even if he represented a recognized religious order, was always at a disadvantage. Fortunately, he said, there were quite a few secular pastors who, though they didn’t care for the orders, didn’t consider the struggling Clementines a menace. But there weren’t many pastors with flourishing parishes who would cooperate with Mac or with anybody. They were sitting pretty, Mac said, and they knew it. If he now and then succeeded with one of them, it was only because he was liked personally — or, as it seemed to Myles, because of what Mac called “the package deal.” The package deal didn’t actually involve the Work, Mac was careful to explain, but it sometimes helped it. And, Myles felt, compromised it.

The package deal always began with Mac’s opening his bag of tricks. It was a Gladstone bag, which he had got from a retired cookie salesman. When open, it looked like a little stadium, and where the cookies had once been on display, in their individual plastic sections, ranged in tiers, there were now rosaries, medals, scapulars — religious goods of the usual quality, which didn’t catch the eye in many rectories. But there were also playing cards with saints as face cards — in one deck the Devil was the joker — and these were new to some priests, as they were to Myles, and had strong educational appeal. Children could familiarize themselves with the lives of the saints from them, and there were other decks, which taught Christian doctrine. Mac had a new kind of rosary, too. It was made of plastic, to fit the hand, and in function and appearance it was similar to an umpire’s ball-and-strike indicator. Each time a little key was punched, the single dial, which showed the Mysteries — Sorrowful, Joyful, and Glorious — revolved a notch, and for the Ave Marias there was a modest tick, for the Pater Nosters an authoritative click. Mac had difficulty explaining the new rosary’s purpose to some priests— not to replace the old model, the traditional beads on a string, but to facilitate prayer while driving, for the new rosary was easily attached to the steering wheel. “Of course, you still have to say the prayers,” Mac would say.