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

“Yeah, now I see,” Mac said. He was looking only a little hurt; the flesh above his snow-white collar was changing pinks, but he was looking much better, seemingly convinced that Myles, with an excuse to harm him, and with the power to do so, would not. Mac was having his remarkable experience after all — almost a conversion. “Had you wrong,” he confessed. “Thought sure you’d squeal. Thought sure you’d be the type that would. Hope you don’t mind me saying that. Because you got my respect now.”

Myles could see, however, that Mac liked him less for having it. But he had Mac’s respect, and it was rare, and it made the day rare.

“Until I met you, why— Well, you know.” Mac stopped short.

Myles, with just a look, had let him feel the stick.

“We’ll leave it at that,” Mac said.

“If you will, I will,” said Myles. He crossed the room to the washbowl, where he began to collect his razor, his toothbrush, and the shaving lotion that Mac had given him. When he turned around with these things in his hands, he saw that Mac had gone. He’d left a small deposit of gray ash on the rug near the spot where he’d coiled and uncoiled.

Later that morning Myles, as a last service and proof of good will, went to the garage and brought Mac’s car around to the hotel door, and waited there with it until Mac, smoking his second cigar of the day, appeared. Myles helped him stow his luggage and refused his offer to drive him to the railroad station, if that was where Myles wanted to go. Myles had not told Mac that he intended to hitchhike back to the last town, to confront the difficult bishop and strike the rock a second time. After shaking hands, Mac began, “If I hear of anything—” but Myles silenced him with a look, and then and there the team split up.

Mac got into the Cadillac and drove off. Watching, Myles saw the car, half a block away, bite at the curb and stop. And he saw why. Mac, getting on with the Work, was offering a lift to two men all in black, who, to judge by their actions, didn’t really want one. In the end, though, the black car consumed them, and slithered out of view.

FATHER FABRE, COMING from the bathroom, stopped and knocked at the pastor’s door — something about the door had said, Why not? No sound came from the room, but the pastor had a ghostly step and there he was, opening the door an inch, giving his new curate a glimpse of the green eyeshade he wore and of the chaos in which he dwelt. Father Fabre saw the radio in the unmade bed, the correspondence, pamphlets, the folding money, and all the rest of it — what the bishop, on an official visitation, barging into the room and then hurriedly backing out, had passed off to the attending clergy as “a little unfinished business.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“How about that table you promised me?”

The pastor just looked at him.

“The one for my room, remember? Something to put my typewriter on.”

“See what I can do.”

The pastor had said that before. Father Fabre said, “I’m using the radiator now.”

The pastor nodded, apparently granting him permission to continue using it.

Father Fabre put down the old inclination to give up. “I thought you said you’d fix me up, Father.”

“See what I can do, Father.”

“Now?”

“Busy now.”

The pastor started to close the door, which was according to the rules of their little game, but Father Fabre didn’t budge, which was not according to the rules.

“Tell you what I’ll do, Father,” he said. “I’ll just look around in the basement and you won’t have to bother. I know how busy you are.” Father Fabre had a strange feeling that he was getting somewhere with the pastor. Everything he’d said so far had been right, but he had to keep it up. “Of course I’ll need to know the combination.” He saw the pastor buck and shudder at the idea of telling anyone the combination of the lock that preserved his treasures.

“Better go with you,” the pastor said, feeling his throat.

Father Fabre nodded. This was what he’d had in mind all the time. While the pastor was inside his room looking for his collar (always a chance of meeting a parishioner on the stairs), Father Fabre relaxed and fell to congratulating himself. He had been tough and it had worked. The other thing had proved a waste of time.

After a bit, though, Father Fabre took another view of the situation, knowing as he did so that it was the right one, that the door hadn’t just happened to shut after the pastor, that the man wasn’t coming out. Oh, that was it. The pastor had won again. He was safe in his room again, secure in the knowledge that his curate wouldn’t knock and start up the whole business again, not for a while anyway.

Father Fabre went away. Going downstairs, he told himself that though he had lost, he had extended the pastor as never before, and would get the best of him yet.

Father Fabre sensed John, the janitor, before he saw him sitting in the dark under the staircase, at one of his stations. He might be found in this rather episcopal chair, which was also a hall-tree, or on a box in the furnace room, or in the choir loft behind the organ, or in the visiting priest’s confessional. There were probably other places which Father Fabre didn’t know about. John moved around a lot, foxlike, killing time.

Father Fabre switched on the light. John pulled himself together and managed a smile, his glasses as always frosted over with dust so that he seemed to be watching you through basement windows.

“John, you know that lock on the door to the church basement?”

John nodded.

“It’s not much of a lock. Think we can open it?”

John frowned.

“A tap on the side?”

John shook his head.

“No?”

“Sorry, Father.”

“So.” Father Fabre turned away.

“Will you need a hammer, Father?”

“Don’t think I’ll need one. Sure you won’t come along?”

“Awful busy, Father.” But John found time to get up and accompany Father Fabre to the iron staircase that led to the church basement. There they parted. Father Fabre snapped the light switch on the wall. He wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. He left the door open for light. A half flight down, pausing, he hearkened to John’s distant footsteps, rapidly climbing, and then he went winding down into the gloom. At the bottom he seated himself on a step and waited.

Soon he heard a slight noise above. Rounding the last turn, descending into view, was the pastor. “Oh, there you are,” said Father Fabre, rising.

The pastor voiced no complaint — and why should he? He’d lost a trick, but Father Fabre had taken it honorably, according to the rules, in a manner worthy of the pastor himself.

Father Fabre was up on his toes, straining to see.

The pastor was fooling with something inside the fuse box on the wall, standing up to it, his back almost a shield against Father Fabre’s eyes. Overhead a bulb lit up. So that was it, thought Father Fabre, coming down to earth — and to think that he’d always blamed the wiring for the way some of the lights didn’t work around the church and rectory, recommending a general checkup, prophesying death by conflagration to the pastor. Father Fabre, rising again, saw the pastor screw in another fuse where none had been before. That would be the one controlling the basement lights.

The pastor dealt next with the door, dropping into a crouch to dial the lock.

Father Fabre leaned forward like an umpire for the pitch, but saw at once that it would be impossible to lift the combination. He scraped his foot in disgust, grinding a bit of fallen plaster. The pastor’s fingers tumbled together. He seemed to be listening. After a moment, he began to dial again, apparently having to start all over.