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

“I’ll bet the priest won’t show up,” Daddy said.

“The priest will come,” Old Gramma said. “The priest will always come when you need him; just wait.” Her old lips were praying in French.

I hoped he would come like Old Gramma said, but I wasn’t so sure. Some of the priests weren’t much different from anybody else. They knew how to keep their necks in. Daddy said to Mama once if you only wanted to hear about social justice you could turn on the radio or go to the nearest stadium on the Fourth of July, and there’d be an old white man in a new black suit saying it was a good thing and everybody ought to get some, and if they’d just kick in more they might and, anyway, they’d be saved. One came to Our Saviour’s last year, and Father Egan said this is our new assistant and the next Sunday our new assistant was gone — poor health. But Daddy said he was transferred to a church in a white neighborhood because he couldn’t stand to save black souls. Father Egan would’ve come a-flying, riot or no riot, but he was dead now and we didn’t know much about the one that took his place.

Then he came, by God; the priest from Our Saviour’s came to our room while the riot was going on. Old Gramma got all excited and said over and over she knew the priest would come. He was kind of young and skinny and pale, even for a white man, and he said, “I’m Father Crowe,” to everybody in the room and looked around to see who was who.

The doctor introduced himself and said Old Gramma was Old Gramma, Daddy was Daddy, we were the children, that was Mr Gorman, who was just passing by, and over there was poor Mama. He missed Old Gramma’s old woman friend; I guess he didn’t know what to call her. The priest went over and took a look at Mama and nodded to the doctor and they went into Old Gramma’s room together. The priest had a little black bag, too, and he took it with him. I suppose he was getting ready to give Mama Extreme Unction. I didn’t think they would wake her up for Confession or Holy Communion; she was so weak and needed the rest.

Daddy got up from the table mad as a bull and said to the white man, “Remember what I said, mister.”

“But why me?” the white man asked. “Just because I’m white?”

Daddy looked over at Mama on the bed and said, “Yeah, just because you’re white; yeah, that’s why… ” Old Gramma took Daddy by the arm and steered him over to the table again and he sat down.

The priest and the doctor came out of Old Gramma’s room, and right away the priest faced the white man, like they’d been talking about him in Old Gramma’s room, and asked him why he didn’t go home. The white man said he’d heard some shouting in the alley a while ago that didn’t sound so good to him and he didn’t think it was safe yet and that was why.

“I see,” the priest said.

“I’m a Catholic too, Father,” the white man said.

“That’s the trouble,” the priest said.

The priest took some cotton from his little black bag, dipped his fingers in holy oil, and made the sign of the cross on Mama’s eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and hands, rubbing the oil off with the cotton, and said prayers in Latin all the time he was doing it.

“I want you all to kneel down now,” the priest said, “and we’ll say a rosary. But we mustn’t say it too loud because she is sleeping.”

We all knelt down except the baby and Carrie. Carrie said she’d never kneel down to God again. “Now Carrie,” Old Gramma said, almost crying. She told Carrie it was for poor Mama and wouldn’t Carrie kneel down if it was for poor Mama?

“No!” Carrie said. “It must be a white God too!” Then she began crying and she did kneel down after all.

Even the white man knelt down and the doctor and the old woman friend of Old Gramma’s, a solid Baptist if I ever saw one, and we all said the rosary of the five sorrowful mysteries.

Afterwards the white man said to the priest, “Do you mind if I leave when you do, Father?” The priest didn’t answer, and the white man said, “I think I’ll be leaving now, Father. I wonder if you’d be going my way?”

The priest finally said, “All right, all right, come along. You won’t be the first one to hide behind a Roman collar.”

The white man said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that, Father.” The priest didn’t hear him, I guess, or want to explain, because he went over to Mama’s bed.

The priest knelt once more by Mama and said a prayer in Latin out loud and made the sign of the cross over Mama: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti . He looked closer at Mama and motioned to the doctor. The doctor stepped over to the bed, felt Mama’s wrist, put his head to her chest, where it wasn’t pushed in, and stood up slowly.

Daddy and all of us had been watching the doctor when the priest motioned him over, and now Daddy got up from the table, kicking the chair over he got up so fast, and ran to the bed. Shaking all over, he sank to his knees, and I believe he must’ve been crying again, although I thought he never would again and his head was down and I couldn’t see for sure.

I began to get an awful bulging pain in my stomach. The doctor left the bed and grabbed the white man by the arm and was taking him to the door when Daddy jumped up, like he knew where they were going, and said, “Wait a minute, mister!”

The doctor and the white man stopped at the door. Daddy walked draggily over to them and stood in front of the white man, took a deep breath, and said in the stillest kind of whisper, “I wouldn’t touch you.” That was all. He moved slowly back to Mama’s bed and his big shoulders were sagged down like I never saw them before.

Old Gramma said, “ Jésus! ” and stumbled down on her knees by Mama. Then the awful bulging pain in my stomach exploded, and I knew that Mama wasn’t just sleeping now, and I couldn’t breathe for a long while, and then when I finally could I was crying like the baby and brother George, and so was Carrie.

“‘THIRTY-NINTH POPE. Anastasius, a Roman, appointed that while the Gospel was reading they should stand and not sit. He exempted from the ministry those that were lame, impotent, or diseased persons, and slept with his forefathers in peace, being a confessor.’”

“Anno?”

“‘Anno 404.’”

They sat there in the late afternoon, the two old men grown gray in the brown robes of the Order. Angular winter daylight forsook the small room, almost a cell in the primitive sense, and passed through the window into the outside world. The distant horizon, which it sought to join, was still bright and strong against approaching night. The old Franciscans, one priest, one brother, were left among the shadows in the room.

“Can you see to read one more, Titus?” the priest Didymus asked. “Number fourteen.” He did not cease staring out the window at day becoming night on the horizon. The thirty-ninth pope said Titus might not be a priest. Did Titus, reading, understand? He could never really tell about Titus, who said nothing now. There was only silence, then a dry whispering of pages turning. “Number fourteen,” Didymus said. “That’s Zephyrinus. I always like the old heretic on that one, Titus.”

According to one bibliographer, Bishop Bale’s Pageant of Popes Contayninge the Lyves of all the Bishops of Rome, from the Beginninge of them to the Year of Grace 1555 was a denunciation of every pope from Peter to Paul IV. However inviting to readers that might sound, it was in sober fact a lie. The first popes, persecuted and mostly martyred, wholly escaped the author’s remarkable spleen and even enjoyed his crusty approbation. Father Didymus, his aged appetite for biography jaded by the orthodox lives, found the work fascinating. He usually referred to it as “Bishop Bale’s funny book” and to the Bishop as a heretic.