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

From that day on, I moved freely about the house, as I had in Father Malt’s time, and Mrs Wynn, to add to the mystery, made no effort to keep me with her in the kitchen. I was thus in a position to observe other lapses or inconsistencies in Father Burner. Formerly, he’d liked to have lights burning all over the house. Now that he was paying the bill, the place was often shrouded in darkness. He threw out the tattered rugs at the front and back doors and bought rubber mats — at a saving, evidently, for although one mat bore the initial “B,” the other had an “R,” which stood for nobody but may have been the closest thing he could get to go with the “B.” I noticed, too, that he took off his galoshes before entering the house, as though it were no longer just church property but home to him.

I noticed that he was going out less with his camera, and to the hospital more, not just to visit Father Malt, to whom he’d never had much to say, but to visit the sick in general.

In former times, he had been loath to go near the hospital during the day, and at night, before he’d leave his bed to make a sick call, there had had to be infallible proof that a patient was in danger of death. It had been something awful to hear him on the line with the hospital in the wee hours, haggling, asking if maybe they weren’t a little free and easy with their designation “critical,” as, indeed, I believe some of them liked to be. He’d tried to get them to change a patient’s “critical” to “fair” (which meant he could forget about that one), and acted as though there were some therapeutic power about the word, if the hospital could just be persuaded to make use of it. Father Malt, with his hearing aid off, was virtually deaf, Mrs Wynn roomed down the street, and so I had been the one to suffer. “Oh, go on, go on,” I’d wanted to say. “Go on over there, or don’t go — but hang up! Some of us want to sleep!” There were nights when I’d hardly sleep a wink — unlike Father Burner, who, even if he did go to the hospital, would come bumbling back and drop off with his clothes on.

In general, I now found his attitude toward his duties altered, but not too much so, not extreme. If he’d had a night of sick calls, he’d try to make up for it with a nap before dinner. His trouble was still a pronounced unwillingness to take a total loss on sacrifice.

I found other evidence of the change he was undergoing — outlines of sermons in the wastebasket, for instance. In the past, he’d boasted that he thought of whatever he was going to say on Sunday in the time it took him to walk from the altar to the pulpit. He was not afraid to speak on the parishioners’ duty to contribute generously to the support of the church, a subject neglected under Father Malt, who’d been satisfied with what the people wanted to give — very little. Father Burner tried to get them interested in the church. He said it was a matter of pride — pride in the good sense of the word. I felt he went too far, however, when, one Sunday, he told the congregation that it was their church and their rectory. There had always been too many converts hanging around the house for instruction, and now there were more of them than in Father Malt’s day. The house just wasn’t large enough for all of us.

Father Desmond, noting how little time Father Burner now had for himself (and for Father Desmond), suggested that the chancery be petitioned for help (“There’s just too much work here for one man, Ernest”), but Father Burner said no, and so resisted what must have been the worst of all possible temptations to him, the assistant’s sweet dream — to have an assistant. He said he’d go it alone. It almost seemed as if he were out to distinguish himself, not in the eyes of others — something he’d always worked at — but in his own eyes.

At any rate, he was beginning to act and talk like a real pastor. When Father Desmond came over or phoned, they talked of construction and repairs. Father Desmond, one of our most promising young pastors, was building a new school — with undue emphasis, it seemed to me, on the gymnasium. Father Burner, lacking authority to do more, made needed repairs. He had the rectory kitchen painted and purchased a Mixmaster for Mrs Wynn. He had the windows in the church basement calked and installed a small institutional kitchen there, thus showing all too clearly that he intended to go in for parish suppers, which he’d abominated in the past as the hardest part of the priesthood.

Father Desmond and Father Burner now spoke fluently a gibberish that only a building pastor could comprehend. They talked of organs, bells, and bulletin boards, coin counters, confessional chairs and hearing devices, flooring, kneeler pads, gym seats, radiation, filing systems, electric fans, mops, and brooms, and all by their difficult trade names — Wurlitzer, Carillonic, Confessionaire, Confession-Ease, Speed Sweep, the Klopp (coin counter); Vakumatic, Scrubber-Vac, Kardex, Mopmaster, and many more. And shrubbery and trees.

There was a great need for trees in Sherwood — a need that, I daresay, had never occurred to Father Malt, or, presumably, to many of the older inhabitants of the town. The new people, who lived in “ranch houses” and worked in Minneapolis, seemed to like trees, and so, in his new phase, did Father Burner.

“When spring comes,” he said, in cold January, ‘I’ll plant some maples.”

Father Desmond, who knew where Father Burner’s thoughts were hiding, said, “Someday you’ll build, too, Ernest.”

After fourteen months in the hospital, Father Malt was moved to the sisters’ infirmary in St Paul, where there were supposed to be other patients, including old priests, of similar tastes and outlook. In our busy rectory, the seasons had come and gone without pause, the seasons as we observed them — baseball, football, Christmas, basketball, and Lent again. There were further improvements, or at least changes. Father Burner got Mrs Wynn a white radio for her kitchen and thereby broke the tradition of silence we’d had under Father Malt, who hadn’t even listened to Cedric Adams and the ten o’clock news.

I spent my mornings in the parlor and thus escaped the full effect of Mrs Wynn’s programs, but in the parlor, or wherever I went in the house, I heard those same voices, always at the same hour, always repeating themselves, and for a while, at first, I took a certain interest in those miserable lives. Can a woman over thirty-five find love again? Should a girl, the ward of a man twenty years older, marry him? For these questions, as time went on, I could see there would be no answers.

In our rectory, another question was being asked, and for this question there had to be an answer. Father Burner was pastor of the church in all but name, and could hope, with good reason, that this, too, would be added unto him in time, if he worked and prayed hard enough. During the first weeks after the accident, Father Burner and Father Desmond had discussed the physical aspects of Father Malt’s case — what kind of cast, the number and type of pins, and all the rest. Lately, however, they’d been taking another line, more to the point and touching upon Father Burner’s chances.

The difficulty lay, of course, in Father Malt’s refusal to give himself up to the life of an invalid. Nothing could be done about appointing his successor until he actually resigned or died. No one, of course, openly suggested that he do either. It was up to him to decide. Father Desmond believed that, sooner or later, the Archbishop would go to Father Malt and precipitate a solution of the problem. But even the Archbishop was powerless to force Father Malt to resign against his will. As long as Father Malt wished, as long as he lived, he would be pastor, and this was according to canon law. Father Malt was an “irremovable pastor,” well liked by the people of the parish, a favorite at the chancery, where, however, it was known — according to Father Desmond — that Father Burner was doing a bang-up job.