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

Ethel, closing her eyes, saw Mrs Hancock alone, on the hassock, with her products all around her.

“It’s a lot of pan for the money,” Mrs Hancock was saying now. She reached over Ethel’s body for it. “You’ll love your little pan,” she said, fondling it.

Ethel’s eyes were resisting Mrs Hancock, but her right hand betrayed her.

“Here?” Mrs Hancock opened a drawer, took out a purse, and handed it over, saying, “Only $12.95.”

Ethel found a five and a ten.

“You do want the ointment, don’t you? The pan and the large bottle come to a little more than this, but it’s not enough to worry about.”

Mrs Hancock got up, apparently to leave.

Ethel thought of something. “You do live in Blue Island, don’t you?” Ralph would be sure to ask about that — if she had to tell him. And she would!

“Not anymore, thank God.”

Ethel nodded. She wasn’t surprised.

Mrs Hancock, at the door, peeked out — reminding Ethel of a bored visitor looking for a nurse who would tell her it was time to leave the patient. “You’ll find your ointment and mop downstairs,” she said. “I just know everything’s going to be all right.” Then she smiled and left.

When, toward noon, Ethel heard Ralph come into the driveway, she got out of bed, straightened the spread, and concealed the pan in the closet. She went to the window and gazed down upon the crown of his pearl-gray hat. He was carrying a big club of roses.

ON A FINE Sunday morning in June, Father Fabre opened the announcement book to familiarize himself with the names of the deceased in the parish for whom Masses would be offered in the coming week, and came upon a letter from the chancery office. The letter, dated December, dealt with the Legion of Decency pledge which should have been administered to the people at that time. Evidently Father Fabre was supposed to read it at the nine-thirty and eleven o’clock Masses that morning. He went to look for the pastor.

Father Fabre, ordained not quite a year, had his hands full at Trinity. It wasn’t a well-run parish. The pastor was a hard man to interest in a problem. They saw each other at meals. Father Fabre had been inside the pastor’s bedroom, the seat of all his inactivity, only once; Miss Burke, the housekeeper, never. The press of things was very great in the pastor’s room, statues, candlesticks, cases of sacramental wine, bales of pious literature and outdated collection envelopes, two stray pews and a prie-dieu, the implements and furniture of his calling. There was a large table-model radio in his bed, and he obviously slept and made the bed around it. That was about it.

Father Fabre found the pastor in the dining room. “Little late for this, isn’t it?” he said. He held out the letter which had wintered in the pastor’s room.

“Don’t watch me eat,” said the pastor, a graying dormouse. He had had the six-thirty and eight o’clocks, and was breaking his fast — not very well, Father Fabre thought, still trying to see what was in the bowl. Shredded wheat and oatmeal? Something he’d made himself? Not necessarily. Miss Burke could make dishes like that.

The pastor shifted into a sidesaddle position, bending one of his narrow shoulders over the bowl, obstructing the curate’s view.

Father Fabre considered the letter in his hand… immoral motion pictures / demoralizing television / indecent plays / vulgar radio programs / pernicious books / vicious papers and periodicals / degrading dance halls / and unwholesome taverns … Was this the mind, the tongue of the Church? “Little late for this, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“I thought we were supposed to give it a long time ago.” On the Sunday within the Octave of the Immaculate Conception, in fact. On that day, Trinity, pledgeless, had been unique among the churches of the diocese — so he’d bragged to friends, curates who were unhappy about the pledge, as he was, and he hadn’t really blamed them for what they’d said out of envy, that it had been his duty to repair the omission at his Masses.

“Weren’t we?”

“No.”

“ No? ”

The dormouse shook his head a half inch. The spoon in his right hand was a precision instrument, scraping up the last of whatever had filled the bowl. Grain.

“I don’t feel right about this,” Father Fabre said, going away with the letter. He went to the sacristy to vest for the nine-thirty, talking to himself. It was a little late for the pledge. No. The Sunday within the Octave had been the day for it. No.

The white fiddleback chasuble he was putting on had been spoiled on Christmas. He’d been vesting, as now, when the pastor, writing out a Mass card for a parishioner, had flicked his pen at the floor to get the ink flowing. Father Fabre had called his attention to the ink spots on the chasuble. “’S not ink,” he’d said. Asked what it was, he’d said, “’S not ink,” and that was all he’d say. For a time, after that, Father Fabre wondered if the pastor’s pen could contain some new kind of writing fluid — not ink — and thought perhaps the spots would disappear. The spots, the ’ s not ink spots, were still there. But a recent incident seemed to explain the pastor’s odd denials. “Not a ball point, is it?” he’d said to Father Fabre, who was about to fill his fountain pen from the big bottle in the office. “ No , Father,” said Father Fabre, presenting his pen for inspection. “Takes ink,” said the pastor. “ Yes , Father.” The pastor pointed to the big bottle from which Father Fabre customarily filled his pen, and said, “Why don’t you try that?” “Say, that’s an idea,” said Father Fabre, going the pastor one better. “Better go and flush your pen with water first,” said the pastor. And the funny part was that Father Fabre had gone and flushed his pen before filling it from the big bottle that time. “I think you’ll like that ,” said the pastor. That was Quink . The dormouse had the casuist’s gift, and more.

He escaped much of man’s fate. Instead of arguing his way out of a jam, or confessing himself in error, the pastor simply denied everything. It was simple — as simple as when he, as priest, changed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. But he had no power from his priesthood to deny the undeniable, for instance that he’d spoiled a good chasuble. When he said “’S not ink,” nothing was changed. He could really slow you up, though, if you were inclined to disagree with him and to be rational about it.

When the pastor entered the sacristy before the nine-thirty, Father Fabre was ready for him. “Father,” he said, “I can’t give this pledge in conscience — not as it’s given in some parishes. I can’t ask the people to rise as a body and raise their right hands, to repeat after me words which many of them either don’t understand the full meaning of, or don’t mean to abide by. I don’t see anything wrong with giving it to those who mean to keep it.” He’d wrangled against the pledge in the seminary. If it was “not an oath,” as some maintained, wasn’t it administered by a priest in church, and didn’t it cheapen the clergy to participate in such a ceremony, and one which many merely paid lip service to? Didn’t the chancery use the word “invite” and wasn’t “demand” the word for the way the thing was rammed through in some parishes? Couldn’t outsiders, with some justice, call the whole procedure totalitarian? What did Rome think of it? Wasn’t it a concession to the rather different tone in America, a pacifier?