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

One of the ladies got sarcastic. “Would it be too much to ask, then, just what you do mean?”

The pastor said nothing.

Then the one who earlier had succeeded in getting him to clear his throat said, “Father, it’s not always easy for us to understand everything you say. Now, Father, I always get a lot out of your sermons — why, some I’ve heard on television aren’t half as good — but I don’t kid myself that I can understand every word you say. Still waters run deep, I guess, and I haven’t got the education I should have. So, Father, would you please tell us what you mean, in words we can all understand?”

It would have surprised Father Fabre if, after all that, the pastor had said nothing.

“’ S not so ,” he said.

Father Fabre had to leave then, for devotions.

In the sacristy, he slipped into his cassock, eased the zipper past the spot where it stuck, pawed the hangers for his surplice, found it on the floor. The altar boys had come, but he wasn’t in the mood for them, for the deceptive small talk that he seemed to do so well, from ballplayers to St John Bosco in one leap, using the Socratic method to get them to do their own thinking and then breaking off the conversation when he’d brought out the best in them. It wasn’t necessary with the two on hand — twins who were going to be priests anyway, according to them at the age of ten. They had fired the censer too soon, and it would be petering out after the rosary, when it would be needed for benediction. He stood at the door of the sacristy and gazed out into the almost empty church. It was the nice weather that kept people away from devotions, it was said, and it was the bad weather that kept them away in the wintertime. He saw Mrs Mathers kneeling alone in prayer. The pastor had done well for her, everything considered, but not well enough, Father Fabre feared. He feared a scandal. Great schisms from little squabbles grew…

And great affirmations! He’d expected the pastor to dismiss the ladies in time for devotions, but he hadn’t expected them to come, not in such numbers, and he took it as a sign from heaven when they didn’t kneel apart from Mrs Mathers, the woman taken in adultery, or thereabouts, a sign that the pastor had triumphed, as truth must always triumph over error, sooner or later, always: that was heaven’s promise to pastors. Life was a dark business for everyone in it, but the way for pastors was ever lit by flares of special grace. Father Fabre, knowing full well that he, in spirit, had been no better than the ladies, thanked God for the little patience he’d had, and asked forgiveness for thinking ill of the pastor, for coveting his authority. He who would have been proud to hurl the ready answer at Mrs Mathers’ persecutors, to stone them back, to lose the ninety-nine sheep and save not the one whose innocence he would have violated publicly then as he had in his heart, in his heart humbled himself with thoughts of his unworthiness, marveled at the great good lesson he’d learned that day from the pastor, that Solomon. But the pastor, he knew, was zealous in matters affecting the common weal, champion of decency in his demesne, and might have a word or two for his curate at table that evening, and for Mrs Mathers there would certainly be a just poke or two from the blunt sword of his mercy.

Father Fabre, trailing the boys out of the sacristy, gazed upon the peaceful flock, and then beyond, in a dim, dell-like recess of the nave used for baptism, he saw the shepherd carrying a stick and then he heard him opening a few windows.

IT HAD BEEN a wonderful year in the yard, which was four city lots and full of trees, a small forest and game preserve in the old part of town. Until that day, there hadn’t been a single casualty, none at least that he knew about, which was the same thing and sufficient where there was so much life coming and going: squirrels, both red and gray, robins, flickers, mourning doves, chipmunks, rabbits. These creatures, and more, lived in the yard, and most of these he’d worried about in the past. Some, of course, he’d been too late for, and perhaps that was best, being able to bury what would have been his responsibility.

Obviously the children had been doing all they could for some time, for when he happened on the scene the little bird was ensconced in grass twisted into a nesting ring, soggy bread and fresh water had been set before it — the water in a tiny pie tin right under its bill — and a birdhouse was only inches away, awaiting occupancy. Bird, food and drink, and house were all in a plastic dishpan.

“Dove, isn’t it?” said his wife, who had hoped to keep him off such a case, he knew, and now was easing him into it.

“I don’t know,” he said, afraid that he did. It was a big little bird, several shades of gray, quills plainly visible because the feathers were only beginning. Its bill was black and seemed too long for it. “A flicker maybe,” he said, but he didn’t think so. No, it was a dove, because where were the bird’s parents? Any bird but the dove would try to do something. Somewhere in the neighborhood this baby dove’s mother was posing on a branch like peace itself, with no thought of anything in her head.

“God,” he groaned.

“Where are the worms?” said his wife.

“We can’t find any,” said the oldest child.

“Here,” he said, taking the shovel from her. He went and dug near some shrubbery with the shovel, which was probably meant for sand and gravel. With this shovel he had buried many little things in the past. The worms were deeper than he could go with such a shovel, or they were just nowhere. He pried up two flagstones. Only ants and one many-legged worm that he didn’t care to touch.

He had found no worms, and when he came back to the bird, when he saw it, he was conscious of returning empty-handed. His wife was going into the house.

“That bird can’t get into that house,” he said. “It’s for wrens.”

“We know it,” said the oldest child.

He realized then that he had pointed up an obvious difficulty that the two girls had decently refrained from mentioning in front of the bird and the two younger children, the boys. But he hadn’t wanted them to squeeze the dove into the wrenhouse. “Well, you might as well leave it where it is. Keep the bird in the shade.”

“That’s what we’re doing.”

“We put him in the dishpan so we could move him around in the shade.”

“Good. Does it eat or drink anything?”

“Of course.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “Did you see it eat or drink anything?”

“No, she did.”

“You saw it eat or drink?” he said to the younger girl.

“Drink.”

“It didn’t eat?”

“I didn’t see him eat. He maybe did when we weren’t watching.”

“Did it drink like this?” He sipped the air and threw back his head, swallowing.

“More like this.” The child threw back her head only about half as far as he had.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

He walked out into the yard to get away from them. He didn’t know whether the bird had taken any water. All he knew was that one of the children had imitated a bird drinking — rather, had imitated him imitating a chicken. He didn’t even know whether birds threw back their heads in drinking. Was the dove a bird that had to have its mother feed it? Probably so. And so probably, as he’d thought when he first saw the bird, there was no use. He was back again.

“How does it seem? Any different?”

“How do you mean?”

“Has it changed any since you found it?”

The little girls looked at each other. Then the younger one spoke: “He’s not so afraid.”