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

The Bishop was glad that the troublesome postwar, or Holstein, period was over. Father Gau had been stationed at some distance from the front during this period, and might have been interested in a firsthand account of the fighting, but he seemed to understand that the Bishop didn’t care to talk about it.

Father Gau was very understanding. The organist in the main dining room at the Webb did not forget the Bishop’s one request — for “Trees”—and night after night played it, sometimes at great length, which was all right, but when she took to rendering it as a solemn fanfare to mark his arrivals and departures, the Bishop wasn’t sure he cared for it, but he said nothing. After a while, the organist abandoned the practice, and Father Gau, when questioned by the Bishop, admitted that he’d asked her to do so.

During the day, too, on trips and at the Chancery, Father Gau saw to it that the Bishop’s will was done — sometimes before the Bishop knew what his will was. “Just say yes or no, Your Excellency,” Father Gau would say, offering a solution to a problem the Bishop might not have been aware of, or to one he’d regarded as tolerable.

One such problem had to do with the regulations for fasting, which, of all the regulations of the diocese, were the ones of most concern to the laity. Monsignor Holstein, trying to make these regulations perfectly clear and binding wherever possible, had gone too deeply into the various claims for exemption — youth, old age, poor health, pregnancy; “But if you can fast, so much the better!”—and had shown an obsessive preoccupation with “gravy and meat juices,” the abuses of which were subtle and many. The regulations had been “clarified” until they were in need of codification and took a good half-hour in the reading. Father Gau, with the Bishop’s permission, let the wind out of them, and took up the slack with the magic words “If you have any questions, see your pastor.”

Father Gau suggested other changes. “You know what, Your Excellency? People don’t know you.” This couldn’t be helped, the Bishop felt, but he was interested, and after listening to Father Gau, and seeing that the greater good of the diocese was involved (something he hadn’t always been sure about when listening to Monsignor Holstein), the Bishop did promise to be seen more in public. He attended a Bosses’ Night banquet given by the local Jaycees, going as Father Gau’s guest and giving a talk on “My Boyhood in and Around Fargo,” which turned out very well. He kicked off the Red Cross campaign, which hadn’t had direct support from the diocese before, and won the approval of non-Catholics, who, economically and ecumenically, were not to be sneezed at, as Father Gau pointed out. The Bishop was even seen at concerts at the two Catholic colleges, which, in recent years, he had visited only when necessary, for commencement exercises, and had departed from as early as he possibly could, as soon as he’d said all he had to say against the sin of intellectual pride. The Bishop really got around. On some nights, returning home, he fell asleep in the car and had to be roused, and it was all he could do to get into his pajamas. But he often retired with a sense of satisfaction he hadn’t experienced since his New Deal days.

In his pastoral letters he became more and more humane, urging the faithful to drive carefully, to buy a poppy, to set their clocks ahead for daylight-saving time. Formerly it had been his custom to visit the orphanage once a year, at Christmastime, with six bushels of oranges. He hadn’t gone oftener because it always made him feel bad — and mad. Now, at Father Gau’s suggestion, he went every month, and found it easier. “They wait for you, Your Excellency,” said Father Gau, and he was right.

There were other changes. For some years, the Bishop had had his eye on a certain large family, had noted the new arrivals in the birth column of the Times , and had inquired of the family’s pastor whether there was any improvement otherwise. (The head of the family was an alcoholic, his wife a chain smoker.) There was no improvement until Father Gau, fighting fire with fire, found the father a job in the brewery. Miraculously, the man’s drinking and the woman’s smoking fell off to nothing. “There’s your model family, Your Excellency,” said Father Gau, and the family’s pastor agreed. So the Bishop dropped in on the family one Sunday afternoon with a gallon of ice cream, and was photographed with the parents and their fourteen children for the diocesan paper.

And there were other changes. In June, Father Gau, who had been acting rector of the Cathedral, became rector in fact, and a domestic prelate.

“Gee,” said Monsignor Gau after the colorful ceremony — at which the choir had performed under the direction of Mr McKee, whose reappointment had been one of the first official acts of the new rector. “Gee, Your Excellency.”

“Just call me ‘Bishop.’”

The next day, a scorcher, it was business as usual for the Bishop and Monsignor Gau at the Chancery. In the afternoon they drove out to the cemetery, where the big cross was to be relocated so that it would be visible from the new highway across the river — the Bishop had noticed many out-of-state cars in town during the past week. He had hoped to escape the heat by coming out to the cemetery, but the place just looked cool. He walked along the edge of the low bluff, below which ran the river, until he found a spot he liked, and Monsignor Gau marked it with a brick. Then the Bishop gazed around the cemetery with an eye to the future. “I give it ten years.”

“If that,” said Monsignor Gau.

The Bishop shot a glance at the adjoining property, a small wilderness belonging to the Ostergothenburg Gun Club.

“It’s a thought,” said Monsignor Gau.

But that evening at the Webb, which was comfortably cool, Monsignor Gau said he doubted if any land at all could be had from the Gun Club, and also if purchasers of cemetery lots would care to be any closer to the activities of the Gun Club. As for buying the Gun Club lock, stock, and barrel (to answer the Bishop’s question), even if that could be done, it would be a very unpopular solution. The center of population had shifted north since the war, people following wealth and the river as closely as they could, and now, all along the river, right up to the cemetery and continuing on the other side of the Gun Club, there were these large estate-type houses, while back from the river the prairie was filling up with smaller but still very nice houses. “The Gun Club’s holding the line against us, as some people see it, and they’d take us to court if we could get the Gun Club to sell— if .”

“I had a chance to buy that property long before it was the Gun Club’s, and I wish I had,” said the Bishop.

“Things go on there at night,” said Monsignor Gau.

“What kind of things?”

Monsignor Gau didn’t seem to know how to put it. “Shenanigans,” he said.

The Bishop just looked at him.

“Cars drive in and park,” Monsignor Gau explained. “In fact, there have even been trespassers in the cemetery.”

The Bishop sighed. He had heard that such things happened, but not in Ostergothenburg. A high wall? A night watchman? He thought of the cost to the diocese, and sighed again.

“Bishop, don’t say yes or no to this right away,” said Monsignor Gau. Proceeding slowly, with great caution — as well he might, if the Bishop understood him — Monsignor Gau offered a solution to the problem. For the sake of the town and the diocese, for the sake of the living and the dead, said Monsignor Gau, the Bishop should move the cemetery.

“No, no.”

“Frankly, I don’t see what else we can do, Bishop,” said Monsignor Gau.