J. Powers - Wheat That Springeth Green

Joe washed it that night, as he would have done in any event, and when asked the next morning by Mooney if he’d slept in it said, “No,” curtly. And likewise when asked the following morning. The next morning he wasn’t asked.

“I hear the Rector’s out of danger,” Mooney said.

“Thank God,” said Joe.

The days passed, and as far as Joe could tell nobody but Mooney, who was now acting as if he hadn’t, had ever expected him to wear the hair shirt constantly for the Rector’s sake. In fact, the hair shirt wasn’t mentioned to Joe these days, even lightly, which was odd. And there was something else odd — easy to detect, hard to define. Joe noticed that certain guys never really looked at him — they looked to one side of him, or over his head, or down, but never in the eye. He went to see Cooney about it.

“Did somebody say something?” Cooney asked.

“No. I wish somebody would.”

“Don’t let it worry you.”

“Then there is something!” said Joe. Even his best friend wouldn’t look him in the eye!

“Joe, there are those…”

“Yes?”

“Who have never approved of you for wearing the hair shirt — for reasons you already know. ‘Singularity’ and so on.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“And now there are those — they’re the same ones, plus quite a few more — who dis approve of you for wearing it. Am I right in thinking you’re wearing it now?”

Joe nodded.

“Well, the idea these guys have is that you were ordered not to wear it, and are therefore in flagrante delicto .”

“Not so!” said Joe, and gave Cooney a true account of the interview, as he had before, and again spoke of his attempt to comply with the Rector’s demand—“request,” he said, was probably a better word for it.

“Look, Joe,” Cooney said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can go right on wearing the hair shirt, although I still say it’s taking an unfair advantage, like wearing brass knuckles. But the idea these guys have — the reason you’re more unpopular these days, and of course the heart attack, coming when it did, is also a factor in that — is that you’re going against the Rector’s intention .”

Joe thought about this for a moment. “I see,” he said, and went away to think some more.

As it happened, he had to think for three days before he arrived at a firm decision. Then he had to wait for Wednesday afternoon to come, and when it did he took a bus downtown. He was carrying the hair shirt in the plastic bag. At the hospital he found the Rector in a private room, in bed with a paperback.

“Ah, what’s this?” the Rector said.

Joe, afraid the Rector was referring to the bag and was under the impression that it contained a gift for him, said, “No, Father,” which made sense only in the context of Joe’s thoughts. “I was just passing by, Father.”

“ Were you now?” replied the Rector in a marveling tone, and looked Joe in the eye.

“As a matter of fact, Father, I wasn’t.”

The Rector smiled, and Joe felt foolish but better.

“Sit down, Joe.”

Joe managed to sit down. “How’ve you been, Father?” Oh, great! “I mean, how are you, Father?”

“I’m better, I’m told.”

You’re grayer, Joe thought, and, the way he’d been going, did well not to say so.

“What’s on your mind, Joe?”

Joe looked down at the floor, where he’d put the bag because it called attention to itself in his hands, and then back at the Rector. “Remember, Father, I was supposed to bring you the hair shirt?”

“Now that you mention it, Joe, yes.”

“Father, I want you to know I did bring it to your office that morning, but you…” Joe felt foolish again.

“I didn’t keep the appointment,” the Rector said, and smiled.

“Not your fault, Father.” As if that needed saying. Joe reached down for the bag and stood up with it. “Father, the hair shirt’s inside,” he said. “And it’s nice and clean. I washed it.”

“Not now, Joe. Not here. When I’m back. Soon enough then.”

So Joe, about to place the bag on the bed at the Rector’s feet, held on to it. He hadn’t anticipated this development, but it didn’t divert him. “Father, I have to ask you a question,” he said, and got a funny look from the Rector. “It’s about your intention, as to the hair shirt.”

“I thought you should stop wearing it, Joe, or I wouldn’t have asked for it. But in the circumstances — you’ve been wearing it, have you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And you want me to say whether you were right or wrong to do so?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Well, I can’t, in the circumstances, Joe. You’re the one to say. I will say I was worried about you, Joe. That question of yours at the lecture!” The Rector shook his head at the thought of it. “After that, I had to ask for the hair shirt. But now I don’t know. Things look different to me now, here. And you do, Joe. So I’d say do as you think best about the hair shirt. Wear it, or don’t. I trust you. Now I’m tired. You’d better leave.”

Joe asked for the Rector’s blessing, knelt for it, and left with it, carrying the hair shirt in the plastic bag.

In the following days — the Rector had died that night — Joe sensed that he was being blamed, as a puppy might be blamed for causing an accident in which it had escaped injury and someone had died, and that more guys than before liked the sight of him less. “When,” he imagined them saying, “when will he repent and take off the hair shirt?” For he hadn’t said anything to anybody about his visit to the hospital, and would not.

Mooney, one of the few who still spoke to him, asked, “Are you getting anywhere, Joe?”

“Can’t say I am, Chuck.”

“Still wearing it?”

“Yes.”

“But not at night?”

“No.”

“That could be why you’re not getting anywhere, Joe. Ever think of that?”

“Yes.”

Yes, Joe had thought of that — oh, not as a cure, as Mooney meant, but as a pointer to the nature of his failure. He was, by the standards of saints, too fastidious, he knew — not enough of a slob. Why, for instance, should guys going about the corridors in their bare feet, or in their socks, which was somehow worse — why should this bother him so much? He kept his slippers handy by his bed and wore them or his shoes, preferably his shoes, when he went into the corridors. Yes, that could be his trouble — in a sense, the reason for his failure. Even if he did wear the hair shirt day and night — and he could — what about his feeling for others, his fellow men, who, next to God, should be his first concern? The seminary was a community, and a tight little one at that, and just wasn’t the place for all-out mysticism, for growth in holiness beyond a certain point — a low point by the standards of saints. No place he’d ever be, no parish, would be the place for that. And just this, for him, knowing what he did about the life of the spirit (not much but something) and not being able to give himself to it — wouldn’t that be a hair shirt of sorts? The Rector could have been wearing that kind for years day and night — probably all old priests did — and Joe, in feeling its prickliness already, before he was even ordained, was ahead of his time, he thought. Maybe it had been foolish to hope that he could go all the way, could get in touch with God directly, to think that he could bypass humanity, but he wasn’t giving up yet. No, he would continue to wear the hair shirt (unless asked not to by the new Rector, whoever he might be), would wear it during the day and wash it at night, until it wore out. If, by then, he was still not getting anywhere, he would simply make do with the hair shirt that so many were wearing.