J. Powers - Wheat That Springeth Green

“So what’s the answer?” said Potter. “Watch the Twins?”

“Those bores,” said Conklin.

Hennessy reproved them with a look, and spoke with his future authority. “What’s the answer, Father?”

Eyeing Father Felix’s glass on the coffee table, Joe said, “A few monks saved civilization once. Could be the answer again. Principle’s sound. You’d have to work out the details. Wouldn’t have to be monks. Could happen right here.” Joe reached for Father Felix’s glass, the last of the wine, and swirled it clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, denying himself before downing it. “Wanna see how Father is,” he said. “Be right back.” At the door, as he was about to leave them, he turned and said, “How can we make sanctity as attractive as sex? Answer I got was ‘Just have to keep trying.’ Not much of an answer. Nobody remembers it — just the question. Guess it’s the answer to all these questions. Be right back.”

The monk’s eyes opened when Joe approached the bed. “Get you anything, Father?”

“All right.”

“Drink of water?”

“All right.”

Joe administered water to Father Felix, flipped his pillow, eased him down. “Want your shoes off?”

“Is the party over, Joe?”

“No, not yet.”

“Then,” said the monk, his eyes closing, “why is everybody leaving?”

“Not yet,” Joe said patiently.

But when he returned to the study he saw that he was wrong.

Hennessy — he was the only one left — said, “How is he?”

“All right.”

Led by voices to a window on the street side, Joe looked down and saw Bill, Potter, and Conklin talking to a young woman — older than they were, though — in a convertible.

“Conklin had to leave,” Hennessy said.

Joe came away from the window.

“Want to thank you, Father,” Hennessy said.

“It was Bill’s party.”

“All the same.” Hennessy seemed to know what it was like to be a pastor. “Oh, and I should thank the housekeeper.”

“Good idea.” Joe saw Hennessy, who’d go far, off to the kitchen, and came back to the window. The young woman moved over on the seat and the cruel mustache took the wheel. Potter and Bill then fell all over themselves saying good- bye, making it look hard to do. The convertible drove away. Then, to Joe’s surprise — he had meant to say something about coming again, soon — Hennessy appeared below, having, it seemed, left the rectory by the back door. Without a word or sign to Potter and Bill, who stood together talking, Hennessy got into the driver’s seat of the black sedan at the curb. Potter and Bill then parted, rather solemnly, Joe thought, and Potter got into the backseat of the black sedan. It drove away. A few moments later Bill entered the study, and Joe said:

“Who was that ?”

“His mistress.”

Joe stared at Bill. “Say that again.”

Bill said it again.

“ That what he calls her? How d’ya know that ?”

“He told us.”

“He did, huh?” Joe was thinking if he had a mistress he wouldn’t tell everybody.

“He’s honest about it, Father. You have to give him credit for that.”

“I do, huh?”

Father Felix came in, looking much the same.

“You missed your bus,” Joe said, and then to Bill, “Why don’t they get married?”

“Complications.”

“Like what?”

“She’s already married.”

Joe sniffed. “Great.”

“Her husband won’t give her a divorce. He’s still a Catholic.”

“Say that again.”

Bill said it again.

Joe turned away. “And now you wanna get back to your monastery — right?”

“How?” said Father Felix.

“I’ll drive you.”

“Eighty miles?” said Bill. “Can’t he stay overnight?”

“He wants to get back to his monastery. He’s not happy away from it. And I need the air. Well, what d’ya say, Father?”

“All right,” said Father Felix.

EARLY IN THE evening on the following Sunday, after sending out for and enjoying a very tasty dinner with Father Felix and Bill, Joe took leave of them for a few days and drove off to the seminary to make his annual retreat, having explained that Bill was to carry on as usual, keep regular office hours, not throw any parties, or go to any, and not to give scandal (“i.e., stay away from Potter” and , it was implied, Conklin), and that Father Felix was to have the use of the pastor’s office and study (TV) and was to act (implied) as turnkey in the pastor’s absence.

At the seminary, in his room — it might have been better or worse — Joe right away opened his bag and hung two summerweight cassocks in the closet (a few wire hangers); opened the bottle of Airwick he’d brought along and started it off in the closet; opened one of the fifths of gin (not his usual brand but chosen for its handy cup cap, his answer to the glass problem at the sem). He poured himself a cup and sat down with it in the one sittable chair, his head nesting for a moment where another had nested during the academic year. He finished his drink standing, put the cup, now the cap, back on the fifth and it back in his bag, covering it with socks and underwear, thus uncovering, but covering again, the poker chips, the decks of cards, and hoped he wouldn’t have to use them, would be invited to play elsewhere, as he had the previous year, and would do as well again.

The annual retreat for diocesan clergy (from which Bill was excused that year because he’d made one with his class before ordination) could be more of a social than a spiritual occasion for men of Joe’s vintage and older, and since it was given twice in successive weeks so both pastors and curates could attend (the week coming up was the repeat) there was always an element of chance in it — as to who’d be there and who wouldn’t — an element that Joe, by discreet, early inquiries, might have resolved to his advantage as a gambler but would not as a priest and also as a gambler.

He moved the Airwick to another location, the sittable chair, and went down to join the retreatants standing around in front of the Administration Building, to see who was there, to watch cars arrive and depart for the new parking lot (as Joe had) after the long-haired seminarian in overalls spoke his piece—“The Rector wants the entrance kept clear this year.” Joe was in time to see Father Stock arrive in a flashy old black Chrysler and walk away from it with his Gladstone bag, ignoring the seminarian and everybody else, the sidewalk clearing for him.

Pogatznick, one of the little group, all pastors, that Joe had joined, said to the seminarian, “See if he left the key in it.”

“You kiddin’?” said Schwinghammer, once a curate under Father Stock.

“Still,” Mooney said, “you have to hand it to him for coming to the retreat at his age, retired and all.”

“He comes for the group picture,” said Schwinghammer.

Joe nodded, and asked, “What’s the word on Po?” (The retreatmaster, an order man, was billed as Demetrius Po.)

“Not good,” said Cooney.

“What I hear,” said Rooney.

“ Not what I hear,” said Mooney.

“Hey, what kind of name’s that ?” said Schwinghammer.

“Well, there’s the river Po,” said Cooney.

“And Edgar Allan Poe,” said Mooney, “but that’s with an e. ”

“Could be anything, a name like that,” said Rooney.

“He could’ve changed it,” said Schwinghammer.

“Shortened it, you mean?” said Pogatznick.

A black Continental pulled up to the entrance, which the driver, Monsignor Egan, after listening to the seminarian, appeared to agree with the Rector should be kept clear this year, and got out of the car. He asked the seminarian his name, his home parish, praised his pastor, and feared, he said, there were two large bags in the trunk, Rooney then coming forward for them. “Oh, thanks, Bob,” Monsignor Egan said to him. “ And Lawrence,” he said to the seminarian. And nodding to some, greeting a few by name, among them Joe, and followed by Rooney with the bags, Monsignor Egan moved toward the Administration Building — from which the Rector swiftly emerged with his hand out — while Lawrence drove off to the parking lot with a funny look on his face.