The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (30 page)

“Much scandal?”

“Some.”

“Nothing serious, though?”

“No.”

“Suppose it depends on what you call serious.”

Father Burner did not reply. He had become oddly morose. Perhaps he felt that he was being catered to out of pity, or that Father Philbert, in giving him so many opportunities to talk against Father Malt, was tempting him.

“Who plays the accordion?” inquired Father Philbert, hearing it downstairs.

“He does.”

“Go on!”

“Sure.”

“How can he hear what he’s playing?”

“What’s the difference—if he plays an accordion?”

Father Philbert laughed. He removed the cellophane from a cigar, and then he saw me. And at that moment I made no attempt to hide. “There’s that damn cat.”

“His assistant!” said Father Burner with surprising bitterness. “Coadjutor with right of succession.”

Father Philbert balled up the cellophane and tossed it at the wastebasket, missing.

“Get it,” he said to me fatuously.

I ignored him, walking slowly toward the door.

Father Burner made a quick movement with his feet, which were something to behold, but I knew he wouldn’t get up, and took my sweet time.

Father Philbert inquired, “Will she catch mice?”

She!
Since coming to live at the rectory, I’ve been celibate, it’s true, but I daresay I’m as manly as the next one. And Father Burner, who might have done me the favor of putting him straight, said nothing.

“She looks pretty fat to be much of a mouser.”

I just stared at the poor man then, as much as to say that I’d think one so interested in catching mice would have heard of a little thing called the mousetrap. After one last dirty look, I left them to themselves—to punish each other with their company.

I strolled down the hall, trying to remember when I’d last had a mouse. Going past the room occupied by the young missionary, I smiled upon his door, which was shut, confident that he was inside hard at his prayers.

The next morning, shortly after breakfast, which I took, as usual, in the kitchen, I headed for the cool orchard, to which I often repaired on just such a day as this one promised to be. I had no appetite for the sparrows hopping from tree to tree above me, but there seemed no way to convince them of that. Each one, so great is his vanity, thinks himself eminently edible. Peace, peace, they cry, and there is no peace. Finally, tired of their noise, I got up from the matted grass and left, leveling my ears and flailing my tail, in a fake dudgeon that inspired the males to feats of stunt flying and terrorized the young females most delightfully.

I went then to another favorite spot of mine, that bosky strip of green between the church and the brick sidewalk. Here, however, the horseflies found me, and as if that were not enough, visions of stray dogs and children came between me and the kind of sleep I badly needed after an uncommonly restless night.

When afternoon came, I remembered that it was Saturday, and that I could have the rectory to myself. Father Burner and the missionaries would be busy with confessions. By this time the temperature had reached its peak, and though I felt sorry for the young missionary, I must admit the thought of the other two sweltering in the confessionals refreshed me. The rest of the afternoon I must have slept something approaching the sleep of the just.

I suppose it was the sound of dishes that roused me. I rushed into the dining room, not bothering to wash up, and took my customary place at the table. Only then did I consider the empty chair next to me—the utter void. This, I thought, is a foreshadowing of what I must someday face—this, and Father Burner munching away at the other end of the table. And there was the immediate problem: no one to serve me. The young missionary smiled at me, but how can you eat a smile? The other two, looking rather wilted—to their hot boxes I wished them swift return—talked in expiring tones of reserved sins and did not appear to notice me. Our first meal together without Father Malt did not pass without incident, however. It all came about when the young missionary extended a thin sliver of meat to me.

“Hey, don’t do that!” said Father Philbert. “You’ll never make a mouser out of her that way.”

Father Burner, too, regarded the young missionary with disapproval.

“Just this one piece,” said the young missionary. The meat was already in my mouth.

“Well, watch it in the future,” said Father Philbert. It was the word “future” that worried me. Did it mean that he had arranged to cut off my sustenance in the kitchen too? Did it mean that until Father Malt returned I had to choose between mousing and fasting?

I continued to think along these melancholy lines until the repast, which had never begun for me, ended for them. Then I whisked into the kitchen, where I received the usual bowl of milk. But whether the housekeeper, accustomed as she was to having me eat my main course at table, assumed there had been no change in my life, or was now acting under instructions from these villains, I don’t know. I was too sickened by their meanness to have any appetite. When the pastor’s away, the curates will play, I thought. On the whole I was feeling pretty glum.

It was our custom to have the main meal at noon on Sundays. I arrived early, before the others, hungrier than I’d been for as long as I could remember, and still I had little or no expectation of food at this table. I was there for one purpose—to assert myself—and possibly, where the young missionary was concerned, to incite sympathy for myself and contempt for my persecutors. By this time I knew that to be the name for them.

They entered the dining room, just the two of them.

“Where’s the kid?” asked Father Burner.

“He’s not feeling well,” said Father Philbert.

I was not surprised. They’d arranged between the two of them to have him say the six and eleven o’clock Masses, which meant, of course, that he’d fasted in the interval. I had not thought of him as the hardy type, either.

“I’ll have the housekeeper take him some beef broth,” said Father Burner. Damned white of you, I was thinking, when he suddenly whirled and swept me off my chair. Then he picked it up and placed it against the wall. Then he went to the lower end of the table, removed his plate and silverware, and brought them to Father Malt’s place. Talking and fuming to himself, he sat down in Father Malt’s chair. I did not appear very brave, I fear, cowering under mine.

Father Philbert, who had been watching with interest, now greeted the new order with a cheer. “Attaboy, Ernest!”

Father Burner began to justify himself. “More light here,” he said, and added, “Cats kill birds,” and for some reason he was puffing.

“If they’d just kill mice,” said Father Philbert, “they wouldn’t be so bad.” He had a one-track mind if I ever saw one.

“Wonder how many that black devil’s caught in his time?” said Father Burner, airing a common prejudice against cats of my shade (though I do have a white collar). He looked over at me. “Ssssss,” he said. But I held my ground.

“I’ll take a dog any day,” said the platitudinous Father Philbert.

“Me, too.”

After a bit, during which time they played hard with the roast, Father Philbert said, “How about taking her for a ride in the country?”

“Hell,” said Father Burner, “he’d just come back.”

“Not if we did it right, she wouldn’t.”

“Look,” said Father Burner. “Some friends of mine dropped a cat off the high bridge in St Paul. They saw him go under in mid-channel. I’m talking about the Mississippi, understand. Thought they’d never lay eyes on that animal again. That’s what they thought. He was back at the house before they were.” Father Burner paused—he could see that he was not convincing Father Philbert—and then he tried again. “That’s a fact, Father. They might’ve played a quick round of golf before they got back. Cat didn’t even look damp, they said. He’s still there. Case a lot like this. Except now they’re afraid of
him
.”

To Father Burner’s displeasure, Father Philbert refused to be awed or even puzzled. He simply inquired, “But did they use a bag? Weights?”

“Millstones,” snapped Father Burner. “Don’t quibble.”

Then they fell to discussing the burial customs of gangsters—poured concrete and the rest—and became so engrossed in the matter that they forgot all about me.

Over against the wall, I was quietly working up the courage to act against them. When I felt sufficiently lionhearted, I leaped up and occupied my chair. Expecting blows and vilification, I encountered only indifference. I saw then how far I’d come down in their estimation. Already the remembrance of things past—the disease of noble politicals in exile—was too strong in me, the hope of restoration unwarrantably faint.

At the end of the meal, returning to me, Father Philbert remarked, “I think I know a better way.” Rising, he snatched the crucifix off the wall, passed it to a bewildered Father Burner, and, saying “Nice Kitty,” grabbed me behind the ears. “Hold it up to her,” said Father Philbert. Father Burner held the crucifix up to me. “See that?” said Father Philbert to my face. I miaowed. “Take that!” said Father Philbert, cuffing me. He pushed my face into the crucifix again. “See that?” he said again, but I knew what to expect next, and when he cuffed me, I went for his hand with my mouth, pinking him nicely on the wrist. Evidently Father Burner had begun to understand and appreciate the proceedings. Although I was in a good position to observe everything, I could not say as much for myself. “Association,” said Father Burner with mysterious satisfaction, almost with zest. He poked the crucifix at me. “If he’s just smart enough to react properly,” he said. “Oh, she’s plenty smart,” said Father Philbert, sucking his wrist and giving himself, I hoped, hydrophobia. He scuffed off one of his sandals for a paddle. Father Burner, fingering the crucifix nervously, inquired, “Sure it’s all right to go on with this thing?” “It’s the intention that counts in these things,” said Father Philbert. “Our motive is clear enough.” And they went at me again.

After that first taste of the sandal in the dining room, I foolishly believed I would be safe as long as I stayed away from the table; there was something about my presence there, I thought, that brought out the beast in them—which is to say very nearly all that was in them. But they caught me in the upstairs hall the same evening, one brute thundering down upon me, the other sealing off my only avenue of escape. And this beating was worse than the first—preceded as it was by a short delay that I mistook for a reprieve until Father Burner, who had gone downstairs muttering something about “leaving no margin for error,” returned with the crucifix from the dining room, although we had them hanging all over the house. The young missionary, coming upon them while they were at me, turned away. “I wash my hands of it,” he said. I thought he might have done more.

Out of mind, bruised of body, sick at heart, for two days and nights I held on, I know not how or why—unless I lived in hope of vengeance. I wanted simple justice, a large order in itself, but I would never have settled for that alone. I wanted nothing less than my revenge.

I kept to the neighborhood, but avoided the rectory. I believed, of course, that their only strategy was to drive me away. I derived some little satisfaction from making my-self scarce, for it was thus I deceived them into thinking their plan to banish me successful. But this was my single comfort during this hard time, and it was as nothing against their crimes.

I spent the nights in the open fields. I reeled, dizzy with hunger, until I bagged an aged field mouse. It tasted bitter to me, this stale provender, and seemed, as I swallowed it, an ironic concession to the enemy. I vowed I’d starve before I ate another mouse. By way of retribution to myself, I stalked sparrows in the orchard—hating myself for it but persisting all the more when I thought of those bird-lovers, my persecutors, before whom I could stand and say in self-redemption, “You made me what I am now. You thrust the killer’s part upon me.” Fortunately, I did not flush a single sparrow. Since
my
motive was clear enough, however, I’d had the pleasure of sinning against them and their ideals, the pleasure without the feathers and mess.

On Tuesday, the third day, all caution, I took up my post in the lilac bush beside the garage. Not until Father Malt returned, I knew, would I be safe in daylight. He arrived along about dinnertime, and I must say the very sight of him aroused a sentiment in me akin to human affection. The youngest usher, who must have had the afternoon off to meet him at the station in St Paul, carried the new bag before him into the rectory. It was for me an act symbolic of the counterrevolution to come. I did not rush out from my hiding place, however. I had suffered too much to play the fool now. Instead I slipped into the kitchen by way of the flap in the screen door, which they had not thought to barricade. I waited under the stove for my moment, like an actor in the wings.

Presently I heard them tramping into the dining room and seating themselves, and Father Malt’s voice saying, “I had a long talk with the Archbishop.” (I could almost hear Father Burner praying, Did he say anything about
me
?) And then, “Where’s Fritz?”

“He hasn’t been around lately,” said Father Burner cunningly. He would not tell the truth and he would not tell a lie.

“You know, there’s something mighty funny about that cat,” said Father Philbert. “We think she’s possessed.”

I was astonished, and would have liked a moment to think it over, but by now I was already entering the room.

“
Possessed!
” said Father Malt. “Aw, no!”

“Ah, yes,” said Father Burner, going for the meat right away. “And good riddance.”

And then I miaowed and they saw me.

“Quick!” said Father Philbert, who made a nice recovery after involuntarily reaching for me and his sandal at the same time. Father Burner ran to the wall for the crucifix, which had been, until now, a mysterious and possibly blasphemous feature of my beatings—the crucifix held up to me by the one not scourging at the moment, as if it were the will behind my punishment. They had schooled me well, for even now, at the sight of the crucifix, an undeniable fear was rising in me. Father Burner handed it to Father Malt.