The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (48 page)

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.”

He was touched by this, in spite of himself. Now that they’d found the bird, she was saying, it would be all right. Was ever a bird in worse shape? With food it couldn’t eat, water it probably hadn’t drunk and wouldn’t, and with a house it couldn’t get into—and
them
! Now they punished him with their faith in themselves and the universe, and later, when these had failed and the bird began to sink, they would punish him some more, with their faith in him. He knew what was the best thing for the bird. When the children took their naps, then maybe he could do the job. He was not soft. He had flooded gophers out of their labyrinthine ways and beheaded them with the shovel; he had purged a generation of red squirrels from the walls and attic of the old house when he moved in, knowing it was them or him. But why did animals and birds do this to him? Why did children?

“Why’d you pick this bird up? Why didn’t you leave it where it was? The mother might’ve found it then.”

“She couldn’t lift him, could she?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, he can’t fly.”

“No, but if you’d left it where it fell, the mother might see it. The mother bird has to feed a baby like this.” Why couldn’t she lift it? Why couldn’t the two parents get together and just put it back in the nest? Why, down through the ages, hadn’t birds worked out something for such an emergency? As he understood it, they were descended from reptiles and had learned how to grow feathers and fly. The whale had gone to sea. But he didn’t know whether he believed any of this. Here was a case that showed how incompetent nature really was. He was tired of such cases, of nature passing the buck to him. He hated to see spring and summer come to the yard, in a way. They meant death and mosquitoes to him.

It had been the worst year for mosquitoes that anyone could remember, and in Minnesota that was saying a lot. He had bought a spraying outfit, and DDT at $2.50 a quart, which, when you considered that there was no tax on it, made you think. A quart made two gallons, but he was surprised how quickly it went. The words on the bottle “Who enjoys your yard—you or the mosquitoes?” had stayed with him, however. He had engaged professionals, with a big machine mounted on a truck, to blow a gale of poison through the yard. (In other years, seeing such an operation in other yards, he had worried about the bees.) The squirrels and rabbits in residence had evacuated the trees and lily beds while he stood by, hoping that they and the birds understood it was an emergency measure. He believed, however, that the birds received too much credit for eating annoying insects. Wasps, he knew, consumed great numbers of mosquitoes—but what about
them
? The mosquito hawk, a large, harmless insect, was a great killer of mosquitoes, but was itself killed by birds—by martins. That was the balance of nature for you. Balance for whom? You had to take steps yourself—drastic steps. Too drastic?

“Now I want you to show me exactly where you found this bird.”

The little girls looked at each other.

“Don’t say anything. Just take me to the exact spot.”

They walked across the yard as if they really knew where they were going, and he and the little boys followed. The girls appeared to agree on the spot, but he supposed the one was under the influence of the other. The older one put out a foot and said, “Here.”

He hadn’t realized they were being that exact. It was surprising how right they were. Fifty or sixty feet overhead, in a fork of a big white oak, he saw a nest, definitely a dove’s nest, a jerry-built job if he ever saw one, the sky visible between the sticks, and something hanging down. He moved away and gazed up again. It was only a large dead leaf, not what he’d feared, not a baby bird hanging by its foot. He felt better about having had the yard sprayed. The machine on the truck was very powerful, powerful enough to bend back the bushes and small trees, but he doubted that it had blown the baby dove out of the nest. This was just an unusually bad nest and the bird had fallen out. Nature had simply failed again.

“The nest! I see it! See?”

“Yes.” He walked away from them, toward the garage. He hadn’t called the nest to their attention because restoring the bird was out of the question for him—it was a job for the fire department or for God, whose eye is on the sparrow—but that didn’t mean that the children might not expect him to do it.

“Just keep the bird in the shade,” he called from the garage. He drove down to the office, which he hadn’t planned to visit that day, and spent a few hours of peace there.

And came home to another calamity. In the kitchen, the little girls were waiting for him. Something, they said, had jumped out of the lilies and pushed one of the young bunnies that hadn’t been doing anything, just eating grass near the playhouse. A weasel, they thought. Their mother hadn’t seen it happen, had only heard the bunny crying, and had gone up to bed. There was no use going to her. They were in possession of what information there was. He should ask them.

“Don’t go out there!”

“Why not?”

“Mama says if the bunny has the rabies it might bite.”

He stood still in thought. Most of his life had been spent in a more settled part of the country. There was a great deal he didn’t know about wildlife, even about the red squirrel and the yellow-jacket wasp, with which he had dealt firsthand, and he knew it. He could be wrong. But there was something ridiculous about what they were suggesting. “Did you see whatever it was that pushed the rabbit?”

“Of course!” said the older girl. It was this that distinguished her from all others in the house.

“What did it look like?”

“It went so fast.”

This was ground they’d covered before, but he persevered, hoping to flush the fact that would explain everything. “What color was it?”

“Kind of—like the rabbit. But it went so fast.”

This, too, was as before. “Maybe it was the mama rabbit,” he said, adding something new. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. “Maybe she didn’t want the young one to come out in the open—in the daytime, I mean. Maybe she was just teaching it a lesson.” He didn’t know whether rabbits did that, but he did know that this particular mother was intelligent. He had first noticed her young ones, just babies then, in a shallow hole alongside a tiny evergreen that he had put a wire fence around, and that he’d draped with Shoo—rope soaked with creosote, advertised as very effective against dogs, rabbits, and rodents of all kinds. And as for the punishment the young rabbit had taken from whatever it was, he had once seen a mother squirrel get tough with a little one that had strayed from the family tree.