“The apostle to the Slavs?”
“The Bohemian,” Jack said.
“Oh, the apostle to Pomerania. A good sort of man, for a bishop — too good, by all accounts.”
“But I haven’t begun it yet.”
“Let me know how it goes.”
Father Urban drove Jack to the Hill—“No, I won’t come in, thanks”—and then drove himself back to Great Plains, slowly, enjoying the landscape in the moonlight. The hills, under snow, the trees casting shadows, had an enchanted look, the look of night in the north in the movies, and the sky was all broken out with stars. Once, at a bend in the road, the headlights slipped up on some white rabbits playing in a field. Father Urban hadn’t realized that rabbits had such fun. The world was really a beautiful place. He rolled along enjoying it all, oblivious of himself, until he entered the city limits of Great Plains. He was sorry that he’d have only two or three more days with the car, which he’d come to depend on, and he was going to miss the deep satisfaction there was in doing the work of a parish priest — his daily Mass meant even more to him at St Monica’s. He had done well there in the last five weeks. Could he have done better? He did not think so. His record would speak for itself.
• Mrs Burns, freed from the telephone, given a new lease on life.
• Johnny Chumley rehabilitated.
• People polled on new church — and pollinated.
• Parish life now a reality.
• Attendance at daily Mass up 150 percent (eight — ten people now made it).
• Mission — most successful in history of parish.
• All-around good work for the Order.
• Mrs Thwaites.
Here, until that evening, there hadn’t been much to cheer about. At the end of each week, Father Urban received an envelope with a fifty-dollar bill in it, but this, though more than it might have been — it might easily have been nothing — was probably no more than Phil had been getting. Father Urban had heard Mrs Thwaites’s confession once, and had talked over her chances in the next world, giving her all the reassurance he could — which wasn’t quite enough, he’d felt. Mrs Thwaites was pretty much as Monsignor Renton had described her, in that respect. But it now appeared that Father Urban, without knowing it, had scored somewhere along the line. Otherwise why would Mrs. Thwaites have tried him out in the role of adviser? And since this was a role he might be asked to play again, having played it well once, it probably had to be rated as the greatest of his achievements while at St Monica’s. Much good could come from it, for the Order.
It was almost ten when Father Urban arrived back at the rectory, but a young man was waiting for him. The young man was wearing a short coat made of the same material as Wilf’s long devil’s-food one, but green, and he needed a shave. He said he wasn’t a Catholic but was married to “one.” He said his children were being brought up as Catholics. He said, “What more do you want?”
It was Father Urban’s practice, in census-taking, to express regret when he discovered that children were not attending the parish school — not too much regret, though, since the parish school was overcrowded — and it was this, presumably, this regret expressed by Father Urban, and communicated to the young man by his wife, that had brought him to the rectory. “May I ask your religion, sir?” said Father Urban.
“Don’t have any,” said the young man.
“I see. Well, we don’t want to make one of that, do we?”
“How’d you like a bust in the nose?”
At that point, Johnny Chumley entered the office and went over to the file, opened a drawer, and stood looking into it.
After a moment, during which nothing happened, the young man got up and walked out.
“Thanks, Johnny,” said Father Urban. “I didn’t realize he’d been drinking.”
Johnny shut the drawer of the file. “Monsignor Renton called a while ago.”
“Oh no!” said Father Urban, thinking Monsignor Renton was asking for still more time to wear Phil down.
“No,” Johnny said. “No. The Pastor’s dead.”
9. DEAR BILLY: LONG LIVE THE PASTOR?
Although the Great Plains diocese was hard up for men, no order, and certainly not the Clementines, could expect to walk into an established, going concern like St Monica’s. Those good men and true who’d coveted the parish while Phil was alive were still there, and doubtless more had joined them now that he was dead. Nevertheless, Father Urban did ask himself whether there might not be a chance, just an outside chance, for the Order. Always, after asking, he had to reply in the negative, and yet he went right on asking. How could he?
To begin with, he was chosen to say a few words at Phil’s funeral. Whether this was the wish of the Bishop (or only the wish of Father Udovic, who did the actual asking), Father Urban didn’t know. In any case, it was not an easy assignment. Phil hadn’t been popular with laity or clergy. He represented a type of gentleman-priest no longer being produced in seminaries — now thoroughly Americanized and turning out policemen, disc jockeys, and an occasional desert father. And the circumstances of Phil’s death (heart attack while golfing in the Bahamas) weren’t favorable, for it was a very cold day in Minnesota. The Bishop had liked Phil, however, and that was about all Father Urban had going for him when he began to speak. “Most Reverend Bishop, Right Reverend and Very Reverend Monsignors, Reverend Fathers, Venerable Sisters, and Beloved Members of the Laity.” Although Father Urban knew that the deepest sympathies of the most important part of his audience could be readily engaged, he spoke more of death itself than of the death of a priest. But he did say it was not too much to say that Father Phil Smith, seeking to respond to every call, had given his life for his people, that he had exercised the common touch without ever becoming common, and that his greatest earthly desire had been to erect a new church at St Monica’s — for God’s sake and the people’s. “That I can assure you,” said Father Urban.
Only that morning, he said, he’d received a post card from Father Smith (written before he died), a post card (“Thanks again. Taking boat and pressed for time. All for now. Phil.”) from which he recalled only the words “All for now.” He dwelt upon the meaning in those three little words, though not as an etymologist might, saying that only saints and children could really comprehend them, for only great saints and little children lived each moment for all it was worth. Those three little words, rightly understood, were all we needed to know. Rightly understood, they would — like St Augustine’s famous “Love God, and do what you will”—carry us safely through this world and into the next.
Father Urban then spoke of God as the Good Thief of Time, accosting us wherever we go, along the highways and byways of life. So, in light and darkness, as children, as young people, as old, we meet Him. And bit by bit we are deprived of our most precious possessions, so we think, our childhood, our youth, all our days — which, though, lest we forget, we have from Him. We try to hold back what we can, have a secret pocket here, a slit in the lining there, where He won’t look, we think, but in the end we give up everything, every last conceit. “That’s all, Lord,” we say. “No,” saith the Lord. “What else, Lord?” “You,” saith the Lord. “Now I want you.” Thank God He does! Pray God that He always will! God Almighty wants you! That is the biggest, the best, fact of life! That is the fact of life! Death! Life and death and life — eternal life! Who could ask for anything more?