Wilf attributed the great change in their fortunes primarily to the brochure. It was doing the job he’d always known it would do. Next in importance, in his estimation, was the clever covering letter he’d written to pastors, a letter in which he thanked them for their “continued support.” And after that came the warmer weather and the fact that he’d had the furnace and ducts vacuum-cleaned. (“Found an old overshoe in your duct, Urban — no wonder you were cold.”) Thus Wilf accounted for the great change — and began negotiations with his discount house to procure “government surplus” beds and mattresses for Minor. “We’re on the move, boys.”
If so, why — why now?
They had come into the diocese cold, with no fifth column to soften up the population (no old grads around to say, “I went to school with the Clems”), with nothing but the Bishop’s permission to sustain them. The lower clergy, after welcoming them with all the lukewarmness at their command, had closed ranks and hardened at the prospect of being regarded by their own flocks as less traveled, less learned, and less spiritual than the newcomers. This is almost inevitable if the newcomers have a country place and wear a striking habit (which, unfortunately, the Clementines didn’t), and the secular clergy know it. They know that among them there are too many men whom too many people remember as something else, as, in Johnny Chumley’s case, a hockey player. In short, they know that they suffer from a deficiency of mystery and romance, as the Protestant clergy do, compared with them. But what they’d feared hadn’t happened in this instance. Wilf had made nothing of the one advantage he’d had. The Clementines, competitors not so much for the alms and stipends of the faithful as for their hearts, had got nowhere until Father Urban entered the lists. He, unlike Wilf, had taken good care to conquer the profane world before tackling the other one, and, for that reason, was able to deal with the clergy from a sitting, rather than a kneeling, position. They loved a winner. It was as simple as that. That was what was really behind the great change.
Father Urban, however, still wouldn’t call it success. They were getting the retreatants, yes, but they weren’t getting the revenue. The common practice — the retreatant to leave behind an offering to cover his board and room, and, if he wished, a bit more — just wasn’t working out at the Hill.
One afternoon, after a group of retreatants had departed, Father Urban walked into the office and found Wilf holding his head. “The take’s still off, eh?”
“It’s not quite what it should be,” Wilf said.
Father Urban scrutinized the roster of departed retreatants, sighed, and said what he’d refrained from saying before. “Too many Teutonic and Central European strains, I’m afraid, and these not the best of their kind.”
“Aw, now,” said Wilf. He was inclined to be touchy on this point. He held that it was only an historical accident that the American hierarchy was so Irish in its make-up. Father Urban, on the other hand, held that the Irish, ecclesiastically speaking, were the master race, and had had the saints, and still had the bishops, to prove it.
“No,” said Father Urban. “Let’s face it. We’re getting the ham-and-sausage-supper types now. The horseshoe pitchers. That’s all there is to it. They’re the ones who’re setting the tone, and it’s all wrong.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t look at it that way,” Wilf said. “So materially, I mean.”
“Try that on your grocer.”
“It is sort of discouraging.” Wilf said that he’d thought of putting up small signs such as hotels had in their bedrooms, but not setting a minimum rate, just suggesting one.
“No good.”
“No, I don’t like it much myself.”
Taking leave of Wilf, Father Urban said, “Let’s face it. We have to go after a different breed of retreatant.”
A few days later, Father Urban was out strolling among the children in the school playground, talking to one of the sisters, a Chicago girl, when Cal, of Cal’s Body Shop, brought Phil’s car back. In a way, Father Urban was sorry to see it. For two days, he’d had the use of Sylvia Bean’s little English sports car — a Barracuda S-X 2. He complimented Cal on the fine job he’d done on the back fender of Phil’s Plymouth, and then said he supposed he ought to return the little Barracuda to its rightful owner. Cal caught on and said, sure, he’d follow in the big car.
Sylvia wasn’t home, but Father Urban left the little Barracuda in the driveway and gave the key to the maid. Cal moved over, and Father Urban drove him to his place of business. Cal, who knew the circumstances of the accident, said he’d shaved the bill down as far as he could in case Father Urban had to pay it. “Mighty white of you, Cal.” Father Urban then drove off to see the party responsible for the accident in which, fortunately, only Phil’s car had suffered, and it only forty-eight dollars’ worth.
The other party’s address, given to Father Urban by the cop summoned to the scene of the accident, was simply R.R.2, Duesterhaus, and so Father Urban dropped in at the Duesterhaus post office for more information. He discovered that the other party was a farmer whose property adjoined that of the Order, none other than the owner of the black dog, Rex, of whom Wilf was so fond.
At the time of the accident the farmer, an elderly man, had been about to deliver a load of firewood — white birch logs that really looked too nice to burn — to a big house a few doors away from Ray Bean’s. Running his old truck off the steep driveway on his first attempt, he’d backed out into the street to try again, and without watching where he was going, when Father Urban happened by. There was a scum of wet snow. Father Urban’s wheel tracks showed that he’d done all he could. He was completely in the clear. But the farmer had no insurance.
Father Urban found Mr Hanson and the dog at home. The dog seemed to recognize him, but Mr Hanson didn’t, and so Father Urban introduced himself. He mentioned his connection with the Hill (“We’re neighbors”), and then presented the bill, saying that Cal had shaved it down as far as he could.
Mr Hanson said, Yar, he guessed he’d have to pay it. He didn’t have no insurance, he said, because he’d been delivering his last load. He was giving up farming, going to California where his daughter was. His missis had passed away. Some fellers might buy his place, he said. So far, though, they were holding out, wouldn’t give him his price. Father Urban asked what that might be. Mr Hanson had an old frame house, a red barn in very bad shape, and about sixty acres left of what, he said, had once been four hundred. In the distance, Father Urban could see the thin little woods, not many birches left, where the farmer had cut his last load. After finding out what Mr Hanson wanted for his property, which took a bit of doing, Father Urban left. At that point, he really didn’t know why he’d bothered to find out.
The following afternoon, he was back, and Monsignor Renton was with him (“I just want to know what you think, Monsignor, and I may need your help later”). They walked over the still-frozen ground with Mr Hanson and Rex. The property included about three hundred yards of barren shore line on Pickle Lake (as Mr Hanson called it). He said the fellers who might buy his property weren’t interested in farming it but in selling off lots for summer cottages. Father Urban asked who they were, these fellers, and Mr Hanson mentioned a couple of names. One of them was familiar to Father Urban who said, no, he wasn’t thinking of cottages, and, no, he wasn’t thinking of farming — for one thing, as Mr Hanson had pointed out, the barn needed too much work. Father Urban, not saying what he was thinking of (Monsignor Renton made this easier by whooping it up with the dog), asked Mr Hanson to do nothing until he heard from him, and wrote down St Monica’s telephone number (“Just call collect”) in case anything got going with the fellers (“We’re neighbors, after all”). Mr Hanson said, Yar, O.K.