“My place,” said Mr Studley, when they came to it — a place much like the Zimmermans’—but they went on past it, down to the lake. “Here’s what I wanted you to see,” Mr Studley said, “and if you’re the man I think you are, you won’t laugh.”
Father Urban didn’t laugh when, after some difficulty, Mr Studley opened up a garage-like affair, opened it up to the sky, and said, “My plane.”
Mr Studley’s plane was a World War I four-winged machine, bright red, with a number of heraldic devices painted on it: dice which had come up seven; the ace of spades; the leg of a female, ending in a high-heeled shoe; and a mustachioed man in a high silk hat on the band of which appeared the words “SIR SATAN.”
“You were in the First War?” Father Urban asked.
“I would’ve been if it’d lasted another month.”
Father Urban, inspecting the plane’s rear end, noted a Civil Defense sticker. “In working order?”
“It very soon could be.”
“You’d push it down to the water — is that it?”
“That’s right. Those are the floats you see over there.”
“And you’d just attach those?”
“That’s right. I know all about it.”
“What’s your business, Mr Studley?”
“I’m retired, unless, of course…”
“Of course.”
Mr Studley climbed into the front cockpit. He put on a helmet and lowered the goggles. “Seems a long time ago,” he said. “C’mon up.”
“No, that’s all right.”
“C’mon. I was in yours.”
It took Father Urban a moment or two to understand what Mr Studley meant. “All right.” When Father Urban started to get into the plane, though, the dog growled.
“Frank!” yelled Mr Studley, and Frank laid off.
Father Urban found another helmet-and-goggles in the rear cockpit, but he didn’t put them on. They smelled strongly of Frank, as did the whole rear cockpit, and Father Urban very soon left it.
“Now you have to sign my guest book,” said Mr Studley, when he touched down.
Father Urban, tempted to sign himself “Father,” wrote “Rev.” and hoped that was all right.
“Now I’ll show you something,” said Mr Studley. “Here, here, here,” he said, pointing to other names in the guest book. “And over here. And here. All priests like yourself.”
“You met them over at Zimmerman’s?”
“Not all of ’em. Now how about that drink?”
“No, I don’t think so. Thanks.”
“Well, you don’t mind if I have one, do you?”
“Not a-tall. Go right ahead. But I have to get back.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
“No, that’s all right. Hadn’t you better close that?” The door of the hangar rolled up and back in such a way that the plane was exposed to the sky. “It could rain.”
“Think so?” Mr Studley gazed up at the sky. “Oh hell, let it go. And I’ll walk you back. I took you away from ’em, so I’ll take you back to ’em. They all hate me. Even the women. Did anybody say anything?”
“No,” said Father Urban.
When he arrived back at the chairs with Mr Studley (“Hell, what’s wrong with sitting on the grass?”), conversation dropped off to practically nothing. Once again Mrs Zimmerman tried to bring Father Urban a tankard of Icy-ade (Mr Studley wasn’t even approached on the subject), but this time Father Urban was firm with her, in a nice way. Then she brought him the guest book which, however, he didn’t sign, since Mrs Zimmerman said, “Maybe you’d like to write more than just your name. Will you stay and eat?” Father Urban had thought eating was included in his invitation, but, seeing a chance to get his schedule back into a fluid state, which was how he preferred it, he said, “Well, I don’t know about that.” “There’s plenty.” “Well, we’ll see, Mrs Zimmerman.”
Despite the presence of Mr Studley, conversation was picking up, continuing, it seemed, on the same lines as earlier. It had to do with that morning’s gospel.
The gospel had dealt with the steward who called his master’s debtors together, and, writing off fifty barrels of oil here, and twenty quarters of wheat there, since he knew he’d soon be out of work and in need of friends, had, oddly enough, won the praise of his rich master. A difficult text, Luke XVI, 1–9, and for some years now, when the Sunday for it rolled around, Father Urban had read it, yes, but had cut back to I Paralipomenon in the Old Testament where you got substantially the same idea (the advisability of using our present situation as a preparation for our next one) in a much more acceptable form. Father Urban’s sermon on the financing of the temple—“And they gave for the works of the house of the Lord: of gold, five thousand talents, and ten thousand solids: of silver, ten thousand talents: and of brass, eighteen thousand talents: and of iron, a hundred thousand talents,” and so on — was one of his better jobs.
At first, listening to Mr Zimmerman and the other two men — to whom their wives were listening — Father Urban had thought they were talking about him and his sermon. They were not. Nobody, in fact, had mentioned Father Urban’s sermon. The truth was Mr Zimmerman hadn’t mentioned it when he issued the invitation to the picnic. There was now some doubt in Father Urban’s mind that the one had led to the other. Mr Zimmerman, like many before him, was worried about Luke XVI, 1–9.
“Say you’re a rich man,” he said to the man whose wife had brought the potato salad, “and I’m just somebody that works for you at the lumberyard, but I’m in your bookkeeping department, and I go around to various people that owe you and your firm money and I discount this bill so much and that one so much — I don’t get it.”
“Our Lord,” said Father Urban, “isn’t commending the steward for cooking the books, or even condoning this. You’ll note this man is called ‘the unjust steward.’”
“Yes, I know…” said Mr Zimmerman, but he still didn’t like it.
“And I think you’ll find ‘unjust’ means ‘inaccurate,’” said Mr Studley. “There’s a difference, you know.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Father Urban. “I know there’s a difference, yes.” Where they were now, Father Urban didn’t know. Mr Studley not only made it seem that he and Father Urban were together but that he, Mr Studley, was, of the two of them, the sounder man.
Mr Studley yanked up a nice handful of Mr Zimmerman’s grass and threw it away. “Look at it the right way or not at all,” he said. “You people are always looking at things from your own viewpoint. You’ll never get it that way, I can tell you. Look at it from the employee’s viewpoint. Christ was always on the side of the employee — the little guy. That’s what Christianity means. That’s what all your great religions mean. That’s why we fought two major wars. Ask him,” said Mr Studley, referring to Father Urban.
But before Father Urban could clarify Mr Studley’s thought, he had to clarify his own, and before he was able to do this, Mr Studley was on again, pulling grass. “Zim, if this rich man could look at it like that, why can’t you? It’s not costing you.” And with that, Mr Studley lay back on the grass and shut his eyes. “O.K., Zim,” he said, when Mr Zimmerman started to say something. Mr Zimmerman started again.
“If somebody in bookkeeping tried something like that on me, I’d prosecute. I’d have to — or set a bad example. See what I mean? That’s my point,” he said, looking to his two friends for support.
“I’ll grant it’s a difficult text,” said Father Urban. “But rightly understood…” he said, and let it go at that. Father Urban had some ideas of his own about this text. Our Lord, in Father Urban’s opinion, had been dealing with some pretty rough customers out there in the Middle East, the kind of people who wouldn’t have been at all distressed by the steward’s conduct — either that or people had been a whole lot brighter in biblical times, able to grasp a distinction then. It had even entered Father Urban’s mind that Our Lord, who, after all, knew what people were like, may have been a little tired on the day he spoke this parable. Sometimes, too, when you were trying to get through to a cold congregation, it was a case of any port in a storm. You’d say things that wouldn’t stand up very well in print.