The man whose wife had brought the shortcake said, “Father Tom just skips it. ‘Every year,’ he says, ‘I come to it and I just skip it. It does more harm than good,’ he says. ‘So I just skip it.’”
“Who’s Father Tom?” said Father Urban.
“I think I’ve met him,” said Mr Studley, from his prone position.
“Our pastor. He just skips it,” said Mr Shortcake.
“What about the fella that’s going along with the other fella?” said Mr Zimmerman. “He’s just as bad as the other fella.”
“Too bad Father Prosperus isn’t here. He’d be able to tell us a thing or two, I’ll bet.” This from Mrs Potato Salad.
“I guess he could at that,” said Mrs Zimmerman.
“Who’s Father Prosperus?” said Father Urban.
“Our son,” said Mrs Zimmerman.
“Your son’s a priest?”
“Yes, he’s a Dolomite father,” said Mrs Zimmerman.
“At St Ludwig’s?”
“No, at St Hedwig’s. He’s chaplain there.”
That did it for Father Urban. There hadn’t been much reason before to hope that Mr Zimmerman would make a benefactor for the Order of St Clement. Now there was none.
Mr Studley suddenly sat up and said, “C’mon over to my place, and I’ll make you a real drink.”
“No, thanks,” said Father Urban. “But I don’t mind if you have one.”
“Maybe later,” said Mr Studley, and lay down again, this time with a piece of his stomach showing.
All around Father Urban the discussion went on.
“Well now…” he said, trying, in a nice way, to end it, but nobody — nobody, with the possible exception of Mr Studley — was listening to him. Mrs Zimmerman was thoroughly involved now. Employed by Mr Zimmerman for many years as a stewardess, and hearing that she was soon to be let go, she had written off fifty percent of a debt owing to her master, a matter of fifty barrels, and naturally he was sore about it, and the party Mrs Zimmerman had accommodated — Mrs Shortcake — was also sore, saying nothing about her part in the deal. Others were in similar difficulties.
“I say…” said Father Urban, but nobody, unless Mr Studley, heard him. Father Urban glanced at the sky and signed the guest book with a flourish — just signed it. Then there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and the sky, which had been looking more and more like slate, shook, and the wind ran through the oaks, whipping up the green-gray backsides of leaves, and a dozen large raindrops hit the top of the picnic table all at the same time.
Mr Zimmerman ran to the picnic table for his scrapbook in which the carbon copies had been placed for safekeeping, fortunately. Mr Studley rose up in alarm and was last seen running down the beach, heading for his place. And Father Urban — crying, “I’d love to stay, but really I can’t,” to Mrs Zimmerman and the other women, who, of course, had run for the food on the picnic table — ran to the little Barracuda and raised its little fawn roof. But first he got rid of Frank, who had been sitting on his coat.
Halfway to Ostergothenburg, the rain let up, and then it stopped entirely. On the other side of town, on the highway leading home to the Hill, the Mellon came up behind the little Barracuda at the last stoplight and nudged it. There were girls in the Mellon now, Father Urban saw, and he also saw, as he hadn’t before, that the Mellon had no lower teeth — just a dark gap there.
“Drag?” said the driver, in whose face there was a hint of human intelligence, as there is in a shark’s.
Father Urban made no reply.
The light changed to green and the Mellon came abreast.
“Chicken!”
This time Father Urban, though he said nothing, and gave no sign, accepted the challenge. He was ten lengths behind when he made his decision, but slowly and surely, he gained on the Mellon, drew even with it, and still the little Barracuda was full of run. Then he let it all the way out, and shot ahead. Something was happening to the Mellon. Coughing and sneezing and emitting blue smoke, it was pulling over to the side of the road. Father Urban had been winning before this, however, and would’ve won had the race continued, and, in fact, he had won. The Mellon, though, was about the only thing he’d been able to handle in that diocese. The Mellon, and the guest book at the Zimmermans’, which, finally, when nobody would listen to him, he’d signed with a flourish, “Pope John XXIII.”
11. WRENS AND STARLINGS
WHEN THE HISTORY of the Order in the United States came to be written, and Father Urban must have been about the only Clementine who was looking that far ahead and thinking along those lines, would what was now St Clement’s Hill go down as one more spot where the good seed of its zeal had fallen and flourished, or as another where the Order had lost out? That was the question in Father Urban’s mind, in August, when the Bishop returned from Rome. According to Monsignor Renton, the Bishop was thinking of taking over the Hill for a diocesan seminary. “You guys were all right until you went and built this course,” said Monsignor Renton — brown as a berry from playing it.
Over hill and dale, on tee and green, Father Urban pumped the trusty consultor, but although Monsignor Renton talked freely, he couldn’t tell Father Urban when or how the Bishop would move against the Clementines — only why. “He’s always wanting something.” Dear James had wanted one man’s choir director, another man’s sanctuary lamp, and so on, and what he wanted he got. It had been going on for years. He had seen some wormy statues in London, fingers and whole arms missing, and Monsignor Renton, traveling with him, had done his best to talk him out of these costly purchases, but they were now standing in the Cathedral.
But could the Bishop do such a thing? He could. The Clementines had had it done to them before, most recently at Bolivar Springs, Missouri, where they’d run a minor seminary and boys’ boarding school, an indifferent enterprise economically and scholastically, and where the local bishop had wanted first one of his men on the faculty, then two, to which demands the Clementines had gracefully acceded, and thus passed the point of no return. As soon as the Bishop had educated enough men (elsewhere) to operate the institution, the Clementines had been eased out altogether and paid off. To an outsider it might have appeared that this was all to the good — and thus, had the Clementines complained, it would have been made to appear to Rome. Nuns could coo their way out of such difficulties, or, that failing, would often fight, and sometimes cardinals would ride forth in their behalf. But it was almost impossible for a small, unentrenched order of men (whose record might have been better) to defend itself against a bishop and his hordes. What could wrens do against starlings?
“You have to have strong grounds for effecting a transfer of ownership such as the Bishop is contemplating,” said Father Urban. He had been making the best of the poor library at the Hill, reading up on the subject of contracts between bishops and religious. “Canon law is quite clear about such things.”