The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (34 page)

The package deal always began with Mac’s opening his bag of tricks. It was a Gladstone bag, which he had got from a retired cookie salesman. When open, it looked like a little stadium, and where the cookies had once been on display, in their individual plastic sections, ranged in tiers, there were now rosaries, medals, scapulars—religious goods of the usual quality, which didn’t catch the eye in many rectories. But there were also playing cards with saints as face cards—in one deck the Devil was the joker—and these were new to some priests, as they were to Myles, and had strong educational appeal. Children could familiarize themselves with the lives of the saints from them, and there were other decks, which taught Christian doctrine. Mac had a new kind of rosary, too. It was made of plastic, to fit the hand, and in function and appearance it was similar to an umpire’s ball-and-strike indicator. Each time a little key was punched, the single dial, which showed the Mysteries—Sorrowful, Joyful, and Glorious—revolved a notch, and for the Ave Marias there was a modest tick, for the Pater Nosters an authoritative click. Mac had difficulty explaining the new rosary’s purpose to some priests—
not
to replace the old model, the traditional beads on a string, but to facilitate prayer while driving, for the new rosary was easily attached to the steering wheel. “Of course, you still have to say the prayers,” Mac would say.

Mac gave freely from his bag. Other things, however, he sold—just as an accommodation, he said, to priests, whose work naturally left them little time for shopping. He seemed to have a friend in every business that a parish priest might have to deal with. Myles saw him take large orders for automatic bingo cards (with built-in simulated corn counters), and the trunk of the car was full of catalogues and of refills for the grab bag. “There’s one for you, Father,” he’d say, presenting a pastor with one of the new rosaries. Later, speaking earnestly of power lawn mowers, of which he happened to have a prospectus showing pictures and prices, he’d say, “That’s practically cost minus, Father. He”—referring to a friend—“can’t do better than that, I know.”

One day, when they were driving along, Myles, at the wheel, asked about Mac’s friends.

“Friends? Who said I had any?” Mac snapped.

“I keep hearing you talking about your friends.”

“Is that
so
?” Some miles later, after complete silence, Mac said, “I’m a man of many friends—and I don’t make a dime on any of ’em.” Still later, “The Fathers know all about it.”

This Myles doubted. The Fathers were forbidden to engage in business for profit, he knew, and he believed that Mac, as their representative, was probably subject to the same prohibition. It was a question, though, whether Mac was primarily the Fathers’ representative or his friends’ or his own. It was hard to believe that
everyone
was only breaking even. And Myles felt sure that if the Fathers knew about the package deal, they’d think they had to act. But a replacement for Mac would be hard to find. The
Clementine
, as Myles was discovering, was not an easy magazine to sell. The pamphlets weren’t moving well, either.

Without knowing it at the time, Myles saw a variation of the package deal worked on a pastor who met them in his front yard, baying, “I know all about you! Go!” Myles was more than ready to go, but Mac said, “You know, Monsignor, I believe you do know about me.” “Don’t call me Monsignor!” “My mistake, Father.” Mac’s voice was as oil being poured out. “Father, something you said just now makes me want to say something to you, only it’s not anything I care to say in front of others.” “Whatever you have to say can be said now,” the pastor mumbled. “Believe me, Father, I can’t say it—not in front of this boy,” Mac said, nodding at Myles. Then, in a stage whisper to Myles, “You better go, son.” Myles hesitated, expecting to hear the pastor overrule Mac, but nothing of the sort happened, and Myles went out and sat in the car. Mac and the pastor, a fierce-looking, beak-nosed Irish type, began to walk slowly around the yard, and presently disappeared behind the rectory. Then, after a bit, there was Mac, coming out the front door and calling to Myles from the porch, “Come on in!” Myles went in and shook hands with the pastor, actually a gentle silver-haired man. He asked them to stay for lunch, but Mac graciously refused, insisting it would be too much trouble for the housekeeper. On the following Sunday morning, this same pastor, a marvelous speaker, preached in behalf of the Work, calling the
Clementine
“that dandy little magazine” at all five Masses. Myles attended them all, while Mac hobnobbed with the ushers in the vestibule. Between Masses, the two of them, sitting at the card table, worked like bookmakers between races. Afterward, when they were driving away, Mac announced that the team had had its most successful day. That evening, in a new town, relaxing in the cocktail lounge of their hotel, Mac gave up his secret. He said he had diagnosed the pastor perfectly and had taken the pledge from him—that was all. Seeing that Myles disapproved, he said, “It so happened I needed it.” Myles, who was getting to know Mac, couldn’t quarrel with that.

Mac and Myles moved constantly from town to town and diocese to diocese, and almost every night Myles had the problem of locating suitable accommodations. He soon saw that he would not be able to afford the hotels and meals to which Mac was accustomed, and finally he complained. Mac looked hurt. He said, “We don’t do the Work for profit, you know.” He only got by himself, he said, by attributing part of his living expenses to the car. He wasn’t misusing the swindle sheet, though; he was adapting it to circumstances beyond his control. There really
were
expenses. “I don’t have to tell you that,” he said. “The Fathers, God love ’em, just don’t understand how prices have gone up.” Myles’ predecessor, a fellow named Jack, had put up in “the more reasonable hotels and rooming houses,” and Mac suggested that Myles do the same, for a while. “Later, when you’re doing better, you could stay in regular hotels.”

“Is that what Jack did—later?” Myles asked.

“No. Jack seemed to like the kind of places he stayed in.” Jack, in fact, had quit the Work in order to stay on in one of them, and was now engaged to the landlady. “In some ways, Jack wasn’t meant for the Work,” Mac added. “But we had some fine times together and I hated to see him go. He was a damn fine driver. Not that that’s everything.”

It had become an important part of Myles’ job to do all the driving and put the car away at night and bring it around to the hotel in the morning for Mac and his luggage. More and more, Mac rode in the back seat. (He said he preferred the ashtray there.) But there was no glass between the front and back seats, and the arrangement did not interfere with conversation or alter Mac’s friendliness. Occasionally, they’d arrive in a town late at night—too late for Myles to look for one of the more reasonable places—and Mac would say, mercifully, “Come on. Stay with me.” And on those nights Mac would pick up the tab. This could also happen even when they arrived in plenty of time for Myles to look around, provided the drive had been a long one and Myles had played the good listener.

The association between the two was generally close, and becoming closer. Mac talked frankly about his ex-friends, of whom there were many—mostly former associates or rivals in the general-merchandise field, double-crossers to a man. The first few times this happened, Myles controlled his desire to tell Mac that by damning others, as he did, he damned the whole human race—damned himself, in fact. One day, after Mac had finished with his old friends and with his wife (who was no good), and was beginning to go to work on the Jews (who also had given him nothing but trouble), Myles did tell him. He presented an idea he held to be even greater than the idea of brotherhood. It was the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. Humanity was one great body, Myles explained, all united with Christ, the Saviour. Mac acted as though the doctrine were a new one on him. “One great body, huh? Sounds like the Mystical Knights of the Sea,” he said, and talked for a while of Amos and Andy and of the old days when they’d been Sam and Henry. That was the afternoon that Mac got onto the subject of his dream.

Mac’s dream—as he spoke, the snow was going from gray to ghostly blue and the lights were coming on in the houses along the way—was to own a turkey ranch and a church-goods store. What he really wanted was the ranch, he said, but he supposed he’d have to play it safe and have the store, too. Turkeys could be risky. With the general revival of interest in religion, however, a well-run church-goods store would be sure to succeed. He’d sell by mail, retail and wholesale, and there’d be discounts for everybody—not just for the clergy, though, of course, he’d have to give them the usual break. The store would be a regular clearinghouse: everything from holy cards to statues—products of all the leading manufacturers.

“Sort of a supermarket?” Myles asked, thinking of chalices and turkeys roosting all in a row.

“That’s the idea.”

“It’d be nice if there were one place in this country where you could get an honest piece of ecclesiastical art,” Myles said.

“I’d have that, too, later,” Mac said. “A custom department.”

They were getting along very well, different as they were. Mac
was
a good traveling companion, ready wherever they went with a little quick information about the towns (“Good for business,” “All Swedes,” “Wide open”), the small change of real knowledge.

One day, when they were passing through Superior, Wisconsin, Mac said that originally the iron-ore interests had planned to develop the town. Property values had been jacked up, however, by operators too smart for their own good, and everything had gone to Duluth, with its relatively inferior harbor. That was how Superior, favored by nature, had become what it was, a small town with the layout of a metropolis.

“It’s easier to move mountains than greedy hearts,” Myles commented.

“I wouldn’t know,” Mac said.

Myles found the story of Superior instructive—positively Biblical, he said. Another case of man’s greed. The country thereabouts also proved interesting to Myles, but difficult for Mac when Myles began to expound on the fished-out lakes (man’s greed), the cut-over timberland (man’s greed), the poor Indians (the
white
man’s greed). The high-grade ore pits, Mac foolishly told him, were almost exhausted.

“Exhausted for what?” Myles asked.

“Steel,” said Mac, who didn’t realize the question had been rhetorical.

“This car!” said Myles, with great contempt. “War!” Looking into the rearview mirror, he saw Mac indulging in what was becoming a habit with him—pulling on his ear lobes.

“What
are
you?” Mac finally demanded. “Some kind of a new damn fool?”

But Myles never gave up on him. He went right on making his points, laying the ground for an awakening; it might never come to Mac, but Myles carried on as if it might at any moment. Mac, allied with the modern world for better or worse, defended the indefensible and fought back. And when logic failed him, he spluttered, “You talk like you got holes in your head,” or, “Quit moanin’!” or, “Who you think you are, buster—the Pope?”

“This is when you’re
really
hard to take!” Mac said one day, when the news from Korea was bad and Myles was most telling. Myles continued obliviously, perceiving moral links between Hiroshima and Korea and worse things to come, and predicting universal retribution, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. “And why?” he said. “Greed!”

“Greed! Greed! Is that all you can think about? No wonder they had to get rid of you!”

A few miles of silence followed, and then a few well-chosen words from Mac, who had most certainly been thinking, which was just what Myles was always trying to get him to do. “Are you sure the place you escaped from was a seminary?” he asked.

But Myles let him see he could take even this, turning the other cheek so gracefully that Mac could never know his words were touching a sore spot.

Later that day, in the middle of a sermon from Myles, they passed a paddy wagon and Mac said, “They’re looking for you.” Ever after, if Myles discoursed too long or too well on the state of the modern world, there came a tired but amiable croaking from the back seat, “They’re looking for you.”

At night, however, after the bars closed, it was
Mac
who was looking for Myles. If they were staying at the same hotel, he’d knock at Myles’ door and say, “Care to come over to the room for a drink?” At first, Myles, seeing no way out of it, would go along, though not for a drink. He drank beer when he drank, or wine, and there was never any of either in Mac’s room. It was no fun spending the last hour of the day with Mac. He had a lot of stories, but Myles often missed the point of them, and he knew none himself—none that Mac would appreciate, anyway. What Cardinal Merry del Val had said to Cardinal Somebody Else—the usual seminary stuff. But Mac found a subject to interest
him
. He began denying that Myles was a cradle Catholic. Myles, who had never seen in this accident of birth the personal achievement that Mac seemed to see, would counter, “All right. What if I weren’t one?”

“You see? You see?” Mac would say, looking very wise and drunk. Then, as if craving and expecting a confession, he’d say, “You can tell
me
.”

Myles had nothing to tell, and Mac would start over again, on another tack. Developing his thought about what he called Myles’“ideas,” he would arrive at the only possible conclusion: Myles wasn’t a Catholic at all. He was probably only a smart-aleck convert who had come into the Church when the coming was good, and only
thought
he was in.

“Do you deny the possibility of conversion?” Myles would ask, though there was small pleasure in theologizing with someone like Mac.

Mac never answered the question. He’d just keep saying, “You call yourself a
Catholic
—a
cradle
Catholic?”

The first time Myles said no to Mac’s invitation to come over and have one, it worked. The next time, Mac went back to his room only to return with his bottle, saying, “Thought you might like to have one in your pajamas.” That was the night Myles told Mac, hopefully, that whiskey was a Protestant invention; in Ireland, for example, it had been used, more effectively than the penal laws, to enslave the faithful. “Who’re you kiddin’!” Mac wailed.