“Nice place you’ve got here, Father.”
“Thanks. Nothing special about it except the office area — in the basement but surprisingly bright and airy.”
“So I’ve been told, Father.”
Joe, hoping to hear more, sat down in his BarcaLounger.
“Understand you built the rectory, Father.”
“Also the school and convent.”
“That I didn’t know.” Mr McMaster, in dismay, his big fat head cocked back, his pop eyes popping, then winked one of them. “And all paid for, Father?”
“No.”
Mr McMaster smiled, nodding, as if he could never be so blunt and honest but would certainly like to be. “Father, wherever your name comes up — for example, at the Chancery — I’ve heard nothing but good.”
“That so?”
“Indeed. Oh, indeed.”
Joe — he’d had enough of this — said: “What can I do for you, sir?”
Mr McMaster, in dismay again, said: “Father, you took the words right out of my mouth!”
“That so?”
“Indeed. It’s part of my job, or I wouldn’t dare ask, but how’s the program going here?”
“If you’re talking about Arf, Mr McMaster, there’s no program here.”
Mr McMaster was obviously in pain. “Why’s that, Father?”
“Thought you knew.” And still thought so. “My assistant didn’t tell you?”
“I wasn’t here very long, Father, before you came.”
So Joe, though doubting it was necessary, explained his fiscal system to Mr McMaster. “You must’ve run across something of the sort in your travels.”
“Yes and no, Father. Exceptions are often made when it comes to a big-ticket item like this. Pastors, God love ’em, aren’t so rigid then.”
“Sell out, you mean.”
“Father”—Mr McMaster shaking his big fat head—“I couldn’t — and wouldn’t—say that about any of the many fine men like yourself it’s been my good fortune to meet.”
Joe sniffed. “I try to budget for everything that comes along. There’ll be no thermometer on my church lawn.”
“That’s optional!”
“Not here.”
“Father, how can you budget for this?” In his professional capacity, Mr McMaster would know Joe’s assessment.
Joe had weakened at the thought of it. “Fortunately, it’s spread over three years.”
“Three years! You could wrap it up in three weeks!”
“Sorry. I’ll do it the hard way.”
“Too bad.” Mr McMaster was staring at Joe’s thumb. “Keeps you from saying Mass?”
“Afraid so.” Not many laymen would have thought of that, it occurred to Joe. “Look, Mr McMaster.”
“Just call me Mac, Father. All my other friends do.”
“Uh-huh. Look, Mac, we can’t do business, but I can make you a drink.” To say nothing of myself.
“Thanks. Bourbon, if you’ve got it, and water.”
While Joe was occupied in the bathroom, with the door open, Mac spoke to him of a certain Monsignor Pat (“in another diocese, Father, so I’m not talking out of school”) who, being shafted with a ball-breaking assessment and being a poor administrator for a pastor in the modern world of today, had spurned outside help (Mac?) and had then suffered a massive stroke — which, however, had become the balls of the program in his parish. “Over the top, Father.”
Joe, who’d had his hands — hand — full making drinks, brought them out of the bathroom on a tray. “How about Monsignor Pat? He make a miraculous recovery?”
“No, I’m sorry to say.” Mac bowed his big fat head in grief, but snapped out of it, scooted forward on the couch, the toes of his tasseled loafers pointing at Joe. “Father, in my humble but expert opinion — and they don’t call me the Grand Old Man of Fund-Raising for nothing — an exception could and should be made here. This is a hardship case. Sometimes, Father, it’s the little things that count.” Mac was staring at Joe’s thumb.
Joe poked it at him. “What if I told you I got this little thing playing catch? Hard-ball.”
Mac merely nodded. “So what? It’s not the same, no, as a massive stroke. But, Father, the fact is — You. Can’t. Say. Mass. Can you think of anything worse for a priest? I can’t. Everybody in the parish with kids, or without ’em — everybody who was ever a kid — would get behind you and the program. It’d fly, Father, believe me. Over the top!”
“Sorry, Mac.”
“Father, could I say something — with your kind permission?”
Joe kindly gave it with a nod.
“Father, go ahead, go it alone — it’s no skin off my ass. But whatever you do, Father — go it alone, or go with the program — I want you to know my hat’s off to you.” Turning over his gray enameled straw hat, which was cooling upside down on the end table by the couch, Mac raised it to Joe and let it drop right side up on the table as though resting his case. “Father, if it’s not asking too much, I’d like to see the office area before I leave.”
“Why wait?”
So, carrying their drinks, they went down to the office area, with which Mac was anything but unimpressed (unlike some of the clergy), as he was (“Indeed! Oh, indeed!”) with Joe’s office/offices lecture, after which, saying it had made him think, he appeared to be depressed.
“Father, I’m worried about the Church these days. So many changes, and not all of ’em, I’d say, for the best.”
“Hardly any, I’d say.”
“No, but I shouldn’t say it.”
“Why not? Who cares?”
“Father, I’m a convert.”
“Hard to believe.” (Mac, smiling, appeared to take this as a compliment.) “Convert from what?”
“Nothing much.”
Joe nodded. “In that case, you should feel right at home these days.”
Mac grinned. “Not many left like you, Father.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mac.”
“I do, Father — going from diocese to diocese, the things I hear and see.”
“We just have to hang in there, Mac.” The phone rang. “St Francis.”
“Father, I know it’s late and I don’t want to say who I am, but my husband and I, we’re not regular contributors, and now we wonder if we should be. The other one was here a while ago and said if people give to the church and anybody knows about it, except God, it’s not true charity. That’s what he said, Father.” (A man, presumably her husband, came on the line: “If you ask me, the other one’s full of shit.”) “We thought you should know this, Father.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Anything else, ma’am?”
“No, Father.”
“Thanks for calling. G’night.”
Unfortunately, before Mac could leave he had to return to the study for his hat, with which he then — having to rest for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs — sat fanning his face. “For some reason, Father, I keep thinking of my friend Lou.”
“Lou?”
“Cooney.”
“Cooney? Oh, you mean Father Cooney.” Joe had expected this to have (on a layman and a convert of Mac’s vintage) more of an effect than it did.
“That’s right. Lou, if you don’t know, Father, had your system, but he couldn’t sleep nights. A bad case of the shakes—moneywise, Father. The same with Lad — Ladislaw, Lou’s assistant. Poor guys, Lou and Lad. Out every night beating the bushes for bucks, trying to make their assessment.” (Mac shook his big fat head.) “It’s not a ballbreaker like some — like yours, for instance, Father — but it’s still a nice piece of change. Naturally, I wanted to help, but Lou can be a very stubborn individual, Father. I left my card. ‘Call me if you change your mind, or even if you don’t — we can always have a drink.’ A couple of days later Lou did call me — in the middle of the night. I got dressed and went to see him. Something I’d said made him rethink his situation, he said, namely that it wasn’t hopeless, that he could wrap it up in a matter of weeks without really going against his system — against the letter, maybe, but not the spirit. That’s what counts, as I understand it.”