Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers

Author:J.F. Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-590176-60-3
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Katie had called during dinner to say that Mrs Thwaites wished to see him as soon as possible, and so, when he’d got out of his surplice and cassock, and Jack had got out of his, they drove out to Lake Lucille. When they arrived at the house, Father Urban suggested that Jack remain in the car. “I don’t know what’s on her mind, and you’ll be warmer here with the heater on. You can listen to the radio while I’m gone.”

In Mrs Thwaites’s room, the TV sets were off, the lights were on, and Dickie, Mrs Thwaites’s son, was present. Father Urban sensed that Dickie, whom he’d met on another occasion, was to be the subject of the conversation—and hoped he wasn’t thinking of going into the Clementines. Dickie, who had been in and out of too many orders already, according to Monsignor Renton, was now running a book and church-goods store over in Ostergothenburg, an establishment called the Eight Seasons. When Father Urban had asked why it was called that, Dickie had replied, “Why, because of the eight seasons, of course.” “What eight seasons?” “Why, the eight seasons of the church year, of course.” Father Urban hadn’t cared for that, not a-tall, but even without that, he wouldn’t have cared for Dickie. The boy, as his mother fondly referred to him, was forty-six, fat in the middle and soft all over, with a bottlenose (from his father, to judge by photographs in Mrs Thwaites’s room), and lots of hair (this from his mother) swept up in a gray mane that might have looked all right on the conductor of a symphony orchestra. No, Father Urban just couldn’t see Dickie Thwaites, with his record and his hair, even as a Clementine brother, and so he was alarmed when he heard Mrs Thwaites say:

“The boy’s giving up the store.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Dickie.

“It’s well to be sure,” Father Urban said, in case they were talking about Dickie’s vocation. “Were you, perhaps, thinking of something else?”

Dickie, who was sitting on a big footstool, with his hands all but lost in his hair, said, “This is the century of the cad.”

Father Urban thought this over for a moment, and then, to Mrs Thwaites, he said: “I take it this is why you’ve asked me here.”

“Yes, I thought you might be able to tell the boy what to do.”

Father Urban glanced at Dickie.

Dickie looked up from the floor at which he’d been staring. “Of course, I’d be interested in anything you might have to say, Father.”

Father Urban sat back in his chair, a club chair with an odd cushion, and was suddenly like a man sitting in a floating inner tube. “Then suppose,” he said, sitting forward, “we begin at the beginning. Why Ostergothenburg?”

Dickie said that he’d chosen Ostergothenburg, a highly Catholic community (as Great Plains wasn’t), to be near his mother—it was only an hour’s drive home in his little Porsche—and to be near St Ludwig’s and St Hedwig’s. Among the

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