Wheat That Springeth Green by J.F. Powers

Author:J.F. Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590176580
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-11-01T22:00:00+00:00

15. THEREAFTER

JOE STILL HAD to do practically everything—all the accounts and correspondence—and he also had to think of jobs that Bill could do, quite a job. The future looked brighter, though, with Bill making good progress in his typing. Well, fairly good progress. He had turned against his manual, his records, even his phonograph—which at first, at the end of the business day, he’d lugged up to his room to play folk (in Joe’s lexicon, “folks”), work, and protest songs on, but now, thank God, left down in his office. Bill was sweating it out these days, but so was Joe, and, really, Bill couldn’t complain. It wasn’t all business in the office area. With the door open between them, pastor and curate could carry on desk-to-desk conversation, and if the flow was more one way than the other, that was because there was so much Bill didn’t know about practically everything—procedure and policy, the parish and the community, and the world in general. Here too, Joe did what he could for Bill, mining a dozen periodicals that crossed his desk and passing them on with articles marked “Read” or “Skip.” Sometimes Joe would go over to Bill’s house just to smoke a baby cigar with him. And sometimes, Joe would put on his hat and say in the cawing voice of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (to whom Joe knew he bore a growing resemblance), “Knock it off, kid.” Bill would cover his typewriter (Joe was strict about that, as he was about not leaving the toilet seat up in Bill’s lavatory) and off they’d go in Joe’s car, the radio tuned to an FM music station for Bill. They had called at a number of rectories on business that could have been handled over the phone but wasn’t because Joe enjoyed being seen with his curate—a pleasure he’d had to deny himself until he learned his curate’s name. They had dropped in on a few parishioners, including the Gurriers—Bill enjoyed small talk, Joe didn’t. At first, maybe after a visit to the hospital or the garage (in Bill’s little car to bail out Joe’s car, a habitual offender), they’d had a meal somewhere and gone on to box seats at the stadium—until it became clear to Joe that Bill, though he’d played in the outfield on his high school team and pitched in relief, was not greatly interested in the national game. One evening, at Bill’s instigation, they had taken in a lousy foreign movie, after which Joe had stopped at a drugstore for aspirin and then, with the idea of keeping in shape, had bought a couple of catcher’s mitts and a regulation ball. Now, when free in the evenings, they went out in the yard and pitched to each other. Bill had a honey of a fast ball, but Joe could hold him—better than Bill could hold Joe, who threw what is known as a heavy ball and was rather wild. Joe’s change-up too was deceptive—as it was at such times in conversation.

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