Page 44 - Vol. VI #3

Last Chance (continued from preceding page)
left in the pink light of dawn. It was how priests had survived throughout history, donning their riot gear on the way out of town, one step ahead of an irate mob. Flanagan hadn’t even the de- cency to nail a note to the door. The entire parish showed up to find an abandoned church. Even
the organist was out in the cold. Conflict had been avoided because contact was avoided. All they found that day was him—Bruce—their careless caretaker, smelling of stale wine and tobacco and stripped of his keys. Not that locks mattered. The church held no secrets for him and he could enter it any number of ways. He could have led the flock down through a broken basement window and back up to the sanctuary, but for what? No red light glowed, the tabernacle was empty. It was far too late for heroics.
Bruce smiled. If only it were that easy to know where you belonged. For now though, it was clear. His job was to sit in his van and bear witness to the Holy Miracle of the Condo Conversion. And then he did what he’d been trained to do in the face of utter futility. He prayed. It was not enough to pray for those on the sidewalk here today either; he had to also pray that God’s love would comfort the new tenants, who would soon lay awake nights listening to the echo of a distant re- quiem, their days haunted by ancient confessions emanating from the linen closet. He prayed for them all—us sinners—bound together now by the frightful image of Jesus’s head rolling towards them to the blessed end of time.
On the third day after the aborted mass, Bruce found Flanagan sneaking back at dusk to grab a few forgotten things from the rectory. Bruce, sit- ting on the steps with his bottle, considered the patent falsehood of assuming everything of hu- man form had a soul.
“The closings, they say they’re to make the church ‘healthier.’” Eric O’Conner stared at the head. “Je- sus don’t look too healthy right now, does He?”
“You shouldn’t have lied to them, Flanagan,” Bruce called out from the dark. “You led them on.”
Frank Ahearn stepped closer to the head, then stopped. “If this is what can happen to Him, no wonder the Catholic church is in the state it’s in.”
Father Flanagan turned slowly, with a warped smile on his face. “Well, Bruce, I’d have to have known the truth in order to lie,” he said, making
a steeple with his gloved fingers. “I didn’t know when I planned the mass that the archdiocese would swoop in and lock up the building to pre- vent any more monkey business. There was noth- ing I could do.”
“What happened?” asked Annette Tarr, wiping away her tears. “Father promised all religious items would be ‘dispersed’ in a proper manner.”
Then he turned his back to indicate that the con- versation was over and began fumbling with his keys, muttering strange curses. Bruce put his fists in his armpits and crowed.
Frank looked up at the sky. “There’s no trust in the world if you can’t trust your own parish priest.”
Flanagan turned, his features mottled in the shad- ows. “Get out of here, you old drunk. I let you work here out of mercy, but you were never any- thing but a disgrace to the job, as you were to the friars. You trespass again, I’ll have you put behind bars where you belong.”
“I can’t believe he knows what’s happening here today,” said Annette. “I can’t. It’s got to be a cleri- cal mistake, is all.”
35
“Isn’t it like the American flag, don’t you have to
“He promised a final mass too, didn’t he?” said Eric.
~
“The whole thing, from beginning to end, was done in bad faith,” said Annette’s husband, Malcolm, leaning on the wall. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Shouldn’t we cover it up?” Malcolm asked. “It’s so, so. . . .”