Good Sex, Great Prayers

by Brandon Tietz

  “I’ll never say a word about him, Kip,” Father Johnstone told him. Yet again, he was able to determine what the sheriff was about to say before he said it. “I don’t need this town getting riled up over ghosts they thought to be dead long ago. You can keep your legend.”

  Sheriff Morgan paused, looking at the pastor in a way he never had before: with caution. The guise of the schoolyard bully had been beaten out of him on the road, all those hours under the boiling sun, walking on wet blisters. It was out there that he finally felt weakness, an urge to accept death. Sometimes he’d spend miles trying to pull Shelby from his holster and eat a bullet, but couldn’t will his arm to execute. His body was no longer his own anymore. He never did figure out how it all happened, only that he couldn’t control it. Couldn’t stop it, and the pastor had a hand in it. He’s a changed man.

  “You’re not you anymore,” Kip said, but not in a disparaging way. An observation. “You’re like her now. People been talking about why you haven’t preached since old man Clevenger took a shot at you. Maybe she’s the reason.”

  Asking when Father Johnstone plans on taking the helm again has become something of an icebreaker to engage in conversation, he’s noticed. Even now, walking amongst the festivities, he’s already had eight or nine non-members of the flock ask if next Sunday will be day.

  “Sure would be nice to hear what the Lord has to say about all this mess,” they’ll hint. “Seems like the church was about the only building in town that wasn’t affected.”

  Indeed, not one plank of wood rotted. Not one pillar cracked. Leaky roof aside, the church Father Johnstone has known for over three decades remained immaculate, untouched by the plague. Of course, this led to various theories as well, the main one being that the particular type of wood and varnish combination somehow shielded the building. Others theorized it was another miracle, that Father Johnstone’s Divine sanction extended to the structure itself.

  ‘Your power will magnify along with your flock,’ Madeline wrote. ‘You were always the keystone, but now everyone will know it. They’ll feel it intrinsically, all the way to their bones.’

  Dr. Keller has been called out for his inconsistent work as of late. People are accusing Sheriff Morgan of being a deserter who left an incompetent fool in his stead. As for the mayor, there’s a lot of talk surrounding him. None of it good.

  “Andy Farnsworth has barely poked his head out of his house since things went south,” Mrs. Colston mentions from behind her pie stand, caring very little for who overhears her discussion. “Word’s been going around that he was making some shady dealings with some out-of-towners. Might be time for a change in office.”

  It’s not the first time Father Johnstone has heard this idea being openly discussed in mixed company. Indeed, the mayor has gone into hiding, mostly out of paranoia of what awaits him out in the streets. He knows as well as anyone that Pratt isn’t without a sense of wrath, no matter how high its spirits are. The town would tear him apart if they knew the details of his arrangement with Mr. Pollux and his associate, Mason Hollis. It would be regarded as high treason, and the backlash would be far worse than anything Father Johnstone saw when his church was flooded with a makeshift mob bearing bats and pistols. Mayor Farnsworth wouldn’t even get a chance to speak; they’d drag him from that beautiful home on Waterstone’s end and lynch him up on the nearest elm tree. No trial or quarter. Just revenge. ‘Settling the score,’ as they say.

  Father Johnstone often muses whether he’d come to the mayor’s aid should violent reprisals come to pass; he hasn’t decided. As a pastor, he’s obligated to uphold life. As a man living in the fringe, he can’t ignore the fact that the mayor’s death would be anything if not harmonious.

  ‘Sometimes death is necessary.’

  Burying the mayor wouldn’t bother him none; he was never part of the flock. Full of hubris, that man. Worshipped himself more than the Lord and wasn’t quiet about it. For that, Father Johnstone can spare no concern.

  ‘You’ll never be the same,’ Madeline wrote. ‘Once you stop playing by the rules it’s hard to go back.’

  Father Johnstone has been compromised. Permanently so.

  After everything that’s happened, he doesn’t have it in him to assume the helm and recite the Lord’s word. He’s felt real power surge through his person, witnessed it bring back Mary and save the town. Never again could he utter the line, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ without feeling like a complete hypocrite. He did much more than suffer Madeline’s existence. He gave her everything he wasn’t supposed to: his support, his love, and a non-traditional burial.

  Dr. Keller gave him the directions and the pastor followed them to the letter, saying every word and combining all the listed ingredients: animal organs, select herbs, three drops of blood from the Secondary. Father Johnstone’s blood. Dr. Keller wrapped her in a shroud and delivered her to the daisy hill three hours before sunrise. While the town slept, Madeline Paige was lowered into the earth, deep into a pit that the pastor had spent the last many hours digging.

  “You sure you don’t want to see her?” Dr. Keller said.

  He waved him off again. So much had changed in Father Johnstone without his say-so, but the memory, the campfire smile and the eyes—he could keep that. Madeline Paige could be preserved exactly how he wanted to remember her, and no amount of trips through the rumor mill could change that. His faith and relationships would change, pillars would come and go, but Madeline could be absolute. Forever beautiful, buried in the womb of the daisy hill her aunt Josie loved so much. Deep down where the soil was still rich and alive.

  In the here and now, Father Johnstone strolls through the commotion that is Pratt, noticing all the colors of the balloons, the streamers, the aromas of pies and cobblers. He can feel the tide turning, the morale of the people rising with every home they rebuild and ill friend that recovers. Pratt is well on its way to finding its feet again, and Father Johnstone—he no longer feels so alone. He has Mary and a dear friend in Dr. Keller. He has the love of the flock and non-flock alike. Even Sheriff Morgan, despite everything, has finally relinquished the grudge. Although the Challenger he poured his soul into is all but totaled, the pastor is fine with that. Father Johnstone has a new project: the Paige household. Pollux left behind a bag of luggage containing the following items: two changes of clothes, two editions of The Good Book, one partially-drank bottle of wine, a sharpened crucifix, some old jerky, and close to $2,000,000 in bundled cash. Father Johnstone figures that should be more than enough to fix the house up, better than new.

  The idea appeals to him: working outdoors, hammering lumber with the ballgame playing on the radio. A cooler full of ice-cold bottled beer. He’ll pay local kids looking for extra money to help him out while deliveries from the hardware store ship in. The view would be perfect: spring blue skies hanging over a pile of popcorn. Kids chasing each other through the daisies while bumblebees dance from bud to bud, running and laughing, creating their fondest memories over the place where Madeline Paige sleeps past the threshold.

  She’s in that other place beyond the fringe.

  The Visitor

  It’s worse today.

  “You’ve got to take your medicine now, Mr. Johnstone,” Annie says, grabbing a bottle of pills from a nearby desk, which must mean it’s around noon. In the mornings, she gives me the eye drops and a pile of supplements. Evenings are for sleeping aids and joint pain. Noon means the heart meds, and with that I either get a bowl of stew or some weak chili. No peppers and barely any spices. Can’t have real chili anymore, Annie says. Stuff will burn my mouth right out. Not good for the heart, either. Fat from the hamburger meat clogs up the ol’ ticker so much I can feel it wanting to pop. It’s worse today, though. The damn thing keeps fluttering every ten minutes or so, but I don’t want to worry Annie so I keep my trap shut. She’ll make a big deal out of it and I don’t want that. I’d rather listen to the ball game and eat in peace.

  “I know, I know
…I’m gonna turn on the TV in just a minute. Give me a second to make you something to wash those meds down,” Annie says, anticipating this part of the routine.

  “No lemonade,” I tell her. “Too tart.”

  “No lemonade,” she says, pouring out some sweet tea into glass tumbler.

  Annie brings over the tea and pills, setting them down on my little plastic bed platter and watches me to make sure I take them. It’s not that she doesn’t trust me. She does. I just forget sometimes. Little things like what day it is or if I’ve already opened the mail or not. Ol’ doc what’s-his-name said it’d get worse before it gets better a few years ago. Young guy named Brian or Brad or something like that. He’s the one that took over for Dr. Keller when he finally passed on.

  “The machine breaks down at your age,” he said. “All we can do is hope the meds take and try to keep an eye on things.”

  Then he mentioned something about inaccuracies with my medical records and inconsistent blood work. Stuff from way back, right around the time everything went haywire and Pratt had to be rebuilt. I told him it was probably a clerical error, that things must’ve gotten mixed up during all the commotion.

  “Well, that would make sense,” he said. “Blood types don’t change as you probably know. Odd though.”

  “Those were odd times,” I said.

  Back then I could heal a broken bone and cure lung cancer like it was nothing. No one ever got sick, not even during the flu season. There was even a stretch of about nine years when no one in the town died—not even family pets. Nearly a decade without death, mourning, or illness. ‘Pratt’s golden era,’ people were calling it. After Mayor Farnsworth got ran out of town, the crop came back lush and full. Grain-plant workers went back to the factories while the women and wives did their duties on the home front. They were always planning some kind of BBQ or get-together at the newly rebuilt Danger Ranch. Travis finally found the gumption to ride the bull. Never tried to go pro like his pop, but most folks agreed that he could have.

  “With the baby on the way, I reckon it’s best to keep the ridin’ a casual affair,” he said with a big wad of jerky in his mouth. After my Madeline took the fear out of him, ol’ Travis never touched another tin of chewing tobacco for the rest of his days. “Nasty little habit I never should have started,” he told people. “Getting a lot more lovin’ from the wife now that my mouth doesn’t taste like wet cigarettes.”

  Heather and Travis conceived during that initial consummation, the same one that left craters in the drywall and broke their furniture. Drake Durphy was born in the dead of winter, hollering and deep purple, but healthy as can be. I remember seeing flashes of Danger in his face, the eyes mostly. He does this squinting thing that the ladies love, but only when he’s on the bull ready to be cut loose into the ring. The Durphy stare-down, people call it.

  “Not a drop of fear in him,” Travis always tells me. “Almost as if someone took my pop’s spirit and handed it on down.”

  Travis normally visits on Sundays. The morning mass will let out and Travis will stop by for a quick visit while his two little girls play on the daisy hill. Over a beer or some hard cider, we’ll talk about how things are going on the ranch or Drake’s bull riding. Memory is going to hell so Travis knows a story might need to be told more than once, God bless him. Sometimes he’ll talk about that day’s sermon.

  “Feeding of 5,000 reading,” Travis will say. “It’s about the fifth or sixth time he’s done it since you bowed out and I still haven’t gotten used to it.”

  There’s always a period of adjustment when a new guy takes the helm, but everyone seems to like the new pastor well enough. He’s a good man, conducts his sermons nice and traditional the way folks like, but that’s never the reason Travis brings it up. My time as pastor is a bridge back to the past, and the past is still unclear for a lot of folks. When everything got repaired and Pratt was whole again, that was the point when people finally felt like it was okay to speculate. If it’s one thing I know—one thing I still remember, anyway—it’s that when things get too boring, that’s when the rumor mill gets to churning again. Everyone loves a ghost story.

  “Such a strange girl, that Madeline Paige,” people said. “Strange how her and Father Johnstone were so close. Wonder where she took off to.”

  She wasn’t in Pratt for more than a few months. Madeline made her impression on the town, that’s for sure. Folks still talk about where she gone and why she left me the daisy-hill house. It’s still the finest property in all of Pratt, so of course people are going to ask their questions. Even Travis and Helena McManus (formerly the widow Wright) bring it up from time to time. I’ve gotten quite good at keeping secrets though, and losing my memory has made it all the easier.

  “Make sure to take your pills, Mr. Johnstone,” Annie reminds me, setting down a bowl of reheated beef stew and a couple slices of lightly buttered bread. I pop my meds before I forget again, washing them down with a couple swallows of sweat tea while Annie turns on the tube. Game’s already started from the sound of it. I can hear the commentary, the crowd.

  “What inning?” I ask, squinting at the screen.

  “Second,” Annie says. “Bottom of the second. Two out. You want some more drops, Mr. Johnstone?”

  I wave her off. The drops don’t do squat. It’s like having cold cat piss swimming in your eyes. Surgeries didn’t take either. When Dr. young-and-handsome said the machine breaks down, he wasn’t kidding. First thing to start going were my joints, especially that knee ol’ Mason Hollis took a wrench to. Got to the point where I couldn’t get around without a walking cane. Then it went downhill from there: eczema breakouts, hair loss, gum disease, eyes and ears got dimmer as the years passed. Dr. Keller couldn’t help nor his replacement. Lord couldn’t do anything, either. My gift had run out, and along with it, a few other functions I used to take for granted. That’s right around when Mary passed.

  “Do you have everything you need, Mr. Johnstone?” Annie asks.

  I give her a curt nod, an attempt at a smile to show I appreciate her. My eyes stare at the TV even though it mostly looks like watercolors. Humongous splashes of electric green with white blurs running through them. Can’t make out the names of the players or the score, and if I try for too long, I’ll just give myself a headache. I concentrate on the stew, let what’s left of my ears do the work for me, listening for crowd reaction or the crack of the bat. Mary used to curl up next to me during the games. I miss that. I miss the company. Can’t really be mad at the Lord for taking her though. She lived for twice the amount of time most dogs her breed do. After Mrs. Adams lost Missy and Chips to the plague, it was especially hard for her to see Mary trotting around town well beyond her years. Jealousy. She never said anything directly, but intangibly, I could feel her bewilderment as to how a standard terrier lived all the way to twenty-six.

  “So I’m going to head out now,” Annie tells me, giving me a touch on the shoulder to get my attention. She’s been doing this more and more as my condition gets worse, verifying that I’m actually listening. Making sure that I haven’t drifted off in my own head. “My replacement will be along any minute, okay?”

  “Did you bring the mail in?” I ask.

  “It’s Sunday, Mr. Johnstone,” Annie says.

  It gets worse. Every day the machine breaks down a little more, nuts and bolts coming loose in my brain. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night from the pain in my knee and feel around for Mary, that warm ball of fur that should be curled up against my gut. My hands will smooth over the cold sheets searching, and it’ll take me a minute or so to realize she ain’t around anymore. I’m alone and Mary is asleep in the earth where I buried her.

  “Hey, cheer up,” Annie says. “It’s just for the afternoon, okay? And you didn’t hear it from me, but word is that my replacement knows her way around the kitchen,” she says enticingly. “Maybe she’ll fix you up some dessert.”

  I sigh, giving Annie a little nod. She hasn’t s
aid anything to me about it (or maybe she has and I forgot), but I figure she’s taking off early to see the doctor. Annie’s with child; I can tell. My gift and abilities may have gone out the window, but that knack for reading the intangibles stuck. While I’m struggling to handle a spoon or zoning out in front of the tube, Annie usually daydreams about the baby. She’s hoping for a little girl, but whatever the kid ends up being, once it arrives Annie will be out of the picture. Only a matter of time before she formally breaks the news that she won’t be my caretaker much longer.

  “Just watch the game. She’ll be along in a bit,” Annie says. “I’m gonna leave the door open for her.”

  Annie grabs her bag and heads out. It gets worse.

  My heart flutters again, giving the inside of my chest a couple jabs. White lights start to prickle in my vision, mixing in with the view of the daisy hill just outside my window. Can’t remember the last time I walked through that pile of popcorn, but the breeze always brings the scent of the flowers in. I try to focus in on that, the smell of the daisies flowing into old lungs. Try to settle. Try to find the Lord to hold me together. Just one last little miracle for old time’s sake. It’s like that for a stretch—five, maybe fifteen minutes of me struggling to sit in my own skin while the game drones on. I can’t even remember what teams are playing let alone the inning or the score.

  “You okay, Father Johnstone?” a voice asks. A woman. She’s wearing the same basic get-up that Annie does, a pair of scrub pants with a patterned cotton top.

  I collect myself, not wanting to look weak, giving her a little nod to let her know I’m fine. Everything’s okay. The flutter is already dying off, so I pretend that it’s just a little indigestion from my lunch. Clear my throat—maybe a bit too theatrically, coughing. Then it hits me: the way she addressed me that no one really does anymore.

  “You called me Father,” I say. “Not many people call me that anymore…not anyone your age.” I try to look her over but my vision is muddy. Only the broad strokes come through now: slender and pale, a little over five feet tall with dark hair. Smells nice, like soap and perfume.