They were not. The Catholic Church hadn’t felt so out of the loop since Joan of Arc started talking directly to God. People gave up attending. Instead they toured the farms where God had made himself evident, stopping to ogle the likeness of His son on a cow over at Rosebank before travelling on to take in an Adam on a duck egg at Limefield. All the Catholic Church of Korumburra could offer as a counter-fascination was a handsome young priest named Father Gould Wakeling.
Father Gould was born with the built-in smile of a dolphin or a Dalai Lama and this made him much loved by the people of Korumburra. Sadly, his sermons were no more enlightening than the chirpings of a dolphin or a Dalai Lama, which made him more loved as a Country Fire Authority volunteer than a priest. His congregations became thin with the competition from holy livestock and fabulous melons. Until, on February the 2nd, when the likeness of St Paul was revealed in a fresh cow pat at Rutherford’s dairy and that cow pat was roped off and declared something-to-see and a sure-fire-sign, Gould’s congregation shrank to a spinster called Old Ms Harris, who believed the preacher struggled against an unholy lust for her and habitually inched her frock to her knee during the lesson.
Father Gould’s bishop came to visit him from Melbourne. They sat in the dim Lady Chapel of Gould’s church and the bishop mouthed a cup of tea and when the small-talk was done asked, ‘Gould, what is it? A congregation of one? What ails the parish?’
‘A hysteria is sweeping the flock,’ Father Gould told him. ‘They are in touch with the Lord through their cows and fruits.’
‘A hysteria?’ asked the bishop.
‘Yes. The latest … amazement is St Peter’s face in a … in a … a cow cake.’
‘But a hysteria can be used,’ the bishop smiled. ‘A hysteria may be harnessed. A hysteria is a gift, Gould. You must not waste a hysteria.’ The bishop bent his mouth in a gentle pout as at a forgetful child. Then smiled and rose to go. ‘I know you will make the most of these miracles, Gould.’ He stopped smiling and took the priest by the wrist. ‘For if there are to be miracles … they must be our miracles. You understand?’
Gould didn’t, but said he did. How could he take ownership of these miracles for the Church? What wonder could he produce to trump these misshapen epiphanies and bring the faithful back? The dumb bastards had fallen for every counterfeit Christ imaginable and were taking their religion straight off their animals’ arses. How do you fight that?
Vanilla slice and Red Bull. In an attempt to win back his congregation he advertised free vanilla slice and Red Bull at next Sunday’s service. These twin delights ignited no lust for the Gospel in the people of Gippsland. The congregation stayed away. (Noah had been discovered on an Appaloosa outside Paynesville.) Seeing the spread laid out on the trestle table, out of pity for Father Gould, Old Ms Harris gorged herself and had to be helped home and laid out on her sofa. There she suffered all afternoon, going Red Bull cold turkey, twitching incessantly, static building between her nylon hose and her rayon sofa and discharging CIA-strength zaps to her buttocks every few minutes. After each shock she whispered, ‘Gluttony,’ just to let the Lord know she knew the sin for which she was being punished.
Lying in his bed that night Father Gould is angry his congregation didn’t come for the slice. Old Ms Harris had told him about the Appaloosa. ‘Noah?’ he asks aloud into the dark. ‘What did Noah even look like? What fucker identified Noah on a horse? Who’s to say it isn’t Jimi Hendrix?’ Father Gould has composed a tour-de-force sermon to slay his congregation’s appetite for worshipping idols and imagines himself delivering that sermon now. He eyeballs the front row of the packed church. ‘I have been captured, these last weeks, by a rather horrid idea … a cynical notion, unworthy of me and unjust to you. Perhaps it is more correctly termed a suspicion. An outlandish suspicion that may have been planted in my mind by the servant of Darkness.’ He lets these last three words ring off the rafters. The congregation holds its breath. The usual coughing and fidgeting is quelled. ‘For, surely, it could not be true.’ The people are stone. He has them at last. ‘Yet, if I cannot allay this suspicion, and I cannot, then I must voice it. Must I not?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Amen.’
‘Go ahead, Father.’
‘It is this: that some of you are using these so-called local manifestations, not to enhance your relationship with God, but to feather your own nests, financially speaking.’ That accusation lies heavily on them until a rough shout comes from the rear of the congregation, ‘Right back at you, Father.’
Father Gould rolls over in bed onto his back and raises his hands, asking the Lord’s forgiveness for this blasphemous heckle, for this regrettable detour his imagination has taken. He begins to replay the scene in his mind, but as he makes the accusation to his congregation that they have been using God for financial advantage, the rough voice rises again from the rear of the church, ‘Right back at you, Father.’ He sobs aloud, knowing he will never be brave enough now to use this sermon.
Bishop Fairall has told Father Gould Wakeling miracles must belong to the Church. Thus, with Easter coming and a full congregation looming on Easter Sunday, Father Gould has decided that if God is going to reveal himself to his people then he better reveal himself right here, on Church property.
Old Ms Harris’ nether regions are blistered and slathered in ointment and as she waddles gingerly about the church she gives off an antiseptic air. She places vases of wattle and hyacinth on the window sills and arranges them in the light. ‘We will have a congregation today, Father,’ she assures Father Gould. ‘We will have a roll-up for the resurrection,’ she nods. He smiles at her. He believes they will come, for the Lord’s resurrection may not be as easily ignored as a vanilla slice and a glass of Red Bull. Still, his stomach knots at the thought they may not come, that they are irretrievably lost.
They do come. It is, after all, Easter Sunday, a day that celebrates the most glorious event of the Christian calendar. Father Gould knows the people of Korumburra are the ugliest on earth. But they are his flock and his heart lifts to see them schlomping fatly into church with daytime TV rattling in their heads, dressed like welfare-pimps in their Nike caps and their runners and tracky-dacks and checked flannel shirts. The old of the area are bent and simple-minded; the middle-aged are missing teeth by twos and threes and smell drunk; and the young, with their spiked hair and their swagger, look ready to fight and rut. On some days Gould thinks Jesus would have whipped these people with a surf-rod. On others he thinks Jesus would have sprayed a little magic dust on them to straighten their backs and teeth and fill their heads with serious knowledge and stop them fornicating among their own. He wishes he had a pocketful of that magic dust and was able cure them of being such clueless, fat shitheads.
Unfortunately he only has a service made up of historical improbabilities, astronomical misreadings and biblical anticlimaxes leavened by lame witticisms. The bent backs, teeth and morals of his congregation will not be straightened by these.
Firstly he calls on them to sing a hymn, under cover of which the tobacco smokers and marijuana dependants cough and hawk phlegm as urgently as dogs barking at a passing locomotive. While they sing, to the amazement of the congregation Father Gould unbuttons and removes his shirt. At hymn’s end he stands before them in a white singlet with a tattoo of Moses (is it Moses?) on his thin left bicep. He smiles at his congregation’s astonishment and begins to recite the Easter Homily of St John Chrysostom. As he does so he unbuttons his trousers and steps from them, revealing a coquettish Mary tattooed on his left thigh and on his right, St Paul. (A stern rebuttal of its grinning cow-pat competitor. Anyone who has seen both knows either one or the other is a lie.) Before this homily is over three women have left the church, and many more have ogled their priest’s brief underwear and forgotten the step-by-step excruciations of the Lord Jesus. Old Ms Harris feels an urgent need to feel an urgent need. But, alas, does not.
‘Let us pray,’ their priest says. While they are on
their knees with their heads bowed he beseeches the Lord and removes his singlet. At the end of the prayer the congregation lifts its eyes to see a pained portrait of Jesus in blue and green and red tattooed on Father Gould’s hairless chest. The priest himself is smiling triumphantly. He drops one hip and juts out his chin like a pop-artiste taking a stance on global warming, then spins to reveal Blake’s bearded, windswept God tattooed on his back reaching down from the heavens of his shoulders toward his crack with a finger extended.
On a smiling fellow like Gould Wakeling the scowling patriarchs of Christianity come off like bullies and the congregation feels vaguely as if it is being threatened. Vaguely as if it is being insulted. But mostly it feels embarrassed for its priest.
The congregation knows these tattoos are the work of Gerry Halpin. Many of their own limbs and some of their genitalia have been tattooed with flaming skulls and stalking panthers and swallows and roses by Gerry Halpin, who learnt his craft through a TAFE course while doing six years for culpable driving.
What can their priest be thinking? They are experiencing real visitations and he, in desperation, has gone and got himself scrawled up with art perpetrated by a drunk driver. They look in many different directions to avoid looking at Father Gould. And everywhere their eyes fall they see chattels that are man-made. Everything here is man-made. Genuine Heavenly sign is bursting forth in the district and the Church is asking us to kneel before manufactured things, crafted icons. The statue of Jesus is plaster and from France, the cross is hewn from local turpentine by old Joe Blackledge, the pulpit, the lead-light windows … are pretty, but someone made them. This is art and craft. Whereas our own attractions are true signs, wonders unsullied by the hand of man, the work of a spontaneous and generous God. And now this man has been panicked by our closeness to God and has stampeded off to the tattooist and had himself adorned with a roll-call of heavies. Oh, dear. Ours are done by God, Father Gould. Yours are done by Gerry Halpin. A hand-hewn cross is just a statement of belief. A saint in a turd is the truth.
Seeing the embarrassment of his congregation Father Gould’s smile collapses as irreversibly as a dynamited dance hall. He looks shorter and more conniving without his smile, Old Ms Harris thinks. In the front pew she stands and turns to address the congregation. ‘Don’t go ringing the bishop, any of you dimwits who thought you might. Mary Katswim,’ she points at a woman three pews back whose bloated face sparkles delightfully with a fairy-dust of donut sugar, ‘the bishop doesn’t need your little update-from-the-front on today’s regrettable events.’ Mary Katswim pouts a sparkling pout to let it be known she would never dob her priest in to the bishop.
Old Ms Harris turns to Father Gould, and blinks tearfully up at him semi-naked in his pulpit. ‘Dress yourself, Father. Before the Protestants get wind of this.’ She walks gingerly from the church and her lingering antiseptic air gives the congregation a feeling she is morally pristine, saintly, close enough to God to make this right.
So, I have lost Old Ms Harris, too, Father Gould thinks as he watches her go. My staunchest parishioner, who loved both God and me. She is gone from the church.
Priests, like little boys, live an imaginary life in which they are heroes who prevail over whiskered and warty enemies and are rewarded by good kings. To a boy every stick is a sabre, every bush is a pirate. It is a pity their mother has to call them home to a meal of cheeseburgers and fries and scrub their ears and send them to an early bed. But that is how a little boy’s day always ends. A hero packed off to bed with his ears glowing pinkly.
What calls a priest home from his imagined adventures? What trumpeting killjoy dissolves the palaces and prayers that surround a man of the cloth and brings him back to earth and serves him up his meal of cheeseburgers and fries? The pity and counsel of those he had sought to pity and counsel will do it.
With the service over, Father Gould’s congregation gathers around him, wanting to support him, but not knowing how. The braver men comment on his tattoos.
‘Nice, Father.’
‘Yeah, sweet.’
‘Cool. Moses looks mega-wise.’
‘Commanding.’
‘God looks … God looks … real real. ’Cept if he falls off that cloud he’ll end up with his face wedged where he don’t want it.’ No one laughs.
‘Gerry Halpin’s stuff isn’t it, Father? Gerry’s gone to the next level with his artwork.’
Father Gould’s lips tremble slightly amid the comfort offered by these people. None of his congregation really wanted to get closer to God than the Church is. They feel bad about it. They feel guilty. They have stolen this man’s gig, his livelihood, and they feel like scabs. But the price of water is up and the price of milk is down and the EEC is subsidising dairy produce, pushing these farmers at the bottom of the world into bankruptcy. And lately some of these skint cockies with the most fascinating holy manifestations (Eunice Stronghold and the Assembly of God Korumburra Quadruped Choir, for instance) are making as much as divorce lawyers. Even if some of them remain sceptical about the holiness of their visitations, the fact that waves of pay-per-view simpletons are delivered by them makes them at least partially miraculous.
The people console Gould Wakeling as if he has lost a loved one. Old Ms Harris has walked out. She was the last who believed in him. His life as a priest is over. Father Gould knows he can’t hold his parish now. Bishop Fairall is bound to appoint a better man. A man prepared to damn these farmers and loose the charge of blasphemy on them and bring them back cowed and penniless to the Church. Gould’s name will be mud and at the seminary he will be used as an example of the weaknesses that might afflict a priest. A pale fellow whose faith wavered at a time of crisis and who lost a parish to a simple hysteria that might have been crushed like a nut.
‘Father, I enjoyed that service. I been a bit busy Sundays of late. But I’m intendin’ to be regular again.’
‘Me, too, Father.’
‘Ripper sermon.’
‘Goosebumps, me.’
‘Here’s your shirt, Father. Don’t cry.’
The St Paul in the cow turd had overtaken all its competitors and become the preeminent tourist attraction in the district. It seemed to offer such complete and utter redemption. The highest, most beautiful saint from the lowest most noisome substance. We could all be kings in a world of such miracles, it seemed to whisper. Everyone wanted to be touched by its magic.
Rutherford himself wasn’t so much a diligent Christian upon whom a miracle had been lavished by a grateful Lord as an atheist who heard the sounds of a gold rush and sculpted himself a nugget with a trowel and a spatula. He was bald and beery and known to overstock his paddocks and he was mean-minded until his saint began to pull in rafts of wall-eyed Queenslanders. He became congenial then. He became a host. He smiled and bent low at the hips and ushered them into his milking shed wherein the saintly turd.
It sat in the centre of the concrete pad roped off by a red velvet rope strung between stanchions to keep the believers from trampling the thing they had come to adore. Rutherford had put up stadium seating on three sides so people could sit in reverie and muse over the thing like wise men in a manger. Ginger beer was handed out free to anyone who donated ten dollars to Rutherford’s brucellosis fighting fund. Brucellosis hadn’t been seen in the shire for years. But if it returned Rutherford would be ready with a mansion and a hot spa.
Within an hour of leaving Father Gould’s church Old Ms Harris is at Rutherford’s dairy mingling with the score of travellers ogling his St Paul. She had wanted to see this miraculous turd from the moment she had heard of its emergence. She had doubted its provenance and wanted to scowl showily at the thing. And now, leaning over the red velvet rope, staring down at it she sees a conniving and wicked nature writ in its every feature. The saint has bushy eyebrows, a beard of mould, deep, piercing eyes. ‘You’re no more St Paul than a bandicoot’s the Messiah,’ she whispers at that wondrous stool. She stalks the perimeter of the protective rope eyeballing the
turd. It eyeballs her back, following her in her circumnavigation, never blinking. ‘Not scared of me, eh? And I’m not scared of you either,’ she whispers. It is smiling at her now, she sees. Mocking her, happy at the part it has played in the downfall and ruination of her priest. ‘I know from whose bowel you sprang,’ she whispers. ‘You are the lamb of Beelzebub.’
She lifts the rope and ducks beneath it nimbly, for a burnt octogenarian. Moves forward with a steely tread. She has purpose. People said afterwards neither Rottweilers nor tattooed Maori could have held her back. Standing above the thing she raises her right foot high and yells, ‘Shithead,’ and stomps that turd, splattering its smug physiognomy over the spellbound pilgrims. This is a confusing scene for the Christians. One moment they are venerating and admiring this thing and grateful to be in its presence, the next they’re trying to flick it out of their hair and scrape it off their faces and saying ‘Yuck’ and ‘Urrghh’ and kids are crying and women holding out their frocks before them in wonderment at the profusion of turdsplatter.
Mal Rutherford had been a battler who rose at four to draw milk from a herd of aging cows before he had become custodian to a wondrous relic. Then, for a while, with his turd saint pulling pilgrims, he was worth ten-thou-a-week and no way for the ATO to get involved. Now he is poor again. An organ-grinder whose monkey has been whacked by a mafia hit man. Old Ms Harris. Surely sent by the local Catholic Church.
Pepsi Bears and Other Stories Page 10