The Best Christian Short Stories

by Brett Lott

  Keeper Jack's jaw had fallen open during Dosie's little speech. He managed to sputter, "But what then, Dosie? Where will you go? You'll have to cross the breadth of the country and then the Pacific Ocean. And there's a war on out there. It ain't like you can just catch a boat and go where you want to go."

  "First thing to do is to get to Morehead City," Dosie answered. "Then I'll see what's next. That's the way I'll do the entire thing. Every place, I'll figure out how to get to the next place and so on. Herman, didn't I ask you to saddle Genie?"

  Herman ran to the stable and soon had Genie standing by the gate. Dosie swung up in the saddle, then leaned over and softly spoke into the mare's ear, Genie answering with a low nicker. Straightening, Dosie said, "Well, Ferry Master, are me and the mate going to have to take your ferry across the Sound ourselves?"

  The master thought not and off he went down the sand track at a fast pace. Dosie gave Dosie's Delight a last, fond look, then smiled down at the people of Killakeet. "You folks have been good to me, as good as anybody ever was, and I sure do appreciate your prayers and praise. I'll come back if I can." And with that, without so much as another glance over her shoulder, she clucked her tongue to Genie, and said, "Walk on, girl."

  The people followed, silent, confused, but somehow hopeful. At the ferry, Dosie got off and handed over Genie's reins to Herman. "She's yours, Herman, if you still want her."

  "Yes, Missus. Anyways, I'll keep her for you. And I'll look after the house, too."

  "You'll find my will in the hutch," Dosie said. "You get the house if I don't come back."

  "Oh no, Missus!" Herman cried. "I don't want your house!"

  "Well, it's yours just the same," Dosie said, then gave Herman a quick hug and climbed aboard the ferry. The mate raised the plank and the master backed the little slab-sided vessel away. Dosie waved once and all the people on the beach waved back. Genie tossed her head and stamped her hooves. The men took off their hats and the women raised their aprons and dabbed at their eyes. For his part, Herman started to cry outright. Keeper Jack took Genie's reins from him and patted the big mare on her neck. "Good girl," he said, because she tended to be.

  Herman was a snot-nosed mess. "Poor Missus," he sobbed. "And poor Josh."

  "What do you mean, Herman?" the keeper asked. Then he said the strangest thing Herman thought he'd ever heard. "My boy Josh is the luckiest man I guess there is on Earth."

  Herman couldn't believe his ears. "What's lucky about him?" he demanded.

  Keeper Jack put his hand on Herman's shoulder. "Why, that he has a woman who loves him so much she'd go around the world to find him, even when nobody expects that she should."

  All the men nodded agreement with wistful smiles. Lucky Josh, they all seemed to be saying although, them being men, no words were actually said out loud. Outraged, Herman threw off the keeper's hand and went to the women and told them the men's opinion. Queenie answered, "Herman, dear, you're right as rain. The men, as usual, have it all wrong. It ain't Josh what's lucky. It's that there girl on the ferry. Your Missus."

  Herman was aghast. "But look here, Mrs. O'Neal, there she is all alone and she don't even know where she's going!"

  "That's so true, Herman," Queenie answered with an odd little smile that all the women seemed to be wearing. "But it don't change that Dosie Crossan is as lucky as a woman can be. You see, she's fallen in love with a man she's willing to cross the world to find. Who'd of thunk it would have been the likes of Josh Thurlow, but there ain't no accounting for taste."

  Lucky Dosie, the women sighed in unison.

  Dizzy with confusion, Herman paced the sand, trying to find some sense in all that had transpired. He stopped and looked at the ferry, now nearly swallowed up in the pearly morning mists of the Sound. He looked at the people who'd raised him and they seemed like strangers. He kept trying to understand what they were getting at but he just couldn't. But then an answer of a sort began to form in Herman's mind. It was an answer he thought he'd heard in church. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Herman said it out loud, almost without realizing it.

  "And that goes for a woman, too, dear," Queenie advised.

  "Well, I'll be blessed," Herman said, a glimmer of understanding settling into his soul. He was distracted by a ruffle of feathers and looked up to find Purdy perched on Genie's saddle. "I guess we're all blessed if somebody loves you and you love them back, ain't we, Purdy?" Herman asked. He got no answer, not directly, anyway, but it was the first time Herman realized a pelican could smile. And then something else settled into Herman's soul: a longing. He sought out his mama and told her what he had to do. The widow Guthrie looked hard at her son, then said, "Well, don't drown, and come back as soon as you can."

  Herman hugged her, then sought out the keeper to ask him a question. "Will you look after Genie, sir?" he asked, and when the keeper said he would, Herman waded barefoot into Pamlico Sound. After a moment's hesitation, he tossed his cap into the air, threw himself forward, and swam as hard as he'd ever swum before.

  HOMER HICKAM is one of the most popular authors in the world, his books translated into many languages. His best-known work is his memoir Rocket Boys, which was made into the movie October Sky. He has written two more memoirs: The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone, and the nonfiction military history book Torpedo Junction. His novels include: Back to the Moon, The Keeper's Son, and most recently, The Ambassador's Son. He and his wife share their time between homes in Alabama and the Virgin Islands. For more information on Mr. Hickam and his books, please go to www.homerhickam.com.

  AX OF THE

  APOSTLES

  ERIN MCGRAW

  A GOOD SHORT STORY IS NEVER ONLY ONE STORY, BUT TWO (AT least), just as the life of any of us consists of who we are in public, and who we are in private. "Ax of the Apostles" is a story that gives us a glimpse into the interior of a believer's heart and mind, a believer who, like most of us, is acclimated to his own sins, no matter how irritating the sins of others remain. What it is we as believers choose to do with the sin in our lives once we are made to see its lonely depth and corrosive breadth is what is at stake here, and why this story of a lost teacher and a searching student resonates so beautifully within the context of a life lived for Christ.

  —BRET LOTT

  After four hours spent locked in his office, gorging on cookies and grading sophomore philosophy papers, Father Thomas Murray seethed. His students, future priests who would lead the church into the next century, were morons.

  "Kant's idea of the Universal Law might have made sense back in his time, but today we live in a complex, multicultural world where one man's universal law is another man's poison, if you know what I mean." So there are no absolutes? Father Murray wrote in the margin, pressing so hard the letters carved into the paper. Peculiar notion, for a man who wants to be a priest.

  They didn't know how to think. Presented with the inexhaustibly rich world, all its glory, pity and terror, they managed to perceive only the most insipid pieties. If he asked them to discuss the meaning of the crucifixion, they would come back with Suffering is a mystery, and murder is bad. Father Murray looked at the paper before him and with difficulty kept from picking up his pen and adding Idiot.

  He had planned on spending no more than two hours grading; he would do well to go over to the track and put in a couple of overdue miles. But flat-footed student prose and inept, flabby, half-baked student logic had worked him into a silent fury, and the fury itself became a kind of joy, each bad paper stoking higher the flames of his outrage. He reached compulsively for the next paper in the stack, and then the next, his left hand snagging another of the cookies he'd taken last night from the kitchen. They were not good—lackluster oatmeal, made with shortening instead of butter—but enough to keep him going. What makes you think, he wrote, that Kant's age was any less complex than yours?

  Still reading, he stretched his back against the hard office chair, which shrieked every time he
moved, and started to count off the traits lacked by the current generation of seminarians: Historical understanding. Study skills. Vocabulary. Spelling. From down the hall he heard a crash and then yelps of laughter. "Oh, Alice!" someone cried. Father Murray closed his eyes.

  A month ago one of the students had sneaked into the seminary a mannequin with eyelashes like fork tines and a brown wig that clung to its head like a bathing cap. Since then the mannequin had been popping up every day, in the showers, the library, at meals. Students mounted it on a ladder so that its bland face, a cigarette taped to its mouth, could peer in classroom windows. Now a campaign to turn the mannequin into the seminary's mascot was afoot. Savagely, Father Murray bit into another bad cookie, then stood, inhaled, and left his office.

  At the bend in the hallway, where faculty offices gave way to dormitory rooms, five students clustered beside an open door. The mannequin, dressed in towels, half-reclined in the doorway to Quinn's room. Blond, morose Quinn, a better student than most, tugged the towels higher up the mannequin's bosom. The customary cigarette had fallen from the doll's pink plastic mouth and now dangled by a long piece of tape. "You should have seen your face," Adreson was saying to Quinn. Father Murray knew and loathed the sort of priest Adreson would become: peppy, brain-dead, and loved by the old ladies. "I thought you were going to faint. I thought we were going to lose you."

  "Jumped a foot," added Michaels. "At least a foot."

  "Went up like a firecracker" Father Murray suggested, and the seminarians turned, apparently delighted he had joined them.

  "A Roman candle," Adreson said.

  "Like a shooting star," Father Murray said. "Like a rocket. Like the Challenger. Boom."

  The laughter slammed to a halt; Adreson stepped back, and Father Murray said, "You men sound, in case you're interested, like a fraternity out here. I would not like to be the one explaining to the bishop what tomorrow's priests are doing with a big plastic doll. Although I could always tell him that you were letting off some steam after your titanic academic struggles. Then the bishop and I could laugh."

  "She fell right onto Brian," Adreson murmured. "Into his arms. It was funny."

  Father Murray remembered a paper Adreson had written for him the year before in which Adreson had called Aquinas "The Stephen Hawking of the 1300s," not even getting the century right. In that same paper Adreson had made grave reference to "The Ax of the Apostles." From any of the other men Father Murray would have allowed the possibility that the citation was a joke. Now he looked at his student, twenty years old and still trying to subdue a saddle of pimples across his cheeks. "You have developed a genius for triviality."

  "Sorry, Father."

  "I'm giving you a piece of information. Think about it."

  "Thank you, Father."

  "Don't bother thanking me until you mean it."

  "Oh, I mean it, Father." Adreson pursed his mouth—an odd, old-maidish expression. "Sorry we disturbed you. Guess we're too full of beans tonight. Hey—you want to go over to the track?"

  Father Murray felt a plateful of oatmeal cookies churn in his stomach. "Another time. I've still got work to do." "Corpore sano, Father." Father Murray snorted and turned back toward his office. He cherished a measure of low satisfaction that the one Latin phrase Adreson seemed to know came from the YMCA slogan.

  He should, of course, have taken up Adreson's offer. By ten o'clock his stomach was violent with oatmeal cookies; his error had been in eating even one. As soon as he'd tasted that first sweet bite, he was done for. He could eat two dozen as easily as a single cookie. Tomorrow he would have to be especially strict with himself.

  Strictness, as everyone at St. Boniface knew, was Father Murray's particular stock-in-trade. Fourteen months before, his doctor had called him in to discuss blood sugar and glucose intolerance. "You have a family history, is that right?"

  Father Murray nodded. His mother—bloated, froglike, blind—had had diabetes. By the end, she had groped with her spongy hand to touch his face. He had held still, even when she pressed her thumb against his eye. "Doesn't everybody have a family history?" he said now.

  "This is no joke. You are at risk," the doctor said. "You could start needing insulin injections. Your legs are already compromised. You could die. Do you understand that?"

  Father Murray considered reminding the doctor that a priest's job entailed daily and exquisite awareness of his mortality. Nevertheless, he took the doctor's point: Father Murray's forty-five-inch waist, the chin that underlaid his chin, his fingers too pudgy for the ring his father had left him. If he let the disease take hold he would deteriorate in humiliating degrees, relying on others to walk for him when his feet failed, to read to him when the retinopathy set in. A life based wholly on charity—not just the charity of God, which Father Murray could stomach, but the charity of the men around him. The next day he began to walk, and a month later, to run.

  For a solid year he held himself to 1,100 exacting calories a day, eating two bananas for breakfast and a salad with vinegar for lunch. His weight plummeted; his profile shrank from Friar Tuck to St. Francis, and the waist of his trousers bunched like a paper bag. The night Father Murray hit one-fifty, ten pounds below his target weight, Father Radziewicz told him, "You're a walking wonder." They were standing, plates in hand, in line for iced tea. Father Radziewicz's eye rested on Father Murray's piece of pork loin, slightly smaller than the recommended three ounces, stranded on the white plate. "How much have you lost now?"

  "One hundred twenty-four pounds."

  "Enough to make a whole other priest. Think of it."

  "I'm condensed," Father Murray said. "Same great product, but half the packaging."

  "Think of it," Father Radziewicz said. His plate held three pieces of pork, plus gravy, potatoes, two rolls. "I couldn't do it," he added.

  "It's just a matter of willpower," Father Murray said. "To the greater glory of God."

  "Still, isn't it time to stop? Or at least slow down. Maybe you've glorified God enough."

  "I've never felt better in my life."

  The statement was largely true. He had never in his life been quite so satisfied with himself, although his knees sometimes hurt so much after a twelve-mile run that he could hardly walk. He bought Ibuprofen in 500-count bottles and at night, in bed, rested his hand on the bones of his hips, the corded muscles in his thighs. Out of pure discipline he had created a whole new body, and he rejoiced in his creation.

  So he was unprepared for the muscular cravings that beset him shortly after his conversation with Father Radziewicz. They came without warning, raging through the airy space below his rib cage. The glasses of water, the repetitions of the daily office, all the tricks Father Murray had taught himself now served only to delay the hunger—five minutes, fifteen, never enough.

  One night he awoke from a dream of boats and anchors to find himself pushing both fists against his twisting stomach. Brilliantly awake, heart hammering, he padded around the seminary, glancing into the chapel, the storage room that held raincoats and wheelchairs for needy visitors, the pathetically underused weight room. Finally, giving in, he let his hunger propel him to the kitchen, just so that he'd be able to get back to sleep.

  Holding open the refrigerator door, he gazed at cheesecake left over from dinner. He was ten pounds underweight. He had left himself a margin; probably he was getting these cravings because he actually needed some trace of fat and sugar in his system. And the next day he could go to the track early and run off whatever he took in tonight. He ate two and a half pieces of cheesecake, went back to bed, and slept as if poleaxed.

  Since then Father Murray had hardly gone a night without stealing downstairs for some snack—cookies, cake, whatever the seminarians and other priests, those locusts, had left. He stored his cache in a plastic bag and kept the bag in his desk drawer, allowing himself to nibble between classes, in the long afternoon lull before dinner, whenever hunger roared up in him. Twice he broke the hour-long fast required before t
aking Communion. Each time he sat, stony faced, in his pew, while the other priests filed forward to take the Host.

  At meals he continued to take skimpy portions of lean foods, so stuffed with cookies even the plate of bitter salad seemed too much to get through. Father Bip, a Vietnamese priest he had often run with, told him that he was eating like a medieval monk. Father Murray slapped himself hard on the rump. "Brother Ass," he said. That rump was noticeably fleshier than it had been two months before, and he vowed again that he would recommence his diet the next day. That night, anticipating the stark hunger, he quietly walked the half mile to a drug store and bought a bag of peanut-butter cups, several of which he ate on the walk back home.

  As he lay in bed, his teeth gummy with chocolate and peanut-butter paste, his days of crystalline discipline seemed close enough to touch. The choice was simple, and simply made; he remembered the pleasure of a body lean as a knife, a life praiseworthy and coherent. Yet the next night found him creeping back to the kitchen, plastic bag in hand, not exactly hungry anymore but still craving. Already his new black pants nipped him at the waist.

  After his one o'clock Old Testament class the next afternoon, Father Murray returned to his office to find Adreson waiting for him. The young man, who had been absently fingering a flaming blemish beside his nose, held out his hand toward Father Murray, who shook it gingerly and ushered Adreson into his office.

  "How was your class, Father?"

  "We entertained the usual riotous dispute over Jerome's interpretation of 2 Kings." Then, looking at Adreson, he added, "It was fine."

  "Your O.T. class has a real reputation. Men come out of there knowing their stuff."

  "That's the basic idea."

  "Sorry. I'm nervous, I guess. I want to apologize for making all that racket in the hallway last night."