The Best Christian Short Stories

by Brett Lott

  "Thank you."

  "I knew we were being—"

  "—childish," Father Murray offered.

  "—immature. I just thought you should know that there was a reason. Brian's mother has multiple sclerosis. He just found out last week. She's at home by herself with four kids, and she keeps falling down. I know it's killing Brian, but he won't talk about it. He just keeps going to class and services. It isn't healthy. That's why we put Alice in his room."

  "He may find it comforting to keep up his usual schedule. This may be his way of coping," Father Murray said, autopilot words. Genuine surprise kept him from asking Adreson how a towel-wrapped mannequin was supposed to help Quinn manage his sorrow.

  "He needs to talk, Father. If he talks to people, we can help him."

  "You have a lot of faith in yourself."

  "We're here to help each other." His hand fluttered up toward his face, then dropped again. " I f it were me, I'd want to know I could count on the guys around me. I'd want to know I wasn't alone."

  "He prays, doesn't he? He may be getting all the support he needs. Not everything has to be talked out."

  "We're not hermits, Father."

  "A little more solitude wouldn't hurt anybody around here."

  A burst of anger flashed across Adreson's face, and Father Murray leaned forward in the chair, which let out a squeal. He was more than ready to take the boy on. But after a complicated moment Adreson's mouth and eyes relaxed. "Of course you're right. I thought I should apologize for disturbing you." He straightened, clearly relieved to have put the moment behind him. "I'm going for a run this afternoon. Want to join me?"

  "You're doing a lot of running lately. I'd suggest you take a few laps around the library."

  "You're great, Father. You don't ever miss a lick." He produced another grin. He seemed to have a ready-made, toothy stockpile. "Track meet's coming up. I'm running the relay and the 440. Hey, 440's your event, isn't it?"

  "Distance," Father Murray said.

  "I'm a little obsessed about that 440. Sometimes in practice I can get close to the conference record, so now it's my goal: I want to put St. Boniface in the record books."

  Father Murray held his peace, but Adreson must have read his expression.

  "I'll have plenty of time to be pastoral later. Right now, running's the best talent I've got." He winked. "I know what you're going to say: Not a very priestly talent, is it?"

  "I wasn't going to say anything like that. You are the model of today's seminarian."

  Father Murray waited for Adreson to leave the office before he swiveled to gaze at the maple outside his window. Hundreds of tender spring leaves unfurled like moist hands, a wealth of pointless beauty. Where, he wondered, was Quinn's father? Had he run off after the fifth child, or had he died, snatched away in midbreath or left to dwindle before the eyes of his many children? Cancer, heart attack, mugging. So many paths to tragedy. Now Quinn's mother was trapped inside a body that buckled and stumbled. Before long she would rely on others to cook for her, drive for her, hold a glass of water at her mouth.

  "Too much," he muttered, his jaw so tight it trembled. He didn't blame Quinn for not wanting to talk to Adreson, who knew nothing about pain. He didn't have a clue of sorrow's true nature or purpose: to grind people down to faceless surfaces, unencrusted with desire or intent. Only upon a smooth surface could the hand of God write. Every priest used to know that. Father Murray knew it. Quinn was learning it.

  Turning to the desk, Father Murray began to reach for the stale cookies in his drawer, then pushed back his chair. If an overdue visit to the track would make his legs hurt, so much the better. He couldn't take on any of Quinn's suffering, but at least he could join him in it.

  Weeks had passed since Father Murray had last gone for a run. His legs were wooden stumps, his breath a string of gasps. He flailed as if for a life preserver when he rounded the track the fourth time. Adreson, out practicing his 440, yelled, "Come on—pick 'em up, pick 'em up!" and Father Murray felt his dislike for the boy swell. After six laps, he stopped and bent over. Adreson sailed around twice more. Father Murray waited for his lungs to stop feeling as if they were turning themselves inside out. Then he straightened and began again.

  At dinner he stood in line for a slice of pineapple cake. "Oho," said Father Bip. "You are coming down to earth to join us?"

  "I should be earthbound after this, all right."

  "Should you be eating cake?" Father Radziewicz asked. "Wouldn't a piece of fruit be better?"

  "Of course it would be better, Patrick," Father Murray snapped. "Look, one piece of cake isn't going to make my feet fall off."

  Father Radziewicz shrugged, and Father Murray stomped across the dining room to a table where Father Tinsdell, a sharp young number imported this year from Milwaukee to teach canon law, was holding forth. "You're all thinking too small. We can sell this as an apparition. Trot Alice out after Mass and get the weeping women claiming that their migraines have gone away and their rosaries have turned to gold. We'll have the true believers streaming in. Pass the collection basket twice a day; next thing you know, we're all driving new cars. We'll buy one for the bishop, too."

  Father Antonin leaned toward Father Murray. "He found the mannequin in his office. Hasn't shut up since."

  "The women are always grousing about how there isn't enough of a feminine presence in the church," Father Tinsdell said. "Well, here they go. Five feet, six inches of miracle-working doll. We can put her in the fountain outside. Stack some rocks around her feet: Voila! Lourdes West. Bring us your lame, your halt. If enough people come, somebody's bound to get cured. That should keep us rolling for the next century."

  "You know," Father Murray said, setting his fork beside his cleaned plate, "Rome does recognize the existence of miracles."

  "Somebody always stiffens up when you start talking marketing." The man's face was a series of points: the point of his needly nose, the point of his chin, the point of his frown set neatly above the point of his cool smile, directed at Father Murray. "Don't get in a twist. I'm up to date on church doctrine."

  "People have been cured at Lourdes."

  "I know it." Father Tinsdell leaned forward. "Have you ever seen a miracle?"

  "No," said Father Murray.

  "There are all kinds of miracles," Father Antonin broke in.

  Without even glancing at the man, Father Murray knew what was coming: the miracle of birth, the miracle of sunrise, those reliable dodges. He looked at Father Tinsdell. Father Point. "Never. Not once. You?"

  "Yup. Saw a fifteen-year-old girl pull out of renal failure. She was gone, kidneys totally shot. Her eyeballs were yellow. Even dialysis couldn't do much. For days her grandmother was in the hospital room saying rosaries till her fingers bled. She got the whole family in on it. And then the girl turned around. Her eyes cleared. Her kidneys started to work again."

  Father Murray stared at the other man. "That can't happen."

  "I know. But I was there. I saw it."

  Father Murray pondered Tinsdell's mocking gaze. How could a man see a miracle, a girl pulled from the lip of the grave, and still remain such a horse's rear? "I envy you," Father Murray said.

  "Keep your eyes open. No telling what you might see." Father Tinsdell stood. He was thin as a ruler. "I'm getting coffee. Do you want more cake?"

  "Yes," said Father Murray, though he did not, and would ignore the piece when it appeared.

  Several times in the next week Father Murray paused outside of Quinn's door, his mouth already filled with words of compassion. But Quinn's door remained closed, separate from the easy coming and going between the other men's rooms. Father Murray respected a desire for solitude, the need for some kind of barrier from the relentless high jinks of the Adresons. He pressed his hand against the door frame, made ardent prayers for Quinn's mother, and left without knocking.

  He should, he knew, have saved at least one of those heartfelt prayers for himself. His hunger was becoming a kind of ins
anity. Food never left his mind; when he taught he fingered the soft chocolates in his pocket, and at meals he planned his next meal. Nightly he ate directly from the refrigerator, shoveling fingerfuls of leftover casserole into his mouth, wolfing slice after slice of white bread. He dunked cold potatoes through the gravy's mantle of congealed fat, scooped up leathery cheese sauce. He ate as if he meant to disgust himself, but his disgust wasn't enough to stop him. Instead, he awakened deep in the night, his stomach blazing with indigestion, and padded back to the kitchen for more food.

  With the other priests in the dining room he carried on the pretense of lettuce and lean meat; his plate held mingy portions of baked fish and chopped spinach unlightened by even a sliver of butter. He ate as if the act were a grim penance. For a week now he hadn't been able to button the waist of his trousers.

  One night after dry chicken and half of a dry potato he made his ritual pause outside of Quinn's door, then continued down the hall to his own room. Fourteen papers on the autonomy of will were waiting, and promised to provide ugly entertainment. But when he opened his door he jumped back: Propped against the frame stood the mannequin, wearing his running shoes, his singlet and jacket, and his shorts, stuffed with towels to hold them up. From down the hall came a spurt of nervous laughter, like a cough.

  Father Murray waited for the laughter to die down, which didn't take long. Adreson and three other men edged out of the room where they'd positioned themselves. They looked as if they expected to be thrashed.

  "My turn, I see," Father Murray said.

  "We didn't want you to feel left out," said Adreson.

  "Well, heavens to Betsy. Thank you."

  "We thought you'd like the athletic motif. It was a natural."

  "An inspiration, you might say."

  "I was the one who thought of having Alice running," Adreson said. "Some of the other men suggested your clothes. Hope you don't mind." He leaned against the wall, hands plunged into the pockets of his jeans. Relaxed now, the others ringed loosely around him.

  "Did Quinn have suggestions for this installation?" Father Murray looked at the mannequin's narrow plastic heels rising from his dirty running shoes, the wig caught back in his dark blue sweatband, the face, of course, unperturbed.

  "Didn't you know? He's gone home to help out." His voice shifted, taking on a confiding, talk-show-host smoothness. "I don't think it was a good idea. His mom may be getting around now, but over the long run, he needs to make arrangements. Immersing himself in the situation will give him the sense that he's doing something, but he isn't addressing the real problems."

  "Maybe he wants to be there."

  "Not exactly a healthy desire, Father. Multiple sclerosis, for Pete's sake. I don't want to be brutal, but she isn't going to get better."

  "No," Father Murray said.

  "But you know Brian. He said he had to go where he's needed. I told him that he has to weigh needs. He needs to ask, 'Where can I do the most good?' He can't fix everything in the world."

  "You weren't listening to him. Every need is a need," Father Murray said, chipping the words free from his mouth. "If you're hungry and you remember that children in Colombia are starving, do you feel any less hungry?"

  "Sure. When I'm on vacation I always skip lunch and put that money in the box. And you know, I never feel hungry. Never."

  "One of these days," Father Murray began, then paused. His voice trembled, which surprised him. He felt quite calm. "One of these days you'll find that your path isn't clear. Choices won't be obvious. Sacrifices won't be ranked. Needs will be like beads on a necklace, each one the same size and weight. It won't matter what you do in the world—there will still be more undone."

  "My dark night of the soul." Adreson nodded.

  "Your first experience of holiness," Father Murray corrected him.

  Adreson flattened his lips, and his friends looked at their shoes. "Zing," Adreson said.

  "Pay attention. I'm trying to get you to see. If you could take on Quinn's mother's disease tomorrow, if you could take it for her, would you do that?"

  "We each have our own role to play, Father. That's not mine."

  "I know that. Would you reach for this other role?"

  Angry, mute, Adreson stared at the carpet. Father Murray understood that the young man was exercising a good deal of willpower to keep from asking, Would you? Would you?, and he meant to ensure that Adreson remained silent. If the young man asked, Father Murray would be forced to confess Yes. Yes, I would, his desire to save just one human life caustic and bottomless.

  "I'll go ahead and get Alice out of your room, Father," Adreson was saying.

  "Leave her for now," he said wearily.

  "I'm sorry. It was just supposed to be a joke."

  "I know that. I'm not trying to punish you." Father Murray watched the ring of young men shrink back. He was sorry they were afraid of him, but it couldn't be helped. "She's something new in my life. I'll bring her down to your room tomorrow. Besides, I need to get my clothes back."

  The men retreated toward the student lounge, where they would drink Cokes and discuss Father Murray's bitterness, such a sad thing to see in a priest. None of them, Adreson least of all, would imagine himself capable of becoming like Father Murray, and in fact, none of them would become like Father Murray. Only Quinn, and he was gone.

  Father Murray turned and studied the mannequin, which looked awkward, its angles all wrong. When he adjusted one of the arms, the mannequin started to tip; its center of balance was specific and meant for high-heeled shoes. Quickly he tried to straighten it, but it inclined to the right. In the end, the best he could do was prop the plastic doll against the bureau and berate his painfully literal imagination, which had flown to Quinn. He wondered how often the young man had already steadied his mother on her way to the bathroom or the kitchen. Father Murray's singlet had slipped over the mannequin's shoulder. He pulled the garment up again.

  Adreson and the others must have gotten a passkey and skipped dinner so they could sneak in and rifle his bureau drawers. Father Murray didn't care about that—he kept no secret magazines that could be discovered, no letters or photographs. Then he remembered the nest of candy wrappers, the thick dust of cake crumbs. And he himself, talking to Adreson about hunger.

  "Mother of God." He paced the room in three familiar steps, turned, paced back. The mannequin's head was tilted so that the face gazed toward the flat ceiling light, its expressionlessness not unlike serenity. A bit of paper lingered where a cigarette was usually taped, and Father Murray leaned forward to scrape it off. But the paper didn't come from a cigarette. Carefully folded and tucked above the mannequin's mouth, as precise as a beauty mark, was placed a streamer from a chocolate kiss. When Father Murray touched it, the paper unfurled and dangled over the corner of the mannequin's mouth like a strand of drool, and the doll pitched forward into his arms.

  He thrust it back, resisting the impulse to curse. The mannequin's balance, he finally saw, was thrown off by extra weight in the pockets of the jacket. They were distended, stuffed like chipmunk cheeks. How had he not noticed this? Father Murray stabilized the mannequin with one hand and rifled the pockets with the other, his heart thundering.

  He knew upon the first touch. Handfuls of dainty chocolate kisses, fresh-smelling, the silver wrappers still crisp. He dropped them on the bureau and let them shower, glittering, around his feet. The air in the room thickened with the smell of chocolate; he imagined it sealing his lungs. A full minute might have passed before he fished out the last piece and sank to the floor beside the pool of candy.

  He thought of Adreson: grinning, amiable, dumb. Seminary record-holder in the 440, possessor of a young, strong body. He didn't look capable of true malice. He didn't look capable of spelling it. But above Adreson's constant, supplicating smile sat tiny eyes that never showed pleasure. They were busy eyes, the eyes of a bully or a thug. Eyes like Adreson's missed nothing, and Father Murray had been a fool to think otherwise. He had attribu
ted the nervous gaze to self-consciousness, even to a boyish desire to make good, a miscalculation that might have been Christlike if it weren't so idiotic. Like mistaking acid for milk, a snake for a puppy.

  Pressing his fist against his forehead, he saw himself illuminated in the silent midnight kitchen, the overhead light blazing as he shoveled food into his mouth: a fat man making believe he had dignity, and the community of men around him charitably indulging his fantasy. Only Adreson withheld charity.

  He fingered the candies on the floor. Unwrapping one, he placed it on his tongue, the taste waxy. He unwrapped a second and held it in his hand until it softened.

  The next day, Father Murray waited in Adreson's room, hunger making his mood savage. Before him on the desk sat two textbooks and a dictionary that Father Murray found in the farthest corner of Adreson's single bookshelf. Father Murray's legs, clad only in running shorts, spread pallidly on the hard wooden chair. He had propped the mannequin against Adreson's closet, draped in a sheet for modesty's sake.

  "Whoa! Father, you don't get it. The whole point is not to be caught in somebody else's room." Adreson's smile lacked anything like mirth, as Father Murray supposed his own did.

  "I read your paper," he said. "I'm here to save you."

  "I'm doing fine in all my other classes," Adreson said.

  "That's hard to imagine," Father Murray said. He gestured toward the desk chair, but Adreson did not sit down.

  "You're not dressed for teaching, Father."

  "I thought we might have an exchange. I'll help you, then you can coach me at the track. I need some coaching."

  Adreson needed a moment to process this. Once he did, the expression that crossed his face made Father Murray shiver.

  "Don't look to me to cut you any slack," Adreson said. "I take running seriously."

  "It's your great gift," Father Murray said.

  "I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into."

  "I know," Father Murray said. He hoped that Adreson could not hear the light edge of fear in his voice, but even if he could, it would change nothing. Father Murray was committed. "But I'm going to help you first."