It’s coming to you very late in the evening, but here is the fiction that’s been brewing in my mind for the past month.
The Heathen
Father Cuthbert—whom Mr. Taggart thought far too young at the age of twenty-eight to be referred to as Father—sat in his study in the parish office and gazed into the small icon of the anastasis that rested upon a miniature easel on the center of his desk. He gently drummed his right hand against the mahogany of the desktop, his left feeling across the page out of the book he had just been reading, a small, old volume from the late seventies about teaching the meaning of Sacraments to the postmodern generation. His eyes had glazed over a line about deconstructing the Real Presence when a stir in his spirit had raised his gaze up to the icon, a holdover from the previous rector, who had been converted from Judaism and had a fierce sense of propriety when it came to observing the oldest representations of the Faith. Father Cuthbert had not removed the icon both out of a sense of reverence and a sense that were he to touch it, he might be struck dead. The young Priest observed a peculiar sense of evangelical piety, which both embraced the fierce love of God by the solemnity of his homilies and nearly paralyzed him with the fear of God’s holiness, seen in particular in the way his hands trembled as he placed the Host even to his own mouth.
Now, he gazed into the eyes of the resurrected Christ lifting the faithful dead from their tombs and he felt a ripple down his back. The ripple gave way to a sharp, piercing feeling in his chest near his heart.
“Father?”
The pain suddenly gone, the Priest looked up to find the small woman with the weak eyes who served as the interim secretary standing in the doorway. “Yes?” his voice had not recovered from the phantom touch, so it came out sounding broken.
“Mr. Lawrence Taggart has called again. He requests that you see him no later than this afternoon.”
The Priest nodded gingerly and felt a weariness settle upon his shoulders. “I’ll collect the Elements,” he replied, turning from her as he rose and walked toward the golden inlaid box with the carved chalice and wafer hovering above it on the opposite wall from where the icon faced. He opened the small door and drew forth the bowl of consecrated wafers and the cup of remaining wine. In what must have been a trick of the light, the priest believed for a moment that the wine muddied, darkened, and took on a tawny color. The distortion resolved in an instant, back to the deep burgundy, and the priest blinked several times and thought it was an apparition brought on by his fatigue. To be sure, he swirled the chalice once and inspected the contents against the office light, finding it as purging red as it ever had been. He dismissed the moment altogether, took two wafers and stored them with care in a small box and decanted enough of the wine into a small chalice with a secure lid, collected his briefcase, and stepped out from his office.
He turned back once to let his gaze linger on the icon, to look into the face of the triumphant Christ. A moment past. Then, blinking, he turned again and headed out the door.
Mr. Taggart lived in an aged plantation house long abandoned by any life save the old man and his housekeeper on the eastern side of the Pontchartrain. It was yellow, the paint peeling back from decades of storms and the occasional, inexplicable drought. In the dry days of July, the Priest’s old pickup shot burnt oxide dust behind him, lacing the sky like the bloodied waters of the Nile. It was a long drive, nearly forty minutes in good weather and up to two hours in poor. The Priest didn’t understand why Mr. Taggart insisted on keeping his membership at St. Therese of Lisieux Episcopal Church or why the old man insisted on only a priest delivering the Sacrament to him, and not one of the equally qualified deacons, but, as he gathered from the congregation, things had been like this for well over two decades and no one thought it profitable to question tradition.
Mr. Taggart, after all, was a hero to the Faith.
His exact education was something of speculation, some rather sure he had spent time at a Bible college in Egypt before heading onto Scotland and eventually settling in Louisiana. Then others had him traveling the Americas, spending a decade or so in Brazil before traveling up into Central America and eventually crossing over into the States. He had received honorary degrees, but these too were under speculation as to origin. What was known, without question, was the extensive body of work the man had produced concerning theology, in particular his regard for penal substitutionary atonement. His book, Righteousness Made Pitch: A Theology of a Transmuted Saviour, was a standard popular theological text that still drew considerable sales, though it was nearing a half-century since its first publication. Following that work came others, generally concerned with Mr. Taggart’s particular fascination with a vision of Christ who saved the soul from the corrupted body, which he identified as chiefly realized through the Eucharist.
The Priest had read the first book, as well as a few of the others, and had found them frustrating. Father Cuthbert did not regard himself as being particularly theologically astute, let alone versed enough to produce an adequate response to Mr. Taggart’s writings. But the Priest found himself unsettled as he read, as if the center to his being had been slightly slanted and it never quite returned to the comfort of propriety until after he had celebrated the Mass away from Mr. Taggart, away from his books. The Priest had no words for this. He had studied mostly pastoral care in seminary and what little theological training he had was focused mostly on the reasoning behind the liturgy. All he could commit to was the sense of uneasiness, which could have been as much the product of Holy Ghost as ingesting a bad clam.
After all, enough people liked Mr. Taggart, or remembered liking what they had read with zeal in their youth in the summers of church camps and tent revivals, that he was regarded with a prophetic deference. So much so, what question could exist about his theological creditability had faded into the waters of nostalgic evangelism. The Priest, having exposure to Mr. Taggart later in life, was not so inclined toward him. Nonetheless, being in the service of the tradition of the congregation and the priest before him, Father Cuthbert paid his weekly visit with mustered reverence and offered the Sacrament to the frail man.
When the Priest pulled up to the front of the house, the Theologian was waiting for him. He was thin and pale with narrowed eyes that shown a dull brown. His lips were set sternly and his hands were tucked confidently in his pockets. As Father Cuthbert turned off the ignition, Mr. Taggart turned his back and headed back into the house. The Priest watched him go and a small sigh of frustration escaped his lips, “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.” He did not move his hand in the sign of the cross as he spoke it, but kept them resting on the steering wheel and made the words out of delicate murmurs. Finally, he reached over and lifted the latch, pushing the door open with the weight of his body.
It closed with a delicate thwack as a raven cried in the distance. Between the door and the raven, no sound was heard, not even the delicate footsteps of the Priest as he approached the house, the oxide dust beneath his feet a silent cushion of vagabond prayers made chaff in the summer heat.
He knocked three times on the front door, paused, and heard the movement of slowly drug feet behind the door. The lock turned with a quiet, defiant click before being pulled steadily open by an elderly woman with tightly curled white hair. Mrs. Thunderpot, who was referred to as Mrs. out of a sense of discretion, peered up at the Priest and clicked her tongue once upon inspecting him. “He’s been in a mood this week,” she offered bluntly, still keeping her body firmly set in the frame of the open door. “He won’t be glad to see you, but you’ve come all the same. He keeps hoping that you’ll choke on a wafer and die in front of the alter so that they’ll bring a proper priest to take over.”
Father Cuthbert swallowed. “I’m sure it isn’t as bad as all that.”
“It is.” The woman insisted frankly. “He says as much when I bring him his coffee after Morning Prayer.”
The Priest swallowed again. “Well, may I see him?”
“Do as you like,” the woman replied, backing away from the door before turning hard on one iron leg and scooting along both feet at a dull rumble as she receded into the house. The darkness at the back received her and she was no longer seen.
The Priest sighed gently and stepped through the doorframe and into the house. He shut the door behind him and took a moment to inspect for what seemed the hundredth time the foyer, littered with relics of a past life lived on the edges of the world. On the hall table were jade statuettes from China and a collection of books in Spanish about saint cults. In the corner stood a lamp, carved entirely of ivory, as old as the Priest and the Theologian put together. A mounted moose head rested above the entryway to the parlor, where Mr. Taggart spent most of his time. The head’s dead eyes inspected the Priest and found him unassuming, which seemed to explain the animal’s fixed look of contempt.
“Have they entrusted you with so little that you can afford to waste time standing in my foyer?” called Mr. Taggart.
Father Cuthbert tightened his grip on his briefcase handle and proceeded into the parlor, where Mr. Taggart sat in the center of a couch observing him with calculated disdain. The Priest was about to speak, but the older man interjected, “How many have left the church since your first Sunday?”
“None,” the Priest replied. “Twelve have joined.”
“Twelve!” the man snorted, “It would have been a good number at eleven, but twelve welcomes a Judas. You’ve let a Judas in with you, haven’t you?” When the Priest did not reply, the Theologian stretched himself on the couch and addressed the ceiling. “It’s all gone to waste under you cowards. You dribble on about your concerns for the mortal life when it is the eternity that should keep our focus. There was a time when Faith meant something, when reverence meant something.” He adjusted himself and returned his eyes to the Priest. “You say your prayers?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Taggart looked skeptical. “It doesn’t show. The knees of your pants look to clean for you to actually pray.” He gestured to his own pants, where the knees were slightly discolored. “That is the sign of one who prays.”
The Priest made to respond, but realized quickly he had little to say. Each time the conversation took the same turn and each time the Priest felt that the horrible thing of his vocabulary stood in the way. He was miserable at articulating Mystery, which he knew all too well when he was subjected to the Theologian, who spoke with an authority and certainty the Priest felt himself both drawn to and frightened by.
“Well, get on with it,” Mr. Taggart commanded, gesturing in frustration.
“Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
“And blessed be His kingdom, now and forever, Amen.” Mr. Taggart replied quickly.
The Theologian had stipulated, years before, that the visitation of the priest who bore the Sacrament to his home would not be a truncated exchange of Communion, but a full liturgical service as outlined in Rite I of the Book of Common Prayer. The Priest found this arrangement to be somewhat silly. Mr. Taggart would often be alone, Mrs. Thunderpot, a devout Methodist, would only join for the first half of the service, up to the exchange of the peace, if she attended at all. Most often it was only the Priest and Mr. Taggart, who settled for making his right hand into the traditional V and pointing it at the Priest before saying curtly, “Peace,” when it came time for the exchange. Mr. Taggart also only crossed himself at the close of the Priest’s homily he found the words to have been good. He had yet to cross himself, a detail that was translated to the Priest some weeks previous by the frank vigilance of Mrs. Thunderpot.
“In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Mr. Taggart blinked at Father Cuthbert and not even the faintest tremble took his hand as if it were to move. The Priest studied the ceiling, then preceded with the Creed. At the Prayers of the People, Mr. Taggart insisted on kneeling at the coffee table in front of the couch. He struggled with this but, when the Priest offered to help, insisted that he was capable. His knees made a protesting groan as they pressed to the floor. The Priest remained standing in front of the coffee table, slightly off to the side. At the Confession of Sin, the Priest and the Theologian prayed together, the Theologian speaking rather quickly, while the Priest felt a defiance rise in his spirit as he fell several words behind the other, insisting that each be carefully rounded and articulated. The Theologian watched him with passive annoyance as he concluded the prayer.
At Mr. Taggart’s insistence, even the announcements that would have been made the previous Sunday were to be repeated in the space between the prayers and the Eucharist. Father Cuthbert recounted the upcoming bowling game the Episcopal Youth were planning and the new ministry for mothers who were still nursing. At last he reached the latest missionary endeavor, which was to raise money to send a team to India to help build water wells to provide clean water. Of particular concern was the prevalence of diphtheria, so the parish was seeking donations to help start an outreach work.
“For what?” Mr. Taggart interjected.
“Pardon?”
“What’s the point of sending these people to India to build wells?”
The Priest worried his lower lip before he replied. “To help save lives?”
“Bodies!” The Theologian snapped, “To save bodies! You have said nothing of immortal souls.”
“I think that part is understood,” Father Cuthbert offered, which Mr. Taggart was not amused by. “We will of course seek opportunities to share the Gospel, but we hope to open those opportunities through works of love.”
“But you have no certainty that they shall be converted?”
“I suppose not,” the Priest narrowed his eyes.
“So a child could grow up, live because of your well, become a Hindu, die of old age, and go to Hell?”
The Priest swallowed. “Theoretically.”
“Better then,” concluded the Theologian, “to let the heathen die.”
Father Cuthbert recoiled in horror and in his haste he knocked into his briefcase, which was on the floor. The Elements inside rattled in disturbance. “You can’t mean that.”
“Of course I do,” the man replied. “It is a simple calculus. You would agree with me that we are held accountable to the revelation of God we have received, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you would further agree that a child who dies young is not held to the same accountability as an adult, that there is a time when God’s grace rests upon a child and whether or not that child has knowledge of Him?”
“Certainly; yet, I would—”
“Therefore, it follows that if God has mercy on the child who has not heard, it is better for us to leave the heathen in his death, so that he may live a short life on this miserable earth before being received into the heavenly arms of his Saviour.” The Theologian sat back on the couch, a satisfied look on his face.
The Priest wrung his hands in frustration. He knew enough to be certain that what had been said was wrong, but he could not muster a vocabulary that allowed him to correct it. “What you say sounds logically true,” he ventured, carefully setting his weight in the words, “But it lacks the heart of Christ.”
“I’m sure,” the man replied frankly, “That you see it that way. This level of theological understanding requires far more than the country priest’s oscillating devotionals study and meandering prayer.”
“That may be,” the Priest conceded, “But ordination means something.”
“Chickens were given wings but we clip them for their own good, so as to make them useful to us. Ordination is a pretty word given to ugly things in service of an ugly cosmos. The hope, Cuthbert, is that we be rid of this damned world altogether and take our residence with Christ elsewhere.”
“The incarnate Christ came to ransom body and soul, Mr. Taggart.”
“‘Those who sow in the winter reap in summer. The winter is the world, the summer the other aeon. What comes out of the winter is the summer. Let us sow in the world that we may reap in summer. But if any man reap in winter, he will not reap but pluck out.’”
The Priest wanted to ask if that was in the Bible, but he was afraid of being ridiculed for it. “It feels wrong,” he eventually offered, but could tell that Mr. Taggart was uninterested in his response. A moment passed. Mrs. Thunderpot could be heard away in the kitchen boiling a kettle and chopping something sternly. Finally, Father Cuthbert saw no other option but to continue. “Walk in love,” he murmured, “as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”
The Priest turned his back on the Theologian and withdrew the Elements from his bag. Though they were already consecrated, he followed the Mass as instructed, Mr. Taggart repeating the words of the People with a quick, biting impatience. At last, the Priest placed a wafer on his own tongue and felt as if a lit coal had been pressed to his lips. He nearly cried out from the pain, but at the climax he felt a sudden sweetness like honey overwhelm him. In a rhythm he took the cup to himself and set it to his lips, drinking shallow but finding his mouth filled with a purgating glory, a sudden, sharp impartation in his spirit. When he lowered the cup, he kept his gaze from Mr. Taggart, a dazed sense of wonder keeping him close. He had not feared the Elements as he had done so before. He had taken of God and in mystery had not been denied.
The Priest turned to find the Theologian kneeling at the coffee table.
“‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.’” He placed a wafer atop Mr. Taggart’s hands and observed the man ingest it quickly, followed by a quick sign of the cross.
“‘The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul—’” The Priest stopped. He had been bringing the cup before the lips of the Theologian when he noticed a sudden discoloration take the wine. It tanned, as it had in his office, but then was returned to the burgundy shade.
“Come on,” Mr. Taggart insisted, slapping a hand on the table.
A rush of wind came from behind the Priest and he felt himself suddenly lifted up, “‘For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.’”
Mr. Taggart had not seemed to notice the wind, but stared up at the Priest with a look of particular frustration. “‘Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them,’” he quipped, then promptly took the cup from the Priest’s hand and drank the last of the wine that was within it. He set down the cup with defiance, then looked up at the Priest with narrowed eyes.
The Priest looked down at him, slightly uncertain as to what had just happened. He could faintly recall the past moment, the words he had spoken, but they were as unclear as the oxide chaff that drifted outside the house. What he felt, in a way that quietly frightened him, was a sense of balance within his spirit that he had never felt around Mr. Taggart before. They went on with the remainder of the service without further interruption and with the Theologian’s usual insistence that the Priest hurry along in the prayers. On the last Alleluia. Mr. Taggart waved the Priest away without another glance. Father Cuthbert collected the empty bowl and cup, placed them with care into his briefcase, and made for the door.
“Father?”
The Priest turned. He was standing on the porch of the house and Mrs. Thunderpot had resumed her place in the doorway as she had at the beginning of his visit. “Yes?”
Mrs. Thunderpot extended a small bundle held together by wax paper. “Take this with you.”
The Priest took it from her and looked at it properly, finding it to be a sandwich on homemade bread. “Thank you,” he whispered in surprise, looking back up into the woman’s austere face.
“Just part of my Christian duty,” the woman explained, standing at attention. “I had a cousin who married a Chinese. Nice woman. Quiet. Catholic. But she loved Jesus too, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” the Priest agreed.
With that, Mrs. Thunderpot shut the door with a steady arm and could be heard shuffling back into the darkness of the house.
A week later, the Priest sat at the desk in his office, his gaze once more focused on the icon of the anastasis. Beneath his right hand, he pushed his fingers along the wax paper that Mrs. Thunderpot had used to wrap the sandwich. He had not been able to throw the paper away, feeling something in it that was perhaps, vulgarly, holy. He found himself absentminded throughout the week, returning his hand to feel along the wrinkles of the paper and to reflect on Mr. Taggart’s words. He was still uncertain what he should have said in response, but he found himself increasingly at peace with the simple, natural knowledge that what was said had been wrong and that explanation as to why it was wrong was perhaps not needed.
“Father?”
The Priest looked up to see the interim secretary in the doorway. “Has he called already? It’s earlier than usual.”
The woman’s lip quivered slightly a tear rolled down her right cheek. “Lawrence Taggart is dead,” she gasped, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Dead?” The Priest exclaimed, sitting back in his chair and taking his hand from the wax paper.
“His housekeeper found him yesterday morning collapsed in his bathroom. Apparently it was a disgusting sight. Absolutely dreadful.”
“What do you mean?” Father Cuthbert sat forward in his chair, the tawny wine emerging from his mind’s eye.
“They say that he had contracted diphtheria somehow. His pipes must have become contaminated because of the age of his house. But they can’t explain how it would have taken him so quickly. His housekeeper didn’t notice anything about him that seemed sickly until just last week.” The interim secretary turned away then, tears slipping down her cheeks as she quickly fled from the Priest’s sight to grieve.
The Priest sat in his chair, his mouth set in disbelief. His eyes traveled slowly to the icon and to the resurrected Christ, reaching His pierced hands into the depths of Hell and ransoming those asleep in Him.
© 2012, Preston. All rights reserved.
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