The Accident Prone Priest
June 27, 2010
Father Stephen was a blur. The clicking heels of his shiny black leather shoes tattooed the pink marble aisles of St. Ann’s Catholic Church. For three years he served as our parish priest. I served Mass with him dozens of times yet we never shared a conversation of any length. He spoke as necessary, his expression shrouded behind thick lensed black framed glasses.
His height was average, his chest was barreled and his feet were tiny. A too tight turned around collar grappled with his bulging neck. His stoic upper lip and rock cliff forehead glistened perpetually with perspiration. He combed his full head of glossy jet black pomaded hair straight back from an unmemorable block of Ukrainian face.
Something hounded Father Stephen. Relentlessly. Vindictively. Something only he could see. Fast as he moved he never could outrun it. Since arriving at St. Ann’s he’d been propped up on crutches, plastered into casts and wrapped in bandages. Once he slipped tumbling down the church basement stairs breaking his right arm. No sooner was the cast removed when he tripped approaching the glass framed front door of our school building. He flung out his recently knitted right arm in an effort to break his fall only to punch a hole through the glass all the way up to his elbow. After bandage and stitches were removed Father Stephen enjoyed a few months of respite from catastrophe. Then he fell down the concrete rectory steps fracturing his left ankle.
Never a shirker he soldiered on with his duties hobbling on crutches through the Mass, attending to the sick in hospital, hearing inconsequential confessions of unimpressive sinners. The speed with which he moved seemed to double with each disaster. Still he continued to lose the race. One suffocating summer afternoon my parents and I looked on in shocked amazement from the melting asphalt Kroger parking lot as Father Stephen hurtled his powder blue Chevrolet Corvair onto Independence Avenue between two lanes of oncoming traffic. T-boned by a Pontiac his head ricocheted off the driver side window, his eyeglasses crumpled and his brain concussed.
Several weeks of headaches, nausea and a new pair of identical glasses he moved more cautiously now. His shoulders rose nearer to his ears. His chin hung closer to his chest. Speeding in his dented Corvair to administer Last Rights to some departing soul his bruised heart attacked him. Clutching his constricting chest with his left hand he steered to the shoulder with his right. Father Stephen returned to his flock a much subdued shepherd. His once fleet and foolish feet no longer rushed in. His fiery energy flagged. Gradually he began saying Mass again but another priest conducted the sermon so Father Stephen could rest for a while bookended on a pew by two altar boys. Often I served as one of those human bookends. Father Stephens’ unraveling clock works were no match against Father Bachnach’s tedious, interminable pontifications. Soon he fell deep into sleep leaning with all his leaden weight left then right then left then right against one adolescent shoulder then another, head lolling over then snatching up awake for a few moments before leaning forward snoring so that I had to occasionally employ an elbow increasingly and more insistently into his ribs shuttling him back and forth from sleeping to waking always fearing he would topple forward before we could catch him. Sometimes the sermon droned on so mercilessly that all three of us bounced in and out of consciousness banging into and off of one another until I was convinced we would collapse into a pile of cassocks, surplices and chasubles.
Eventually his old frenetic energy returned. He began giving his own sermons again and I, for one, was glad. They were brief, sincere and to the point. I served Mass for Father Stephen for the last time at 6 o’clock on a Monday morning. The pews were modestly dotted with nuns, elderly widows and widowers and a handful of metal lunch box clutching blue collar workers from the steel mill and oil refinery. Father Stephen clipped along economically. I gravely assisted him serving communion, holding the gold plated paten beneath powdered, stubbled and wimpled chins as he reverently placed each stark white host on each pink extended tongue. Solemnly we turned together toward the altar. I knelt at its foot. The accident prone priest gingerly ascended the three black marble steps, tripped on his linen alb and crashed headlong beneath the altar, arms outstretched as in supplication. I heard him utter a humble “oh no” as the golden chalice flew from his hands clanging tumbling, spraying consecrated hosts fluttering across the cold reflective floor.
With a pathetic sigh he lowered his conquered brow onto an outstretched arm and lay still for a few silent seconds. Composed again he rose slowly to his erring feet. I rushed to his side as two men in faded blue work shirts collected the scattered defiled hosts in their stained calloused hands dropping them into the still ringing chalice. I never saw Father Stephen after that. Weeks later he was assigned to another parish. The last news I heard of him he had walked straight through a closed sliding glass door barely escaping with his harried, cursed life. I did not want to know more.
These wonderful, talented people are Dorthe Gerlach and Michael Hartmann and they have a band in Denmark called Hush. The three of us met a couple of years ago, struck up a strong friendship and have been writing songs together every chance we get. Just spent two days with them at Engelsholm school for art and music. This is an amazing place for aspiring writers and artists with classes on songwriting, electronic music, painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, glass blowing, and jewelry. Situated in a castle built beside a lake in 1593 surrounded by a moat and miles of woods and farmland, inspiration is everywhere.
Elixir Strings
