When Father Mullens was taken away from St. James by federal agents in handcuffs last year, no one came to take his place. The archbishop visited Crofton two weeks later and delivered Mass on a rainy Sunday in April. During his homily, he informed the congregation that it wasn’t in the diocese’s budget to hire a new pastor.
I overheard the adults chatting later over coffee and doughnuts, saying the church probably just wanted to bury the shame of what had happened there. Someone told my mother that since it had been all over the ten o’clock news, it was probably better just to close the doors.
I didn’t think it was fair that St. James had to shut down. They found photos of children without clothes in Mullens’ desk drawer—kids from several churches along the Platte Basin over the years. There was no arguing with the bishop. Mom heard from the Deacon’s wife that the matter had gone all the way up to Pope John Paul II.
When I excitedly told my older brother, Ray, that even the Pope knew about our little church, one morning before heading out to help Dad in the field, he shrugged.
“Who cares,” he said, eating his sprinkled chocolate donut.
The archbishop offered us several churches in Norfolk we could attend, but that’s an hour to an hour and a half drive for anyone in the tri-county area. His announcement made my father grumble from the pew that he’d rather become Methodist than drive that far for Mass—which was incredibly ironic, since Dad was always complaining that Methodists were “nuts.”
He loved blaming the “Damn Protestants” for any misfortune, like when the rotary tiller broke down. Mom says his dislike for them was really about their ban on playing cards. Dad had hosted a poker game every Friday night for years with other farmers in the area and wasn’t about to give up his one social outing for some “Frozen Chosen,” whatever that meant.
That all changed about a week after the Feds arrested Father Mullens. After that, Dad blamed him for everything. He swore up a storm, too. “F— Father Mullens this,” and “F— Father Mullens that.”
Of course, he rarely said that around my mother, but when we were out in the field, he’d let it fly.
I say rarely because once, while fixing a leaky faucet in the kitchen, he let it slip and nearly sent her to the emergency room.
With no real options, our family—except my mother—mostly stopped going to church. On Sundays, Mom still drove an hour up to her sister Lucy’s place outside Vermillion, where they attended Mass. Then she’d stay for lunch, help around the house, and drive home that evening.
Dad made it clear he wasn’t wasting his only day off driving an hour to church, eating bland chicken salad sandwiches with the widow Lucy, and driving an hour home. Ever since Uncle Bob died in a combine accident five years ago, there’s always been too much to do.
Dad also insisted Ray and I shouldn’t have to go either, since we’d just be pulled into chores. But I always liked Mass, so I went with Mom about once a month and got my fill.
Ray has never gone.
The church put the building and pretty much everything else inside up for sale. They took the vestments and a few other church-owned items, and Mom said they probably gave them to other churches. The rest was “best offer only.”
The Anderson Real Estate sign posted at the church driveway had endured four seasons and had seen better days. The Midwestern plains have a way of wearing down whatever you place in the wide open. Every so often, people showed interest, but there hadn’t been any takers yet. My mother couldn’t accept that a church could even be for sale, and she would complain, “A house of God for sale? It just ain’t right.”
We only lived a few miles west of the church, so my father agreed to be the caretaker of the building (for a fee) with the real estate company. I don’t know how much he received, but several times a week, he’d come home from the field and head over to check if the grass had been mowed by the hired Hoppen boy, that nothing was broken or vandalized, and that no one was squatting in the basement. He always returned home in a bad mood for some reason. Mom went over in the mornings when she knew Dad couldn’t go in the evenings and always took time to sit in the pew and pray, she told us. “It’s still a house of God, after all.”
Last summer, someone painted black swastikas on the front doors, and another vandal painted boobs on the east exterior wall during the winter. Each time, the real estate company sent a painter to prime and cover up the handiwork.
My brother, Ray, had been wanting to take our dirt bikes to the church “incognito” for some time. Since school had ended, both of us had been busy with chores, helping Dad move the cows to other parts of the pasture, and rebuilding the stable. But Ray kept bugging me about how he wanted to go without ever saying why. He’d just say, “I need another person keeping an eye out.”
Dad gave us Saturdays to do with them what we wanted. I liked to sleep in, but on one particular morning, I opened my eyes to find Ray standing over me.
“Mom went with Dad to town for parts and to have lunch with his brother. We’re going over to the church.”
My brother and I rode motocross, but we weren’t too serious about it. Dad bought us bikes two years earlier. Ray had a cool bike—a 1980 Yamaha YZ125, one of the best. I had a Suzuki 400 Cyclone that always broke down. Dad always said he wanted to go back and shoot the guy who sold it to him. We were always working on it. They were more fun in the winter when it snowed—if mine was running. We hopped on the bikes and headed for St. James. It would take us fifteen minutes.
The building looked a lot smaller and neglected as we rode the bikes around to the back of the church. Ray said he wanted to avoid being seen in case someone showed up. Also, because there was a door to the basement that he still remembered how to open without a key from his time as an altar boy four years earlier.
The basement was musty, as if it hadn’t been opened in a long time. Once I got over the rank, I immediately recognized the kitchen area and the common space where they held receptions and funeral luncheons. I recognized it because it was also the place where I spent many Sundays in Bible school. There was also a bathroom that was more like a locker room with showers and toilets.
Ray was already canvassing the room, sifting through boxes and cupboards. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was looking for “shit to take.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe it and told him it wasn’t right to steal from a church; “It’s a commandment, after all!”
But he said God owed him whatever that meant.
Ray was on a mission, and there was no changing his mind. So, as he sifted through some stereo equipment, I went over to the old toy chest and fumbled through some board games and toys. That’s when the song Jesus Loves Me flashed in my head. My last year in Bible study, I had the infamous teacher, Tara Jennings, a senior at Crawford High. Every boy in the tri-county area who could breathe had a crush on her. Tara used to have us sing the song at the end of every class. She left for college that fall, and I stopped going to study the following spring, but I remember my time with fondness, as well as the song. I mumbled the song while digging through a bunch of records.
Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so; little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong.
Ray startled me. “Don’t do that!”
I winced. “Okay, geez.”
The kids’ drawings from the last class still hung on the walls, and I recognized most of the names on the various colored but wilted construction paper decorated with misshapen crosses and crooked rainbows: Erin Bowens’ mother was a drug dealer turned born again; little Rachel Moakley lost half of her left arm to a bacterial infection when their well water got contaminated; Johnny Catherwood stole and tortured a chicken from a neighbor’s farm and had to work it off last summer taking care of all their chickens; and Vance Rowen was the adopted half-Korean kid that Mr. Rowen brought back from Korea after being stationed there. Rumor had it that Vance was his real son.
I picked up a purple stuffed octopus that I remembered from my days in Bible study. “Hey, look at—” I stopped and turned around to find Ray standing in the doorway to the showers, staring. I tried to snap him out of the trance.
“You gonna just stand and stare at the showers all day?”
No response.
“I said—”
“Just shut up already.” He waved me off. “I heard ya.”
I told him he looked like he’d seen a ghost or something. He didn’t say anything back, and his face was red when he turned around. He had a weird smile. Not a happy smile, but the same one he gave our great-grandmother Wilkinson last year when he opened his Christmas gift from her and saw it was a toy for a toddler. Our mom glared at him until he finally pretended to love it, with a fake smile like the one he had on now.
“You scare me sometimes,” I told him.
“Whatever,” he snapped. He pointed up the stairwell. “Let’s go see if there’s anything upstairs.” He paused. “And remember, not a word to Dad about any of this.”
I shrugged. “Of course.” I don’t know why he felt the need to say it. I was just as guilty as he was. Plus, he knew about the Penthouse magazine I kept in an old duffel bag in my closet. I wasn’t going to say anything.
Just as Ray grabbed the door handle at the top of the stairs, voices sounded from upstairs inside the church. He turned to me with his finger against his lips and made an expression with his eyebrows curled down. We must not have heard the cars pull up while searching for junk.
He pressed his ear to the door to listen. From where I knelt on the stairs, I couldn’t hear, so I pulled on his pant leg to get him to move over. He swatted my hand away, clearly annoyed. After enough bugging, he finally slid over, and I scooched up next to him. I pressed my ear against the door like he did. A voice grew clearer, and I recognized it as the real estate agent who had hired my father. The smell of mildew hit my nose, making me scratch it. Ray gave me a stern look.
The agent was speaking. “I can send over what they were paying for building insurance as soon as I return to the office. The economy has changed since then, but it shouldn’t be much different—very affordable.”
“Thank you,” another man replied. I didn’t recognize his voice.
“You say it was built in 1955?” a woman asked.
“That’s right.”
The voices sounded as if they were getting closer. I nudged Ray with my elbow, hoping he’d get my hint. He didn’t move.
The woman went on. “It feels good, Jerry. Like he sent us here.”
There wasn’t an instant answer. And I wasn’t sure if the he she was referring to was some guy they met at a diner over in Jackson.
“Do you really think so?” the man finally replied.
“I do. This is it. Let us spread His word, Reverend Graves.”
“Amen, First Lady, Graves. Amen.”
A little more chatter about dates and a timeline to remodel then the Reverend Graves spoke again. “It’s just a shame what happened here with that priest.”
The agent scoffed. “Old news. No one remembers.”
“Those kids do,” the man retorted. “I assure you.”
No one spoke further. Papers shuffled, and a briefcase was either opened or closed, with the latches making a clicking sound.
“I heard the older boy over at the Wilkinson farm near here was one of the abused,” the agent went on. “His father didn’t want to press charges and make a thing of it; thought it would make it worse—can’t say I blame him.”
I lost my balance and fell backward, causing my arms to swing wildly in the air as my weight shifted downward. Suddenly, Ray’s fingers dug into the skin of my breastbone before clasping onto the collar of my T-shirt. The band held just enough to stop me from somersaulting backwards down the dozen steps and breaking my neck, but not without making a ripping sound. While I sat suspended in air, Ray and I locked eyes—his were filled with tears. The shirt ripped more, but I was able to reach for the railing and right myself without making much noise. I turned back to Ray, and he had his finger up to his mouth again.
After another minute, we heard them mention the word ‘basement,’ and Ray pointed down the stairs. He took off his shoes and held them in one hand, then motioned for me to do the same. We made our way down and out the back door without being seen, put our shoes on, and pushed our bikes around to the side of the church, where we waited quietly. On my way out, I couldn’t help but grab the purple octopus. When I finally glanced over at Ray, I noticed he had nothing from the church, and a wave of guilt washed over me. I stuffed it into my backpack.
After another twenty minutes, we finally heard the cars start and leave. Once they disappeared down the road, we fired up the bikes, and I followed Ray back along the trails home. Nothing was said the rest of the night between us.
Without warning, my father slammed open my bedroom door the next morning, screaming: “GODDAMN CHURCH IS ON FIRE! GET UP! GET UP!”
Still wearing the shirt with the freshly stretched collar from the day before, I jumped out of bed and squinted to see it was six-thirty in the morning. Ray and I sat in the back of Dad’s truck and could see the black smoke streaming into the sky ahead in the distance. Mom had already left for Aunt Lucy’s.
Dad drove down the gravel road toward the highway, kicking up a cloud of dust. I was nervous. But Ray sat calmly with one arm resting on the truck bed rail. His body rocked from the bumpy ride while he squinted at the morning sun, the wind whipping against his face and hair. The strange smile on his face again.
As we arrived on the scene, it was clear there was nothing we would be able to do, so we stood fifty yards away, watching the building burn. The heat was overwhelming and terrifying, and I stood behind Dad and Ray for protection. Dad had his arm around Ray’s shoulder as the sirens sounded in the distance, but were mostly drowned out by the jet-engine-sized roar of fire and wind, along with the popping, crackling, and everything else that accompanied the inferno. What looked like small pieces of black paper floated everywhere above and around us.
I watched the fire grow, burning that building with a wrath straight out of the bible. And I didn’t think anyone was going to save it. That’s when, in the midst of all the chaos, through the hot wind and ash, I barely heard my dad as he leaned over to Ray. “Fuck it. I’m glad it’s gone.”
I could only see the back of their heads, but Ray slowly nodded, and my dad pulled him in tighter. That’s when the song came back into my head.
Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so; Little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong.
When they turned around, Ray had that strange smile again. Was it pride? Relief? I didn’t ask. He had that same smile, but this time, so did I.
*****
Dave Mainelli published his short story collection, “How to Be Lonely,” with WSC Press in 2021. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Emerging Nebraska Fiction Writers, Curbside Splendor, Seven Arts Magazine, Write. Teach., and Flash Fiction magazine. He teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wayne State College.
