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How Father Holt Got Transferred to Iowa

Jenean McBrearty

    Of all times and all places, Father Patrick Holt should not have disgraced himself at the Immaculate Conception Church during a funeral.
    The ceremony was lovely, befitting the beloved stature of the now-deceased widow of Danville’s richest transportation guru. Had Pastor Curtis had a choice he would never have asked him to deliver the eulogy, but a post-flu laryngitis made it necessary. He was thankful he’d lived until the Holt disaster struck.
    “It was situational, the absurdity of death itself,” Holt asserted in his defense. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I read what was printed. And, if Enrique hadn’t giggled, no one would have noticed.”
    Curtis still couldn’t talk. Doctor Young had insisted he rest his voice but saying the mass in a hoarse whisper seemed to be an acceptable exception. Until now. As Young predicted, his face reddened with by rage, Father Curtis was unable to vent audibly. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on his desk while he rested his face in the palm of his left hand and shook his head slowly from side to side in despair.
    “I’ve never been a great public speaker or a good reader, which is why I always like to read things beforehand. If I’d had more time, maybe I could have caught your typos before...”
    Curtis jumped from his chair, ran to the door, opened it, and pointed to Holt. Then to the hallway.
    Holt approached his superior warily, checking for a weapon as he drew near, and ducked as he slipped past. The door banged shut after him.
    Seated outside the rectory office on an old church pew was the boy who started the debacle ball rolling: thirteen-year-old Enrique Basilone. The bane of every teacher at IC School. Would he think Holt’s unceremonious ejection from Curtis’ office as funny as his funeral faux pas?
    Enrique avoided eye contact, his chin resting on his chest to ensure his gaze fell on his shoes, but Fr. Holt saw his shoulders shaking. The little bastard was still laughing.
    Holt hurried down the hallway that led to the second front door that opened to a foyer and the first front door. Once inside the foyer, Holy pondered his options. Suicide. Transfer. Public apology. Confession. A whole new career. Maybe this was God’s way of making him rethink his vocation. Maybe it was time he went home to Indiana.
    He opened the first front door and saw a woman with a cane climbing the rectory stairs. On the porch, she looked up and came face to face with the man who ruined her sister’s funeral.
    “I’m so sorry,” Holt blurted. “I want you to know that.” He stepped back and held the door for her.
    “If you’d known my sister, Father Holt, you’d know she had a wonderful time at your expense.”
    “Then you haven’t come to have me burned at the stake?”
    She rested on her cane. “Patty Pettiboner, CEO of the Danville Fucking Company? Father, that was the funniest, truest eulogy I’ve ever heard. Patty was one wild gal.” He flitted to the second front door and held it open. Poor old soul. Perhaps she could smooth Curtis’ ruffled feathers. “It’s too bad you ran out. You would have heard people laugh. Well, some of them. Mostly the men.”
    “I couldn’t stop laughing. Believe me, I tried. But Enrique kept making giggle suppression noises...”
    “We all have that one friend, the one who gets us sent to the principal’s office very time the biology teacher says the word vagina. Patty was that friend for me.”
    “Please...tell Father Curtis that.”
     “I’ve already sent him a note. I’ll make a donation to the mortgage fund.”
    Enrique was walking towards them wearing that smile all kids wear when they’ve just heard adult bullshit. In his hand were some 3X5 cards. Had Father Curtis admonished him in print?
    As though he could read minds, Enrique held up the cards and waved. “Father Curtis is resting his voice,” Holt whispered to Patty’s sister as she came inside and side-stepped the exiting adolescent.
    Curtis came out of his office. Was he waiting for her, or ready for round two in the Father Holt Grudge Match? He motioned them both to his office where they sat in front of Curtis’ desk like students about to receive detention. Although mute, Curtis was prepared. He gave the dowager a stack of cards too.
    Appreciate your forgiveness, but successful parish work requires a
    priest to be respected not ridiculed by the altar boys every time he says
    mass. Holt I can get rid of, but Enrique and the other students will stay.
    Some of them will knock up their girlfriends and stay forever.

    She read the card and handed it to Father Holt. “Was it all that bad, Father Curtis? A little Christian charity would go a long way here,” Mrs. Langly said. Did she expect charity from a Pastor of a working-class coal town? Curtis scribbled on a card and handed it to her, and she to Holt:
    If he doesn’t go, I’ll kill him.
    “No parish will take him without a letter of recommendation, Father Curtis. They’ll think he’s part of that musical chair nonsense that happened with the molestations. Why don’t you refrain from murder until I can talk to the Archbishop in Dubuque. He’s my nephew.”
    Curtis glared at Holt and solemnly shook his head yes.
     “I’m sure Father Holt has talents that are yet unrecognized.”
    Curtis shook his head no, scribbled again, and handed a card to Mrs. Langly that she did not pass to Holt.
    Congenitally stupid. High price for musical chairs.
    Iowa was the place for the nice young man of cheerful and contrite countenance. He wouldn’t get wrinkles until sixty or break any hearts. She kept her checkbook in her purse and left, wondering why so many believe Jesus was a sourpuss. At her nephew’s ordination, she and Patty had laughed uncontrollably when he’d referred to Mary as the Immaculate Contraption.

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