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Shire Council Epic

Shire Council Epic

Published by Brian Rebbechi on October 31, 2021

What is lighter than a feather?

DUST, my friend, in summer weather.

And what is lighter than the dust, I pray?

The winds that blow them both away.

And what is lighter than the winds?

The lightness of unthinking minds.

Now what is lighter than the last?

Ah! there, my friend, you have me, fast.

– Anonymous

With a bang of the brass gavel, Shire President Nancy Silver called the special meeting of Winton Swamp Council to order.

After a few words with Secretary Heather Jensen and Minute secretary Miss Eva, she mumbled through the meeting preliminaries before sternly dismissing the public gallery and the news people. Then, without looking up, she clomped to the lectern and started speaking:

“This community, threatened by global warming, labors to protect the natural world, our priceless legacy. That’s why, some years ago, the government decided to cease all fossil fuel extraction and to much restrict its importation from around the globe. This council joined the new order, that is it called for the phasing out of fossil fuel mining, right across our nation.

“Locally, our first step was to cease maintaining all asphalt roads. Had we not done this, the exponential increases in the price of bitumen, that followed the government’s decision, would have consumed almost our entire property tax income. Simply raising more funds by increasing the taxes would have driven our people from their homes; most have no way to get more money. So, to emphasize here, abandoning bitumen roads has allowed many of our people to keep a roof over their heads.

“Now I come to the reason why this has had to be a closed meeting: The potholed, fragmented road surfaces that remain must be skimmed off and dumped, and the dirt surfaces smoothed out, to avoid massive vehicle damage. Stated in another way, we hereby admit to the public that sealed bitumen roads are a thing of the past in Winton Swamp county. We have moved on from our former, ugly ways to a clean, green way of life.

“Our task tonight is to figure out how to explain and rationalize what our citizens in their ignorance will probably call a descent into hard times. Be aware that many residents have little sympathy for our environmental initiative, so we must gently adjust them all to retreat from from what they say is a dastardly and outrageous discomfort, and a vile attack on enjoyment of daily life.

“News of the new policy will be publicized tomorrow. Fresh bylaws have already been drafted. Prominent speakers have been reminded to describe the new order as a new enlightenment. They will explain it in great detail and stress that our plan spreads the pain of this epical environmental protection equally across the entire community. It is necessary: no pain, no gain or, as councilor Karen said, you can’t make an omelet without breaking at least one Emu egg.”

“I now pass the microphone to my deputy, John Cece, who will explain some of the issues that the new bylaws will address. John, please take over.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I start with a philosophical observation: You have all seen movies depicting former times (Wild Westerns, for instance) where muddy streets and clouds of dust were normal seasonal variations. Around the mid-1800s, winning oil from whaling began to wind down and petroleum use expanded. Before that, dusty and muddy roads were accepted throughout the world as being part of life.

“Thus, how can we pretend that we can’t do, creatively, what our forebears did uncomplainingly? It is a little known fact that more horses exist with us today than ever in man’s history. Whether ridden or pulling a wheeled conveyance, they create minimal dust and pollution. It is time to welcome them back.
“Now, let me outline some of the things that our new bylaws will cover; pick up your copy of the first edition of these bylaws on Thursday.

“We’ll mandate speed limits for all of our roads. Maximum speed will not exceed ten mph, but lower limits will apply to extremely dusty locations and hilly areas. Also, there will be variations for wet and muddy conditions and for night traveling.

“The speed limits will apply to all vehicles, including motor bikes, scooters, bicycles that have motorized assistance, and horse-drawn conveyances, like gigs, and buggies as well singly ridden horses and ponies.

“In the produce growing areas: Five miles per hour will be the maximum speed allowed. In addition, where powdery clays can make fine dust up to six inches deep, produce must not be grown within 500 feet of roadways, so dust and grit will not penetrate leafy vegetables.

“Rains in winter will lay dust, but no increase in speed limits should apply due to sliding and bogging being a constant danger. Chains are generally recommended in winter conditions. These limits will be enforced; a penalty schedule has been set. Fines to be used to fund strict policing, and to finance purchase of horses for older, first-time riders as well as for youngsters who would like to own their first pony.

“Some roads will naturally become impossibly bog-prone. To combat this, land owners will be obliged to permit vehicles and horses to travel outside the legal road reserve and within private property, on a generally parallel course.

“Now, back to you Mr President”

Shire President, Nancy Silver, then reclaimed the microphone to close the meeting: “Thank you all for attending this historic conference. The steps we institute this night will echo far and wide as all countries realize the necessity. We pray and look forward to seeing inventions and innovations that will advance man’s lot, as has happened before. At times, our resolution may falter, but gladness and optimism will surely prevail.

Good night all.”

Constable Frank

Constable Frank

Published by Brian Rebbechi on October 28, 2021

Ned Hanlon drank at the Railway Hotel bar every night after work.

His job was carting lumber for the hardware store right there in town. Big, muscular, and handsome he was, but nasty tempered, loud and a real bullying man. He went out of his way to abuse and insult people; it seemed that his day was complete if he could provoke another man and then punch him up.

Dunnystop was a tiny town, way out in the country; only about a thousand people (and nearly the same number of dogs, which, when they weren’t barking and howling, raided sheep in the farming area).

Young junior constable Frank Gardiner had recently been assigned to Dunnystop’s one-man police station. Of medium height, thin as a rake but with good muscle, he grew up in the city. Frank had no idea why the powers-that-be had posted him to this remote backwater but there he was; might as well make the most of it. If only there weren’t so many dogs running around loose. Frank hated arresting dogs.

The police station was housed in an old shopfront. It badly needed renovation. Two rooms made up the office which was fitted out with an ugly old desk and some awful looking cupboards. Flakey beige paint covered the walls and ceilings. In the yard was an ancient outhouse attached to a one-room brick lockup.

The Railway Hotel where Ned Hanson did his drinking and fighting was just three doors away on the corner of Main Street. There you have it.

The very week he took charge, Frank heard that Ned Hanlon was bashing two guys in the bar, so he showed up right away to see blood on the floor but no victims. They’d slunk off to nurse their wounds. Frank walked up to Ned Hanlon, “I’m arresting you for assaulting two citizens.” Ned looked Frank up and down and yelled, “You and which army?” Then he rushed at Frank. It wasn’t pretty. Frank was barely able to lay a fist on Ned before he was on the floor bleeding and barely conscious. They took him to the little hospital around the corner where Nurse Mannion sedated him, plastered his wounds, and kept him in bed overnight.

The following Friday, the hotel clerk called Frank because Ned was mauling a young lady. Frank limped into the pub, still sore from the previous week, and said,” Ned, I’m arresting you for assault and for disturbing the peace.” Ned said, “In yer dreams, Frank,” then, he laid into Frank again. This time, before being taken to the hospital, Frank hit Ned on the chin. Skin flew off and the blow left Ned feeling a bit dizzy.

The same sort of thing happened week after week. Each time Constable Frank tried to arrest Ned there was a fight, and Frank had to be helped to the hospital. The nurses soon knew what to expect on Fridays; they got ready with bandages and Rapid gel, which they rubbed into Frank’s many sore spots. Usually, though, Frank would land on Ned a solid punch or two, mostly on the chin.

So it went, month after month, Constable Frank limped into the bar and called for Ned to come quietly. Routinely, Ned refused and fought Frank till the blood flowed, and poor Constable Frank had to be taken to hospital. But then it was noticed that Ned was getting nervous; he wasn’t enjoying his beer and he kept looking at the door lest Frank should come. And Frank always did come.

Near Christmas, months later, Frank walked in as usual and asked Ned to submit to arrest. Ned said, “OK Frank,” and held out his hands for the cuffs. For 35 years, Frank was town constable and no one ever resisted arrest again.

After retiring, Frank took over parking enforcement for the local council. All he had to do was walk the streets, looking stern but smiling easily at those who greeted him, barely ever having to write a ticket.

Gos – Part One

Gos – Part One

Published by Brian Rebbechi on October 15, 2021

Gos squinted from his high perch in the cave mouth, down the cliff face to the wide icy beach and across the pack ice, across the endless glaring white pack ice. He was young when this tiny cave became home. In those times, the sea ice was yet solid in front of him, so it was good that he found this shelter where birds and bats lived and nourished him. And important was this for Gos’s safety. Earlier, a band of wolf like beings had attacked Gos’s little group, killing and eating all but Gos and his parents, who had hidden in the frozen marshes, inland from this high cave.

When winds didn’t blow, Gos foraged along the edge of the ice, collecting crabs, turtles and beached fish. One day, a woman came home with him. She didn’t ask. He didn’t invite her; she just followed. Now, there was a female child in the high cave too.When winds didn’t blow, Gos foraged along the edge of the ice, collecting crabs, turtles and beached fish. One day, a woman came home with him. She didn’t ask. He didn’t invite her; she just followed. Now, there was a female child in the high cave too.

Early one morning, Gos saw a young bear gorging on the remains of a furred seal. He walked slowly across the ice to where the ravenous bear, oblivious to his presence, was soon battered senseless with a boulder of ice. Gos needed the meat, and he needed the fur; so bears were often his prey.

One fateful day, Gos noticed a strange odor as he stood squinting toward the horizon. Far out in the ocean to the south of the sea ice, the water began to bubble strangely, and deafening, howling jets of water and foam shot skywards. And this foam soon covered the scene, the whole vista, clear to the horizon. The sea rose and enveloped the beach and the lower cliff beneath the cave. Each day, it got worse. The smell was putrid. The fire would not stay alight. Breathing became impossible. The woman and the child died. Gos crept to the back of the cave, and laid down, waiting for his life to end.

A wind blew, and when it did, Gos, with much effort, was able to breath weakly. He found the strength to push the bodies of the woman and child out of the cave, into the rising water. He chewed on the flesh of the young bear and he pelted stones at the bats, killing none this time. Some days, the fire would brighten up; it depended on the wind. Gos understood nothing of what was happening. But what he saw made him choke with terror. The birds flew about the sky no longer; instead, their lifeless bodies drifted on the swell or lay scattered on the receding ice pack. He found that he could see better across the open water without narrowing his eyes to avoid dazzling light reflected from the pack ice.

Nor did Gos have any concept of time. He ate what he could grab, when he had the strength, and he labored painfully at breathing. Mostly, he lay terrified on the floor of the little cave.

Time passed; the atmosphere warmed. Barely at first then substantially. The water lost its chill and breathing came easier. Seepage in the cave was yet fresh enough to sip. The beach was submerged beneath the water’s surface, so Gos could not venture far down from the cave. More time passed, the sea ice below him began cracking and breaking up. As the water warmed still further, the air got humid, then rain fell as droplets melded with dust. Clouds appeared in the sky.

Far along the water’s edge to his left, Gos saw a massive whale; it had been thrown against the cliff by the turbulent, turbid, ugly ocean which swirled and bubbled and rose and receded some days and calmed on other days. He could see that death would soon come to the whale, so he waited and watched. As a youngster, he had learned about whales.

And Gos had seen as a youth how to transport fire. He gathered two flat pieces of soft rock, mudstone, the length of his foot and as thick as its width. He’d scraped at each piece with his hand-stone cutter to make a hollow such that when put together the two plats enclosed a space the size of his fist. Then, he scooped fire ashes with red coals into the hollow and tied strips of bear hide to hold the rocks for carrying. Thus equipped, and with a fresh bear skin and strips of bear flesh, Gos walked to the lifeless whale, gathering pieces of driftwood as he went. The beach, close to the cliff, was crackling beneath his feet, but this was not ice, it was hard and bright and of fine texture, a substance he’d not before seen, left by the rushing ocean.

As Gos neared the whale, he saw two figures lying prone upon the monster. One, a woman, was hungrily gnawing at the dark blubber, while the other, an infant, watched helplessly as the woman chewed, now and again taking fragments from her mouth and passing them to the child. Gos made his presence known as he approached, showing as best he could that he meant no harm. The whale’s tail was wedged against the cliff and this enabled Gos to climb up to where the woman was sitting by the pathetic hole that she’d chewed into the whale’s blubber.

Spreading the bear skin right there on the whale, Gos sat upon it then passed fragments of the raw bear meat that he’d brought, to the woman and her child. Before long, he had a fire burning, the driftwood he’d gathered and the oil of the whale blubber creating passable light and heat. He gestured to the others to also sit upon the bear skin, but was not surprised when they ignored the invitation. His talk meant nothing to them; no common words could be found, but gestures and imitation helped to connect the three. The woman though wrapped in a tattered fur, was visibly emaciated. She’d clearly eaten so little in recent times that Gos wondered if she could remain alive.

The sun came and went, over and over, and the three huddled atop the whale; Gos cut a deepening gash in the whale to win blubber and flesh. And he scouted for fuel, for heat and to partially cook the whale flesh. But he was uneasy; he couldn’t cease scanning the land and the sea, the land lest marauders should come in search of a meal of their own kind, and the sea lest the ocean should resume its terrifying eruption.

Late one evening Gos sprang to his feet, yelling guttural sounds, and, grabbing the bearskin and the remaining bear meat, he took the child under his arm and rushed off the whale and along the beach toward his cave home. The woman ran after him; he’d seen massive geysers far out to sea. Gos knew that breathing would again, very soon, become impossible.

Once the three were safely in the cave and had restarted the fire, they waited in fear for what would happen next. It started as before; the fire went low, they could barely breathe; experience told Gos to lie stock still on the floor of the cave. The others followed his example. Much later, a wind got up and breathing came easier. The tiny group established a routine for living. A pelican, the first live bird since the latest sea eruption, alighted in the cave entrance; Gos grabbed it. Fresh, warm meat.

The little cave provided space for the three of them once they’d rearranged the stones that Gos kept there for protection. He mounded the rocks to one side of the entrance, the more easily to take them up should marauders threaten to climb the cliff. The collection of driftwood was arranged, all the better to save space. They moved the fire itself to give room for sitting and sleeping around it. Turtle shells when not in use for keeping salt-water and for heating food, were nested inside one another by the wall. Gos draped bear skins across the entrance to dry, instead of leaving them heaped on the rough rock floor as before.

The three settled into a life of watching and waiting. Gos pondered and gazed across the ocean toward the far away horizon. He puzzled deeply about the awful turmoil around him. He knew it was much beyond his poor wit ever to understand, but his desire to retain life and hope still drove him.

Gos had not the slightest sense that he was enduring the beginning of the end of an ice age that had lasted many thousands of years. Nor did Gos know that his terrifying privations would be known of, far, far ahead in years. At night, he gazed up at the brilliant stars and sensed how small a part in the scheme of things was his minute being. But a tiny spark in his brain told him that henceforth his kind had to begin figuring it all out. He continued to ponder for the remainder of his short life, the deep suffering that engulfed him:

Why did the ocean roil so furiously? Why did it rise then recede in a coating of foam, over and over? Why did the ice break up and give way to a muddy, furious ocean? Why did breathing get so difficult?

What caused the never-waning, atrocious smell? Why did all the birds die? Why did the air and the water get warmer? Why did so many clouds appear in the formerly almost clear sky? Why did so much heavy rain start falling? Why did the surf leave a coating, a brittle skin, a shiny substance on the beach, that Gos had not seen before, and where did this strange substance come from?

End of Part One

Father Phil of Jillamatong

Father Phil of Jillamatong

Published by Brian Rebbechi on October 15, 2021

He who is wrapped in purple robes,

With planets in his care,

Had pity on the least of things,

Asleep upon a chair.

– William Butler Yeats

JILLAMATONG TIMES
7 November 1955

CLASSIFIED ADS:

LOST: Father Phil’s Brown Mare.
Answers to Molly.
Bring Back to Presbytery.
No Reward.

A busy-body parishioner, most likely Mrs Hannebery, snipped out the ad and mailed it to bishop Collins, with a note of disapproval scribbled in the margin.

“Botheration take it! Not again!” (This is as close to cussing as his Holiness ever ventured), then he sent for Monseigneur Ryan : “Another complaint about Fr Phil out there at Jillamatong! What does he want a horse for? We got him that old Ford. There’s not even a stable there.” The Monseigneur agreed. “Your excellency, I’ll instruct Fr Phil to get rid of the animal and, henceforth, pay more attention to his pastoral duties.” The bishop sighed, “It’s only six years since I ordained him, but it seems like 20. I’ve done everything I can. Yet, the parishioners, in fact the whole township, like him. What else can I do? Jillamatong’s already the diocesan equivalent of Siberia!”

Christmas came and went. So did Lent, Easter, and All Saints Day, yet there was Father Phil still clopping around the parish on Molly, save for a few hours every other week when the mare, without telling anyone, went for a quiet walk by herself. The bishop tried and tried, but somehow his formidable authority was all for nothing; talk about old fashioned passive resistance!

A month later, Fr Phil called the 4th grade back into the church to repeat their Saturday Confessions. “Bless me Father, (they went), for I have sinned. I threw peanuts in the lake.” One by one, the whole class confessed to exactly the same thing!? Fr Phil gently, explained to each kid, that this was not a real sin.

When the last child knelt before him, Fr Phil said, “And, I suppose, you threw peanuts in the lake too?” The child said, “No, I’m peanuts!”

Fr Phil was perturbed; his response had been wrong; he was duty bound to straighten it out; it took quite a while, in fact it was almost dark before each child had been brought back and told that, in fact, to throw a person in the lake really is a sin. In an attempt to make light of it though, Fr Phil imposed a novel penance: the boys were to stand on their head against the wall for five minutes while they said two extra Hail Marys. Mrs Hannebery came along just then but decided not to stay when she saw the boys standing on their heads. “I’m not dressed for it. I’ll come back next week,” She said. As usual, bishop Collins heard the whole story from her. He crossly sent for Father Phil’s file once more. Fr Phil thought it was more bad luck than bad priestly management; and he was a victim too, because he missed out on his peaceful evening jaunt on mare, Mollie.

Angst about the Peanuts incident had faded into the past, and life was mooching along serenely. Molly had expired. Knowing the bishop was a busy man, Fr Phil opted not to bore him with the trivia associated with the purchase of a new horse. Had he done so, he would have mentioned that the new mare was to be named Molly in memory of the old Molly.

But enough of that, Fr Phil had to get to work on his Sunday sermon. He’d already chosen to base it on the parable of the loaves and fishes, and when he ascended the pulpit on Sunday, he started with an impressive oratorical flourish: “And the Lord fed a few people on 5000 loaves and fishes.”

A slip of the tongue, a small mistake, they knew what he meant, but they heard what he said. Now, Pat Hannebery, obnoxious lad, a cheeky devil, a real show-off, couldn’t let it go. He hops to his feet and yells, “Now there’s an easy thing, Father, I could do that me self!“ Everybody laughed. Even the sisters in the Nuns’ Chapel twittered. Humiliation! No doubt about it.

Fr Phil was enraged and remained so for most of the week. Spent three days riding Molly around the countryside he did, reliving the public embarrassment, and thinking awful things about that vile little reprobate, Hannebery. By Friday, he had a plan: redo the sermon and get it right this time. So it went: “And the Lord fed 5000 people with a few loaves and fishes.” Then he lent forward, stared down at Hannebery, and shouted, “Now could you be doin’ that, Hannebery?”

Right away, that , awful young rat-bag, Hannebery, stands up and calls back at Father Phil, “Sure I could Father, I’d use what was left over from last week!”

The congregation let forth with loud laughter and catcalls that should never be heard in a Catholic church. For once, though, Mrs Hannebery didn’t tell the bishop; after all, it was largely her son’s fault. As for Father Phil, he prayed to God for guidance and was told to go ride the mare, and remember that the effluxion of time cures everything. And so it did.

I’ve lost track of just when, during Fr Phil’s Jillamatong career, these things happened, nor can I recall the order in which they took place, but he’d been there 27 years when Molly disappeared; the usual ad in the Jillamatong Times didn’t do any good. The parishioners scoured the town to no avail. In due course, they realized that Molly was gone for keeps and as Fr Phil was looking sadder by the day, they chipped in to purchase a replacement mare, the new one to be named Molly, as usual.

When the presentation took place, right after Easter Sunday Mass, Father Phil, standing with his arm around the new Molly, made a most heart-rending speech of thanks that caused even Mrs Hannebery, by then a fan of Fr Phil, to shed a tear or two. The bishop, in the meantime, vaguely wondered about the lifespan of horses generally, and of Molly in particular, but he was never told anything about it.

The mystifying disappearance of the previous mare, Molly, was forgotten once the new Molly proved edifyingly efficient; maybe she was even a little slower, a non-fault as far as Fr Phil was concerned.

Once each calendar month, Mass was said at outlying Havilah. They had a really tiny wooden church some 15 miles away. Fr Phil had to say the Jillamatong Mass quite early before heading out to St Jude’s at Havilah ( I forget the exact Mass times). One such Sunday, Fr Phil forgot his eyeglasses. Kind of a disaster really. He couldn’t read the gospels and he couldn’t read the epistles. Nor could he make out any of the other prayers. He asked for someone to lend their specs for the morning, but several pairs proved to be unsuitable, so he sent the altar boys round the church to collect everyone’s glasses. A good idea, surely, but it took a bunch of tries before the right pair was found. These were perfect, so Fr Phil went right ahead with saying Mass, ignoring the big old tray of spectacles just sitting there.

After Mass, Fr Phil hopped on Molly and headed back to Jillamatong without another word. The folk, many half blind, were left there for a long spell, matching themselves to their correct glasses. The bishop was kept out of that loop too, but Havilah’s Christmas contributions were way down.

It was a priestly chore to drive the ladies of the women’s guild to meetings with their counterparts in the neighboring parish. Normally, this was monthly on Wednesday afternoon. The road to Carisbrook was short, but very rough, bendy and hilly. On the day I have in mind to tell you about, it was raining pretty hard, yet the five ladies were enjoying the outing, each nursing a plate of cakes for afternoon tea. For some reason, best known to the Lord above, Fr Phil had chosen a road less travelled, and no wonder, it was not paved. And (guess what), they got hopelessly bogged; no use getting out and pushing. Besides, the ladies were, as Fr Phil said the previous Sunday, “skin and bone under-achievers,” not to mention they were wearing their Sunday dresses. They saw a faint light in the distance, and toward it plodded a lone Fr Phil, leaving the guild ladies in the Ford.

The farmer, Eric and his wife, Edith, greeted Fr Phil with such generous hospitality that he forgot to explain about the guild ladies, anxiously cooling their heels in the Parish Ford till he should come back to drive them through the endless rain to their homes, it being, by then, far to late to continue on to Carisbrook.

What, with getting the priest dry and comfy, and with serving a libation, and with attending to the inner man via a nice hot meal, topped off with plum pudding and whipped cream, not to mention sharing the district news, the waiting guild ladies were relegated to the back burner of Fr Phil’s memory. The lovely ladies meanwhile watched the rain stream down the Ford’s windows in the fading light.

No cell phones in those days; the ladies just had to wait. The rain, at least, could have stopped, but it didn’t.

Around 9 pm, Fr Phil and farmer Eric Dempsey turned up on the latter’s McCormick-Deering tractor and pretty soon they’d extricated the bogged Ford. Fr Phil thanked the farmer all over again, waved goodbye exuberantly, then took the driver’s seat and headed for home. At least the ladies hadn’t gone too hungry whilst waiting all those hours in the Ford: Thank God for the cakes they’d made for afternoon tea at the meeting. Fr Phil did notice a stony silence in the car, but assumed the ladies were just a bit tired.

Next day, the guild secretary, Mrs Morgan, sent a polite letter of regret, for not showing up, to her counterpart in the Carisbrook Guild. In it she managed, with loyal eloquence, to insulate Fr Phil from blame for the debacle. Fr Phil himself remained blissfully unaware that the day had been awful for the guild ladies. He did say that all would have been well if only they’d left the Ford at Jillamatong and ridden to Carisbrook on Molly instead, but he didn’t explain how that could possibly have worked.

Fr Phil was a little older when the affair of the statues took place. Across the street from the presbytery, there was a body of water, a shallow lake, of size about a hundred acres. The Jillamatong folk used it for boating, fishing and swimming. Not Fr Phil. He used it to dump the church’s every statue; one night he did the whole thing, in all, a total of 18 of the painted plaster images were carried to his little rowboat, rowed well beyond the shore, and consigned to the depths.

Or so Fr Phil thought. Cheap religious statues are molded from plaster. They are hollow. In water, they appear to sink, but they do nothing of the sort. Thus, by the time Fr Phil was back in bed, all the statues were bobbing around in the water, keeping the ducks company.

Around 6 am, there was loud knock on the door of the presbytery. “Fr Phil, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are in the lake, and angels galore! It’s still dark. What will we do?” Fr Phil said, thinking quickly, in spite of the early hour, “Adam, go home right now, tell not a soul, leave this to me.”

He should have broken the statues to bits, so the air inside the hollow figures wouldn’t cause them to float. “Well, here goes,” he thought, as he donned his riding clothes, grabbed his shot gun and plenty of cartridges and rode Molly round to the little jetty where the rowboat rose and fell in the gentle swell. Rowing out to where he could just make out the floating statues, he systematically blasted them all with number 12 cartridges.

The shattered pieces obligingly sank to the bottom. Fortunately, it was duck-hunting season, so Jillamatong incuriously slept on.

The bishop was toxic with rage when he greeted the delegation of Jillamatong’s parishioners. “But it’s no big deal,” said sergeant Corcoran,“ The statues were old and dusty and were substandard images. Fr Phil has been complaining about them for years. True! He should have raised the issue with the Parish Altar Society. We would have proposed a disposal plan more palatable to parishioners and society generally. As we are all aware, Fr Phil occasionally resorts to precipitate, agricultural-style solutions to everyday problems. But what’s done is done. We must look to the future. To this end, our parish elders have already promised the funds for a set of the latest models of all the statues.”

Poor old bishop Collins! He was placated by Sergeant Corcoran’s fine speech, yet, while nervous and apprehensive, he agreed to let Fr Phil’s latest mischief get covered up as the weeks went by. A letter from the Environment Protection people was promptly answered by the bishop’s office via Monsignor Ryan, who composed a letter that could only be described as a masterpiece of evasion. The statue fragments were never recovered from the lake and no one seemed thereafter to know a thing about the episode. Everyone was delighted with the new statues and the ladies’ guild baked and sold cakes until they raised enough money to repaint the inside of the church a gentle light violet color to better display the new statues.

At the the national bishops’ conference that year, Bishop Collins was approached by an aggressive reporter: “It is well known that a certain priest in a small rural parish has, over many years, been involved with multiple acts of dubious behavior. Yet you have not acted to discipline him. What do you say to this allegation?”

The bishop reacted strongly: “Listen to me young lady! Fr Phil’s sacred duty is to attend to the moral welfare of his flock. In each and every case reported to me, there was no instance where Father’s moral guidance and attention to his flock’s religious instruction was not beyond reproach. Take the report of Fr Phil’s calling back into the confessional, a group of boys who had been told that they had not sinned. Father thought they had merely thrown peanut shells into the lake. When he found that the boys had actually thrown a real live lad (named Peanuts) into the lake, Fr needed to correct this and he resolutely did so. He did the right thing, regardless of town criticism.”

All summer, miles away bushfires had smoked up the air, and aging parishioners were suffering; many were ill enough to call for the sacraments. Fr Phil on Molly gave comfort, day after day. One twilight, He returned very tired to the presbytery and fell gratefully into his verandah chair. “Hard it is,” he sighed, “for, a lone priest, and getting old, and so far from city help, to get enough rest.”

Then, thinking blankly about the day, he dozed, just as young Freddie Hogan, galloped up and called to him, “Father, Mum wants yer to come quick. She thinks Pa’s dying!”

“I’ll be right there,” said Fr Phil, “soon as I water Molly and feed her. She’s worked all day. ”So saying, he filled the little water trough and put some fresh hay beside it and poured some cold tea from his teapot, then sat again while Molly fed. Half numb, he gazed out across the sweeping, plain all bathed in evening light.

The lengthening shadows merged into the land of sleep as darkness descended and, peacefully, the stars bore witness.

It got cold. The priest roused, then came wildly awake and fished out his watch. “It’s nearly morning! Pa Hogan likely has died, and without the sacraments! I’ve betrayed him; my weak priesthood’s done this. Please God let Pa Hogan be still living! My parishioners will lose faith in me as their pastor.”

With that, Father Phil bounded off the verandah, adjusted the astonished Molly’s bridle, mounted roughly and set off for the Hogan farm, in the faint moonlight. For nigh on an hour, Molly carried the anxious priest. Then, up the broken drive she trotted and slid to a halt by the Hogan front porch.

The door burst open and Mrs Hogan rushed out onto the verandah. “Oh Father! You’re back? You’re back again! Pa died at midnight, just after you left. He half sat up, then he smiled and lay back and held my hand and died.”

The dawn light was showing in the sky when Molly stopped beside Fr Phil’s chair. He eased himself down, and sat ever so quietly, staring ahead at the orange light of the rising sun that just then began to appear low on the eastern horizon.

He who is wrapped in purple robes,

With planets in his care,

Had pity on the least of things,

Asleep upon a chair.

– William Butler Yeats