The Church Was Bankrupt
- Aug 12, 2020
- 3 min read
by John Jodzio
The church was bankrupt so we bought the priest’s house at the auction. We moved in six months ago, but people still leave things for Father Breen on our steps. Mostly it’s flowers and food, but once there was a burning bag of dog shit my wife Marlena stomped out with her Crocs.
Once a man tried to leave a baby on our steps, but I saw him from our bedroom window and yelled down, “This isn’t holy land anymore!” and he sighed and lugged the baby carrier back to his car. There’s also a guy named Chuck who keeps mowing our lawn. When I explained to him that Father Breen didn’t live here, he shook his head and told me, “God still does.”
Sometimes Father Breen drives over and parks his Buick across the street from our house and stares in our windows with a pair of binoculars. He’s retired now but he still wears his priest collar and sips on a bottle of peppermint schnapps in between coughing fits.
Father Breen was sitting in his car when we tore out his old hot tub and set it out by the curb. About 15 minutes later, three men showed up and helped Father Breen carry it away.
“This proves that no man, no matter how saintly or pure, is immune to a hot tub’s pleasures,” Marlena said.
A few days later Marlena and I went out to dinner. When we got back we found our front door wide open. Nothing was gone, no one was hurt, but someone had taken a hammer and clawed a pentagram in our living room wall.
“We’re gutting the entire house,” I told the cops. “So whoever did this did us a favor.”
The next morning Chuck was mowing our lawn and I asked him where Father Breen lived.
“He’s staying with Dr. Platt until he gets his own place,” he said. “Three blocks down. The house with the American flag in the front.”
Sure enough, I found Father Breen sitting in his hot tub in the Platt’s backyard. His eyes were closed and there was a look of ecstasy on his face. At least there was until he opened his eyes and saw me.
“Did you claw a pentagram in our living room wall?” I asked.
He stood up and wrapped himself in a towel. Even though he was a man of God, gravity had still done a number on his body, his skin and bone were getting pulled to the center of the earth, just like everyone else.
“I didn’t claw anything into your wall,” he said, “but I still hope you and your wife burn in hell.”
I installed security cameras the next day. Nothing happened for about a week, but one night I checked the security footage and saw Father Breen pissing near the arborvitae in our front yard. I was angry at first, but my anger turned quickly to sadness when I saw how long he had to stand there with his junk flapping around before the piss started to flow.
“Should we call the cops?” Marlena asked.
“Let’s turn the other cheek,” I said.
Luckily after that night, weird shit has happened less and less, no bags of shit, no babies, no pentagrams. Chuck finally quit mowing our lawn and Father Breen ended up moving to Atlanta. Marlena and I worked damn hard on the house—tore everything down to the studs and then built everything back up again. By the time we were finished no one could tell that God had ever lived where we lived.
John Jodzio’s work has been featured in a variety of places including This American Life, McSweeney’s, and One Story. He’s the author of the short story collections, Knockout, Get In If You Want To Live and If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home. He lives in Minneapolis.
