Six Catholics and an Atheist by Barry Rachin (polar express read aloud .txt) 📕

post postcards and tons of colorful pictures. One showed Mr. Smithers sitting on top of an elephant. The elephant was lying on its side with its mouth open and a big red tongue hanging out. Its eyes were open but the lumpy beast didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular.
“That’s one saaaad looking elephant,” Sarah said, drawing out the vowel for dramatic effect. “Do you think it’s just sleeping?”
Penrod studied the picture for the longest time. He stared at the huge gun his father slung over his shoulder and the crisscrossed cartridge belts full of hollow-point bullets draped around his neck. “Sleeping,” Sarah's brother confirmed. “Definitely taking a mid-morning snooze.”
In another picture the parents were standing at the top of a mountain looking down through hazy clouds - yes, the clouds were below them - at a huge African plain.

Well, the Smithers were having such great fun they simply forgot to come home. They sent pictures and flowery postcards but that was pretty much it. But Penrod and Sarah didn’t mind. They grew comfortable in their parentless solitude. They looked after each other, which is what brothers and sisters are supposed to do.
When one of the super-duper, nosey neighbors said something like, “Haven’t seen your folks around lately,” Sarah would reply, “Oh they're very busy people.” The children never lied. That would be wrong. They omitted a few minor details but never ever told a lie.
Now you might think that a couple of children abandoned by their selfish, good-for-nothing parents would be scared to death, but not Penrod and Sarah Smithers. Heck no! From the day their parents waltz out the door on their glorious African safari, Penrod had a plan. “I’ll cook and you clean," he told his sister. “We’ll be just fine. Who needs parents anyway? They just boss you around and act more irresponsible than a bunch of dopey kids.”
“We’ll be just fine,” Penrod repeated with a confident wave of his hand. “This is the beginning of an awesome, stupendous, splendiferous adventure.”
“Splennndiferous,” Sarah repeated in a soon-to-be-fourth-grade, singsongy voice.

A gurgling snore cut the narrative short. Wilbur was sound asleep. Kirsten shut the light off, drifted into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of coffee. An hour later she recognize the purr of her sister's Honda CRV as the car crawled up the driveway.


"How was Willy?" Alice slipped off her high heels.

"He's never any problem." Kirsten was trying to decide whether to confront her sister with her husband’s crassness. "Do you know any atheists?"

. "No, why do you ask?" She teased a pearl drop earrings from a fleshy lobe then withdrew its mate

"There's a well-respected doctor over at the hospital who doesn't believe in God."

"I'm not surprised," Alice countered. "Modern life has become too hectic for a lot of people. Organized religion’s optional,... a luxury."

"Not for us goody two-shoes Papists," Kirsten muttered.

"What was that?" Alice loosened the buttons on her cuffs. "I didn't catch that last remark.


Tuesday morning on the way to work, Kirsten swung by the Braintree Rehabilitation Center. "I'm looking for Dorothy Edwards."

"Second floor, room twenty-eight," the receptionist replied.

Kirsten rode the elevator up one flight and found the white-haired woman sitting by herself in the solarium. She greeted Kirsten warmly but looked haggard. "There's been a change of plans." She pulled the hospital-issue bathrobe up around her wrinkled throat. "I'm transferring to Briarcrest Nursing Home next Tuesday."

Kirsten felt her brain grow numb. "But I thought - "

"My son, Brandon feels it's for the best."

The fight had gone out of her. A vibrant women, who, after her husband died, attended college and raised three children had been reduced to disposable chattel. "What do you want, Dorothy?"

"I'm an old woman."

"Your son bullied you into changing your mind, didn't he?"

"My best years are behind me." Her voice cracked but, through an effort of will, the widow maintained a semblance of composure. "It's time to move on."


My best years are behind me. It's time to move on. Mrs. Edwards was talking a cryptic, Morse code. Her son, Brandon, in all likelihood, had gotten himself into a financial mess and needed to sell off his mother's estate in order to set his own pathetic house in order. No matter that Mrs. Edwards lived out her final years sharing a sardine-can-of-a-room with mental defectives who talked gibberish and crapped the bed every five minutes! Brandon required financial liquidity. He didn't have a pot to piss in and his mother's property represented a disposable asset. And the worthless bastard was probably a practicing Catholic!


Around midday, Kirsten slipped out of her office and visited the hospital chapel. The room smelled faintly of incense. Except for a handful of votive candles and a solitary row of track lighting near the front, the room was dark and utterly still. She prayed to the Holy Mother asking her to watch over Mrs. Edwards - to make sure that the elderly woman got a reasonably spacious room with a scenic view plus a roommate equally alert and pleasant. Then she prayed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that He help her make sense of the ludicrous farce that was her personal life. For good measure, Kirsten followed the petitions with a dozen Hail Marys.

Slouching down in the pew, she closed her eyes. Somewhere back in her college years Kirsten stumbled across a silly creation myth. According to the Blackfoot Indians, the Spider God fashioned the universe. Everything worked out fine except for the humans – even among native Americans, a handful of Brandon Edwards types slipped through the cracks, mucking things up – and so the Spider God flew into a rage. Throwing down fireballs, he incinerating the planet and started over from scratch. But the troublemakers and shady characters got the upper hand and, a second time, the Spider God put the match to his organic masterpiece. By the fourth or fifth try, he finally despaired. “Let the crazy earthlings works things out on their own terms.” The Spider God was far too busy with other celestial tasks to worry about Brandon Edwards finessing his mother out of her life savings. Properly understood, the Blackfoot deity was neither unsympathetic nor indifferent to human misery. It wasn’t so much a flawed theology but human pathology that gummed up the works. As she was rising to her feet, the door opened, and Father McNulty shuffled into the prayer chapel.

"Miss Hazelton," the priest greeted her with an unctuous smile, "what brings a young professional here so early in the day?"

"Do you remember Mrs. Edwards?"

"The woman with the broken hip."

"Her son is putting her into a nursing home." Her tone was leaden.

The priest removed his glasses and rubbed the side of his thin nose. The rosacea was particular bad today, the cheeks streaked with dark purple."Yes, well, at her age,…" the priest began philosophically but never bothered to finish the thought.

"At her age what?" When there was no immediate response, Kirsten rose from the pew, lunged forward and stuck her head up under the priest's mottled chin. "You're an asshole, Father McNulty." The man staggered backwards. "Has a disgruntled parishioner ever told you such a thing or do you assume that, as God's divine emissary, everything you say or do is above reproach?"

"This is the house of the Lord.” If he was taken aback by the outburst, it didn’t take the priest long to regain his composure. “Leave the chapel and don't return until you have properly atoned for this disgraceful behavior."

"Yes, I'll leave," She retreated several steps, "but that changes nothing. You're still an insufferable asshole."


"I ran into Father McNulty. " Dr. Wong tracked down a despondent Kirsten Hazelton in the solarium drying her puffy eyes. He said you became irrational, foulmouthed,… emotionally unhinged." He shared the observation with a flippant smile, implying that he didn't put much credence in the priest's account. "By his reckoning, you belong on a locked ward over at the Institute of Mental Health." The Institute of Mental Health was where the most incorrigible mental defectives were warehoused once less drastic resources had been exhausted.

"We had a difference of opinion," Kirsten sputtered, "and I told the crusty old fart things no one else ever had the nerve to say."

"Apparently that didn’t go over very well."

Kirsten grinned weakly. She was grateful Dr. Wong hadn't demand specifics. The soft-spoken physician had done his best to safeguard Mrs. Edward's dignity and would have been devastated to learn the truth about the son's treachery.

"What are your plans for the holiday?" Dr. Wong asked.

"Not much. I'm just staying home."

"An emotionally unhinged coworker with nowhere to go on Thanksgiving…" Pulling a pen from his pocket, he scribbled an address on a slip of paper. "We live over by the Brandenberg Community Center… seventy-five Aspen Drive. It's a slate blue colonial with white shutters."

"I can't impose -"

"Show up around noon. I'll tell my wife to set another plate at the table." Dr. Wong hurried off down the corridor.


The next day, Kirsten did her makeup and pulled her hair back in a tight bun which she fixed with an ivory pick. She opted for low heels and a lavender dress that showed her figure to best advantage without being in the least bit provocative. Arriving at the Wong's house, she was ushered into the vestibule by a chubby woman a year or two younger than herself. "So there you are!" Dr. Wong rushed over and, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, wrapped her in a bear hug. "Here, let me introduce you to my family, and I must warn you from the outset, I'm feeling quite outnumbered."

"In what way?" Any reservations she might have experienced were blown away by the combination of savory aromas and festive faces.

My wife's family is originally from Nanjing Province on the Yangtze River in southern China."

"Which means nothing to me."

"For centuries, foreign missionaries spread their religions through the coastal routes. A recent census suggested four million, Chinese Catholics, but the true figure is much closer to fourteen." The man gestured at the oriental women gathered together in the next room putting the final, decorative touches on the table. "Four daughters and a wife - all devout Catholics."

Mrs. Wong, a short round woman, looked up and smiled slyly. "Even my son has gone over to the enemy camp, attending Mass over at Saint Andrews!" He led the way into the main dining room as a tall, well-built man in his mid thirties came down the stairs from the upper level. "Joshua, let me introduce you to Miss Hazelton, the discharge planner at our hospital."
"We'll be eating in a moment," Mrs. Wong announced.

"Perfect timing!" The doctor led Kirsten to a seat alongside his son. "Did I mention that Joshua, like his illustrious father, is an osteopath over at Beth Israel?" He shook his head up and down energetically, as though in answer to his own question. "Well, at any rate, he can bring you up to speed on that." The man retreated to the far end of the room.

Joshua leaned forward and said, "I've been dying to meet you?"

"How's that?"

"My father's always been rather close-lipped. He hardly ever has anything much to say about the people he works with, but he's been singing your praises all morning." He raised a bottle of bottle of wine. "Would