Pastor Patty Does What Must Be Done

Pastor Patty crawled out of bed and looked out the window. The Sunday morning view was not pleasing.

Periwinkle County is located geographically and meterologically on what "Mr. Robbins," the congenial old meterologist on Channel 8&1/2, calls "The Creases." PC is on the crease of every kind of map. In the east part of the county are the Bleu Tetons. The north part, up toward Capital City, is flat as Kansas. The west, toward Hope's Promise and Cratchit State U, is hill land. Nobody talks about the southern part of PC, even to describe the terrain, except to note that it includes a lot of yard cars. Sometimes it feels like Houston in summer, sometimes like Buffalo in winter, sometimes both at the same time, according to where you are.

Pastor Patty lives in Memphjus, the county seat, named for the biblical city, and spelled according to the reworking of the Masoretic pointing of the Hebrew text by Joseph "The Brigand" Olds, a reformed pirate and founder of Saint John the Catholic Baptist Church and College, which is sometimes inside the town of Memphjus and sometimes outside, according to how Joseph Olds IV feels about the Town Council. Saint John the Catholic Baptist Church theology is universalist. They believe that everyone will be saved, unless you don't agree with them. Then you'll go to hell.

Pastor Patty is not a part of SJTCBC&C. She pastors the church simply known as "The Methodist." This morning she wants nothing to do with it. The Kitchen Nazis have been at war with the Bleeding Hearts over meals for the homeless. [Neither name is an official title, but Methodists are known for taking insulting names and using them as a badge of honor, so both the KNs and the BHs now refer to themselves, with pride, according to the sobriquets heaped upon them by their foes.] It doesn't feel much like a church, more like a town hall about health care reform. The only good part of worship is when the kids come up. You never know what they'll do. At Christmas, when they were looking at the creche set on the altar, and she asked for the name of Jesus' father, little Walter Weter shouted out "Bob," as loud as if he were on a quiz show. The KNs and the BHs laughed together at that.

She talked with her sort-of mentor, Rev. Randall Nathan (Retard) about it. She knew he would have the batteries out of the phones. Like most retired preachers, his goal in life is to avoid people altogether. So she left her husband to get breakfast for the kids, went to the Nathan house, waded through the snow, pecked out SOS in Morse code on the basement window, and was then allowed to slide through the window into his secret lair, the one everyone in town knows about. She was pleased that she could still fit through the window.

Pastor Nathan told her about the boy who didn't want to go to church. It's an old story, but he's an old man, and they love to tell old stories. "I don't want to go," he told his mother. "They never sing hymns I like and nobody there likes me." "You have to go," his mother said. "Give me two good reasons," he pouted. "Well, you're forty-five years old, and you're the pastor of the church."

Pastor Patty is only 35, but she got the point. He knew that she got it, but he explained it anyway. "Some things you just have to do. You don't have to feel like it, or want to, or be in the mood, or be prepared. You just have to show up and do it."

"Will you be there this morning?" she asked him. "Of course not," he said. "I don't have to."

When she followed the acolytes down the aisle to start the 10:30 service, though, he was there, sitting between the KNs and the BHs. She laughed out loud. "The old hermudgeon has been listening to himself again," she said.