The Vicar of St. Dunstan's Ep. 24

A familiar voice greeted me: "Bishop Northgate? This is Father Jenkins."

My wife looked up at me and I rolled my eyes. "Simon?" I asked, "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt your vacation, Your Grace, but there's a problem."

"All right, Simon, tell me."

"Father Williams is in trouble again. He got picked up this afternoon for DUI again, unfortunately and he had his laptop with him. They checked it and found a ton of pornography."

I sighed. "Damn, that's three DUIs in a year. He's at Horton, isn't he?"

"Yes, your Grace."

"Simon, I thought I told you I left the 'Your Grace' sh–stuff back in England, didn't I?"

"Yes, Bishop Northgate."

"What's my calendar look like this weekend?"

There was a moment while he flipped some pages. "You're still on vacation."

My wife rolled her eyes; I looked in another direction: "Of course, I forgot. My mind was miles away Where's Bill now?"

"He's at his Vicarage."

"All right. This is Thursday, right? I'll call him tonight. We're going to have to dry him out again, and we may have to send him to Alice Springs when it's over. Call the Chair of his Vestry and tell them that I'll be there for services this weekend and we'll have a town hall meeting afterward. Got it?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry about this."

"Guess this is why I get paid the big bucks, Simon. Goodbye."

"Good bye, Sir." I hit the Done button and put the device back on my belt.

Her head nuzzled my chest. "Problems, dear?"

I shook my head. "I wonder how St. Ambrose of Milan managed. He went from being a simple civil servant to Bishop of a divided town in one day, and he held them together. Why did they choose me to be their Bishop? Why me? Do I look like I've got a clue?"

She shook her head. "Ambrose had farther to go than you did; he wasn't even baptized when he was elected bishop. You have a great deal of experience with crazy people, running a parish in a foreign land, and you are a fair man without prejudice. Having a doctorate and several published articles didn't hurt your status with your peers. The electorate was so divided and polarized by the two leading candidates, only a Dark Horse could have gotten a majority." Kissing my hand, she held it against her cheek. "You're the one they elected on, you'll be able to cope. When God closes one door, he opens another."

I smiled. "Well, that sounds familiar. I guess I'll have to cope with an interrupted vacation. I've got to go to Bill Williams' parish this Sunday and see what's up. Sorry to be gone. It'll take a couple of days, and I'll come right back to you when I'm done."

She shook her head. "No way, Al. We're in this together. You need me; that's why you came back to England to get me You may need to stop twice as often for piss breaks as we go down the road, but you're not leaving without me."

I chucked Agnes on the chin. "All right, Perky, we go together."

The sun grew big and red as it dipped toward the horizon. A storm rose in the Southwest, flickering in the distance, but the thunder was too far away to hear and its track was going to pass us by a wide margin. We held each other in the crimson light under the old tree by the pond on the Kansas Plain until it turned purple and the planet Venus dominated the sky with its brilliance.