Pepsi Bears and Other Stories (13 page)

The St Paul in the cow turd had overtaken all its competitors and become the preeminent tourist attraction in the district. It seemed to offer such complete and utter redemption. The highest, most beautiful saint from the lowest most noisome substance. We could all be kings in a world of such miracles, it seemed to whisper. Everyone wanted to be touched by its magic.

Rutherford himself wasn't so much a diligent Christian upon whom a miracle had been lavished by a grateful Lord as an atheist who heard the sounds of a gold rush and sculpted himself a nugget with a trowel and a spatula. He was bald and beery and known to overstock his paddocks and he was mean-minded until his saint began to pull in rafts of wall-eyed Queenslanders. He became congenial then. He became a host. He smiled and bent low at the hips and ushered them into his milking shed wherein the saintly turd.

It sat in the centre of the concrete pad roped off by a red velvet rope strung between stanchions to keep the believers from trampling the thing they had come to adore. Rutherford had put up stadium seating on three sides so people could sit in reverie and muse over the thing like wise men in a manger. Ginger beer was handed out free to anyone who donated ten dollars to Rutherford's brucellosis fighting fund. Brucellosis hadn't been seen in the shire for years. But if it returned Rutherford would be ready with a mansion and a hot spa.

Within an hour of leaving Father Gould's church Old Ms Harris is at Rutherford's dairy mingling with the score of travellers ogling his St Paul. She had wanted to see this miraculous turd from the moment she had heard of its emergence. She had doubted its provenance and wanted to scowl showily at the thing. And now, leaning over the red velvet rope, staring down at it she sees a conniving and wicked nature writ in its every feature.
The saint has bushy eyebrows, a beard of mould, deep, piercing eyes. ‘You're no more St Paul than a bandicoot's the Messiah,' she whispers at that wondrous stool. She stalks the perimeter of the protective rope eyeballing the turd. It eyeballs her back, following her in her circumnavigation, never blinking. ‘Not scared of me, eh? And I'm not scared of you either,' she whispers. It is smiling at her now, she sees. Mocking her, happy at the part it has played in the downfall and ruination of her priest. ‘I know from whose bowel you sprang,' she whispers. ‘You are the lamb of Beelzebub.'

She lifts the rope and ducks beneath it nimbly, for a burnt octogenarian. Moves forward with a steely tread. She has purpose. People said afterwards neither Rottweilers nor tattooed Maori could have held her back. Standing above the thing she raises her right foot high and yells, ‘Shithead,' and stomps that turd, splattering its smug physiognomy over the spellbound pilgrims. This is a confusing scene for the Christians. One moment they are venerating and admiring this thing and grateful to be in its presence, the next they're trying to flick it out of their hair and scrape it off their faces and saying ‘Yuck' and ‘Urrghh' and kids are crying and women holding out their frocks before them in wonderment at the profusion of turdsplatter.

Mal Rutherford had been a battler who rose at four to draw milk from a herd of aging cows before he had become custodian to a wondrous relic. Then, for a while, with his turd saint pulling pilgrims, he was worth ten-thou-a-week and no way for the ATO to get involved.
Now he is poor again. An organ-grinder whose monkey has been whacked by a mafia hit man. Old Ms Harris. Surely sent by the local Catholic Church.

Who among us would not belt the daylights out of a spinster after such a vandalism? I only ask, who would not throttle and thrash a saboteur so aged and frail and therefore so easy to throttle and thrash?

She is nodding cheerily down at her right shoe besmirched triumphant in that crater of turd. She is looking around at the interstate dupes scraping shit from their hair, when Mal Rutherford gives off a whimper and comes at her from behind. He has his fingers deep in the wattles of her throat before she can say ‘Amen'. They lose their footing and go down, kicking and rolling in the green muck, the farmer choking and shaking the spinster and crying over his lost miracle. He is ashamed to be throttling a pious hag and rattles her head back and forward with the shame.

The rapture of the Christians curdled to spleen when they were speckled with turd. Now they see Mal Rutherford has her in a death lock they begin to shout encouragement. Above his own grunts and the croaks and the whistles of Old Ms Harris he can hear their barracking.

‘Damned old bitch.'

‘Heretic.'

‘Kill her.'

‘Choke the old mole.'

‘Go, Bigfella. Go. Half-Nelson, commando style.'

Being an atheist, Rutherford is amazed and angry that
Christians can shout such hateful things and his anger at their wrongheadedness makes him let go of Old Ms Harris. He doesn't want to commit any act they might endorse. He stands above her, panting, and would help her to her feet if she were conscious. He glares around at the crowd which, now the action has stopped, feels embarrassed and shocked at its own hateful nature. Many of them look around at the milking machines, feigning an interest. Some stare up at the metal superstructure of the shed. All of them begin to drift outside, away, gone.

Having worshipped a fake saint and been splattered with turd and then caught out willing the death of an old lady, they have not enjoyed the
Revelatory Experience
Mal Rutherford's brochure promised. Now he starts to yell at them. ‘Yeah, go on. Get out, ya pack a' bastards. Go on … piss off. I made it meself, anyway. Hear that? I done it meself with a trowel and a picture of Derryn Hinch I cut from
Who Weekly
magazine. You think a cow could do it? You idiots. A cow's got no more idea of historical figures than a beaver does. Cows shit shit. I seen a million shits cows shitted and never so much as Popeye the Sailor Man in any of 'em.'

None of the Christians calls for a refund on their way out, though a few spin their tyres and throw gravel as they accelerate down Rutherford's driveway.

Old Ms Harris dies covered in the muck that had been St Paul. Mal Rutherford calls the police himself, and
when they arrive he thrusts his hands toward them to be cuffed and tells them he snapped. Tells them, ‘Look in the milking shed. She's in there … It's not … it's not pretty.' As they drive away with him in the paddy wagon a young detective posted from the city with schoolboy French and toilet humour begins to say quietly in a French accent, ‘Ze merderer. Ze merderer. Ve arrest ze merderer.' And is blinked at by his detective inspector and told to shut the hell up.

Hearing of the vicious debacle that has taken place at Rutherford's dairy, Christians lose faith in the local wonderments. They are suddenly revealed as a blasphemy and their owners are scowled at in the streets of Korumburra. This worship of graven images has gone far enough. It has cost a pious old lady her life. And, anyway, what type of idiot believes the Lord, maker of the marvellous, endless heavens, would reveal himself on a cow's plumage? Jesus' face is more likely to be displayed in a galaxy-wide supernova than on the belly of a beast. The idols were false. The rush is over. There is only the Church now.

Whose next function of note is Old Ms Harris' funeral. One takes comfort in the certainty the Church will not succumb to cheap and reflexive payback. One feels happy knowing the Church will not perceive this ceremony as a golden opportunity for revenge and a free swing at those who have strayed, and will not go to
work on her mourners with the glee of an inquisitor. But then, one is annually happy at the imminent reappearance of the Easter Bunny.

Its interior is hung about with black crepe and the mourners sit fidgeting, stifling their coughs and swallowing their phlegm in stoic silence, stealing glances at Old Ms H who is propped in a casket lined with red silk, still giving off an antiseptic air and wearing a neck-brace and a pout as if she is dreaming of burnt scones. At intervals during the service Father Gould goes to her and pats her like he might a puppy whining for reassurance. She was a Founding Disciple of the Church Community Group and Bishop Fairall is in attendance.

Father Gould has his mojo back, a big smile reconstructed from ear-to-ear. The people are beaten and have been dragged back like guilty sheep in their best track-suits. The Church owns God again. The priest's tattoos are covered and forgotten.

From the pulpit he looks down on the mourners, before pointing at Eunice Stronghold. ‘Eunice, how now the Nigerian choir?'

‘Disbanded, Father. In light of …'

Father Gould nods. Just so.

‘Tim Watson,' he points at the farmer. ‘Have you set aside the melon?'

‘I have, Father. Eaten.'

‘And do you feel foolish to have believed in a fruit, Tim? Do you feel … you have worshipped falsely? Unwisely? Like a heathen, or a brute?'

‘It wasn't the worst, Father. It was better than that
Noah in Paynesville. Everyone said it was a dead ringer for Mary.' He sees his priest scowling. ‘But, yeah, turned out probably it was fly-blight and not her.'

Father Gould glares at the mourners, so foolishly bewitched. ‘A melon,' he tells them. ‘Afflicted with blight.' He lets this sting awhile. ‘Oh … Let us pray.'

After the prayer Father Gould says softly, ‘Martha Harris loved God.' He opens his palms to the ceiling, the Church, wherein God. Then he glowers and shouts, ‘And because she loved God she despised melons masquerading as His messengers.' Father Gould snatches up a watermelon he has hidden by his feet in the pulpit and casts it into the aisle where it breaks open and its moist flesh is exposed to the thirsty congregation. Children are held in their seats by their parents. ‘She abhorred Friesians strutting like cherubim, did Martha. And the goat choir was, to her, a morbid cacophony proving what perfect fools her neighbours could be.

‘But Martha Harris, being good, being Christian, could see good in others. Martha Harris would say, if she were here now, and she is, and I can hear her, “Forgive them, Father. They are home again, in the bosom of the Church. They have strayed. But they are home. Forgive them.” She speaks as Jesus would. No surprise. For if any in our shire were marked with the sign of Our Lord it was not the melon, nor the boar, nor the glutinous stool of the milker … it was Martha Harris herself, marked by His compassion and His courage. Martha Harris became my whole congregation while you people wandered among the freak shows whinnying at
claptrap as if it were revelation. And … then … Martha Harris walked out alone to strike down blasphemy.

‘And in her triumph over that false Paul she paid the ultimate price. Covered in excrement … she crossed over. No state to meet the Lord, you think; slathered with cow-doings instead of dressed up in your Sunday best. Wrong. For I know this: they that arrive at the gates of heaven and make petition to St Peter while covered in the gore of false prophets are welcomed as champions and hosannas speed their entry, and those good few take a special place beside Jesus. Which is where Martha Harris sits now.'

His congregation, those few who are listening rather than coveting the flesh of the smashed melon with their tongues lolling, have an image of Old Ms Harris sitting next to a perfect Jesus on a cloudy couch; him radiating light, goodness, wisdom … her in a neck brace and covered in cow-turd. In their imaginations Jesus' nose wrinkles and his buttock cheeks grip at the cloud and creep surreptitiously, left, right, left, right, away from the spinster along the couch.