Excerpt from The Delinquent Virgin

The Reverend Hamilton Reedy often wrestled with uncharitable thoughts. For instance, he wondered — uncharitably — if seventeen-year-old Lisa Kellogg ought to have the role of the Virgin in the church's Christmas pageant. Then he dismissed the question as needlessly legalistic. Of his superior, Bishop Throckmorton, Hamilton Reedy believed (uncharitably, but correctly) that the Bishop used sincerity to mask his colossal ineptitude and gross opportunism. However, as Hamilton sat in the church study penning one of his usual defensive letters to the Bishop, he took a rather different tone, explaining his unorthodox attitudes (as the unorthodox always do) in lofty terms. He had crumpled this draft and trashed it just before the church secretary, Mrs. Leila Doggett, tapped at his door and announced that the police were here.

The reverend rose to greet the two officers who identified themselves as Washington and Green, the former a black man, about forty with a lined face and graying hair. Green, a much younger white man, suffered from a weak chin. "Thank you for coming so quickly," the Reverend extended a hand to each man. "Would you like some coffee?"

"I don't think we have time," said Officer Washington, whipping out an official set of forms in triplicate and poising his pen over them.

"You've seen the empty Nativity scene in front of the church, I take it," the Reverend said gravely. "It's a sad testament to the tenor of our times, gentlemen, that someone would actually steal the Holy Family from in front of a church itself." At that moment he considered dispensing with the Christmas Eve meditation he'd already written and substituting something along these lines-but then again, no. Too grim. Christmas was about uplift. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Christmas was about glory, not theft. Leave the thieves for Easter, Good Friday, darkness at noon, that sort of …

Officer Washington cleared his throat, calling the Reverend's attention back to the topic at hand. "You'll be happy to know, Reverend, that we've found your Holy Family."

"You have? Well, this is good news." Hamilton rubbed his hands together and smiled.

Green and Washington glanced nervously at each other. Green continued. "The Holy Family was on the steps of the city jail, the downtown police station, this morning when our shift came on. We didn't know, until we got your call, where they'd come from."

"On the steps of the police station?" inquired Hamilton. "That's a very odd place for thieves to leave them."

"We suspect kids. Malicious mischief."

"Rather nervy kids to leave them on the police-station steps, don't you think? This sounds graver than mere mischief."

Rather than reply, Officer Washington began asking a series of predictable questions. Naturally the Reverend's answers were unsatisfactory: he had driven past the front of the church this morning, noticed, to his alarm, that the Holy Family was missing from the Nativity scene and called the police. Simple.

Completing his form, Washington stuck his pen back in his pocket, gave a copy to Reedy, and assure the Reverend that no harm was done. "I'm afraid, though, you'll have to come down to the station to collect them. You'll have to sign. Stolen property, you know."

Green offered, "The duty officers took them off the station steps and brought them in the waiting room. They look mighty strange there among the derelicts and hookers and drunks."

The Reverend said he would pick the Holy Family up in the church van later that afternoon.

"The sooner the better," said Washington as they took their booted, uniformed selves from the Reverend's study.

"Nasty brats did this," announced Mrs. Doggett, refreshing the Reverend's coffee cup. She was a prim woman, fond of cardigans and polyester pants, overfond of chocolate toffees; the scent of chocolate toffees clung to everything she touched. Mrs. Doggett heaped calumny not only on the perpetrators of this crime, built on their parents and grandparents as well. "Is your letter to the Bishop ready for me to type?" she concluded.

"Not just yet, Leila. It must be perfect, you know -- or as close to perfect as we can come in this imperfect world."

Copyright 1999 by Laura Kalpakian. All rights reserved.