Why was I responsible for the Bishop’s funeral? Sure, I’d been attached to the diocesan office for a couple of years, but only because Bishop Pfister had wanted to, in his words, “keep an eye on me.”

Shortly after my ordination, he said to me, “You’re a real degenerate, you know, of course.”

What could I say? I nodded.

The mortician from Hollins and Kriegbaum called on Saturday morning to tell me that Pfister had died in his sleep. I was shaving. Bud, the mortician and a good Catholic to boot, told me that Pfister had left a note that I was to be in charge of planning the wake and memorial service. I was dumbfounded. Why me? I hung up the phone. The old priest was standing in the doorway.

“The Bishop’s just died,” I said. “You’ll have to handle the confessions by yourself this afternoon. Can I borrow your car?”

The old priest grunted, left the keys on my dresser, and went back to his room to smoke.

Details, details. The dicoesan officials had already selected a coffin, a plain cherry box. One official had a lumpy pile of Pfister’s vestments strung over his arm.

“We won’t need those,” I said.

“Why?” the man asked.

“Because Bishop Pfister wanted to be buried naked.”

Looks of disbelief from the morticians in their blue suits and the men from the diocese.

“I don’t have anything written to prove that,” I said. “But the Bishop often said in our conversations that he wanted to go out of this world in the way that he’d come into it.”

Pfister probably would have appreciated my small deception. Rather than the casual look of the priest in short shirt sleeves or the full bishop’s regalia, an incenser tucked under his arm like a late-arriver at a party clutching a velour-wrapped bottle of Dry Sack. Still, the good Catholics stared.

“I suppose we could ignore his wishes, but—”

“No,” said one of the men. “A bishop’s last wish is his last wish.”

They all nodded, although Bud looked skeptical.

Details, details. The wake would be Monday night, the service the following morning. His pallbearers would be friends culled from among his seminary classmates. The preacher, a thin, big-voiced priest from the South Side. The wake would be simple. An open casket there, a white pall at the memorial service. We settled it all within an hour, Pfister’s body in the other room, stretched out on the embalming table. It was already in the middle of its slow, self-regulated stew. His thoughts, liquid, drained with the cold blood through plastic tubes.

Around three A.M., Bud called me.

“You’d better get down here,” he said.

I begged off. It was the middle of the night. I had five masses scheduled the next day. My imagination sorted what the old priest would exact from in exchange for hearing the full round of confessions. [My friend, Michos, hadn’t called in five days.]

“No, you’d better get down here.”

At the mortuary, we stood beside the embalming table, both staring with disbelieving eyes.

“I’ve heard about this before, but never actually seen it,” Bud said.

Bishop Janus Pfister lay on the table—cold, unmoving, reclined, unchanged all but for a stunning eight-inch erection, lifted straight from some pornographer’s dream.

“It’s like when a dog gets hit by a car,” Bud said. “His carcass’ll have an erection. My old man called it a ‘hard peter.’ All the fluids collect in one place, they say.”

“Does anyone else know about this?” I asked.

He shook his head. We said nothing. What could we say in the presence of that dead man’s pecker?

“We could still have an open casket at the wake,” he said. “The material should cover it.”

“Do you think—” But I had no thought to finish.

“I could take it off,” Bud said.

The thought of the mortician climbing onto table, astride Pfister and his massive dong, waving a pair of loppers seemed too undignified, even for this dead curmudgeon.

“No,” I said. “Do you think we could tie it down with something?”

Bud disappeared into the side office where they kept information on death records and police reports. He returned with a rubber band, the thickness of two fingers and the circumference of the average man’s leg. Together, we slid it up Pfister’s naked left leg. I had to lean across the table and his erection kept tapping my shoulder. When we got the rubber band mid-thigh, Bud put on a pair of surgical gloves, yanked Pfister’s penis down, and slid it carefully beneath the rubber band.

“That ought to hold it,” he said.

I nodded.

***

On Monday night, we gathered for the Bishop’s wake. Those who came to pay their respects would walk up to the casket, stare down at the naked corpse, Pfister’s scratchy, thin hair poking up through his fatty chest. They’d walk away, dead-faced, saying nothing. We got over it though. The open bar helped. Pfister’s seminary classmates, a thin crowd of horny, old priests stood hung-armed, sipping Jameson’s from half-filled plastic cups while one priest stood in the middle telling dirty jokes. People came and left. The dirty joke-teller prayed the rosary. We sat in the folding chairs, listening politely. Although in the middle of the prayers, there was a loud snap. I lifted my head in time to see Pfister’s still erect penis fly end over end across the room into a bank of Chinese evergreens. I watched it. A few others acknowledged the sound, but didn’t see or didn’t believe what they saw. Bud wasn’t there. My own private revelation.

After the wake, I slipped over to the bank of plants, reached in, and grabbed it. Without looking, I put it into my jacket pocket and left.

***

It was beautiful, the way that it rolled through the air, like a baton slung by some sparkling Texas schoolgirl. It was near midnight and [although Michos hadn’t called in a week,] things seemed right. The trumpet on the radio, Pfister’s penis in my coat pocket on the seat next to me. These happy thoughts filled me as I went through the red light at Milwaukee and Fullerton. The cop’s lights startled me.

“Good evening, Father. Did you notice that you went through that red light back there?”

“No. I’m sorry, officer. It’s been a long day. I’m just coming from the Bishop’s funeral.”

“I understand. Can I just see your license and registration?”

“Certainly.” I reached across and opened the glovebox, fishing for the registration for the old priest’s car. It wasn’t there.

“I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem to be there. This is a friend’s car. Father Krueger’s. It—”

The cop shrugged.

“Don’t worry, Father. I’ll just call it in.”

I watched in the rear-view mirror as the cop went back to his car. Nervously, I looked down to see Pfister’s penis shining brightly on the seat next to me. I grabbed it and dashed from the car towards the nearest alleyway.

The cop’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “Hold it there, Father.”

I ignored him. I ran. The cop’s voice following me. Turned the corner. Ran. Into the alley. I ran. Down. Into the world.

————

Garin Cycholl’s recent work includes Rx, a novel about a man practicing medicine without a license in a (Dis)united States.