The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Out at the end of the world, on a long spit of land like a finger poking into oblivion, nestled in a valley among the dunes, sat the Church of Saint Ifritia, constructed from twisted driftwood and the battered hulls of ships. There was one tall, arched window composed of the round bottoms of blue bottles. The sun shone through it, submerging altar and pews. There was room for twenty inside, but the most ever gathered for a sermon was eleven. Atop its crooked steeple jutted a spiraled tusk some creature had abandoned on the beach.

The church’s walls had a thousand holes, and so every morning Father Walter said his prayers while shoveling sand from the sanctuary. He referred to himself as “father” but he wasn’t a priest. He used the title because it was what he remembered the holy men were called in the town he came from. Wanderers to the end of the world sometimes inquired of him as to the church’s denomination. He was confused by these questions. “A basic church, you know,” he’d say. “I talk God and salvation with anyone interested.” Usually the pilgrims would turn away, but occasionally one stayed on and listened.

Being that the Church of Saint Ifritia could have as few as three visitors a month, Father Walter didn’t feel inclined to give a sermon once a week. “My flock would be only the sand fleas,” he said to Sister North. “Then preach to the fleas,” she replied. “Four sermons a year is plenty,” he said. “One for each season. Nobody should need more than four sermons a year.” They were a labor for him to write, and he considered the task as a kind of penance. Why he gave sermons, he wasn’t sure. Their purpose was elusive, and yet he knew it was something the holy men did. His earliest ones were about the waves, the dunes, the sky, the wind, and when he ran out of natural phenomena to serve as topics, he moved inward and began mining memory for something to write.

Father Walter lived behind the whalebone altar in a small room with a bed, a chair, a desk, and a stove. Sister North, who attended a summer sermon one year, the subject of which was The Wind, and stayed on to serve Saint Ifritia, lived in her own small shack behind the church. She kept it tidy, decorated with shells and strung with tattered fishing nets, a space no bigger than Father Walter’s quarters. In the warm months, she kept a garden in the sand, dedicated to her saint. Although he never remembered having invited her to stay on, Father Walter proclaimed her flowers and tomatoes miracles, a cornucopia from dry sand and salt air, and recorded them in the official church record.

Sister North was a short, brown woman with long, dark hair streaked with grey, and an expression of determination. Her irises were almost yellow, cat-like, in her wide face. On her first night amid the dunes, she shared Father Walter’s bed. He came to realize that she would share it again as long as there was no mention of it during the light of day. Once a season, she’d travel ten miles inland by foot to the towns and give word that a sermon was planned for the following Monday. The towns she visited scared her, and only occasionally would she meet a pilgrim who’d take note of her message.

In addition to the church and Sister North’s shack, there were two other structures in the sand-dune valley. One was an outhouse built of red ship’s wood with a tarpaulin flap for a door and a toilet seat made of abalone. The other was a shrine that housed the holy relic of Saint Ifritia. The latter building was woven from reeds by Sister North and her sisters. She’d sent a letter and they’d come, three of them. They were all short and brown, with long, dark hair streaked with grey. None had yellow eyes, though. They harvested reeds from the sunken meadow, an overgrown square mile set below sea level among the dunes two miles east of the church. They sang while they wove the strands into walls and window holes and a roof. Father Walter watched the whole thing from a distance. He felt he should have some opinion about it, but couldn’t muster one. When the shrine began to take form, he knew it was a good thing.

Before Sister North’s sisters left to return to their lives, Father Walter planned a dedication for the relic’s new home. He brought the holy item to the service wrapped in a dirty old towel, the way he’d kept it for the past thirty years. Its unveiling brought sighs from the sisters, although at first they were unsure what they were looking at. A dark lumpen object, its skin like that of an overripe banana. There were toes and even orange, shattered toenails. It was assumed a blade had severed it just above the ankle, and the wound had, by miracle or fire, been cauterized. “Time’s leather” was the phrase Father Walter bestowed upon the state of its preservation. It smelled of wild violets.