After splitting up the cash they received from the mayor for healing his daughter, St. Peter and Brother Jim go their separate ways.

And so St. Peter took a different road, but I thought, Just as well he’s trotting off. Saints alive, what a character!

Now I had plenty of money, to be sure, but I’ve never been very thrifty or frugal. I wound up squandering some and giving the rest away. I was flat broke again.

As I walked along I came into a town, went to a corner store, and picked up a copy of The National Enquirer. The head line that day read “Senator in Mourning for his Mistress.”

Hello, I thought,  this is going to be something. I’ll make that girl come back to life and make him pay through the nose. So I went to the senator and offered to bring his mistress back to life.

Now the senator had read in the National Enquirer about a discharged soldier traveling through the state bringing dead people back to life and hadn’t put much stock in the report. But when I showed up offering to raise his honey from the dead he decided he take a chance. What did he have to lose?

So I had them bring me a kettle of water, and made everybody go outside. I cut the mistress into pieces, threw them into the water, and kit a fire under the kettle, just as I watched St. Peter do.

The water began to boil and the flesh fell off the bones. I took the bones out and put them on the table, only I didn’t remember the order in which they went and laid them every which way, back to front.

Then I went and stood before the bones and said, “In the nmae of the most Holy Trinity, you who are dead, aride.” I said this three times, but the bones didn’t move. So I said it three more times in vain. “Arise you silly goose, if you know what’s good for you!” I said.

Monday: “The ‘Pete Man’ Saves the Day!

—

The Adventures of Brother Jim based on the story “Brother Gaily” from The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm.