Off to one side of the altar was what looked like a vestry room. I went back there. The water squirted out of my shoes when I walked. I took them off. Then I took off my pants. I looked around. There was a cassock hanging there, and some surplices. I took off everything, wet undershirt, wet drawers, wet socks, and put on the cassock. Then I took a lighter that was standing in a corner and started out to the sacristy lamp. I knew my matches wouldn’t work. Walking on a tile floor barefoot you don’t make much noise, and when she saw me with the lighter, in the cassock, I don’t know what she thought, or if she thought. She fell on her face in front of me and began to gibber, calling me padre and begging for absolución. “I’m not the padre, Juana. Look at me. It’s me.”
“Ah, Dios!”
“I’m lighting the candles so we can see.”
But I mumbled it low. I pulled down the lamp, lit the lighter and slipped it up again. Then I went around through the vestry room and up on the altar and lit three candles on one side, crossed over and lit three on the other. I cut the lighter, went back to the vestry room, put it in its place again. Then I went back and cut the car lights.
One funny thing about that that I didn’t realize until I snapped that switch. Each time I crossed that altar I went down on one knee. I stood there, looking at the six candles I had lit, and thought that over. It had been twenty years, ever since I had been a boy soprano around Chicago, since I had thought of myself as a Catholic. But they knock it into you. Some of it’s there to stay.
I lifted eggs and about fifteen other things from the rumble, until I could get out her hatbox. It was pretty wet but not as wet as the rest of the stuff. I took it back to the vestry room, set it down, then went out and touched her on the shoulder. “Your things are back there. You better get out of that wet dress.”
She didn’t move.
By that time it must have been about half past eight, and it dawned on me that why I felt so lousy was that I was hungry. I got a candle off the altar, lit it, went back and stuck it to the rear fender of the car, and took stock. I lifted out most of that stuff from the rumble seat, and unlashed what was riding the running board, and all I could see that was doing us any good was the eggs. I unwrapped one and took out my knife to puncture the end so I could suck it, and then I noticed the charcoal. That gave me an idea. There were some loose tiles in the floor and I clawed up a couple of them and carried them to the vestry room and stood them on their sides. Then I got one of the iron plates for cooking tortillas, and laid it across them and carried in the charcoal.
Next thing was how I was going to cook the eggs. There were no skillets or anything like that. And I went through every basket there was and there wasn’t any butter, grease, or anything you could use for grease. But there was a copper pot, bigger than I wanted but anyway a pot, so that meant that anyway I could boil the eggs. While I was rooting through those beans and rice and stuff that would take all night to cook, I smelled coffee and started looking for it. Finally I hit it, buried in with the rice in a paper bag, and then I found a little coffee pot. The coffee wasn’t ground, but there was a metate there for grinding corn, and I mashed up a couple of handfuls with that, and put it in a bowl.
I went in the vestry room with what I had and the next thing was what I was going to use for water. It was dripping through every seam in the room and running down the windows in streams, but it looked kind of tough to get enough of it to cook. Still, I had to get some. Out back I could hear a stream pouring off the roof, so I took the biggest of the bowls and pulled the bolt on the rear door, right back of the altar. But when I opened it I could see a well, just a few steps down the hill. I took off the cassock. It was the only dry thing there was, and I wasn’t letting it get wet. I went down to the well stark naked. The rain came down on me like a needle shower and at first it was terrible, but then it felt good. I threw out my chest against it and let it beat me. Then I pulled up the bucket and poured the water in the bowl. When I got back in the church with it I was running water even from my eyeballs. I felt around back of the altar for a closet. Oh, it was coming back to me, fast. I knew where they kept everything. Sure enough, I found a door and opened it, and there they were, the altar cloths, all in a neat pile. I took one, rubbed myself dry with it and put on the cassock. It was warm. I began to feel better.
The choir loft was off to one side and I started there to get a hymn book, so I could tear it up to start the fire. Then I changed my mind. Except for the window, there was no vent in the vestry room, and I didn’t want to be smoked out, right at the start. I took four or five pieces of charcoal, laid them in a little pile between my tiles, went back to the altar and got another candle. I held the flame under the charcoal, turning all the time to keep the melting even, and pretty soon I got a little glow. I fed a couple more pieces on, and it glowed still redder. In a minute it was off, and I blew out the candle. There was hardly any smoke. Charcoal doesn’t make much.
I laid the plate over the tiles, put the pot on it, and dipped some water in the pot. Then I dropped in some eggs. I started with six, but then I kept thinking how hungry I was, and I wound up with a dozen. I filled the coffee pot, scooped in some coffee, and put that on. Then I sat there, feeding the fire and waiting for the eggs to boil. They never did. The pot was too big or the fire too small, or something. The most I got was smoke coming off the top, but they were cooking all the time, so I didn’t worry much. Anyway, they’d be hot. But the coffee boiled. The old smell hit me in the nose, and when I lifted the lid the grounds were simmering around. I took an egg, went to the back door, broke it, and let the egg spill out on the ground. The shell I took back and dropped in the coffee. That was what it needed. It began to clear.
I watched the eggs some more, and then I thought about my cigarettes and matches. They were in my coat, and I went to the car to get it. Then I thought about her things. I put the cigarettes and matches on the end of the tortilla plate to dry. Her stuff I took out of the hatbox and draped them near the fire on a bench that was back there. What she had I could only half see. It was all damp, but it smelled like her. One dress was wool, and I put that nearest the heat, and a pair of shoes, on the floor near it. Then I got to wondering how we were going to eat the eggs, even if they ever got cooked. There were no spoons or anything like that, and I always hated eggs out of the shell. I went out to the car again and half filled a little bowl with corn meal. I came back, dipped a little water into it. I worked it with my fingers, and when it got pasty I patted some of it into a tortilla, or anyway into some kind of a flapjack that was big enough to hold an egg. I put it on the plate to cook, and when it began to turn color I turned it over. When it was done on both sides I tasted it. It didn’t taste right. I went out and got some salt I had found and forgotten to take. I mixed a little salt in, tried another one, and anyway you could eat it. Pretty soon I had twelve. That was one for each egg, and I thought that was enough.
All that took a long time, and there wasn’t one peep out of her the whole time I was at work. She had moved from the altar rail to a pew, but she was still out there, a rebozo over her head and her bare feet sticking out behind, where she was kneeling with her face in her hands. I slid in the pew, took her by the arm and led her into the vestry room. “I told you once to take off that wet dress. Here’s one that’s fairly dry, and you go back there and change it. If your underwear’s wet, you better take it off.”
I picked up the woolen dress and shoved her behind the altar with it. When she came back she had it on. “Sit on the bench so your feet will be on the warm tiles near the fire. When those shoes are dry you can put them on.”
She didn’t. She sat on the bench, but with her back to the fire, so her feet were on cold tiles. That was so she could face the altar. She dropped her head in her hands and began to mutter. I got out my knife, broke an egg tortilla, and shoved it at her. The egg was half hard and half soft, but it rode the tortilla all right.
She shook her head. I put the tortilla down, went to the altar,
got three or four candles, lit them, came back and stuck them around. Then I closed the door, the one that led to the altar and that I had kept open, to have more light. That kind of blocked her off on the muttering and she half turned around. When she saw the tortillas she laughed. That seemed to help. “Look very fonny.”
“Well, maybe they look fonny but I didn’t notice you doing much about them. Anyway, you can eat them.”
She picked up the tortilla, half wrapped it around the egg and bit into it. “Taste very fonny.”
“The hell it does.”
I had bit into my first one by then, and it hit the spot. We wolfed them down. She ate five and I ate seven. We were talking in a natural tone of voice for the first time since we got in out of the storm, and it came to me it was because that door that led to the altar was shut. I got up and closed the other door, the one leading into the church, and that made it still better. We got to the coffee and there was nothing we could drink it out of but one little bowl, so we took turns. She would take a guzzle and then I would. In a minute I reached for the cigarettes. They were dry, and so were the matches. We lit up and inhaled. They tasted good.
“You feel better now?”
“Yes, gracias. Was very cold, very hongry.”
“You still worried about the sacrilegio?”
“No, not now.”
“There wasn’t any sacrilegio, you know.”
“Yes, very bad.”
“No, not a bit. It’s the Casa de Dios, you know. Everybody’s welcome in here. You’ve seen the burros in here, haven’t you? And the goats? On the way to market? The car is just the same. If we had to break the door in, that was only because we didn’t have any key. I showed plenty of respect, didn’t I? You saw me genuflect every time I crossed, didn’t you?”
“Genu—”
“Bow—in front of the Host?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No sacrilegio there, was there? You’re all upset about nothing. Don’t worry, I know. I know as much about it as you do. More probably.”
“Very bad sacrilegio. But I pray. Soon, I confess. I confess to the padre. Then, absolución. No bad any more.”
By that time it must have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. The rain hadn’t let up, but sometimes it would be heavy, sometimes not so bad. The thunder and lightning would come up and go. There must have been three or four storms rolling up those canyons from the sea, and we’d get it, and it would die away and then we’d get it again. One was coming up now. She began to do what I’d noticed her doing once in the car, hold her breath and then speak, after a second or two when you could almost hear her heart beat. I tumbled that the sacrilegio was only part of what was eating on her. Most of it was the storm. “The lightning bother you?”
“No. The trueno, very bad.”
It didn’t look like it would pay to try to explain to her that the lightning was the works, the thunder nothing but noise, so I didn’t try. “Try to sing a little. That generally helps. You know La Sandunga?”
“Yes, very pretty.”
“You sing and I’ll be mariachi.”
I began to drum on the bench and do a double shuffle with my feet. She opened her mouth to sing, but there came a big clap of thunder just then, and she didn’t quite make it. “Outside, I no feel afraid. I like. Is very pretty.”
“A lot of people are like that.”
“Home, with Mamma, I no feel afraid.”
“Well—that’s practically outside, at that.”
“Here, afraid, very much. I think about the sacrilegio, think about many things. I feel very bad.”
You couldn’t blame her much because it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a gay place. I understood how she felt. I felt a little that way myself.
“Anyhow, it’s dry. In spots.”
The lightning came and I put my arm around her. The thunder broke and the candles guttered. She put her head on my shoulder and hid her face in my neck.
It died off after a while and she sat up. I opened the window a crack to get a little oxygen in the air, and put a couple more sticks of charcoal on the fire. “You had a good dinner?”
“Yes, gracias.”
“You feel like a little work?”
“… Work?”
“Suppose you be fixing us up a place to sleep while I wash up.”
“Oh yes—gladly.”
I went and brought the mats and then got out a pile of altar cloths. Then I took the pots, bowls, and water out back and washed them up. I couldn’t see very well, but I did the best I could. I had to duck out to the well once or twice, stripped down like I was before, and rub off with the same old cloth, so it took me about a half hour. When I got done I piled the things up inside the door and went in there. She was already in bed. She had taken three or four of the mats and some altar cloths, for herself, and bedded me down across the room.
I blew out the candles we had eaten by, and stepped out on the altar to blow out the ones I had lit there, and then I noticed the other one, the one I had stuck to the car fender, was still burning. I stepped over the rail, went back there and blew it out. Then I started up to the altar again. My legs felt queer and shaky. I slipped in a pew and sat down.
I knew what it was all right, and it came to me then why I had put her to fixing the mats and taken all that time to wash up. I had hoped she would just fix one bed, and then when she didn’t, it was like a wallop in the pit of the stomach to me. I had even quit wondering why I was the only man on the face of the earth she wouldn’t sleep with. What I hated was that it made any difference to me.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I wanted to smoke, and I had the cigarettes and matches with me, but I just held them in my hand. I was over by the choir loft, out of line with the Blessed Sacrament, but I was right in line with the crucifix, and I couldn’t make myself light up. Another storm began to come up. I enjoyed it that she was across there in the vestry room, all alone, and scared to death. It kept rolling up, the worst we had had yet. There came two flashes of lightning, and then one terrific shot of thunder right after them. The candles were just guttering up again when there came a blaze of lightning, and the thunder right with it, and every candle up there went out. For a second you couldn’t see a thing but the red spot of the sacristy lamp.
Then she began to scream. From where she was, with the door to the altar open like I had left it, maybe she caught it sooner than I did. Or maybe for a split second I had my eyes closed. I don’t know. Anyway, the church filled with green light, and then it seemed to settle over the crucifix, so the face looked alive, like it was going to cry out. Then you couldn’t see anything but the red spot.
She was screaming her head off now, and I had to have light.I dived for the choir loft, scratched a match, and lit the organ candles. I don’t know how many there were. I lit them all, so it was a blaze of candles. Then I turned to go and light the altar candles again, but I would have to cross in front of the crucifix and I couldn’t do it. All of a sudden I sat down to the organ. It was a small pedal organ, and I pumped with my bare feet and started to play. I kept jerking out stops, to make it louder. The thunder rolled, and the louder it rolled the louder I played. I didn’t know what I was playing, but after a while I knew it was an Agnus Dei I cut it off and started a Gloria. It was louder. The thunder died off and the rain came down like all Niagara was over us. I played the Gloria over again.
“Sing.”
I couldn’t see her. She was outside the circle of light, where I was sitting in the middle. But I could feel her, up at the altar rail again, and if singing was what she wanted, that suited me too. I skipped the Qui Tollis, the Quoniam, and the rest of it down to the Credo, and went on from there. Don’t ask me what it was. Some of it was Mozart, some of it was Bach, some of it was anybody you can think of. I must have sung a hundred masses in my time, and I didn’t care which one it was, so I could go on without a break. I went straight through to the Dona Nobis, and played off soft after I finish
ed it, and then I stopped. The lightning and thunder had stopped again, and the rain was back to its regular drumming.
“Yes.”
She just whispered it, but she drew it out like she always did, so the end of it was a long hiss. “… Just like the priest.”
My head began to pound like it would split. That was the crown of skunk cabbage, all right, after all the years at harmony, of sight-reading, of piano, of light opera, of grand opera in Italy, Germany and France—to be told by this Indian that couldn’t even read that I sounded like a priest. And it didn’t help any that that was just what I sounded like. The echo of my voice was still in my ears and there was no getting around it. It had the same wooden, dull quality that a priest’s voice has, without one particle of life in it, one echo that would make you like it.
My head kept pounding. I tried to think of something to say that would rip back at her, and couldn’t.
I got up, blew out all the candles but one, and took that one with me. I started up past the crucifix to cross over to the vestry room. She wasn’t at the crucifix. She was out in front of the altar. At the foot of the crucifix I saw something funny and held the candle to see what it was. It was three eggs, in a bowl. Beside them was a bowl of coffee and a bowl of ground corn. They hadn’t been there before. Did you ever hear of a Catholic putting eggs, coffee, and corn at the foot of the cross? No, and you never will. That’s how an Aztec treats a god.
I crossed over, and stood behind her, where she was crouched down, on her knees, her face touching the floor and her hands pressing down beside it. She was stark naked, except for a rebozo over her head and shoulders. There she was at last, stripped to what God put there. She had been sliding back to the jungle ever since she took off that first shoe, coming out of Taxco, and now she was right in it.
Three by Cain: Serenade/Love's Lovely Counterfeit/The Butterfly Page 5
