“A talking tree.”
“I see.”
Cricket said, “Father, Ron’s death is just one more reason why it’s no longer safe for you to stay here. We want to take you to the Ledges today. They’re well protected—off the beaten path. It’s a good place for the winter months and not likely that the savages will invade a cold state park with the wind blowing off a frozen lake.”
Fritz added, “Open spaces to the west and east allow the Mustang to adequately defend the Ledges before a large force could launch their assault. A five-minute flight from here and we could include the Ledges in our daily recon mission.”
“But how practical would it be for me to get back here once a week—bring Communion, talk to my congregation?”
“Can’t promise, Father,” Fritz said.
“I could fill in for Father,” Sister Marie said, and Father Danko smiled. “I’d do my best to attend the sick, counsel families, especially the children. Many of them have been really harmed emotionally.”
Father said, “It’s getting worse too. Last night they made a fire on the steps, dancing around it quite out of their minds—ten to fifteen young people. Their parents are afraid to step in. The attacks last night will only make folks hunker down even more.”
Fritz said, “We saw people fighting back last night, too, protecting their children, their homes.”
“And I should be here then, protecting Saint Andrew’s,” Father said.
“The Brazilian woman has this church in her sights,” Sister said. “There’s not enough of us to interfere with her designs. We’re here, Father, because we can’t keep her people out if they decide to attack.”
“What about the National Guard?” He looked to Fritz.
“If they come today it’s going to take some time to know their lasting effect. And they could be called elsewhere. A battle’s coming, and our best course of action is hit and run if the troops don’t arrive, and encourage folks to keep guarding their homes. A lot of these criminals are frightened of the unknown, and last night they discovered families willing to make a lot of trouble for them. But we can’t hold a large building without taking casualties and eventually losing it. I’m sorry, Father. But my sense is to let the witch come in without a fight and take it. We’ll do everything to take it back as soon as we can.”
Father asked, “Do we have a better sense of who she is, what she wants?”
“She wants the world that we all know and love to never return,” Cricket said, reaching for Sister Marie’s hand. “The old world giving way to her new world of lust, drugs, and a few laptops and cell phones to ensnare her followers. Her screwball philosophy is changing all the time.”
“She’s focused and terribly deranged,” Sister added, “and keeps a bunch of beautiful young men and women as both a Praetorian Guard and harem.”
“She knows she can’t succeed,” Father Danko said, confident of his assertion.
“She doesn’t care.” Sister Marie held her rosary in both hands. “She loves the moment, the sensations of the moment—sex, killing, fear permeating this town. Those are her building blocks for a new world. She expects others to pick up the scent and follow her vision when she falls.”
“Sister’s right, Father,” Cricket said. “If she were to be wiped out in battle, she’d relish that … you know, the sun goddess going down in flames and all that crap. She needs to suffer a defeat that’ll make her followers lose heart.”
Cricket drove and Fritz scanned the fields and forests for trouble. Besides his .45 sidearm, he had an AR-15 across his lap. Father Danko and Sister Marie talked some, but were mostly quiet and solemn after Father’s self-removal from Saint Andrew’s. His housekeeper, who lived alone, would be moving in with another parish family. Tony was responsible for keeping crews of three to six local residents to guard the locked church and rectory. Before Father had made his journey, the crowd out front had chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go” after smoking a lot of dope. They had no clue of Father’s disappearance.
The Barracuda comfortably maintained sixty miles per hour and was the lone car mile after mile passing pickups and cars that had been abandoned by their owners. Cricket could have gone faster, but she didn’t know what surprises awaited her along the two-lane road. Some cars still blocked one or both lanes. They spotted a few people in their yards, children at a game of catch. They passed fields with folks behind horse-drawn plows and at the back of an unplowed field was the tail of a National Guard F-16 that had fallen from the sky after the EMP pulse fried the plane’s electronic engine control.
When Cricket rested her right hand on the seat, Fritz snatched it and kissed it.
“Marry me,” he said. She looked at him and swerved and went off the road into the berm, kicking up dust and gravel and shouts from the backseat.
Sister Marie shouted, “Cricket, mercy, what’s going on up there?”
“I want you today and every day for the rest of time,” Fritz said, and Cricket hit the accelerator and the car lunged with a big cat’s grace, stepping into a full run. She stayed focused on the road ahead, and now Father Danko was yelling to slow down.
“I could have stayed in the Falls and died there,” he screamed from the back seat.
“You want to marry me so we can have sex today?” Cricket yelled.
“And tomorrow,” he said.
She braked hard and the Barracuda skidded, coming to a stop next to a field of wheat. She turned off the engine. The dust hung in the air and it was quiet in the back seat. Cricket opened the door and started walking down the road. Fritz followed.
“Mary and Joseph, what’s going on?” Father Danko stood up in the back seat and watched the drama unfold. Cricket kept walking when Fritz came up alongside her.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“If we’re getting married, I need to think.”
“Our passengers?”
Cricket snapped a look at the car and saw Father with his mouth open and Sister Marie smiling.
“They’ll be fine for a while.”
“What?”
“We made love and you want to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Because of the sex?”
“Of course, and everything else—”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. Ever fall in love?”
“Once. Three years ago.”
“Did you want to marry her right away?”
“No.”
“Any regrets?”
“No.”
“Did you fall out of love?”
“No.”
Cricket stopped and looked directly at him. “That’s a deal-killer—”
“She stopped loving me. She said she made a mistake.”
“If she showed up right now, right here, ready to fall into your arms—”
“Before I met you I’d have let her fall back into my arms. Now that I’ve met you, that feeling’s gone.”
They had already walked some distance from the car. Sister and Father had gotten out and were stretching their legs.
“If I don’t measure up a year from now, five minutes from now, are you going to pine for her?”
“Emily Cricket Hastings, you take my breath away. No woman has ever done that.”
“I’m crazy about you, Fritz.”
They leapt at each other and Cricket thought she heard their passengers gasp loudly in fear that they were going to tear each other apart. They kissed for a long time.
She asked, “You think we have time to get married at the Ledges and still go flying today?”
“If we start driving soon instead of walking.”
They kissed again and headed back to the car.
“I never heard a yes,” Fritz said.
Cricket jumped straight up, arms over her head, the iconic cheerleader ascending. She screamed “yes!” multiple times.
44
A Blessing
Arm in arm they approached the Barracuda, greeted by a smiling priest and nun.
Father said, “We were close to death several times, so I figure it had to be something transformative.”
“Love sweet love.” Sister Marie beamed.
Fritz rushed his sentence: “We’re getting married today, Father, if we could impose upon you—”
“Absolutely. We’ll have an outdoor Mass with Sister as witness and server.”
Sister Marie got teary-eyed and ran to Cricket. They both shook and cried and squealed in each other’s arms. Father Danko walked over to Fritz and gave him a bear hug, saying:
“A moment of perfection in a very lovely, imperfect world.”
Father walked to the passenger door and held it open for Sister, who climbed in, sniffling into her hankie.
“Bride to be, your chariot awaits.” Father Danko embraced Cricket before she got in. He ran around to the driver’s side and took his seat in the back with Sister. Fritz closed the heavy, wide door and placed both hands on the wheel.
“Don’t trust me to drive today?” Cricket addressed the group.
“No, we don’t,” Father said to laughter. “But we fully expect you to fly to the moon and back without breaking a sweat.”
The wind was neither hot nor cold but pure energy at fifty miles per hour. Cricket wondered if she would someday drive the sky blue Barracuda into the next life full of the people she loved. She thought the throaty purr of the old muscle car would be a fine counterpoint to angels on the wing. And then she realized Sister Marie was singing a hymn she had never heard before. The melody and words were a blessing for her and Fritz.
45
Wilderness Chapel
Father Danko selected a flat sandstone rock for the altar, close to the size of Saint Andrew’s. A thirty-foot cliff was the backdrop, and halfway up a small dogwood grew from a crevice. From Father’s Mass kit he placed a yard-long white linen cloth upon the massive stone and set out a gold chalice, a six-inch-tall silver cross near the center, and two candles. Off to the side he positioned a bowl for washing his hands and the ciborium containing the hosts. Glass cruets for water and wine had already been filled by Sister. The last item was a purple stole with gold fringe that he kissed and placed around his neck so that it hung down his chest.
A family of five were happy to participate, and it was decided that their seventeen-year-old son would walk Cricket to the altar and their six-year-old daughter would be both the ring bearer and flower girl. Sister Marie just happened to be carrying a dark shade of red lipstick and handed it to Cricket with a wink and a smile. The young bride applied it using the Barracuda’s rearview mirror.
The noonday sun poured into the hollow of canted sandstone rocks and lit the footpath that went further into nature’s spectacle. A waterfall could be heard not far from where they stood. Near the wedding site, men with rifles patrolled the paths and main entrance to the Ledges. Since Cricket and Sister Marie had been there a month ago, more than a dozen families had decided to make it their home. Each family had a cabin and supplies for winter. Her dad would have been proud of their determination, and Uncle Tommy could have caught up on his reading. “Cricket, this winter I’m finally putting my feet up, no running all over the place. I’ve never read Huck Finn and I looked at the first few pages and, boy, I’m hooked.”
It grew quiet as Father welcomed everyone for Mass. Sister Marie started singing the “Ave Maria,” a melody made for woods and stone as much as it was made for the beauty of Saint Andrew’s.
Father made the sign of the cross and Mass began. Fritz stood next to the sandstone altar grinning at Cricket. Cricket stood back, maybe thirty feet away, with the handsome teen on her right. The young girl got the nod from Father and slowly made her way to nature’s altar with an armful of wildflowers and the rings in her pocket. Sister’s voice became a whisper in the great hymn before it slowly began to build. Father had taken Cricket’s confession shortly after they’d arrived, and the lightness she felt was akin to her very first confession and Communion.
Father read the gospel from the lectionary, a red-covered book where all the Sunday gospel readings were found. He first read Genesis, the creation of man and woman, and from the New Testament, Saint Paul:
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine
Or nakedness, or peril or the sword?
Cricket listened to the bold answer to these calamities and glanced at the fallen leaves by her feet. God’s love would be the only power capable of carrying her and her husband safely through trials she couldn’t even imagine. She looked up and he was smiling at her, a winning smile that had been worn by free men over the centuries.
Father Danko started his homily. Cricket glanced around and saw that the small group gathered had grown in number, as other settlers had heard of the wedding.
Father said, “I’ve known the groom for years and the bride for about five minutes. But what I felt in the short time they were together was the chemistry of attraction and love. They both have demonstrated, in truly difficult times, their love of friends and strangers. And so it is no wonder that they found each other and love each other with that special calling reserved for a man and a woman.
“When I sanctify the bread and wine today, remember that we are accepting Christ in the present, because it’s in the present that these wafers and wine become the body and blood of our Savior. Like a river, His grace floods our lives. He’s present as we sweep the floor in the morning, make breakfast”—he turned to the couple—“make love and make children—
“This is what I want our young couple to know: they’ll never be separated again. Nor can they ever be separated from Christ. In the darkness that has momentarily come to our world, we should be reminded that the darkness can thrive even with all the lights working and in the middle of a great festival of lights and progress. Yet even in the worst of times Christ’s love flows unabated, filling our lives to the brim. Only the true light of the world can redeem us.
“In times of terror and darkness, our young couple can look to the Savior and remember his three words of courage: ‘Be not afraid.’ Have there ever been more courageous words spoken as sweetly and with such affection as these words of Christ? As Fritz and Cricket go forward in their lives that is a phrase to be written on their hearts.” He paused, and then said: “Now let us pray.”
Cricket felt the seasons passing in the course of the Mass. After she and Fritz exchanged vows, she smiled at the young ring bearer who, after handing the priest the rings, sighed loudly, relieved of her responsibility and immune to the laughter that followed.
Fritz tenderly slipped a white-gold band onto Cricket’s finger, and she slid a gold band onto his with such emotion that another part of her pulled back for a moment, and she briefly watched the ceremony standing alongside Sister Marie. The woman next to Fritz was full of passion for their union. The woman next to Sister had a cool center that admired Fritz with clarity. Both parts of her would love Fritz to the end of time. And somehow her parents knew her joy.
Driving back to the Falls with only Sister in the back seat, Cricket finally asked, “Where did my ring come from?”
“My grandmother’s ring,” Fritz said. “I asked Dad for it days ago.”
“You got my father’s. Mom’s ring is here.” From her blouse she pulled out the silver chain and gold band.
Cricket was overwhelmed with emotion, staring at the ring on her hand, saying, “It’s beautiful.” She turned to Sister. “You knew all along he was going to ask me?”
“Yes, for a very long time—since this morning. Judy suggested the lipstick.”
“And Father Danko?”
“No idea,” Sister Marie said. “He’s probably reviewing right now the day’s events—the great ride in the Barracuda, the scary part too, and the interesting stop in the middle of nowhere where you two enacted a wonderful boy-girl drama, and then blowi
ng his mind with the wedding. He probably won’t sleep for days.”
“You’ve been enjoying yourself too, Sister,” Cricket said, turning in her seat, catching Sister Marie’s sly but proud smile.
“You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Holaday.”
“Emily Cricket Hastings Holaday,” Fritz exhaled, pretending to run out of breath. “Can I call you Cricket?”
“All day long, sweetheart.”
PART IV
A DARKENED HEART
46
Death and Love
Sister Marie decided to go with the married couple to the airfield. She was still stunned by the mighty fighter.
“It couldn’t be more fitting than to name it after the American mustang. This is the most delightful flying ship I’ve ever seen up close. Now I know it has a serious mission,” Sister said, walking past the muzzles of the .50-caliber guns, “but I expect both of you to fly this plane a lot in peacetime, too.”
“I don’t own it, Sister,” Fritz said. “Wright-Patterson will surely want it back once the world gets its head on straight. Until then, average guys like me get to do things I never dreamed possible.”
Dennis was reading some old aviation magazine and said that Frank was headed to Youngstown and then Pittsburgh to see if there were any Guard movements in the east.
Cricket climbed in first after they did a husband-wife preflight, with Cricket catching little items before Fritz did.
Fritz followed, coming around the left side of the plane, saying, “Sister, we’re headed west to Cleveland and will recon in the general area north and south of the Falls. We should be back within the hour. The mechanics will keep you company. They’re caught up on the Skyhawk and don’t have anything to do until one of the P-51s returns. If you’d like to learn more about the Mustang, Dennis will talk your ear off.”
Pulse of the Goddess: American Blackout Book One Page 23
