Elias's Fence
Page 22
If you looked, you could see Christine's soul gazing out of three pairs of sparkling azure eyes.
She was with them even as they mounted the horses. They rode swiftly over the land, and Rachael lifted the lid of the urn and offered her mother's ashes to the wind.
They settled on the brush, in the stream, on the rocks...and a small puff of dust blew into Rachael's long blonde hair.
They placed the empty urn at the edge of their land and in the morning it was gone – the Aborigine old ones had found a treasure.
Later, they talked about their plans, discussing school, business, ranching, but knowing that now there was time to travel, to see the reef and Ayers Rock and all the wonders of this new world. It would come; they would find their way; a time would be ripe for deciding.
It was Rachael who suggested, "Let's write to Rosa, tell her we're okay, and tell her about..." She stopped.
"Sure," her brothers agreed. “But we’re not sure if the address is still good, if she’s really still there in Nuevo Laredo.”
They argued about which photographs to send her.
"No, not that one," Rachael said, snatching it away. "I look too fat."
"Not that one," Matthew said, "we all look retarded."
It took half an hour to decide and then each one wrote a brief paragraph. They sealed the bulging letter and Luke mailed it the next day in Alice Springs.
But Rosa never got the letter, for she had returned to the small village in Mexico.
She had even managed to save most of the money Christine had given her, for when the train was stalled because of a strike, she met a young man in a battered truck who was going back to Mexico as well. By coincidence, he was from a nearby village and just for the price of gas he drove Rosa and the boys home.
The small poor village of adobe huts looked so good to her, and she had enough money to buy a little two-room house. Out of her windows, she could see the spire of St. Angelo and the tolling of the bells that called the faithful to Mass was music to her ears; it was a sound she had thought she would never hear again.
Often she thought of them, Christine's children, and she remembered them in her prayers for she knew how God had blessed her; his blessing was right before her in the two brown boys that were playing happily in the dusty street.
And sometimes, at twilight on Saturday night, he came, a straight tall figure carrying a small bunch of wilted flowers - or sometimes a clumsily wrapped box of chocolates which had melted a little on the long dusty ride from his village.
God was good. It was enough!
Now Anderson stands before him, him that sent him, the fallen angel.
"Like your father before you, you almost succeeded, but your impatience has cost me victory. This time our adversary wins, but this is a game of eternity - to be played over and over."
"Again I spin the wheel of time and select a warrior."
"With patience, like the cattle tick, I wait!"
The End