them all, son.'
'No, sir. Not all.'
'All of the children. Timothy was killed within the hour you saw the first bodach. There was nothing you could have done for him. And I am more at fault for Maxwell than you are. If I had understood the situation and had shot Heineman sooner, Maxwell might have lived.'
'Sir, you're surprisingly kind for a man who prepares people for death.'
'Well, you know, in some cases, death is a kindness not only to the person who receives it but to the people he himself might have destroyed. When will you leave?'
'Next week.'
'Where will you go, son?'
'Home to Pico Mundo. You? Back to your beloved Indianapolis?'
'I am sadly certain that the Indiana State Library at one-forty North Senate Avenue has become a shambles in my absence. But I will be going, instead, to the high desert in California, to meet Mrs. Romanovich on her return from space.'
We had a certain rhythm for these things that required me to take a sip of wine and savor it before asking, 'From space-do you mean like the moon, sir?'
'Not so far away as the moon this time. For a month, the lovely Mrs. Romanovich has been doing work for this wonderful country aboard a certain orbiting platform about which I can say no more.'
'Will she make America safe forever, sir?'
'Nothing is forever, son. But if I had to commend the fate of the nation to a single pair of hands, I could think of none I would trust more than hers.'
'I wish I could meet her, sir.'
'Perhaps one day you will.'
Elvis lured Boo away for a belly rub, and I said, 'I do worry about the data in Dr. Heineman's computers. In the wrong hands…'
Leaning close, he whispered, 'Worry not, my boy. The data in those computers is applesauce. I made sure of that before I called in my posse.'
I raised my glass in a toast. 'To the sons of assassins and the husbands of space heroes.'
'And to your lost girl,' he said, clinking my glass with his, 'who, in her new adventure, holds you in her heart as you hold her.'
CHAPTER 55
THE EARLY SKY WAS CLEAR AND DEEP. THE snow-mantled meadow lay as bright and clean as the morning after death, when time will have defeated time and all will have been redeemed.
I had said my good-byes the night before and had chosen to leave while the brothers were at Mass and the sisters busy with the waking children.
The roads were clear and dry, and the customized Cadillac purred into view without a clank of chains. He pulled up at the steps to the guesthouse, where I waited.
I hurried to advise him not to get out, but he refused to remain behind the wheel.
My friend and mentor, Ozzie Boone, the famous mystery writer of whom I have written much in my first two manuscripts, is a gloriously fat man, four hundred pounds at his slimmest. He insists that he is in better condition than most sumo wrestlers, and perhaps he is, but I worry every time he gets up from a chair, as it seems this will be one demand too many on his great heart.
'Dear Odd,' he said as he gave me a fierce bear hug by the open driver's door. 'You have lost weight, I fear. You are a wisp.'
'No, sir. I weigh the same as when you dropped me off here. It may be that I seem smaller to you because you've gotten larger.'
'I have a colossal bag of fine dark chocolates in the car. With the proper commitment, you can gain five pounds by the time we get back to Pico Mundo. Let me put your luggage in the trunk.'
'No, no, sir. I can manage.'
'Dear Odd, you have been trembling in anticipation of my death for years, and you will be trembling in anticipation of my death ten years from now. I will be such a massive inconvenience to all who will handle my body that God, if he has any mercy for morticians, will keep me alive perhaps forever.'
'Sir, let's not talk about death. Christmas is coming. 'Tis the season to be jolly.'
'By all means, we shall talk about silver bells roasting on an open fire and all things Christmas.'
While he watched, and no doubt schemed to snatch up one of my bags and load it, I stowed my belongings in the trunk. When I slammed the lid and looked up, I discovered that all the brothers, who should have been at Mass, had gathered silently on the guesthouse steps.
Sister Angela and a dozen of the nuns were there as well. She said, 'Oddie, may I show you something?'
I went to her as she unrolled a tube that proved to be a large sheet of drawing paper. Jacob had executed a perfect portrait of me.
'This is very good. And very sweet of him.'
'But it's not for you,' she said. 'It's for my office wall.'
'That company is too rarefied for me, ma'am.'
'Young man, it's not for you to say whose likeness I wish to look upon each day. The riddle?'
I had already tried on her the fortitude answer that Rodion Romanovich had made sound so convincing.
'Ma'am, intellectually I've run dry.'
She said, 'Did you know that after the Revolutionary War, the founders of our country offered to make George Washington king, and that he declined?'
'No, ma'am. I didn't know that.'
'Did you know that Flannery O'Connor lived so quietly in her community that many of her fellow townspeople did not know that she was one of the greatest writers of her time?'
'A Southern eccentric, I suppose.'
'Is that what you suppose?'
'I guess if there's going to be a test on this material, I will fail it. I never was much good in school.'
'Harper Lee,' said Sister Angela, 'who was offered a thousand honorary doctorates and untold prizes for her fine book, did not accept them. And she politely turned away the adoring reporters and professors who made pilgrimages to her door.'
'You shouldn't blame her for that, ma'am. So much uninvited company would be a terrible annoyance.'
I don't think her periwinkle eyes had ever sparkled brighter than they did on the guesthouse steps that morning.
'Dominus vobiscum, Oddie.'
'And also with you, Sister.'
I had never been kissed by a nun before. I had never kissed one, either. Her cheek was so soft.
When I got into the Cadillac, I saw that Boo and Elvis were sitting in the backseat.
The brothers and sisters stood there on the guesthouse steps in silence, and as we drove away, I more than once looked back at them, looked back until the road descended and turned out of sight of St. Bartholomew's.
CHAPTER 56
THE CADILLAC HAD BEEN STRUCTURALLY reinforced to support Ozzie's weight without listing, and the driver's seat had been handcrafted to his dimensions.
He handled his Cadillac as sweet as a NASCAR driver, and we flew out of the mountains into lower lands with a grace that should not have been possible at those speeds.
