The Sparrow

'No kick so far.'

'Well, it just seems to me that there is some pretty powerful theology on the side of love and sex and families. It seems to me that a fairly authoritative Personage once commented that it is not good for man to be alone. Rome, along with all closets,' Anne pointed out archly, 'is very far away. We have been gone almost two decades. Maybe priests can marry now! And in any case, I fail to see how Emilio would be cheating God out of anything by loving Sofia.'

'Annie, you are troddin' a path that's worn to bedrock.' D.W. reached behind himself and scooped up another handful of pebbles. A spasm of pain crossed his face, but Anne put it down to the topic. 'Oh, hell, I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference. Maybe they'd just be happy and have a fine bunch of kids an' God would love 'em all…'

They sat for a time listening to the sounds of the river and staring at the western sky, blazing now with the colors of first sundown. D.W. seemed to be working something out, so Anne just waited until he spoke again.

'Bear with me here, 'cause I'm just stirrin' this around some with a stick. But, Anne,' he said softly, 'it seems to me that sainthood, like genius, is rooted in a sort of inspired persistence. It's a consistent willing of one thing. It's that kind of consistency and focus I see at work in Emilio.'

'D.W., are you serious?' Anne sat still, eyes wide open. 'You think Emilio is a s—'

'I didn't say that! I'm talkin' in the abstract here. But Marc and me, we been hashin' it out and, yes, I see the potential for it, and it's my job to protect that, Anne.' He hesitated a moment before confessing, 'Maybe I shouldn't have but I did in fact use the S-word in one report back to Rome. I tole 'em I think we got us a gen-u-wine big-time mystic on our hands. 'Wedded to God and at certain moments, in full communion with divine love, is how I put it.' He dumped the last few rocks, brushed the dirt off his hands and leaned over to watch the pebbles clatter downward, elbows on his knees, the big-knuckled hands loose between his legs. 'Hell of a management problem,' he said after a time. 'They don't cover this one back home at the Famous Father Superiors School.'

Anne found there was nothing she could say. She stared at the clouds in the western sky, piled like whipping cream tinted by strawberries and raspberries, blueberries and mangos. She never got tired of the colors here.

'And, Anne,' D.W. continued thoughtfully, 'I'm real concerned about Mendes in all this, too. I am awful fond of that girl and I don't want to see her hurt. She's all guts and brains on the outside, God love her, but there's broken glass inside that child. If he's gotta choose, Milio's gonna choose God, and I hate to think how Sofia would take that. So don't you go encouragin' her to take the initiative, unnerstan'?' D.W. got to his feet. Anne noticed that he seemed a little pale, but his next remark startled her out of any inquiry. 'Too bad Sofia didn't take a shine to the Quinn boy or Robichaux.'

Anne stood up as well and frowned, confused. 'Well, Jimmy, of course! But Marc? I thought he was—well, you know. I thought—'

'You thought Robichaux was gay?' D.W. roared, and half a dozen coronaries rocketed into the air. He put a bony arm around Anne's shoulders, obviously tickled by the notion. 'Oh, my. No-o-o. Not by a wondrous long shot. Marc Robichaux,' he informed her as they strolled along, 'is in love with capital-N Nature and women are nature at its finest for ole Marc! He loves the ladies. Marc, in his own way, is a kind of mystic, too. God's reality is everywhere for him. It's almost an Islamic theology. Robichaux don't separate the natural and the supernatural. It's all one thing for him, and he adores it all. Specially if it's female.' He looked down at Anne, still gawping at him, and laughed at her. 'Now, you talk about a management problem! Province had to put ole Marc to work in a boys' school to keep him out of trouble. He never hit on anybody but he is a good-lookin' sumbitch and one thing leads to another. Couldn't say no if a woman came to him. And come they surely did. Best therapeutic lay in Quebec, is what I heard.'

'I'll keep it in mind,' Anne said, breathless now herself with laughter, but she couldn't help saying, 'So celibacy is optional.'

'Well, in some sense, it mighta been for Marc, early on. Came a time when he mended his ways. But, now, look here! This illustrates my point about Emilio,' D.W. said emphatically. 'For Emilio, the separation between natural and supernatural is basic. God is not everywhere. God is not immanent. God is out there somewhere, to be reached for and yearned after. And you're gonna have to trust me on this, but celibacy is part of the deal for Emilio. It's a way of concentrating, of focusing a life on one thing. And I happen to think it's worked for him. I don't know whether it's he found God, or God come and got him…'

They could see the hampiy shelter again now, sunlight like molten copper streaming in from the west. Askama was still in Emilio's lap, asleep apparently. Sofia's head was bent over her computer tablet. Emilio noticed them and raised a hand. They waved back. 'Okay. Okay, I see your point,' Anne said. 'I'll keep out of it. Maybe it will all work out.'

'I hope so. Lots at stake here, for both of 'em. For all of us.' He pressed a hand into his belly and made a face. 'Damn.'

'You okay?'

'Oh, sure. Nerves. I react to everything with my belly. I knew you knew but sayin' something's different.'

'What's your theology like, D.W.?' Anne asked, pausing at the top of the path that led down the cliff.

'Oh, hell. On my best days? I try to keep my mind stretched around both experiences of God: the transcendent, the intimate. And then,' he said, grinning briefly, 'there are the days when I think that underneath it all, God has got to be a cosmic comedian.' Anne looked at him, brows up. 'Anne, the Good Lord decided to make D. W. Yarbrough a Catholic, a liberal, ugly and gay and a fair poet, and then had him born in Waco, Texas. Now I ask you, is that the work of a serious Deity?' And, laughing, they turned down the steps toward the cut-stone apartment they now called home.

The object of this conversation was unaware of the extent to which the exalted state of his soul was drawing notice. Emilio Sandoz was sweating buckets with Askama curled up on his lap, radiating heat like a fourth sun in the late afternoon. If, instead of assuming that he was meditating on the glory of God or synthesizing some new and closely reasoned model of Ruanja grammar, anyone had asked him directly what he was thinking about, he would have said, without hesitation, 'I was thinking that I could really use a beer.'

A beer and a ball game on the radio to listen to with half an ear as he worked, that would have been perfection. But even lacking those two elements of bliss, he was and knew himself to be completely happy.

The past weeks had been suffused with revelation. At home and in the Sudan and the Arctic, he had seen acts of great generosity, of selflessness and abundance of soul, and felt close to knowing God at those moments. Why, he had once wondered, would a perfect God create the universe? To be generous with it, he believed now. For the pleasure of seeing pure gifts appreciated. Maybe that's what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small…

The sense of being engulfed—saturated and entranced—had inevitably passed. No one exists like that for long. He was still staggered by the memory of it, could feel sometimes the tidal pull in some deep stratum of his soul. There had been times when he could not finish any prayer—could hardly begin, the words too much for him. But the days had passed and become more ordinary, and even that he felt to be a gift. He had everything here. Work, friends, real joy. He was swept sometimes with an awareness of it, and the intensity of his gratitude tightened his chest.

There was great contentment in the simplest moments. Like now: sitting inside a hampiy tree with Sofia and Askama, out here on the plain, where they could work in the afternoons while the others slept, without so many interruptions and so much kibitzing. Chaypas had shown them how to make a wonderful breezy shelter simply by pruning out a corridor to the natural clearing inside the trees. The older plants were fifteen to twenty feet in diameter with thirty or forty straight stems, growing bushlike, leading to an umbrella of leaves. The leaf canopy was so dense that it prevented all but the heaviest rainfall from reaching the central region of the tree, and the internal stems died off naturally, leaving a ring of live ones around the outside. All you had to do was clean up the center a little and bring in cushions or hammocks to hang from the branches overhead.

Lulled by the afternoon heat, the dull discussions and the peculiar foreign monotone, Askama would relax and he would feel her breathing slow and the sweet weight of her settling against him. Sofia would smile and nod at the child and their voices would drop even lower. Sometimes they would simply sit and watch Askama sleep, enjoying the rare silence.