“Well,” I said, “if I ever come face to face with God Almighty, He’s got some serious explaining to do. I got a whole list of things to ask Him, starting with why He gave me to the mama He did.”
They all three stared at me for a few seconds, but two shakes later you never heard a roomful of people laugh so hard.
“Honey,” Bessie said, “you and I are going to be best friends.”
“You know,” the Padre said, “a story along those lines might be just the thing. A story about Saint Teresa of Avila.”
I knew some about saints. Manny’s mama, Rita, was a regular churchgoer, and she’d hauled me with her to Sunday Mass sometimes. She talked about Saint This One and Saint That One like they were her next-door neighbors or people she’d just run into at the grocery store, except that they wore halos. “I asked Saint Martha to get Manny Sr. off his lazy butt to help me with the dishes,” she’d say, or “I’d still be wandering the mall parking lot if Saint Anthony hadn’t helped me find my Eldorado.” Rita said every saint had special abilities, like Saint Anthony finding lost things and Saint Martha helping housewives. She herself had been named after Saint Rita, patron saint of the impossible, because the doctor had told Rita’s mama that she couldn’t have kids. Rita’s second favorite was Saint Jude Thaddeus, helper of hopeless causes. Rita was forever burning poor Saint Jude’s ear about Manny.
“I’ve never heard of Saint Teresa,” I said.
“You remind me of her,” said the Padre.
“How come?”
“About five hundred years ago Saint Teresa was riding through Spain on a donkey. God knocked her off the donkey into the dirt and said, ‘That’s how I treat My friends.’ And she replied, ‘That’s why You have so few of them.’”
The Padre gave us a sly look and we all laughed.
“Saint Teresa, one,” I said, licking my finger and marking an imaginary score in the air. “God, nothing.”
“Nice touch,” the Padre said.
“That story’d start a fine sermon,” I told him, “but Mrs. Wilson won’t like it.”
“She’ll have a fit!” Bessie cried, cackling.
“You be sure and tell her where you got the idea,” I said.
“Y’all are piling up serious purgatory time today,” Fred teased.
But Bessie just grinned. “Worth every suffering minute.”
“I know another story,” the Padre said.
“Another saint story?”
He considered. “Could be.”
I sat back in my chair.
“It’s about the day Henry hung the crucifix Bessie hired him to make in the church,” the Padre said. “It was four or five years ago, about an hour before the Saturday vigil Mass. I was in the sacristy, right off the altar. A few members of the parish had come to church early and were kneeling in prayer. Henry was up on a rickety ladder at the back of the altar. The plaster he was trying to drill into was crumbling, and Henry was telling that plaster where it could go and calling upon any number of holy names.”
“That’s Henry,” I said.
The Padre nodded. “This went on for some time. One of the more diplomatic church ladies came to me, all anxious and wringing her hands, and she said, ‘Father, Father, you’ve got to speak to Dr. Royster about his blaspheming! The parishioners are complaining. Please ask him to stop.’
“I said, ‘I’m aware of the situation, Abigail, and sympathetic to your discomfort, but I never interrupt a man when he’s praying.’”
We all burst out laughing again, Bessie most of all.
“I’ll never forget, Lucinda Wilson came in right after Henry finished putting up that cross,” the Padre said. “She took one look at it and said to Henry’s face, ‘That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.’ And Henry told her, ‘If you close your eyes, it will go away.’”
Bessie clapped her hands, said she never tired of hearing that story, and demanded another, but Fred told her she needed her afternoon nap. She fussed about that, saying he kept her chained to her bed, but I thought she looked tired.
She seemed to read my mind, because as Fred was helping the Padre rise from his chair, she reached out for my hands again, looked me in the eye, and said, “Don’t let Fred turn you into an old mother hen. One’s more than enough around here. And tell Henry Royster I said he’s the second-sweetest man who ever lived.”
Sweet was not a word I associated with Henry, and I swear she saw me thinking that, too, because she squinted and said, “You’ll see.”
“You a mind reader?” I asked her.
She pressed my cheeks between her cool hands. “Honey,” she whispered, “your face is as clear as glass.”
I was going to have to watch myself around Bessie.
Fred and I drove the Padre back to his church, which was not far up the road from Henry’s. It was a white frame country church with a steeple and a graveyard beside it. A couple of old ladies looked up from arranging flowers in the headstone urns and waved. The Padre shuddered and slid down in his seat. “Hideous,” he said, shaking his head. “A slap in the Creator’s face.”
“What?” I asked.
“Plastic flowers. Abominable things.”
This was some strange holy man. “If you close your eyes …” I reminded him.
“Quite right,” he said, smiling. “Please get me inside so I don’t have to look at them.”
The church was empty and hushed. He showed me the crucifix Henry had made for the altar, as unusual a thing as I’d ever seen. It wasn’t at all like the crucifixes in Rita’s church. It was made with just two pieces of curved silver metal attached to a plain darker metal cross. The Padre pointed out that the lighter silver metal represented Jesus’ outstretched arms and twisted body, and that spare as the piece was, it was exactly right. The metal figure seemed to be dying, rising, comforting, and yearning all at the same time.
Loud banging from Henry’s workshop interrupted my replay of the afternoon, but I
