Th
e strangest thing is Sister Mary Kate’s rattail comb, standing upright in a cracked jar of cold cream, right there in the middle of the fl oor of her room like an alien fl ower.
In the cafeteria, there’s broken glass and spilled food everywhere, but Chickie’s glass of milk is still standing on the table, balanced on the very edge as if one sneeze could send it crashing to the fl oor.
“I’ll be darned,” Luke says, looking at it. “I’ll be doggoned.”
Amiq thinks of the Saint Christopher medal, swinging from the edge of a shelf in the empty bathroom, and he won-236
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ders whether it fell off into the sink, slid down the drain.
And a thousand miles south, on a remote beach on the southern edge of the northernmost state in the country, Father Mullen watches the ocean rise up over him, a great rushing wall, a ceiling of liquid dark cement raining down.
Riveted to the ground, he watches it sweep over him as inevi-table as night, watches as though he’s watching from a great, unbridgeable distance.
Gone.
It was a heart attack. Th
at’s what the whispers say about Sister
Sarah, and this seems right somehow, Donna thinks. As though Sister had planned for it in that stern, deliberate way of hers.
Th
ey bury her at the church graveyard in the woods behind the school. Th
e church was the only family Sister Sarah had,
Father says.
Perhaps Sister Sarah had been an orphan, too, just like me, Donna thinks.
Th
ey stand in the middle of the graveyard in the woods by the school—a smooth and grassy patch at the tail end of winter. Green things poke up through melting snow, and off through the trees somewhere one little bird tests her song against the crisp air. Sister Sarah would like it here, Donna thinks. Th
en, all of a sudden she knows that Sister
is here, as much a part of the place as that little hollow of snow and those waving willows. Donna feels her presence as sharp as birdsong, same as always. More real than Father Flanagan’s voice, washing over the top of them like water.
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Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Luke sees a fl ash in the woods, and he’s pretty sure that nobody else but him sees it. Imagine that: an Eskimo from the tree-less tundra knowing enough about the woods to see the old Indian before any of the rest of them see him. But there he is, solid as rock, old Mr. Pete, standing in the cemetery right next to Luke and Chickie.
“What you doin’ here?” he says to Luke, his voice whispery rough. And for a second Luke is scared, just like the fi rst time.
Th
en he sees the smile. Th
e old, knowing smile, the one that
says, “I jokes.”
“Sending Sister home,” Chickie says.
“She already gone home,” the old man says.
Yes, yes she did, Luke thinks, suddenly.
“A heart attack is merciful. A heart attack is so merciful.” Sister Mary Kate mutters the words over and over, for days and days, her eyes fi lling up with tears. Luke feels bad for her because even though she never understood a lot of things, Sister Mary Kate was always good to them. But he can’t see how a heart attack is merciful. In fact, he can’t see anything at all merciful about death, period. He doesn’t even like the sound of the word mercy. Tastes like fake sugar, bitter on the tongue.
Th
ey say Father Mullen went down to the beach in Seward right before the tidal wave came in. Tsunami. Th is is the word
they use. Probably hit him broadside, like a giant two-by-four.
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Th
at’s what Luke thinks. Swallowed him right up, just like Jonah.
What did Mullen think when he saw that wave coming?
Wrath of God. Th
e words fl ash through Luke’s mind with
a sudden rush of sound and sense.
If he were still a kid, he’d want to warn Bunna about Father coming. Tell him to run quick, to get the heck out of there. Now he thinks maybe it’s the other way around, maybe old Mullen better watch out for Bunna. But then he realizes that even that’s not right. Th
ose two have gone to diff erent places, Bunna and
Mullen. Luke knows this as sure as he knows anything.
Bunna’s place is with Aapa and Aaka out on the tundra, wide open and golden and full of caribou. Hunting in the sunshine, the way it always shines in the summer at midnight back home. Soft and silent and dreamlike.
In Mullen’s place there’s a God that gets his energy from punishing people in a heaven so full of the righteous, a person could hardly breathe without pissing someone off . Luke almost laughs out loud: Bunna wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that.
He can’t quite explain it about that earthquake, but it’s like things were crooked before, and now they’re not. Like they weren’t lined up, but now they are.
Th
e earth is like that, Luke thinks. Flipping over and over and over again, trying to right itself, always trying to right itself.
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