*
“Sweet Lord, look at that,” Sheryl said. Frankland nodded.
Father Robitaille trembled and whimpered in their bed. They had given him water, though he’d thrown most of it back up, and they’d tried to feed him, but he hadn’t been hungry, or maybe just hadn’t recognized his meal as food. He seemed pretty far gone.
He was safe enough in Frankland’s house, though. Like his church and broadcast center, it was steel-framed and set firmly on its foundation. It featured steel walls, steel window frames, steel doors and door frames.
Frankland hadn’t intended it that way, but when he was putting the building up, he realized it wouldn’t make a bad jail.
Or a drunk tank.
“When I was growing up in Little Rock,” Frankland said, “there was a little ol’ Catholic church between where I lived and where I went to school. And my folks told me that when I walked to school, I should be sure to cross the street when I got to the Catholic church, and walk on the other side, so that the Devil wouldn’t jump out of the church and get me. And most of the other kids in the neighborhood had been told the same thing, so practically everyone crossed the street to keep clear of the Catholics.” He chuckled. “Some of the braver kids would sneak up to the church, knock on the door, and run. Dare the Devil to come out and chase them.”
Sheryl nodded. “Your parents knew what they were talking about,” she said.
“Yep.” Frankland grinned. “When I was a child, I didn’t understand that it was just a, a what-d’you-call-it, a metaphor. There wasn’t a literal Devil in there, not the kind with horns and tail— well, I guess there wasn’t, I never looked. But my folks were right that if you went to the Catholic church, the Devil would get you in his clutches.” He laughed. “You know, I’ve never been in a Catholic church to this day. Not even just to look around.”
“Me neither,” said Sheryl.
“Ba ba,” Robitaille muttered through his broken teeth.
Frankland looked down at him. “Look at the Devil now.”
“Hah,” Robitaille said. His eyes came open, seemed to focus on Frankland. “Hah. Help.”
Frankland leaned closer. “Yes. We’re here for you.”
“Help.”
“We’re here to save you,” Frankland said. Which wasn’t the same thing as help, not exactly.
“Ta,” Robitaille said. “Ta. Trink.”
“He wants a drink,” Sheryl said.
Frankland poured a glass of water from the pitcher and held it to Robitaille’s lips. Robitaille raised a hand to the glass and gulped eagerly at the water, and then his whole body gave a violent shudder, and he turned away, retching. Water spilled from his lips.
“Cochon!” he shouted. “Qui es-tu? Un espece de fou?”
“He doesn’t want a drink, teddy bear,” Sheryl said. “He wants a drink.”
“Donne-moi un verre! Un verre!”
Frankland straightened. “Well. Water’s what he gets.” He looked down at Robitaille. “Water’s what we’ve got! It’s all we’ve got!”
Robitaille began to cry. Fat tears fell from his blackened eyes. “Je vais mourir! Donne-moi un verre! Je vais mourir si je ne trouve pas un verre.”
“What’s that language?” Frankland asked. “Latin, like the pope talks?”
“I guess.”
Frankland refilled the glass, put the glass on the table within the reach of Robitaille’s arms.
“I’m gonna let him calm down,” he said. “Then maybe the two of us can have a real chat.”
He and Sheryl left the room, and nodded to the guard that Frankland had put on the door. One of the older men in their church, a tough farmer who wasn’t about to let a drunk priest sway him from his duty.
“Look after him,” Frankland iaid. “Give him anything he wants except alcohol— and I’m afraid that’s all he’s going to want.”
“Where would I find alcohol, Brother Frankland?” The farmer grinned.
“Somebody might have snuck some alcohol in.”
“Well, I’ll keep on the lookout.”
“I appreciate it, friend,” Frankland said.
Frankland made his way down the hall, past the extra furniture and breakable items they’d taken from the bedroom before they put Robitaille in the bed.
And then Robitaille, behind the steel door, began to scream, hoarse wails that prickled the hair on Frankland’s arms.
“Dang,” the farmer said. “That don’t even sound human.”
Frankland thought about that for the next hour or so, and then he decided it was a question to which he’d better find out the answer.