The girls stared at Emmaline, frowning in an effort to reject their mother’s talking this way.
Marn was her name. She killed her husband and got away with it. Of course, he was the leader of a cult.
Whoa.
The girls put their hands up.
Crazy talk, Mom, said Josette.
It’s true, though, said Emmaline.
Okay, Mom, but may we remind you that you’re talking about our grandfather? Josette and Snow nodded vigorously.
What you’re saying, Mom, is way too weird. I mean a bitch is one thing, but killing your husband is out of whack. We don’t want that.
So you don’t want truth. What do you want? said Emmaline.
We want our life to get normal, duh, said Josette.
Uneventful, except for good things, said Snow.
Melodrama? That detracts.
Vocabulary words!
The girls smacked hands.
Fine, said Emmaline. I acquiesce.
MACKINNON SPOKE TO the girl in her language, and she hid her muddy face.
All I did was ask her name, he said, throwing up his hands. She refuses to tell me her name. Give her some work to do, Roberts. I can’t stand that lump in the corner.
Wolfred made her help him chop wood. But her movements displayed the fluid grace of her limbs. He showed her how to bake bread. But the firelight reflected up into her face and the heat melted away some of the mud. He reapplied it and tried to teach her to write. She formed the letters easily. But writing displayed her hand, marvelously formed. Finally—she suggested it herself—the girl went off to set snares. She made herself well enough understood. She planned to buy herself back from Mackinnon by selling the furs. He hadn’t paid that much for her. It would not take long, she said.
All this time, because she understood exactly why Wolfred had replaced the grime on her face, she slouched and grimaced, tousled her hair and smeared her features. And she picked up another written letter every day, then words, phrases. She began to sprinkle them in her talk.
For a wild savage, she was certainly intelligent, thought Wolfred. Pretty soon she’s going to take my job. Haha. There was nobody to joke with but himself.
FATHER TRAVIS ANSWERED the telephone, tipped back his chair. When he heard the name of the new bishop of the diocese, he said nothing.
No surprise.
The new bishop, Florian Soreno, would take a hard-line stance toward all the hot-button issues—this was a red state. Father Travis worked in a blue zone. Reservations were blue dots or blots, voting Democrat. The only Republican he could think of, beside himself, was Romeo Puyat. With a new bishop, Father Travis might get a Dominican with a liberation-theology bent because this bishop might want to punish such a priest by sending him to a reservation. Or perhaps a new order would take over entirely—there were so many fundamentalist orders springing up. He rather liked SSPX. Society of Saint Pius the Tenth. He missed Latin Mass and they were big on keeping the Tridentine Mass going. However, the other issues, abortion for instance, left him cold. His father had taught him that women’s business is women’s business. There was yet another possibility—church authorities still played the shell game with their pederast priests.
Getting rid of the last one had been difficult.
He himself might be reassigned, or he might suddenly have a priest here with more authority and seniority to whom he must answer. He might get a swamper for a housemate—a sick priest in the slump of a long depression. Or a whole sack of nuns might be assigned to the convent suddenly, where now it was run by an oblate group of laypersons and used as a retreat and conference center.
Or, sometimes, nothing happened. He could always hope. He looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling of his office. There was a pale-blue line on the ceiling, scraped of carpenter’s chalk. That color. It was as if she had opened a blue door in his mind.
Father Travis pulled on his coat and walked into the brilliant, dry snow. It was the time of hallowed peace. He loved Christmas and Midnight Mass. The glow of candles spiritualized the features of people who drove him nuts. Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, he would say in his sermon. And then there was that blue door. There was no shame in it, no sense that he was violating his or Landreaux’s or her vows or anything else. He could be happy in his thoughts, couldn’t he? In spite of Matthew? Not his favorite gospel. White wings rustled. He glanced around, filled with an odd joy. Brightness falls from the air.