Father Briar and The Angel (18 page)

Seeing Mr. Olsen there
made her sad. Was he going to torment her the same way tonight that
he had last week? Would Francisco Montana flirt with her
again? 

She wondered if she’d
mind. She was still irritated with Cedric. He’d been both lusty and
indifferent lately, a combination she found almost impossible to
deal with. Julianna felt he was being overly paranoid about the
locals finding out, and if they did, what was the big deal? He’d
have to stop being a priest, sure, but then they could get married
and live together in public, out at her cute little house. Was that
so horrible, was that so immoral, was that too much to ask? No, it
certainly wasn’t.

“Heck,”
she thought, “maybe I’ll even do a little flirting myself. Would do
a girl good, to have people in town know I’m sexy and desirable and
that men want me.”

But that was a bridge too
far. And this was back in an era where that phrase had literal and
not just metaphorical meaning. The Allied defeat in Holland in
1944, where Major General Robert Urquhart had literally gone a
bridge too far and the good guys had suffered a terrible defeat and
humiliating withdrawal. She couldn’t flirt with Mr. Montana, that
would be like cheating on and being unfaithful to
Cedric.

So she put her head down
and went to work. This smorgasbord, unlike last week’s, was much
easier on her; there was no relentless teasing from Ty Olsen, no
overt sexuality from Francisco. There was just food, piles and
piles of hot and steaming meats and vegetables, served in the
coldest depths of winter.

The frightening temperature
had done nothing to lower turnout to the weekly buffet (“although,
remember, never call it that,” Cedric had reminded Julianna before
her shift, “as she will lose her mind.”) and there was still a wait
at the door. When that became too crowded, families would wait in
their pickup trucks, heaters running but windows cracked to avoid
carbon monoxide poisoning, for up to an hour, listening to the
radio, gossiping about By Golly Gosha and their neighbors, and
enjoying each other’s company.

“
I’m
sorry I told Bjorn to fire you after your first shift,” the cook
told her. Julianna shrugged her sweaty shoulders, not defeated yet.
The smorgasbord tonight had been especially busy and she’d been
running around like the proverbial chicken with her head cut
off.

That had been just a
phrase until she moved here to Brannaska. But she’d been taken
around to some farms since her arrival and in the natural course of
the day; she’d seen some barnyard beheadings.

“I had a good shift
tonight, right?”

“Better
than good. Great.” From a nearly silent old Norwegian woman, this
was enormous praise. Once in a decade praise.

Julianna slid onto the
stool opposite the cash register. It was red and the cushion was
worn out from so many heavy farmers’ butts. The thing spun around
dangerously and children had been known to use it like a top, with
themselves balanced upon it.

From the cook’s
expression, however, Julianna judged that both giving praise and
admitting she had been mistaken about something were her two least
favorite things to do. Julianna figured she wasn’t particularly
fond of loud children using her stools as toys, either.

“Thank you for giving me a
compliment.”

“It has only been two
Sundays, two smorgasbords, and already you’ve proved to be a hard
worker. You’re always on time. You are good girl. You never flirt.
Even with Mr. Montana. Many of my past waitresses flirted with
Francisco. You do not like him?”

She liked him well enough.
But her heart was set on another man. How could she tell the cook,
her boss, this, without risking Cedric’s entire life?

“He is nice,” she said,
trying to sound neutral.

“Successful farmer, too;
he’s got massive acreage west of town.”

That the cook thought
Julianna was motivated by money and not love slightly annoyed her,
but she was still too happy about being praised to feel bad for
long.

“I like how you charm the
customers. We don’t have a lot of charmers here in Brannaska. You
don’t mix up orders anymore. And you are good with figures. You are
just as good with the figures as Bjorn is.”

“Thank you. During the war
I did a lot of work with numbers. Mechanics have to know all sorts
of gauges and fractions and such.” Julianna was having a hard time
resisting bragging.

“My jaws
are getting tired from all of this talking,” the cook said, and
that ended the conversation. She walked to the back to pour brown
sugar, salt and orange juice for one recipe or other; this
concoction was in nearly everything they made, from the ribs to the
desserts.

Julianna sat at the
counter and tried not to spin around on the stool. She thought
nobody was looking, so she indulged herself. Once.

She immediately regretted
it. There was a huge laugh from across the room; Mr. Montana had
just returned from the bathroom, where he’d been for a substantial
amount of time.

“
Don’t
go in there for a while, kid; I’m pretty sure I just did something
that violated the Geneva Conventions.”

She tried not to laugh;
that was gross and body humor wasn’t funny. But it built up within
her.

“Bjorn, your smorgasbord
was so good I just committed a war crime in the john!”

Now Julianna burst out
laughing. How could this man make such things sound harmless,
funny, and, yes, charming?

“I’m going to tell Senator
McCarthy on you,” she said.

“Can I bribe you not to
rat on me?”

“What is your offer?” she
said, one eyebrow raised.

He patted the flask in the
pouch of his overalls.

“Cocktail?”

She wasn’t as scandalized
as most of the locals would’ve been. This was a “dry” country; no
alcohol could legally be bought or sold within its enormous
boundaries. Booze was very much a moral issue here.

But Julianna had come from
a Pacific Northwestern family with a comfortable and friendly
relationship with red wine and brandy. So the offer of a tidy
little cocktail appealed to her; it had, after all, been a long,
successful work day.

“You did an excellent job
tonight,” he told her.

Wow! Two compliments in
fifteen minutes? This must’ve been a record, for Brannaska
anyway.

She met Francisco’s eyes.
“Thank you. I appreciate it, and I appreciate you not giving me the
dickens tonight. My father taught me that I should never shirk and
sort of job or duty or responsibility. He hated shirkers, my
dad.”

“How did he feel about
cocktails?”

“He was strictly a shot
and a beer guy. My mom loved a Brandy Alexander,
though.”

“I can offer vodka and
orange juice, if Bjorn has orange juice.”
“The cook, I promise you, has orange juice.”

Excited, she excused
herself and went to the back. Two glasses poured, she went back and
sat down.

The cook definitely not
would’ve approved of her juice in this manner.

Bjorn was a little more
tolerant, but still, out of respect, they waited to pour the vodka
until he’d gone outside to start the engine of his truck, lest it
freeze up and not be able to drive them the quarter mile
home.

As Mr. Montana mixed the
drink with soda straws, Julianna took a good look at him for the
first time. When he wasn’t annoying her with his teasing and his
weird theories about how the world worked, he was rugged and
attractive and manly.

When he was dressed up, he
dressed in Western gear to match his Western name. And he didn’t
stick strictly to cowboy denim, he’d come to barn dances and church
potluck dinners in a Nudie Suit, the elaborately embroidered and
rhinestone bejeweled creations made popular by Hank Williams and
Porter Wagoner.

But he was no dandy, no
foppish dude; you might mistake him for a wrangler right off a
ranch, but not a Nashville slickster or a Hollywood cowboy with a
plastic gun. Were she a “shaker,” she’d bet that there wasn’t a day
in his life that he hadn’t done some sort of challenging manual
labor.

Instead of wearing him
out, like it had some other residents of Brannaska who were the
same age, it had invigorated him. He had a thick chest that he had
a hard time finding overalls to cover it, but he did, and baggy
ones, too.

They
took sips.

“Delicious,” she
complimented. It had been a long time since she’d had vodka and it
had an electric burn as it went down. She took a deep breath and
the world spun and then looked new.

The free drink was the
first time a man had bought her one since the war had ended. It
wasn’t because she wasn’t beautiful or fun, quite to the contrary.
But she’d been so in love with Cedric, for so long, that she’d
never had much of an opportunity to step out.

Julianna was delighted.
“What a night this has been,” she thought. “I’ve gotten free drinks
from a Norwegian cowboy, a real apology from a woman who never
speaks, and praised for a job I’ve only done twice in my
life.”

If they were going to
continue their evening, they’d have to adjourn to somewhere else.
Bjorn hadn’t started his truck to let it run forever; him and the
cook wanted to get home. But this was a big step.

A big big step, just out
the door. Could she do it?

Julianna had witnessed him
joking and laughing with the customers. She knew he worked like a
machine when he was on the farm. Would he be fun somewhere else?
Was it safe? More importantly, was it appropriate?

After three more big sips
of vodka, it was appropriate.

There was a chain hotel on
Highway Ten, about twenty miles away, with a lounge and restaurant
for truckers that stayed open all night. Most of the respectable
people in Brannaska avoided it because they’d heard all sorts of
sordid stories about what truckers did with various women of low
character in the parking lot.

They drove there
separately, her following him at a respectable distance. Julianna
was nervous. Once settled into the grimy lounge, they began
talking, once two more drinks had been ordered.

“Nice that this place is
just across the county line,” he said, “so we can get a
nightcap.”

“That they serve liquor
seems to be the only attraction to this place,” she said, lifting
up a wet, ketchup-stained napkin that had been carelessly left by
the waitress. Julianna wouldn’t have been so shoddy.

“Well, they make an
excellent Brandy Alexander.”

“
Thank
you, Mr. Montana. Tonight’s crowd at the smorgasbord wore me out.”
Cassidy sipped her drink.

“Consider yourself lucky.
There were no tourists in there tonight,” Mr. Montana said. A
tourist was anybody they didn’t immediately recognize. Immediately.
“Those demanding out-of-towners expect things they shouldn’t,
expect things that nobody could cook, and expect them free,” he
noted.

“
Worse are the seniors,”
she joked, emboldened by the alcohol, “especially the geezers they
bring in from the old folks home. I have to hand feed some of those
poor people.”’

“
It is a good thing that
most of smorgasbord consists of soft and mushy foods. It’s easy for
them to chew,” Mr. Montana agreed.

“
I didn’t confuse the
glorified rice with the mashed potatoes tonight, which is a step in
the right direction.”

“
I could’ve made you loose
your cool, but I didn’t want to do it again. It
felt…rude.”

This made her blush, and
blushing made her feel terrible! She was ashamed of herself for
having such a good time without Cedric. Was she being disloyal?
Instinctively, she looked around to see if there was anybody there
to recognize her. This was a habit she’d picked up after a few
years with Cedric.

Francisco popped the cap of
the top of a bottle of beer and took a measured gulp. Since he was
driving home he’d wanted to switch to something a little less
strong than the vodka he’d been nipping from most of the
evening.

“
I think that all people,
not just seniors, are getting more and more impatient; they want
their order, the want everything, and the want it now. I blame
television.”

“
Oh, yes, I do think it is
making our children more stupid. Some of those new programs are
just trash.”

“
No, I wasn’t talking
about programming; I was talking about the waves they beam through
the air to send the pictures to our sets. Those are what are making
us stupid. They could set those rays, those beams, to make people
smarter, but what good would that do them? Government depends on
people being stupid to stay in power.”

As Julianna’s father
would’ve said, “that chaps my ass.” She’d served the country and
its government, so had Cedric. They weren’t duty bound to make
people stupid. They and everybody else like them, all the way up
the chain of command to FDR and Truman themselves, had worked to
keep America safe and free, not ignorant and enslaved to television
waves being beamed from the sky.