Father Briar and The Angel (25 page)

“
So I’m going to go and
shovel us out a little bit.”

“
Dear heart, don’t go.
It’s so dangerous and cold!”

“
It will be okay. I’m
going to tie this rope around my waist and tie the other end to the
support beam in here. That way, I can’t wander off and lose my way,
in case we get into a whiteout situation. I’m also going
to shovel a path to the car, and tie the rope to the door
handle. That way we can’t lose the car, either.”

How he managed to sound so
cheerful was beyond her. But she wasn’t a shirker, so she was tough
and resolute, if only for him.

Gosha fiddled with the
radio dial while she drove, but she never wobbled or wavered, the
truck stayed straight and true. Soon, the reliable voice of WCCO
came through, smooth, cultured, cosmopolitan (well, out of
Minneapolis, anyway, which might as well have been Paris as far as
the Brannaskans were concerned) came from the tinny little
speakers.

“
An Alberta Clipper of
this magnitude and malignancy has never been seen before,” the WCCO
weatherman said. “If you are in Northern Minnesota, seek solid,
warm shelter immediately. Stay in your homes, I repeat: stay in
your homes. And don’t think you are safe in your house. Precautions
must be taken there, too. Shore up your windows with weather
stripping. Stock extra wood for the fireplace. And for goodness
sakes, keep your children and your loved ones near to you, its
going to be a dangerous few days. Stay tuned to WCCO for ‘Weather
Updates on the Eights.’ Young Sid Hartmann is up next with sports
news.”

“
I was watching
Lucy
with you and dad
the other night and something came to me. Came to me in a little
and unused part of my brain,” Trig said, sounding almost eloquent.
What he lacked up for in depth of vocabulary and elocution, he made
up for in preacher’s heartfelt innocence and truth.

His mother was wary but
encouraged. Unlike most of his monosyllabic peers, Trig would often
strike up conversations with his mother, conversations that lasted
full sentences, full paragraphs, even. But they always concerned
hockey or dinner, or, when he was feeling particularly loquacious
and inspired, eating dinner while playing hockey.

Not tonight. Not with
Ramona, still sweaty from sexual exertion, standing by his side,
ashamed, embarrassed by Gosha’s easy busting of them and yet
somehow still a little defiant.

Even boys of lesser moral
fiber can rise to inspired heights, especially when standing on the
shoulders of a benevolent God, the sort of benevolent dude-like
bro-deity who puts his girl up on his shoulders at the rock and
roll concert on a drunken summer’s evening, if only to better see a
verse of her favorite song and flash her breasts at the
bassist.

“
We were watching
Lucy
and I saw how Lucy
and Ethel let their contest winnings slip through their fingers by
carelessness and accident.”

This was true. Lucy and
Ethel had won a newspaper giveaway contest on that week’s episode
but their carelessness had cost them both the winning entry receipt
and their chance at a ten dollar windfall.

“
And I always hear about
Father Briar talking about Jesus in the cave, and the patience it
had given him, and how he’d recognized what was important in
life.”
Again, the hockey star had misunderstood a fundamental proverb and
the lesson to be learned from it, but the old saw “Jesus Loves a
Trier” had never been truer. Trig was a Trier.

Ramona perked up next to
him. A little color returned to her cheeks and he swelled from
breast to thighs in anticipation.

“
And I have decided that I
won’t let the prize of my life slip away through
carelessness.”

Ramona thought she might
faint with joy right then and there. To her impressionable teenage
years, that sounded like the beginnings of a marriage
proposal.

Trig’s mother was equally
weak in the knees, but for different reasons. To her, this sounded
like a prayer in which Trygve Thorbjorn Olsen was accepting Jesus
Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

Ty Olsen was just happy his
son was accepting manliness and the responsibility God asks those
who chose to be men to bear. They all knew Trig would be wrong and
they would all be wrong in his explanation, but they did not
care.

“
Jesus in the cave learned
of the patience necessary to endure years of trial, I too will
learn patience at college. And, just as Lucy and Ethel learned that
being shortsighted and unable to see the wider world could
contribute to the loss of money, sweet sweet money, and they
learned that without one another, they were nothing, I’m going to
have Ramona join me at school. I saved money doing taxidermy for
dad all school year, with that money, I’ll support Ramona until she
gets a job or gets some classes. She’ll cheer me at hockey, I’ll
cheer her in class.”

They, eventually, they
would divorce after twenty years of marriage, sixteen happy, two
average, and only two difficult. For most people it would be hard
to argue with that percentage of success, but athletes and small
town girls with ambition and proto-feminist ideals should not be
judged like the rest of us.

And so, through great
mistakes and minor miracles, this family was united.

Julianna kissed him as he
went outside. He had to work to push the door open against the
force of the wind. The rope slid along through behind
him.

It was nearly a
whiteout.

The sun was high, which was
the only indication of time. Its brightness was awful, turning the
flying snow and shards of ice into blinding particles of pain which
sting his eyes and face without care or mercy.

The wind whipped, blowing
him first left, then right, then back against the icehouse with a
fearful thump. He didn’t think he’d be able to take steps forward
until the force whirled again and propelled him towards the
indistinct black mass that was the car.

“
There is a flare gun in
the trunk, along with some extra blankets,” he remembered. They’d
brought in most of their winter survival kit when they’d first
come, but not quite all of it. He didn’t know what they’d do with
the flare gun, anybody else on the lake wasn’t coming to rescue,
and they were as trapped as Cedric and Julianna. And anyway, Cedric
didn’t think even the flare could be seen through this wicked
weather.

Teenagers had been using
the icehouse (as evidenced by the empty beer bottles) and had cut a
number of holes, too close to the house and snow had insulated
them; instead of freezing over, they’d stayed open, with only a
loose, slushy crust on top. They littered the route between the
icehouse and the car like landmines, but Cedric had no way of
knowing.

He managed to make it all
the way to the car and tied his end of the rope around the door
handle, which he found only by fumbling and fussing and running his
mitten covered hands over the whole of the vehicle.

While he was doing so, he
brushed as much of the snow from the car as he could. It was full
of ice crystals and was therefore gritty and abrasive, not as heavy
as wet snow but a grave threat nevertheless.

Then, with great
fastidiousness, he slid his mitten off and into his coat pocket,
grabbing the car keys with the same motion. He knew it was so cold
he had one try to get them into the trunk’s lock. Within seconds
his hand was trembling but the ice gave way, metal scraped against
metal and went in.

With an effort that took
almost the last of his remaining strength, he wrested the trunk
open, the ice crunching and cracking from the hinges as he did. He
put the flare gun in his pocket and retrieved his mitten. Father
Briar trudged back to the icehouse. He was halfway there when the
rope gave way. He hadn’t tied it tightly enough to the door handle
and it slid off when a gust of wind blew across the frozen
lake.

He might’ve made it back, he
wasn’t that far away, and even half snow blind, he could see the
shelter.

But then his foot found one
of the holes cut a few days prior by the teens and he went in
almost to the knee.

His first thoughts were,
“its odd my shin didn’t snap. Odd, to be so calm in the face of
such danger.”

Then he wanted to panic. The
gravity of the situation was overwhelming and it was all he could
due not to pull hard on the rope. But he knew that if he hadn’t
tied it tight to the car door, he probably hadn’t tied it tight
enough inside, either, and didn’t want to lose his tether to the
earth and be sucked under. He didn’t know how big the hole was.
Time seemed to have stopped. He thought only of Julianna and the
pain in his leg.

Taking a deep breath, he
decided what to do. He couldn’t move for fear of falling through
further, his eyes were full of tears, his lungs aching from
effort.

Cedric gave three long but
gentle tugs on the rope. He followed those with three short, sharp
tugs, and three more slow, long ones. He waited, then repeated his
message.

Three long, three short,
three long.

It took Julianna only
moments to figure out the Morse code Cedric was sending her. She
and all the other WAC girls had memorized it in their first days of
training.

As she put her coat and
boots on, the tugging got more urgent and she knew whatever trouble
he was in was getting worse.

“
He’s stuck out there and
I have to go out and get him,” she told herself to build her
courage, “or else he’ll die.”

So out she went.

Just yards away, on the
other side of the icehouse, the wolf had curled up against the
shelter to soak up the heat from Julianna and Cedric’s fire. They
didn’t know he was out there. Not yet. They would, though, once he
was rested from his incredible run to escape the storm. He knew he
couldn’t run forever and when he’d seen the shelter, even the smell
of humans wasn’t enough to deter him from hunkering
down.

He smelled food, too. His
belly growled and despite the dark of the night blizzard, his teeth
glistened.

Gosha’s driving was
masterful.

The beast drove
beautifully. It was like there was no snow or wind or anything but
a breezy summer afternoon. Bishop Dale Mueller, who’d not been able
to drive his Lincoln Coupe more than ten miles and hour (and even
then had ended up in the ditch) was flummoxed. She plowed through
snowdrifts half the height of the car with an assassin’s
confidence. On the rare occasions that the tires of her Ford Truck
lost grip on the road, she adjusted the wheel a fraction of a
millimeter, into the skid, not away from it, like he would’ve, and
they were back on course, straight and true.

All the while, she listened
to WCCO radio and gave running commentary on the weather reports,
the state of the Catholic Church, jokes about Germans, rumors about
the parish, and graphic descriptions of the deviant sexual acts she
was convinced Julianna and Father Briar were up to.

Dale could see why this
woman was such a force within the congregation. She was a non-stop
machine of intimidation and innuendo, laced with a heaping scoopful
of charm.

“
The old girl is
entertaining,” he thought as she told yet another joke.

“
Poland is invaded by
Russia from the east and Germany from the west. Which way shoot
first?”

“
I don’t know.” He really
didn’t.

“
West. Because always:
business before pleasure!” Then she laughed her gurgling and
cackling laugh.

Despite that those are the
best two words with which to describe it (everybody in Brannaska
did) it was an appealing sound, one that grew on you. “Sorta like a
fungus,” the Ty Olsen had once said. There wouldn’t be much to say
anymore. now that she’d saved his precious child and his not-quite
virginal girlfriend.

She kept up this patter
through a snowstorm that had left snowplows stranded in their
garages and the bravest of men mewling like kittens. Never once did
her strong left hand waver, she kept it strong and true on the
wheel and their course was always correct.

“
Don’t come any closer,
Julianna, I’m afraid you’ll crack through the ice.”

“
Now you are telling me
not to be scared of the ice? Heckuva reversal, that. I didn’t
believe you then, but I learned. I believe you now. This is four
feet thick. I’ve been chipping away at the hole inside all
day.”

“
I broke
through.”

“
Don’t think you did. You
mentioned teenagers. I saw the empties. They just cut come fishing
holes too close to the icehouse. That is what you fell through, I’m
sure of it.”

“
No, Julianna, I feel
through a huge hole in the ice and I’m barely hanging
on.”

Despite the blizzard, the
world looked crystal clear and as gorgeous as the Garden of Eden to
Julianna. It was then she knew as fact, not faith, that God was
with her today, by her side and allowing her to move in mysterious
ways.

“
I brought the broom
handle out,” she said, her voice like a bell, “and I’ll just poke
my way along with that. I can see that you are only in up to your
knee, you will be fine until I get there.”
“Julianna, I command you-“