Father Briar and The Angel (7 page)

Like love, ice itself is
not very abrasive. But like love over time, it can grow in power
and passion; it can change the very shape of the world. By picking
up and moving boulders and gravel, the glaciers were able to scrape
away flora and fauna and everything else beneath it.

“
In the past, snowshoes
are essential tools for fur traders and trappers. Brannaska still
has a lot of both, although it is an old man’s game now. Mainly,
though, I just use mine for fun,” he admitted.

“
Before people built
snowshoes, nature provided examples. Several animals, most notably
some types of white rabbits, have evolved over the years oversized
feet enabling them to move more quickly through deep snow,” Cedric
told her.

Julianna kept an eye out
for the rabbits she had seen on prior walks. How she envied their
camouflage, their ability to disappear when need be. That they had
another special power, snowshoe feet, made her even more
jealous.

Many were the times she
wished she and Cedric could be like those rabbits and just
disappear together forever.

Chapter Seven: Divination
and Water Witching are not Sciences.

Meteorology then, like now,
was more divination than science. But the war effort had furthered
the field somewhat, since weather is so crucially essential to
botching an invasion. “Ask Hitler, he found out,” as Cedric said.
Julianna said “Yeah, what a dummy. Nobody could invade Brannaska in
the winter, much less Russia!”

It was only in 1948- after
the war, even- that the first correct tornado prediction was made,
by scientists in Oklahoma’s “tornado alley.” Thousands of mobile
homes were saved in the process. Two years later, in 1950, a bunch
of spectacular nerds at Princeton University, using one of
America’s first super-computers, the acronymic ENIAC, made the
first successful computer-simulated weather prediction
experiment.

This lead to the formation
of the National Severe Storms Project, a branch of which was
located on a long and lonely tract of government-owned land near
Brannaska. It was one of the many ways the government was reshaping
itself in the heady and giddy years after the war.

This morning they were
tracking a storm the likes of which they’d never seen.

“
How long do we have,
chief?” one of the young meteorologists asked.

“
Weather conditions this
coming spring are ripe for the possibility of the storm of the
century!” the senior forecaster informed him.

The senior meteorologist
wasn’t a meteorologist at all. He was a con-man from Dublin,
Ireland, who’d forged some credentials (not that the incredibly
trusting Minnesotans even looked) and used his knowledge of North
Atlantic storms to convince everybody he was a forecasting
genius.

They had a local “media
liaison” whose main job was to call WCCO Radio and tell them any
tiny new fact, rumor, or speculation coming out of the
meteorologists mouths.

“
WCCO, weather updates at
eight minutes after the hour, eighteen minutes after the hour,
twenty eight minutes after, thirty eight minutes after, forty eight
minutes after, and fifty eight minutes after the hour!” the
broadcasters announced, and they held to this schedule like Father
Briar held to the Catholic religious calendar.

“
I’ve seen nary a North
Sea squall with the power of this Alberta Clipper, laddy,” the
Irish conman told his assistant, “we better alert the
media.”

“
Again? We just phoned the
radio station fifteen minutes ago.”

“
Then they are twelve
minutes behind on our new prognostications! Get on the horn at
once.”

“
A possible storm of the
century?” the switchboard operator at WCCO asked, “that is huge
news. We’ll run with it immediately.”

They knew their audience.
All over farm country, farmers looked north, brewed more coffee,
and fretted over winds yet unfelt, snows yet unseen.

Chapter Eight: How are
You Going to Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Rome on
the Silver Screen?

It had been a long time
since Julianna had been this excited.

Cedric was taking her down
to Minneapolis (“the Twin Cities,” in the local lingo, as
Minneapolis was separated by its twin, the capital city of St.
Paul, by nothing more than the Mississippi River and a century of
good-natured rivalry) to see the new Christian epic movie,
The Robe.

She had filled her car with
gas, stocked the trunk with a winter survival kit, and prepared
tuna fish sandwiches with extra crunchy celery and mayonnaise with
a little mustard. It would take them all morning and a bit of the
afternoon to make the drive down Highway Ten, so she had been up
early and with a song in her heart.

Then Gosha showed
up.

“
Ms. Warwidge, I have
rabbits, baby rabbits. But I don’t have sugar. A trade, maybe, a
trade?” She held up two little rabbits by the scruff of their
necks.

“
They are pretty
adorable,” Julianna thought, “but whatever would I do with
rabbits?”

As if reading her mind,
Gosha said “they are good for pets and for stews!”

“
I don’t need any rabbits,
sorry Gosha.”

“
I can see you are making
preparations for a trip. Where are you going?”

“
I’m not going anywhere,”
Julianna lied. She hated to do so, but it was necessary in this
case. “I’m just stocking up in case a blizzard hits. It is good to
be prepared.”

“
Eh, prepare, don’t
prepare. Nothing matters when Soviet tanks roll through your
village.”

It was tough to argue with
that point, although Jewels didn’t see any T-35’s on the
horizon.

“
Well lady, you have fun
wherever you are going. Thanks for the sugar. Let me know if you
change your mind about the rabbits, eh?”

Julianna didn’t remember
giving her the sugar, but there she was, holding the cup anyway.
She didn’t give it any more thought, she was just happy the old
woman was gone.

She picked up Father Briar
at the church and she could barely resist kissing him, although she
did.

Richard Burton portrayed
Marcellius Gallio, an officer in the Roman Legions and a notorious,
well-known ladies’ man. “That isn’t exactly a big stretch in his
acting range,” Cedric had wryly commented. However, lusty Lothario
is captivated by the reappearance of a childhood sweetheart, Diana,
portrayed by the lovely and talented Jean Simmons.

Marcellus rides into
Jerusalem on the same day as Jesus' triumphal entry on Palm Sunday.
Jesus is arrested and condemned. Marcellus reports to the infamous
Pontius Pilate, who informs him that the emperor has sent for him.
Before he departs, Burton’s character is ordered to take charge of
the detail of Roman soldiers assigned to crucify Jesus. Marcellus
wins the Robe worn by Jesus in a dice game and is told it will be a
morbid and gruesome reminder of his first crucifixion.

Returning from the
crucifixion Marcellus tries to shield himself from a rain squall
with the Robe, but feels a sudden crushing guilt for the
crucifixion of Jesus and tears the Robe off.

This was the scene that
brought Cedric to tears. “The emotion Burton showed when his shame
hit him should earn him an academy award,” he opined. “I haven’t
seen acting that good since Jimmy Cagney in
Angels With Dirty Faces.”

They were sipping coffee in
a roadside café, halfway home. The film had inspired and moved the
both of them. Since Cedric wasn’t usually comfortable talking about
deep matters while driving as he believed that it distracted him,
they’d stopped in a little town of no consequence called Elk River,
where they were having weak brew and waiting on a couple of slices
of banana crème pie.

“
I loved it when Richard
was acting like a madman,” Julianna said.

Cedric smiled. “Richard?
You two are on a first name basis?”

Far from being chastised,
she was engaged by the game.

“
Yes. Liz and I go way
back. She introduced us at an ice cream social a few years
back.”

He laughed, loud and long,
and this made the waitress smile as she brought their
pie.

“
It must have been awful
to be Marcellus, haunted by nightmares of the crucifixion. I
occasionally feel the pain of Christ as I’m giving Communion. To
have lived through his agony every night must have been nearly
unbearable.”

He flipped through a little
yellow notebook, spiral bound at the top and careworn at the
bottom. Cedric, ever the Father, had been taking notes in it
throughout the course of the movie. He would be going to the church
library tomorrow, as well as the public library in town, to
research the various accuracies and inaccuracies in the
film.

“
No matter what my
research indicates,” he said, taking Julianna’s hand, “I had a
great time at the movie.”

How she loved holding his
hand in public. Feeling especially titillated, she leaned across
the table and kissed him, spilling a bit of coffee on the table in
the process. This annoyed him; he didn’t like mess of any kind,
especially near pie. Delicious pie! But he concealed his irritation
because he wanted Jewels to know what a fabulous time he was
having. He didn’t like it when her face darkened and her mood
changed. She could be, for all her wonderful traits, a bit like the
Minnesota weather. She could change from beautiful to stormy in a
moment.

“
The movie was great,” she
agreed. “The sound was loud and the color so vibrant! Everything we
see in Brannaska is washed out and tinny. I have to strain my ears
to hear.”

“
The popcorn was nice and
salty and slathered in butter.” They’d had two boxes.

Their small talk was sort
of silly, they both knew it. They were just biding the time, being
polite and proper, until it was too late to drive. Then, they’d
have to get a motel. She couldn’t help but notice that he’d chosen
a café with a motel directly behind it, a little place with a red
buzzing neon sign that cast a pink glow across the frozen parking
lot.

“
Another cup of coffee for
you two? Or maybe even another slice of pie? You have such a trim
figure, you can indulge yourself!” she told Julianna, trying to
flatter her way into a sale and a bigger tip.

They silently calculated.
Cedric’s eyes must’ve drifted back towards the motel and Julianna’s
to the clock, because the waitress picked up the silent, electrical
attraction.

“
I can fix that pie to go.
I can also ring over to the front desk at the motel if you would
like; my husband is the night manager and we can check you right
in!”

“
That sounds great,”
Julianna said, before Cedric could disagree.

Within minutes, they were
in the room.

“
I
missed you so much,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say.
The train ride over the endless prairie had felt endless, so she’d
taken her sweet time in preparing a lovely and loving (and maybe a
bit sexy!) opening speech, but it had fled her
memory.

“Not as half as I missed
you, my
 
Jewels.”

“That is funny,” she
thought, “that nickname still irritates me a little.”

But she pressed that tiny
thought from her mind and fell back into love with him with the
whole of her heart. She leaned forward, but not before looking
around to make sure they were well and truly alone, and then kissed
him on the lips, those firm, warm lips.

Desire for her flooded
through him anew. He wanted so much from her, he wanted it all, and
he wanted it now.

“I’ve waited so long,” he
mumbled, in between kisses.

“As have
I,” she told him.

He put his hands to her
breasts but she pushed them away. She was filled with sexual
feelings as well, but she wasn’t ready to acquiesce, not yet. So he
accepted what she offered, her hot open mouth, and her sweet pink
tongue.

Julianna slid her way up
on to his lap. He groaned and re-positioned her body for maximum
pressure on his ever hardening penis. How she loved the feel of it
against her! Again his hands went to her breasts, and it was her
turn to groan. But again she denied him. She wanted to prolong the
pleasure. He wanted to dive right in.

Instead,
she pulled his head to her breast and put his ear to her heart. She
wanted to feel his hair, soft and tightly trimmed. She wanted him
to hear the quickening of her heartbeat. The fingers in their other
hands intertwined, locked, held.

How soft her hands were
and what power they had over him. Even her slightest touch was
erotic and sent little trembles through him. She rocked back and
forth, drawing his attention away from her hands and back on her
beautiful hips. It was a strain to not let him enter her right
then. Her body warmed and her breathing got raspy. At the very core
of her there was a new need, an urgent desire. Julianna wondered if
he could detect it.