Father Briar and The Angel Read online

  The men at the dance, much to the dismay of the single women who had turned up didn’t look quite so striking. For the most part they dressed in flannels and white cotton tees. As the night progressed though, the heat got too much even for the resilient farm hands of Brannaska. They stripped off their tees and revealed their bulging farmers pectorals much to the blushing and fainting of the on looking ladies.

  “Oh, isn’t he gorgeous,” Ramona said to her friends as she blushed at a prominent example of Minnesota masculinity, the luscious Trig Olsen.

  Her parents, based on Cedric’s advice, had denied them access to one another throughout the last couple of weeks and their lust was boiling over. Ramona looked around for the pesky priest or the Polish crone who’d been so disruptive to their budding sexuality. They were nowhere to be seen.

  “Hmm,” Ramona thought to herself with maximum teenage sarcasm and scorn, “maybe they are off fucking each other.” Not seeing them, she discretely grabbed her boyfriend and they went off to find one of their many love nests.

  Teenagers have always been, and always will be, a step ahead.

  Chapter Fourteen: Bjorn’s Needs a New Cook.

  While Bjorn was in the front of the café acting as the host, greeting and teasing the customers, serving coffee, and taking their money, several people worked back in the kitchen to keep things running. Of course, Bjorn’s wife, the cook, was the head honcho (even humble Brannaskans needed one of those), but she did have help during the rush hours.

  If there was ever salt of the earth (and there was, Brannaska was one of the saltiest places on earth, per capita…), these women were it.

  Some were of sturdy stock, born and raised in what they proudly called “the North Country,” girls who’d stayed in town after high school and married young to the farmers who tilled the land. They were used to working side by side with their men, but often didn’t see much in the way of earnings; fickle was the economy of family farming, so fickle, in fact, the profession doesn’t really exist now.

  Some were itinerant laborers of various qualities. More on those folks later.

  When the word was spread that Clarice needed a cook or two, women came forward.

  What a Godsend it was. Some of the women earned spending money of their own, a new concept for them. It made perusing the Sears Roebuck catalog so much more fun. And then, oh what fun to see the rural mail carrier deliver a package of fabric or a new girdle that they had actually paid for with their own money. A couple of girls even bought those huge cone-shaped bras that made them look like they had atomic missiles under their sweaters, but never had the courage to wear them out of the house.

  Julianna was due to start tonight. Her job search hadn’t lasted long.

  She was replacing a woman named Rose, who always reminded the cook of a chickadee. She was small, thin, nervous, and perpetually grey-colored.

  Bjorn thought she was too silly, but the customers liked to joke with her as she flirted and laughed with them and at herself.

  “That woman can work!” he’d boom, after hours, when the cook complained about her. “There is nothing that she won’t do.”

  The problem was, she had never learned to drive; therefore, her husband had to deliver her and pick her up each day. Now he was sick from a scary infection in his lungs caused by pesticides and so she couldn’t come to work any more.

  Before Rose had been Thora, the wife of a man whose primary accomplishment in life was overcoming an addiction to medicinal opium. The twenties were a wild time, even in Brannaska; snake oil salesmen came through town peddling all manner of exotic cures.

  Thora had been a beauty in her day, but life had taken its toll; she drank in her car before and after her shifts but never during, so it was hard for Bjorn or the cook to fire her. What you did when you weren’t working wasn’t even of their business, or so they told one another.

  Irene, a widow who lived a stone’s throw from the front door of the café, was the pie maker. She would waddle down the street (unfortunately she ate too many of her own pies, not to mention her own and cakes and cookies) before the café opened each morning and roll out the best pie crust ever. She wasn’t the most sociable woman, in fact the cook, herself a woman so taciturn she isn’t even named in this story, had only heard her speak a handful of words over the last three decades. Therefore, these early morning hours suited her well. She could be back home, dusting the flour off her apron before the men came looking for their coffee and favorite piece of pie, which they often had after breakfast.

  Irene had many specialties such as banana cream and coconut cream, pecan, lemon meringue, but none of those fancy French silk or key lime ones. That would have been, if not heretical, at least borderline treasonous. Probably the all-time favorite pie was fresh wild blueberry pie. She was not the blueberry picker. Her chubby, wobbly knees would have made it impossible to get up from the blueberry patch.

  But this caused no problem, because if there was anything Bjorn and Clarice liked to do better than tending the café, it was blueberry picking.

  In the middle of the afternoon, when there was a lull in the restaurant, they would head out in the July heat and humidity (yes, there were times when Northern Minnesota wasn’t buried beneath a blanket of ice and snow) with their empty Kemp’s Ice Cream buckets or milk pails, their mosquito spray, a couple of sandwiches, and a thermos of coffee.

  There were acres of wild blueberry woods a few miles from town. Here, too, they had different duties. Bjorn was the ‘scout’ which meant that he didn’t pick many berries but would walk around the woods looking for the best patch.

  Finding one, he would yell out “Clarice, over here, they are better than where you are.” She would get up off her knees, tromp over there, and say under her breath, “my other patch was better.” This would be repeated time after time, until it was time for a quick cup of coffee and the rather warm bologna sandwich. Then into the car and get back just in time to serve the supper guests. But, oh, how they loved those trips in the woods, and what delicious pies Irene would make from those berries.

  Julianna considered the salary of the job to be secondary to her access to fresh slices of pie, and couldn’t wait to start.

  Chapter Fifteen: In the Aftermath of Julianna’s First Night on the Job.

  She fell into Cedric’s arms, crying.

  “Oh, my dear, it was a disaster. A fiasco. A catastrophe.”

  “I’m sure it couldn’t have been that bad,” he said, trying to comfort her.

  He was having a difficult time concentrating on her woes. He’d had to console many a tearful and emotional parishioner, but this was different. This was his girlfriend. You couldn’t treat your crying girlfriend like a sad member of your congregation, could you? Even if she was? Love was complicated, much more complicated than he’d been told.

  “It was terrible! I screwed up every order.”

  “How is that possible? At smorgasbord, doesn’t everybody serve themselves?”

  “Apparently so, but I didn’t know that. I’m new here! How was I supposed to know? Nobody told me. That rascal Mr. Olsen kept sending me to the spread to get his pork ribs for him. Then the cook yelled at me because I was serving him and not bringing dishes out from the back. These people eat so fast. I’ve never seen food disappear like that before. Twenty pounds of ‘glorified rice’ was eaten in just a few minutes. What the heck is ‘glorified rice, anyway?”

  Cedric giggled a soft little giggle. “It’s a local creation, I think. It is cold cooked rice with a mountain of whipped cream and sugar, all mixed together with canned pineapples and topped with maraschino cherries. It is quite the confection!”

  “I couldn’t tell it apart from the mashed potatoes. Both were so white and fluffy.”

  “White and fluffy, sort of like the bellies of the people eating it,” Cedric joked, trying to cheer her up.

  But she was in no mood. One of the things Father Briar would learn about their relationship was that when she wanted to
cry and complain, she wanted to cry and complain, that was what would lift her mood, not joking or problem solving. He’d learn that her tears weren’t a call to action, but to contemplation. She wanted to mull over her problems, to feel and appreciate them, not to aggressively solve them. This was a great difference between being a priest and a boyfriend. Clergy were supposed to help, boyfriends were supposed to listen.

  “The cook was so mad at me! She didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was mad.”

  This was true. When she was most angry, the cook said the least.

  “I feel really stupid, Cedric. How could I have messed up such an easy job? I’m a smart girl, right?”

  “Of course you are, darling Jewels, they just don’t know that yet. They will. You impress everybody, eventually. You just had a tough night tonight, that is all.”

  His words weren’t much of a comfort, but his strong arms sure were. Julianna pulled in a breath, and he squeezed her tighter. She loved this. She played this like a game, not letting it out until the last moment, then sucking in more as fast as she could, making him hold her tighter. Sometimes she wanted to shrink herself thusly until she was put a straw, then a toothpick, then a single strand of hair. Then she’d be safe.

  After a while, she was almost afraid to let it out at all. She stared at him, eyes blurry and still red from tears. He felt the tension in her shoulders and the air puffing up her chest, that beautiful chest.

  Oh, it felt good to confide in him, to vent to him, to put her troubles upon him. Finally she exhaled and pursed her lips together a bit. The long night at the café had bleached off all her lipstick and she looked pale and chapped.

  She sat down on his couch. He wished they were in the bedroom, and then he was ashamed of himself, deeply ashamed.

  “It is amazing what power romantic lust can have over a man,” he thought, then pushed all prurience from his mind and vowed to help his love with a pure heart.

  Julianna closed her eyes tight, opened them, blinked, and looked at him fresh. He was handsome and caring and kind and, in the right light, sexy like a film star. She pushed her back against the plush coach, taking warmth from it. All thoughts of waitressing had faded from her mind, all thoughts of disaster, everything but thoughts and feelings for him. She needed comfort.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  Now was not the time for one hundred percent brutal honesty.

  “Not at all.”

  “Really?”

  “When we met, I felt a charge go through me, more than a charge, a change. I knew nothing would ever be the same. I’m so proud of how slow we went, how we explored, how thoughtful we were, how considered, and how considerate.”

  Now she got teary once more, but not out of frustration or disappointment, but from joy.

  “Oh, my love,” she said, and kissed him, because words failed her yet again.

  In the quiet, he continued. “I shied away from the developing feelings for you because they had no place in my life of order and service.”

  “Not to mention chastity.”

  This made him laugh. More, it cracked him up. This unexpected bit of mirth lightened the mood in the room to such a degree that she felt the little, familiar stirrings of desire between her tingling thighs.

  “Being in love is a strange thing, isn’t it?” he asked, a note of melancholy playing through his voice.

  “It is. But I know that love is real and that loneliness is painful.” Julianna well remembered their time apart; those long months when they were halfway across the country from one another still hung with her.

  Knowing this, he stepped in, filling the rhythm of her conversation with some of his.

  “I am so glad that you came to Brannaska to be with me. I so very much want to be happy, and I hope you can be happy here, the winter aside.”

  “The winter isn’t so bad. Yet.”

  Yet. It would get much, much worse. But neither of them knew that then.

  “Was it hard for you to make the move out here?”

  Julianna hadn’t talked about it much; doing so seemed to violate the strange but stable truce she’d made with both God and Cedric about the affair. But the truth was, it had been hard, leaving home again after the war.

  “Yes, yes it was,” she confessed.

  “You could’ve said something. I could’ve counseled you.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Worried about what?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know if you really wanted me to come. I didn’t want to be disappointed, to have my heart broken.”

  He kissed her and her heart nearly exploded when she realized they were close to intercourse again. She kissed and nibbled at his ears; he laughed a bit and his breath quickened. He pressed his hand between her thighs, found the soft cleft there, and held.

  Julianna squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on her pleasure. She was tired of waiting and tired of the space between them, wanted everything to touch, absolutely everything. She pulled the rest of their clothes away and they lay nude together on the couch.

  His body was beautiful. She looked him over, wanting to commit everything to memory were they ever to be separated again. Cedric stood up and took her hand, leading her to the bedroom. She closed the door behind them. Before he lay her down on the bed, he brushed her cheek with the back of his warm hand, kissed her softly, and told her he loved her.

  “You are the most gorgeous woman in the world, Jewels. You have no idea how beautiful you are.”

  His lips closed on her neck, then moved down to her breasts, on to her belly. Her impatience manifested itself in a lusty moan; the carnal, animal sound raised both of their desire.

  Julianna raced her hands across his back and down to his bum, then lower even, pulling and grinding and enjoying the tense strength of his muscular thighs. She wondered how he stayed so fit, given that he ate mostly at Bjorn’s, which was no health food establishment. She also didn’t think the activities of the priesthood entailed much exercise.

  Now it was her turn to roll him over. She put him on his back and put her mouth all over him. Julianna took him into her wet hot mouth, slowly at first, then quick and hungry. She was greedy and he was eager, thrusting his hips to let her taste the whole length of it. He tried to keep his moans muffled and quiet but she heard and she knew he loved it.

  She was surprised then, when he spoke up.

  “Jewels stop,” he begged.

  She realized he was at the edge of climax and wanted to hold off, so she let him slid from her mouth and tumbled to her back. He moved to the top position and kneeled between her legs.

  The heat rushed to her face and then away again, down through her chest and then between her legs as he explored her folds and her wetness. He raised his head and refocused his attention on her nipples, moving from one to another. He took them between his teeth and saw how far he could go before she cried out with pleasure. It wasn’t very far, she felt as though every nerve ending and every fiber of her body was on fire, even though he was being as gentle as could be expected of any man who’d endured a prior commitment celibacy as long as he had.

  Father Briar used his strong arms to toss her legs over her head. He did this with a smile. He pressed himself against her and enjoyed the wiggling of her hips, her little noises, her groans of desire. He could feel the juices seeping from her and he wanted more and more of them. So he teased her with his purple head and then pulled away.

  The repeated rhythm of this was enough to bring her to the edge, that glorious, dangerous edge. She spread herself even further for him and enjoyed the feeling of the warmth evaporating between them and the winter’s chill, which was present in every room that year, cooling her.

  Her exhibitionism (even if nobody but he was there to see) inflamed her, already aching, all-consuming pussy. She knew from previous experience with him, sleight as though it was, that he wouldn’t enter her yet, he’d te
ase more out of the experience, if not for her, for himself.

  But, oh Lord, she loved it too!

  He proved her right. Taking his penis away from her, he decided to use his mouth to enhance their lovemaking. He blazed a trail passionate and inhaling kisses around her body, seeming to land his mouth on whatever random bit of physical geography pleased him best.

  Finally his spectacular mouth landed between her legs and she screamed and drew her breath back in and screamed some more. This was unbearable, the combination of release and desire for more, the love of this and the wanting of something different.

  Cedric decided to take things even further and closed the whole of his mouth around as much of her vagina as he could. He drew it all in, stretching her out in entirely new ways. Her insides felt warm and as though they might feel great enough to come out and explore a little. She gasped extended and interesting gasps that fascinated him and he thought there might be whole languages contained within them.

  “I have been blessed by God,” he told her. “And I believe myself to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

  He hoped she didn’t recognize that he was plagiarizing Lou Gehrig. She didn’t, so he continued; now making shit up as he went along.

  “I am so very lucky. I find myself between both of my worlds right now, and I am finding it equally easy to move among them.”

  “I came here to find happiness. And I’ve found it with you, so can we stop the talk of the Church and your duties there, and for now, at least, enjoy the balance? For as long as it may last?” When Cedric put his mouth to hers, she got a bit dizzy as the blood rushed from her head to regions further south. kissed her, the heat rushed to her groin. She’d never wanted anyone this much before, and she found herself questioning what would happen to them, with his obligations to his parish, his Order, and his God. She forced herself not to focus on the potentially devastating unknowns and instead gave her full measure of attention to the pleasure and the illicit thrill of their forbidden love.