Father Briar and The Angel Page 14

  And then she had the most fantastic idea came into her head, alcohol-fuelled, to be sure, but still, what was the saying? In vodka veritas? “Something like that,” she thought, a plan forming. What if she let Father Briar find her in such a low class locale, slumming with truckers and jazzbos and whores?

  “That would make him jealous, so jealous! Maybe he’d see how silly it is, to not be able to go out together. Maybe things will change. Anyway, it is what he deserves. Isn’t that what the Church teaches us, that we all get what we deserve, in the end?”

  She returned to her seat in the booth across from Montana Frank. Thankfully, in her absence, he’d finished her vodka orange.

  “Sorry, sweetie, about your screwdriver,” he slurred, slumped back in the seat.

  This was going to be easier than she thought. She already had an accomplice who was very pliable. It would be easy, stepping out around town with him a few times. Naturally, nothing meaningful could ever occur between them, this was just for show.

  “I mean,” she thought, gulping her water and the little square ice cubes that she crunched between her teeth like a horse crunches sugar cubes, “I can barely tolerate him on an hour cocktail date or through an eight hour shift waitressing at Bjorn’s, much less a life together!”

  But she wasn’t going to tell Cedric that!

  “Let the locals talk. Let them talk about me,” she thought, “for once, the gossip will work in my favor, instead of against me, like it usually does. I won’t even tell him myself. Word that I’m stepping out with another man will get back to him soon enough.”

  Now all she had to do was convince Frank Montana, now mostly finished with his sixth beer, to be her accomplice.

  As he slipped further down in his booth, wherein he was so comfortable it looked like his home away from home, and fiddled with the beer bottles in front of them, peeling the labels down halfway and exactly halfway, never off, and arranging them in a straight line, she decided to make her move. Julianna leaned forward in the booth, making sure to press her breasts together to enhance the size of her cleavage, even though she was clad in three layers of sweaters, and said, “Montana Frank, as you know, I’m new in town, and I’m so terribly lonely…”

  Chapter Nineteen: Francisco and Julianna’s First… Date?

  When she’d first asked him out, Montana Frank had thought he’d gotten drunk enough to fall asleep in the booth and have a delicious dream. “This young woman can’t be serious,” he’d assumed. But she’d persisted, inviting him to dinner date at Hurley’s Hanging Gardens, the nicest restaurant in the trendy tourist destination of Mille Lacs.

  “Mille Lacs means “thousand lakes” in French.” Mr. Montana man-splained.

  “Oh, just like Des Moines is French for ‘the Moines,’ she joked.

  People from both of the Twin Cities make the drive up to eat here,” he enthused. “And even better, it’s your treat!”

  He was teasing. She’d offered to pay, which was mind-blowing enough, but there was no way any woman was paying for his dinner.

  “Call me a chauvinist, but my mama raised me right. I’m a member of the Church in good standing. I always pay for “shakes” at Bjorn’s, even when I lose. And hell will freeze over before I allow a woman to pay for a meal. Even an alluring woman with a hidden agenda, a woman like Julianna Warwidge.”

  Of course, he knew that she must have had ulterior motives. She was young and beautiful; he was aging and a bit of an overweight scoundrel, when he honestly appraised himself. This he didn’t do often, where was the fun in that? But when he did, he was honest. There were many more desirable bachelor farmers around town than he; why hadn’t Julianna showed the slightest bit of attention in any of them?

  And he’d inquired. Bjorn always knew the good gossip and he hadn’t heard any scuttlebutt about her being seen stepping out with any other fellows. This was the 1950’s, so lesbianism never entered his nor any other of the townsfolk’s minds. Nobody, that is, but Bjorn and the cook, strangely, as they remembered Sweden’s free and open nudist culture from their youth, where attitudes towards the body and sex were free and uninhibited during the summer months They’d discussed the possibility that Julianna might have been a “daughter of Eros,” but dismissed the possibility out of hand. This was Brannaska, after all.

  “I am honored that you, such a high-falluting girl, would be seen out with me in public,” he said, his flattery oozing across the table like the butter melting over the bread. Julianna enjoyed it, too; Mr. Montana was an exceptionally manly physical presence despite his silly theories and awkward sense of humor. And any man would’ve been an improvement over being seen out with no man, which was her usual predicament.

  “I’ll be on my best behavior,” he promised, after accepting her invitation to dinner. That she hoped would be true. She still had no romantic interest in the man; she was just looking to make Cedric jealous. She wasn’t nervous being our or even alone with him; she was a tough girl who’d fended of plenty a horny and drunken sailor during her time in the WAC. Her father had taught her “to never take any guff from any man,” and he’d even showed her a few dirty tricks with which to defend herself. “Ain’t dirty tricks,” he’d explained, “if you are a lady and some brute is trying to assault your honor.”

  Mr. Montana shook his head. He could believe the menu at this place. “What a grand variety of options!” Unlike most Minnesota farmers, this one wasn’t a man of few words. He liked fourteen words when four would do, and if he could get away with forty, all the better! Something just didn’t feel right about not explaining yourself fully.

  Still, though, he was worried about talking too much. It had been a while since he’d been out with a woman. Been longer since he’d been out with an attractive woman. Been even long still since he’d been out with a young, attractive woman. Most of his dates had hair the color of which did not exist in nature but had been chemically engineered in a bottle.

  “Will you please order for me, Mr. Montana?” she batted her eyelashes at him. “You are so much more worldly than I am.”

  “Oh, I doubt that’s true,” he said, blushing for the first time in thirty years. There was joy in being out with a women half his age, and even if he suspected the whole thing was a sham, he wasn’t going to let that affect his good time.

  When the waitress came, he straightened up in his chair and spoke very formally.

  “We will have two Chiffonade salads with Roquefort dressing. Our appetizer will be Canapé Anchovies. I will have a New York Sirloin Steak and the lady will have Lamb Chops in Mint Sauce. We will both have sweet potatoes, butter, bread and red wine, I do not care what vineyard or vintage, my palate is not that sophisticated.”

  Both the waiter and Julianna were impressed. “As you wish, sir,” she said, bustling back to the kitchen.

  “It isn’t Bjorn’s,” he said with a wry smile, “but it’ll do quite nicely for tonight.”

  She didn’t comment on the fact that they were at Mille Lacs Lake’s fanciest fish restaurant and he’d ordered an imported steak and lamb chops.

  “Cedric would’ve known to order the house specialties and not the showiest items on the menu,” she thought, missing him for a moment.

  The wine put such thoughts aside. It was sour and sweet simultaneously, heady and fragrant with a dozen tastes. “Delicious,” she said.

  “I think so, too.”

  They made small talk until a big problem happened.

  Father Briar and Bishop Dale walked into the restaurant

  It was all Julianna could do to keep the wine from squirting through her nose. She wanted to curse, and curse out loud. Cursing in her head wasn’t nearly as much of a stress relief. They took seats behind Mr. Montana, in a darker corner of the place, ensconced in a big round red booth.

  “Thanks for coming out with me tonight,” the Bishop said. “I saw that the lights in the parish house were on and I thought I might drop in.”

  “That is very thoughtful of you.
I could always use some company.”

  Cedric had been hoping for Julianna’s company that night but repeated calls through Ma Roggenbucker’s party line had gone unanswered. But he’d left the light on for her, just in case. That was the way folks did things around here. “Minnesota nice,” they called it. And Cedric lived by an “open door” policy.

  But an “open door” policy sometimes led to dinner with your boss instead of time with your illicit love. Such is life.

  Bishop Muller had no such policy; both his door and his heart were locked, and therefore fewer joys and disappointments from the world than did Father Briar.

  For example, tonight the man had been lonely and out for a drive. Driving and listening to the radio were a form of mediation for him, and he often drove in weather and other circumstances he shouldn’t have. Having, perhaps subconsciously, drifted over towards his favorite parish in the diocese, he made the effort to ask Cedric out for dinner and more driving with him.

  Since Northern Minnesota is sparsely populated and as lonely, as well, as lonely an old Bishop, dining options were minimal. So it wasn’t much of a coincidence that they ended up at Hurley’s Hanging Gardens, especially after they’d been out “cruising” for an hour or better. Father Briar had been frightened as they’d driven; the bishop was a terrible driver and seemed to be in constant battle with the car.

  When they finally pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, he was so relieved and stressed he didn’t even notice Montana Frank’s vehicle parked five cars down.

  Nor did he notice Julianna in the booth with the very same Montana Frank as they walked in. He was still thinking about the dozen or so times the Bishop Muller had narrowly missed hitting other cars or careening headlong into the ditch.

  “I’ve heard the lamp chops are good here,” Bishop Muller commented.

  “I’ll be having fish,” Cedric said.

  Julianna fussed and fumed and plotted and schemed and worried.

  “What am I going to do if he sees us?” she wondered, heart pounding.

  Their meals came.

  “This looks delicious,” Mr. Montana commented.

  “It sure does,” Julianna agreed.

  They both, however, privately thought it didn’t look any different than the plates they’d have gotten and Bjorn’s. Oh, sure, they might’ve arranged the victuals on the plates here a little fancier here; the potatoes were a good five centimeters away from the fish and not a morsel was anywhere the edge of the plate. At Bjorn’s, overlap was common and edges of your fried chicken breast hanging over the plate was a sure sign of gourmet eats.

  Julianna picked at her salad and tried not to look at the booth behind her. She felt ashamed and frightened, like she wanted to disappear into a crack in the floorboard and go down into the depths of the earth. But even the thought of that triggered her claustrophobia, her fear of being trapped under the earth, to be buried alive, to be closer to hell.

  The first part of dinner with the bishop was a minor hell, just the first ring, which Dante describes as merely a deficient form of Heaven, a place where beings are controlled by nothing but rationality and therefore can dream of and aspire to nothing greater and more holy than logical minds can conceive of.

  Bishop Muller chewed with his mouth open, talked in a low mumble about nothing, and looked between his plate and his guest with big, red, wet eyes.

  “Sometimes he looks like a sad clown, and sometimes he just looks like a clown,” Cedric thought between mouthfuls of (admittedly delicious) broiled Walleyed Pike. “The former is better than the latter; at least sad clowns have dignity.”

  “I’m so ashamed of myself,” the bishop thought. “I’ve got to rely on those under me, priests who are too scared to say no, for company.”

  His lamb chops tasted like ash in his mouth.

  “I’m so ashamed of myself,” Julianna thought. This surprised her. She felt as though she was cheating on Cedric. “But how can you be unfaithful to a priest? Isn’t going out with other men just part of the charade? And a part of the charade that should, at least, be part of the fun? I can’t have a normal love life, why can’t I at least have the appearance of one?”

  “I heard on the radio that there might be a storm brewing up north,” Montana Frank said, trying to lighten Julianna’s darkened mood. He was a sensitive soul, prone to great worry about having offended others.

  “You farmers, do you talk about anything but the weather?” Julianna wasn’t trying to be rude, and she forced a plastic smile after saying it, but when his face fell, she knew she’d done wrong.

  “Another sin,” she sighed inwardly, “as if I can afford any more.”

  Father Briar, just physically a few feet away from Julianna and Mr. Montana, had, spiritually speaking, descended into the second circle of hell, where the punishments of “Hell proper” begin. Dante described it as a place “where no thing gleams."

  Looking around, Father Briar concluded that indeed, this RESTAURANT was a perfect representation of this section of Dante’s vision. The red tablecloths were muted, the silverware unpolished, the plates an eggshell white, the lighting dim, and the conversation without with or charm.

  Even more appropriately, in the second circle of Hell reside people whose earthly lives were consumed by lust. These souls are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest.

  Always the classicist, Father Briar pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and began to doodle on the paper napkin that he’d asked for instead of the linens.

  Seeing him, Bishop Muller asked, “are you distracted, or dissatisfied with our meal?”

  “No, not at all. I am one of those Christians who firmly believes that “the devil makes work for idle hands.”

  For the first time all week, Bishop Muller smiled.

  While Father Briar’s Medieval Latin wasn’t as well-practiced and daily-used as his classical Latin (the language of the church), it was still fluent and lovely, especially in his elegant handwriting.

  “Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom

  seized my lover with passion for that sweet body

  from which I was torn unshriven to my doom.

  Love, which permits no loved one not to love,

  took me so strongly with delight in him

  that we are one in Hell, as we were above.

  Love led us to one death. In the depths of Hell

  Julianna waits for him who took our lives."

  This was the piteous tale they stopped to tell.”

  Conversation had stopped at Julianna and Mr. Montana’s table as well. He’d started telling a story but lost the narrative thread somewhere after she’d offered him one of her lamb chops.

  Julianna felt awful. She was mad at everybody in the room and wished it would snow so much that they’d be just swept away into the white nothing. She would’ve said a little prayer, but thought that it might be blasphemous, given the circumstances. If not blasphemous, at least asking too much of the Lord, going a bridge too far.

  She had forgotten, in her time of stress and sorrow, that no span is too long for a caring God. Bishop Muller, noticing Cedric doodling Dante’s Inferno on the cocktail napkin, got the hint and suggested they repair home early, before dessert, even.

  So worried was Father Briar about the dangers of the drive home that he didn’t even notice his girlfriend with the town’s most eligible bachelor. He was just praying they got home safe.

  Which, of course, they did.

  Chapter Twenty: Weren’t the Disciples Out on a Lake in a Storm and Christ Calmed it for Them? Few Such Miracles, These Days.

  The Irish fisherman, Stevie Coughlin, was in a weatherman’s glory. This meant he could lie his ass off and not be called on it. In this way, it was handy he was an Irishman, a people, because of Houlihan, the town’s scurrilous innkeeper, had a reputation around Brannaska as being slippery with the truth.

  “She’s a whopper, she’s a maelstrom, she’s a monster!
” he screamed into the National Weather Service phones, which were ringing consistently, with people requesting and offering information.

  “Does that guy know any science or does he just know adjectives?” One of the college-trained forecasters asked.

  “Knowing all the best adjectives is most of meteorology,” Reginald (never Reggie) Roggenbucker, who was their most recently hired weatherman, said. Reginald was the lone son of the Roggenbucker Phone Monopoly, and he wanted out of the family business. So he’d studied economics at the U of M, which was the only science more fraudulent than meteorology, and had been hired, fresh out of school, by the new Weather Service.

  True, but there was, even then, some established science. It was well-known, in fact, that an Alberta Clipper originated when warm, moist winds from the Pacific Ocean come into contact with the mountains in the provinces of British Columbia and then Alberta and into Manitoba’s wild northern kingdom

  “To form, the air travels through the mountains, forming what are known as Chinook winds in Alberta, then develops into a storm over the Canadian prairies when it becomes entangled, like an abusive lover, with the cold air hanging there.

  The storm then slides southward and gets caught up in the jet stream, sending the storm barreling into the North and Central areas of the United States.’

  “In a weird little fact, the term isn’t used in Alberta, because the winds up there that cause the storms down here are warm. They start as warmth in Alberta and when they get to Minnesota, they are dangerous and full of ice and snow.” This seemed, to Reginald Roggenbucker, as a perfect metaphor for life in the state.