Father Briar and The Angel Page 18

  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 teenag
ers. 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-“

  “Who do you think you are, Moses?” Even the blizzard winds couldn’t blow away the high and beautiful comedy in her teasing. “That makes sense. You are old enough to be Moses, bossy enough to be Moses, spent some time in parting the seas, and only have ten damned things to talk about.”

  At the end of their fight, there was’’ laughter, and the laughter was awesome, and the laughter was with God.

  Father Briar did what Julianna told him to do. He waited there for her to walk out to him, reach out with both hands, and pull. She brought him up with superhuman ease and they walked on three feet back to the icehouse, guided by her eyes.

  The wolf was warm and strong, but hungry

  Inside the shack, things were soft and tender (just as the wolf enjoyed them…) as Jewels and Cedric began making up. Kisses first, then necking. Oh! What a thing ‘necking’ was in those halcyon early fifties.

  In between their kisses, she wrapped and warmed his leg, and made sure the rest of his body was warmed by something she’d learned in her emergency medical training during her WAC days as “core to core contact.”

  She tingled. The taste of her sexy skin was like nothing his palate had ever experienced. “Who knew medicine could be so sexy?” she joked, causing him to laugh again. Even though they were on a lake, she could feel a sea change beneath them.

  They kissed and kissed because they were already undressed. That was part of “core to core contact.” His kisses were soft and sweet but not yet spectacular. Until he got to her breasts. There were only a few boards, strong and sturdy to be sure, between her and the world, the deadly, empty world. The outside world. That her breasts were exposed in such a dire situation made her thrilled. Was there any lady in Minnesota naughtier than she? Surely not.

  He stoked the fire again, although there was no need. The heat of their bodies was enough to steam up the inside of the icehouse and leave puddles on the plywood floor.

  “How could we ever have fought?” he wondered aloud.

  “Sometimes it is necessary,” she counseled, “it just has to be done with respect.”

  This made him kiss her deeper and with more passion than any dirty talk could have.

  The wolf watched Cedric and Julianna and he licked his lips, imaging what they might taste like.

  Father Briar didn’t have to imagine. She’d sprayed “her signature fragrance,” her simple Woolworth’s perfume, on her neck and he was kissing what remained of it away. It was as arousing as the finest French imports (which, of course, he’d never smelled, but a man can certainly imagine) and he wished she’d wear it more often.

  “What funny things we think of, when trapped with the ones we love,” he marveled. There were so many dangerous and amazing things going on outside, and here he was, thinking of his lover’s perfume. Tasting it, too.

  He longed to taste the rest of her. She’d loosed her clothes, causing his pants to tighten. Julianna’s full breasts swung free and he stripped her over her shirt, taking in her trim waist, her porcelain skin made even whiter by not seeing the sun for months of winter, and the beginning curves of her delightful hips.

  There wasn’t much visual stimulation in the icehouse, but she was all he needed. His visual imagination had been stimulated, memories long dormant had been reawakened, and he thought of that same body, that body which she so lovingly offered to him, during the other times he’d been fortunate to be with her. That dress she wore to the barn dance, those cute stockings she’d worn to the hockey game in Thief River Falls, that particularly fancy church dress she wore on high holidays and for festivals of saints.

  Then his cock stiffened again as he had flashes, memories, little mini-orgasms, after remembering her body fully nude, and indulging his imagination. She grabbed him and pulled him close. She could feel his hardness pressing against her, throbbing really, and he delighted in the anticipation of what was to come.

  “There is no place for this lust, this desire, this insatiable hunger,” he chided himself, but then gave in again. No man, he thought, could withstand the rapid onslaught of fire and passion that had come from kissing her.

  “But I could no more stop kissing her than I could stop breathing,” he thought, rationalizing his desire. Just to prove it, he held his breath, feeling the creeping cold from outside extinguish itself in his lungs.

  He ran his fingers through her hair, listening to her moan as he tugged and pulled at the soft and downy tufts. Julianna’s sounds were pushing him closer and closer to losing control of himself, and oh, how he loved control.

  Julianna and her body had taken control of his brain. Sure, this was foolish, making love in a little icehouse in the middle of a blizzard. Heck, everything was foolish. Kissing her for the first time had been foolish, and everything since then had been foolish, almost to the point of dangerousness.

  Pausing for a moment, he reached over to the cooler, hoping to find a cold soda pop inside. A small part of him was hoping for something stronger, maybe they had a little brandy left?

  Nope, just soda. He shared it with Julianna, who was as hot as he was, despite the deadly blizzard outside. It was going to be one hell of a night.

  He glanced over at the clock above the stove and saw it was just about seven pm. It had been dark outside so long due to the heavy snowfall that time had lost all sense of meaning. Father Briar was pretty sure it was Saturday night but it could have been Friday, next Wednesday, or next month, for all he knew.

  Now, savoring the icy bottle of cola to his lips, Cedric took a long, audible gulp, his Adam’s Apple bobbing as he swallowed, and licked his lips. He smiled down at Julianna, who was lying on a thick pile of blankets, placed on top of a wooden pallet. He liked his makeshift bed, liked their little love-nest.

  He licked the last of the pop off his lips, happy he could still taste her over its caramel and sugary sweetness.

  “Will I ever find safety with this woman? Will she ever find peace with me?” he wondered, but then dealt with such philosophical problems in physical ways. They had to, they would be trapped under the same small roof (and the wind was now rattling the walls) for another day, at least. How long could it possibly last? How long could they possibly last? He could make love for a week, at least, but after that, he wasn’t so sure.

  A dozen emotions pulsed through him. This was a woman who’d given up a normal romance and a normal life to be with him. That they’d ever fought shocked him and filled him with shame. This was a woman who he’d found so desirable that he’d betrayed the vows and promises of the Society of Jesus for her. That he’d ever not been in love with Julianna shocked and amazed him. This was a woman who’d moved halfway across the country, to a frigid but fertile land, to further explore the possibilities of their love. That he ever thought he could live without her shocked and amazed him.

  He knew that he would protect with his life and he worried that this storm might make that possibility real.

  “No man has ever loved a woman like I love Julianna,” Cedric thought, knowing that was vanity, pure vanity, and that vanity was a sin. But this was a pretty small sin and a pretty big compliment to his lady, to boot, so he pushed guilt aside and went to kissing her body with a renewed vigor.

  She was as white, sweet and delicious as a sugar cookie, lying on the makeshift bed. Propping herself up
on her elbows and stretching her curvy legs and supple calves, she stared at him. Even this he found impossibly erotic.

  Cedric took all of her in as the storm increased around them. There certainly was a storm in his heart. He kissed her belly and her bush and her thighs and her kneecaps and then moved up to her neck and began anew.

  Growling with primitive savagery and a feverish hunger (remarkably similar to the wolf outside, although neither of them could know that at the time), he eased his underpants down over his thighs and off his ankles, but his eyes remained locked on hers. There were nearly one.

  Over the past wintery weeks, he’d memorized every measure of her body. Cedric had put his lips on it, had tasted it, and had savored the emotions it brought out of him. It had changed his life. A huge smile came to the lips of the horny, committed, monogamous priest. At that moment, it didn’t matter what she believed or he believed or the Church believed or anybody in town or any where believed. It didn’t matter. Only they, their desire, and their faith in their love, still existed.

  He scooted over to the edge of the makeshift bed and pressed his body against hers, pulled her into his arms and lay her down on the goose down pillows. He tasted her yet again and loved it. And then he began his smorgasbord, pressing her hips down using only the control of his mouth. When she wiggled in ecstasy from the delight in his mouth, he switched his dish and went to her breasts, supping on the juicy nipples while they perked up beneath the care of his tongue. She called out his name but the wind carried it away, out there across the frozen lake and into the snowy, starry night.

  Julianna shuddered and sighed and wished the sensations he was giving her would never end. He explored her body with a cartographer’s care, tracing every change in elevation, tracing her curves and her lines and her pathways. He kissed her from neck to navel and wild sounds caught in her throat for a moment before escaping.