Father Briar and The Angel

by Rita Saladano

  “I’m sorry I told Bjorn to fire you after your first shift,” the cook told her. Julianna shrugged her sweaty shoulders, not defeated yet. The smorgasbord tonight had been especially busy and she’d been running around like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off.

  That had been just a phrase until she moved here to Brannaska. But she’d been taken around to some farms since her arrival and in the natural course of the day; she’d seen some barnyard beheadings.

  “I had a good shift tonight, right?”

  “Better than good. Great.” From a nearly silent old Norwegian woman, this was enormous praise. Once in a decade praise.

  Julianna slid onto the stool opposite the cash register. It was red and the cushion was worn out from so many heavy farmers’ butts. The thing spun around dangerously and children had been known to use it like a top, with themselves balanced upon it.

  From the cook’s expression, however, Julianna judged that both giving praise and admitting she had been mistaken about something were her two least favorite things to do. Julianna figured she wasn’t particularly fond of loud children using her stools as toys, either.

  “Thank you for giving me a compliment.”

  “It has only been two Sundays, two smorgasbords, and already you’ve proved to be a hard worker. You’re always on time. You are good girl. You never flirt. Even with Mr. Montana. Many of my past waitresses flirted with Francisco. You do not like him?”

  She liked him well enough. But her heart was set on another man. How could she tell the cook, her boss, this, without risking Cedric’s entire life?

  “He is nice,” she said, trying to sound neutral.

  “Successful farmer, too; he’s got massive acreage west of town.”

  That the cook thought Julianna was motivated by money and not love slightly annoyed her, but she was still too happy about being praised to feel bad for long.

  “I like how you charm the customers. We don’t have a lot of charmers here in Brannaska. You don’t mix up orders anymore. And you are good with figures. You are just as good with the figures as Bjorn is.”

  “Thank you. During the war I did a lot of work with numbers. Mechanics have to know all sorts of gauges and fractions and such.” Julianna was having a hard time resisting bragging.

  “My jaws are getting tired from all of this talking,” the cook said, and that ended the conversation. She walked to the back to pour brown sugar, salt and orange juice for one recipe or other; this concoction was in nearly everything they made, from the ribs to the desserts.

  Julianna sat at the counter and tried not to spin around on the stool. She thought nobody was looking, so she indulged herself. Once.

  She immediately regretted it. There was a huge laugh from across the room; Mr. Montana had just returned from the bathroom, where he’d been for a substantial amount of time.

  “Don’t go in there for a while, kid; I’m pretty sure I just did something that violated the Geneva Conventions.”

  She tried not to laugh; that was gross and body humor wasn’t funny. But it built up within her.

  “Bjorn, your smorgasbord was so good I just committed a war crime in the john!”

  Now Julianna burst out laughing. How could this man make such things sound harmless, funny, and, yes, charming?

  “I’m going to tell Senator McCarthy on you,” she said.

  “Can I bribe you not to rat on me?”

  “What is your offer?” she said, one eyebrow raised.

  He patted the flask in the pouch of his overalls.

  “Cocktail?”

  She wasn’t as scandalized as most of the locals would’ve been. This was a “dry” country; no alcohol could legally be bought or sold within its enormous boundaries. Booze was very much a moral issue here.

  But Julianna had come from a Pacific Northwestern family with a comfortable and friendly relationship with red wine and brandy. So the offer of a tidy little cocktail appealed to her; it had, after all, been a long, successful work day.

  “You did an excellent job tonight,” he told her.

  Wow! Two compliments in fifteen minutes? This must’ve been a record, for Brannaska anyway.

  She met Francisco’s eyes. “Thank you. I appreciate it, and I appreciate you not giving me the dickens tonight. My father taught me that I should never shirk and sort of job or duty or responsibility. He hated shirkers, my dad.”

  “How did he feel about cocktails?”

  “He was strictly a shot and a beer guy. My mom loved a Brandy Alexander, though.”

  “I can offer vodka and orange juice, if Bjorn has orange juice.”

  “The cook, I promise you, has orange juice.”

  Excited, she excused herself and went to the back. Two glasses poured, she went back and sat down.

  The cook definitely not would’ve approved of her juice in this manner.

  Bjorn was a little more tolerant, but still, out of respect, they waited to pour the vodka until he’d gone outside to start the engine of his truck, lest it freeze up and not be able to drive them the quarter mile home.

  As Mr. Montana mixed the drink with soda straws, Julianna took a good look at him for the first time. When he wasn’t annoying her with his teasing and his weird theories about how the world worked, he was rugged and attractive and manly.

  When he was dressed up, he dressed in Western gear to match his Western name. And he didn’t stick strictly to cowboy denim, he’d come to barn dances and church potluck dinners in a Nudie Suit, the elaborately embroidered and rhinestone bejeweled creations made popular by Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner.

  But he was no dandy, no foppish dude; you might mistake him for a wrangler right off a ranch, but not a Nashville slickster or a Hollywood cowboy with a plastic gun. Were she a “shaker,” she’d bet that there wasn’t a day in his life that he hadn’t done some sort of challenging manual labor.

  Instead of wearing him out, like it had some other residents of Brannaska who were the same age, it had invigorated him. He had a thick chest that he had a hard time finding overalls to cover it, but he did, and baggy ones, too.

  They took sips.

  “Delicious,” she complimented. It had been a long time since she’d had vodka and it had an electric burn as it went down. She took a deep breath and the world spun and then looked new.

  The free drink was the first time a man had bought her one since the war had ended. It wasn’t because she wasn’t beautiful or fun, quite to the contrary. But she’d been so in love with Cedric, for so long, that she’d never had much of an opportunity to step out.

  Julianna was delighted. “What a night this has been,” she thought. “I’ve gotten free drinks from a Norwegian cowboy, a real apology from a woman who never speaks, and praised for a job I’ve only done twice in my life.”

  If they were going to continue their evening, they’d have to adjourn to somewhere else. Bjorn hadn’t started his truck to let it run forever; him and the cook wanted to get home. But this was a big step.

  A big big step, just out the door. Could she do it?

  Julianna had witnessed him joking and laughing with the customers. She knew he worked like a machine when he was on the farm. Would he be fun somewhere else? Was it safe? More importantly, was it appropriate?

  After three more big sips of vodka, it was appropriate.

  There was a chain hotel on Highway Ten, about twenty miles away, with a lounge and restaurant for truckers that stayed open all night. Most of the respectable people in Brannaska avoided it because they’d heard all sorts of sordid stories about what truckers did with various women of low character in the parking lot.

  They drove there separately, her following him at a respectable distance. Julianna was nervous. Once settled into the grimy lounge, they began talking, once two more drinks had been ordered.

  “Nice that this place is just across the county line,” he said, “so we can get a nightcap.”

  “That they serve liquor seems to be the only attra
ction to this place,” she said, lifting up a wet, ketchup-stained napkin that had been carelessly left by the waitress. Julianna wouldn’t have been so shoddy.

  “Well, they make an excellent Brandy Alexander.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Montana. Tonight’s crowd at the smorgasbord wore me out.” Cassidy sipped her drink.

  “Consider yourself lucky. There were no tourists in there tonight,” Mr. Montana said. A tourist was anybody they didn’t immediately recognize. Immediately. “Those demanding out-of-towners expect things they shouldn’t, expect things that nobody could cook, and expect them free,” he noted.

  “Worse are the seniors,” she joked, emboldened by the alcohol, “especially the geezers they bring in from the old folks home. I have to hand feed some of those poor people.”’

  “It is a good thing that most of smorgasbord consists of soft and mushy foods. It’s easy for them to chew,” Mr. Montana agreed.

  “I didn’t confuse the glorified rice with the mashed potatoes tonight, which is a step in the right direction.”

  “I could’ve made you loose your cool, but I didn’t want to do it again. It felt…rude.”

  This made her blush, and blushing made her feel terrible! She was ashamed of herself for having such a good time without Cedric. Was she being disloyal? Instinctively, she looked around to see if there was anybody there to recognize her. This was a habit she’d picked up after a few years with Cedric.

  Francisco popped the cap of the top of a bottle of beer and took a measured gulp. Since he was driving home he’d wanted to switch to something a little less strong than the vodka he’d been nipping from most of the evening.

  “I think that all people, not just seniors, are getting more and more impatient; they want their order, the want everything, and the want it now. I blame television.”

  “Oh, yes, I do think it is making our children more stupid. Some of those new programs are just trash.”

  “No, I wasn’t talking about programming; I was talking about the waves they beam through the air to send the pictures to our sets. Those are what are making us stupid. They could set those rays, those beams, to make people smarter, but what good would that do them? Government depends on people being stupid to stay in power.”

  As Julianna’s father would’ve said, “that chaps my ass.” She’d served the country and its government, so had Cedric. They weren’t duty bound to make people stupid. They and everybody else like them, all the way up the chain of command to FDR and Truman themselves, had worked to keep America safe and free, not ignorant and enslaved to television waves being beamed from the sky.

  She didn’t want to directly contradict him, though, that would be impolite. And since he’d made such a show earlier of not being rude and teasing her, she wasn’t going to say anything about the silliness of his theories.

  “It is turning people into lousy neighbors and lousy tippers. I’m sure you’ve noticed that,” he said, winking.

  “Not really,” she thought, sipping her drink to cover her silence, “but I have noticed you throwing money around like its nothing, especially when pretty women are involved. Me, lately. Heck, I’ve got twenty extra dollars in my pocket right now because of you.”

  Twenty dollars was a huge amount of money. Huge. The equivalent of one hundred and seventy five dollars today. A loaf of bread cost twenty cents, a gallon of milk was eighty five cents, and two dozen eggs were a dollar and a half, not that anybody in Brannaska was wanting for chickens or eggs.

  “They aren’t that bad,” she said, trying to dismiss the situation. He took another measure, although large, gulp of beer, and then called for another. “Wow, that one went down fast,” she noticed. And he’d started repeating himself.

  “Those old folks come down from the senior home like a group of squabbling old pigeons. Those old people love that glorified rice and love it when someone gives them good service. You give good service.”

  Now Julianna felt like she was in a bit of a bind. If she drank her vodka orange juice too fast, she’d be drunk and not able to drive home. There was no way she was spending any time in the parking lot here! Goodness knew what the truckers might do. But equally painful would be sitting here listening to him try to, as the kids said, “put the make on her.”

  “I just try to listen to them, to give them a little bit of affection if they need it, and to get their food to them as quick as I can,” she said, trying to keep the conversation light and personable. “They are all cooped up like chickens in that home and they either don’t have any children or the kids they have don’t care to come round and visit. So smorgasbord is the only time they get to go out all week, to get out and do something.”

  “Yah,” he agreed, “smorg is good for the community.”

  Even when drinking, Mr. Montana was well-spoken and never slurred his words. She’d overhead him discussing a variety of events and news items with fellow farmers at Bjorn’s, and despite his loony theories, he was well informed. As he drank more, those claims only became sillier and more outlandish, but still entertained people enough so that now their little two person outing had turned into a late-night drinking session with some of northern Minnesota’s roughest characters.

  Julianna had been in the WAC, and Seattle was a port city, so she was no stranger to rough gentlemen who began and ended many a conversation with their fists. That seemed to be code among sailors, especially, although her Cedric was nothing like that.

  Cedric! How mad he would be if he saw her now!

  Was she being naughty? At the moment, she didn’t care. “Montana Frank,” as she was now reluctantly calling him, was a hoot and a half, in the local slang. Meaning, the fellow was good for a laugh. A lot of laughs. Why couldn’t she go out? She certainly couldn’t go out with Cedric, “the paranoid old stick in the mud,” as the vodka had made her take to calling him.

  Speaking of vodka, Julianna had finished her drink. The glass sat, the ice melting into the pulpy remains of the orange juice.

  “Thank you, Montana Frank, that was delicious.” She had anticipated adding “but now I have to go” to the end of that sentence, but at the very last millisecond, decided it wasn’t necessary.

  “You are having another, right?” he commanded more than asked, already signaling the barman for two more before she had a chance to respond.

  “Maybe this waitress won’t be as fast as me. Maybe she’ll be as helpless at bringing drinks as she is at cleaning tables,” Julianna thought, noting the ketchup-stained napkin still sitting there, “and maybe I’ll be able to sneak away unnoticed.”

  Nope.

  The drinks were there in moments. Montana Frank had just gotten to the punch line of his first joke when they were delivered.

  “Eh, let yourself go a little bit, Jewels,” she thought, using Cedric’s nickname for her. Cedric again, thoughts of him were never far from her mind, were they? Despite that nagging little devil on her shoulder, Julianna smiled, a mixture of excited, content, and tired. And a little ashamed for betraying Cedric in this manner, then a little ashamed at being involved with a priest in the first place. But such were the conundrums of life and love, eh?

  She’d told Cedric that her new job felt like a bore after working those long years of war and meaning. There were similarities between waitressing and being a mechanic, she realized, the booze liberating her thoughts. Both involved endless hours on the feet, ten to twelve hour days, verbal abuse (and the occasional slap on the ass) from men, and not a lot of money.

  Waitressing even had some fun aspects to it that working in the war effort did not. After that disastrous first Sunday smorgasbord, she had enjoyed chatting with the staff and serving the customers. The free meals were the best of the perks, the cook was a master and Julianna had gained a half dozen pounds in the short time she’d been working there.

  She got to bring whatever food that was leftover from smorgasbord home, and whenever she was in town and dropped by for coffee and breakfast or a light lunch, Bjorn or
the cook would invariably wave off the grubby bills she held out for the tab.

  “Wouldn’t Father Briar be ashamed of his choice of lovers if he saw me here now,” she thought, taking a pull of her new, ice cold drink through the plastic straw. “All of our high-minded theological discussions about fidelity to one’s vows, ones morals, tossed out the window of a pickup truck into the frigid north woods night, for some jokes and some laughs and some cocktails.

  “Oh, the heck with it,” she told herself. “We won the war. Then we won another war in Korea. Why can’t we have a little fun? But what about dad? Would he think I’m shirking right now?” All the time she’d spent in church and in service, yet here she was, contentedly swilling drinks in a cold northern dive bar.

  Julianna decided she needed a glass of water. She went up to the bar and plopped herself down on one of the stools, noting that they were the same make and model as the ones in Bjorn’s, but were a lot more decrepit. While the barman was getting her water, she looked across the smoky room. There were all sorts of unshaven men and a big band tune from fifteen years ago on the radio. Like the music, this looked like a crowd lost to time. It was late enough and empty enough that the sluggish waitress, who doubled as an indifferent cleaning woman, had pushed a few of the chairs up against the walls and was sweeping with all of the enthusiasm of the condemned.

  At one end of the room there had once been a dance floor but it had long gone to rot, the hardwood floor now mottled and stained with spilled drunks and shed blood. Julianna shuddered at how down on their luck a band must’ve been to have played their music here. The water tasted good, though, these farm towns had wells deep into the aquifer and it came out fresh, frigid, and sweet smelling. It brought a much needed clarity to her thoughts.

  This place was miles from the sorts of places she’d recently been with Cedric. He was not fussy; heck, he’d been a sailor, but so many years under the rigor of a Jesuit education had given him a certain refinement that was otherwise rather lacking in Brannaska. Combine that with their justified fears of being seen together or caught in a compromising position and the number of places they could safely venture was minimal. This filled her with a feeling as bitter as the Angostura bottle behind the bar.