“Oh yes. Highly.”
“I’ve read it myself dozens of times. I’m practically an expert on dinosaurs by this time. Promise you won’t tell anyone I gave it to you?”
“I promise.”
“I’ll let you know when the others have finished eating.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Quinn could tell from the way she handled the book that it was something very precious to her and that it was a sacrifice on her part to lend it to him. He was touched by her gesture but also a little suspicious of it: Why me? Why do I get the special treatment? What does she want from me?
Back in the storage shed he lit the two candles, sat down on the cot and tried to make some plans for the future. First he would hitch a ride in the truck with Brother Crown as far as San Felice. Then he would drop in on Tom Jurgensen and collect his three-hundred dollars. After that—
After that no plans were necessary. He knew all too well what would happen. If he scraped together enough money he’d go back to Reno. If he couldn’t make Reno, Las Vegas. If he couldn’t get to Las Vegas, one of the poker parlors outside Los Angeles. A job, money; a game, no money. Every time he ran around the circle, the grooves got deeper. He knew he’d have to break out of it some time. Maybe this was it.
All right, he told himself, he’d get a job in San Felice where the only gambling was bingo at the country club once a week. He’d save some money, mail a check for his back rent to the hotel in Reno and have the clerk send on his clothes and the rest of the things he’d left as security. He might even, if everything turned out well, ask Doris to join him. . . . No, Doris was part of the circle. Like most of the other people who worked at the clubs, she spent her off-hours at the tables. Some of them had their whole lives under one roof; they slept, ate, worked and played there, with as much single-minded dedication as the Brothers and Sisters of the Tower.
Doris. It was only twenty-four hours since he’d said goodbye to her. She’d offered to lend him money but for reasons he wasn’t sure of, either then or now, he’d refused. Maybe he turned it down because he knew money had strings attached, no matter how carefully they were camouflaged. He looked down at the book Sister Blessing had given to him and he wondered what strings were attached to it.
“Mr. Quinn?”
He got up and opened the door. “Come in, Sister. Did you have a good Renunciation Day dinner?”
Sister Blessing glanced at him suspiciously. “Good enough, considering the troubled state of Sister Contrition’s mind.”
“Just what is one supposed to renounce? Not food, I gather.”
“None of your business, Come along now and no smart talking. The dining room’s empty and I have your lamb stew heated up and a nice cup of cocoa.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in stimulants.”
“Cocoa is not a true stimulant. We had a meeting of the Council about that last year, and it was decided by a large majority that cocoa, because it contained other important nourishment, is quite permissible. Only Sister Glory of the Ascension voted no because she’s so stin—thrifty. I told you about the hair in the mattress?”
“Yes,” said Quinn, who preferred to forget it.
“You’d better hide the book. Not that anyone would spy on you, but why take a chance?”
“Why, indeed.” He covered the book with a blanket.
“Have you read it?”
“Some.”
“Don’t you think it’s very interesting?”
Quinn thought the strings attached to it might be more interesting but he didn’t say so.
They went outside. An almost full moon hung low in the redwood trees. Stars studded the sky, hundreds more than Quinn had even seen, and even while he stood and watched, still more appeared.
“Haven’t you ever seen a sky before?” Sister Blessing said with a touch of impatience.
“Not this one.”
“It’s the same as always.”
“It looks different to me.”
Sister Blessing peered anxiously up into his face. “Do you suppose you’re having a religious experience?”
“I am admiring the universe,” Quinn said. “If you want to put a tag on it, go ahead.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Quinn. I prefer that you not have a religious experience right at the moment.”
“Why?”
“It would be very inconvenient. I have something I want you to do for me and a conversion at this time would interfere.”
“You can stop worrying, Sister. Now, about this something you want me to do—”
“I’ll tell you later, when you’ve eaten.”
The dining room was empty, and Brother Tongue’s rocking chair was gone and so was the bird cage. One place was set at the end of the table nearest the stove.
Quinn sat down and Sister Blessing filled a tin plate with lamb stew and another with thick slices of bread. As she had in the afternoon, she watched Quinn eat with a kind of maternal interest.
“Your color’s not very good,” she said, after a time. “But you have a hearty appetite and you seem healthy enough. What I mean is, if you were frail, I naturally couldn’t ask you to do me any favors.”
“Contrary to appearances, I am extremely frail. I have a bad liver, weak chest, poor circulation—”
“Nonsense.”
“All right, what’s the favor?”
“I want you to find somebody for me. Not find him in person, exactly, but find out what happened to him. You understand?”
“Not yet.”
“Before I go on, I’d like to make one thing clear: I can pay you, I have money. Nobody around here knows about it because we all renounce our worldly possessions when we come to the Tower. Our money, our very clothes on our backs, everything goes into the common fund.”
“But you kept something of your own in case of emergency?”
“Nothing of the kind,” she said sharply. “My son in Chicago sends me a twenty-dollar bill every Christmas with the understanding that I hold on to it for myself and not give it to the Master. My son doesn’t approve of all this.” She gestured vaguely around the room. “He doesn’t understand the satisfactions of a life of service to the Lord and His True Believers. He thinks I went a little crazy when my husband died, and maybe I did. But I’ve found my real place in the world now, I will never leave. How can I? I am needed. Brother Tongue with his pleurisy attacks, the Master’s weak stomach, Mother Pureza’s heart—she is the Master’s wife and very old.”
Sister Blessing got up and stood in front of the stove, rubbing her hands together as if she’d felt the sudden chill of death in the air.
“I’m getting old myself,” she said. “Some of the days are hard to face. My soul is at peace but my body rebels. It longs for some softness, some warmth, some sweetness. Mornings when I get out of bed my spirit feels a touch of heaven, but my feet—oh, the coldness of them, and the aches in my legs. Once in a Sears catalogue I saw a picture of a pair of slippers. I often think of them, though I shouldn’t. They were pink and furry and soft and warm, they were the most beautiful slippers I ever did see, but of course an indulgence of the flesh.”
“A very small one, surely?”
“They’re the ones you have to watch out for. They grow, grow like weeds. You get warm slippers and pretty soon you’re wanting other things.”
“Such as?”
“A hot bath in a real bathtub, with two towels. There, you see?” she said, turning to Quinn. “It’s happening already. Two towels I asked for, when one would be plenty. It proves my point about human nature—nothing is ever enough. If I had a hot bath, I would want another, and then one a week or even one every day. And if everyone at the Tower did the same we’d all be lolling around in hot baths while the cattle starved a
nd the garden went to weeds. No, Mr. Quinn, if you offered me a hot bath right this minute I’d have to refuse it.”
Quinn wanted to point out that he wasn’t in the habit of offering hot baths to strange women but he was afraid of hurting the Sister’s feelings. She was as earnest and intense about the subject as if she were arguing with the devil himself.
After a time she said, “Have you heard of a place called Chicote? It’s a small city in the Central Valley, a hundred miles or so from here.”
“I know where it is, Sister.”
“I would like you to go there and find a man named Patrick O’Gorman.”
“An old friend of yours? A relative?”
She didn’t seem to hear the question. “I have a hundred and twenty dollars.”
“That’s a lot of fuzzy pink slippers, Sister.”
Again she made no response. “It may be quite a simple job, I don’t know.”
“Suppose I find O’Gorman, what then? Do I give him a message? Wish him a happy Fourth of July?”
“You do nothing at all, except come back here and tell me about it, me and only me.”
“What if he’s no longer living in Chicote?”
“Find out where he went. But please don’t try to contact him, no purpose would be served and mischief could be done. Will you accept the job?”
“I’m in no position to pick and choose at the moment, Sister. I must remind you, though, that you’re taking quite a risk sending me away from here with a hundred and twenty dollars. I might not come back.”
“You might not,” she said calmly. “In which case I will have learned another lesson. But then again you might come back, so I have nothing to lose but money I can’t spend anyway and can’t give to the Master because of my promise to my son.”
“You have a trick of making everything seem very reasonable on first examination.”
“And on second?”
“I wonder why you’re interested in O’Gorman.”
“Wonder a little. It won’t do you any harm. I will tell you only that what I’ve asked you to do is highly important to me,”
“All right. Where’s the money?”
“In a good safe place,” Sister Blessing said blandly, “until tomorrow morning.”
“Meaning you don’t trust me? Or you don’t trust the Brothers and Sisters?”
“Meaning I’m no fool, Mr. Quinn. You’ll get the money when you’re sitting in that truck beside Brother Crown of Thorns at dawn tomorrow.”
“Dawn?”
“Early to bed and early to rise puts color in the cheeks and sparkle in the eyes.”
“That isn’t how I heard it.”
“The Master has made certain changes in the proverbs to make them suitable for our children to learn.”
“I’m curious about the Master,” Quinn said. “I’d like to meet him.”
“He’s indisposed tonight. Perhaps when you come to visit us again—”
“You seem pretty sure I’ll be coming back, Sister. Maybe you don’t know about gamblers.”
“I knew about gamblers,” Sister Blessing said, “long before you saw your first ace of spades.”
TWO
Quinn was awakened, while it was still dark, by someone shaking him vigorously by the shoulder. He opened his eyes.
A short fat man, carrying a lantern, was peering down at him through thick-lensed spectacles. “My goodness gracious, I was beginning to think you were dead. You must get up now, immediately.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. It’s time to arise and greet the new day. I am Brother of the Steady Heart. Sister Blessing told me to give you a shave and some breakfast before the others get up.”
“What time is it?”
“We have no clocks at the Tower. I’ll be waiting for you in the washroom.”
Quinn soon found out how some of the Brothers had acquired the scars on their chins and scalps. The razor was dull, the light from the lantern feeble, and Brother of the Steady Heart near-sighted.
“My, you are a jumpy one,” Brother Heart said with amiable interest. “I guess you suffer from bad nerves, eh?”
“At times.”
“While I’m at it I could give your hair a bit of a trim.”
“No thanks. The shave’s plenty. I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Sister Blessing said I was to make you look as much like a gentleman as possible. She’s taken quite a fancy to you, seems to me. It kind of rouses my curiosity.”
“It kind of rouses mine, too, Brother.”
Brother Heart looked as though he wanted to pursue the subject but didn’t dare pry into Sister Blessing’s affairs or state of mind. “Well, I’ll go now and make breakfast. I have the fire lit, won’t take a minute to boil some eggs for the two of us.”
“Why will there just be two of us?”
Brother Heart’s pudgy face turned pink. “It will be more peaceful without Sister Contrition around, she’s the regular cook. Oh, but that woman’s a devil in the morning. Sour, there’s nothing worse than a woman gone sour.”
By the time Quinn finished dressing and went over to the dining room, Brother of the Steady Heart had breakfast waiting on the table, boiled eggs and bread and jam. He continued the conversation as if it hadn’t been interrupted: “In my day, the ladies didn’t own such sharp tongues. They were quiet-spoken and fragile, and had small, delicate feet. Have you noticed what big feet the women have around here?”
“Not particularly.”
“Alas, they have. Very large, flat feet.”
For all his barber-shop chattiness, Brother Heart seemed nervous. He barely touched his food and he kept glancing over his shoulder as if he expected someone to sneak up on him.
Quinn said, “Why the big hurry to get rid of me before the others are up?”
“Well, now. Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.”
“I would.”
“It has nothing to do with you personally, Mr. Quinn. It’s just, well, you might call it a precautionary measure.”
“I might, if I knew what you were talking about.”
Brother Heart hesitated for a moment, biting his underlip as though it itched to talk. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. It concerns Sister Contrition’s oldest child, Karma. Last time the truck was going to the city the girl hid in the back, under some burlap sacks. Brother Crown of Thorns drove halfway to San Felice before he discovered her. The burlap made her sneeze. Karma went to school for a while, it filled her head with bad ideas. She wants to leave here and find work in the city.”
“And that’s not possible?”
“Oh no, no. The child would be lost in the city. Here at least she is poor among poor.”
The sun was beginning to rise and a faint rosy glow filled the skylight. From the invisible Tower came the sound of the gong, and almost immediately Sister Blessing hurried in the door. “The truck is ready, Mr. Quinn. You mustn’t keep Brother Crown of Thorns waiting. Here, let me have your coat and I’ll give it a good brushing.”
Quinn had already brushed it but he gave it to her anyway. She took it outside and made a few swipes at it with her hand.
“Come along, Mr. Quinn. Brother Crown has a long day ahead of him.”
He put his coat back on and followed her down the path to the dirt road. She said nothing about either the money or O’Gorman. Quinn had an uneasy feeling that she’d forgotten what happened the previous night and that she was a little crazier than he’d thought at first.
An old Chevrolet truck, lights on and engine chugging, was parked in the middle of the road. Behind the wheel, wearing a straw hat over his shaved head, sat a man younger than the Brothers Quinn had met so far. Quinn guessed his age
to be about forty. Brother Crown of Thorns acknowledged Sister Blessing’s introduction with a brief smile that revealed a front tooth missing.
“At San Felice, Brother Crown will let you off wherever you wish, Mr. Quinn.”
“Thanks,” Quinn said, getting into the truck. “But about O’Gor—”
Sister Blessing looked blank. “Have a good trip. And drive carefully, Brother Crown. And don’t forget, if there are temptations in the city, turn your back. If people stare, lower your eyes. If they make remarks, be deaf.”
“Amen, Sister.”
“As for you, Mr. Quinn, the most I can ask is that you behave with discretion.”
“Sister, listen—about the money—”
“Au revoir, Mr. Quinn.”
The truck started rolling down the road. Quinn turned to look back at Sister Blessing but she had already disappeared among the trees.
He thought, Maybe the whole thing never happened and I’m crazier than the bunch of them put together. Which is quite a bit crazy.
He said, shouting over the noise of the engine, “A fine woman, Sister Blessing.”
“What’s that? Can’t hear you.”
“Sister Blessing is a fine woman but she’s getting old. Maybe she forgets things now and then?”
“I wish she would.”
“Perhaps just little things, occasionally?”
“Not her,” Brother Crown of Thorns said, shaking his head in reluctant admiration. “Memory like an elephant. Turn down your window, will you? God’s air is fresh.”
It was also cold, but Quinn turned the window down and his collar up and put his hands in his pockets. His fingers touched the cool smoothness of money.
He looked back in the direction of the Tower and said silently, “Au revoir, Sister. I think.”
Because of the twisting roads and the age and temperament of the truck’s engine, it took more than two hours to reach San Felice, a narrow strip of land wedged between the mountains and the sea. It was an old, rich, and very conservative city which held itself aloof from the rest of Southern California. Its streets were filled with spry elderly ladies and tanned elderly men and athletic young people who looked as if they’d been born on tennis courts and beaches and golf courses. Seeing the city again Quinn realized that Doris, with her platinum hair and heavy make-up, would feel conspicuous in it, and feeling that way she would make it a point to look even more conspicuous and end up beaten. No, Doris would never fit in. She was a night person and San Felice was a city of day people. For them dawn was the beginning of a day, not the tail-end of a night, and Sister Blessing and Brother Crown, for all their strange attire, would look more at home among them than Doris. Or me, Quinn thought, and he felt his plans and resolutions dissolving inside himself. I don’t belong here. I’m too old for tennis and skin-diving, and too young for checkers and canasta.
How Like an Angel Page 3