And then past it.
And then off, over the cliffs and out into the ocean.
The trembling timbers stilled. The glasses settled uneasily into the frames.
Slowly, slowly, the terrible tension eased. Even the howl of the demon wind and the barrage of the rain seemed to abate. Not completely, but to a much lower level than before.
Still, they stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms with only her thin dress and his wet undershirt and britches between them. It wasn’t much, and it soon dawned on him that if they stood there any longer it wasn’t going to be enough.
He forced himself to step back and to push her gently away. And now he did clear his throat. The spell woven by high talk, closeness, shared experience, and the darker magic of the storm, finally snapped like a soap bubble. Jenny suddenly noticed an invisible wrinkle on her skirt and turned aside to smooth it out. Grey scooped up her father’s fallen clothes and did his very best to stand behind them in case his interest in her showed. It occurred to him that hiding an erection behind the folded clothes of a woman’s murdered father was both sick and wrong. But it was what he had.
“I’ll leave you to change,” said Jenny as she headed toward the door. She didn’t leave at a dead run, but it was close. Grey stood there and listened to her shoes on the steps. Then he closed his eyes, bent forward, and slowly, deliberately banged his forehead on the doorframe.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grey and the other men dressed in bits and pieces of Lucky Bob Pearl’s clothes. Their own wet things were draped over the backs of kitchen chairs arranged around the fat-bellied cast-iron stove. Brother Joe — who seemed quite familiar with the inside of the Pearl home — brewed coffee and began frying eggs. Jenny joined them a few minutes later and took heavy coffee mugs from a closet and began filling them.
When Grey tasted the coffee he winced and nearly spat it out, and he was a man who enjoyed his coffee strong enough to pick a fight. But this was hot tar in a cup. When he trusted himself not to actually curse the monk for being a poisoner and a blasphemer against the sanctity of the gods of coffee, he said, “You, um, make a strong cup, Padre.”
Looks Away hid a grin behind his cup.
Brother Joe was unabashed, however. “We don’t have much water, so we brew it strong. People drink less of it that way, and still get to enjoy the flavor.”
“Is enjoy really the best word?” Looks Away wondered aloud. “Experience seems more apt.”
If Brother Joe got the joke he did not show it.
The eggs were fried in bacon fat, and they tasted good enough. Grey had eaten many worse things over a life in the saddle.
“I think we should have our talk now,” he said after swallowing a forkful of eggs.
“There’s clearly a lot of strange things happening in this town. In your town. I’m a stranger here, so exactly what in the Sam Hill is going on? Who wants to start?”
He expected it to be Looks Away, but Brother Joe surprised him by speaking first.
“I’ve been living in these parts for many years. I was born near here, but then I followed a missionary down to Mexico and spent six years in a monastery. I took holy orders and came back here to build a church. My father left me some money and it was enough to buy land and materials.”
“I didn’t see a church,” said Grey. “Not a Catholic one. Actually not any churches come to think on it.”
Brother Joe shook his head. “There was one, but it’s gone now. It was a lovely thing, too, though it’s prideful to say so. A tall steeple and a bell so clear and true that you could hear it miles away. Enough pews for four hundred people, and for two full years we filled those pews. People came from other towns for services.”
“When was this?” Grey asked, but he thought he knew the answer already.
“We opened the doors on the first day of spring 1866.”
“Ah,” said Grey. The great Quake was in 1868. “I’m sorry.”
“For the church? No,” said Brother Joe. “Lovely as it was, it was just a building. Brick and stone, nails and paint. But remember that the Great Quake happened on a Sunday.”
Grey winced.
“So many people,” said Brother Joe in a voice that was raw with pain. “And they were good people, Mr. Torrance. Fine, hard-working people. Decent people who worked the land and came to their knees on a Sunday. Maybe not every Sunday, and maybe not every one was the best Christian he or she could be, but everyone sins.”
No one commented on that.
“Everyone,” repeated the monk. “God knows.”
Grey caught a strange note, a deeper sadness in the monk’s voice. He saw unshed tears glittering in the man’s dark eyes.
Brother Joe took a pull on the bad coffee and seemed to steel himself before he continued. “As sinners must, I want to make a confession,” he began, directing his words only to Grey. “When I said that I was not a priest, I should have said that I was — but am one no longer. Because I sinned a great sin, I lost the blessings of the church. I disgraced myself and have betrayed the love of God.”
Looks Away reached across the table and patted his arm. “There, there, old chap.”
“What happened?” asked Grey.
Brother Joe closed his eyes and his fingers knotted together into trembling knots.
“When the Great Quake tore these lands apart, we were in the middle of a hymn. ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Perhaps the timing was a joke of the Devil. A mockery. The first of many.” He shook his head, eyes still closed. “The tremors struck so quickly. We had no warning, no clue. One moment we were all there, bathed in the shared joy of worship, and then the world split apart. The church itself split apart. All in an instant there was a sound like green wood being split and the floor itself was rent from the doors along the aisle to the transept. It broke apart the church like two halves of an eggshell. The walls leaned away from each other and great masses of the roof came plunging down. Everyone… everyone…”
“Joe,” said Jenny, touching his shoulder, “you don’t need to do this.”
He opened his eyes but didn’t look at her. Instead he stared at his interlaced hands. Tears rolled down his brown cheeks.
“The people screamed. My parishioners, my flock… my friends… they screamed as our church was torn apart and the pit opened beneath us. Many were… killed… when the roof fell. More died as the steeple plunged down among them. I saw a woman — a lovely young farm wife no older than Miss Pearl — torn to pieces as the stained glass window exploded. I saw her die, still clutching her child as she tried to protect him with her own body. I witnessed people burn as smoke and fire belched up from the bowels of the earth. I saw people try to hold onto the pews, the broken timbers, the floor boards to keep from falling into the inferno. I heard them all scream. I heard them call out to God and His angels to save them. I… I prayed, too. I prayed harder than I ever had before. But, God forgive me, I did not pray for them. I did not pray for the people in my church.” Tears streamed down his face and fell onto his hands. “I prayed to God to save me. Me. I begged the Almighty to spare me. Not them. Not the men and women. Not the old. Not the children. I prayed that I would be spared. And I was.” A sob broke in his chest. “I was saved from fiery death because the great hard-carved crucifix that hung above the altar fell down across the crack in the floor. And while everyone I loved, everyone I had sworn to guide and protect died I… I… crawled across the body of our Lord to escape.”
He buried his face in his hands and wept. It was terrible to see. The sobs came from such a deep place that they shook his thin body, striking him like blows. Jenny got up and came around behind him, wrapping her arms around the monk’s frame, and he half turned and clung to her. The way a drowning person would. The way a child would.