“We will like hell.”
I ran over to the doors, shook them and kicked them. They were big double doors and they were locked all right. I tried to think of some way I could get them open. If I had a jack handle I could have shoved it in the crack and pried, but there wasn’t any jack handle. I beat on the doors and cursed them, and then I went back to the car. The engine was still running and she was sitting in it. I jumped in, turned, and pointed it straight at the church. The steps didn’t bother me. The church was below the road and they went down, instead of up, and anyway they were just low tile risers, about three inches high, and pretty wide. When she saw what I was going to do, she began to whimper, and beg me not to, and grabbed the wheel to make me stop. “No, no! Not the Casa de Dios, please, no! We go back! We go back to Mamma.”
I pushed her away and eased the front wheels down the first step. I bumped them down the next two steps, and then the back wheels came down with a slam. But I was still rolling. I kept on until the front bumper was against the doors. I stayed in first, spun the motor, and little by little let in the clutch. For three or four seconds nothing happened, but I knew something had to crack. It did. There came a snap, and I was on the brake. If those doors opened outward I didn’t want to tear out their hinges.
I backed up the width of the last step, pegged her there with the brake and got out. The bolt socket had torn out. I pulled the doors open, shoved Juana in, went back and started to work on the mats again. Then I thought, what’s the matter with you? Don’t be a fool. I ran back and pulled the doors as wide open as they would go. Then I ran in and began to drag pews around, working by the car lights, until there was an open space right up the center aisle. Then I went back and drove the car right in there. I went back and pulled the doors shut. The headlights were blazing right at the Blessed Sacrament, and she was on her knees at the altar rail, begging forgiveness for the sacrilegio.
I sat down in one of the pews where it was turned sidewise, just to sit. I began to worry about the car lights. At the time it seemed I was thinking about the battery, but it may have been the Blessed Sacrament, boring into the side of my head, I don’t know. I got up and cut them. Right away the roar of the rain was five times as loud. In with it you could hear the rumble of thunder, but you couldn’t see any lightning. It was pitch dark in there, except for one red spot. The sacristy light was burning. From up near it came a moan. I had to have light. I cut the switch on again.
Off to one side of the altar was what looked like a vestry room. I went back there. The water squirted out of my shoes when I walked. I took them off. Then I took off my pants. I looked around. There was a cassock hanging there, and some surplices. I took off everything, wet undershirt, wet drawers, wet socks, and put on the cassock. Then I took a lighter that was standing in a corner and started out to the sacristy lamp. I knew my matches wouldn’t work. Walking on a tile floor barefoot you don’t make much noise, and when she saw me with the lighter, in the cassock, I don’t know what she thought, or if she thought. She fell on her face in front of me and began to gibber, calling me padre and begging for absolución. “I’m not the padre, Juana. Look at me. It’s me.”
“Ah, Dios!”
“I’m lighting the candles so we can see.”
But I mumbled it low. I pulled down the lamp, lit the lighter and slipped it up again. Then I went around through the vestry room and up on the altar and lit three candles on one side, crossed over and lit three on the other. I cut the lighter, went back to the vestry room, put it in its place again. Then I went back and cut the car lights.
One funny thing about that that I didn’t realize until I snapped that switch. Each time I crossed that altar I went down on one knee. I stood there, looking at the six candles I had lit, and thought that over. It had been twenty years, ever since I had been a boy soprano around Chicago, since I had thought of myself as a Catholic. But they knock it into you. Some of it’s there to stay.
I lifted eggs and about fifteen other things from the rumble, until I could get out her hatbox. It was pretty wet but not as wet as the rest of the stuff. I took it back to the vestry room, set it down, then went out and touched her on the shoulder. “Your things are back there. You better get out of that wet dress.”
She didn’t move.
By that time it must have been about half past eight, and it dawned on me that why I felt so lousy was that I was hungry. I got a candle off the altar, lit it, went back and stuck it to the rear fender of the car, and took stock. I lifted out most of that stuff from the rumble seat, and unlashed what was riding the running board, and all I could see that was doing us any good was the eggs. I unwrapped one and took out my knife to puncture the end so I could suck it, and then I noticed the charcoal. That gave me an idea. There were some loose tiles in the floor and I clawed up a couple of them and carried them to the vestry room and stood them on their sides. Then I got one of the iron plates for cooking tortillas, and laid it across them and carried in the charcoal.
Next thing was how I was going to cook the eggs. There were no skillets or anything like that. And I went through every basket there was and there wasn’t any butter, grease, or anything you could use for grease. But there was a copper pot, bigger than I wanted but anyway a pot, so that meant that anyway I could boil the eggs. While I was rooting through those beans and rice and stuff that would take all night to cook, I smelled coffee and started looking for it. Finally I hit it, buried in with the rice in a paper bag, and then I found a little coffee pot. The coffee wasn’t ground, but there was a metate there for grinding corn, and I mashed up a couple of handfuls with that, and put it in a bowl.
I went in the vestry room with what I had and the next thing was what I was going to use for water. It was dripping through every seam in the room and running down the windows in streams, but it looked kind of tough to get enough of it to cook. Still, I had to get some. Out back I could hear a stream pouring off the roof, so I took the biggest of the bowls and pulled the bolt on the rear door, right back of the altar. But when I opened it I could see a well, just a few steps down the hill. I took off the cassock. It was the only dry thing there was, and I wasn’t letting it get wet. I went down to the well stark naked. The rain came down on me like a needle shower and at first it was terrible, but then it felt good. I threw out my chest against it and let it beat me. Then I pulled up the bucket and poured the water in the bowl. When I got back in the church with it I was running water even from my eyeballs. I felt around back of the altar for a closet. Oh, it was coming back to me, fast. I knew where they kept everything. Sure enough, I found a door and opened it, and there they were, the altar cloths, all in a neat pile. I took one, rubbed myself dry with it and put on the cassock. It was warm. I began to feel better.
The choir loft was off to one side and I started there to get a hymn book, so I could tear it up to start the fire. Then I changed my mind. Except for the window, there was no vent in the vestry room, and I didn’t want to be smoked out, right at the start. I took four or five pieces of charcoal, laid them in a little pile between my tiles, went back to the altar and got another candle. I held the flame under the charcoal, turning all the time to keep the melting even, and pretty soon I got a little glow. I fed a couple more pieces on, and it glowed still redder. In a minute it was off, and I blew out the candle. There was hardly any smoke. Charcoal doesn’t make much.