I laid the plate over the tiles, put the pot on it, and dipped some water in the pot. Then I dropped in some eggs. I started with six, but then I kept thinking how hungry I was, and I wound up with a dozen. I filled the coffee pot, scooped in some coffee, and put that on. Then I sat there, feeding the fire and waiting for the eggs to boil. They never did. The pot was too big or the fire too small, or something. The most I got was smoke coming off the top, but they were cooking all the time, so I didn’t worry much. Anyway, they’d be hot. But the coffee boiled. The old smell hit me in the nose, and when I lifted the lid the grounds were simmering around. I took an egg, went to the back door, broke it, and let the egg spill out on the ground. The shell I took back and dropped in the coffee. That was what it needed. It began to clear.
I watched the eggs some more, and then I thought about my cigarettes and matches. They were in my coat, and I went to the car to get it. Then I thought about her things. I put the cigarettes and matches on the end of the tortilla plate to dry. Her stuff I took out of the hatbox and draped them near the fire on a bench that was back there. What she had I could only half see. It was all damp, but it smelled like her. One dress was wool, and I put that nearest the heat, and a pair of shoes, on the floor near it. Then I got to wondering how we were going to eat the eggs, even if they ever got cooked. There were no spoons or anything like that, and I always hated eggs out of the shell. I went out to the car again and half filled a little bowl with corn meal. I came back, dipped a little water into it. I worked it with my fingers, and when it got pasty I patted some of it into a tortilla, or anyway into some kind of a flapjack that was big enough to hold an egg. I put it on the plate to cook, and when it began to turn color I turned it over. When it was done on both sides I tasted it. It didn’t taste right. I went out and got some salt I had found and forgotten to take. I mixed a little salt in, tried another one, and anyway you could eat it. Pretty soon I had twelve. That was one for each egg, and I thought that was enough.
All that took a long time, and there wasn’t one peep out of her the whole time I was at work. She had moved from the altar rail to a pew, but she was still out there, a rebozo over her head and her bare feet sticking out behind, where she was kneeling with her face in her hands. I slid in the pew, took her by the arm and led her into the vestry room. “I told you once to take off that wet dress. Here’s one that’s fairly dry, and you go back there and change it. If your underwear’s wet, you better take it off.”
I picked up the woolen dress and shoved her behind the altar with it. When she came back she had it on. “Sit on the bench so your feet will be on the warm tiles near the fire. When those shoes are dry you can put them on.”
She didn’t. She sat on the bench, but with her back to the fire, so her feet were on cold tiles. That was so she could face the altar. She dropped her head in her hands and began to mutter. I got out my knife, broke an egg tortilla, and shoved it at her. The egg was half hard and half soft, but it rode the tortilla all right.
She shook her head. I put the tortilla down, went to the altar, got three or four candles, lit them, came back and stuck them around. Then I closed the door, the one that led to the altar and that I had kept open, to have more light. That kind of blocked her off on the muttering and she half turned around. When she saw the tortillas she laughed. That seemed to help. “Look very fonny.”
“Well, maybe they look fonny but I didn’t notice you doing much about them. Anyway, you can eat them.”
She picked up the tortilla, half wrapped it around the egg and bit into it. “Taste very fonny.”
“The hell it does.”
I had bit into my first one by then, and it hit the spot. We wolfed them down. She ate five and I ate seven. We were talking in a natural tone of voice for the first time since we got in out of the storm, and it came to me it was because that door that led to the altar was shut. I got up and closed the other door, the one leading into the church, and that made it still better. We got to the coffee and there was nothing we could drink it out of but one little bowl, so we took turns. She would take a guzzle and then I would. In a minute I reached for the cigarettes. They were dry, and so were the matches. We lit up and inhaled. They tasted good.
“You feel better now?”
“Yes, gracias. Was very cold, very hongry.”
“You still worried about the sacrilegio?”
“No, not now.”
“There wasn’t any sacrilegio, you know.”
“Yes, very bad.”
“No, not a bit. It’s the Casa de Dios, you know. Everybody’s welcome in here. You’ve seen the burros in here, haven’t you? And the goats? On the way to market? The car is just the same. If we had to break the door in, that was only because we didn’t have any key. I showed plenty of respect, didn’t I? You saw me genuflect every time I crossed, didn’t you?”
“Genu—”
“Bow — in front of the Host?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No sacrilegio there, was there? You’re all upset about nothing. Don’t worry, I know. I know as much about it as you do. More probably.”
“Very bad sacrilegio. But I pray. Soon, I confess. I confess to the padre. Then, absolución. No bad any more.”
By that time it must have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. The rain hadn’t let up, but sometimes it would be heavy, sometimes not so bad. The thunder and lightning would come up and go. There must have been three or four storms rolling up those canyons from the sea, and we’d get it, and it would die away and then we’d get it again. One was coming up now. She began to do what I’d noticed her doing once in the car, hold her breath and then speak, after a second or two when you could almost hear her heart beat. I tumbled that the sacrilegio was only part of what was eating on her. Most of it was the storm. “The lightning bother you?”
“No. The trueno, very bad.”
It didn’t look like it would pay to try to explain to her that the lightning was the works, the thunder nothing but noise, so I didn’t try. “Try to sing a little. That generally helps. You know La Sandunga?”
“Yes, very pretty.”
“You sing and I’ll be mariachi.”
I began to drum on the bench and do a double shuffle with my feet. She opened her mouth to sing, but there came a big clap of thunder just then, and she didn’t quite make it. “Outside, I no feel afraid. I like. Is very pretty.”
“A lot of people are like that.”
“Home, with Mamma, I no feel afraid.”
“Well — that’s practically outside, at that.”
“Here, afraid, very much. I think about the sacrilegio, think about many things. I feel very bad.”
You couldn’t blame her much because it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a gay place. I understood how she felt. I felt a little that way myself.
“Anyhow, it’s dry. In spots.”
The lightning came and I put my arm around her. The thunder broke and the candles guttered. She put her head on my shoulder and hid her face in my neck.
It died off after a while and she sat up. I opened the window a crack to get a little oxygen in the air, and put a couple more sticks of charcoal on the fire. “You had a good dinner?”
“Yes, gracias.”
“You feel like a little work?”
“... Work?”
“Suppose you be fixing us up a place to sleep while I wash up.”
“Oh yes — gladly.”