I went and brought the mats and then got out a pile of altar cloths. Then I took the pots, bowls, and water out back and washed them up. I couldn’t see very well, but I did the best I could. I had to duck out to the well once or twice, stripped down like I was before, and rub off with the same old cloth, so it took me about a half hour. When I got done I piled the things up inside the door and went in there. She was already in bed. She had taken three or four of the mats and some altar cloths, for herself, and bedded me down across the room.
I blew out the candles we had eaten by, and stepped out on the altar to blow out the ones I had lit there, and then I noticed the other one, the one I had stuck to the car fender, was still burning. I stepped over the rail, went back there and blew it out. Then I started up to the altar again. My legs felt queer and shaky. I slipped in a pew and sat down.
I knew what it was all right, and it came to me then why I had put her to fixing the mats and taken all that time to wash up. I had hoped she would just fix one bed, and then when she didn’t, it was like a wallop in the pit of the stomach to me. I had even quit wondering why I was the only man on the face of the earth she wouldn’t sleep with. What I hated was that it made any difference to me.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I wanted to smoke, and I had the cigarettes and matches with me, but I just held them in my hand. I was over by the choir loft, out of line with the Blessed Sacrament, but I was right in line with the crucifix, and I couldn’t make myself light up. Another storm began to come up. I enjoyed it that she was across there in the vestry room, all alone, and scared to death. It kept rolling up, the worst we had had yet. There came two flashes of lightning, and then one terrific shot of thunder right after them. The candles were just guttering up again when there came a blaze of lightning, and the thunder right with it, and every candle up there went out. For a second you couldn’t see a thing but the red spot of the sacristy lamp.
Then she began to scream. From where she was, with the door to the altar open like I had left it, maybe she caught it sooner than I did. Or maybe for a split second I had my eyes closed. I don’t know. Anyway, the church filled with green light, and then it seemed to settle over the crucifix, so the face looked alive, like it was going to cry out. Then you couldn’t see anything but the red spot.
She was screaming her head off now, and I had to have light.I dived for the choir loft, scratched a match, and lit the organ candles. I don’t know how many there were. I lit them all, so it was a blaze of candles. Then I turned to go and light the altar candles again, but I would have to cross in front of the crucifix and I couldn’t do it. All of a sudden I sat down to the organ. It was a small pedal organ, and I pumped with my bare feet and started to play. I kept jerking out stops, to make it louder. The thunder rolled, and the louder it rolled the louder I played. I didn’t know what I was playing, but after a while I knew it was an Agnus Dei I cut it off and started a Gloria. It was louder. The thunder died off and the rain came down like all Niagara was over us. I played the Gloria over again.
“Sing.”
I couldn’t see her. She was outside the circle of light, where I was sitting in the middle. But I could feel her, up at the altar rail again, and if singing was what she wanted, that suited me too. I skipped the Qui Tollis, the Quoniam, and the rest of it down to the Credo, and went on from there. Don’t ask me what it was. Some of it was Mozart, some of it was Bach, some of it was anybody you can think of. I must have sung a hundred masses in my time, and I didn’t care which one it was, so I could go on without a break. I went straight through to the Dona Nobis, and played off soft after I finished it, and then I stopped. The lightning and thunder had stopped again, and the rain was back to its regular drumming.
“Yes.”
She just whispered it, but she drew it out like she always did, so the end of it was a long hiss. “... Just like the priest.”
My head began to pound like it would split. That was the crown of skunk cabbage, all right, after all the years at harmony, of sight-reading, of piano, of light opera, of grand opera in Italy, Germany and France — to be told by this Indian that couldn’t even read that I sounded like a priest. And it didn’t help any that that was just what I sounded like. The echo of my voice was still in my ears and there was no getting around it. It had the same wooden, dull quality that a priest’s voice has, without one particle of life in it, one echo that would make you like it.
My head kept pounding. I tried to think of something to say that would rip back at her, and couldn’t.
I got up, blew out all the candles but one, and took that one with me. I started up past the crucifix to cross over to the vestry room. She wasn’t at the crucifix. She was out in front of the altar. At the foot of the crucifix I saw something funny and held the candle to see what it was. It was three eggs, in a bowl. Beside them was a bowl of coffee and a bowl of ground corn. They hadn’t been there before. Did you ever hear of a Catholic putting eggs, coffee, and corn at the foot of the cross? No, and you never will. That’s how an Aztec treats a god.
I crossed over, and stood behind her, where she was crouched down, on her knees, her face touching the floor and her hands pressing down beside it. She was stark naked, except for a rebozo over her head and shoulders. There she was at last, stripped to what God put there. She had been sliding back to the jungle ever since she took off that first shoe, coming out of Taxco, and now she was right in it.
A white spot from the sacristy lamp kept moving back and forth, on her hip. A creepy feeling began to go up my back, and then my head began to pound again, like sledge hammers were inside of it. I blew out the candle, knelt down, and turned her over.
Chapter 4
When it was over we lay there, panting. Whatever it was that she had done to me, that the rest of it had done to me, I was even. She got up and went back to the car. There was some rattling back there, and then I felt her coming back, and got up to meet her. I was getting used to the dark by then, and I saw the flash of a machete. She came in on a run, and when she was a couple of yards away she took a two-handed chop with it. I stepped back and it pulled her off balance. I stepped in, pinned her arms, and pressed my thumb against the back of her hand, right at the wrist. The knife fell on the floor. She tried to wriggle free. Mind you, neither one of us had a stitch on. I tightened with one arm, lifted her, carried her in the vestry room and closed both doors. Then I dumped her in the bed she had been in, piled in with her, and pulled up the covers. The fire still made a little glow, and I lit a cigarette and Ï smoked it, holding her with the other arm, then squashed it against the floor.
When she tired, I loosened up a little, to let her blow. Yes, it was rape, but only technical, brother, only technical. Above the waist, maybe she was worried about the sacrilegio, but from the waist down she wanted me, bad. There couldn’t be any doubt about that.
There couldn’t be any doubt about it, and it kind of put an end to the talk. We lay there, then, and I had another cigarette. I squashed it out, and from away off there came a rumble of thunder, just one. She wriggled into my arms, and next thing I knew it was daylight, and she was still there. She opened her eyes, closed them again, and came closer. Of course there wasn’t but one thing to do about that, so I did it. Next time I woke up I knew it must be late, because I was hungry as hell.
It rained all that day, and the next. We split up on the cooking after the first breakfast. I did the eggs and she did the tortillas, and that seemed to work better. I got the pot to boil at last by setting it right on the tiles without any plate, and it not only made it boil, but saved time. In between, though, there wasn’t much to do, so we did whatever appealed to us.