Father Briar and The Angel (14 page)

Some were itinerant
laborers of various qualities. More on those folks
later.

When the word was spread
that Clarice needed a cook or two, women came forward.

What a Godsend it was. Some
of the women earned spending money of their own, a new concept for
them. It made perusing the Sears Roebuck catalog so much more fun.
And then, oh what fun to see the rural mail carrier deliver a
package of fabric or a new girdle that they had actually paid for
with their own money. A couple of girls even bought those huge
cone-shaped bras that made them look like they had atomic missiles
under their sweaters, but never had the courage to wear them out of
the house.

Julianna was due to start
tonight. Her job search hadn’t lasted long.

She was replacing a woman
named Rose, who always reminded the cook of a chickadee. She was
small, thin, nervous, and perpetually grey-colored.

Bjorn thought she was too
silly, but the customers liked to joke with her as she flirted and
laughed with them and at herself.

“
That woman can work!”
he’d boom, after hours, when the cook complained about her. “There
is nothing that she won’t do.”

The problem was, she had
never learned to drive; therefore, her husband had to deliver her
and pick her up each day. Now he was sick from a scary infection in
his lungs caused by pesticides and so she couldn’t come to work any
more.

Before Rose had been Thora,
the wife of a man whose primary accomplishment in life was
overcoming an addiction to medicinal opium. The twenties were a
wild time, even in Brannaska; snake oil salesmen came through town
peddling all manner of exotic cures.

Thora had been a beauty in
her day, but life had taken its toll; she drank in her car before
and after her shifts but never during, so it was hard for Bjorn or
the cook to fire her. What you did when you weren’t working wasn’t
even of their business, or so they told one another.

Irene, a widow who lived a
stone’s throw from the front door of the café, was the pie maker.
She would waddle down the street (unfortunately she ate too many of
her own pies, not to mention her own and cakes and cookies) before
the café opened each morning and roll out the best pie crust ever.
She wasn’t the most sociable woman, in fact the cook, herself a
woman so taciturn she isn’t even named in this story, had only
heard her speak a handful of words over the last three decades.
Therefore, these early morning hours suited her well. She could be
back home, dusting the flour off her apron before the men came
looking for their coffee and favorite piece of pie, which they
often had after breakfast.

Irene had many specialties
such as banana cream and coconut cream, pecan, lemon meringue, but
none of those fancy French silk or key lime ones. That would have
been, if not heretical, at least borderline treasonous. Probably
the all-time favorite pie was fresh wild blueberry pie. She was not
the blueberry picker. Her chubby, wobbly knees would have made it
impossible to get up from the blueberry patch.

But this caused no problem,
because if there was anything Bjorn and Clarice liked to do better
than tending the café, it was blueberry picking.

In the middle of the
afternoon, when there was a lull in the restaurant, they would head
out in the July heat and humidity (yes, there were times when
Northern Minnesota wasn’t buried beneath a blanket of ice and snow)
with their empty Kemp’s Ice Cream buckets or milk pails, their
mosquito spray, a couple of sandwiches, and a thermos of
coffee.

There were acres of wild
blueberry woods a few miles from town. Here, too, they had
different duties. Bjorn was the ‘scout’ which meant that he didn’t
pick many berries but would walk around the woods looking for the
best patch.

Finding one, he would yell
out “Clarice, over here, they are better than where you are.” She
would get up off her knees, tromp over there, and say under her
breath, “my other patch was better.” This would be repeated time
after time, until it was time for a quick cup of coffee and the
rather warm bologna sandwich. Then into the car and get back just
in time to serve the supper guests. But, oh, how they loved those
trips in the woods, and what delicious pies Irene would make from
those berries.

Julianna considered the
salary of the job to be secondary to her access to fresh slices of
pie, and couldn’t wait to start.

Chapter Fifteen: In the
Aftermath of Julianna’s First Night on the Job.

She fell into Cedric’s
arms, crying.

“
Oh, my dear, it was a
disaster. A fiasco. A catastrophe.”

“
I’m sure it couldn’t have
been that bad,” he said, trying to comfort her.

He was having a difficult
time concentrating on her woes. He’d had to console many a tearful
and emotional parishioner, but this was different. This was his
girlfriend. You couldn’t treat your crying girlfriend like a sad
member of your congregation, could you? Even if she was? Love was
complicated, much more complicated than he’d been told.

“
It was terrible! I
screwed up every order.”

“
How is that possible? At
smorgasbord, doesn’t everybody serve themselves?”

“
Apparently so, but I
didn’t know that. I’m new here! How was I supposed to know? Nobody
told me. That rascal Mr. Olsen kept sending me to the spread to get
his pork ribs for him. Then the cook yelled at me because I was
serving him and not bringing dishes out from the back. These people
eat so fast. I’ve never seen food disappear like that before.
Twenty pounds of ‘glorified rice’ was eaten in just a few minutes.
What the heck is ‘glorified rice, anyway?”

Cedric giggled a soft
little giggle. “It’s a local creation, I think. It is cold cooked
rice with a mountain of whipped cream and sugar, all mixed together
with canned pineapples and topped with maraschino cherries. It is
quite the confection!”

“
I couldn’t tell it apart
from the mashed potatoes. Both were so white and
fluffy.”

“
White and fluffy, sort of
like the bellies of the people eating it,” Cedric joked, trying to
cheer her up.

But she was in no mood. One
of the things Father Briar would learn about their relationship was
that when she wanted to cry and complain, she wanted to cry and
complain, that was what would lift her mood, not joking or problem
solving. He’d learn that her tears weren’t a call to action, but to
contemplation. She wanted to mull over her problems, to feel and
appreciate them, not to aggressively solve them. This was a great
difference between being a priest and a boyfriend. Clergy were
supposed to help, boyfriends were supposed to listen.

“
The cook was so mad at
me! She didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was
mad.”

This was true. When she was
most angry, the cook said the least.

“
I feel really stupid,
Cedric. How could I have messed up such an easy job? I’m a smart
girl, right?”

“
Of course you are,
darling Jewels, they just don’t know that yet. They will. You
impress everybody, eventually. You just had a tough night tonight,
that is all.”

His words weren’t much of
a comfort, but his strong arms sure were. Julianna
pulled in a breath, and he squeezed her tighter.
She loved this. She played this like a game, not letting it out
until the last moment, then sucking in more as fast as she could,
making him hold her tighter. Sometimes she wanted to shrink herself
thusly until she was put a straw, then a toothpick, then a single
strand of hair. Then she’d be safe.

After a while, she was
almost afraid to let it out at all. She stared at him, eyes blurry
and still red from tears. He felt the tension in her shoulders and
the air puffing up her chest, that beautiful chest.

Oh, it felt good to
confide in him, to vent to him, to put her troubles upon him.
Finally she exhaled and pursed her lips together a bit. The long
night at the café had bleached off all her lipstick and she looked
pale and chapped.

She sat down on his couch.
He wished they were in the bedroom, and then he was ashamed of
himself, deeply ashamed.

“It is
amazing what power romantic lust can have over a man,” he thought,
then pushed all prurience from his mind and vowed to help his love
with a pure heart.

Julianna closed her eyes
tight, opened them, blinked, and looked at him fresh. He was
handsome and caring and kind and, in the right light, sexy like a
film star. She pushed her back against the plush coach, taking
warmth from it. All thoughts of waitressing had faded from her
mind, all thoughts of disaster, everything but thoughts and
feelings for him. She needed comfort.

“Do you love
me?”

“Yes.”

“Does that bother
you?”

Now was not the time for
one hundred percent brutal honesty.

“Not at all.”

“Really?”

“When we met, I felt a
charge go through me, more than a charge, a change. I knew nothing
would ever be the same. I’m so proud of how slow we went, how we
explored, how thoughtful we were, how considered, and how
considerate.”

Now she got teary once
more, but not out of frustration or disappointment, but from
joy.

“Oh, my
love,” she said, and kissed him, because words failed her yet
again.

In the quiet, he
continued. “I shied away from the developing feelings for you
because they had no place in my life of order and
service.”

“
Not to
mention chastity.”

This made him laugh. More,
it cracked him up. This unexpected bit of mirth lightened the mood
in the room to such a degree that she felt the little, familiar
stirrings of desire between her tingling thighs.

“Being
in love is a strange thing, isn’t it?” he asked, a note of
melancholy playing through his voice.

“It is. But I know that
love is real and that loneliness is painful.” Julianna well
remembered their time apart; those long months when they were
halfway across the country from one another still hung with
her.

Knowing this, he stepped
in, filling the rhythm of her conversation with some of
his.

“I am so
glad that you came to Brannaska to be with me. I so very much want
to be happy, and I hope you can be happy here, the winter
aside.”

“The winter isn’t so bad.
Yet.”

Yet. It would get much,
much worse. But neither of them knew that then.

“Was it hard for you to
make the move out here?”

Julianna hadn’t talked
about it much; doing so seemed to violate the strange but stable
truce she’d made with both God and Cedric about the affair. But the
truth was, it had been hard, leaving home again after the
war.

“Yes, yes it was,” she
confessed.

“You could’ve said
something. I could’ve counseled you.”

“I was
worried.”

“Worried about
what?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t
know if you really wanted me to come. I didn’t want to be
disappointed, to have my heart broken.”

He kissed her and her
heart nearly exploded when she realized they were close to
intercourse again. She kissed and nibbled at his ears; he laughed a
bit and his breath quickened. He pressed his hand between her
thighs, found the soft cleft there, and held.

Julianna squeezed her eyes
shut and concentrated on her pleasure. She was tired of waiting and
tired of the space between them, wanted everything to touch,
absolutely everything. She pulled the rest of their clothes away
and they lay nude together on the couch.

His body was beautiful.
She looked him over, wanting to commit everything to memory were
they ever to be separated again. Cedric stood up and took her hand,
leading her to the bedroom. She closed the door behind them. Before
he lay her down on the bed, he brushed her cheek with the back of
his warm hand, kissed her softly, and told her he loved
her.

“You are
the most gorgeous woman in the world, Jewels. You have no idea how
beautiful you are.”

His lips closed on her
neck, then moved down to her breasts, on to her belly. Her
impatience manifested itself in a lusty moan; the carnal, animal
sound raised both of their desire.

Julianna raced her hands
across his back and down to his bum, then lower even, pulling and
grinding and enjoying the tense strength of his muscular thighs.
She wondered how he stayed so fit, given that he ate mostly at
Bjorn’s, which was no health food establishment. She also didn’t
think the activities of the priesthood entailed much
exercise.

Now it was her turn to
roll him over. She put him on his back and put her mouth all over
him. Julianna took him into her wet hot mouth, slowly at first,
then quick and hungry. She was greedy and he was eager, thrusting
his hips to let her taste the whole length of it. He tried to keep
his moans muffled and quiet but she heard and she knew he loved
it.