Brother Odd

CHAPTER 16

GAZING AT THE WINDOW, TRYING TO understand what I had seen and silently congratulating myself on the fact that I still had clean underwear, I didn't realize that Sister Clare Marie had entered the reception lounge. She circled around from behind me, coming between me and the window, as white and silent as an orbiting moon.

In her habit, with her soft pink face, button nose, and slight overbite, she needed only a pair of long furry ears to call herself a rabbit and attend a costume party.

"Child," she said, "you look as if you've seen a ghost."

"Yes, Sister."

"Are you all right?"

"No, Sister."

Twitching her nose, as though she detected a scent that alarmed her, she said, "Child?"

I do not know why she calls me child. I have never heard her address anyone else that way, not even any of the children in the school.

Because Sister Clare Marie was a sweet gentle person, I did not want to alarm her, especially considering that the threat had passed, at least for the moment, and considering as well that, being a nun, she didn't carry the hand grenades I would need before venturing again into the storm.

"It's just the snow," I said.

"The snow?"

"The wind and cold and snow. I'm a desert boy, ma'am. I'm not used to weather like this. It's mean out there."

"The weather isn't mean," she assured me with a smile. "The weather is glorious. The world is beautiful and glorious. Humanity can be mean, and turn away from what's good. But weather is a gift."

"All right," I said.

Sensing that I hadn't been convinced, she continued: "Blizzards dress the land in a clean habit, lightning and thunder make a music of celebration, wind blows away all that's stale, even floods raise up everything green. For cold there's hot. For dry there's wet. For wind there's calm. For night there's day, which might not seem like weather to you, but it is. Embrace the weather, child, and you'll understand the balance of the world."

I am twenty-one, have known the misery of an indifferent father and a hostile mother, have had a part of my heart cut out by a sharp knife of loss, have killed men in self-defense and to spare the lives of innocents, and have left behind all the friends whom I cherished in Pico Mundo. I believe all this must show that I am a page on which the past has written clearly for anyone to read. Yet Sister Clare Marie sees some reason to call me-and only me-child, which sometimes I hope means that she possesses some understanding I do not have, but which most often I suspect means that she is as naive as she is sweet and that she does not know me at all.

"Embrace the weather," she said, "but please don't puddle on the floor."

This seemed to be an admonition that once might have been better directed at Boo than at me. Then I realized that my ski boots were caked with snow, which was melting on the limestone.

"Oh. Sorry, Sister."

When I took off my jacket, she hung it on a coatrack, and when I shucked off my boots, she picked them up to put them on the rubber mat under the rack.

As she moved away with the boots, I pulled the bottom of my sweater over my head, and used it as a towel to blot my soaked hair and damp face.

I heard the door open and the wind shriek.

Panicked, I pulled down my sweater and saw Sister Clare Marie standing on the threshold, looking less like a rabbit than like an array of sails on a vessel on course in Arctic straits, vigorously knocking my boots together so the snow caked on them would be left outside.

Beyond her, the blizzard didn't seem as though it wanted to be embraced, not this storm of storms. It looked instead as though it wanted to blow down the school and the abbey and the forest beyond, blow down everything on the face of the earth that dared to stand upright, and bury everything, and be done with civilization and with humanity once and for all.

By the time I reached her, before I could shout a warning above the wind, Sister Clare Marie retreated from the threshold.

Neither a demon nor an Amway salesperson loomed out of the frigid tempest before I pushed the door shut and engaged the dead-bolt lock once more.

As she placed the boots on the rubber mat, I said, "Wait, I'll get a mop, don't open the door, I'll get a mop and clean this up."

I sounded shaky as if I had once been badly traumatized by a mop and needed to summon the courage to use one.

The nun didn't seem to notice the quaver in my voice. With a sunny smile, she said, "You'll do no such thing. You're a guest here. Letting you do my work, I'd be embarrassed in front of the Lord."

Indicating the puddle of melting slush on the floor, I said, "But I'm the one who made the mess."

"That's not a mess, child."

"It looks like a mess to me."

"That's weather! And it's my work. Besides, Mother Superior wants to see you. She called up to the abbey, and they said you'd been seen going outside, maybe you were coming this way, and here you are. She's in her office."

I watched her fetch a mop from a closet near the front door.

When she turned and saw that I hadn't left, she said, "Go on now, shoo, see what Mother Superior wants."

"You won't open the door to wring out the mop on the stoop, will you, Sister?"

"Oh, there's not enough to wring. It's just a small puddle of weather come inside."

"You won't open the door just to glory in the blizzard, will you?" I asked.

"It is a fantastic day, isn't it?"

"Fantastic," I said with no enthusiasm.

"If I've got my chores done before None and rosary, then I might take time for the weather."

None was the mid-afternoon prayer, at twenty minutes past four, more than six and a half hours from now.

"Good. Just before None-that'll be a nice time for watching a storm. Much nicer than now."

She said, "I might make a cup of hot chocolate and sit by a window and glory in the blizzard from a cozy corner of the kitchen."

"Not too close to the window," I said.

Her pink brow furrowed. "Whyever not, child?"

"Drafts. You don't want to sit in a draft."

"Nothing wrong with a good draft!" she assured me heartily. "Some are cold, some are warm, but it's all just air on the move, circulating so it's healthy to breathe."

I left her swabbing up the small puddle of weather.

If something hideous came through the window with the one cracked pane, Sister Clare Marie, wielding the mop like a cudgel, would probably have the moves and the attitude to get the best of the beast.