Bear and His Daughter Read Free Page A

offered up the suffering in it.
    Camille wept at the sound of the words. Mary found herself unable to go on for a moment.
    “There’s more,” Camille said.
    “Yes,” said Mary. She drew upon her role as story lady.
Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And the lion glares thro’ the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover’d with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence.
    Camille sobbed. “Oh Mary,” she said. “Yours weren’t protected.”
    “Well, stars…” Mary Urquhart said, still cheerfully. “Thin influence. Thin ice.”
    The parlor lights were lighted in the rectory of Our Lady of Fatima when they pulled off the genteel main street of the foothill town and into the church parking lot. Mary parked the station wagon close to the rectory door, and the two women got out and rang Father Hooke’s bell.
    Hooke came to the door in a navy cardigan, navy-blue shirt and chinos. Camille murmured and fairly curtsied in deference. Mary looked the priest up and down. His casual getup seemed like recalcitrance, an unreadiness to officiate. Had he been working himself up to deny them?
    “Hello, Frank,” said Mary. “Sorry to come so late.”
    Hooke was alone in the rectory. There was no assistant and he did his own housekeeping, resident rectory biddies being a thing of the past.
    “Can I give you coffee?” Father Hooke asked.
    “I’ve had mine,” Mary said.
    He had a slack, uneasy smile. “Mary,” the priest said. “And Miss … won’t you sit down?”
    He had forgotten Camille’s name. He was a snob, she thought, a suburban snob. The ethnic, Mariolatrous name of his parish, Our Lady of Fatima, embarrassed him.
    “Father,” she said, “why don’t we just do it?”
    He stared at her helplessly. Ashamed for him, she avoided his eye.
    “I think,” he said, dry-throated, “we should consider from now on.”
    “Isn’t it strange?” she asked Camille. “I had an odd feeling we might have a problem here tonight.” She turned on Hooke. “What do you mean? Consider what?”
    “All right, all right,” he said. A surrender in the pursuit of least resistance. “Where is it?”
    “They,” Mary said.
    “The babies,” said Camille. “The poor babies are in Mary’s car outside.”
    But he hung back. “Oh, Mary,” said Father Hooke. He seemed childishly afraid.
    She burned with rage. Was there such a thing as an adult Catholic? And the race of priests, she thought, these self-indulgent, boneless men.
    “Oh, dear,” she said. “What can be the matter now? Afraid of how they’re going to look?”
    “Increasingly…” Father Hooke said, “I feel we’re doing something wrong.”
    “Really?” Mary asked. “Is that a fact?” They stood on the edge of the nice red Bolivian rectory carpet, in the posture of setting out for the station wagon. Yet not setting out. There was Haitian art on the wall. No lace curtains here. “What a shame,” she said, “we haven’t time for an evening of theological discourse.”
    “We may have to make time,” Father Hooke said. “Sit down, girls.”
    Camille looked to Mary for reassurance and sat with absurd decorousness on the edge of a bare-boned Spanish chair. Mary stood where she was. The priest glanced at her in dread. Having giving them an order, he seemed afraid to take a seat himself.
    “It isn’t just the interments,” he told Mary. He ignored Camille. “It’s the whole thing. Our whole position.” He shuddered and began to pace up and down on the rug, his hands working nervously.
    “Our position,” Mary repeated tonelessly. “Do you mean
your
position? Are you referring to the Church’s teaching?”
    “Yes,” he said. He looked around as though for help, but as was the case so often with such things, it was not available. “I mean I think we may be wrong.”
    She let the words reverberate in