“You’re supposed to stay here,” said Kali.
“Everybody else is moving around,” grumbled Patrick.
“Let’s just stay together, okay, kids?” said Father Souza.
“So, Father Mark?” Brittany tapped his elbow. “My grandma told me about this little girl, who took Communion only she spit the Host out into a Kleenex and took it outside and cut it open with a knife to see if it did anything, and it started really bleeding, and she went to Hell.”
“I heard that story, when I was your age,” said Father Souza. “But I think—”
At that moment the PA system was switched on, with a deafening squeal of feedback, and a DJ named Ron introduced himself at high volume. He led everyone in singing the national anthem, followed by the Portuguese national anthem. After that he called out the marching order of each group, as the fog burned off abruptly and everyone began to sweat.
Father Souza led the children to their place in line, just in front of the ox cart. There they waited, shifting from foot to foot on hot asphalt, until the parade stepped off.
The ox behind them started forward, and the cart began an ominous shrieking that grew louder as it moved slowly down Addie Street. By the time they rounded the corner onto Cypress Street, it was painful to hear. Brittany and Kali walked with their hands over their ears, rosaries held in their teeth. Patrick ignored it all, marching along cheerfully, happy to be moving. He spotted one set of his grandparents taking photos and raised Our Lady in a high sign for them, being unable to wave. “Cut it out!” hissed Brittany.
Patrick ignored her too. He spotted his parents and the other grandparents with them, video cameras whirring, and he shifted Our Lady to one hand and did the Macarena as he marched.
“You’re going to Hell,” said Brittany.
“Nuh uh,” said Patrick.
“Kids, that’s enough sending each other to Hell,” muttered Father Souza.
Someone came running out of the Lions Club kitchen with a bottle of Mazola and poured it over the cart’s screaming axle, and that helped a little.
“Thank you, God,” said Patrick
“You’re going to—” began Brittany, and then all three little faces turned up to Father Souza, as to a referee.
“If he said ‘Thank you, God,’ as a prayer of thanks from his heart, then it wasn’t a sin,” said Father Souza patiently. “Brittany, don’t get so angry about—”
“Yaay!” said Patrick.
“But ray grandma says—”
“Kali, look, it’s Ms. Washburn,” exclaimed Patrick, pointing.
“Hi, Ms. Washburn,” said Kali, waving with her rosary.
Ms. Washburn, who taught second grade at Cornelia Harloe Elementary, was seated at an outdoor table in front of the Surf Coffee Shop. She was watching the parade with a cool and amused smile, sipping her coffee, but there was a frown line between her eyes.
“My grandma says she’s going to Hell too,” said Brittany, unexpectedly. Both Patrick and Kali turned to stare at her.
“She can’t be going to Hell,” said Kali, “we’re going to be in her class this year.”
“Didn’t you know? She’s an—” said Brittany, but then the band behind them struck up “Louie, Louie” and drowned out further conversation. Father Souza wondered what Ms. Washburn might be, to have gotten on old Mrs. Machado’s comprehensive list of the damned.
The parade turned the corner and wound its way up the long hill. At the highway intersection, two cops stopped traffic in installments as the parade came across to the vast parking lot of the church. Father Souza moved in front to lead the children through, watching the highway traffic with his pale, worried face.
Someone parked the ox and got it a bucket of water, as the rest of the parade filed into St. Catherine of Alexandria’s. The band members crowded upright in red and blue rows. There were so many of them they had to leave their instruments in the garden, in gleaming piles. The trains of the Queens were gathered up awkwardly, layered over the backs of pews. Elevating the Host, Father Souza looked out over the packed house and sighed. Today, he had a congregation. Next Sunday’s attendance would drop back to the usual single row of grandmothers and three families.
After Mass, Father Souza administered a general blessing, invoked St. Anthony, and said a few hopeful words about donations for the Earthquake Retrofitting Fund for St. Catherine’s School. Nobody pulled out their wallets, though.
The teenagers changed out of their band uniforms or Queen ensembles, grabbed surfboards, and raced back down the hill to the beach. Mothers and aunts collected the abandoned robes and packed them carefully away. The other adults and children went into St. Anthony’s carnival, which had been set up on the empty schoolground, and threw beanbags through holes or ping-pong balls into fish bowls. They won goldfish, black eyepatches, rolls of Smarties candy and tiny pink plastic cars.
School started a month later, though not at St. Catherine’s Elementary. No ABC cards were tacked up above the first grade blackboard. At Halloween there were no drawings of pumpkins; at Thanksgiving, no turkeys made from paper plates and construction paper, nor drawings of Indians and Pilgrims. The day on which Christmas vacation had begun came and went without hysteria, cheers or the janitor dressing up as Santa Claus. Mr. Espinoza had been dead for five years, anyway. Valentine’s Day approached, and there were no red construction paper hearts.
The rituals of life went on, or they didn’t; when they ceased, it was astonishing how quickly they were forgotten. St. Anthony still had his day, but for how many more years?
Father Souza sat in his office and looked out at the vacant school building, at the rows of empty windows. His gaze settled inevitably on the jagged cracks that had shot up through the old brickwork, like black lightning out of the earth, on the morning the earthquake had hit. He had long since learned to accept acts of God, but this one had rather surprised him.
Phantom children moved on the weedy playground, in the plaid woolen uniforms or salt-and-pepper corduroy of a generation past. A tetherball swung listlessly against its post, as the fog blew by.
A real child was coming up the walkway to his office, followed by a woman. Startled, Father Souza rose and opened the door.
“Hi, Father Mark,” said Patrick. “We have to talk.”
“Patrick,” said his mother, in tones of reproof.
“Mrs. Avila?” Father Souza guessed, extending his hand.
“Hi,” she said. “Do you have a minute to talk to us?”
“Okay,” said Father Souza. He let them in and they settled in the two chairs that faced his desk. He returned to his chair, wondering why Patrick was wearing gardening gloves fastened over his sneakers with duct tape.
“I, ah, I’ve met Patrick’s father at Mass, of course,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t come because I’m Lutheran,” she said, amiably enough. “Well, not Lutheran Lutheran, but… you know.”
“Sure,” said Father Souza.
“My dad is away on Campaign,” said Patrick.
“Campaign is where he and the other re-enactors go up to Lassen Campground in full costume and pretend they’re sixteenth-century Italian troops fighting battles,” Mrs. Avila explained patiently. “Which is why I had to take the afternoon off to deal with this.”
“I have this really big problem, Father,” said Patrick.
“What kind of problem?”
“Well…” said Patrick, “we were supposed to make holidays, right? And so I had this really great idea, and—”
“Ms. Washburn gave them this creative assignment at the beginning of the semester,” said Mrs. Avila. “They were supposed to invent holidays. Come up with a reason for the holiday and make up customs for it, and pick a day of the year, and that kind of thing. So Patrick came up with Monkey Day.”
“Which is this really cool holiday all about monkeys?” said Patrick. “Like everybody wears monkey shoes, and eats monkey food like bananas and banana bread and banana milkshakes? And chicken strips only you call them monkey fingers? And—” He jumped to his feet and waved his arms. “Just do everything monkey! Like playing Monkey Island on your dad’s computer and watching monkey DVDs and stuff. King Kong. Mojo Jojo. Tarzan. You know.”