There was no one in sight, and no smoke coming out of the wide stone chimney. Crude half-log shutters were fastened over the windows on the outside as if the builder’s idea had been to keep people in rather than to protect the place against intruders. With the huge sugar pines filtering the sunlight, the air seemed to Quinn suddenly cool and damp. Pine needles and orange-colored flakes of madrone bark muffled the sound of his footsteps as he approached.
Through a chink between the half-logs Brother Tongue of Prophets saw the stranger coming and began making small animal noises of distress.
“Now what are you making a fuss about?” Sister Blessing said briskly. “Here, let me see for myself.” She took his place at the chink. “It’s only a man. Don’t get excited. His car probably broke down, Brother Crown of Thorns will help him fix it, and that will end the incident. Unless—”
It was part of Sister Blessing’s nature to look for silver linings, find them, point them out to other people, and then ruin the whole effect by adding unless.
“—unless he’s from the school board or one of the newspapers. In which case I shall deal firmly with him and send him on his way, wrapped in his original ignorance. It seems a bit early, though, for the school board to start harassing us about the fall term.”
Brother Tongue nodded agreement and nervously stroked the neck of the parakeet perched on his forefinger.
“So he’s probably a newspaperman. Unless he’s another plain ordinary tramp. In which case I shall treat him with dispassionate kindness. There certainly isn’t anything to get excited about, we’ve had tramps before, as you well know. Stop making those noises. You can talk if you want to, if you have to. Suppose the building caught on fire, you could yell ‘fire,’ couldn’t you?”
Brother Tongue shook his head.
“Nonsense, I know better. Fire. Say it. Go on. Fire.”
Brother Tongue stared mutely down at the floor. If the place caught on fire he wouldn’t give the alarm, he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just stand and watch it burn, making sure first that the parakeet was safe.
Quinn knocked on the unpainted wooden door. “Hello. Is anyone here? I’ve lost my way, I’m hungry and thirsty.”
The door opened slowly, with a squawk of unoiled hinges, and a woman stepped out on the threshold. She was about fifty, tall and strong-looking, with a round face and very shiny red cheeks. She was barefooted. The long loose robe she wore reminded Quinn of the muu-muus he’d seen on the women in Hawaii except that the muu-muus were bright with color and the woman’s robe was made of coarse gray wool without ornament of any kind.
“Welcome, stranger,” she said, and though the words were kind, her tone was wary.
“I’m sorry to bother you, madam.”
“Sister, if you please. Sister Blessing of the Salvation. So you’re hungry and thirsty and you’ve lost your way, is that it?”
“More or less. It’s a long story.”
“Such stories usually are,” she said dryly. “Come inside. We never turn away the poor, being poor ourselves.”
“Thank you.”
“Just mind your manners, that’s all we ask. How long since you’ve eaten?”
“I don’t recall exactly.”
“So you’ve been on a bender, eh?”
“Not the kind you mean. But I guess you’d have to call it a bender. It bent me.”
She glanced sharply at the tweed jacket Quinn was carrying over his arm. “I know a fine piece of wool when I see it, since we weave all our own cloth. Where’d you get this?”
“I bought it.”
She seemed a little disappointed as if she had hoped he would say he had stolen it. “You don’t look or act like a beggar to me.”
“I haven’t been one very long. I don’t have the knack of it yet.”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me. I have to check up on our visitors, in self-protection. Every now and then some prying reporter comes along, or a member of the law bent on mischief.”
“I’m bent only on food and water.”
“Come in, then.”
Quinn followed her inside. It was a single room with a stone floor that looked as if it had just been scrubbed. The biggest skylight Quinn had ever seen provided the place with light.
Sister Blessing saw him staring up at it and said, “If light is to come from heaven, according to the Master, let it come directly, not slanting in through windows.”
A wooden table with benches along each side ran almost the entire length of the building. It was set with tin plates, stainless steel spoons, knives and forks, and several kerosene lamps, already cleaned and fueled for the night. At the far end of the room there was an old-fashioned icebox, a woodstove with a pile of neatly cut logs beside it, and a bird cage obviously made by an amateur. In front of the stove a man, middle-aged, thin and pale-faced, sat in a rocking chair with a bird on his shoulder. He wore the same kind of robe as Sister Blessing and he, too, was barefooted. His head was shaved and his scalp showed little nicks and scratches as if whoever had wielded the razor had bad eyes and a dull blade.
Sister Blessing closed the door. Her suspicions of Quinn seemed to be allayed for the time being and her manner now was more that of a hostess. “This is our communal eating room. And that is Brother Tongue of Prophets. The others are all at prayer in the Tower, but I’m the nurse, I must stay with Brother Tongue. He’s been sickly, I keep him by the stove at night. How are you feeling now, Brother Tongue?”
The Brother nodded and smiled, while the little bird pecked gently at his ear.
“A most unfortunate choice of names,” Sister Blessing added to Quinn in a whisper. “He seldom speaks. But then, perhaps prophets are better off not speaking too much. You may sit down, Mr.—?”
“Quinn.”
“Quinn. Rhymes with sin. It could be a bad omen.”
Quinn started to point out that it also rhymed with grin, spin, fin, but Sister Blessing replied brusquely that sin was by far the most obvious.
“I gather sin is what brought a young, able-bodied man like you to such a low estate?”
Quinn remembered what Newhouser had said about the people at the Tower, that they were especially hospitable to poor sinners. “I’m afraid so.”
“Drinking?”
“Of course.”
“Gambling?”
“Frequently.”
“Womanizing?”
“On occasion.”
“I thought so,” Sister Blessing said with gloomy satisfaction. “Well, I’ll make you a cheese sandwich.”
“Thank you.”
“With ham. There are rumors in town we don’t eat meat. What nonsense. We work hard. We need meat to keep going. A ham and cheese sandwich for you, too, Brother Tongue? A drop of goat’s milk?”
The Brother shook his head.
“Well, I can’t force you to eat. But I can at least see that you get some fresh air. It’s cool enough now to sit outside for a while. Put your little bird back in his cage and Mr. Quinn will help you with your chair.”
Sister Blessing gave orders as if there was no doubt in her mind that they would be carried out promptly and properly. Quinn took the rocking chair outside while Brother Tongue returned the parakeet to its cage and Sister Blessing started to prepare some sandwiches. In spite of her strange clothes and surroundings she gave the impression of an ordinary housewife working in her own kitchen, pleased to be of service. Quinn didn’t even try to guess what combination of circumstances had brought her to a place like the Tower.