"I don't know where he's been hiding these years, but now it seems he's found a way back."
"Satan has never been away," Brother Robert said. "But now he has taken human form for an all-out assault on humanity."
"Satan?" the man said. "Did I mention Satan?" He shrugged. "Never mind. The fact remains that you're going to need help."
"What kind of help?" Grace said.
"I don't know. Once there was someone, but he's gone. Now…"He paused and looked from Grace to Brother Robert to Martin. "Perhaps someone in your group is the key."
"Who?" Brother Robert said. "How can we tell?"
Mr. Veilleur turned and headed for the door. "I haven't the foggiest. But he'll have to be someone special. Someone very special."
And then he was gone, leaving Grace staring at Brother Robert and wondering who it might be.
Fourteen
Friday, March 8
1
"What's that song you're whistling, Father?"
Bill looked up and saw Nicky standing on the far side of his desk, all dressed and ready to spend the weekend with the Calders.
"A real oldie called 'It's a Great Day.' "
"What's so great about it?"
"Everything, Nicko. Everything. The sun's out, the work week is almost over, spring is only two weeks away. A great day from morning till night."
He felt almost giddy and had to rein in his feelings before they ran away with him. He couldn't share the details with Nicky just yet, but he had a feeling that come Sunday night they'd both have reason to celebrate.
Bill reached over his desk and straightened Nicky's tie. It was too red and too narrow to be fashionable, and it hung down below his tightly cinched belt, but it was the cleanest of the three red ties available. The collar of the white shirt was too big for his scrawny neck, and the sleeves of the blue blazer were too short for his gangly arms. The same was true of the gray slacks, which showed too much white sock below the cuffs.
All in all, a sight to give a Brooks Brothers salesman a case of the vapors, but it was the best they could do out of that motley collection of hand-me-downs and better-quality donated clothing they called the dress-up closet. But then again, Bill didn't want the kids going out on their home visits looking too well dressed. Nicky's attire screamed, Give this boy a home! And that was probably all to the good.
He was clean, that was the important thing. His dark hair had been washed and combed up in the front, which was a mixed blessing in a way—although it camouflaged some of the more misshapen aspects of his skull, it exposed more blackheads on his forehead. He had play clothes and some clean underwear in the battered canvas satchel on the floor beside him.
"Nervous?" Bill said.
"Nah. I've been to lots of these."
"No, sweat, ay? Just a cool cat taking off for the weekend."
"Okay." Nicky's smile was slow and shy. "Maybe a little nervous."
"Just be yourself."
His eyes lit. "Really?"
"On second thought…"
They both smiled at their private joke.
The intercom buzzed. "The Calders are here," said Sister Miriam's voice from the front office.
"We're on our way."
He took Nicky's satchel and placed an arm on his shoulder as he led him down to the first floor.
"This is it, kid. Strut your best stuff for these people and you'll be in Fat City."
Bill felt Nicky's arm go around his back and hug him.
2
Bill waved good-bye to Nicky as the Calders drove away with him in the backseat of their new Dodge, then hurried back to his office and pulled the letter from under the desk blotter. It had arrived this morning from the Maryland Provincial and he must have read it and reread it a dozen times since then. Loyola High School in Baltimore had a spot for him! He would have preferred Loyola College, but at least this was a step in the right direction. He could report there on June 1, and come September he could begin as an instructor in the religion department… if he still wished to trade his current post for that of high-school teacher.
Wished? He was dying to get out of his current post!
And what a great location they were offering him! Just forty-five minutes down the Baltimore-Washington Expressway and he'd be in the capital, right in the heart of the action. There was always something going on in D.C., such as the new civil-rights bill before the Senate right now.
And it would put him far away from Carol. A few hundred miles would serve to cool his night thoughts. Maybe then he could get some sleep.
He kissed the letter and slipped it back under the blotter.
Nicky's going to find himself a home, and I'm going to rejoin the human race.
He began humming "Everything's Coming Up Roses."
3
The ground was thawed and the weekend was promising to be a warm one, so Jonah decided to get an early start on the garden. Come Friday afternoon most weeks he was bushed by the time he got home from the plant. But lately he had been full of life, bursting with energy, and the vegetable garden was as good a place as any to work some of it off. Maybe he'd be able to bring in some lettuce this year.
The first thing he was going to do, though, was set up a decent perimeter fence to keep the rabbits out. He would have loved to set up coils of razor wire to shred the greedy little rodents as they hopped into the garden, but the neighbors would raise a fuss when the same thing happened to their wild little bastards as they took their usual headlong shortcut through his backyard.
So he'd have to settle for chicken wire.
He planned to set up a two-by-four post at each corner of the garden, then string the mesh between it. Three feet would be more than high enough.
He began digging the hole for the first corner post. About eighteen inches would do it. Jonah liked the slicing sound the spade made as he jammed it into the soft earth, loved to feel the countless rootlets part beneath the blade as he drove it deeper into the ground with his foot. There was something delicious in disrupting the delicate balance below. Years of interplay; of give-and-take between the soil, the nutrients, the bacteria, the insects, and the vegetation—all altered forever with the thrust of a shovel.
When he had dug down about a foot, the dirt began to turn red.
Strange. He hadn't known there was any clay around here. And then he saw that it wasn't clay but a red liquid seeping up through the soil. He lowered himself to his hands and knees for a closer look. He sniffed.
Blood.
Jonah's pulse suddenly picked up as a shudder of elation raced through him. This wasn't a hallucination. This was the real thing. Another in a long line of signs he had been gifted with throughout his life.
Breathless, he watched the thick red fluid well up in the hole until it reached the rim, then ooze off into the garden in a thin, slow rivulet. Jonah would have liked to have let it fill the garden, to watch it cool and clot as dusk fell, but there were no secrets in these tiny, crowded backyards around here. It wouldn't do at all to have the neighbors wondering what had happened in the Stevenses' yard.
Reluctantly he began shoveling the earth back into the hole, stoppering the crimson flow. When the sod was back in place, he stepped back, reined in his excitement, and stood there thinking.
Blood flowing in his backyard. How else could he interpret that but as a harbinger of death, the death of someone close to his home? It was also a sign that events were gathering speed, and that he should not waste his time tilling the earth.