Free The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich Page B

her ground-floor cell, which opened into the garden. The old nun often ventured outside, to contemplate the image of Christ as she saw it in the growing plants.”
    Jude stopped, eyeing a wan cinnamon bun left on Father Damien’s plate. He couldn’t help it. His appetite was constant, vexing.
    “Have it,” said Father Damien, wishing it were an adequate bribe.
    Father Jude reached over and delicately, with his soft, blunt fingers pinched up the bun and ate it in two bites.
    “The question, or task before us right now,” he said, chewing, “is establishing your knowledge of Sister Leopolda, your history, your”— here he sought the word—“claim. No, I don’t mean that exactly. Your authority. Your expertise. Frankly”—and here Father Jude smiled—“I don’t anticipate a problem. Everybody else . . . her contemporaries are dead.”
    “Oh really,” said Father Damien, and though he cast down his eyes in seeming respect there was a gloating satisfaction in his frail voice that made Father Jude glance sharply at the profile of the older priest. As soon as he felt his composure slip, Father Damien recovered and assumed a righteous, blank, carefully focused clerical air. Still, Father Jude’s pale eyes remained upon him, and the gaze he maintained revealed a sharp speculative intelligence.
    “Just for the hell of it,” he said, smiling a tight smile, “or the heaven of it. I’m going to ask, I mean, in general. Was she?”
    “Was she what? What are you saying?” said Father Damien, although he knew full well.
    “Was she a saint?” asked Father Jude simply.
    There was silence after his question, in which a hush of wind trembled in the leaves. Suddenly, through that corridor of extreme quiet, there sounded a harsh cacophony. Crows with human thrill had mobbed a great owl. The bird floated eerily, like a gray thrust of wind, in and out of Father Jude’s eyeshot, chased by a wheeling tumble of black feathers. Dark laughter. Their shrieks seemed to Jude’s ears both hilarious and foul. Father Damien’s voice barely cut through the din.
    “There is your answer,” he said.
     
    Creamed corn and ground-beef casserole, macaroni, a dish of hot, vinegary string beans, squares of rhubarb crumble. Lunch came wrapped in foil with twin place settings. At a small table of chipped enamel, set outside beneath the wild grapevine arbor, the two sat and made appreciative sounds as a brooding and massively built woman removed the aluminum sheets, folded them for future reuse, and loomed silently over Damien.
    “Father Jude, I would like to introduce you to Mary Kashpaw. She is my housekeeper, keeper of the church grounds, master general of all you see.”
    A slight smile tweaked the corner of Mary Kashpaw’s line of a mouth, cut like a seam in stone. Her eyes gentled as they rested on the old man, then narrowed as she turned her attention to Father Jude. As she slowly assessed the visitor, she stiffened into a mountain and became so monumentally rooted that it was almost a surprise when she walked away. Slightly shaken by her presence, though without any reason he could discern, Jude busied himself, poured thin coffee into white ceramic mugs. Father Damien frowned.
    “Have you,” he peered behind Father Miller, “brought a bit of wine, perhaps, to complement the meal?”
    “If I’d known.” Father Miller hooked his shoulders.
    “No matter.” Father Damien waved his hands. “Best, anyway, that I abstain. At least for this particular afternoon.”
    “You’ll need your wits about you.” Father Miller was teasing, but even so his demeanor was challenging enough to quicken Damien’s pulse, causing, in turn, an increase of circulation that often led to heartburn. Damien picked slowly at his food, raised a string bean to his lips, bit the end off, chewed, put it down again. In the meantime, Jude Miller ate two-handed, busily sopping up extra juice with a piece of soft white bread while rhythmically forking the