Free The Whore-Mother by Shaun Herron Page B

kneeled behind a chair, and offered thanks for deliverance, crossed himself again and came out to the corridor. She was waiting.
    â€œEat, now?”
    â€œThank you, miss.”
    â€œWe’ll go into the office.”
    It was a little glass room beside the front desk. She told him to sit down. He watched the entrance hall with growing uneasiness. If any of them came in here, searching, he was trapped in this glass house. The only way in or out of it was the door into the hall and onto their guns. They could do it here. They would do it here.
    She unwrapped a brown-paper package of sandwiches and did not appear to watch him. He watched the front door, his imagination flying high. “I keep these to nibble on,” she said, and gave him one. Ham. He wasn’t hungry now. Coming here was a mistake. Into a trap. He ought to have kept going. Phoned his sister from a call box. No. Now that he’d run for it, they’d have somebody watching her. Yes, and God Almighty, he hadn’t thought of that. They’d watch every move his parents and his sister made and when they brought the car to the Limestone, Powers would know it. They would come after him with tireless malice. Wasn’t the last murder arising out of the Civil War committed in 1969—almost fifty years after? Was it a son avenging a father he’d never seen? They were like that, down the generations.
    â€œEat,” she said, looking the other way.
    He bit the sandwich. It was tasteless. He chewed at it and swallowed and choked.
    â€œIf I can be of any help,” she said, looking directly into his face. “Sometimes there’s something....”
    He bit again on the sandwich. It took time and prevented talk. It was as much of a trap up in that dormitory as it was in this glass box.
    She said, “I’m not prying. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?”
    â€œWhy would you say that?”
    â€œProtestants don’t cross themselves in chapel.”
    â€œAm I not allowed in?”
    â€œReligion is no qualification here. Only need.”
    He chewed dully on the sandwich, watching the hall.
    â€œI was in South Africa when the blacks rioted in Port Elizabeth and ate the two nuns,” she said.
    He looked at her, puzzled. Why did she say a strange thing like that? She looked a lot younger than she was. So did the good nuns. He could see, now. She was a lot older. He remembered reading about the two nuns the blacks ate. He remembered it because his political science professor had pointed out that the two nuns were among the best friends of the Africans who ate them. “Either the blacks were pagans who believed they could digest the nuns’ virtue—or it’s unwise to make friends of the blacks,” the professor said. He remembered it also because Catholic martyrs weren’t eaten anymore, their priest had pointed out: killed, jailed, hanged, tortured, crucified in one place or another, but not eaten. What am I supposed to say to her? he wondered.
    â€œI remember the next day sitting waiting for them to come for us. We were their good friends. So were the nuns. We became former friends. They ate their former friends.”
    He didn’t expect talk like that from the Sally Anns. They thumped tambourines, blew trombones and trumpets, and sang on street corners. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t care at the moment whom the blacks ate in Port Elizabeth.
    â€œI felt the way you look,” she said quietly.
    â€œWhat? I beg your pardon?”
    â€œI’m not prying,” she said.
    â€œNo.” What am I supposed to say now? he wondered. He was leaving here, by God. But where was he going?
    â€œYou’re a Catholic, you’ve been very badly beaten, you haven’t a thing, not even a razor, you’re very frightened, and you’re hiding with no money in what a lot of people think of as a Protestant doss house. Would you like some tea?”
    â€œNo. No.