Free Holy Terror in the Hebrides by Jeanne M. Dams Page B

know which one. I am not familiar with the more byzantine structures of the Catholic Church.”
    “An’ what none o’ you seem to’ve figured out,” Hattie Mae broke in before Teresa could retort, “is that the kids couldn’t stand him.”
    It was a flat statement, falling like a stone into the room, and the undertext was again clear:
I know about ghetto kids and what they’re thinking. You don’t
.
    Teresa opened her mouth and shut it again.
    Hattie Mae went on, her voice just slightly less belligerent. “They went along with it, o’ course. Kids are smart, an’ they know which side their bread is buttered on. They’d go to ’im with hard-luck stories, and he’d fall for it every time, raising money for this and that when the kids were just takin’ it to buy drugs. He was too simple to know!”
    The silence reverberated.
    Grace responded, finally, in her cool, distant way. “Oh, it’s true enough that he was a young twerp. Anyone who knew him knew that. But he did do a great deal of work, even if his personality was not—charismatic.”
    “But what about this award?” I ventured. “Surely the Religious Assembly—I mean, they must have researched . . .”
    Six pairs of eyes looked at me pityingly, including Jake’s.
    “If,” said Chris precisely, speaking for the first time, “the Chicago Religious Assembly were told that Jesus Christ had appeared in person on Michigan Avenue, announcing his candidacy for mayor against Richard Daley, the assembly would take out a full-page ad in the
Tribune
urging everyone to vote for Him. Without making a single phone call.”
    “I see.”
    The wind howled, the trees groaned, unknown things out there in the dark crashed and banged, and we sat in depressed silence.

6
    O NE BY ONE we found excuses to go up to bed, but not, at least in my case, to sleep. Oh, I intended to. Feeling that it was a silly thing to do, I nevertheless jammed the back of my chair against the door. With the lever-style handle prevalent in Britain, it was actually a fairly effective deterrent against illicit entry.
    So I had taken care of that, and that was absolutely as far as I intended to go in dealing with the absurd idea that I might be housed in the same building as a particularly clever murderer. The evening’s conversation hadn’t produced anything very productive, and I refused to analyze it further tonight. I was extremely tired, and when I get tired I get cross, and I do not think clearly in that condition. Tomorrow was time enough for pondering. Tonight was for sleep.
    It’s just possible that I might have managed it, if it hadn’t been for the wind. Wind has always frightened me, far more than thunderstorms or blizzards or any of the other weather phenomena I grew up with. I understand it has the same effect on many people. In the parts of the world where a hard wind will sometimes blow for days or weeks, the chinooks in the American West, or the mistrals in France, people go crazy, suicides and murders multiply. Police departments dread the winds.
    In my room upstairs, close to the roof of the old house, the wind seemed louder and more threatening than ever. It made me just that much more restless and nervous than I already was, and totally unable to settle myself for sleep. I thought of a hot bath but wasn’t sure I wanted to be immersed in water if thunder and lightning should come along to join the party. I said my prayers and recited the twenty-third psalm. I counted to a thousand twice, the second time backwards, and tried to work complicated multiplication problems in my head. None of the rituals worked.
    What I wanted was someone to talk to, someone who would understand, a friend.
    My best friend, my husband, was beyond human conversation. That thought didn’t bring tears tonight; perhaps part of me had healed at last, or perhaps—well, to be honest, the idea of Alan, alive and sensible and within reach of a telephone, was definitely cheering. I could call him.
    I