Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. Just shadows. I don’t know how he got in, but it looks like he went out over the back fence.”

“That would take some doing, wouldn’t it?” he said, grinning broadly. “Probably some punk kid, out looking for anything he could find. He was probably more scared of you than you were of him.”

“Small comfort,” I said.

“One way to get your peace of mind back is to install a good floor safe,” he said. “I can connect you to a reliable dealer, probably get you a nice discount.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, but wouldn’t. The Rileys, as I remembered them both, always seemed to have something to sell or a discount they could arrange for you.

“I need to get going,” he said. “But if you have any more trouble, don’t hesitate to give me a call, Maggie. I’m just down the way and I can be here in a hurry. The neighbors have always known they can call on me any time of the day or night if they need a little help.” As emphasis, he patted the service revolver on his belt.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And give that floor safe some serious thought.” With a wave, he turned and walked back toward his home.

After a quick shower, I fired up Mike’s pickup and started making deliveries, grateful for a reason not to be alone in the house. Books went to the library, clothes to the thrift store. And two big boxes piled high with fresh garden vegetables went to a soup kitchen in the basement of an old church in downtown Oakland.

Juggling the heavy produce boxes, one on each arm, I managed to get down the back stairs and into the large community room without either falling or dropping anything; my arms were sore from lifting and carrying the day before.

As I set the boxes on the first table I came to, I heard a familiar voice call out.

“Hey, McGurk.” Father John, once my parents’ parish priest, leaned through the service window from the kitchen. He had a white paper cap on his head and an apron over the jeans and polo shirt he wore that day instead of his usual white cassock, looking fairly convincingly like kitchen help. “How long since your last confession?”

“I don’t know, Padre,” I said. “What year is this?”

“I thought so.” He grinned at me as I rubbed a kink out of my arm. He looked fine, a little pale, thinner, certainly older. I hadn’t seen him since my sister’s funeral six years earlier. “What’d you bring me?”

“Green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes,” I said. “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.”

“Bring it in, let’s have a look.”

I carted the boxes into the kitchen and set them down next to the big stainless steel sinks. Looking around the empty kitchen, I asked, “You all alone?”

He glanced heavenward, grinning. “I am never alone, child. But Cook is AWOL this morning, so yes, no one is here except me.” He handed me a paper cap like his and an apron to put on. “He’s a good cook, when he can find it in his heart to show up. Give me a hand, will you? We feed lunch to two hundred at noon and the soup isn’t even started.”

“You can’t feed that many people all by yourself,” I said.

“The church ladies will be here later to set up the service line and do the salad and bread. But they won’t have soup to serve unless we get busy.”

He unloaded the boxes into the sink and looked at what he had to work with. “I was hoping you’d hidden a couple of fat chickens in here. Getting enough protein into the meal is always a problem. But this is nice, very nice.”

There were four giant soup pots on the restaurant-size stove. He poured gallons of chicken broth into the pots and started it simmering while we washed and chopped vegetables and herbs. Everything was dumped into the pots, along with about ten pounds of brown rice and a tub of leftover spaghetti.

“Do you do this every day?” I asked him.

“People eat every day,” he said, fitting lids onto the pots. “Hey, McGonagle, I have a good idea. Why don’t you do one of your programs about homeless people, break some hearts, loosen some wallets?”

“Already did that one, years ago,” I said. “You should work on your skills dividing loaves and fishes instead.”

“Every day I ask for God’s help with that particular sleight-of-hand,” he said with a chuckle. “And today he sent me you.”

“If there’s a miracle in this story, it’s Mr. Sato’s green thumb.” I untied my apron and hung it back on the hook he had taken it from and gave him my cap.

He asked about Mom and my daughter, Casey, and I filled him in.

“And how are you?” I asked, watching him closely as he decided how to answer. He leaned back against a counter, arms crossed over his chest, looking down.

“Floor needs a good mopping,” he said instead of answering the question.

“Kevin Halloran told me you were back in the parish,” I said. “I wanted to say hello, so I called the church and asked about your schedule. I was told you’d be here.”

He turned his face up to me, grimacing. “What blabbermouth did you talk to?”

“Lorna Priddy,” I said. “She told me you’re in remission.”

“My missing cook calls it recess,” he said. “When I was diagnosed, the diocese offered to assign me a rocking chair at the old priests’ home to wait until Our Father calls me home.”

“I can’t imagine you accepting that deal.”

“Me either. So I asked if there was a rack available in the rectory at St. Mary’s that I could use until the recess bell rings. Cancer be damned, there’s still some use in me.”

“Your soup’s starting to smell good.”

He asked me to stay and help serve lunch, but I had too much to do. I did, however, agree to stay and keep him company until the church ladies arrived. There was something fragile about him that had never been there before; I sensed that he very much did not want to be alone, any more than I did.

I knew he wouldn’t tell me anything about his relationship with Larry Nordquist if I asked him directly-that penitent-confessor bar. But I thought he might talk to me about the work he and Mrs. Bartolini had done with Vietnamese refugees. It seemed to me that at the end of a failed war there would be people from all sides who, as Mom suggested, still needed enemies, and he might have some ideas about who they were. But I could not bring myself to launch into that topic just then. He seemed so happy, so relaxed that I did not want to upset his peace.

Instead, we talked about nothing and everything as we stirred the soup and argued over seasonings. He was curious about my current film project, a two-hour special scheduled for fall Sweeps Week. He had met the subject of the film, a murdered former congressman, and found him to be sympathetic to issues relating to poverty.

I told him, “I’m calling the film There Was a Crooked Man .”

He began to recite the poem, “‘There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile / He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile…’ Was your congressman a crooked man?”

“You’ll just have to wait till September when the film airs,” I said. “Then you can decide for yourself.”

“I liked the man,” he said with a little lift to his shoulders. “Maybe I don’t want to learn something that might change my opinion of him. I think I’ll just read a book the night of the broadcast.”

“That’s up to you,” I said, knowing from experience that there was a lesson in the offing.

“Maggie, I’m not your only old friend who’s back in town.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Larry Nordquist. Do you remember him?”

“I saw him yesterday,” I said, wondering where Father John was headed, but happy that he had brought up the subject.