Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“On the practical level — the fruit company repurchased the property — you can’t stall them forever. And there’s really a lot of negative talk. The Archbishop is starting to get upset.”

“That old creep,” Justin said. “He’s not even a Christian. He’s a cross between a Grand Inquisitor and an Olmec priest.”

Sister Mary sat stiffly for a moment and then dissolved in guilty laughter.

“Justin — you’re such a smart aleck.”

Even distraught Justin could not help smiling back at her.

“Well, he ain’t Bing Crosby,” Sister Mary said in a low-comedy mutter. “But he represents the church here and that means plenty. And believe it or not he’s protecting you from a government investigation.”

Justin Feeney rose from her chair and walked to the edge of the veranda.

“Give me a few days before you speak to anyone. I have to make some plans of my own.”

Mary Joseph frowned. She did not believe that one could plan in idleness.

“Now I want to hear from you in a week and I want to hear a date of departure. If you need extra help maybe I can sneak you some Peace Corps kiddos to pull and tote.”

“Thanks, Joe. Thanks for giving a damn.”

Mary Joseph picked up her black bag and went to the top of the steps. She had mastered an impulse to touch Justin on the cheek or to give her a hug. Such demonstrations were contrary to her training.

“Hey, listen, you did an A-1 job here for a long time. Don’t go feeling like a complete flop. Don’t let yourself get morbid. Just get busy and pack up.”

Justin nodded briskly.

“God loves you, Justin. You’re his special lady. He’ll help you.”

“O.K., Joe.”

On the first step down Sister Mary Joseph was smitten with dread. In Justin’s impatient goodbye smile she read the word “lost”—and the word sounded in her scrubbed soldierly soul with a grim resonance.

“Hey,” she said, turning round, “I got a thing for Charlie Egan, know what I mean? I really want to see him get home alive. Can you take care of it for me?”

“You bet,” Justin said.

Walking to her jeep, Sister Mary caught sight of another vehicle rounding the palm grove between Freddy’s Chicken Shack and the water’s edge. It was a four-wheel-drive Toyota and the driver she recognized as Father Godoy, a Tecanecan priest from Puerto Alvarado. She waited beside her Willys as he pulled up.

Father Godoy wore creased chino pants, a blue plaid shirt and expensive sunglasses. He was out of his Toyota shaking her hand and breathing English pleasantries before she could utter a greeting.

His long face lengthened further in a bony yellow smile; he was tall and angular, a tragical Spaniard of a man.

“Well, it’s going great, Father,” Sister Mary heard herself declare. “We have an OB now and some new hardware and God willing we’re going to have a real good year.”

He bobbed his head before her in hypothalamic agreement with everything in sight. Very sexy, she thought. She distrusted intellectual priests and the native clergy she generally regarded as soft, spoiled and unprogressive.

“Terrific,” he was saying, in the racy Stateside which he affected for people of her sort, “really great! What would they do without you up there?”

“Looking in on our friends here, Father?”

“Right, right,” he said, as though he had not understood her question.

“I hear,” she said, “you have a nut loose down the coast. Somebody killing little kids.”

“It seems that way,” Godoy told her. “The people think it’s a foreigner.”

“Yeah,” the nun said, “I’d want to think that too. I hope the word’s out to be careful.”

“Everyone knows,” Godoy said. “That’s how we are here.”

“Well, so long,” she said, climbing into her jeep. “Keep us posted.”

“All the best,” Godoy called to her. “All the best to everybody.”

When she had driven as far as the palm grove, she stopped the jeep with the engine idling and bent into the lee of the dashboard to the light a cigarette. Inhaling, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Godoy at the top of the steps beside Sister Justin. Both of them were looking out to sea.

“Oh, boy,” she said to herself as she put the jeep in gear, “a couple of stars.”

Father Godoy was complimenting Sister Justin on the beauty of the ocean and her good fortune in living beside it. His doing so made her feel guilty.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked.

“No, no, please.” He looked about him cheerfully, further embarrassing Justin with the station’s lack of activity.

“How’s Himself,” Godoy asked in a low voice.

She smiled at the missionary Irishism.

“Not well, I’m afraid. He’s rather crushed and not always rational. A while ago he had the boat out in the middle of the night. I can’t imagine why.”

“Strange,” the priest said. “A little worrying, eh?”

“Please have some tea.”

“I have to go. It’s the day of the procession in town.”

“Oh drat,” Justin said. “It just got away from me. I haven’t missed it once since I’ve been here and today I forgot.” She shrugged sadly.

“I can take you in tonight,” he said. “For the festival afterwards. You see, I’m coming back to take some children from the company school. So we’ll stop for you if you like.”

“That’d be great. Would you?”

“Yes, of course. Of course. In fact I came now to ask you.”

“Well,” Justin said, laughing, “yes, please.”

“Great,” the priest said. “I’ll go now and then after six we’ll pick you up.”

“Wonderful.”

“Well, until then,” he said, and went down the steps, leaving the image of his shy smile behind him.

“Wonderful,” she said.

Wonderful. “Wonderful wonderful,” she repeated dully under her breath. “Goddamnit, what a fool I’m becoming.”

As she watched Godoy get into his jeep, she felt mortified and panic-stricken. She hurried from the veranda before he could turn and see her.

For a while she busied herself with sweeping out the empty dispensary, spraying the stacked linens for mildew, poking in the corners for centipedes or scorpions. Within the hour a man came from the village with a red snapper and a basket of shrimp; Justin went down the steps to pay him. The man brought a message from the Herreras, a mother and daughter who did cooking and cleaning for the station, that they would not be coming for several days. They had not come for some time before — nor had the young women who worked as nurse’s aides, two girls from the offshore islands whom Justin herself had taught to read and write, her barefoot doctors. It was just as well since there was no work for them.

Somewhat later Lieutenant Campos drove by to give Sister Justin a quick glimpse of herself in his silvered sunglasses.

She cleaned and scaled the snapper, washed the shrimp and showered in her own quarters. Changing, she put on a cool khaki skirt, a red checked shirt, an engineer’s red scarf over her hair. When she went back into the kitchen, she found Father Egan mixing cold well water into his rum.

“Are we friends today?” she asked him.

“There’s a level, Justin, on which we’re always friends. Then there’s a level on which we can’t be.”

Justin received this response in silence. Mystical as ever, she thought. She picked up the cleaned fish, stood holding it for a few moments, then set it down again.

“Sister Mary Joseph is after us to close. You probably know that.”

“Yes,” the priest said. “Of course it’s up to you.”

“Why is everything up to me?” she asked, wiping her hands on a towel. “I mean, what’s happening with you? It’s very worrying.”