Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Who’s talking theology?”

“You,” Sister Justin said. “Pie in the sky.”

Sister Mary Joseph had come down from the mountains around Lake Tapa to talk sense to Justin. Her own situation was very different; her order was strong and adaptable, her dispensary could measure its effectiveness in lives preserved. Arriving at French Harbor she had quickly surmised that the local people were staying away, that something was seriously wrong with Father Charlie Egan and the stories she had heard about the state of the Devotionists on the coast were at least partly true.

“You gotta have an element of pie in the sky, kiddo,” she told Sister Justin. “That’s part of the basics.”

Justin shaded her pale blue eyes from the glare of sky and ocean and leaned her chin on her fist.

Sister Mary Joe stood up and took their tea glasses.

“You want to talk pragmatism — O.K. we’ll do that.” Holding the glasses between her thumb and fingers, she waved them before Justin’s averted face. “You’re accomplishing nothing. You’re not needed. Am I reaching you now?”

These were words as hard as Mary Joe commanded and the satisfaction with which she flung them at poor Justin caused her immediate remorse.

She was rinsing the glasses in the kitchen when Father Egan came in, shuffling toward the icebox, holding a flyswatter absently in his right hand.

“How’s things, Father?” Sister Mary asked, looking him up and down.

“My dear Joe,” Egan said. “Things are rich.” He fixed himself a glass of water and gave her a vague smile. “How nice of you to come and visit us.”

“Beats working,” she told him. “Still going over your book?”

“Scribble scribble scribble,” the priest said, and retreated back to his room.

Mary Joe wiped the glasses and went to the refectory to get a stethoscope from her black bag. Then she rapped once on Father Egan’s door and let herself in.

She found him sitting by his window, the shutters thrown open to the green hillside below, a working bottle of Flor de Cana at his feet. Outside chickens picked among the morning glory vines, an old woman chopped at a stand of plantain with her machete.

Sister Mary settled her thick body on the window rail.

“We’re old friends, aren’t we, Father? We can speak plainly to each other.”

“Yes,” Egan said, “we’re old pals, Joe.” His smile faded and he turned his head to look over his shoulder. “And I won’t have her tyrannizing you. You don’t have to listen to her.”

“C’mon,” Mary Joseph said, “Justin’s O.K. She’s a good kid.” She opened one of the buttons of his white cotton shirt and pressed the scope over his breastbone. “Let’s talk about you.”

The beat was feathery and irregular. Egan was in his early sixties; to Mary Joe his heart sounded as though it should belong to a very old man.

“So how about laying off the sauce?”

“Ah,” Father Egan said. “You have me there.”

“Yeah, I got you there, Charlie. And from where I’m standing you look a little portly to me and what do you bet your liver’s enlarged? The right bug would knock you flat on your back.”

She bent down, picked up the rum and set it down on Egan’s desk beside the crucifix.

“You need to go home, Father. This kind of life — keep it up and it’ll be curtains.”

Father Egan scratched his ear and looked out of the window.

“I mean, what are you guys doing here anyway?” Sister Mary demanded. “Your instructions are to close this joint. This is the religion where people do what they’re told, right?”

“Yes, well,” Father Egan said, “you see, I thought I’d finish the book before we struck the flag.”

“Boo for that idea,” the nun said. “Because if you want to finish that book you better strike your flag or whatever — quick.

“Look,” she told him. “I’ll leave some pills with Justin for you. Take one every four hours instead of the joy juice. But don’t take them both or you’re dead.”

“Bless you, Joe,” Father Egan said. He said it in a far-off manner that Mary Joe found alarming.

“God bless you, Charlie,” she said. “Pray for me.”

She went back to the refectory, put the stethoscope away and carried her bag out to the veranda. Sister Justin was still in her chair, staring sadly out to sea, and Mary Joseph suspected she had been crying. Mary Joseph was not very sympathetic.

From time to time, up at Lake Tapa, Sister Mary had found herself with the obligation to comfort some of the younger and tenderer agents of the Peace Corps. She forgave them for their tears — Tecan was a hard place and they were young and American. First time away from their skateboards, she liked to say.

But the sight of a nursing nun in tears made her feel ashamed and angry. Tears were for the Tecanecan women, who always had plenty to cry about.

“Great day in the morning,” she declared, forgetting that she had repented her earlier hardness, “if I lived around here and I needed help I sure wouldn’t try to get it from this balled-up operation. I’d go right straight to the Seventh-Day Adventists or the LSA’s or to somebody who knows what the heck they’re doing.”

“The LSA’s!” Justin said savagely. “The LSA’s are a bunch of right-wing psalm-singing sons of bitches. They’ve got a picture of the President on their wall, they suck ass with the Guardia and they fink for the CIA.”

In spite of herself, Mary Joseph blushed.

“You got a lot of nerve,” she said, “to talk that.”

Justin looked down at the veranda deck and shielded her eyes. Mary Joe waited for her to calm down and then sat beside her.

“Look, Justin, the very fact that you have the leisure to sit around and brood should tell you that you’re not doing your job. I mean, great guns, kid — it’s no time or place for ego trips.”

“Am I ego-tripping?” Justin asked. “Isn’t it supposed to bother me that people starve so America can have Playboy Clubs and bottomless dancing.”

Sister Mary snickered. “Aw, c’mon,” she said.

“Maybe I’m putting it stupidly. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“If it’s true it bothers me. But what do I know? I’m just a pill pusher. So are you. Nobody elected us. You know,” she told Justin, “in many ways you’re a typical Devotionist. You all tend to be very bright and high-strung and short on horse sense.”

Sister Justin brushed the windblown hair under her checkered bandana.

“I’ve had it with the order and I’ve had it with my sister of mercy number.”

“Then it’s time you went home,” Sister Mary said. Justin’s words made her shudder. “Justin — something special is happening now. The church is really turning back to Jesus. It’s gonna be great and it would be a shame to miss out on it.”

Justin put her hand across her eyes.

“If I told you,” Sister Mary went on, “that you need to pray — that you need to ask God’s help — would you say I was talking pie in the sky again?”

Sister Justin had turned her face away and was pursing her lips to make her tears stop. Mary Joseph watched her young friend cry; she no longer felt it in her to be outraged.

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you anymore?”

Justin only shook her head.

She was a real beauty, Mary Joseph thought, the genuine article. In her own order they would never have let one so pretty and headstrong take final vows. But it was hindsight — Justin had soldiered on for six years, cheerful and strong, the wisest of catechists, a cool competent nurse. A little too good to be true in the end.

“This is no place for a personal crisis,” Mary told her.

“I know,” Justin said. She patted her cheek with a folded handkerchief.