James Cain - Serenade

“Ah, Dios!”

“I’m lighting the candles so we can see.”

But I mumbled it low. I pulled down the lamp, lit the lighter and slipped it up again. Then I went around through the vestry room and up on the altar and lit three candles on one side, crossed over and lit three on the other. I cut the lighter, went back to the vestry room, put it in its place again. Then I went back and cut the car lights.

One funny thing about that that I didn’t realize until I snapped that switch. Each time I crossed that altar I went down on one knee. I stood there, looking at the six candles I had lit, and thought that over. It had been twenty years, ever since I had been a boy soprano around Chicago, since I had thought of myself as a Catholic. But they knock it into you. Some of it’s there to stay.

I lifted eggs and about fifteen other things from the rumble, until I could get out her hatbox. It was pretty wet but not as wet as the rest of the stuff. I took it back to the vestry room, set it down, then went out and touched her on the shoulder. “Your things are back there. You better get out of that wet dress.”

She didn’t move.

By that time it must have been about half past eight, and it dawned on me that why I felt so lousy was that I was hungry. I got a candle off the altar, lit it, went back and stuck it to the rear fender of the car, and took stock. I lifted out most of that stuff from the rumble seat, and unlashed what was riding the running board, and all I could see that was doing us any good was the eggs. I unwrapped one and took out my knife to puncture the end so I could suck it, and then I noticed the charcoal. That gave me an idea. There were some loose tiles in the floor and I clawed up a couple of them and carried them to the vestry room and stood them on their sides. Then I got one of the iron plates for cooking tortillas, and laid it across them and carried in the charcoal.

Next thing was how I was going to cook the eggs. There were no skillets or anything like that. And I went through every basket there was and there wasn’t any butter, grease, or anything you could use for grease. But there was a copper pot, bigger than I wanted but anyway a pot, so that meant that anyway I could boil the eggs. While I was rooting through those beans and rice and stuff that would take all night to cook, I smelled coffee and started looking for it. Finally I hit it, buried in with the rice in a paper bag, and then I found a little coffee pot. The coffee wasn’t ground, but there was a metate there for grinding corn, and I mashed up a couple of handfuls with that, and put it in a bowl.

I went in the vestry room with what I had and the next thing was what I was going to use for water. It was dripping through every seam in the room and running down the windows in streams, but it looked kind of tough to get enough of it to cook. Still, I had to get some. Out back I could hear a stream pouring off the roof, so I took the biggest of the bowls and pulled the bolt on the rear door, right back of the altar. But when I opened it I could see a well, just a few steps down the hill. I took off the cassock. It was the only dry thing there was, and I wasn’t letting it get wet. I went down to the well stark naked. The rain came down on me like a needle shower and at first it was terrible, but then it felt good. I threw out my chest against it and let it beat me. Then I pulled up the bucket and poured the water in the bowl. When I got back in the church with it I was running water even from my eyeballs. I felt around back of the altar for a closet. Oh, it was coming back to me, fast. I knew where they kept everything. Sure enough, I found a door and opened it, and there they were, the altar cloths, all in a neat pile. I took one, rubbed myself dry with it and put on the cassock. It was warm. I began to feel better.

The choir loft was off to one side and I started there to get a hymn book, so I could tear it up to start the fire. Then I changed my mind. Except for the window, there was no vent in the vestry room, and I didn’t want to be smoked out, right at the start. I took four or five pieces of charcoal, laid them in a little pile between my tiles, went back to the altar and got another candle. I held the flame under the charcoal, turning all the time to keep the melting even, and pretty soon I got a little glow. I fed a couple more pieces on, and it glowed still redder. In a minute it was off, and I blew out the candle. There was hardly any smoke. Charcoal doesn’t make much.

I laid the plate over the tiles, put the pot on it, and dipped some water in the pot. Then I dropped in some eggs. I started with six, but then I kept thinking how hungry I was, and I wound up with a dozen. I filled the coffee pot, scooped in some coffee, and put that on. Then I sat there, feeding the fire and waiting for the eggs to boil. They never did. The pot was too big or the fire too small, or something. The most I got was smoke coming off the top, but they were cooking all the time, so I didn’t worry much. Anyway, they’d be hot. But the coffee boiled. The old smell hit me in the nose, and when I lifted the lid the grounds were simmering around. I took an egg, went to the back door, broke it, and let the egg spill out on the ground. The shell I took back and dropped in the coffee. That was what it needed. It began to clear.

I watched the eggs some more, and then I thought about my cigarettes and matches. They were in my coat, and I went to the car to get it. Then I thought about her things. I put the cigarettes and matches on the end of the tortilla plate to dry. Her stuff I took out of the hatbox and draped them near the fire on a bench that was back there. What she had I could only half see. It was all damp, but it smelled like her. One dress was wool, and I put that nearest the heat, and a pair of shoes, on the floor near it. Then I got to wondering how we were going to eat the eggs, even if they ever got cooked. There were no spoons or anything like that, and I always hated eggs out of the shell. I went out to the car again and half filled a little bowl with corn meal. I came back, dipped a little water into it. I worked it with my fingers, and when it got pasty I patted some of it into a tortilla, or anyway into some kind of a flapjack that was big enough to hold an egg. I put it on the plate to cook, and when it began to turn color I turned it over. When it was done on both sides I tasted it. It didn’t taste right. I went out and got some salt I had found and forgotten to take. I mixed a little salt in, tried another one, and anyway you could eat it. Pretty soon I had twelve. That was one for each egg, and I thought that was enough.

All that took a long time, and there wasn’t one peep out of her the whole time I was at work. She had moved from the altar rail to a pew, but she was still out there, a rebozo over her head and her bare feet sticking out behind, where she was kneeling with her face in her hands. I slid in the pew, took her by the arm and led her into the vestry room. “I told you once to take off that wet dress. Here’s one that’s fairly dry, and you go back there and change it. If your underwear’s wet, you better take it off.”

I picked up the woolen dress and shoved her behind the altar with it. When she came back she had it on. “Sit on the bench so your feet will be on the warm tiles near the fire. When those shoes are dry you can put them on.”

She didn’t. She sat on the bench, but with her back to the fire, so her feet were on cold tiles. That was so she could face the altar. She dropped her head in her hands and began to mutter. I got out my knife, broke an egg tortilla, and shoved it at her. The egg was half hard and half soft, but it rode the tortilla all right.

She shook her head. I put the tortilla down, went to the altar, got three or four candles, lit them, came back and stuck them around. Then I closed the door, the one that led to the altar and that I had kept open, to have more light. That kind of blocked her off on the muttering and she half turned around. When she saw the tortillas she laughed. That seemed to help. “Look very fonny.”