EMMETSBURG: Nineteen

John stood in the cool and quiet of the dark lobby. He was alone, but for Sister Dougherty at the desk near the door. He studied her there for a moment, lost in a Bible passage. She was the first girl John had ever seen naked. Not like a womanly, arousing naked, but that awkward and confusing naked of pre-pubescence. She’d always been sweet and sensitive, but with a captive wildness behind her fiery Irish green eyes. One might have guess she might have given into that wildness and run off to the big city or some farther and more adventurous horizon but it wasn't long after her father passed in a long and wasting illness that she gave herself to the Lord. Now there she was chaste and pure and a Nun. Funny how the rivers of life flow, he thought. She looked up from the Bible and smiled warmly at John, as if the same thought had come to her.

“Best take it easy with that hand,” she said. Her voice echoed slightly in the emptiness of the lobby.

He sort of shrugged and picked at the edges of the bandage, biting a little into his wrist.

“Any news on that fella?” he asked without looking at her. He was lingering. The loss of blood had made him queasy, and John in no particular hurry to be in the harsh sunlight washing the street outside into oblivion.

“You did a real good thing, John, helping that boy out the way you did.”

He raised his bandaged hand and frowned. “Got a souvenir.”

“Your reward will be in heaven.”

John shook his head. “Won't fix my roof.”

“The Lord provides.”

“How is he with a hammer and nails?”

“He was a carpenter,” Sister Dougherty quipped, quickly changing the subject. “Doctor says he took a pretty good wallop, that fella. He'll be shaky a while, but the best place for him is at home in bed.”

“Questions is, how does a fella like that end up wrecked in a creek way out in the middle of godforsaken Iowa.”

Sister Dougherty came around the desk and took John by the arm. She led him slowly across to a bench and together they sat. It had all the hallmarks of scoldings he'd gotten from Sisters back in grade school. It was silly, but John couldn't help from feeling that way. He looked at the floor and out into the street, anywhere but in Maribel Dougherty’s eyes. She still held his arm, gently stroking it with her fingers.

“Lot's of lost folks in the country these days,” she said. “Times like these get folks all mixed up.”

That's when he knew this was something more. John looked up into her eyes at last. “Except you didn't sit me down for a Civics lesson, now did you?”

“John Perkins, we been friends just about our whole life.”

“Reckon we have.”

“Doc Gross wanted me to ask a favor of you.” Sister paused, forming the words properly. John knew in an instant what she was about to ask of him. He was already weighing all of it, though his answer was already assured. He thought of Anna and what he would say to her.