She looked up at him. He could smell her breath.
“Is that true?” she asked, just barely audibly.
“Yeah, honey, it’s true. Ol’ Hans-Peter is an officer and a gentleman and a fighter pilot. We officers and gentlemen and fighter pilots don’t do things like that.”
Alicia Carzino-Cormano then threw her arms around him, hugged him tightly, put her face on his chest, and said, “Oh, Cletus, thank you very much!”
Then she kissed him square on the lips and ran from the room.
[NINE]
La Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Milagros
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1105 23 December 1942
The Chapel of Our Lady of the Miracles seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Saints Peter and Paul Ranch, thought First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, onetime acolyte of Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church, Midland, Texas.
Until he walked into this one, he assumed that a “chapel” was sort of an altar off to the side of the main part of the church. The chapel at Trinity, for example, was in fact a small church within a church used mostly by a small group of the unusually devout for the celebration of seven A.M. Sunday Morning Prayer before they hit the links of the Midland Country Club.
Or once in a while, he thought, remembering two specific incidents, for the quiet, family-members-only marriage of a bride who wanted a church wedding but was reluctant to march down the main aisle to the strains of “Here Comes the Bride” in a white dress which could not entirely conceal the fact that she was about to add to the world’s population.
La Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Milagros was a large religious edifice, seating normally maybe three hundred people (it was almost as large as Trinity Episcopal, and a hell of a lot more ornate). Today it held more than that. It came fully equipped with an organ, a choir loft, a cemetery, and a rectory. And two priests in absolutely stunning vestments heavy with golden thread, one a doddering old man who seemed to have trouble staying awake, and the other who looked as if he was ordained last week.
And there were three social classes of worshipers: First, there were two kinds of pews in the church itself. All but the first three rows were simple wooden benches. The first three rows were softly upholstered in red velvet.
These were reserved for important worshipers, which today meant the family of the late Señora Marianna Maria Dolores Rodríguez de Pellano, whose beautifully carved solid cedar casket now rested just before the communion rail. And today, at the invitation of Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez, Cavalry, Argentine Army, Retired, included First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR.
The Old Man, Señora Carzino-Cormano, the Carzino-Cormano girls, Uncle Humberto and Aunt Beatrice, and some people Clete did not recognize were seated in the VIP section of La Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, a wing off the main body of the church, where there were individual prie-dieux and nicely upholstered chairs with arms.
The healthy-looking young priest delivered an angry homily, promising eternal damnation for those who lived by the sword. Clete suspected that the homily was directed mostly at him and Enrico, who had his Remington with him, not at all well-concealed in a poncho.
Just for the record, Padre, I didn’t come down here because I wanted to. I didn’t go in the goddamned Marine Corps because I get my rocks off shooting people. I would even have obeyed Christ’s “turn the other cheek” rule if those two bastards hadn’t come at me with knives.
But what about the one I shot in the forehead while he was actually screaming, “Please, Señor, for the love of God, help me!”?
Martín was right: That was murder, Cletus Frade. You didn’t have to kill that sonofabitch. You shouldn’t have killed him.
Familiar words from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer came into his mind: “I have done those things that I ought not to have done, and I have not done those things I ought not to have done, and there is no help in me.”
Come to think of it, Cletus, the only thing you have done lately that you ought to have done is to keep your hands off the Virgin Princess. You get a small gold star for that.
His meditation on his own guilt and innocence was interrupte
d when Enrico nudged him. And then he saw that Enrico had not nudged him, and was in fact completely unaware of him. Enrico was weeping.
More than a little awkwardly, Clete put his arm around him and held him comfortingly.
[TEN]
The Ranch House
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province