Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [87]
Oris had driven back to town and had his oil changed and his tires rotated at Frank’s garage before he left town. “Vietnam,” he had told Frank. “Are there no American priests anymore that the diocese has to start sending preachers from Vietnam?” And then he had launched into his tirade about nobody speaking the original American language anymore, English, and Frank had started talking in Navajo, calling it the original American language, making Oris mad. He shut up after that, but he was still upset. He had needed to see Father George, and the man had up and left that morning.
Oris hadn’t planned to drive to Gallup, felt like he had done what he should do by driving out to the church, but after waiting on his car he couldn’t shake that irritating feeling that he wasn’t done, that he couldn’t give up. By lunchtime he had convinced himself that he had to chase down the priest, so he had gassed up and followed the leading of his heart.
He headed west on Highway 60, stopping at the cemetery for some clarification, and then drove north on Highway 36 over to Fence Lake. There he turned onto Highway 602, which took him through the Zuni Reservation before finally heading up toward Gallup. He was taking his time, not speeding because he was still being cautious with the Buick, but now he was starting to get hungry and wished he had stopped at the diner and eaten lunch before leaving town.
“Nobody’s going to believe me,” he said out loud. “Especially not that priest.” Oris couldn’t even believe it himself.
“What am I supposed to say to him anyway?” he asked. “My dead wife told me to come and get you and bring you back to Pie Town?” He shook his head and gripped the steering wheel. “Yep, that’s reason to change your plans, change the plans of the diocese of the Catholic Church, and come back to a place that never even accepted you to begin with.”
Oris sighed. “I never cared for the guy anyway,” he said. “There’s just something not right about the boy. Everybody could see it when he drove into town that first day with a girl sided up next to him.” He narrowed his eyes and kept talking. “I tell you, something ain’t right about him. He’s hiding something. He doesn’t even own a decent pair of boots.”
He turned up the volume on the radio and listened to the old country tunes playing on his favorite station. Willie Nelson was singing. “You used to love this music, remember?” Oris was talking to his late wife. Alice enjoyed the old ballads. “Loved the cowboy music.”
He glanced over at the seat next to him. It was almost as if she were sitting right beside him. He smiled. He liked the thought of her visiting him, even though he understood she wasn’t flesh and blood. She wasn’t alive. He liked the thought that she finally broke through his dreams and his longings and showed herself to him. He had missed her so much.
He knew it was her as soon as the dream started, knew it was her coming to him just like she had come when Alex got sick. It felt exactly the same, the room filling up with her, his dreams and his sleeping mind so clearly focused on her, so clearly focused on something beautiful and pure, his heart so sure of what she was saying.
The first time she had come to tell him to get to Malene, and he had done it, and it was right. And this time it was to speak to that priest, the one he didn’t care for and the one who had left town. But it didn’t matter what she asked, he was going to oblige her. Oris would do anything