House of Gold (48 page)

The white smoke had risen.

In Saint Peter's Square, the crowd waited for him, terrified of the evil cloaking the earth in flames, casting smoke as black as any during the days of Silicon Babylon so many centuries ago. So the people waited (in the same square where a priest from Ohio named Father Dial had once successfully administered the sacrament of reconciliation to a dead man).

Eduardo stood
in the shadows of the balcony. The Walking Priests had told him about this balcony, before his conversion, calling it an altar of sacrifice.

The crowd beheld their brown-skinned pope and they cheered–they always cheer during this moment when the rock brings forth water. But this time it was different. The crowd was small. Their enthusiasm was forced. The cross-haters were here, too, hissing and
booing.

The world was in flames.

Eduardo waited, for he was a man who had learned not to rush during his long walks as a Wayfarer. He waited for the silence.

Because Eduardo knew he was a weakling, flesh and blood, an empty sepulchre without enough faith to tell a mountain to move. He was terrified. As had happened during his entire priesthood, he found himself wordless.

The flock gave him silence.

Eduardo accepted the truth. He was the runt of the litter, because all the holy ones, his immediate precursors, had been compromised, corrupted, or killed by the evil one, and the cardinal from South Africa needed cannon fodder so he could buy time to plan for a real pope. Indeed, Eduardo's predecessor had been torn to shreds, with the world watching, just two weeks earlier, in the square below,
in just the third year of his reign.

Bring it on,
he thought, donning his courage like a breastplate, still wordless, weak, and bitterly intimidated by this plow thrust into his hands.

Bad axe time,
he thought.

He took the first step, out of the shadows.

No words came, and so, an accomplished thief, he stole three small words from his new namesake, the one whom they called the great one, the Magnificent
Pole.

Little Eduardo raised his arms, his knees shaking, throwing his voice:

"Be not afraid!"

In Latin.

Silence.

He repeated the phrase in Italian.

Some moderate clapping. They wanted real words, not tired maxims from the past.

A bad start to this new walk.

Eduardo prayed to the old reliable,
Saint Anthony!

He repeated the phrase again, in Italian. Then English, then German. Until he ran out of
languages.

He was finally finished with this failure of a first step, but he was on the road now, walking.

It was okay.

With nothing better to do, and despite the snickering from the cross-haters, the American pope pulled out his well-worn beads, then began to lead the crowd in the Most Holy Rosary.

He started with the Sorrowful Mysteries, because these were his favorites, and because all Wayfarers
started here. All Wayfarers were taught in the seminary that the cross comes before the resurrection.

During the fourth decade, a shot rang out; a bullet tore into his leg.

Eduardo fell.

The Swiss Guards rushed to his side, along with the seven cardinals who had the courage to join him on the balcony.

His ears burned when he heard laughter below. A fight had broken out in the square.

Ignoring
his pain, because it was only pain (and because the pain in his heart was much worse), he barked at the guards and the red hats to leave him be. Eduardo made a tourniquet using a cardinal's sash.

He reached up.

The more sentimental historians, years later, wrote that the image of his bloody hand gripping the balcony, seen by the world, turned the tide.

He rose.

He saw the cause of the commotion.
They had captured the boy, the boy with the rifle, the one who had shot him. A cross-hater, who was now amidst a gaggle of Swiss Guards and others beating Eduardo's would-be assassin with their fists.

Discipline has broken down!

This was not okay.

"Do not harm the boy!" Eduardo threw his voice to the square, cutting through the confusion. "Do not lay a hand on him!"

He had a voice which stopped
things.

The vigilantes relented.

"Care for his wounds. Then bring him to me."

They obeyed the voice of authority.

Still bleeding, Eduardo finished the Rosary with the crowd, then collapsed.

He was fired at five more times over the next seven weeks, always during the Rosary, and was hit twice.

Once in his good leg. Once in the shoulder.

Three times he fell. Three times he rose.

The theologians,
years later, knowing that God repeats lessons, made this Eduardo's epithet.

Eduardo returned to the balcony. Again, and again, and again. Always with the Rosary. He returned because he was a Wayfarer of Mary Immaculate, and a persistent bastard, and the old wrinkled cardinal from South Africa had been right, and Eduardo had been wrong, which was not a big surprise to Eduardo.

The new pope was
a stupid fool running toward the cross. He just couldn't stop jumping into puddles of his own blood. Feeling useless, he wept as his fingertips moved methodically across his beads.

The crowds began to grow during the third month.

A romantic, Eduardo told the old South African that he wanted to become the first pope to walk around the world on foot.

But this plan, as with most plans formulated
through a lens darkly, was not written in the Book of Life.

Pope John Paul VII, the Walking Priest who had never seen Magalloway Mountain, died in the tenth month of his pontificate from a gunshot wound to the heart–while leading the flock in the Rosary.

He published no encyclicals. He never left the Vatican grounds.

On the day Eduardo Ramirez was martyred, two billion souls across the planet
were praying with him.

His death added hundreds of millions more within three weeks–because his successor was also a Wayfarer, and kept up the family tradition, swinging the old axe with abandon.

Turns out the old cardinal from South Africa was also a persistent bastard, and also had Bagpipe in his blood, though he was not from the Woodward line. He was from another Bethlehem, and another soul-line
of Man-Loves-Woman overlooked by the evil one.

Bethlehem. Bagpipe. Same thing.

It's always the little ones.

Simple.

Eduardo Ramirez was credited by those who wrote the histories of his time as the one who put out the flames with his blood. It would take three more Wayfarers to finish the job. The last two actually began the long walk around the earth.

The last Wayfarer pope actually made it to
London before he was assassinated in a slum called Brixton.

The South African cardinal started bringing in Carmelites and Dominicans to mop up. After all, they were not crazy like the Wayfarers.

Carmelites traveled by jet, like normal popes.

The Dominicans stayed in their studies, composing encyclicals, because it always takes a Dominican to explain what a Wayfarer really meant to say.

It took
fifteen years before things returned to a more normal level of suffering. No other Wayfarers were elected pope after this dark period.

Eduardo was just doing his job, and would be embarrassed by his own story because, to him, he was taking the easy way, the long walk that never ends–letting his plow carry him to the day of glory.

Eduardo Ramirez was but one star in the Ellie-Loves-Buzz heavens,
and a rather small one (yet the smallest stars are always the ones that burn hottest). He was certainly not the most intelligent pope. But he was in love with plows. Eduardo was mentioned here because he became the first soul in the line to be canonized.

+  +  +

Buzz and Ellie were sitting in rocking chairs on the deck of the Monastery, the glorious altar of sacrifice where Sam and Christopher
had given their lives for holy and unfathomable plans.

It was summer, and the memorial garden Buzz and Mark had planted years ago for their lady Ellie was in full bloom.

Chesterton and his Lady were snuggled together at their mistress's feet, waiting for the Rosary to begin.

Mark had retired for the evening. Zack and Hal were asleep at the house.

There was enough light from the full moon to see
the outline of Mount Magalloway to the west. It was the only reality in Buzz's presence which could make the claim to have been at the foundations of the earth. The mountain answered to no one, except to those with faith enough to tell it to move.

Buzz, because he was Buzz, was thinking about this plain fact, and accepted it, recognizing once again that his own faith, however precious, must be
quite small.

If the dog hadn't showed up,
he told Magalloway,
you would have kicked my ass.

He rocked, pondering about the mountain, the long walk, the Man, how much he still missed Melanie, and about his seventh child, little Becky, serene at Ellie's breast. He then decided to let the Word all these things represented come forth, not knowing, as usual, what it would be.

"I love you, Ellie."

Simple.

She gave him her beauty with a smile, and, as always, his melted. He was still sentimental.

As she knew he would be.

"This is our last child," he told her.

"How can you possibly know that?" she asked, quickened to anger. Being Ellie.

"Just guessing, El."

You're so full of it,
she thought.

They listened to the music of silence for a time, rocking gently, counting blessings in a wordless
waltz.

Later tonight, they would waltz on the beach in their bedroom, despite his prophecy, because they would always want babies, always want each other.

Sometimes they danced slowly. Sometimes they danced the other way, and that was okay, too.

That's how we got Becky,
Buzz mused.

Becky. He looked at his wife, as Ellie looked down at the child. So peaceful. Perfect for each other.

Could any child
be loved more than a child born to his Ellie?

Buzz doubted it, and realized that Somebody had moved Magalloway for him during that dark year, little though his faith had been.

All for the baby in his wife's arms.

More silence, more rocking.

"Will it ever end?" she asked.

He knew she was talking about the love.

The fertile love within the hearts of the living.

"Maybe. But it will never end for
the stars. There will be stars in our skies forever."

Why beat around the bush?

"Good," she said.

Becky was sleeping now. Ellie rose and put the baby in the little crib which was kept on the deck.

Ellie came back to him, and lowered herself onto his lap, and began to kiss him the way a sister never kisses a brother, blood rushing to her cheeks, one hand around his neck, her fingers into his crewcut.

Buzz placed his hand on her waist, and the other on her ribs, holding her this way, her back and neck arched
just so.

So that her lips floated on his own, and he closed his mind to everything but the warmth of her mouth, concentrating–on
her.

They did this until they were done, and she lifted her head, breathing, her eyes closed, praying.

He waited. He could wait forever. Then she began kissing
him again, this time with sorrow.

She did not want to stop
having him,
but she was afraid, because she was a practical girl, even at the age of forty-five, that she would forget their first real kiss, on the jetty, before Mark came down from the clouds.

He realized she was crying when he tasted her tears. He stopped, opened his eyes, looking into hers. He moved the strands of hair from her brow.

"Buzz," she whispered.

Their faces, their eyes, their bodies–close.

"Ellie," he breathed.

There was so much more to say, but he remained silent, because she had crushed his defeated heart, a heart for which there was no cure.

Melancholy always came when he heard the mysterious music within Ellie's soul, his soul searching for the Trinity.

Her passion became his, and he offered himself to her, in
love with this cross which carried him. This was the way, the way the man of sorrows began again the long walk with the beautiful woman.

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