Read Online Barnacle Love by Anthony de Sa - Free Book Online Page B

reached for Manuel’s balled fist and tried to peel his fingers open. He held Manuel’s hand tight. He slipped the coin into Manuel’s pocket. He was about to say something but Manuel wouldn’t let him. Manuel turned before the priest uttered any words and walked back up the aisle. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the lint-covered coin, dropped it into the holy water at the church entrance, and wiped his hand across his pants. Manuel remembers hearing the sound of the coin hitting the crystal bottom before he punched open the heavy wooden doors, pushed his way out onto the worn steps of the church, into the warm air.
    An hour has passed. Manuel’s eyes move from the ornate relief that glorifies the ceiling to
Nossa Senhora de Fátima’
s blank expression in the dim light. The candles lit at her feet cast shadows that slash her features, elongate her nose, and bring one brow to a point.
    “
Nossa Senhora
, please show me what is right.” He is surprised by his own whisper.
    He waits, but nothing. The church is warm. He turns to leave. Mateus said he would mail his letters. The boat leaves at one in the morning and then onto a train that will take him to a place many of
them
go, Montreal or Toronto. Mateus has written it all down. Manuel is about to cross himself, bends his knee slightly to genuflect, but then turns to walk down the aisle.
    “Bless you, my son.” His cassock flicks Manuel’s shin as the black shape whirs by him.
    “Padre Carlos!”
    He turns. He is small. Not how Manuel remembers him.
    “What is it,
filho
?”
    “I’m not your son.”
    Padre Carlos tilts his head in distant recognition; he’s trying to place the young man before him.
    “I’m Manuel … Manuel Rebelo of Lomba da Maia.” His eyes widen. “You used to say, ‘Those who serve me … serve God.’”
    Manuel’s fists are hard, his knuckles white. The restraint in his voice is slipping away. Although Padre Carlos is his focus, he can see a flurry of people getting up from the pews, shifting away from them. Manuel surges toward the old priest. Bewildered, Padre Carlos shrivels and moves back. He raises his ringed finger to his mouth. “Shhh,” he sounds.
    Manuel catches the sparkle of red and the pleading in the priest’s face. He hears some squeals, cries of “
Policia! Meu deus, Policia!
”
    “I was a boy!” he yells. The echo comes back to him three, four, five times.
    Padre Carlos stumbles backward, moves like a scurrying crab. He hits the base that supports
Nossa Senhora de Fátima.
The flames flicker, she teeters. Crouched beneath her, he cowers and makes the sign of the cross. His glasses askew, Manuel sees the whites of his eyes. He came to hurt him but the priest is so small. In a remarkable instant the anger and grief of his past leave him, only to be replaced by his fado, and the burning flame, which once had warmed him when he thought of home, is extinguished.
    Manuel turns to leave then looks back. To steady himself, raise himself from the floor, Padre Carlos grabs on to the posts that provide temporary footing for the statue. She leans dangerously, rocks to right herself again, and then falls onto the base. There are cries of horror and wails of disbelief. Her head comes off cleanly and rolls down the aisle, chasing Manuel. He stops it under his foot. Her crown is flattened on one side. Her eyes stare at Manuel but they do not see. Maybe she will cry now …
    Say good-bye to the sea, say good-bye
    Though the heavens may open
    And smile onto the place I was born
,
    filled with the things I know.
    I will not come back from the sea.
    Do not weep, do not cry—
    only sing for my dream and …
    pray for me.

MADE OF ME
    IT WAS HER TURN TO GO . They all sat in Manuel’s living room. His sister kept staring at the money that would pay for her flight piled on the coffee table. She alone sobbed in the silent room. Georgina brushed past Manuel and his brother Jose to sit beside her sister-in-law Candida.
    “It