Read Online Elders by Ryan McIlvain - Free Book Online

you, Elder. No offense.”
    “Well what about you?” McLeod said. “What’s gotten into you in the last, I don’t know, the last fourteen hours? What was in that letter last night?”
    “Complications.”
    “You can tell me, Passos. I’m your friend, right?”
    “Maybe later.”
    “How about now, Elder? Before I lose you to your letters again.”
    He did need to get back to them, Elder Passos thought. Nana. Tiago. Felipe. Dos Santos. They hummed in his head like heated molecules. The elders took a left onto the main street just as the six bus pulled away ahead of them. “Hey!” Passos ran after it, waving his arms, but it didn’t slow down. A few seconds later his companion caught up to him at the bus stop. McLeod sat down on the bench, patted the spot beside him. “It’s okay, right? We’re staying in tonight. You can write letters to your heart’s content,but while you’re here why don’t you explain to me all the radio silence. I know something’s worrying you, and I think that’s why you should tell me. At the very least I’m your companion, and we’re supposed to support each other, right? ‘Succor’ each other? Doesn’t it say that somewhere?”
    Passos dropped down beside McLeod, still breathing hard. He wasn’t exactly stalling, but after a moment McLeod added, “I can offer some collateral vulnerability, if that sweetens the deal.”
    Passos laughed. “Where did you learn a phrase like ‘collateral vulnerability’?”
    “You’re not the only one who studies another language, you know.”
    “Ah, yes, very good,” Passos said in English. “Very good.”
    Just then another six bus turned onto the main street and Passos stood up and started waving it down like a taxi, to make sure.

 

    He realized he didn’t even know which ankle Nana had sprained, and he’d neglected to ask in his letter, now sealed. It lay on the desk in front of him in a fanned-out pile: long letters to Tiago and Felipe, his letter to Nana, and a brief update to Elder Dos Santos, whom he’d meant to call João. He’d been meaning to for months. Passos didn’t
think
Nana had mentioned which ankle. Had she? For the fourth time he took up the letter, the sheet sharp-creased at three places, unevenly spaced apart. The overhead bulb behind him could only hold back the darkness so much. The letter’s creases caught shadows, cradled them, like little dark pools that Passos had to tip this way and that to empty out so he could see to the words underneath.
    Cristiano, meu filhinho
, Nana’s letter began, though Passos was not her little son and not Cristiano, either, at least not for these two years. He considered his title of “Elder” a privilege, and a temporary one at that; he wished his grandmother would use it, referring to him the way he referred to himself:
Love, Elder Passos
. But of course he couldn’t out-and-out tell Nana, make more demands on a woman whose whole life was demands. He also feared she might take it the wrong way. She wasn’t a member of the church, after all. So much of the life of a missionary, of any Mormon, must have seemed strange to her, cultish even, as he knew her parish friends used to whisper.
    I pray every day and night that you are well and with God. I believe He strengthens the poor and the downhearted and we are all that but this week especially. Things are a struggle for us this week especially. I am sorry to tell you that I have sprained my ankle. This was Tuesday. I did it on a rutted part in the street out front of the store
.
    Passos paused, reread the first lines, for the fifth time now, as if he hadn’t already memorized them. The standard salutation, the talk of a “struggle,” Nana’s inevitable word. Then the news of the ankle. No mention of which one. She moved straight to the politicians, another inevitability.
    If the town paved the road like they keep saying they’re going to then I wouldn’t have done it would I? They’re always talking, the