How Like an Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Blessing filled a tin plate with lamb stew and another with thick slices of bread. As she had in the afternoon, she watched Quinn eat with a kind of maternal interest.
    â€œYour color’s not very good,” she said, after a time. “But you have a hearty appetite and you seem healthy enough. What I mean is, if you were frail, I naturally couldn’t ask you to do me any favors.”
    â€œContrary to appearances, I am extremely frail. I have a bad liver, weak chest, poor circulation—”
    â€œNonsense.”
    â€œAll right, what’s the favor?”
    â€œI want you to find somebody for me. Not find him in per­son, exactly, but find out what happened to him. You under­stand?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œBefore I go on, I’d like to make one thing clear: I can pay you, I have money. Nobody around here knows about it because we all renounce our worldly possessions when we come to the Tower. Our money, our very clothes on our backs, everything goes into the common fund.”
    â€œBut you kept something of your own in case of emer­gency?”
    â€œNothing of the kind,” she said sharply. “My son in Chi­cago sends me a twenty-dollar bill every Christmas with the understanding that I hold on to it for myself and not give it to the Master. My son doesn’t approve of all this.” She ges­tured vaguely around the room. “He doesn’t understand the satisfactions of a life of service to the Lord and His True Be­lievers. He thinks I went a little crazy when my husband died, and maybe I did. But I’ve found my real place in the world now, I will never leave. How can I? I am needed. Brother Tongue with his pleurisy attacks, the Master’s weak stomach, Mother Pureza’s heart—she is the Master’s wife and very old.”
    Sister Blessing got up and stood in front of the stove, rub­bing her hands together as if she’d felt the sudden chill of death in the air.
    â€œI’m getting old myself,” she said. “Some of the days are hard to face. My soul is at peace but my body rebels. It longs for some softness, some warmth, some sweetness. Mornings when I get out of bed my spirit feels a touch of heaven, but my feet—oh, the coldness of them, and the aches in my legs. Once in a Sears catalogue I saw a picture of a pair of slippers. I often think of them, though I shouldn’t. They were pink and furry and soft and warm, they were the most beautiful slippers I ever did see, but of course an indulgence of the flesh.”
    â€œA very small one, surely?”
    â€œThey’re the ones you have to watch out for. They grow, grow like weeds. You get warm slippers and pretty soon you’re wanting other things.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œA hot bath in a real bathtub, with two towels. There, you see?” she said, turning to Quinn. “It’s happening already. Two towels I asked for, when one would be plenty. It proves my point about human nature—nothing is ever enough. If I had a hot bath, I would want another, and then one a week or even one every day. And if everyone at the Tower did the same we’d all be lolling around in hot baths while the cattle starved and the garden went to weeds. No, Mr. Quinn, if you offered me a hot bath right this minute I’d have to refuse it.”
    Quinn wanted to point out that he wasn’t in the habit of offering hot baths to strange women but he was afraid of hurt­ing the Sister’s feelings. She was as earnest and intense about the subject as if she were arguing with the devil himself.
    After a time she said, “Have you heard of a place called Chicote? It’s a small city in the Central Valley, a hundred miles or so from here.”
    â€œI know where it is, Sister.”
    â€œI would like you to go there and find a man named Patrick O’Gorman.”
    â€œAn old friend of yours? A relative?”
    She didn’t seem to hear