Then Came Heaven Read Online Free

their wire bows denting the sides of his round pink face. He wore his black cassock most of the time and had it on today as he opened the door of his glassed-in porch and saw who was on his step.
    “Con, Eddie... what’s wrong?”
    “There’s been an accident, Father,” Con told him. “Come in.”
    While they moved inside, Con explained, “It’s Krystyna... she... her car... it was hit by the train.”
    Father went as still as if riddled by two hundred ten volts. Eddie had worked for the parish for twelve years. Father’s concern for him went far beyond that of a priest for a parishioner. “ Kyrie, eleison,”  he whispered in Latin.  Lord, have mercy.  “Is she dead?”
    Con could do no more than nod.
    Father Kuzdek’s breath left him like air escaping a ruptured tire. Rocking back on both heels he closed his eyes and lifted his face, as if begging divine sustenance. “ Erue, Domine, animam ejus.” Deliver her soul, O Lord,  he prayed in an undertone, then caught Eddie around the shoulders with one beefy arm.
    “Ah, Eddie, Eddie... what a tragedy. This is terrible. So young, your Krystyna, and such a good woman.”
    They took some time for their emotions to swell, then Father made a cross in the air over Eddie’s head and murmured in Latin. He laid both of his huge hands right on Eddie’s head and went on praying, ending in English, “The Lord bless you in this time of travail. May He guide you and keep you during the difficult days ahead.” After making another cross in the air, Father dropped his hands to Eddie’s shoulders and said, “I ask you to remember, my son, that it’s not ours to question why and when the Lord chooses to take those we love. He has His reasons, Eddie.” Eddie, still weeping, bobbed his head, facing the floor. Father dropped his hands and asked Con, “How long ago?”
    “Less than an hour.”
    “Where?”
    “The junction of County Road Eighty-nine and Highway Seventy-one, north of town.”
    “I’ll get my things.”
    Father Kuzdek came back wearing his black biretta, carrying a small leather case containing his holy oils. They followed him to his garage, a small, separate building crowding close to the north side of his house and the rear of the church. He backed out his black Buick, and Eddie got in the front, Con in the back.
    The Reverend Anastasius T. Kuzdek commanded the driver’s seat the way he commanded the respect of the town, for though Browerville had a mayor, its undisputed leader was this priest. In an area of the state where the vein of old-world Catholicism ran deep, none ran deeper than in Father Kuzdek’s parish. Legends were told about the man, about the time neither family members nor the local constable could break up a fight between two drunken brothers-in-law at a family reunion. But when Father Kuzdek was called in, he grabbed the pair in his beefy hands, conked their noggins together as if they were little more than two pool balls, and ended the fistfight on the spot. When he stood in the pulpit and announced, “The convent needs wood,” firewood appeared like Our Lady appeared at Fatima, miraculously delivered into the nuns’ yard already dried and split. When he ordered school closed on the feast day of St. Anastasius, his patron saint, there was no school and no complaint from the Archdiocese. Some bigwigs in St. Paul once decided that Highway 71 should be rerouted to bypass Browerville, taking along with it the frequent tourists who stopped to see St. Joseph’s, both the church and the grounds, and drop their money in the offerings box and spend more of it at the businesses in town. Kuzdek took on the Minnesota State Highway Department and won. Highway 71 still cut smack through downtown, creating its main street and running right past the front steps of St. Joseph’s Church.
    Father turned left onto the highway now. When he said, driving his Buick toward the scene of the accident, “Let us pray...” they did.
    ________
     
    They