A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

to the conclusion that he had gone out of his mind. He was a little groggy from the sun, and he had stammered quite a bit. More than one novice had turned up with addled wits after a vocational vigil.
    There was nothing to do but obey the command to return.
    He walked to the shelter and glanced into it once again, to reassure himself that it was really there; then he went to get the box. By the time he had it repacked and was ready to leave, the dust plume had appeared in the southeast, heralding the arrival of the supply carrier with water and corn from the abbey. Brother Francis decided to wait for his supplies before starting the long trek home.
    Three donkeys and one monk ambled into view at the head of the dust streamer. The lead donkey plodded under the weight of Brother Fingo. In spite of the hood, Francis recognized the cook’s helper from his hunched shoulders and from the long hairy shins that dangled on either side of the donkey so that Brother Fingo’s sandals nearly dragged the ground. The animals that followed came loaded with small bags of corn and skins of water.
    “Sooooee pig-pig-pig! Sooee pig!” Fingo called, cupping his hands to his mouth and broadcasting the hog-call across the ruins as if he had not seen Francis waiting for him beside the trail. “Pig pig pig!-Oh, there you are, Francisco! I mistook you for a bone pile. Well, we’ll have to fatten you up for the wolves. There you are, help yourself to the Sunday slops. How goes the hermit trade? Think you’ll make it a career? Just one waterskin, mind you, and one sack of corn. And watch Malicia’s hind feet; she’s in rut and feels frolicky-kicked Alfred back there, crunch! right in the kneecap. Careful with it!” Brother Fingo brushed back his hood and chortled while the novice and Malicia fenced for position. Fingo was undoubtedly the ugliest man alive, and when he laughed, the vast display of pink gums and huge teeth of assorted colors added little in his charm; he was a sport, but the sport could scarcely be called monstrous; it was a rather common hereditary pattern in the Minnesota country from whence he came; it produced baldness and a very uneven distribution of melanin, so that the gangling monk’s hide was a patchwork of beef-liver and chocolate splashes on an albino background. However, his perpetual good humor so compensated for his appearance that one ceased to notice it after a few minutes; and after long acquaintance, Brother Fingo’s markings seemed as normal as those of a painted pony. What might have seemed hideous if he were a sulking fellow, managed almost to become as decorative as clown’s make-up when accompanied by exuberant good cheer. Fingo’s assignment to the kitchen was punitive and probably temporary. He was a woodcarver by trade, and normally worked in the carpenter’s shop. But some incident of self-assertion, in connection with a figure of the Blessed Leibowitz which he had been permitted to carve, had caused the abbot to order him transferred to the kitchen until he showed some signs of practicing humility. Meanwhile, the figure of the Beatus waited in the carpentry shop, half-carved.
    Fingo’s grin began to fade as he studied Francis’ countenance while the novice unloaded his grain and water from the frisky she-ass. “You look like a sick sheep, boy,” he said to the penitent. “What’s the trouble? Is Father Cheroki in one of his slow rages again?”
    Brother Francis shook his head. “Not that I could tell.”
    “Then what’s wrong? Are you really sick?”
    “He ordered me back to the abbey.”
    “Wha-a-at?” Fingo swung a hairy shin over the jackass and dropped a few inches to the ground. He towered over Brother Francis, clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder, and peered down into his face. “What is it; the jaundice?”
    “No. He thinks I’m-” Francis tapped his temple and shrugged.
    Fingo laughed. “Well, that’s true, but we all knew that. Why is he sending you back?”
    Francis