Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry Read Free Book Online Page B

land I get out and sit in the backseat with Ernesto.
    “What do you think the new priest will be like?” I ask Grandma after we've switched places.
    “Taller.”
    Grandpa grunts out a laugh, his hands folded over his black leather journal.
    “Thanks. Very helpful.”
    Our last priest, Father Rosetti, was the size of a Hobbit and getting shorter, with the face of an evildwarf—all north-and-south wrinkles and beady black eyes. If you met him on the street, you would immediately suspect him of poisoning Snow White. But he had a beautiful voice, with a lift at the end of his words like the Italians do. At least I guess they do. Father Rosetti is the only person I've ever met that actually came out of Italy
    I remember him standing on a box to see over the lectern and preaching in his beautiful voice about how having faith is like falling in love. If he hadn't been 112 years old, I would have definitely asked him how he knew about love. Father Rosetti is retired now—or maybe he just got so small they can't find him anymore— so we've got a new priest, a circuit-riding Jesuit named Ziegler.
    “He's from New York City,” Grandma says. “We'll have him for a year.”
    It's hard to get a priest in a little country parish like ours because they don't want to live out here, so the bishop checks one out to us like a library book. The priest rides the circuit of three parishes, sixty miles apart. We've never had a priest stay with us more than two and a half years. What we need is a priest who grew up around here and wants to stay, somebody who understands how people who live off the land pray
    We get to church half an hour before everyone else because Grandma has the keys and pretty much runs the show here at Sacred Heart. We climb out of the truck, and Ernesto takes the coffee cakes and doughnuts over to the parish hall for after Mass.
    There's already a car in the lot. It's a hybrid.
    “This is fancy” Grandpa says. To him, “fancy” is practically a swear.
    Grandma shushes him with a flap of her hand because there's the new priest, sitting on the church steps, in jeans, city shoes, and a businessman's shirt. He is tall and thin, and a bit pale for these parts.
    “You're early,” Grandma says.
    He stands up, smiling, and when he says good morning it's in an accent I've never heard in my life, so it must be a New York City accent. “I gave myself some extra time. I haven't driven a car in years. There was never a need when I lived in New York.”
    That remark meets with dead silence, since it's practically the same as admitting you forgot how to tie your own shoes.
    “So did you have trouble finding our church?” I offer after we've all spent a few moments digesting his lack of driving experience.
    “No, it was easy. There's pretty much just the one road.”
    This is not true, but it occurs to me that none of the other roads around here are on the map, and maybe this guy is expecting us all to show up in donkey carts.
    Grandma tells him our names and he says his name is Father Ziegler, and after a bit of the usual grown-up chitchat Grandma unlocks the door. I carry the altar cloth Grandma ironed last night up to the front of the church.
    Grandma goes over to the Mary statue. She puts fresh candles in the stand and then gives Mary a little kiss on the toes, which seems weird to me even though I know it's a normal devotion and Grandma's probably done it every Sunday of her life. I asked her about it a while back, and she said that once you have babies, you kind of fall into the habit of toe-kissing, and then it seems like an ordinary thing to do. But seriously, now that I know about the toe-kissing thing, I'm absolutely not becoming a dad, because what are the odds that it's the only gross habit you pick up from babies?
    Father Ziegler just stands there looking around thechurch, and I wonder if he's thinking, Where the heck did the bishop send me this time? I bet he's used to a tall church with stained-glass windows