Runaway Nun (Misbegotten) by Caesar Voghan Read Free Book Online Page B

to another.
    “But God, in His ever-abounding
mercy, did not let man reach up to Him, since He has already reached down to
each one of us in his Son, Jesus the Christ, His Name be blessed throughout
eternity,” Sister Deborah said. She lowered her arm and closed her eyes.
    “Amen,” the children responded with
one voice.
    From the wall, the other nuns
crossed themselves in silence.
    Sister Deborah’s eyes remained
closed for a few seconds, heavy with pondering. When she finally opened them,
she saw lightning in the East descending from the sky, the fractured jolts of
electricity lashing at the earth with a fury. A rumbling thunder followed. The
windows of the Center vibrated.
    As
the nuns guided the batch of orphans onto the lookout deck, a skinny boy, the
youngest of the group, tarried behind in front of a giant poster of Central
Park. He took a few steps closer and almost touched the laminated surface of
the photograph with his nose. His eyes skipped from one detail to another: the
hotdog stand, men and women in shorts running on the sidewalks, yellow cabs, a
mounted cop on a pitch-black horse, a long row of children walking hand in hand
past a clown selling balloons….
    “Field trip,” the boy whispered,
and he touched the clown with his finger.
    A nun laid her hand on his
shoulder and gently led him away to join his peers.
    “Field trip indeed, my son,” she
said.
    The boy smiled at her proudly.
    “The wrong kind,” the nun added as
the two passed through the doors.
    Aligned
at the rail of the lookout deck, the children could gaze at a thousand feet of
sheer drop down to the crater’s bottomless pit, dark and tenebrous. Far in the
distance, perched on the ridge across from the Pilgrim Center, the imposing
cathedral-like edifice of the New Vatikan remained veiled in thick tendrils of
fog, its battery of tall spires poking at the rainclouds dragging their fat underbellies
high above.
    Early sprinkles had already
started to fall on the orphans’ faces as they recited in unison a passage from
the Sacred Book of Job, the Sufferer of God:
    “‘Have you seen my armory of hail,
which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war ?, ’ asketh the Lord.”
    “Indeed,” Sister Deborah said. She
smiled, pleased. An armory of hail, a secret place where the great I Am hides
His fiery stones, ready to hurl them at an estranged, un-repented race should
the gentle whisper of His Spirit fall on deaf ears. Yes, even God eventually
runs out of mercy, Sister Deborah thought, as she watched the two rows of
orphans peering into the bottomless pit underneath their feet.
    She then squinted at the heavens
still concealed behind the darkened canopy. The wind had intensified its
whining. By now, the rainclouds were drifting low over the city, and the
thunders’ echo was coming in shorter and shorter intervals. Flashes of
lightning zigzagged through the shutter of clouds.
    She would have to bring the
children back inside, she thought, and try to keep them busy until the storm
passed. Reciting the Sacred Genealogy at the beginning of the Gospel of Saint
Matthew was always a good place to start; it kept their young minds occupied,
their memories alert, and preserved the sacred record in their hearts.
    Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot
Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez, and so one and so
forth. All those men who knew no shame, begetting each other century after
century, pathetic hostages of an unbroken chain of lust and procreation. Of
course, women took a part in that, too, but in his wisdom, Saint Matthew
omitted most of their names until the long list reached its very end with Mary—the
Eternal Virgin, the Bearer of God’s son. One holy woman, her chaste womb
untouched by sin, shining at the end of a long roster of men—unclean,
four-legged creatures ruled by vile cravings that would make the beasts of the
wild blush.
    Yes, the Sacred Genealogy would
do. Sister Deborah smiled