August 1906. Half-moon and a wrack of gray clouds. Church windows and thirty nuns singing the Night Office in Gregorian chant. Matins. Lauds. And then silence. Wind, and a nighthawk teetering on it and yawing away into woods. Wallowing beetles in green pond water. Toads. Cattails sway and unsway. Grape leaves rattle and settle again. Workhorses sleeping in horse manes of pasture. Wooden reaper. Walking plow. Hayrick. Limestone pebbles on the paths in the garth. Jasmine. Lilac. Narcissus. Mother Céline gracefully walking, head down. Crickets. Mooncreep and spire. Ears are flattened to the head of a stone panther waterspout. OUR LADY OF SORROWS ERECTED 1856 CHURCH AND PRIORY OF THE SISTERS OF THE CRUCIFIXION Tallow candles in red glass jars shudder on a high altar. White hallway and dark mahogany joists. Wide plank floors walked soft and smooth as soap. Sister Dominique says a prayer to Saint Peregrine for her Canadian nephew’s cancer as she dashes flour on a kitchen table and turns over a great slab of dough that rolls as slowly as a white pig.
