Brother Odd

Romanovich."
        "Oh, yes, Mr. Thomas. We have been married for twenty blissful years. We share many interests. If she were here, she would so enjoy this."

CHAPTER 49
        
        IF ANY EXITS FROM THE SCHOOL WERE BEING monitored by skeletal sentinels, the front door, the garage doors, and the mud-room door adjacent the kitchen would be the most likely places for them to concentrate their attention.
        Romanovich and I agreed to depart the building by a window in Sister Angela's office, which was the point farthest removed from the three doors that most invited the enemy's attention. Although the mother superior was not present, her desk lamp glowed.
        Indicating the posters of George Washington, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, I said, "The sister has a riddle, sir. What shared quality does she most admire in those three people?"
        He didn't have to ask who the women were. "Fortitude," he said. "Washington obviously had it. Ms. O'Connor suffered from lupus but refused to let it defeat her. And Ms. Lee needed fortitude to live in that place at that time, publish that book, and deal with the bigots who were angered by her portrait of them."
        "Two of them being writers, you had a librarian's advantage."
        When I switched off the lamp and opened the drapes, Romanovich said, "It is still a total whiteout. We will be disoriented and lost ten steps from the school."
        "Not with my psychic magnetism, sir."
        "Do they still include prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack?''
        With a twinge of guilt, I opened a couple of Sister Angela's desk drawers, found a pair of scissors, and cut off six feet of drapery cord. I wrapped one end around my gloved right hand.
        "When we're outside, I'll give you the other end, sir. Then we won't be separated even if we're snow-blind."
        "I do not understand, Mr. Thomas. Are you saying that the cord will act as some kind of dowsing rod leading us to the abbey?"
        "No, sir. The cord just keeps us together. If I concentrate on a person that I need to find, and drive or walk around awhile, I'll almost always be drawn to him by my psychic magnetism. I'm going to be thinking about Brother John Heineman, who is in the Mew."
        "How interesting. The most interesting part, to me, is the adverb almost."
        "Well, I'm the first to admit that I don't live rent-free in Eden."
        "And what does that mean when you admit it, Mr. Thomas?"
        "I'm not perfect, sir."
        After making sure that my hood was firmly fastened under my chin, I raised the bottom half of the double-hung window, went out into the roar and rush of the storm, and scanned the day for signs of cemetery escapees. If I'd seen any shambling bones, I would have been in big trouble, because visibility was down to an arm's length.
        Romanovich followed me and closed the window behind us. We were not able to lock it, but our warrior monks and nuns could not guard the entire building, anyway; they were even now retreating to the second floor, to defend that more limited position.
        I watched the Russian tie the loose end of the cord to his wrist. The tether between us was about four and a half feet long.
        Only six steps from the school, I became disoriented. I had no clue which direction would bring us to the abbey.
        I summoned into mind an image of Brother John sitting in one of the armchairs in his mysterious receiving room, down in the Mew, and I slogged forward, reminding myself to be alert for a loss of tension on the cord.
        The snow lay everywhere at least knee-deep, and in places the drifts came nearly to my hips. Wading uphill through an avalanche couldn't have been a whole lot more annoying than this.
        Being a Mojave boy, I again found the bitter cold only slightly more appealing than machine-gun fire. But the cacophony of the storm, combined with the whiteout, was the worst of it. Step by frigid step, a weird kind of open-air claustrophobia got a grip on me.
        I also resented that the deafening hoot-and-boom of the wind prevented Romanovich and me from saying a word. During the weeks that he had been in the guesthouse, he'd seemed to be a taciturn old bear; but as this day had unfolded, he had become positively loquacious. I was enjoying our conversations as much now that we were allied in a cause as when I had thought that we were enemies.
        Once they have exhausted