Sister Anna Alm was grateful to see Father Luke on the grounds today.
She had spent far too many minutes arguing with the maintenance men about the fate of a bat who had flown into the Basilica through an open window in the narthex.
The men had wanted to kill the little creature and they seemed to delight in the prospect, they were looking for tennis rackets or some other such device in order to make a game out of it, bragging to each other about how they had killed bats that had flow into their homes.
Sr. Anna thought they were being cruel and she was not having it.
It did not matter to her that the bat had disrupted morning prayer where she and her sisters, the Poor Clares, had gathered to sing the liturgy of the hours, as they did every at St. Mary’s.
In the spirit of St. Francis, as the sisters perceived it, they were not going to allow the animal to be hurt, not even if it shat all over them as it flew above their heads during the divine office.
Life was precious, even the life of a bat.
Sr. Anna knew that she would have prevailed in the contest of wills she was having with the maintenance men. They may have been responsible for the building and the estate, and her demand that they capture and release the poor-creature may have been outside her sphere of authority, but she was more than a match for the men who had gathered in the transept to participate in the extermination of the little leather winged thing.
Tiny as Sr. Anna was, the maintenance men and grounds keepers y were punching above their weight in dealing with her, which each of them was aware of even as they protested her demand.
Nevertheless, when she saw Fr. Luke she was eager to bring him into the discussion, and have him channel her will; it resolved the matter quickly and allowed the men to walk away from the dispute with their pride intact.
The old priest listened to them, he took a moment to reflect and appear to be thoughtful; then he issued his judgement, ordering them to do as Anna had asked: “If you know what is good for you,” he concluded sardonically.
More than one of the other Poor Clares cracked a silent smile as Fr. Luke warned the men to mind their manners.
Sr. Anna thanked them for their good will as she walked out of the church with the other nuns and made her toward the van that would take them back to their home Parish.
Before she got on board she stopped to look out over Jewett’s Park.
It was a hot and humid morning, the sky was turning green, and the air smelled of rain.
She and the Poor Clares had a couple of stops to make on their way home, and now Sr. Anna was eager to get on with the day.
She was sitting in the passenger’s seat next to the driver as they crossed the bridge over the railroad on twenty-ninth and Hennepin, approaching Lagoon Avenue. It was there that she saw a young man who she knew crossing the street the stairs of the Walker Library.
It was Johnny Holiday, a boy from the orphanage, the Washburn Home for Boys that was just up the hill from Saint Joan of Arc, her home church.
For a moment Sr. Anna was happy to see him, but then she perceived a darkness hanging about him, a darkness like a cloud that had nothing to do with the gathering storm…and suddenly Anna was worried for him.
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