Little Wolves - By Thomas Maltman Page 0,47

laugh lightly, and Doreen joined her with a nervous bray. “I’d wear shorts if I had legs like hers.”

Gretel’s frown deepened her wrinkles. “She’s the pastor’s wife.”

“Gretel was a schoolteacher,” said Hilda, “for some thirty-seven years.”

“That’s … impressive,” Clara said. Thirty-seven years, she thought. Those poor fucking kids.

“Would you like fresh crushed mint in your tea?” asked Rosa.

“Yes, please.”

“Sit down,” bid Helen. “We were just talking about our own visions of heaven.”

Hilda pulled out a chair next to her and patted the place. “And you should know we’re having cake afterward,” she said. “German chocolate.”

“I hope they have cake in heaven,” Clara said after sitting along with the rest. She glanced at the sluggish ceiling fan spinning above the table, which only seemed to stir the hot air in the room. “And air-conditioning.” She paused, still nervous with so many eyes on her. She was always afraid they would sniff her out, a doubter among them, the one not raised Lutheran. “Did you know that Hilda or Brunhilda means ‘ready for battle’ in Low German?” she said to fill the silence. “Brunhilda rode with the Valkyries.”

Doreen laughed her horsey laugh, spraying a mint sprig onto the tablecloth. The rest looked puzzled.

“I did not know that,” said Alfrieda.

“It’s a good, pagan name,” continued Clara. “All around us these pagan reminders live on in words and names and customs.”

Now that all the women were sitting down, Helen leaned forward. “We’ve heard that you’re a scholar.”

A scholar. Clara smiled at the sound of it. “I’m a doctoral student; I just need to finish.”

Six gray heads all nodded, satisfied. Nobody asked what her studies were about, but Clara decided to fill them in anyway. Didn’t it connect to the afterlife? “For my dissertation I am examining the edicts surrounding the massacre on St. Brice’s Day in 1002. King Aethelred the Unready.…” Here she paused, clearing her throat. “How’s that for a name? Anyhow, this king declared that all the Danes living in England were to be slaughtered. A group of Danes tried to shelter within a church. But the English locked them inside and burned the church to the ground.”

“They all died?” Helen’s hand covered her mouth, as though the event Clara described had happened in the next town over only a few years ago.

“Cooked to a crisp.” Clara felt giddy from the heat. Across the table, Doreen’s eyes were glazed, her jaw slack.

“Why on earth would you want to study something like that?” This was from Gretel.

“There’s this verse in the Bible about judgment at the end of days, about using fire to separate the cockle from the wheat. Aethelred used it to justify his actions. I’ve been translating his writings, looking closely at the words, and also studying the Danish impact on customs and language.”

Silence. Mercifully, Rosa returned with her iced tea. Clara gulped some down and added, “I hope they have iced tea in heaven.”

“Foolishness,” grumbled Gretel. “Why must heaven be a place of creature comforts? Streets of gold and all that.” She shook her head. “Those are human visions, and I don’t know why we settle for clichés.”

“You’re sounding like Reverend Schoenwald,” said Rosa.

Clara knew that the Reverend Gunther Schoenwald had been pastor here for thirty years. For three decades the same portly red-bearded man presided over every Lutheran baptism, every wedding, and every death. This was another reason that Logan hadn’t wanted to come here. They have an unhealthy way of dealing with death, he said. After so many years under the same leadership, the church could develop rigor mortis, hardening in its traditions. Pastor Schoenwald had been the one who insisted on burying the suicides in a separate section. Saints and suicides and newborns all had their own territory, the tombstones for the unbaptized babies like tiny broken teeth scattered in the grass.

“Why not?” said Helen. “Surely he’s up there with the saints.”

“Is Seth up there?” Clara said, surprising herself. She hadn’t meant to speak her question aloud. She had just come to listen, but she hadn’t been able to shut up since coming inside. “Wasn’t he baptized in our church?”

“What do you think?” said Gretel. “A murderer and a suicide? What sort of God would let such evil into his holy presence?”

“The same one who lets evil into our world.”

Gretel’s jaw snapped shut with an audible clacking, like a metal hinge. “You don’t know that family, do you? You don’t know the slightest thing.”

Clara’s voice was small. “I knew him,” she said.

“Did you? After living here for