"Father Aurelio Was Not Inclined to Panic"

Father Aurelio was not a man predisposed to panic. In all moments, he was one to remember who he was: “Padre”. He had not fretted when Gonzalo had slipped small quantities of marijuana into the incense burners before mass, nor had his heart been overcome with dread when the pattern of confessions on the part of the town’s young men began to relate almost hourly to Rosa, the padre’s adopted daughter. Indeed, the Padre had remained quite calm, even as cool and undisturbed as the chapel wine cellar while his ankles, wrists and torso were strapped to an old chesterfield rocking chair. No matter that the chair was fixed tightly to four thousand brightly-coloured helium balloons at the anual parish fair, in the name of fun.

Even so, now drifting approximately three thousand, eight hundred and eighty-seven meters above the steeple of his humble parish, the Padre could no longer ignore the neat and uniform strip of sweat perched on his brow. From his seat the Padre was moved greatly by his realization of how small the earth below appeared. It reminded him very much of the view of his last dinner plate – a meal very graciously prepared and donated by Tengo, the baker. The peas (lightly boiled in salt water, deliciously plump and tender, the Padre noted) were the patches of shrub and thicket wedged stoically between ridges and hillocks of yellow mash potato. And the gravy leant earthy credibility to the entire image – delicately seasoned dirt though it was. Perhaps the pie might constitute an outcrop of coastal cliff if propped at the right angle…

“Yes,” thought the Padre, “if Tengo can prepare such a meal in forty-five minutes, how much greater was your creation in seven days, oh Lord.”

It was precisely at this moment that the Padre was struck by thought for the second time in as many minutes, although his latest realization was somewhat weightier than the previous one. There was no dish in Tengo’s kitchen, nor in any other that could compare to the sight beneath him. His imagination failing him, the only comfort Padre Aurelio could conjure was the thought of an infinitely deep, troublingly wide and particularly cool glass of water. And if the Padre’s imagination had not failed him, he might have thought the water to be a colour one guesses to be locked away under ice bergs, and on the surfaces of priceless Dutch canvasses.

From the top of the church bell tower where Gonzalo stood, the Padre was now invisible. The bright red helium balloons, even in their quantity, had been swallowed up in a haze of blue that made the sky indistinguishable from the sea. And this truth remained despite Gonzalo’s indifference to the scenario that was unfolding, illustrated by attempts to look down Rosa’s shirt from some twenty metres on high. “Nice.”

Padre Aurelio was looking in the opposite direction. Four thousand red helium balloons overwhelmed his aged eyeballs, so he closed them. “Holy Mother, it is me, Aurelio. I know that I am not easy to find underneath this mass of balloons, but surely you can see them? I am lost, Mother. Help me.”

“Gonzalo! Staring at fresh fruit won’t get it into your mouth, now get in the car!” Although Gonzalo had noted the urgency with which Tengo had delivered the command, the fat baker’s face deflated any verbal message that came from it. A distended vein burrowed between Tengo’s skull and his forehead, which distracted slightly from his crimson face, and purple, puckered, bee stung lips. All of which shone fantastically in the sunlight. Indeed, for all the interest he was paying the urgent, stumpy little man, Gonzalo himself might as well have been the cheerful, indifferent sun shining down from on high. “Gonzalo!” The baker’s excessive girth gave him a heart condition, which left him short of breath when stressed, and in turn led to a chronically shiny face which glowed any colour of the rainbow, dependent on his mood. Today he was red.

“Gonzalo, por favor, we need the help of all the men, and we need to leave right now.”

“I’m busy.”

“Gonzalo, the Padre is out of sight, he’s tied to thousands of floating balloons. See? The wind is blowing offshore!”

“Continue?” Gonzalo had his eyes closed in an effort to ignore the troubling reflection, and to sleep. Only the raised eyebrows expressed consciousness.

“Tu perro. Do us all a favour and slip off that tower, you waste of breath. And please, at least try no to fail at suicide. Rosa, in the car.”

Gonzalo turned his body toward the pair and perched his chin on his hands. “Rosa, you’re leaving with that lumpy toad?” He turned his eyes to Tengo. ‘And you baker? Are you trying to inflate yourself into a red helium balloon? Maybe if you meditate you’ll float.”

“Gonzalo…Gonzalo, Gonzalo. I am going to look for my father. That is what I am doing. What are you doing Gonzalo?”

“I was staring at your breasts until I was interrupted. Just a question?”

“Rosa, let’s go.” Tengo’s small chest was heaving at a fairly substantial rate, and his left eye was now bloodshot.

“What Gonzalo?”

“Why even bother looking for him? Come sit up here with me, we’ll drink to the old crone’s exit. At least he was original.”

“Gonzalo, smoke anther one.”

“You’re so pretty when you get angry.” He rolled onto his back and peered into the sun. “Father Icarus! That’s what we’ll call him!”

Rosa made a mental note to kick Gonzalo repeatedly in the groin the moment he was close enough for her short legs to reach. Tengo started the ignition of the old Mercedes and the vehicle jumped back to life. Vibrations rattled along the length of the vehicle, appearing to Rosa like twitchy flanks of a black mechanical race horse. Raindrops seeping through decades old holes in Tengo’s garage roof had stained the chrome handles to a pewter finish. She took a moment to familiarize herself with the machine, running her hands along the length of the trimmings, extending fingers over sharp corners, greasing the hard, waxy paint. Rosa fancied a drive along the coastal roads in so impressive a vehicle. And if she found her father in the process, so much the better. If she did not, well, so much the better.

Tengo wound down the window, “Rosa, for the sake of your father. Please.”

Half-tempted to ask, “He’s not here now, can’t I just enjoy this?” Rosa lingered, but for Tengo’s sake, she climbed into the car, and put on the face of a searchman. Sincerity, concern, vigour, desperation, hope, belief, and when appropriate, hysteria. Tengo’s small round foot leveled up and the clutch clunked out in stages, jerking the racehorse forward in spells of two metres at a time.

“Wait, wait mamacita, stop. How about I help you find him for a…reward?” Gonzalo had slunk down from the tower in as nonchalant a manner as possible, he spoke with suave laziness, cat-like.

Brown gravel ground out into the air between the wheels and the dirt road.

“Hang on a second, I’m your man for the job!”

Gonzalo sprinted alongside the Mercedes, slapping the windows and the doors with the stiffened palm of his hand. Rosa ignored him. Flat palms turned to fists, and from inside of the vehicle it sounded as if a battery of miniature cannon were firing gem squash into their flank. Gonzalo stumbled, half laughing. He pushed his hips forward with all his might, straining against dozens of tendons and chords that fought to overbalance in the path of least resistance. “Please! Stop, I’ll come with you, it’ll be a laugh!”

He fell. Gravel wrested the skin from his forearms, chin and palms. The ground surged up and drove into his sternum. Gonzalo cried out in pain, and also as a result of having his high abruptly ended, and thus being exposed to human embarrassment. “Please come back.” Rosa and Tengo wouldn’t have heard his sobbing even if they had cared. The car was a hundred meters away behind what looked like a wall of magicians dust. Gonzalo was winded, left behind, and wallowed in sublime rejection and uselessness. “Dammit.” He got up, and stole a horse.

“Tengo, should I take the wheel?” The car was snaking precariously along the St Jorges coastal road, with a sheer drop of some fifty metres to the waves below. Rosa had been a willing occupant of the car, and had even played the part of concerned search party member well enough to settle the nerves of a palpitating Tengo, but she was not prepared to lose her life in the process, which at this stage was threatened by the fretful baker’s driving. “No, no thank you, child. This is a man’s vehicle.” Rosa balked. “Tengo you old bastard, I will not let you kill me.” Tengo turned his attention away from the search for his friend and toward the insolent girl in the seat next to him. “If you please, your father’s life is at stake. At least feign concern.”
“I am concerned, Tengo. But you can’t search for someone when you’re – RED!”
“Red? I can’t help how I look, senorita!”
“No! Red, Tengo! Over there!” High up in the air, fluttering in and out of a mushrooming cloud anvil, was a prayerful but as yet unpanicked Padre Aurelio.

Gonzalo too, on his horse, had caught sight of the Padre. However Gonzalo was more concerned with the black Mercedes to his right, and the reward a town hero might garner from grateful town maidens. Gonzalo halted the horse a good fifty metres in front of the vehicle, attempting the grandest hero’s entrance possible.

“AURELIO!” Tengo bellowed, began to laugh uncontrollably and then did something that he might have thought unexpected for that moment. He died. Tengo’s heart arrested its motion, went into spasm and failed. The baker croaked loudly before his body slumped at the wheel.

Later, the town cryer would recount the event. That Tengo the baker was dead prior to impact, that Gonzalo was crushed beneath the body of the horse and the black car’s bonnet, and that Rosa had been struck by a flailing hoof in the head. What the town cryer would never be able to tell, however, was that Padre Aurelio, floating high above, beneath the anvil of a storm cloud, had heard the shouts of his friend’s voice below on the pie of the coastal outcrop. And before he disappeared forever, he had comfort.