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"WHY SO TROUBLED, ROLLINS? BREAKFAST DIDN'T AGREE THIS morning? Sutton, having dropped in at Rollins' side virtually out of thin air, matched his strides along the footpath.
"Breakfast was fine. It's my term paper that has my thoughts in a tangle, a really big tangle. I'm writing an alternative outcome of Jesus' trail, you know, the ultimate trial before Pilate and the mobs accusing him of blasphemy. I'm arguing for a mistrial on the grounds that Jesus didn't have adequate representation, that Judge Pilate was a weakling ultimately wilting to the demands of a bullying mob in exchange for the release of a murderer, for pity sake! Judas kissed Jesus over to his captors without a blush and Peter quailed before the third crow. Creative counsel would have urged Jesus against taking the stand in his own defense for the man stood accused of blasphemy on the strength of the very words his tongue uttered. Pilate, understandably uncomfortable over the whole setup found an out by handing Jesus over to Harod's jurisdiction only to be ruthlessly interrogated by Herod then passed by him back to to Pilate. Pilate, thusly delighted that neither he nor Herod could find such a fault in Jesus deserving of death become tight lifelong friends. But it's all for naught as Pilate eventually wimps and succumbs to the delirious demanding mob."
Having come to a halt on the top step before the great door Rollins turned to Sutton.
"Why are you carrying that branch in your hand, Graeme? Going into landscape design?"
But it is something else about Sutton that has Rollins curious.
Are you panting, Sutton?
"Look at this bud sample, Rollins!" Sutton held forth a leafy twig torn from the wild-rose bush reaching through the ornate iron gates surrounding Maison du Saint-Pere pour Agneaux Trouve. "Here you see the perfect blossom! No flaws on any petal!"
Rollins gazed upon the petals marveling at its delicate shading from pale pink at the outer edges to deeper pink to near flower's center.
"And the bud is sublime!" gushed Sutton. "It's just at the end of its bud cycle. See, its bind is relaxing and in an hour will begin to open like this bud with its petals unraveling! I've caught this twig just in the nick of time!" Graeme Sutton hissed with the conviction of a country... because Sutton hisses, is all.
"Why are you showing me roses, Sutton?"
"I'm carving a headboard for Rosalia's new bed! And this is my model! Perfect from every angle, isn't it Rollins?"
"You are the artist here, Graeme. You, above anyone, should know! Who's Rosalia?"
"The new girl!"
"Oh. Which new girl?" Rollins looked about the places in the year where children gathered...
"Not here, Rollins! She's in the solace garden!"
"What solace garden? Here, at the house?"
"Of course! It's always been here at the fortress since I came here when I was seven going on eight! Reverend Mother sat with me on the hanging swing until Monsignor Philippe took me to the clearing ten minutes before he brought you in."
"Oh, the atrium!"
"Atrium?"
"Garden. So, is she little?" Rollins and Sutton strode over the threshold where the old oak door waited ajar and then up the stone hallway past Monsignor Philippe's office, beyond the silenced great room and the round table where Father Claude cleared away remnants, past the kitchen where dishes stood stacked in the sink and fog steamed ceiling-ward escaping earnest stream hitting cold porcelain and Miriam rolled fondant into sugar flowers under Master Chef Jacques' tutelage... a girl's party tonight?... to the windows view the atrium. Sutton slowed his pace to a crawl and his voice hushed to that unique whisper one reserves for a church's most sacred sanctuary.
"There she is... sitting on the swing! Isn't she spectacular?"
Rollins blinked. In the mid-morning light he saw the fragile figure of a young girl, clear white like a jellyfish and as translucently hypnotizing, sitting stoically on the swings wooden bench, her face bent slightly sideway while Reverend Mother stood behind the girl brushing her long hair into curls around the palm and knuckles of her hand. As each lock was brushed smooth, Reverend Mother laid the ringlet gently on the girl's shoulder.
"How old is she?" Rollins whispered in near silence so as not to break the spell.
"Seventeen, like me!" Really?
"So... she is Rosalia?"
"No!"
"No?"
Rollins glanced down at Sutton, eyebrows raised.
"I don't know what her name is! She looks like a rose to me so she is Rosalia to me! Monsignor Philippe came to the woodshop room after breakfast and asked Father Paul if we had an extra bed frame available for tonight because a new girl is in the fortress and then, oh sweet Heaven I glimpsed her with Reverend Mother at the top of the steps."
Two friends stood at the window camouflaged by the grace of camellia bushes and azaleas and watched the sunlight dazzle the dainty features on a girl seemingly hovering on the bench. It is near impossible to tell what her garment might be so gossamer is the fabric covering her wraithlike form.
"So, I'll go to the garden and introduce..."
"Do it and die, Rollins!"
Rollins spun around and looked into Sutton's stormy face. This was not a tone heard, ever, from the lips of his friend and it frightens him. Graeme's eyes are gray-cold-glassy-hard and threatening like a summer squall's darkest cloud before its burst.
"What's gotten into you?" Rollins took a step backward noticing the twig clutched in Graeme's white-knuckle grip raised like a sword about to strike his chest.
"Things!"
"Ah...things...of course... Like what things, Sutton?"
And Cain slew Abel. Are you envious of me on some level, Graeme Sutton?
"Things, like what got into you when you touched Daria's face that day in the basement and her eyes got all glazed and the way you made her smile at you like that. I know because I saw you standing close to her when I came to the top of the stairs to drop off my paint-smocks for the wash. After that day you went to the basement every day to be with Daria and now you smell like soap every day since!"
Daria graduated from the house years ago
"And since that day you have been taller than me! Even the little girls clutch your legs squealing for you to lift them up to the monkey-bars and Clair always needs so much help with her batting stance and Miriam serves you the corner piece every time." Sutton fell silent because he'd vented all the words on his imaginary list and he's out of breath. If it isn't for the urgent tugging on Sutton's pant-leg he would not have noticed Rollins had fallen to his knees and is pressing his nose against the windowpane.
"Get down! Drop to your knees or they'll see us!"
So that is it then; a simple thing like length in the long bones of a body threatens a man But not from the knees as they knelt; eye to eye, shoulder against shoulder. Two friends huddle together upon the flat stony foundation from which Rollins intended to salvage the most precious possession in his life; his friendship of one, Graeme Sutton, of the Suttons of Cascades d'Or Suttons, of course. In the nanosecond of a heartbeat Sutton's icy glare turned warm with excitement as he beheld Reverend Mother slipping the brush into a pocket of her robe and then glide around the end of the bench to stand before Rosalia.
"Have you ever seen hair that color, Rollins? What color do you think that is?"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPmqMhu1jZR
Rollins tried to think like Monnet might think having seen a May bloom once in such a garden in this morning light.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPa4bs0srHi
"Pink sunshine."795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyMameFxJRd
"Pink sunshine!. Nobody has hair the hue of pink sunshine!"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxsUE2uvznO
No?795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxfYV7MrZ9a
"Strawberry blonde! She's a strawberry-blonde, Rollins!"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpj9u18FVBz
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"You're right, Graeme. But if she's to dream of you tonight you'd better get started carving that headboard!"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwW1Wa24DHb
Sutton gasped and lurched to his feet. For the first time in his life since the day Rollins turned thirteen and was suddenly three inches taller than him, Sutton now towered over his friend.. And from his knees Rollins looked up into Graeme's face.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5v3qhQHoSj
"Time's wasting, man! And you'd better put that rose specimen in some water while you carve so it won't wither! After you and Father Paul set her mattress upon the springs place the twig on her nightstand. When she looks at it and the carved blossom and buds framing her head she will put two and two together! She'll know you went the extra mile just for her!"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuHarDkzWeS
"Mile? What extra?"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdNyFQm38aa
In that moment a spectacular awakening that happen in life's poetry flooded Sutton.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7X9oEnn6e0
"Oh! Oh, you are quite right, Rollins! Brilliant!"795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0K7vXG9voK
Rollins winked...795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgnuqoGIyTn
A gentleman's agreement...confidence between two795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCRixwdmyZy
"Scram, man! What are you waiting for? The slumbering hour drawn nigh!" When Rollins turned from garden scene he sees Sutton fading from sight over the threshold into the morning's scintillating wonder beyond.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7M97xAo4Q2
Rollins turned back to the swing-bench where two figures stand before it. Reverend Mother's hands rest a moment under the girl's curls and then gently fanned the mane away from her form letting them fall naturally back over her shoulders. her fingertips grazed dainty cheekbones until they came to her chin lifting it slightly until the girl raised her eyes to look up. Reverend Mother said something funny for the girls' face brightens with life. A hint of a blush floods her cheeks and she laughed.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjGc5pgD6zy
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Rollins can't be sure if it is a trick of light refracting through a remnant dewdrop on the windowpane that he spies in his viewfinder of if a glistening star shines in the corner of Rasalia's eye...click...as they turned away along the stepping stones.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl75aUybdW3
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Monsignor Philippe smiled as he moved away from the doorway of his office. Boys to men...and I came of age that my eyes were opened to the beauty of women and they appeared before me as flowers in a field...and I loved them all as all I could love.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDv8r6NYdYe
The man stood before the window contemplating his thoughts and the consequence of the decisions they wrought in his life. And when his thoughts were restored with the peacefulness with which he'd made his life's choice a veil of summer's light beauty settle over his being.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFHISBV5yZN
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Rollins lay upon his mattress staring upward at Sutton's mattress bulging like sausages between the slats. Moonlight beamed throughout the clearing for late is the hour and long had the dinner table been vacated, all piano keys quieted and feet dancing in the great room slowed to tiptoes' flight through hallways and stairwells to end silently behind the whisper of closing doors. Sutton turned his pillow to the cool side and sighed. Rollins, plumping a flat spot in his pillow and his thoughts at last untangling, sighted. And it matters not at all the rosy girl's real name is Krystal and that a length of Jacqueline's lacy bead-embroidered sampler lay as a shawl over her thin shoulders.795Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcemD4HVvYa
The flaw is in the story's beginning; Adam and Eve placed in Eden as adults without the benefit of child growth or the nurturing guidance of parents' patient upbringing thus having no knowledge of their foibles' consequences and no frame of reference from which to form a decision.
"The dilemma lies not in the trial but in the beginning of the story, in the garden."
"It happened before the garden, on the top step."
"Trinity's plan to save us from ourselves could not be tampered with."
"I'm a goner... I've lost myself to her."
"so humanity could inherit eternal life."
"Her angel-face haunts the edges of dreams."
"All lost over the vision of a sumptuous apple."
"How she ate so, even the sugar petals all consumed."
"For one bite of the fruit's sweet flesh is man's destiny altered forever."
"For all time am I enchanted having heard her lyrical-voice."
"All doomed over a serpent's beguiling tongue."
"She is Rosalia to me, irresistible to my every breathing moment."
"It should have been a snake in a prune bush, easier to deny."
"I'd give my life for Rosalia."
"You picked the perfect twig, Graeme."
"You'll get an A for your argument, Rollins."
"Good night, Mr. Sutton."
"Sleep tight, judge."
Judge
Rollins pondered over word for an hour, his eyes wide open in the gentle darkness of the clearing as the moon glided past the window along its orbit. And he liked how Sutton had said judge, without a hiss, clearly, confidently, respectfully, honestly.
I want to become a judge, Monsignor Philippe!
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