La Tormenta Grande

By Elsie Ramirez

Pairing: Carlos Ramirez/Sister Bertrille.

Rating: Status: G, New, complete.

Archive: All.

La Tormenta Grande
By Elsie Ramirez

"Where is the front?" Carlos said, gripping the two-way radio mike as if his last anchor to the world.

A long moment and then the voice said, "Headed away from St. Thomas. It will miss San Juan, but only by a little. It will intersect with Puerto Rico, I'm afraid."

"Damn!" Ramirez said sharply, not caring who heard him. "Where will it make landfall?"

There was a long, reluctant pause. "Aguadilta," the Weather Service reporter said. "I'm very sorry to say. The Good Lord protect Sister Bertrille."

Ramirez leaned backward, his eyes closed toward heaven. "The good Lord," he groaned deeply, darkly. He killed the radio, shut down its power.

He flinched a little as the Reverend Mother herself appeared at his side. Removing her spectacles, she focused on the map they both faced. After a moment, she looked toward him, to see the anguish written large in Carlos Ramirez's dark eyes.

"Mr. Ramirez?" she said, fear thinning even her own unequivocal voice.

"La Tormenta Grande is no respecter of persons, Reverend Mother," Ramirez said pointedly, staring straight into the Reverend Mother's eyes. "Particularly one who weighs barely ninety pounds. As a boy, I watched a smaller storm destroy a fleet of fishing boats. One of them my uncle's."

"And Sister Bertrille?" she asked, her even voice barely ruffling.

Carlos pounded the map point with an accusatory finger. "According to the children the Coast Guard rescued, she was tending to that stupid Pelican from San Cristobal Lighthouse. This is on a strip of land off Isla de San Juan. Five miles as the nun flies, if you'll forgive my sarcasm, from Aguadilta where the worst
Caribbean storm this decade will make landfall within the hour. They call that strip of land Cabo de los Pájaros Muertos. Cape of Dead Birds."

"No," she said, so much more clearly resonant in that short, condensed sound. "She was so terribly young."

"Not was, Reverend Mother, not yet," he said. He yanked his closet open. Removing and returning his cobalt blue blazer to a random hanger, he pulled out a deep black slicker from its depths. "Feel free to bring the others into the low room of my club. It will protect you. There is plenty of food to sustain you for some
time, if anything should happen to me."

Her eyes flashed wide. "But where are you going, Mr. Ramirez?"

He dragged the slicker sharply over his head. "I am going to San Cristobal," he said.

Folding her hands within her apron, she spoke in her most composed voice yet, just soft enough to keep the words between them, "The best course of action to be taken now is prayer. God will hear our prayers above the storm. You should come with us to safety now."

"Safety," he said angrily, as if there could again be any such thing. "You go then, Reverend Mother, with the Sisters of San Tanco and the children to safety from the killer storm your God has provided. And I'm going to go out and find her. With the last of my strength, if necessary, I will bring her back to safety."

Reverend Mother nodded, understanding. "Thank you, Carlos," she said.

"But understand something," he said, looking with discretion toward the others.

Sister Jacqueline smiled thinly in comprehension, then ushered the others to another room.

"Yes?" the Reverend Mother said, having waited for the door to click closed.

"If I find her, and I will find her. What is that comical little English saying Sister Bertrille has? Ah, yes, finder's…keepers."

The Reverend Mother nodded gravely. "Understood."

La Contessa was the only vessel in the Caribbean with any hope to scale La Tormenta Grande. The vessel lay before him now, moored firmly to the bier at San Juan Harbor. It had sailed through the eye of very bad storms, yet never as big as this one. It had never had the opportunity to try.

Amando, its skipper, listened carefully to his old friend's story. "You know, of course, you may use it. We built it for storm-chasing, it will go the distance, I think. But I should sail it with you. It's not a day yacht for your lady friends, Carlos."

"I've sailed bigger," Carlos said, offering what was left of his blinding smile. "This is no other man's mission. Only mine. But I will of course buy it from you, if the need should arise. I have instructed my office, in case."

Amando extended a hand. "Then go with the wind at your back, old friend."

At the helm now, skipping out to sea, Carlos Ramirez felt the power of La Contessa's state of the art engines murmuring around him. Its navigation system made each ministration of hand and eye, a miracle of precision and ease.

Carlos toweled away the mist of sweat from his face. He was to the human eye alone on this great ship, but he had a few words to say to the unseen companion … his unseen rival in matters of the heart.

"I will find her," he promised again, engaging the power drive as the navigating beam indicated engines at full speed. "That sweet and gentle girl leaves her home and family to follow your calling, and you lure her to her death. She's not even thirty years old. But no longer will I sit blindly back and accept her naive pursuit of Your will. And if You would kill us both for that, I would rather die with Elsie than live in such a world."

Elsie, the name he had whispered for years during his lately more frequent surrender to guilty dreams, but rarely said in life. Her real name. The true name of the woman he….alright, if we're to make a clean breast of things, he chided himself, say the word…the woman he…loved.

"Elsie!" he yelled, defiant, to the seemingly empty cabin. "Is that your final irony for my life? Is this the payback for all my sins? Fine, then, punish me. Punish me. I surrender myself to Your cruel jurisprudence."

He shook his head, no longer fighting unfettered tears. "But don't hurt her. Not my Elsie. She alone among all people surely does not deserve that."

A sound interrupted, booming across the radio helmset, in a Yanglish accent. "Mayday, mayday, La Contessa. Estamos en condiciones de la tormenta de la emergencia. Ésta es playa de desembarco del San
Cristobal."

He grabbed up the radio. "En Inglés por favor," he said. "I am twenty-five kilometers off Isla de San Juan. I am searching for a lost woman. My vessel is a USVI hurricane observation vessel. It sails under United States Coast Guard colors."

"Roger up. Is this the nun from San Tanco? If so, we may have a sighting."

"Yes!" he said, his heart screaming forward with La Contessa's overdrive. "How old is it?"

" Three hours or so, but we just received it. An air report of a woman stranded on a cobhead, but it was too treacherous to land."

"Was she alive?" Ramirez demanded of the mike, as soon as the radio cleared.

"Roger that," it replied. "If it's your woman, she's approximately ten miles north southwest of your present bearing. Watch your speed or you'll overshoot her. It goes without saying, watch out for Dead Bird Circle. I wish I could offer you help beyond that, buddy. Out."

"Thanks," Carlos said, smiling to himself. Hope. At long last, hope.

"Last count, the storm's only a little slower than you are. Get in and get out of there. Over and out. "

The cobhead rocks stuck out of the shallows like the still sharp teeth of a long dead maneater. At winter, it circled Dead Bird Cape in sinister ice-rimed rock. Was a time, it made the Cape impervious to pirates, so safe for Bishopric sanctuaries of the Church. There was an old cobblestone edifice beyond the the beachstand, facing Lighthouse Wall. Elsie would have tried to reach there, Carlos felt certain, which of course would have led her deeply into the arms of the storm. If she had moved downland, then up to San Cristobal, she might have had a chance. But no, Elsie would trust in the ruins of a desolate church.

He touched the vessel's powerlift to finesse the first of the Circle's snarl. He could see nothing through the howl of gray rain that pounded the coast, and pummeled the Cape. Distant deep black clouds had narrowed to a band of dense, impenitent fog. The hub of La Tormenta Grande, the approaching Tropical Storm of the Puerto Rican century.

…The only certain way to tell, the storm road to San Cristobal, count southward twenty toward Lighthouse Wall. The words of his boyhood tumbled out of his memory, in the English of his maternal aunt's husband, his long-lost uncle. Even that had not saved his life.

One, he counted inwardly, to mark the cobrock he'd just past. Two, he said for the one he angled around. Three…four…five…six…

And so he counted them, fighting to not speed for fear of hitting one and falling too short to save her. Trying not to tarry slower than light.

Seven… eight… nine … ten … Eleven … twelve … thirteen…

He could see the far point of San Cristobal Lighthouse Wall. He was deep in the jaws of Dead Bird Circle.

The shriek of rock sharp cob into La Contessa's hull left no room for doubt what had happened.

It was a sound he'd heard before with yachts and pleasurecraft, though never this loud and long, but mere reason – luxury of sane men and those not in love – had once kept him out of shallow shoals and rocky coastlines.

He kicked open the helm's hatch. He lowered himself down to see the hole in the august hull of La Contessa, to see himself the folly of even trying to sail on.

He burked his course, steering straight for the rocks. Feeling the hull slip easily around them, he tugged at La Contessa's powerdrive to leverage its mass against the vessel, to nest it firmly within the rocks. Then he deployed the power twains, feeling them bore downward past the hull and into the shallow earth beneath. If it was going anywhere, it would have to be by downspout. This ship would not be dragged to sea.

He yanked back the helm's trap, collected a lamp, a fire extinguisher, and a pocket medical kit. He locked the first on his belt, and tucked the last into his slicker.

The second he aimed at the closest, largest, flattest rock, and sprayed the dry foam across it. What doused fire, dried ice. One prodigal step slipped only slightly, as another moved him from the ship to the flat rock's surface.

"Elsie!" he screamed as loud as mere lungs would let him, into the seemingly conquering howl of the storm.

He listened and heard something.

It was a sound so clear, he thought surely he must have been imagining it. At an earlier time, he would have shrugged it off to sheer impossibility, but he had known Sister Bertrille now too many years, to not consider the impossible within the realm of her many wonders. After his flying vision, to say nothing of the miracle bell, he would have to be mad not to rethink cynicism itself.

The sound again, this time a sweet, familiar point of complete clarity encompassed by the heartless roar of storm.

"Carlos!" the voice rebounded, wracked, rough, despairingly.

"Elsie!" he called back, louder still. His lungs ached from the onslaught, but he continued. "I hear you! Stay still!"

"Carlos!" she said again, a sobbed prayer buoyed by delight. "Carlos, I'm here."

Two steps cleared the foggy tendril entwining the farpoint cob. There she lie still, huddled to make herself a shelter around a box, protecting the wounded pelican. Of course, he thought sadly…darkly…his heart bursting the same time with anger as with joy.

Unwrapping her arms from around the box, he lifted her into his arms. She was an ice angel: her face pale as unfired porcelain, but her beautiful lips bent into a smile. Tears were building behind her frozen lashes.

"Carlos," she whispered as a consecration, moving her face against his chest.

"I have you now," he whispered. "You're safe, my love."

Retracing his steps, he had barely enough traction to claim each cob, with the precious cargo in his arms. His foot slipped once each stride, so he took the next one more slowly. Each foothold came deliberately, his foot short-skidding on the sludgy dryness over ice. His arms unbending, they reached the ship.

"I can stand," she said quietly, "I can walk."

"You're certain?"

"Yes." She eased herself down from his arms, retaining his hand to hold for comfort. "Get back into the boat, Carlos. I can go back for the pelican."

"Don't be insane!" he yelled above the approaching melee. "The storm is about to reach us."

"But I can't just leave him," she said.

"Those winds are one hundred miles per hour," he said, about to lift her off her feet and insist their way into safety.

The arm of fog merged with the new blitz krieg of rain, flexing into a tentacle of wind. It slammed them against the bulkhead, then whirled around as an afterthought to collect Sister Bertrille.

Carlos lunged for her, snaring her right wrist. A bolstered knee against the damaged hull, he lunged for her left ankle, too. An old Jai Lai move, he thought wryly, he whipped her weight around toward him, using the wind against itself.

"You can't have her," he murmured to any gods who were listening. "Not her."

The scaffolding around San Cristobal lighthouse.. the shorepolice launch from the nearcoast … the wounded pelican in its box … anything small and fragile, inconsequential … things unprotected, unmoored, susceptible, and weak .. all were seized by the blind malice of La Tormenta Grande.

The one thing holding Elsie Ethrington to the earth was Carlos Ramirez.

"Don't let go, Carlos," she sobbed, this time buried in his arms.

"Never," he whispered against her eyes.

Only eight minutes, yet the moments stretched infinitely in the dense, bending axis of the storm. Every moment, fought. Every effort, a resolution. They were fighting against the dark heart of the world to stay there. For Sister Bertrille to remain.

It didn't happen at once; gradually, the axis faded. The covetous drag on them dispersed. They were left, battered but unbroken, in each others' arms.

She stared up into his face… her eyes reflecting the passing of the numbness of terror, in favor of the greater horror of understanding.

She surrendered against him fully, truly. Against the arms that had just saved her life. The warmth that made her remember minutely so many things it was now impossible for her to forget. Feelings that challenged everything she had once wanted more than life. Was a time, she had believed these feelings were a test of her faith. Now, she knew they were themselves the final answer to her young life's search.

"I'm so stupid," she sobbed, tears dragged out of her, shaken free from the pit of everything she was and had ever been. "How could I have -- I am so, so, so – "

"It doesn't matter," he murmured to her ear.

"We almost died. Not almost, but al-most…"

"I know," he whispered, cradling her more tightly than he'd ever have thought possible. "But it's over now."

"…you saved my life …" she whispered.

"As you saved mine."

"I didn't…"

"Sssshhhh." He nested a kiss in her frozen hair. "We'll discuss it later. Plenty of time. Can you stand?"

"I think."

"I'll help you." He scooped his arms down under her shoulders, and lifted her easily to her feet. He foraged for a smile. "You look no worse for the wear."

"Thanks to you." She looked down at what remained of her surtrice shift, the bodywrap of her habit. " I am so stupid."

"You said that already," he said, freeing the helm's latch, yanking down what was built to be a dive ladder.

"And crazy. Did I say crazy?"

"No," he said, shaking his head sympathetically.

"Don't cut me any slack, Carlos. I am a little crazy at times."

"Oh, you're definitely crazy, you just didn't say it before," he said, grinning. He leaned down to couple his hands and give her a boost into the ship. "Your chariot awaits, Madam."

The ship was bigger inside than she had imagined, from the little she had seen of the deck. Definitely not the Carlos Ramirez HMS BabeMagnet. This one almost looked like an office with one ship's pilot crib sanctioned by a dash of big dials, gadgets, and wild lighted gauges.

"Cool," she said, looking around. "Your boat?"

"It belongs to a friend who works with the Coast Guard. And it is a ship, not a boat," he said. "As I am a man, not a boy."

Her eyes had skimmed down to his broad, tanned chest clearly visible through a large rip in his slicker.

"Oh, I know that," she said, more than a little awkwardly. She wheeled around to change the subject, seeing the deep blue filling the ship's viewscreen. The sky supposed a bright and lovely day, no rumor of storms. The clouds were white and shining to the east. A vision of deceit. A springlike lie.

She thought sadly of the little pelican she couldn't save, then remembered the man who had blessed her own life with his own, coming finally to save it.

"Beautiful day all of a sudden," she said, her voice tightening with anger at the dark irony of the sight.

"Don't let it fool you," he said. "It's coming around the island. The coastline will drag it up again to the south. We'll have to stay put for twenty-four hours. This ship is going nowhere. And the only vessels who can reach us will have to be dispatched from Pounce."

He nodded toward a ship's door. "The observation deck is there. If I know my friend, you will find some ladies' garments in there. I'll radio San Tanco of your safety." He didn't disguise the tightness in the next remark, "The Sisters, I'm sure, will be concerned."

"Thanks," she said. "Twenty-four hours, huh? Reverend Mother will be beside herself."

Carlos grinned again, reaching for the mike. "I'm sure."

Turning away from his trade of words with unseen voices, Elsie shyly pushed open the sliding divider to open the indicated room.

The observation deck was beautiful.

There was a narrow walkway with a bulkhead at one end, a long, observation berth spanning the other side. On the other wall, an observation pane to the sea all around them. She could see straight into the heart of the ocean, enchanted by bright blue-green shiplight, which likewise haunted the observation deck within.

As if stepping gingerly through Wonderland, she opened the small bulkhead closet. She eagerly shed the soaked-to-skin habit, letting it clop to the floor, a sign of the times. From the closet, she withdrew a big, pink… shirt, she'd guess you'd call it. Polkadot hot pink. With matching panties.

"Ain't that the cat's pajamas," she said, shaking her head.

She returned them for a big cableknit campo, like something out of WWII. But it was a loose, warm comfort, fitting her as would have a knit dress.

A soft knock at the door. A civilized gesture, given all they had just endured. It made her love him all the more.

"I'm dressed," she replied.

Carlos was shirtless, standing there smiling, his arms crossed over his chest. He had changed into a black pair of sweatpants.

"They were relieved to hear our report," he explained of his radio transmission. "They will send a repair ship tomorrow. They offered to send a rescue boat to evacuate us, but I made some empty excuse about a captain not abandoning ship, and that you preferred to keep me company. From the sound of her voice, I doubt Reverend Mother believed me."

She shrugged, smiling shyly, trying not to look the only place she could look. "I doubt she would have regardless."

"My thoughts precisely," he said.

"She has her suspicions about us."

"Suspicions?" He rolled his gaze toward heaven. "On four occasions, I've been told by the Bishop of Puerto Rico no less to not be alone with you on my yacht or in my airplane. We're to be escorted in such situations at all times. Reverend Mother has no problem with Gaspar being alone with you, or Pedro. Nor any other man in Puerto Rico. Sisters Jacqueline and Ana and Sixto can come to see me all day long, like a swinging door, in and out, in and out, and there's never a problem. There is only a problem when it comes to you…and me."

She smiled, softly, a little fearfully. Resolved at last to go on, no matter the cost.

"Before," she whispered, feeling the top of her head, where the memory's sensation lingered. "Outside. In the water. Did you kiss me?"

No apology. Unflinching. "Yes."

"And before," she choked again on her words as she measured them. "When you were carrying me. I heard you say my love…" Her chin began to tremble. "Were you saying that to me?"

"No, I was addressing the lighthouse. Yes, of course, I said it to you. I would have said it long ago, if I thought for an instant you would hear me."

She captured a sob. "And it's real. It's really real. I mean it's really, really real. It's not just forbidden fruit or a crush or – "

"It is real," he said, with utmost certainty.

She couldn't resist a laugh, which crumbled into another, and into a mixture of laughter and tears. She sank back on the observation couch behind her.

"That's the whole reason I'm here," she said, finally allowing… at last admitting … what she had, in her soul, known all along. "That was the purpose of my being here at San Tanco. You and me."

"Congratulations, Miss Ethrington," he smiled. "You win a gold star for today."

"That's why," she said, smiling through tears. "That why I've felt, the last two years, as if I've overstayed my welcome. It's all been a portent… an omen… a sign, I guess."

"Elsie," he said, reaching across to lift her chin, for their gazes to meet again. "If you need a sign from God, surely it is the bitter irony of a man like me, who has known hundreds of beautiful women in my lifetime, falling hopelessly in love with a nun. If this is not God Himself reaching out to us to make a point, I don't how else to prove it to you."

"Truly," she said, laughing. She looked up at him, her own love no longer hidden behind her eyes. "Hopelessly, huh?"

"Yes," he said, smiling. There was no room for doubt in the word.

"That's it then, you can't back out now, Carlos," she said, grinning teasingly through tears. "You confessed. My wings are clipped and so are yours."

He grinned, leaning sideways against the door. His arms folded solidly across his tan chest. The visual effect made Elsie's pink cheeks redden all the more.

"Me back out? I have heard no confessions today. From you, I mean," he said. "And I've been paying very close attention."

She shook her head, with reverence at the memory. "Of course I love you, Carlos. I always have. Even at the first. I came here thinking I would save the world. But I guess you knew that."

Clearly having heard the words he wanted, he relaxed against the door again. He smiled, nodded. "My little crusader."

She shrugged a shoulder. "I'd only had flirtations before. I'd never been in love before. I didn't know what it felt like. All I knew was when I looked in your eyes, I saw so much farther than when I only looked with my own. Now look at us. I mean, I only owe you my life."

"You owe me nothing but what you would give freely of your heart."

Meeting his gaze, she reached a sure hand to her throat, where the tiny golden Cross of the Novitiate dangled. She tenderly pulled the clasp around to free it. Opening the clasp, she removed the chain with a sad but certain smile.

His hand touched her face. "My darling, are you sure of this?"

She nodded. "Never so sure of anything in my life," she said. "Now I was kind of hoping you might kiss me. It's been so very long, that I've wanted you to kiss me."

"It would be my pleasure."

Elsie Ethrington, reborn middle American post-adolescent, swallowed hard, when his hand lingered on her face. The sensation was so intimate… so tender… Somewhere at the center of her, the someplace the universe had stored all her dreams to keep them safe for her, swung open a little.

He sat beside her, turning her gently toward him. The smile she found there was blinding, but it was masked behind tears.

"We'll do this slowly," he whispered.

His dark wine-colored lips neared hers, pressing gentle as a whisper against her mouth. A sob and sharp gasp converged in Elsie's tightened throat, as the kiss lengthened. Carlos wove his fingers into her soft homespun hair to soothe away her fear.

A kiss is a dance in your head, some sappy lovesong said, from a lifetime ago as quoted in Elsie's mental girlhood scrapbook. But the flicker of memories encircled her – she and Carlos at the first, Carlos smiling patiently at her latest brilliant scheme, Carlos' dark eyes flashing at her when she'd pushed him too far… or
sunk his yacht … or ruined yet another hot date. And Carlos' gentle, loving look of apology when they made up again. Always, he was dark and handsome against horizons of water, land and air. His heart was
even more beautiful than his smile.

She had been everywhere with Carlos Ramirez, and never to the one place she had most wanted to be.

He tenderly deepened their kiss, tears flowing with abandon now, merging where their faces touched. She sunk her own fingers through his thick black hair, reveling in its sweet mystery. With another hand, she touched his warm muscular chest, feeling beneath her light fingers the rising rhythm of his heart and breath.

When they broke to breathe, she cried silently into his shoulder, feeling his own tears against her hair.

"The Don Juan of San Juan, huh?" she said, trying to lighten the moment a little.

"Not anymore," he confided, like a prayer.

"I'll hold you to that."

"You won't have to." He grinned and retrieved her hand. Around it, he slipped a small paper band. He looked as deeply into her eyes as the walls of the world would allow. "Will you?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Of course. Didja even need to ask?" She rubbed a hand at her upturned nose. "Here come the waterworks again. But Carlos, really, a cigar band?"

"A Havana cigar," he said, with mock indignation.

"Oh, well. Pardon me."

"Anyway," he smiled. "It will suffice till we get back to San Juan."

END