By the time Easter Sunday in 1925 arrived, I’d begun harboring the irrational feeling that 1925, as a year, had it in for me. I tried to tell myself to snap out of it, that years can’t bedevil individual persons, and, if one took a peek at the rest of the world, the year was being hard on darned near everyone.
I mean, looked at objectively, the whole world seemed to be reeling. For instance, the Irish and the English persisted in blowing each other up. Russians still starved in droves even as the Red Army under their new revolutionary leaders kept snapping up Eastern European countries and stomping the countries’ natives to bits under their boots. Bones from soldiers and civilians killed during the Great War continued being dug up by farmers in Belgium and France, seven years after the war’s end. Belgium, by the way, didn’t look as if it would ever completely recover from German depredations.
Then there was my own personal week before Easter, which had resulted in a host of bruises to my leg and injuries to several other people.
But I suppose all that is neither here nor there. 1925 had been rough so far, but Easter should signify a new beginning —at least according to Mr. Merle Negley Smith, the pastor of our Methodist-Episcopal Church—and I was prepared to give it another chance. Therefore, I changed into my Easter duds, which, natch, I’d made myself, and came in a slow second to Spike, the family’s black-and-tan dachshund, as we hied ourselves to answer the knock upon front door. My bruised leg hurt, darn it!
My astonishment at seeing Mr. Lou Prophet—clad in a suit and tie and with his left arm residing in a sling (another souvenir from the prior week)—arrive for Easter breakfast at our house made thoughts about my sore right leg and my grudge against 1925 fly right out the window.
I suspected Sam Rotondo, my fiancé and detective at the Pasadena Police Department, had more or less bullied Mr. Prophet into attending church with us. Sam, you see, had hired Mr. Prophet to be caretaker of the charming bungalow Sam had bought right across the street from my parents’ house on South Marengo Avenue.
Well…I don’t suppose Mr. Prophet couldn’t be called a proper caretaker. Then again, I’m pretty sure Mr. Lou Prophet and propriety stayed as far away from each other as they could get. But I liked the guy. He’d saved my own hide a few times since the beginning of the year.
Told you 1925 had been mean to me.
Mr. Prophet, who had come into our lives in a particularly harrowing manner, fitted into the staid and proper society of Pasadena, California, sort of like a Gila monster might fit on top of a frilly wedding cake. Mr. Prophet, you see, was a character straight out of the Old West. People had even written dime novels about him. He used to be a bounty hunter, for heaven’s sake. Actually, I’m pretty sure heaven and Mr. Prophet didn’t have much to do with each other, either.
He’d managed to lose a leg during his long and adventurous life, only not in a noble way—if there is a noble way to lose a limb. What happened was, he was in a car with two ladies of the night and a crate of bootleg liquor when whoever’d been steering the machine drove it smack off a cliff in Malibu. He was the only survivor but managed to lose a leg in the process. The lost limb put paid to the work he’d been doing, which was serving as an advisor in some of the three million western flickers being produced at the time.
But all that is beside the point. He came to our house for Easter breakfast and aimed to attend church with us! These two events might figure as wonders of the Western world, but I don’t think the people who keep track of such things pay much attention to us folks in Pasadena.
“You look like an Italian duke again, Sam,” I told my fiancé, getting on my tiptoes and kissing him right on the lips.
“And you look lovely, too,” said Sam, eyeing me up and down.
Mr. Prophet said something that sounded like “Rmmph.”
Shoving fear aside, I beamed at Sam’s guest and said, “It’s so good to see you up and about, Mr. Prophet! How’s your arm feeling?”
“Uh,” said he.
Okey-dokey.
“He’s just crabby because I’m making him come to church with us this morning,” said Sam, patting Mr. Prophet on the back. He got a vicious frown for his effort, but it only made Sam’s grin broaden.
“Consarn it, ain’t it bad enough I got a bullet hole in my arm? Now you’re gonna make me pray?” Mr. Prophet sounded sorely aggrieved.
“You don’t have a hole. You have a little graze. Besides, you don’t have to pray,” said Sam. “I never do.”
“Sam!”
My exclamation was solely for show and my shock feigned. I knew my Sam.
“Ain’t never met me a gospel-grinder worth the meat to make him into a man,” grumbled Mr. Prophet.
“I beg your pardon?” I tilted my head, not sure I’d heard correctly.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Prophet.
“Very well,” I said, figuring if he was going to be that way, I’d just let him.
Then I suddenly understood what his quaint words meant. Had to stifle a giggle as I thought of our minister. I considered Pastor Smith a fine Christian gentleman, but he did look rather as if God had run out of meat before he’d quite finished creating him. However, Mr. Smith wasn’t the only good Christian gent Mr. Prophet and I knew. Frowning at Mr. Prophet, I demanded, “What about Johnny Buckingham?”
Johnny Buckingham and his wife, the former Flossie Mosser, ran the Salvation Army Church in Pasadena. They were loving, generous, charitable people. And Johnny definitely hadn’t been slighted in the meat department. Or the good-looks department.
Scowling spitefully at me, Mr. Prophet growled, “He’s different. He’s a man.”
“Whatever that means,” I growled back.
“Huh,” said Sam and Mr. Prophet together. I led the way to the dining room.
After we’d finished the wonderful breakfast my aunt, Viola Gumm, had prepared for us and were making last-minute spiffing-up efforts, Vi put a leg of lamb in the oven, where it would roast as we attended church. I saw Mr. Prophet eyeing the big hunk of meat with befuddlement.
Therefore, as Sam helped me on with my pretty, lightweight spring coat, I said, “Do you like leg of lamb, Mr. Prophet? Vi’s is the best you’ll ever eat.”
His pale blue eyes grew round in their nest of wrinkled flesh—the fellow was old—and he said, “You people eat sheep?” He kept his voice soft, probably so Vi wouldn’t hear him. He sounded horrified.
To the accompaniment of my fiancé’s laughter, I gazed in astonishment at Mr. Prophet. “What do you mean, do we eat sheep? We eat lamb sometimes. Haven’t you ever eaten lamb?”
“Sheep?”
“Lamb.”
“Lambs grow up to be sheep,” he said firmly.
“The one whose leg is in our oven won’t.”
“He’s a wild westerner,” said Sam, still chuckling. “I think wild westerners prefer beef to lamb.”
“Never ate no sheep in my life,” Mr. Prophet announced as if he didn’t aim to break this personal record any time soon.
“You’ll eat some of this one,” said Sam, “if you aim to keep Vi happy.”
“Dammit,” said Mr. Prophet.
“It’s Easter Sunday, Mr. Prophet,” I said in an insufferably prim voice. “I hope you can refrain from swearing in church, at least.”
“Aw, hell.”
So much for him.