Hallowed Be Thy Name

By Andre M. Rome, Jr

Maria and Joey had a typical marriage but struggled with infertility. After being trapped on their roof for several days after a hurricane, Maria and Joey find a boat that mysteriously washes up to their rescue. They are shocked when they miraculously find an abandoned baby in the boat. Their lives take a dangerous turn for the worse when their miracle baby becomes the target of assassins determined to eliminate the threat that he may pose to organized religions. The family is forced to move from city to city one step ahead of their deadly pursuers, while their son continues to desire a normal life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483696423

Andre M. Rome, Jr

Andre M. Rome Jr. launches his first novel with the release of Hallowed Be Thy Name. He has taught English in the Greater New Orleans area for over twenty-six years at Meisler Middle School in the Jefferson Parish Public School System and at Archbishop Rummel High School, where he also served as the head track-and-field coach. When he began what he feared would be the arduous task of writing his first novel, he discovered, “I can honestly say that I have never had so much fun in my life creating characters, researching information, and reliving some of my favorite destinations.”

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

5:30 a.m.

—AND TODAY’S WEATHER in New Orleans is currently 80 degrees with a ninety-percent chance of rain starting later this morning.

Where is that damn alarm button? Shut up!—What day is it? Friday—bus duty—need to copy tests before school starts—need to get up—sit up now—just a few more minutes in bed.

5:33 a.m.

A second alarm sounded, but this time, it was coming from basal thermometer under Maria’s tongue. Joey, we have to make a baby this morning. I’m ovulating!

For most men, the idea of morning sex would be arousing, but for Joey, making a baby on the biological clock had become just another onerous task over the last three years. The two weeks on, every other day followed by two weeks of abstinence routine had made marital bliss less than desirable. Joey loved his wife; he just missed the spontaneity, romance, and foreplay that was present before objective: make a baby.

Joey groaned sleepily, Alright, alright,—but we have to do it quickly because I have to copy five sets of tests before bus duty.

You really know how to turn a woman on, Maria yarned sarcastically. You know, this isn’t my idea of making love either. Maybe, we should just stop trying. A friend of mine at work told me that she didn’t get pregnant until she quit trying. She has five kids now.

Joey laughed, I kind of think we have to have sex to get pregnant though—unless you are expecting to pull off history’s second immaculate conception.

After twelve years of Catholic education and teaching seven years in a Catholic school, Joey had been ingrained with more religious dogma than the average human could tolerate. Consequently, Maria and Joey Babineaux exhausted every prayer, novena, rosary, and religious ritual to have a child. Ironically, every crack-head thirteen year old atheist would show up pregnant regularly in the hospital emergency room where Maria worked. How could God give a child to them and not us? Both feared that God was either cruel or somehow oblivious to their existence.

Maria conceded, "Today’s not a good day. Let’s just skip it this month. It’s time we start living without the baby-dagger hanging over our heads. You know I love you."

I love you, too. There is nothing that we can do to change our fate or God’s will or whatever. I think that we need to just refocus our attention to living each day to love each other from now on.

Well, amen to that! smiled Maria. Now, get your lazy ass out of bed before you blame me for being late to work.

Yeah, yeah, I know—another day, another fifty cents! You got to love the Catholic Church: it’s not just a job; it’s a vocation, Joey moaned sliding his feet into his cushy black slippers.

Joey had argued with the school’s administration several times about just this issue. The Catholic catch phrase, vocation, meant teachers should be happy to work more for less money since God has chosen them to do his work. Loyalty to the Church was constantly being monitored and punished if it fell short of the morality clause. Ironically, the morality clause was only applied to those who dared to question authority. Like the rest of society, most lay teachers either used birth control, were divorced and/or remarried, supported homosexual relationships if not personally gay, and avoided confessing their darkest sins to a priest, all of which violated the morality clause even if not overtly stated in the contract.

Loyalty, however, should go both ways. Joey had watched senior coworkers get fired after twenty years of loyal service. Their vocation became too expensive. Why pay forty-thousand dollars a year for one experienced teacher when you can get two naive teachers for twenty-thousand dollars?

Maria continued her previous complaint, The Catholic Church is one of the richest organizations in the world. Why can’t they sell a priceless painting and give teachers a cost-of-living raise?

As Joey left the house, he remembered the standard answer given to him before from Matthew 6:34, So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

*     *     *

Squeaking down the hall, Joey wished he had actually listened to the weather report which bolted him from his early morning slumber. His umbrella remained next to the door where Maria had placed it the night before. Maria knew that Joey never used his umbrella because he hated to carry it around throughout the day. Consequently, Joey often ended up all wet on rainy days. She compassionately placed a bag of extra clothes in his trunk after the last thunderstorm, but she doubted he would remember it was there. Maria always kept her umbrella in her car, but Joey often chose to just run between the drops and drip-dry if he lacked the speed to make it without repercussions.

The umbrella would have proved quite useful during bus duty. Joey weathered the storm, clipboard blowing aimlessly in hand, while he recorded each bus number and number of passengers upon arrival. Even though he stood under an overhang, Joey knew that rain in New Orleans could be more horizontal than vertical as the angry winds swirled through the inviting breezeways.

7:20 a.m.

At least, Joey wasn’t alone. Most of the male population seated in front of him from this all-boy Catholic school was drenched in a similar stupidity. Joey privately smiled to himself as he heard his wife’s voice in his head, I can’t understand why men are so damn stubborn!

As the morning announcements droned forward, Joey quickly checked his homeroom roll. We realize that many parents have called the school concerned about the weather— Come on now! Really! I swear; some parents indulge their kids every time we get a little rain. We will be watching and listening to WWL weather reports before we decide if school should be let out early today.

The excitement of impending doom, or perhaps an unwarranted three-day weekend, sparked babbling conversations and hidden text messages to Momma begging for an early reprieve. Joey tried to regain composure of the situation, "You know that this is much ado about nothing. You guys are not going home early. It’s just a tropical depression near Cuba. Nothing will happen before the weekend."

7:35 a.m.

Just when Joey thought that it was safe to assume that he was following the school’s party line, another announcement sparked even greater chaos, I am sorry to interrupt homeroom again, teachers, but the National Weather Service has just issued a hurricane warning for New Orleans. The archdiocese has just informed us that we will be dismissing school after second period today. Second period? Why not now or after lunch? Does anyone really think that any teacher will get any school work done today? Well, Saint Daniel, guess who will be joining you in the lion’s den?—so much for today’s test.

*     *     *

9:45 a.m.

Maria had just left her emergency readiness meeting on hurricane staffing. Fortunately, she would not be on duty for this hurricane. She had volunteered for the last near miss and earned her amnesty this time. However, unlike her husband, she had to complete her twelve-hour shift first. The mayor’s evacuation order somehow never applied to hospital personnel. Unlike her usual shifts, most of her work today involved the transport of patients to ambulances delivering those patients to high ground.

Of course, that didn’t stop the occasional junkie from shooting his dealer for insufficient product. While handcuffed to a gurney, a scruffy man argued, I told the motha fucka I needed more shit to get me through the hurricane, but the bitch be holden out on me. Yeah, that makes perfect sense! If the hurricane does get bad enough, there will be a whole lot of unplanned detox happening in the city. Maria did her best to treat his injuries despite her desire to stitch up his mouth rather than his wounds.

It’s amazing how many homeless people arrive in the ER at times of evacuation. The security guards had to forcefully remove several intoxicated patients who refused to be seen by a doctor. Dude, it’s free to see a doctor, but you can’t just sleep here on the ER sofas, Kelvin, the ER security officer, tried to reason with one man.

I said leave me the fuck alone! I don’t need no doctor! the man angrily protested.

Well, then you have to leave. Do you realize that the mayor has issued an evacuation order? You can take a bus to a shelter in Baton Rouge if you leave now.

Fuck off, asshole! I just need to sleep here a couple of hours, he slurred.

With those final words, Kelvin not-so gently placed the man in the back of a waiting police cruiser.

Maria asked, Where are they going to take him? Aren’t they evacuating the jails too?

Yeah, he is going to Baton Rouge whether he likes it or not. Who knows, he may end up in Houston by the time he’s all done, Kelvin remembered his own evacuation last time. The public transit buses headed out of town are often sent from city to city desperately searching for any respite from the storm. By the time they final reach a destination, passengers are exhausted, hungry, and hundreds of miles from home. After a restless night on a tiny cot and scratchy blanket, the shelters often evict passengers back to the public transit buses for the return trip home. Consequently, evacuating hardly seemed worth the trouble.

For Maria, the rest of her shift wouldn’t be much different. People continually flowed into the ER. A purpled finger fractured while boarding up windows, a carbon monoxide poisoning from testing a generator indoors, a herniated disc from lifting a heavy suit case into a minivan, a torn Achilles from swinging a roving ax, and every hyperventilating late-term pregnant woman dropping babies caused by the drop in pressure littered the standing-room-only ER. It’s amazing how needy people get in a crisis, and the hurricane hadn’t even arrived yet. Maria always found it interesting how much the ER reminded her of an ant pile; everyone was methodically running in and out of partitions trying to protect the mound, a fortress about to be doused with rain.

CHAPTER 2

IF YOU PLAN on staying home for this category-five hurricane, we request that you write your social security number on your forearm, so that we may identify your body after the storm has passed.

Well, you can at least say this much for our governor, she does have a flair for the dramatic, Joey jested as his wife still questioned his decision to ride out the storm. After paying hundreds of dollars staying in hotels running from the last few catastrophic hurricanes that fizzled out to nothing more than powerful thunderstorms, Joey couldn’t afford another evacu-vacation. Most of his students’ families would spend the weekend in condos somewhere on one of Florida’s unaffected beaches.

Now, don’t look at me like that. You know that this is all bullshit. Every hurricane decreases in strength the minute it lands on shore. I swear that the governor must own stock in every hotel a hundred miles north of the city, Joey was starting to believe his own conspiracy theories.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Maria rationalized, I still think that it’s better to be safe than sorry. We can always just put the expenses on our credit card.

A little concerned that his wife made sense, Joey explained, I am being safe. I have an ax in the attic, several gallons of water, batteries, flashlights, a radio, a gassed up generator, and enough can goods to survive for two months. Besides, you know how hard it is to evacuate. Every hotel within a twelve-hour drive is booked to capacity. Not to mention that we will be sitting in traffic for hours just to inch along the interstate.

That’s all nice, but I hope you learn how to swim between now and landfall just in case we get another flood, Maria reminded Joey.

Let’s just go to bed. We can check the weather again in the morning. I promise to wear my floaties all day tomorrow if the storm actually hits New Orleans, smirked Joey.

Okay, . . . but I am going to take a shower now while I still can, Maria said popping Joey on his butt with a towel as she passed him in the hallway.

*     *     *

11:00 p.m.

When Maria dripped out of the shower with her hair adorned in a Della Robbia blue towel, she discovered her husband lying on their bed wearing nothing but a pair of pink floaties.

Well, it looks like somebody is a little eager for some loving, Maria laughed. As Maria removed the towel from her head, Joey watched a single droplet run from the tip of her hair down the front of her shoulder, across her breast to the tip of her left nipple pausing briefly, curving around the underside her breast, regain speed at her ribs, curve inward towards her belly button to join more moisture gathered there. Joey pulled Maria’s naked navel closer to his mouth, gently encouraging the drop out of her belly button with his warm breath. The single droplet inched further down meandering side-to-side like a slithering snake caressing her smooth skin covering her pubic bone. The single droplet found its way to her feminine crease dangling ever-so-gently at a protruding prominence of flesh.

With his hands firmly placed under the curves of each of Maria’s butt cheeks, Joey separated her legs while extending his moist tongue to capture the runaway droplet. To his surprise, the droplet was much wetter than he expected. Maria moaned gratefully in approval. Maria’s hands slid from Joey’s hair down his back as she curved over him in compliance with his affections. Lifting her over his shoulder, Joey continued to pleasure Maria as he carried her to the other side of the bed.

Unlike this morning, sex wasn’t a duty; it was a mutual indulgence. Maria pulled Joey toward her naked flesh, rolling Joey over to his back, as she reached down with both hands and began stoking his manhood with an uncontrollable rhythmic intensity. Both bodies curved with anticipation as Maria mounted her prey. Joey’s fingers slid from between her legs to her rib cage until they gently reached the curves of her naked breasts. With each plunge, both screamed in ecstasy until their tense muscles exploded in pleasure. Maria leaned forward sucking Joey’s lower lip between her teeth. Smiling, Maria reached for both of Joey’s biceps and pulled the plastic stoppers releasing the air from his pink floaties.

Oh, Baby, it’s all deflated now. Looks like someone may need to blow that to keep it alive, Maria flirted like a teenage cheerleader.

Joey, not wanting the moment to end, warned, Well, you better give it mouth-to-mouth before it just shrivels up and dies.

The ecstasy continued as thunder and lightning began to match the intensity of their shared moment of love.

*     *     *

1:30 a.m.

Joey stumbled out of bed to use the rest room. As he reached for his slippers, he felt a wet sensation under his feet. I must have peed on the floor in my sleep! Something must be leaking: the water heater—the washing machine—the toilet. Wait—it’s raining—it’s flooding!

Maria, wake up! I think the streets are flooding into our house! Joey nervously warned. Maria, get up, now! We need to start moving whatever we can on top of furniture or countertops. Our floors are wet!

Okay, I’m up. Let me look out the window. Damn, the rain is literally blowing sideways. The streets are flooded. Hey, Joey, the water is getting deeper. It’s over my ankles in here, Maria shouted from the foyer.

Suddenly, a crashing sound followed

Reviews for Hallowed Be Thy Name

[bgem_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a non-stop page turner. I just could not put down. After trying for three years to get a baby, Maria and her husband suddenly discover baby Mateo floating in a flat boat two days after hurricane struck their New Orleans hometown. The shocker, even though tests showed that Maria has never given birth to a child of her own, Mateo turns out to be their biological son and instantly became known worldwide as the "miracle baby". Life is now turned upside down as they raced against unknown assassin from within the Catholic Church to protect baby Mateo from those who want him dead. A thrilling novel, from start to finish and a must read for those who love a good mystery especially one that captures the mysteries and intrigues of the Catholic Church.