Among the fallen, p.6
Among the Fallen, page 6
Then Neil committed the unpardonable sin. He shouted at his father, “God comes closer to me in the woods than ever in your church.”
Saliva slicked Lewis’ lips as his face purpled. Neil thought his father might spit on him. Instead, the preacher swung his fist. Neil ducked the blow and instinctively pushed Lewis away. The older man caught his foot on a chair, lost his balance and went down hard against the wall. Neil thought he might have been hurt, but before he could put out a hand to help him up, Lewis hissed at him like a snake, “You’re none of mine, heathen. Be gone from this house.”
Without a word, Neil went to his room, threw some clothes and his book from the Battered and Bartered table into his duffle, and snatched his coat from the closet on the way out. Coming down the stairs, he saw his mother and sister standing tightlipped and silent in the kitchen door. Neither uttered a word nor made a move toward him or his father, who still sat on the floor with his head in his hands when Neil closed the front door behind him.
Lewis Redding heard the door slam like an echo of judgement. He felt his wife’s hand on his shoulder, and without looking up, brushed it away. It never occurred to Lewis that she might be seeking comfort as much as to give it. His own son was dead to him, as surely as if the boy had been coffined and buried in the mountain. The one he had counted on to get everything right in their life that he had got wrong in his own, had turned away from faith and obedience, and set off into the far country of apostasy and unbelief.
Lewis could not quite quell a nagging suspicion that his own unworthiness had damned his son. He thought of all the doubts and lusts and ill will and covetousness he had suppressed in his own heart down the years, denying even to himself his transgressions of intent and action gone unreckoned and unconfessed because he was the preacher, held by his congregants as above fault and flaw. He would have been astounded to know they recognized how partial and pathetic he was, and in spite of his innate meanness, trusted their God to speak and guide them through this broken man.
When Lewis finally hauled himself up from the floor, groaning, clinging to the overturned chair like a doddering ancient, he was alone in the house. “Have mercy. Have mercy,” he begged the shadows, as if he were certain God lived and listened there. In truth, there was very little Lewis was certain of at that moment. He found enough coffee left in the pot to fill a cup, which he placed in the microwave and set for forty seconds. He carried it out onto his porch and by the time he had downed it, the heat and caffeine had restored enough edge that he could touch the tip of his anger, and he began to feel something like himself again. Wrath, he knew from repeated experience, could often substitute for certitude. He had been betrayed. He had good right to be angry. He was God’s servant. Those who wronged him had wronged God and deserved their wretched futures.
Luke Armstrong lifted the battered sezve from the coals, held it to the cool morning breeze until the bubbles subsided. While he waited for the twigs to settle, he spied the hiker coming up the trail on the slope below. Male, young. Not much more than a boy, Luke judged. Although Luke’s campsite could not be seen from the trail, the hiker would smell the smoke, and would look until he saw the faint ghost of Luke’s fire spiraling up among the trees. Hospitality was not in Luke’s plan for the day, but it was his own fault for not being gone at first light. He would not ignore the Rule. He poured the thick umber tea into his cup and prepared to make another.
Neil Redding stopped suddenly, listening, looking. His bones told him he was being watched. A bear most likely, but he didn’t smell a bear. When the place had his full attention, he did smell burning wood. Only humans set fires in the woods on a bright sunshiny day. Moving only his head, Neil scanned the ridge above. No sign or sound of campers, but a thin blue haze rose lazily up from behind an upthrust of boulders until the morning’s breeze shredded it in the treetops. A face appeared above the boulders, and a tangle of pale golden hair and beard called down, “Come up, Pilgrim, and break your fast, since we’re both here with the food.”
Food was all Neil needed to hear to be persuaded. He had walked out of his father’s house and into the woods, spent the night on the mountain. Except for a couple of hours he had slept sitting against a tree, he had been walking. Not that he knew any place he should go, but he knew no place to go back to, either. He kept moving because to be still was to be defeated. He had just walked out of the only life he knew, and the only solution he could think of was to keep going until he walked into a life that belonged to him.
Where and when that might be, he hadn’t a foggiest notion, other than that trees grew there. Trees were his passion and his friends. Trees had orphaned him and trees, he fervently believed against all logic to the contrary, would home and family him. He waved at the figure above, who returned the gesture before disappearing behind the boulders. Neil slipped the pack from his aching shoulders, and clutching the straps with one hand, began making his way up the pile toward breakfast.
“Drink some,” Luke held out the steaming cup toward Neil as he dropped his pack and scanned the camp. Tent, fire, now mostly died to coals, and a blond giant, maybe the tallest man Neil had ever seen. No gear in sight. Neil supposed it was in the tent. He took the cup and lifted it to drink. “Careful, it’s hot,” the giant warned, and it was, but not too hot to sip. Neil could feel the heat flowing down through his throat and chest into his belly, immediately rendering him calm and grounded.
“Sit down and we’ll partake some sustenance,” Giant said. Neil, having outwalked his rebellion, did as he was told. A little pot sat among the embers, and within arm’s reach, a couple of small wooden bowls, set out as if the big man had been expecting company. Neil hadn’t noticed the bowls until Giant reached for them. He picked up the pot, poured something that looked like brown oatmeal into the bowls, and handed one to Neil. It smelled earthy, pungent with herbs. Looking closer, Neil saw vegetal bits and pieces he could not identify, but he decided the smell was delicious, an impression augmented by his hunger.
Giant broke a small pone of bread in half and handed one to Neil. “Don’t have spoons. You can dip it up with this.” Neil didn’t see where the bread came from, either. Dark and crusty outside, porous and springy inside. When he dipped it into his potage, it sopped like a sponge. The giant lifted his own portion, dripping, to his mouth, and grinned across the fire. Neil did the same.
“Food for the gods,” he said as he dipped what was left of his bread into what was left in his bowl.
“Perceptive,” Giant said.
When the pot was empty, Giant stirred the ghost of their fire into the dirt, and while they waited for the embers to cool, refilled their mugs. He seemed in a mood to talk.
“You tourist or pilgrim?” he queried.
Neil gave question for question, “What’s the difference?”
Giant released a low mirthful growl from deep within himself. “Tourists follow their map, pilgrims follow their dream. What are you following into the morning, young Friend?”
Neil thought for a moment. He didn’t want to tell all he knew. He didn’t want to admit all he didn’t know. But he knew right now he needed to tell the truth. He took another sip of Giant’s strange tea, swallowed, and said, “I guess I’m just walking away, Sir, looking for a sign to guide.”
“You’re a pilgrim for sure, then,” Giant said. “You can call me Luke. After all, we’re all gods in these woods.”
Luke stood, began to rake the ashes from the fire with his boot, found no spark left in them. “I could use some company if we’re headed the same way, Pilgrim,” he said.
“I’m not following a map,” Neil said. “I need to take care of a chore first, though.”
Luke understood, nodded. “I’ll gather up while you’re at it then,” he said.
Neil waded into the brush and found privacy behind an old poplar. He didn’t see the paper pinned to the tree trunk until he was buckling his belt. “Hey, did you see this here?” he called.
When he turned, Luke stood right behind him, a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. “I figured it was close somewhere,” he said. “Old Tsula’s trying to draw me in.”
“Why would somebody put an ad for a carpenter out here in the middle of the woods?” Neil asked.
“Because,” Luke slapped Neil on the back hard enough to make the boy hope he wouldn’t do it again, “they knew right here is where we’d be. You know anything about carpentering?”
“I know which end of a hammer drives the nail,” Neil said.
“Then we have us a job to earn our keep among the Fallen,” Luke said. “You do need a job, don’t you?”
“I can’t go home again,” Neil answered.
Luke pointed at the ground. “Cover that good and come on, then.”
When Neil caught up with him, the campsite was cleared and the tent was gone. “You get all your gear in that little bag?” he said.
Luke hoisted his bag as if it held only air. “That little bag will hold worlds of stuff if you fold it right,” he said.
They walked away into the day, Neil brimming with more questions than he could find words for, and Luke exuding confidence as if he’d done all this before.
“What if the job’s taken by the time we get back to town?” Neil asked when they’d gone about a quarter mile back the way he’d come that morning.
Luke laughed. “Tsula wants us, Pilgrim. She won’t settle for anybody less.”
“Who’s Tsula?” Neil ventured.
“A mangy little púca I used to know back on Otherworld. That kind usually pair up for their mischief. I wager Wendl VonTrier won’t be far off when we get there.”
“What’s a púca?
“A fox. A crow. Anything you don’t want them to be, usually. They are tricksters, but they keep their promises. Their righteousness is twisted, but it’s real. They won’t leave you worse off than they find you.”
“Not like people then,” Neil said it like experience.
“Not like humans at all.” Luke’s tone came out pensive. “Púca are not Fallen, understand.”
“Like me?” Neil ventured.
Luke stopped, gazed at him as if measuring his soul, for a second, or an hour, or maybe days, then said softly, “In all the Two Worlds, there is only one such as you, Neil Redding. If you don’t fill the only place that can find you, it will remain forever empty and creation will be that much incomplete.”
Neil was afraid to ask anything after that, and they walked on in silence, listening to the birds and the wind and their own footfalls and breath, listening for the one word beyond all speaking.
Eleven
AbiWendl looked up from her book as the postmaster came through the door.
“Hello, Rhonda,” she said. “Tired of reading stamps?”
Rhonda Shaw came straight to the counter of Drovers Gap’s only independent bookstore and stared intently at the proprietor, “You okay, Abigail? You don’t look quite yourself lately.”
“I’ve been a bit scattered for a spell now, I admit,” AbiWendl said. “Lot going on.”
“I reckon,” said Rhonda, nodding her head vigorously, as if testing its attachment to the rest of her. “Especially,” she went on, “with your girlfriend moving in so sudden.”
“Tsula Stone is not my girlfriend,” AbiWendl retorted dryly. “She’s just family.”
“Must be a distant cousin,” Rhonda mused aloud as she stared at some undefined interest across the street, “Youns don’t look a thing alike.”
AbiWendl closed her novel with an audible snap, “Rhonda Shaw, did you come into my store for something to read, or just to speculate in gossip?”
“If I’d come all this way just to gossip,” Rhonda huffed, only pretending to be offended, “I’d be telling you how preacher Lewis run off his boy, Neil, and told the deacons at their meeting last night that he’s planning to announce his resignation to the congregation at church tomorrow.”
AbiWendl shook her head. “All this because his son left home?”
“That, and because Marcie took their girl and left the morning after. Oh, Abigail, it was purely awful. Preacher Lewis stood up in front of those men and cried like a little boy with a skint knee, said he wasn’t worthy of his calling, that a man who couldn’t govern his own family had no business to shepherd God’s family.”
“So, you were there at the meeting? I didn’t know you were a deacon, Rhonda.”
“I wasn’t and I’m not. I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Well,” murmured AbiWendl, “if ever I have any secret problems that require spiritual guidance, I’ll confide in one of these upright deacons. They can tell you and before I know it, the whole town will be coming round to help me.”
While Rhonda was trying to parse the full meaning of this declaration, AbiWendl said, “Do you need a book or do you just want to watch somebody read who knows how?”
Apparently, Rhonda actually wanted to buy a book. “Bernice Abner was telling me about a storybook she bought here. Dark in the Mountains, or something like that. She said it kept her awake all night reading. Said that writer fellow who lives up past the church wrote it and she was disappointed in him for writing such a thing because he’d always seemed to her like a very nice man.”
AbiWendl nodded, stepped among her shelves and brought back the book and handed it to Rhonda. “It ain’t dark yet,” she said, quoting a song she’d heard on the radio, “but it’s getting there.”
Rhonda had hardly made off with her short stories tucked into their Vintage Reads bag when Lewis Redding slunk in, head down, like a whipped puppy. He looked as if he’d been tossed out of a bar and slept it off in the rain. The púca gleaned enough of the preacher’s disheveled thought to know he’d not been in a bar and hadn’t been rained on but had stayed awake all night emptying a bottle of something he hadn’t tasted in thirty years.
“You must’ve had to go all the way to Shelton Crossing to buy that poison from somebody who didn’t know you,” the bookseller said softly.
Lewis didn’t try to deny what was apparently obvious to somebody he was barely acquainted with. He coughed, and before he coughed again, rasped, “I need a Bible.” He didn’t mention that the night before, at the depths of his drunken rage, he fed to his woodstove the Bible his wife Marcie had given him at his ordination.
“We have a good selection,” AbiWendl said, “English, German, French, Japanese. I think we even have a couple of New Testaments in Greek and Cherokee back there somewhere.”
Lewis groped within himself for his habitual anger but in his depleted state couldn’t find it, “I mean a real Bible,” he muttered. “You got King James?”
The Bible was in AbiWendl’s hand before Lewis saw her reach for it. “This’ll do for your need, Preacher,” she said, placing the Bible on the counter in front of him. “Only this time, read it from your broken heart.”
Lewis fumbled in his pocket, pushed his plastic across the counter. “I ain’t a preacher any more,” almost a whisper, “just an unwashed sinner like the rest of youns.”
AbiWendl slid Lewis’ credit card back across the counter, bagged his Bible and handed it to him, “That’s a good start, brother Lewis,” she said with a smile he would see again behind his eyes when he lay himself down to sleep that night.
The bookseller was tallying her receipts for the day when the door of Vintage Reads opened wide enough to accommodate his considerable girth and Ned Baskin walked in, wiping perspiration from his forehead with a checkered handkerchief although the day was far from hot.
“Hello, Mayor,” AbiWendl said brightly. “What’s up?”
Ignoring her question, Baskin said, “Drovers Gap is the only town I know where a body can walk uphill both ways.”
“Would you rather do your mayoring in some big city down east where it’s all flat?”
“Please, no,” said the mayor. “Drovers Gap is big enough for me. Besides, I figure the Lord loved folk around here best.”
“How do you figure that?” AbiWendll asked, though she knew what was coming.
“Down east, The Creator gave them just enough ground to cover the place, but here, He piled it up in great heaps.”
“Generosity is where we find it, I suppose,” murmured the bookseller. “Should I give you a book, or do you want to buy one?”
“I got more reading than I can do with reports and petitions,” the mayor sighed. “No, Abigail, I came to tell you the commissioners met last night and voted to turn down your building application for an addition to Hemlock Cottage. You’ll get a notice in the mail, but I wanted to tell you friendly.”
“That hardly seems reasonable, considering they just approved a permit for that mess across the street from me.”
“Well, that’s the thing. Zoning that side of Main is going to be changed from mixed-use to commercial. Since your property will remain in the historic district . . .” Ned’s voice trailed off. Abigail nodded, left the mayor dangling from his silence. She knew that two of the commissioners, a builder and a property developer applied to put up a mini-mall full of touristy shops and had spread around money and favors to facilitate the zoning change. “I reckon I’ll have to make do as I am then, Mayor,” she said.
Ned wiped his face again with his soggy handkerchief. “Well, my vote counted for you, Abigail,” he said. “You could get approval for anything that doesn’t change the footprint of the building or alter the outside appearance. I’m sorry.” The mayor sounded mostly sincere. “I hope you don’t blame me for this.”
AbiWendl laughed. “Oh there’s plenty of blame going around, Ned. I won’t assign you more than your share.”
“We’re still friends, then?” Baskin ventured hopefully, extending his hand across the counter.
The púcawoman took it. “I’m a friend to the world,” she said, with a smile that could rout an army.
