Mary self-consciously ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t realize that. I mean, I saw Bernadette—”
“Oh, Bernadette’s sort of… well, people look the other way with her. But she’s the best there is for a nurse or midwife.”
A midwife? Mary wondered how much experience Bernadette could have acquired at that. “You were telling me about your arm….”
Nehemiah settled back in his chair. “Well, the trouble was, when I cut my hand so bad we were five days away from home. The Brothers with me did what they could, but it got infected. By the time we got back, I couldn’t walk, couldn’t even hold myself up on a horse. My arm was all swollen up and turning dark. Hurt like hell, too. Excuse the language, but I can’t believe Satan’s got much worse to offer. The Doctor said gangrene had set in. The only way he could save me was to amputate, and he wasn’t real sure I’d live through it. But I did, and it was a miracle. The Doctor took off the arm, and I didn’t feel a thing. Well, I did afterward while it was healing up, but I didn’t mind that.”
Mary stared at him. “You mean the Doctor used an anesthetic?”
“Yes. Not the kind they had in hospitals before Armageddon. The Doctor kept a supply of medicines like that, but he said most of them didn’t last. But he had the poppy. We grow them in the greenhouse. The Doctor says the poppy was put on Earth to ease suffering, but sinners made it the scourge of generations. Well, I can testify that the way the Doctor used it was God’s way. He saved my life.” A long sigh, then: “He’s a saint, the Doctor. He’s our rock, just like the Apostle Peter.”
Luke had described the Doctor in nearly the same words.
Mary disciplined her features to betray none of her skepticism. A saint? Certainly a man of dazzling presence, a man to command attention, and perhaps awe.
The evening prayer service had been, more than anything else she experienced today, revealing. All the Flock had crowded into the candlelit sanctuary, and the air was charged with the array of their odors and the astringent tang of the cedar logs of which the church was built. Mary wondered why the Doctor asked Luke to speak before, rather than after, the service. She listened to Luke tell the story of his journey and was only surprised that he said so little about Amarna. “A farm where I was taken in when I was sick and nursed to health by Sister Mary and the old woman who worked the farm with her.” That was all. Old woman. Damn him. Yet Mary was relieved that he didn’t try to explain Rachel to these people. Nor did he mention the books.
When Luke concluded his story, the Doctor ascended to the pulpit, and the service began in earnest. First, the music, with Sister Judith at the pump organ, the Flock singing like a trained chorus fifty voices strong in three-part harmony. Some of the hymns were familiar, like “Bringing in the Sheaves,” but most she had never heard. She didn’t care. It had been so long since she’d heard music, she didn’t notice the words, only the melodies, the harmonies, the rhythms.
When she was nearly limp with the power of the music, the Doctor began his sermon, taking his text from the Book of Ruth in honor of Luke’s return with his bride-to-be. That the story wasn’t particularly appropriate didn’t seem to concern him. He built on it a lesson in faith, and for a solid hour urged the Flock to feats of faith for the sake of eloquently vague glory, threatened them as a consequence of failure of faith with an equally eloquent—and intensely specific—hell. His resonant voice boomed in the shadowed confines of the church, and the climax was wringing. All it lacked was a thunder of applause. Instead, he took his accolades in the form of a final exultant hymn, “Give to the Winds Thy Fears.”
It was only then that Mary understood why the Doctor had let Luke speak first. It was pure theatre. He intended to provide the climax of the evening’s “entertainment.”
Nehemiah rose to put a piece of wood on the fire. The flames probed around the wedge of fir, seeking a foothold.
Mary asked, “Is he really a saint?”
“The Doctor?” Nehemiah sank stiffly into his chair. “Well, I don’t know. He’s not… perfect. Far as I know, there’s only been one perfect man to walk this Earth: the Lord Jesus.”
“But he wasn’t just a man, was he?”
“I guess that’s why He was perfect. The Doctor’s a man. He’s not perfect. But I’ve never met a man quite like him.”
“Neither have I.” Mary stared into the flames and remembered fires in the hearth at Amarna, wondered if Rachel were at this moment gazing into another fire.
No. Don’t dwell on that, on Rachel.
“Brother Nehemiah, didn’t Enid say you were one of the charter members of the Ark?”
He beamed proudly. “I sure was. I knew the Doctor when he was in Portland. Went to the same church, so to speak—his little church on skid road. I was working for the Social Services Division. Gave that up when I saw I could do more good working with the Doctor and the Lord than for the government. Me and my wife and my sister and her husband all came to Canaan Valley with the Doctor and helped build the Ark. Both Adam senior and I were chosen as Elders.”
“You’re an Elder?”
“Yes. I mean, I was an Elder—one of the only three original Elders to live through the Long Winter.”
Mary hesitated, puzzled. “Then you… you were Elder of this household before Luke came home.”
“Well, yes, I was.”
“Does it bother you to have Luke step into your place like that?”
Nehemiah laughed softly. “No, it doesn’t bother me. Told the Doctor that today. Luke, too. Besides, there’s not a lot for the Elders to do anymore. Everybody here pretty much knows what has to be done and when. And if they don’t—well, the Doctor can usually handle it.”
As he handled the replacement of an Elder, Mary thought. That had been done today with no more than a word from the Doctor.
Nehemiah pulled in a deep breath. “Yes, I’m stepping down now, and like the Doctor says, it’s time. And only right. Luke’s going to take the Doctor’s place, probably, sooner or later. We all know that.”
Luke take the Doctor’s place? Mary tried to imagine Luke in the pulpit urging the Flock to righteousness, threatening them with an agonizing hell. She tried to imagine Luke in the role of a saint.
She said, “But that’s bound to be a long time in the future.”
“Maybe. We never know what the Lord has in store for us. The Doctor’s had some trouble with his heart lately. Bernadette’s always boiling up foxglove for him. Not that he can’t work with the best of us, long and hard. Still, you never know. Got to look to the future.”
Mary wondered how much future Nehemiah foresaw if he, like the Doctor, believed the second coming of Christ was imminent. But she hadn’t decided how to word that delicate question, when Nehemiah stretched and came to his feet. “Well, I’d best get back to bed. The cows’ll be waiting early on for milking.”
She looked up at him. “I enjoyed talking to you, Brother Nehemiah.”
“I enjoyed it, too. You’ll be a blessing for Luke and for the Flock. Good night, Sister Mary.” And with that he lumbered away down the hall. She heard the latch on his door click.
Mary looked around into the silent shadows and knew she should go to bed, too, should try to sleep. But she couldn’t face that empty bed yet. She put another piece of wood on the fire and watched the flames whorling around it, listened to their rush and crackle, and thought about saints.
The wedge of wood was charred black, checkered in squares with incandescent edges, when she heard the creak of footsteps behind her. She turned, only to be disappointed again. It wasn’t Luke.