But then Deacon steps out of a house trailer, clutching by the scruff a bedraggled woman looking too tired and beat up to complain. “Look what I found,” he shouts, grinning in his beard, and he lifts her off the ground like shot game. “We ain’t got time for that,” Brainerd says, and Deac says: “No, not now. I was thinking hostage.” The others nod at that, but Houndawg figures she’d be more trouble than she’s worth. Most women are. Better to tie her to a tree before setting the place alight. He’s about to say so when a powerful big-bellied man with a gray burr around his puffy ears stumbles out of the trailer, still pulling his pants up. Must have been in the can. Deacon drops the woman and pulls a knife, as the fat man, faster than he looks, leaps forward and throws his arms around the Deac in a bear hug. Not easy to do. Deacon’s a big man, too. They all unsheathe their blades and advance on the two of them, but the Kid holds his hands up to stop them, a dry hard grimace on his face. He seems fascinated by the sight of the two huge men locked in their fierce embrace, Deacon’s knife deep in the other man’s meaty back but, arms pinned, unable to pull it out and strike again. Like hulking giants in a death dance. Something the Kid may have seen in one of his superhero comics, acted out now before his eyes. Though in the strip the pants of one of them probably wasn’t around his ankles, his hairy butt framed by unbuttoned trapdoor longjohns. There is a long quiet moment broken only by soft wheezing grunts as Deacon slowly presses back against the man’s grip, the Brunist tattoo on Deac’s shoulder with its skull and lightning bolt seeming to bulge and tremble as if about to pop. It’s like time itself is slowing down and so motionless are they, eyes squeezed shut, they seem almost to have fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Houndawg, leaning against a tree not to fall over, is taut, almost breathless, stuttering a bit in the brainpan himself. Deacon, feet spread and pushing against the earth as if to stop its turning slowly leans forward, trying to tumble his opponent to the ground, but then blood begins to leak from Deacon’s mouth, nose, eyes, and there is a crackling sound. The Kid lurches forward, they all do, except for Houndawg, driving their knives into the longjohnned fat man over and over, turning white to crimson, Brainerd finally yanking the man’s head back from behind and slicing his thick white throat. Too late for Deacon, whose bleeding eyes spring open at the end as though to witness their avenging. Teresita turns on the sadsack woman and is about to plunge her blade in her when Brainerd grabs her arm. “Leave her be, girl,” he says, taking the woman by the hair and hauling her to her feet. “I kin use her.”
“Blessed are the fantasists for they shall not be dismayed by oblivion!” the man who calls himself Jesus is declaring.
“Yea, Lord, save us from oblivion!”
“But damned are they who project their mad fantasies upon others!”
“Is it a parable, Lord?”
“It’s a prophecy!”
“That’s crazy! Don’t listen to him!” Angry shouts, heard now as then, so long ago, growing ever fiercer, commingled with the wails of woe and worship, a cacophony of dissent and fervent prayer and threat and lament, and also the rackety flapping of the helicopters overhead, with which Jesus did not have to contend in his own time.
The rising anger might have turned to violence did not the man, swarmed about by small children as though costumed by them, look so uncannily like the image of Christ on their Sunday morning church programs, and had not Reverend Baxter — who at such a moment would ordinarily be railing at full throat against false prophets and other deceptive abominations of the sinful world — fallen, while gazing upon the intruder, into a dark contemplative silence, as if stilled by the ominous workings of the day; for, as he declared it would be, so it is, if what is seen can be believed. He does not believe it (who is this fool?), but he distrusts his disbelief. The announced hour of fulfillment—he has announced it! — is this it then? Is this He? He who will create a new Heaven and a new earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come? He can’t be! And yet, for such are the mysterious workings of the Lord, he — He? — can. There is also the alarming apocalyptic testimony of those who have fled West Condon. No one can doubt the muffled explosions, the smoke billowing over the town, the hovering helicopters (are they firing rockets?), the wild chorus of sirens over there getting louder. Some say they have seen bodies rising into the sky, though none can be seen from here. Should they flee while they still can? Or is the same thing happening all over the world? Many have been urging a return to the sanctuary of the camp. But is it sanctuary or entrapment? They ask this Jesus who has appeared before them. He only smiles with glittering eyes and says: “There is no sanctuary!” Which is exactly what Abner would have said himself.
In the Meeting Hall below, when Abner called for this Holy March, he felt a surge of conviction more powerful than he’d ever felt before, and it’s almost as though that very certainty has provoked its contrary. Torn between yea, yea and nay, nay. Abner is most himself when most righteously enraged, and as they climbed up here, that rage, which served him well in the camp lodge, began to evaporate under the brightening sun, giving way to a kind of awed anticipation. Has God spoken through him, as he so often feels He has? If so, is he ready? Can he be, assailed by doubt? He felt the first presentiments of this strange bafflement of mood when they arrived down on the mine road at the place where he struck and killed the girl that terrible night. He seemed for a moment to see her there or to feel at least her presence, and the road seemed to blacken under his feet, and he knelt to pray. Her shattered face against the windshield scrimmed his mind, hanging like a transparent curtain against the thinning clouds when he looked up. He thought that climbing the hill away from the road would free him of her, but she has risen with him, haunts him still. Young Rector has taught him to trust these mysterious impressions as fleeting experiences of the real world beyond the corrupted one of our senses, and he has learned to trust the boy; he has been so right about so many things, and more loyal to Abner than his own family. He is less certain about the peculiar bug-eyed orphan at his side, even if he is one of the twelve First Followers; there is something not right about him. But young Rector has assured him that the boy is subject to a kind of divine madness, which makes him particularly receptive to holy visions. “Illuminations.” Glimpses beyond the veil. Where there is no dark and all is light.
Light.
And so Abner finds his voice. “Ye are the light of the world! You do not light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light unto the world!” he declares, though without his usual vehemence, hearing himself somehow echoing himself, and the man who says he is Jesus replies: “Blessed are they who put their light under a bushel for they shall ignite a great conflagration!” Whereupon the very mention of fire sets everyone on the sacred Mount of Redemption off again.