Now, because Ben Wosznik’s dog has wandered up to sniff his leg, Reverend Clegg pats Rocky’s head and asks, “Do you folks know how Rocky here got his name? Brother Ben told me only today. The dog’s real name is Rockdust, for, as Ben says, he and his brother wanted to name man’s best friend after a miner’s best friend.” The dog wags its tail. It is almost as if it has known its cue. “It is rockdust that is spread in coalmines to prevent explosions, and had Rocky’s namesake been in sufficient evidence five years ago, we might still have Frank Wosznik and our beloved Ely Collins among us!” There are moans amongst the worshippers in the darkening evening, and some tears. Reverend Clegg’s eyes begin to water, and Debra, watching Clara and Elaine, feels her own throat tighten up. “Oh, I tell you, that was a dreadful night! That disaster that struck Old Number Nine! So many good decent hardworking Christian men died and died so young! But from that tomb, in the words of our ‘White Bird’ hymn, came a message of gladness, a message of gladness, though its author, so much loved and revered by us all, had passed to his reward. ‘Hark ye ever to the White Bird in your hearts,’ his message said, ‘and we shall all stand together before the Lord!’” Elaine is as pale as her limp tunic, though her ears seem flushed, her dry-eyed gaze fixed on some far horizon. Clara is worried about her daughter, and after telling Debra a little about the scenes on the Mount with the Baxter boy five years ago and their secretive correspondence ever since, has asked her, as an experienced counselor for troubled teenagers, to try to draw her out, but so far the child has shied away from any attempt to befriend her. Elaine does her work about the camp — setting tables and washing dishes, emptying the new trash bins, weeding, sometimes minding the little ones — in more or less utter silence, her distant stare unsettling. She is so ardent a believer it is almost frightening, and it is maybe that intensity her more practical mother cannot quite understand.
“Oh, God’s ways are surely inscrutable, my friends. Out of the horror of that black night, that incomprehensible tragedy in the depths of the scorched earth, has emerged a transcendent vision and a stirring prophecy, one destined to shake the world! For it is the truth, and the truth is world-shaking! Just as the Holy Spirit was pleased to dwell in Jesus, so did it take up residence in that holy man Ely Collins, bringing to all of us, through him, the White Bird vision, and then, upon Brother Ely’s cruel death, the Spirit passed on into that disaster’s sole survivor, Ely Collins’ own underground workmate, our Prophet Giovanni Bruno. The Chosen One. In Brother Giovanni, the Spirit worked, as we know, a most marvelous transformation, turning a quiet solitary Roman Catholic coalminer into the prophetic leader of a great evangelical movement, awakening deep within the miner’s heart an unforeseen profundity, a remarkable visionary sensibility. It was our own Ely Collins who perceived this spiritual potential in Brother Giovanni. We know that the poor man had been taunted and abused by his fellow religionists, for a prophet, as is well known, is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house, and we know that he had been ruthlessly driven from his church for standing up against the priesthood, just as Jesus had stood up against the Sadducees, and it was Brother Ely, we know, who took him under his wing and sheltered him and nurtured his soul. And to what wondrous effect! In the words of Brother Ben’s hymn, my friends: Think of Moses, discovered in a river! Think of Jesus, a carpenter’s son! Think of Bruno, a humble coalminer! ’Tis the poor by whom God’s battles are won!” Whereupon — amid the cries of “Amen!” and “Yes, Lord!”—the gathered Followers, arms raised and waving, break spontaneously into another chorus of the song…
“So, hark ye to the White Bird of Glory!
Oh yes, hark ye to the White Bird of Grace!
We shall gather at the Mount of Redemption
To meet our dear Lord there face to face!”
Debra’s arms are also raised and waving, she is singing, tears are streaming down her cheeks, she doesn’t know why but it happens all the time now, it’s as though for the moment the Spirit is lodged in her own heart, and she is no longer the camp director, she is only a humble believer, part of God’s company, God’s glorious company, it’s all so vivid and real. “Yes, Lord!” she cries out. She wants this. “Amen!” she says. And yet at the same time she is watching herself and questioning herself, feeling a stranger even to herself, so she knows she is still not saved.
“Oh yes, how well I remember him and all that happened in that historic time! For, as you all know, I was here, yes, I was here and blessed to be a witness to all that transpired on that stormy Day of Redemption and the awful night before, the Night of the Sacrifice, which haunts me still. As you all know, my dear wife Emma was taken, over there on the Mount of Redemption, God rest her pious Christian soul, taken like the young girl Marcella Bruno, she was redeemed, they were redeemed, redeemed on the Day of Redemption, their souls were transported straight up to Heaven, leaving the rest of us poor sinners here on earth, pining to join them in God’s Heavenly kingdom. For the days that remain to us, God in his great compassion brought me my dear Betty, one of our First Followers who has devoted her life to our calling and who is here with us tonight. God bless her. Yes, I was here. I was here at that remarkable infolding of the faithful at the home of the Prophet on the eve of the Day of Redemption, summoned, as were all, by the Spirit. I was struck by the imposing nobility of our Prophet, by his august silence, his sober poise, his simple but powerful gestures. Not the gestures of a mere coalminer, but those of a being inhabited by the divine. You have all seen his portraits and his photographs — there is a large one hanging in there in the Meeting Hall — wherein one can see at a glance that here was a holy man, a good man, an inspired man, a genuine vessel of the Lord. I say ‘was.’ Now, some of you may not know this, for I have only learned of it today, but our beloved Prophet has suffered the fate of so many prophets and saints before him. He has been ruthlessly executed by his captors, and by that element for which we celebrate his new New Covenant — by light itself! Probably shortly after his capture, though we have until now been denied the knowledge of it. Yes, he is gone — that’s right! pray for him! I hear you! God bless him! — confirming what many of us had suspected all along, for his going began that night, that day, over there on the Mount of Redemption, he seemed already half-transported. I was here. I was here when the fateful decision was taken to visit the Mount, the night before, to acquaint ourselves with it for the great day to follow. Was this a decision we made, or did God make it for us? I was in that room when Sister Clara, as though herself possessed by the Holy Spirit, rose to declare: ‘We go to the Mount of Redemption, not to die, but to act! The Kingdom is ours! It awaits us on the Mount of Redemption!’ Oh, how moved we were by this great lady’s majestic bearing and the depth of her faith, echoing her dear husband Ely, for whom we all mourned! You have all read about this in our church pamphlets. And I was there, over there on the Mount that Saturday night, as we all gathered around a great fire and sang and prayed and confessed our new commitment. I was there as the Prophet strode among us in his flowing white tunic, tall and bearded as Jesus was bearded and manifesting a strength heretofore unseen, his dark cavernous eyes aglitter with firelight, his hand raised in solemn benediction, nodding from time to time as if to say, Yea, in thee I am well pleased! It was as if Christ were growing in him, filling him up with his presence. I was there when someone cried that there were lights on the mine road and we extinguished the fire and rushed to our cars and — and — and — oh, my friends, I can barely continue! Forgive me! But I was there, there in the ditch beside the old mine road which you can see from up there on Inspiration Point, standing there over the dying girl, the saintly sister of our Prophet, who had been fasting and seemed dreadfully frail, lying there — I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I cannot hold back the tears! — lying there in the wildly crisscrossing headlamps of wrecked cars, her little body in its white tunic broken and bleeding, yet somehow at peace, yes, at peace, we all saw that, and on the breast of her tunic, here where the cross in the circle is embroidered, a heart-shaped bloodstain — oh, God save us! God save us all and bless the soul of our beloved Sister Marcella Bruno! Amen! Amen! I was there. I was there when foe embraced foe and all enmity ceased and we became one unified and universal movement, God be praised! And I was there, my friends, oh I hear you, I was there at the Prophet’s house at dawn the next morning, none of us had slept, when that heartbroken man of God, his strength failing him, rose up out of his grief and commanded us to baptize with light, the seventh of his famous seven words, and we did that, I was baptized by the Prophet himself, we all were. He was never to utter another word, for he had already, choosing his words one by one as if mining them from his very depths or as if extracting them from the beyond, said all that was to be said. We all marched out barefoot to the Mount and there began the day with which you are all so familiar.”