Salvage (28 page)

Jo was watching for his reaction.

"What is this?" he asked her.

"Crouch recorded all of his sermons when he rehearsed them. This one is where—" She shrugged. "Just listen."

"—the mighty Mushkoweban, awash in moonlight—" Crouch corrected himself. "A
jewel
in moonlight. And as I knelt there in the dirt, garments filthy with my own impudence, my
hubris
. For it was certainly the sin of Pride which put me on the shore that night, brothers and sisters, I confess this to you right here and now." He cleared his throat. A tiny scratch of pen on paper. "And as I knelt there, I noticed the water wasn't making the splishy-splashy sounds you and I have grown accustomed to, brothers and sisters. The water was
speaking to me
."

"It's his burning bush story," Owen said.

Nodding, Jo said, "
Listen
."

"—it was speaking my name. 'Crouch!' it said. 'Crouch! Crouch!' And at first I thought, 'I must be mad.' Isn't that what they call me out there in the big bad world? The Mad Preacher? Yes, yes," he calmed his imagined defenders. "I'm no stranger to the epithets. I may be a sinner like the rest of us, but willful ignorance is not my sin of choice. I thought I must be mad. Firstly, to wander out to the river in the dead of night, and then to hear voices in the waterfall calling out my name! I put myself in their shoes for a moment, the men and women who curse me as Noah was cursed in his time, or Lot and his wife, and I thought to myself, 'It's no wonder they call me a lunatic!' And yet where the ungodly trusts not his eyes, and turns away his ears, the holy man instead must
listen
. Don't we all yearn to hear the voice of God, our Creator? So I listened, brothers and sisters. I opened up my heart, and the Lord filled me with the Word.

"I said to Him,
I am here
!"

Owen felt his heartbeat quicken, hearing his sister's words in Crouch's voice.

"And God said unto me—" Crouch paused. "I know that, Woodrow. I'm getting to that part now."

Jo stopped the tape, looking up at Owen expectantly.

"
Woodrow!
" Owen said. "He was there in the room with him. He was telling him what to say!"

"I didn't hear his voice," Jo said. "Did you?"

She rewound the tape, pushed play.

"—filled me with the Word. I said to Him, 'I am here!'" Jo leaned close and cranked the volume as high as it would go. Tape hiss filled the air, as loud as a storm in the trees. Crouch's voice boomed, rattling the photos of Jo and her parents on the bookshelf: "AND GOD SAID UNTO ME—"

For a moment there was nothing. Owen and Jo moved close to the tape player, straining to hear through the hiss, the click and whir of the spools. Suddenly a strange, alien muttering made Jo flinch back from the machine, a sound like unintelligible, muffled words spoken through a loudspeaker.

"I KNOW THAT, WOODROW."

Jo reached out, stretching an arm toward the cassette player as if she were afraid to go near, and stopped the tape.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," she said, her eyes widened in fear. "Maybe he was talking to Woodrow over the phone?"

"Maybe." Crouch could just as easily have been speaking to him from the next room. "Maybe it was God speaking to him," he said jokingly.

Jo flashed him a look, turned the volume down, and set the tape whirring again.

"And God said unto me, 'I have seen the misery of My people in your village, and I am concerned about their suffering.' These, you may recall, are the
very same words
God spoke to Moses through the burning bush. God does not love suffering, people, contrary to what the unbelievers would have you think. He feels the suffering of
a single person
as much as He feels that of
an entire people
. That is the lesson of Job in the land of Uz. It was not a test of Job's faith in
Him
, but a testament to
God's own love for Man
.

"There's no question Job was pious," Crouch said, to his imagined parishioners. "A little holier than thou—we can agree on that, can't we?" He chuckled softly, as he if he were laughing along with his congregation. "
Each morning
Job sacrificed a burnt offering for each one of his children—if we count them up, it was
ten
burnt offerings
every single day
—in the
vainglorious
belief that his
children
might not be as holy as their father, and that they may have
cursed
God's name in the night. This was an affront to God, I tell you—this insinuation!"

He paused a moment, cleared his throat.

"But never mind that. Biblical scholars would have you believe the misery set upon Job was at the behest of the Lord, though if you remember, God said to Satan, 'Behold, all that
he
(he, meaning Job) all that
he
hath is in
thy
power; only upon himself put not forth
thine
hand.'
Thy
and
thine
. Well, it's clear enough to me the Lord is giving instructions to Satan, which means it was
Satan
, not God, who
slaughtered
Job's livestock, who
murdered
his children. It is the
Adversary himself
who afflicted Job with boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head!"

That inhuman muttering filled the next pause.

"Yes, I'm aware of that. Would you let me continue?" Another pause. "Yet Job… blames God. He accuses God of having
mercy
for evil men, yet no pity for the
devout
, such as himself. Job's friends
implore
him to confess his sins. God would not punish a righteous man unjustly, they tell him. But Job persists. He argues his own innocence. He pleads his case. He
begs
the Lord—in some, let's face it, rather flowery speech—to
erase
his birth from history
. To
cast
him into the
darkness
!

"In the meantime, God seems to have put aside his little deal with Satan, at least until pious Job starts finding fault in Creation itself." He chuckled softly. "And the Lord so loveth Job that He spoke to him through the whirlwind, justifying
His work
to Job, all the while under the pretense of
challenging
Job for his insolence!

"The Lord then proceeds to punish Eliphaz, Bidlad, Zophar and Elihu for
daring
to question Job's critique of His Good Work. He punishes
them
for defending
Him
. He then
doubles
Job's fortunes and bestows upon him new, ever more beautiful daughters to replace those children Satan had murdered. All of this Job receives for
daring
to challenge the Lord's wisdom.

"What I'm saying to you, friends, is that God is forgiving. God is
understanding
. He sees our despair, yours and mine, and like Moses at the burning bush, like Job and the whirlwind, He spoke to
me
through that waterfall—the
very instrument
of our impending ruin. But from it… He offered salvation for our Ministry. 'The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me,' the Lord said—'"

As if on cue, a baby began to cry in the background. "Lord help us," Crouch cursed under his breath. "Can't I get a moment's
peace
?"

The recording ended suddenly, leaving only the hiss of blank tape. After a moment, Jo pressed the stop button.

"'The firstborn son you shall give to Me,'" Owen repeated. "I'm his firstborn son. His only son, as far as I know. If he was planning to—to
sacrifice
me…" He shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach, to his
soul
, unable to believe his own father, as sick as he was, had meant to murder him to save their church.

The old man was sicker than you thought, Lori. And he's still trying to finish the job, even now. Does he actually believe God will part the water? Does he still think there's a chance
?

Owen answered himself aloud: "He died believing my death would spare them. They probably believed it right up to the end, that if my mother and I had stayed, if he'd gone through with the sacrifice… God would have spared the church."

"You want to know what I think?" Jo offered. "I think Everett Crouch was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and instead of medication, Peace Falls gave him a pulpit. It's one of history's most flammable combinations: power and paranoia. They go together like Christian terrorists and abortion clinics."

Owen considered it. "I just don't understand why no one noticed until it was too late."

"Can
you
tell the difference between old-fashioned religious fervor and a schizophrenic's religious preoccupation? Before it becomes dangerous, I mean." She waited for his reply. When none came, she continued, "I mean, think about it for a second. There's a giant angry man in the sky who created
everything
, and lets us do whatever we want. But if we don't fear him, he'll send us to a lake of fire for
allll
eternity. Imagine somebody telling you this, if you'd never heard anything about God before. Do you think you'd look up in the sky and tremble? Or would you dismiss it as the ramblings of a madman?"

"Good point, I guess," Owen said.

"George W. Bush said God
told
him to end Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq," she said. "Pope Benedict said God told him to quit being the Pope and devote his life to prayer. Now are we meant to believe God
literally
spoke to them? Why would God ignore extreme poverty, rape, torture, terrorism, one environmental catastrophe after another… and then give His undivided attention to a couple of right wing megalomaniacs?"

"You're starting to sound a bit like Job," Owen said.

"Maybe that's because, if God exists,
Job was right
." There was fire in the dark pits of her eyes. "
That's
why God gave everything back to him—along with some new daughters who were even prettier than the ones he'd had before, but let's not even get into that. Maybe God didn't do all that because He
loved
Job, but because God realized what He'd done to Job was the biggest of all dick moves."

Owen grunted in agreement.

"Anyway, we've gotten way off topic," Jo said. "All I know for sure is that God didn't speak to Crouch through the waterfall that night or any night.
Crouch
spoke to Crouch.
In his own mind
."

"Or this Brother Woodrow. You heard the voice on the tape."

"I heard
something
. Whether it was a voice or not, I don't know."

"Whatever it was, all this stuff only cements what I said earlier. It's me he wants. Lori knew it all along. He's been following me my whole life.
Haunting
me. I've tried to ignore him, to push him away, but if I just… maybe he'll leave the rest of you alone, if I just let him
take
me."

Jo fell back from her knees, dropping down on her butt with her back against the sofa. "Don't say that, Owen. There are other ways. There
has
to be another way."

"What if there aren't?"

"Can't we at least
try
? What if we can—I don't know, what if we can reunite him with Woodrow?"

"What makes you think that would help?" Owen only realized he'd snapped at Jo when her mouth closed hard. "Sorry," he said. "The problem is, we'd have to find him first. And there's no telling if that would even work. I'm the one he wants, not Woodrow. I have to go back down there. I have to find
them
."

"Then I'm coming with you," she said, the look in her eyes suggesting devotion—or a death wish.

He nodded. She would follow him whether he wanted her to or not, he knew that. Just as he used to follow Lori around, as if she'd been the older sibling, there would be no stopping Jo.

1

TWO LOVERS STOOD
side-by-side on the dock at Fisherman's Wharf, dressed in their diving gear. Jo turned to him. "Are we crazy, Owen?"

"This is the only way," he said.

"No, I mean, are we
crazy
? Maybe all of this is just a bunch of awful coincidences. Maybe that church down there drove the whole town nuts, and we're the only ones stupid enough to believe our own eyes."

"What happened to the girl who practically dragged me into the water last night?" he said.

Her shoulders drooped. "Maybe a part of me hoped they would take us, the way they took my parents," she said. "It'd be a pretty poetic death, as far as deaths go, don't you think?"

"Yeah," he said. "Real Romeo and Juliet."

"
All I know
is death, Owen. At least you had your mother and sister. I had no one. I
have
no one."

Owen draped an arm over her waist. "You've got me now," he told her. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

Her voice was small when she said, "You mean that?"

He nodded. She looked up, met his eyes, and kissed his lips. A bead of saliva stretched from her mouth to his as she pulled away. He wiped it from her lips with his thumb, and she smiled at the easy tenderness of the gesture.

"Are you ready?" he asked her.

"I guess I've been preparing for this dive almost my whole life, so I should be." She shrugged. "If we don't make it out of this alive, I want you to know…" She started to speak, then hesitated. Finally, it came out in a rush. "I could love you again, if that's what you want."

Owen smiled at the thought of it. He couldn't remember if he'd ever really loved anyone, not even Allison, whom he'd been with the longest—or if she'd even loved him. Their relationship, the two or three years or so it had lasted, had been one of convenience. Lori had introduced them at a party, and they'd fallen into bed together, fallen into step with each other. They'd had many of the same interests, architecture being one of the main ones, but their lives had eventually drifted apart. "I guess, maybe, I could love you, too," he said.