The Healer (17 page)

“Yes. Well.” The Reverend glanced at Elsa Trotter, then back at Payne. “Perhaps you and the boy can share.”

“Share?”

“Yes. You bring the bread, he the water. Or vice versa. I'm sure his mother would be more than happy to supply the bread.”

Payne didn't want to share. He wanted to grab the bread and throw it. He wanted to toss the water on the ground.

“All right,” he said. “I'll share.”

It didn't last. Payne's pride got the better of him, and at length he gave up and relinquished his job to the usurper. A week after
that, he missed his first service ever. Then he missed another. Three full weeks went by before he could bring himself to return.

It was late summer. The day was already hot (though not as hot as it had been a month before), and waves of heat had begun to radiate off the sunlit cliffs at the top of the gorge. They distorted the air, creating an illusion of softness to the sharp rock, an inviting mirage that put Payne in mind of the story that the father had told his son about the Devil and his deceit. He wondered if he'd been wrong to act the way he had, spurning the church. Certainly pride had been involved, and he wondered if it was justified—if pride was ever justified—or if it was the Devil's voice. Reverend Meeks spoke about the Fallen Angel, and he spoke about temptation, but he rarely spoke directly about the Devil, and when he did, he never depicted him as a monster but more a creature, like every man, of faults, who often took the guise of an extremely persuasive and untrustworthy friend. After being slighted, Payne had concluded that the Devil had taken up residence in Reverend Meeks, but since then he'd been thinking. It did no good to bear a grudge, and he'd been practicing tolerance, which came naturally, and forgiveness, which did not, and had made sufficient progress that he felt safe—safe enough, at any rate—in returning.

The reading that day was from the Song of Stilton again. This time it concerned the snake. It came in many forms and disguises, the snake, and how was one to know its faces, and to recognize which were true and which were false? Sometimes it was hideous and frightening, sometimes so beautiful the heart ached. Was one to shun the beauty? Fight one's fear and embrace the ugliness? How was one to choose between right and wrong?

The answer, the lesson, was to look into one's heart and soul, because that is where the Author lived. There, and in every corpuscle, and in every mote and every atom. He lived in every mystery and every hope, everything contained in the world and everything beyond it, seen and unseen and unimagined. And He was speaking all the time,
preaching as it were, from the book that ran forward and backward, to the end and to the beginning of time, a book that was ever deepening. Sometimes His voice arrived in the form of a question, sometimes a commandment, sometimes a compliment, sometimes a rebuke. In His wisdom He sometimes asked for a sacrifice, but often He asked for nothing. One had to listen carefully to hear His words, and this took practice, for His voice was faint and whispery. Only rarely did it trumpet forth, just as only rarely could one ever hope to glimpse the living fire that was His face.

The Reverend paused, and the sun chose that moment to pierce the oval window high in the wall opposite the altar, sending its shafts of light in a slanting path downward. The beams struck the pulpit, reflecting off its burnished copper surface as though it were the sun itself, filling the church with a blinding, refulgent light. Payne had to shield his eyes, as did others. It took some minutes for the sun to move, and when it did, it shifted upward, so that now it was the Reverend who was blinded. For a second he didn't know what to do, except to shade his eyes, but then he seemed to come to some new understanding of the light and the moment, for he dropped his hands and raised his chin. The sun fell fully on him, and a look of pleasure, then wonder, slowly spread across his face. The lines of worry and failure that he'd worn so long seemed to melt away. He looked radiant, lit from outside and from within. A hush fell over the congregation. No one so much as breathed, bearing witness to the Reverend's rapture.

Somehow he concluded the service and afterward received the congregation in his altered state. Gradually, drawn by the flesh-and-blood handshakes and hearty congratulations of the flesh-and-blood people in the line, he returned to earth, so that by the time Payne reached him, he seemed more or less himself. Still, Payne felt at a loss for words. He wanted to ask the Reverend where he'd gone and what he'd seen and heard, but ended up simply thanking him. The Reverend accepted this modestly, replying (as he had already many times) that it
was he who had cause for thanks. But then he paused, and his expression changed, as though Payne had triggered something, and dropping his voice, he asked if he would mind staying.

When the church had emptied, the Reverend took a seat in a pew and invited Payne to join him. For a while he sat without speaking, head slightly bowed, hands folded in his lap. At length he cleared his throat.

“I have news. There's been an offer to restore the church. And not simply to restore it, but to revive it.”

“That's wonderful,” said Payne.

“There're several stipulations. A portion of the money is to go to cleaning up the neighborhood. Another portion, to security.” He paused. “A number of people mentioned that, security.”

“The money's coming from a group?”

“The money's being raised, but yes, a group is at the center. Some of our newer members have formed a steering committee. A few of the old guard have combined with them to make a generous pledge. There's been some spirited debate about the direction the church should take. And, I should add, whether I'm capable of leading it in that direction.”

“What direction is that?” asked Payne.

“As I said, our goal is to revitalize the church. To resurrect it, if you will. We want to give our membership the sense that when they step through our doors, they've stepped into a pertinent and useful conversation. Steeped in tradition, but also relevant to today. Timeless and at the same time timely. Physically, we intend to make the church a jewel again, as it was in its heyday, a focal point of both neighborhood and civic pride. We're not looking to be envied by anyone, but neither do we intend to give quarter to anyone either, be it a person or another house of worship. Not the Temple of the Elations, not the Dome Pechone, not the Cathedral Abolique. In the loyalty of our membership, in our appeal, and eventually in the influence we command, we intend to rival any and all.”

It was an impressive vision, although something in it, or in the Reverend's depiction of it, made Payne uneasy. In his own experience, principally with his brother Wyn, nothing good came of rivalries.

“It's an opportunity for you,” he told the Reverend, who acknowledged this. “As for being capable, I'm sure you are.”

“Yes. I believe I am. More importantly, they believe it, too.” He paused, drew a breath, then turned his attention from himself and his church to Payne. “Let me ask you a question. As a healer. Have you ever saved a life?”

Payne nodded.

“Have you ever lost one?”

He thought of the burned miner. The Reverend and the church had helped him see that he was not to blame for the man's death. “No. Not yet.”

“What would you do if you had to? If to save a hundred lives you were forced to lose one?”

He had never been faced with this and had therefore never asked himself the question. “I don't know.”

“Say there was some sort of epidemic, and there was a novel treatment that might effect a cure. But it needed testing first, and you knew ahead of time that the test would damage the person you tried it on. But you also knew that, with what you learned, you'd be able to halt the epidemic. Would you do it? Would you sacrifice a single person to save a hundred lives?”

“I'd try to save them all,” said Payne.

“Yes. Of course. I try to save each and every one I can, too. But that's not the question I'm asking. I'm asking is there any condition, any situation, where it's defensible to sacrifice the good of one for the good of many? And not just defensible, but justifiable, from a moral point of view?”

Payne wondered why the Reverend was asking him this question, when it was the Reverend himself to whom he looked for answers about right and wrong.

“I suppose you'd have to ask the one who's going to be sacrificed. At the very least, you'd have to get his permission.”

The Reverend mulled this over. “I don't think that would be quite sufficient. I think we'd want something more.”

“Like what?”

“I think he'd have to volunteer.”

Yes. That sounded right. Payne waited for the punch line, but the Reverend didn't deliver one. Instead, he fell silent.

They sat for a while without speaking. Payne grew restless. Something the Reverend had said gnawed at him.

“What do you mean, security?” he asked.

The Reverend nodded, as though he'd been waiting for this. Still, he took time to choose his words.

“Security means different things to different people. It's a delicate issue. In this case, unfortunately, it's one that involves you.”

“How? In what way?”

“Some of our members have expressed a certain tension, an uneasiness let's say, around you.”

“Who?” he asked.

The Reverend refused to say, except that it was not confined to one or two people.

This infuriated Payne. “What? I make them nervous? I frighten them?”

The Reverend sighed. “Both, I'm sad to say.”

“Why? On what basis?”

“You mean what do they say? Or what do I believe is really at issue?”

“What do they say?”

“There's a radical group that's been in the news lately.”

“What group?”

“A tesque group,” said the Reverend. “I don't recall the name, but they've made some charges and declarations that make people nervous. Some people, anyway.”

“But I'm not part of that group. I'm not part of any group. This is my group. This. The church.”

“Yes. It has been. As anyone who knows you knows. But these are people who haven't known that many tesques. Some of them have not known any. They tend to lump them all together. They jump to conclusions.”

“It's absurd to link me to some group I've never even heard of.”

“Of course it is. These people are unschooled and ignorant. In some ways they're like children.”

“They don't want me here?”

The Reverend sighed.

“It's me? I'm the one to be condemned?”

“It's shameful, I know. They need to be taught, which I fully intend to do.”

Payne was stunned. “Teach them by standing up for me. Tell them it's wrong, that you support me. Tell them you're my friend.”

“I am your friend. And as a friend, I'm telling you you won't be happy here. You won't be comfortable. Not right now. As a minister, a messenger, I promise to do all I can to work to change that. To engage these people's minds and consciences and souls. To teach them tolerance, which is what I've always taught. To dedicate myself to making this church all-inclusive, merciful and strong.”

“And then you'll take me back? Is that it?”

“Yes. I won't stop until that day comes.”

“Don't waste your breath,” said Payne. “I won't be coming back.”

The Reverend gave him a long look, then bowed his head. “As you wish.”

Several moments passed, and then the Reverend lifted his face, so full of sorrow and regret, and touched Payne's sleeve.

“I'm sorry. So very sorry. This is not what I foresaw or intended.”

“No?”

“No. Never.”

“I don't believe you.”

The Reverend sighed. “I'll keep you in my heart and in my prayers.”

Payne looked at him with daggers in his eyes. “Don't bother.”

It was the last he saw of the Reverend Meeks, though not of the Church For Giveness. In the following weeks he returned several times, drawn by a perverse need to add salt to the wound. Twice he crept by under cloak of darkness. Once he hid in the park across the street in broad daylight, watching with a knot in his stomach as scaffolding was raised around the church in preparation for its restoration. His final visit came on a day of worship. It was a deliberately reckless decision, and he was spotted almost instantly. It was the Trotter boy, the one who'd stolen his job. He pointed out the tesque who was hiding in the bushes to his mother. The news spread rapidly, and soon there was a small crowd of humans eying him from across the street. Heart pounding, he stepped out of the bushes so that they could see him clearly. He felt righteous, scared to death, defiant. One of the men took a step toward him, but Payne stood his ground, refusing to move. Seconds later, a woman took the man by the arm and pulled him away, and after that, the crowd gradually lost interest. He watched them mount the stairs and file into church, and when the last of them had disappeared inside, and the doors had closed, only then did he let his guard down. He felt close to tears. A sparrow poked its head out of the bush, looked around, then hopped onto a branch and started singing sweetly. Payne did not hear it. Nor did he hear, when it arrived, the answering song.