When We Were Saints (11 page)

Archie prayed. "Use me, Lord. I want to serve you. Show me how to serve you. Please, God, show me." Tears fell from his eyes; his desire was so great, and so was his fatigue. He was tired, yet he couldn't sleep. He grabbed his wool blanket, rose from his bed, and went outside to sit in the rocker on the porch, where he rocked and prayed until at last he fell asleep.

Over the next two weeks, Archie spent as much time as he could each day praying and meditating on the mountain. When he came down in the evenings, he would find messages waiting for him on the answering machine. His grandmother's friends called to check up on him and to let him know they had been by to see him. Other callers just wanted to know how his grandmother was doing. Reverend Fox asked why he hadn't seen Archie in church lately and offered to find him rides to church and to the hospital. Bruce, Art, and Mr. Flyte from his baseball team wondered why Archie hadn't shown up for tryouts, and two friends from his home-schooling group wondered where he had been and if he still planned to go on the camping trip to the Smokies with them. Archie deleted the messages. All of those people seemed like friends he had known in another lifetime. They had nothing to do with him now.

Sometimes at night he would sit down at his desk and draw. One night, though, he picked up his colored pencils and tried to finish his drawings for another story about the Back Street Thrasher but the story seemed stupid to him and his illustrations a waste of time. He sat with his work and stared at the frames on the page. He had drawn the sequence like a comic strip, just like the other illustrations he'd taped to the walls of his bedroom. He looked at them and wondered how his stupid drawings served God. He drew a tree in the space he'd left blank on the page, then tore the whole thing up. Nothing felt right to him anymore, except praying and waiting for God. He'd told Clare that all he wanted to do was pray, and she had said that he could then move on to the next stage and instead of saying "Be still and know that I am God" for three hours, he should say "Be still and know that I am" for
four
hours, and spend the rest of the time in silence and stillness.

Archie was surprised that taking away the word
God
and just saying "Be still and know that I am" changed the prayer's meaning. Instead of thinking about God's presence in all things, he thought about God's existence. "In my stillness I will know that God exists," he said, and he knew that it was a knowledge that would come from within and not because someone in church told him so.

Every day he said the words and waited for the transformation. He lived for the ecstatic experience of God's presence in him. Each time he sat down to pray, he tried to find his way back to that place within, but the harder he tried, the more elusive it became. He spoke to Clare about it after trying for several days, and she told him to fast and to pray six hours a day saying "Be still and know." Those words, he believed, opened a whole new world to him. "In my stillness I will know all things," he said, and he believed it was true. The more he was able to still his mind and thoughts, the more he would understand his purpose and the way in which he could best serve God.

With this new sense of knowing all things, Archie no longer believed he needed Clare to guide him through the stages. He knew what he had to do. He fasted every few days, only drinking water and eating a couple of slices of bread. His only showers were when it rained and God could wash him clean. He wore the same pair of jeans and the same sweatshirt every day and slept only two or three hours a night, spending the rest of those dark hours seeking God. In the mornings he went to the hospital to visit his grandmother, She was not getting better and the doctor told him she could not yet move to the rehabilitation nursing home. On the day she was supposed to leave the hospital, she'd come down with a urinary tract infection, and the nurse told Archie she would have to stay another couple of days.

Archie believed he had caused her illness, and he feared it would be just like his grandfather's death all over again. Every time he went to visit his grandmother she became more distressed. He still refused to move to Miss Nattie Lynn's. He told her he was doing just fine, but she wouldn't listen.

"You're not doing fine, sugar" she said to him. She shifted on her bed and tried to get comfortable, but Archie could see that all her shifting wasn't working. Beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, as though all the restlessness was exhausting her;

She pushed off the top blanket and gestured to Archie. "Look at you. Your hair needs cutting and a good washing.
It's so dirty and greasy it looks brown—a brown rat's nest. And look at your clothes. You wear the same old ratty jeans and holey sweatshirt every time you come, and I hate to say it, Archie, sugar but you don't smell sweet. But even worse, you look ill. You're skin and bones, and those pretty blue eyes of yours look like someone took Clorox to them. And you've got deep, dark hollows going all around them. It scares me to see you like this. Your granddaddy used to look like that anytime he took sick. Now, I want a doctor here to take a look at you."

"Grandmama, I'm just fine. I'm worried about
you,
that's all," Archie said, and he was. He spent many of his hours in prayer with her in his heart. He patted her hand. "I love you, Grandmama," he said.

Emma Vaughn blushed and gave a little nod. Then she pulled the blanket back up and shifted on the bed again. "If you would just go to Nattie Lynn's and let them look after you. That's all I ask. Couldn't you do that for me? My friends have gone up to the house several times to leave you dinner and bring you groceries, and they come back and find you haven't touched any of it."

"Grandmama, please."

"They say you've been spending most of your time with Clare."

Archie nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"She's a sweet girl. She's come by to see me a few times here in the hospital, you know."

Archie didn't know, but he was pleased because he could see it pleased his grandmother.

She nodded at him. "It's all right, you two spending time together just as long as you do it with Nattie Lynn's supervision. How about that? You move into town and you can see her more often."

Every time Archie came to visit, they went back and forth over the same argument. Then his grandmother got pneumonia. The changes the illness made in her shocked Archie. The nurses had put all kinds of IV fluids into her veins, and they seemed to need to draw blood from her every few hours, so her arms and hands were bruised all over and she had oxygen tubes in her nose that ran to a tank by her bed, and there was a heart and blood-pressure monitor hovering nearby as well, beeping and making all kinds of other noises. Archie was sure it was the stress of seeing him and arguing with him all the time that did that to her and he decided it was best he didn't visit her anymore. He felt it would be better if he prayed for her instead; so he stayed on his mountain and did not go to the hospital.

Clare came when she could in the afternoons after school, and together she and Archie prayed on the mountaintop, sitting in the shade of the pine trees. Archie had prayed so much his voice was hoarse, and Clare told him not to worry, that soon he would not have to pray out loud at all. "The prayer will be in your heart all the time, and no matter what you're doing and what you're saying, your heart will be praying. You will be talking to God always."

"Is that how it is with you?" he asked. "Is it always in your heart?"

Clare smiled and bowed her head and whispered, "Yes, Archibald."

Archie looked at her sitting beneath the pine trees, at the top of her head, the curve of her long back, her delicatelooking hand smoothing out the clump of pine needles by her side, and he wondered where on the road to sainthood she was. Was she farther along than he? Sometimes he thought so, because of the way she knew things, as if she had been at this saint business for years, but then she talked as if they were doing everything together—each wearing one set of clothes all the time, giving up possessions, fasting, and both praying together for the same length of time.

Archie asked Clare about that, and she looked up at him with such sadness in her eyes, he couldn't bear to look at her. He lowered his head.

"Where am I on the path?" Clare replied. "You want to know? Too far to ever turn back. Too far for my mother to comprehend. That's why I moved here to live with my father: He's like me, so he doesn't ask too many questions. It's best, Archibald, not to ask too many questions."

Archie didn't know what to make of Clare. He did have questions. Where then on the path was she? How far was "too far"? Why, if she was so far along, did she bother with him? But before he could speak and ask her any of those things, Clare said, "I think you're ready to expand the prayer now. You can pray to these words,
Be still.
"

"'Expand'?" Archie asked. "Don't you mean
shrink?
"

Clare shook her head. "Every time we remove words, we open the prayer up wider. Don't you see that? To pray
Be still
is to be present to all the possibilities God has to offer you. To add words adds meaning, until the meaning becomes much more narrow and so does the prayer. You'll say
Be still
eight hours a day until you feel ready to just stay silent and listen, and after that you will be praying all the time and you will need no words."

Archie couldn't wait until he was praying as she had said, with his heart. He decided that maybe he still needed Clare's guidance after all, and he looked forward to the next stages she had in store for him.

Then one day Clare arrived freshly scrubbed, wearing new clothes and carrying some CDs in a backpack, and Archie objected. "No, this isn't right. This can't be the next stage. There can be nothing standing between God and us." He pointed at her. "Why do you look like that? And what's with the CDs? Music is a distraction."

Clare said, "My mother's in town checking up on me, so I have to go underground for a while."

"'Underground'?" Archie asked.

"I have to wear nice clothes and eat big meals or she'll take me back home with hen" She held up her backpack. "And even the saints chanted, you know. Some even wrote music for God. The right music can become another path to the Lord. Don't you think, Archibald, that we should explore every pathway?"

"'Explore every pathway'?" This was not part of what Archie "knew," and he was reluctant to give in to her but at last he did. He went down into his basement and dug out his CD player and they carried it up the mountain with them. Clare put on the last movement of Suite no. 2 of Respighi's
Ancient Airs and Dances.
Archie thought they would sit and meditate to it, but Clare put the music on and stood up and danced, raising her arms above her head, her palms open to the sky as though she were calling God down to her. The music was light and joyous, and Clare, keeping her arms high, her face to the sun, spun and leaped about the mountaintop and called to Archie to join her. "It is a way of praising God; come on."

Archie wanted to keep watching her. He was fascinated and awed by the graceful way she moved. Her hair shone in the sunlight; her eyes, her face, her body, everything on her glistened. Archie knew it was the light of God within her and he wanted that same light for himself. He wondered when the light would begin to shine in him that way, and watching her dance, he felt jealous. The feeling surprised him. He had thought he was above that kind of emotion by then. No wonder he didn't have the light. He shook his head as though he were shaking out the thought and jumped up to join her for the grand finale.

They held hands and spun with their faces to the sky, and the music resounded with its final bursts of exuberance. They spun until they fell laughing onto the ground. Archie looked at Clare's beaming face and wanted to kiss her and touch her and hold her. Then, ashamed of his thoughts, he stopped laughing. He turned away from her and retreated to the trees. He dropped down on his knees and fell forward on his face. He wanted to eat the dirt, punch his fists into a rock, or pound his body with his fists. How, he wondered, could his mind turn on him that way after so much prayer and devotion to God? How could it happen—first jealousy and then lust, in a matter of minutes? How? How could he feel a desire for anything but God?

Clare came up behind him and spoke to him. "Are you all right?"

Archie lifted his head but didn't look at her. "No more music," he said. "No more dancing. I think you should go now."

"I don't understand."

"Come back tomorrow," he said. "I'll be okay by tomorrow."

Clare knelt down beside him, and he lowered his face back to the ground.

"Maybe we're going too fast with all this, Archibald. Maybe you should back up a little; maybe pray only three hours a day for a while and eat more."

Archie rose up and glared at her. "Eat more! Pray less! I need to pray more, much more. I'm no saint! I'm a sinner Clare. A sinnen" He turned his head and looked across the mountain. The grass was getting longer and greener A breeze ran through it and the blades slanted away from Archie. "Remember when you asked me if I thought we could be like Jesus and be sinless? Remember you asked if people had that capability?"

"Sure, I remember."

"Well, I want to find out. I want to find out if I can be pure in my thoughts and my words and my actions. I want to see if it's possible to really be like Jesus. Otherwise..." Archie looked at Clare. "Otherwise, there's no hope at all. I mean, what's the point of trying to be good if it's not humanly possible—if in the end we're always going to sin?"

Clare didn't answer him right away. She picked up a pine needle and sniffed it, then twirled it in her hand. She laughed and looked up at the sun, and a tear ran down her face.

"Clare?" Archie said.

Clare knelt down beside Archie and took his hand. "We
are
soul mates. I have waited so long for you, Francis."

Archie laughed. "I'm not Francis yet."

Clare let go of his hand and said, "Someday soon, Francis, we will go on our pilgrimage. I know now that someday you will be ready."