On Tuesday morning, I went looking for The Land. The address Roland had given me took me into the wilderness that bordered state forest land, along winding gravel roads crowded by towering red and white pines, needles gleaming silver in the freezing sleet. Roland had drawn me a map by hand, but I got turned around and ended up heading the wrong way for a good twenty minutes before I realized my mistake. The freezing rain clung to my windshield wipers until they scraped against the glass like claws. Half-blind before an iced-over window, I had to drive much slower than I wanted. Whatever study they had planned I would be at least an hour late.
Was this a sign that I should just turn around? Maura had told me that Elijah’s aggravated assault conviction had been plea-bargained down from attempted murder, the victim attending the trial in a wheelchair. Yet, I kept going, picking my way over gravel roads, the wheels slurring for purchase, until I came around a bend.
I knew the place immediately when I saw it. From the road I could only make out the barest glint of the Airstream trailers and mobile homes pitched among jack pine and cedar on a slope of southern exposure. A torrent of snowmelt gushed down a channel near the driveway, ice bobbing in the dirty current. I didn’t know if I could get the Continental up such a steep road, slick with running slush.
I gunned the engine hard, fighting with the steering wheel to keep from sliding off into the engorged creek that paralleled the driveway. At one point I passed a deer stand near the driveway, and I glimpsed a man in a rain poncho, a walkie-talkie held to his face. Higher up, I coasted to stop at a pullout where a motley assortment of vehicles parked: a rusting Ford station wagon and several trucks, including a tow truck with winter’s salvage printed on the side. So, he really was here. To prepare a way, Mother Sophie had said, implying that he needed prayer because of some kind of breakdown. He was here with Sarah at The Land, a place where Maura had never wanted to return to. Here among a Family that was not a family of blood but belief, home in a hiding place armed against the end of the world. What the hell was I doing?
By the time I parked the Continental, reversing it in so I would have an easier time picking my way down, Roland had come out to greet me, dressed in a slicker and a wide-brimmed hat, an umbrella hoisted over his head, the cherry of a cigarette burning in his mouth. He came to my side of the car and held up the umbrella to shield us both. “We thought you weren’t going to come,” he said when I opened my door and climbed out stiffly, my hip aching after the long drive.
“I got turned around,” I said. “Did I miss it all?” Steam hissed out from under the hood of my car, the taxed engine smoldering after such a climb.
“We don’t aim to be easy to find here.” And wasn’t that true? Seeing the place in person I wondered if Maura could be hiding here after all. How would you find a hidden person on such a sprawling property? Roland leaned over with the umbrella, taking one last drag off his cigarette before tossing it into the slush. “And no, you didn’t miss it. We don’t follow any official timeline. We were just getting ready to pray over Mother Sophie.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing wrong with her, except her blindness. We’re gonna try a faith healing. Come on, it’s this way.” He led me toward the lone standing building, an old log cabin buttressed by a stone foundation, the left side sprouting a tower and palisade like some ancient crumbling keep. I could see the outhouses set between the trailers, knew from Maura how men like Elijah had grown sick one summer from digging the sewer lines. Climbing the sloping path beside Roland in the falling sleet, I couldn’t disguise my limp. “Are you hurt?” he asked, leaning in since he was a good four inches taller than me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. Meshach was the one who stood in the fire. Here I could not be a wounded young man, but instead someone strong and fierce. “Just pulled a muscle while out snowshoeing.” Also, someone who apparently couldn’t help telling lies. They couldn’t know about the accident, which had been spectacular enough to get mentioned in the paper along with the robbery. They might be able to connect the two and ferret out who I was.
We trudged up the slope, Roland pausing when we were under the dripping eaves to fold his umbrella and study me with his measuring gaze. I thought for a moment he might pat me down or ask me if I was carrying a wire, but whatever flash of suspicion he was entertaining he shook away and opened the front door to usher me inside.
The cabin smelled sweetly of smoke, a homey place with a copper pot percolating on a woodstove, Mother Sophie nestled in a velvety green recliner, her slippered feet up on an ottoman. Pastor Elijah stood beside her, his shoulders squared, his cheeks ruddy in the heat of the close room. He’d shaved his mustache and sideburns, buzz-cut his hair in a military style, which made him look boyish rather than tough. Accompanied by a tall, blond woman, he didn’t look like someone who’d just had a nervous breakdown. A young couple I didn’t recognize at first stood beside Mother Sophie on the other side, neither one bothering to look my way. Roland and I stamped the slush from our boots in the entryway and hung our coats from pegs in the log wall.
Pastor Elijah crossed the room, clasped my hand in a firm handshake, and introduced himself as Eli. “You must be the Meshach I’ve been hearing about. A prophet, from what I’m told. Well. I’m pleased to finally shake your hand.”
The woman hovering close behind Elijah stepped around him and introduced herself as Caroline, Roland’s sister. She looked a little like her brother, bony-chinned and broad-shouldered for a woman. She wore a red-and-black-checkered dress that buttoned down the front, and her red lipstick smudged her front teeth. I remembered spotting her the first time I’d been to Rose of Sharon and heard Elijah speak. She had been the woman in the bright shawl who sat beside Sarah, Maura’s daughter. I was disappointed that Sarah wasn’t here. I wanted to see her again, a living memory of Maura.
Elijah squinted at me. “I almost feel I know you from somewhere.”
I shook my head, my throat thick with worry. He wasn’t talking about my first visit to Rose of Sharon. Could it be that one night after closing Elijah had seen us in the parking lot? I knew he had never been into the bank branch, but was it possible that a suspicious man like him might have staked out his own wife? How had Maura explained away her lateness coming home? I felt sure he had seen me before, even though Maura had never introduced me to him. The way his small, gray eyes puzzled over me, it was only a matter of time before he figured me out. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Maybe it’s just that God intended us to meet. Come on in and join us.” He introduced me to the young couple, Brian and Lisa, though they hardly looked my way.
Regal as a queen, Mother Sophie sat back in a recliner, her white hair brushed so finely that it gleamed silver. Her recliner was situated near a woodstove and surrounded on two sides by floral sofas, a coffee table with scattered books and brochures between them. I looked around the room as I came closer. I noticed the homey touches at first glance—the Confederate flag tacked up on one wall and the musket above the mantel—but now I saw the guns leaning near the door, at least two shotguns and one ominous-looking assault rifle. The wall facing the driveway gleamed with metal sheeting hammered in for reinforcement. A folding ladder climbed into the eaves where there must be some kind of lookout. Along with the ticking of the woodstove, I heard the low chatter of a police scanner, grainy and crackling.
Mother Sophie beamed up at me from her chair. “I knew you would come, Meshach.” Her eyes fixed on a place near where I stood. Up close, her face was so deeply wrinkled it reminded me of the whorls in a tree trunk. “We’ve eaten all the cheddar biscuits, but there’s tea if you want some.”
“I’m fine,” I said, though I was shivering from the rain and damp, my teeth clacking.
She peered in my direction. “You familiar with Matthew 17? It’s what got this started.”
“No, ma’am.”
“The verse says that if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains. So Elijah, here, gets the idea that if all things are possible through prayer, they are going to heal me tonight. Make these old eyes see again. How does that sound to you?”
“It would be a miracle,” I said.
“It would be that indeed,” said Mother Sophie. “In the last days, we will see things that cannot be explained. I would like to see them, anyhow.”
In a low voice, Elijah said to me, “If you don’t feel comfortable being part of it you can just sit on that sofa and watch.”
I scratched at my arm, suddenly nervous.
“I want Meshach to pray over me. You can do it, right?”
I nodded and then felt stupid, because she was blind and couldn’t see the gesture. This is not what I had pictured when they invited me to a prayer and Bible study. “Sure,” I said, though I felt far from it. “So long as a rookie can’t botch this.”
“You can’t botch prayer,” Mother Sophie assured me. “But there’s some ways of doing it that are better than others.”
There wasn’t much space between the sofas. I crowded in on the side next to the other couple. Lisa had coal-black hair draped to her waist, her eyes large and dark above high cheekbones. I recognized the woman who had spoken in tongues at church last Sunday, one of the Ojibwe. The very one I translated for. I felt nervous standing beside her, worried she might be overcome by the Holy Spirit again and what kind of trouble that might mean for me. Brian—his blocky face blondly bearded, his eyes set too close together—must have been her husband. Pastor Elijah, Roland, and his sister Caroline took up the other side, Roland holding a bowl filled with some kind of white paste.
“What’s that?” Brian asked.
“Crisco,” Roland said. “We wanted to use olive oil from the Holy Land, but there’s none in the cupboards.”
“The kind of oil doesn’t matter,” Pastor Elijah cut in. “Jesus healed with mud and spit. Crisco’ll do.”
Pastor Elijah dipped his fingers into the paste and bid Mother Sophie to shut her eyes. He rubbed around her eyes with it before dabbing her eyelids, mumbling under his breath. Then Roland held the bowl around for all of us so that we could also dip our fingers in and lay hands on Mother Sophie’s face. From my awkward position I ended up getting her bony chin, where the soft down of a few white whiskers had sprouted. Her wrinkled face glistened with grease by the time we had all laid hands on her.
“If this doesn’t work, you can bake my head in the oven like a fat croissant,” Mother Sophie cracked, licking her lips.
“Quiet, you,” said Elijah. “Mood has to be right. Let’s do this.”
We all shut our eyes as Elijah read the verse from Matthew again. “Lord God, You promised in your Good Book that all things are possible if we believe. Wherever two or more gathered, You are there also. We welcome You into this place.”
“Jesus,” Caroline murmured, “Holy Lamb of God.”
Pastor Elijah went on to pray, invoking the story of Saul of Tarsus, blinded on the road to Damascus and then healed when he agreed to stop tormenting Christians and follow God. He continued, a mixture of invocation and story, the others around me all calling upon Jesus and me mumbling along with them, my fingers slippery against the old woman’s chin. Minutes must have passed while we prayed, Lisa vibrating with tension that made the floorboards creak beneath her. I was conscious of Roland’s cigarette smell, the light rise and fall of Mother Sophie’s bosom, her warm breath as it passed over my fingers. “We trust in your healing powers, Lord,” Pastor Elijah said. “Amen.” At last we stepped away.
Mother Sophie sat up in the recliner, her face shining. She blinked her eyes open and looked around. That had been some prayer. I held my breath, wondering for a moment if it had really worked. Her gaze found me. Then she laughed, a great belly laugh that made her chair shake. “Get this crap off me, I’m still blind as a bat.”
“Actually, bats aren’t truly blind,” I said, and then regretted saying anything.
“That so?” Mother Sophie shook her head.
“Maybe a different kind of oil,” Roland offered as he brought over a towel. “That Holy Land oil would have been better.”
Pastor Elijah settled on one of the floral sofas and sank down with a sigh. The rest of us joined him, finding places around a coffee table scattered with Bibles and colorful brochures. “We’ll try again some other time, Mother,” he said.
“No,” she said, “this is how God intends me to be. I’ll see again when he restores his Kingdom on Earth. I can wait till then. Then I will see Him, face-to-face.”
Caroline smoothed down her long, checkered dress against the back of her thighs and sat beside Elijah, close enough that her leg brushed against his. Her mouth turned down when he inched farther away.
Without my asking, Roland brought over a steaming mug on a saucer and handed it to me. “You look like you could use it,” he said. Roland took up a position standing near the door, his hand fidgeting in the pocket where he kept his lighter.
The tea went down the wrong pipe. A coughing fit commenced and my wounded ribs caused me to cry out. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Sorry,” I apologized, when I quit coughing.
Elijah watched me with a look of concern. “You all right, Meshach?”
“I will be,” I said. Don’t mention the night of the accident, I told myself. They can’t know. They can’t know you were with her. You, the last person to see her.
“I understand you live in town?” Elijah asked me.
I shook my head and took another sip of tea, carefully swallowing. A bitter black tea with a dollop of citrus. “I’m tending a property for an elderly couple who have flown south for the winter.”
He leaned closer, his hands clasped in his lap. “And you’re a student?”
“At Northern. Still figuring out what to do with my life. Probably end up working with computers.”
“Maybe he knows about the Sky-net,” said Mother Sophie.
“Sky-net,” Elijah said. “It’s the Internet, Mother.”
He and Roland were the only one who called her that, Mother, but I knew they weren’t kin. “All that won’t matter soon,” Mother Sophie said. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“What do you think?” Elijah said to me. “About Y2K?”
I massaged the bridge of my nose. The heat in this cabin and the mustiness in the sofas made the room swim before me. “It’s possible. I’ve read articles that lend credence to the idea, though many experts find it highly unlikely that we’ll experience major problems.”
“But what do you believe?” Mother Sophie said. “I don’t truck with experts.”
I could have told them then that I thought it was all bullshit, but in that moment I wasn’t sure anymore. I’d seen things. I wanted to believe there was some meaning in all this. The birds killing each other. Maura’s vanishing and my accident. I wanted to make sense of my pain. “I believe there’s a great shadow that lies over the world. I never knew it was there until recently. I haven’t thought much on these things yet, but I do believe something is about to happen.”
“That’s the situation, isn’t it? Then you’ve come to the right place, Meshach. We can help each other,” Elijah said, sitting back and cracking his knuckles, the sound sharp in the room.
One late-night shift when Maura and I closed together, I noticed that something was wrong. When she had bent to pick up a receipt, her face blanched, a quiet hiss between her teeth. Even the light had gone flat in her eyes, glassy and distant, fixed on some territory inside herself. Her movements were slow and deliberate, one arm cradled close to her side. Since everything had to be done under dual control for the sake of security, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves back in the break room, counting twenties into stacks of five hundreds and banding them for the vault.
“You okay?” I said.
“What?” She wrinkled her face, one hand behind her neck. “Yeah. Must have just slept on my neck wrong.”
“Seems like there’s more bothering you than your neck.”
Maura kept on counting twenties and snapping the bands in place. “Forget it.”
“Maybe I can help.”
Maura set down her stack and turned to face me, her jaw clenched. “I’m only going to say this once, okay. Married people fight. It’s normal. Totally normal. So, as much as I appreciate your concern, I would like to be left alone today. Got it?”
He hurt you, didn’t he? The words were on the tip of my tongue, but stayed there. In the two years I knew her this happened every couple of months. Maura would disappear inside herself for a week, grow cold and distant. But I never saw any bruises.
I was lost in my own thoughts when Brian said something to Elijah about dynamite, the best place to set it on a bridge.
Elijah looked my way, assessing how I reacted. I remembered passing over the only bridge that led to this place as I drove here through the sleet. My stomach grumbled audibly. I hadn’t eaten anything all morning.
Lisa rose up without saying a word and plucked the empty biscuit tray from the coffee table to carry it over to the sink. What was I getting myself into here? Only a few years ago Timothy McVeigh had blown up a federal building in Oklahoma City. These people had dynamite and they were planning to use it. You don’t fuck with fascists, Arwen had warned me.
“We’re here for a Bible study,” Elijah said to Brian in a firm voice.
Shaking her head, Caroline stood up from her place beside Elijah. She stretched her arms behind her head and said something about going to check on Sarah. Should she make her something for lunch? Elijah nodded without looking at her. What was going on between them? Without bidding goodbye to anyone else, Caroline strode away, her black lace-up boots clacking on the wooden floor.
After washing the tray, Lisa rejoined us, sitting right beside me. “I hear we were partners on Sunday,” she said. Her voice was mousier than I expected. She did not seem capable of the strange, throaty language she had spoken just a few days ago.
“I had the easy part,” I said.
Pastor Elijah only shook his head. “No one could translate for her before.”
Lisa smiled at me shyly. “So, how long have you known the Lord?”
She asked it so casually, as if God were a next-door neighbor who sometimes stopped in for a visit, bringing milk and cookies.
I thought of Arwen’s sharp profile in the dark, her worry over my going to church. I thought of Maura, singing a hymn that seemed to contain all the brokenness of this world. “I’m only getting to know Him,” I said. “It’s why I’m here.”
“This is a good place to begin,” Elijah said. His voice was soft, almost eager. “Would you like to pray with us?”
Again, I felt that pull. If there was such a thing as God, I wanted to know Him. I wanted Mother Sophie to lay her hands on my skull, heal my pain, take away my darkness. I wanted to find out what happened to Maura. I wanted my world to make sense again. “Maybe not now.”
It swept over me at once: the air in the room stagnant, the left side of my face numbing, my vision tunneling. When I looked at Elijah, a halo of light surrounded him. I looked away quickly, noting how the aura surrounded Mother Sophie as well. The aura was not a good sign, nor the numbness in my face. Such sudden sadness pouring into my head, soul-deep. I knew what this was. Prodrome, the doctors called it, a sign that a migraine was about to wallop me anytime. Dark wings beat at the edge of my vision. It might hit in ten minutes or the aura could last all day before the migraine had me in its talons. “I don’t feel so hot just now. I’ve got to go.” My words sounded slurred in my own head.
“Get him a Bible, Roland,” Mother Sophie instructed. “You take it home with you, Meshach. But don’t go reading it chronological. Start with the Gospels. The book of Mark. Then backtrack to the prophets, like Isaiah. You’ll love Isaiah. Pray as you read. God will speak to you through the verses. You’ll meet Him there.”
“Please. I need some fresh air,” I said.
“I’ll walk him out,” Elijah said. He didn’t bother with any coat as he opened the door and walked beside me out on the porch after I got my shoes and coat on. “You sure you’re okay to drive home?” Melting snow dripped from the eaves, but at least the rain had stopped. The aura lit up my whole world, like I walked among angels.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. I zipped up my parka, Bible in hand. The cold woke me. I could breathe again. I had an emergency baggie with sumatriptan and Percocet in the glove compartment of my car.
“I hope you weren’t bothered by anything Brian said. He came home from basic training down in Hattiesburg with a little brain damage after a chopper he was riding in crashed. Everyone died but him. So he says the oddest things at times, but don’t pay it any mind.” Elijah gestured at the trailers. “This here is home for many of us. It’s a good place. Mother Sophie named it The Land, because it’s a safe place. Maybe the last safe place in the coming days. You know where we are now. You’re welcome here anytime, Meshach.”
“Your whole family lives here?” Here was my chance. I thought of what I needed to say, the real reason I had come here.
Elijah frowned. “My daughter is with some of the older children. I should join her for lunch.” He rubbed his face with his hands and yawned. “Ever since her mother went away, she gets nervous if I’m gone too long.” He spoke like Caroline hadn’t even gone ahead of him to care for Sarah. Had he already replaced Maura with another woman and now he was embarrassed about it?
“Went away?”
“What you said in there about the shadow that lies over the world. That’s true. And sometimes the shadow finds its way into people.” He set a hand on my shoulder and we stepped out from under the eaves. “Can I ask you a favor? Pray for my family.”
I swallowed. I needed to press this without sounding suspicious. “Where did your wife go? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me, his small eyes glittering, his mouth clamping hard enough to grind his teeth before he breathed out again. “I really don’t.”
He looked off toward the Airstream where he must be living with his daughter. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving?”
When I looked at him blankly, he continued, “Turkey Day? Two days from now? If you haven’t made other plans.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“Okay,” he said. “We eat at noon. You know the way.”