The Father
It was near midnight and full dark when Zeke opened the silo door and Emmanuel shone his flashlight inside. The beam revealed Juliette lying on her cot. She put up a hand to block the glare and sat up, but made no move to rush the door and escape. Good. Maybe the slut had learned a thing or two in here.
Keeping the beam locked on her, Emmanuel stepped to the doorway. “Can you behave as God would have you?”
Lit up like a Broadway actress in a tragedy, she nodded and softly said, “Yes. I can.”
He lowered the flashlight so that it shined on the ground at her feet. “Then you may return to the flock.”
She slowly stood and stiffly shuffled toward him. He stepped back to allow her outside. As she passed him, he thrust a small ceramic urn at her.
She looked down at it, hesitating. “What is that?”
“Your child,” he said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Staring down at the vessel, she burst into silent, shoulder-shaking sobs. After a few seconds, she took the urn, clutching it to her chest.
“You may spread her ashes in the garden if you like,” he said. Or you can shove ’em where the sun don’t shine for all I care. Fortunately, the ash didn’t smell too much like the cedar and mesquite logs he’d burned in the dining hall’s fireplace to produce them. Tossing some lighter fluid on them had been a good idea, ensured the wood had burned completely.
Juliette nodded and sniffled loudly.
“Everyone has missed you,” Emmanuel said, “especially the sisters. They’d love to have you join them in the sewing circle again after breakfast tomorrow. I’m sure you’re eager to get things back to normal.”
As for himself, he was eager to get his bank balance back up where it should be. He turned to Zeke. “Take her to the infirmary. She can sleep there tonight and go back to the women’s quarters tomorrow evening.”
As the two headed off, he felt a smug satisfaction.
I’m back in control.
He remembered the first time he’d felt that heady rush of power. It was over thirty years ago, when he’d been only a few years older, but so much wiser, than Juliette.
Emmanuel had been the seventh of thirteen children, the fourth boy, born Philip Peter Swafford in central Mississippi to Southern Baptist parents who had heeded God’s command in Genesis 1:28. Be fruitful and multiply. Given that his parents didn’t drink, dance, or play cards—such activities were the devil’s doing—Emmanuel supposed there’d been nothing else for his parents to do come Saturday nights but work on their multiplication.
Having no formal training but being handy with a hammer, Philip Peter’s father took what work he could find as a handyman. His earnings kept the family fed—barely—but left nothing for luxuries or even some of the basic necessities. Young Philip Peter was small for his age, a condition emphasized by the fact that he had to wear his older brothers’ well-worn and ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes, earning him the scorn of his only slightly better dressed classmates, who not-so-affectionately dubbed him “Pee-Pee.”
When he wasn’t in school, Philip Peter had been forced to go along on jobs with his father. Helping his father repair drywall, replace rotten boards, and install toilets had taught the young boy a lot, primarily that he did not enjoy manual labor. He’d go to hell before he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. No, he planned to go to trade school, maybe even college, and land a job that paid enough that he could finally afford all the material things that had been denied to him in his childhood. A color television. A car. Shoes that nobody else had worn before him.
He’d experienced a growth spurt during his junior year of high school, shooting up five inches seemingly overnight, his once-bare face now sprouting dark, manly hair he’d had to shave every other day. The angelic redhead he’d had a crush on since kindergarten finally noticed him, sending a shy smile his way as they sat in English class. With Philip Peter’s new stature came just enough confidence to return the smile. The girl passed him a note, invited him to come to a jubilee at the Church of the Holy Star, an independent, nondenominational church where her father preached. He’d been thrilled that she’d wanted to spend time in his company. He hadn’t realized at the time that that one note, that invitation, would change his life forever.
At that jubilee, he’d heard the girl’s father preach. To his surprise, it wasn’t all hellfire and brimstone, the fare of fear offered at the Southern Baptist church his parents dragged him and his siblings to. On the contrary, Pastor Ray acknowledged that, while God was an all-powerful being with high expectations of his people, God could also be loving and accepting and provide a refuge from a cruel world where children were forced to work as soon as they were old enough to hold a hammer, to go to bed with a half-empty belly in a cramped and cold room with seven siblings, and be called “Pee-Pee” by their peers.
Finally, Philip Peter had found a warm, welcoming home.
He’d found a second, and much more attentive, father, too. Pastor Ray took a shine to the eager young man, and taught him everything he knew about God, theology, and the Bible, assigning him tasks around the church, preparing him to serve as an assistant pastor. Little did Pastor Ray know that the young man he was mentoring was watching his every move, learning how to be even more charismatic, how to seduce people with words and promises of better things to come.
Philip Peter had not only learned some new things about religion under Pastor Ray’s tutelage, but he’d also learned some things about himself during that time. He’d learned that, while he could make a decent living as the plumber he’d become after completing the community college program, the material things he’d once longed for and now owned failed to provide the satisfaction he’d expected. He’d learned that the respect and adulation of the fellow congregants felt far more gratifying.
The others were impressed by his ability to quote the perfect scripture for every occasion, from happy to solemn to tragic. They sought his guidance on everything from child-raising to marital matters, as if he were some sort of guru. For the first time in his life, he was in control, not only of his own life, but of other people’s as well.
And he reveled in it.
When Pastor Ray took his family and a portion of the church on a mission trip to Mexico for a month in the summer of 1987, Philip Peter stayed behind and seized the occasion to separate the most devoted and needy from among the flock. He combined the disparate but equally effective styles of the Southern Baptist preacher and Pastor Ray, offering his own unique blend of spirituality. He preached increasingly factious sermons over the four weeks, insisting that those who truly loved the Lord had been called, along with him, to live in a newer, better, purer way.
By the time Pastor Ray returned, his congregation had been torn apart, plundered by the young man he’d trusted to tend to his flock while he was away.
Philip Peter, under his newly assumed name Father Emmanuel, led his followers to a new life in Texas, one funded by the donations of their cash and sale of their property. He left behind what remained of the Church of the Holy Star, as well as the preacher’s daughter he’d deflowered after making empty promises of marriage and children he had no intention of fathering. His younger siblings had been nothing but pains in the ass to him, more competitors for what little food was on the table, more brats his parents expected him to look after on occasion. Why would he want to tie himself to one woman and bring children into his life when he could live free on his own terms?
Twenty-eight people had come with him from Mississippi to Texas at the end of that summer, and dubbed themselves the People of Peace. Over the years, they’d fixed up the old camp they’d purchased and taken in more folks on a trial basis. Father Emmanuel carefully chose whom he allowed permanently into the fold, turning out those who didn’t pass his tests of devotion and deference. They numbered just over a hundred and fifty souls now, a strong yet manageable number.
And he reigned over them all.