The Seventh Day

by Scott Shepherd

  Sunlight dripped through the shattered stained-glass windows, filling the huge space with an eerie prism glow. The underside of the Strangers’ spacecraft hovered above the altar like a Hindenburgish angel. Joad walked down the red-carpeted aisle until he reached the altar steps.

  He came to a dead stop and took in the spaceship rammed into the upper reaches of the church. His eyes bore through it—as if seeking somewhere, something, someone, much much higher.

  “Seven years.”

  At first, those were the only words that left his mouth. His soul was filled with so much torment, yet complete emptiness; he found it difficult to utter anything else.

  A long glare at the spacecraft broke open the dam.

  “You made me wait seven years? For this?”

  He waved his arm at the ship.

  “Why not just let me drown during those six months I was stuck at sea? Or the year I spent building something to float me across it!”

  Joad lowered his head and voice.

  “I thought we had a deal.”

  He began pacing back and forth, frustrated so completely that if he could have reached up and pull God down, he would’ve done so, and then shaken him for all he was worth.

  “I gave up everything! Everything I knew. I turned my back on what I was bred and trained to do! And for who?”

  He pointed directly above, his forefinger trembling.

  “For you!”

  He shook his hand at the gargantuan spaceship.

  “Where were you when this happened? How could you let this happen?!

  He lowered his hand. “When they were wiping us out—destroying my home and town—where was I? I’ll tell you! On the other side of the world on a goodwill mission.”

  He yelled at the top of his lungs. “In your name!”

  His cry reverberated through the sanctuary with the fire and brimstone ferocity of a tent revival preacher, bouncing off the stained glass hard enough for the cracks to widen further.

  And just as suddenly, the steam seemed to go out of him. His voice grew thicker and heavier.

  “In your name.”

  Joad’s eyes strayed toward the exit leading to the garden where his beloved now lay. When he turned back to the altar, his face was filled with sadness and outright despondency.

  “At least you could’ve left me with Becky. You let her survive The Seventh Day and then had her die?” He shook his head. “You should have let me die with her. That way she wouldn’t have been alone.”

  He knelt on the altar steps, and for the first time since returning to Nemo, choked off a sob.

  “There’s no reason for me to be here without her.”

  He hung his head and wiped the burgeoning tears in his eyes.

  “Father?”

  Laura’s voice. Of all things, here, now.

  Joad remained on his knees and closed his eyes.

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “But you’re a preacher,” Laura said.

  Joad opened his eyes and turned to see the girl slowly making her way up the red-carpeted aisle.

  “I was.”

  “When you were in the tank?”

  “No,” replied Joad. “Because I was in the tank.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Joad couldn’t imagine a worse time to explain things to Laura, but realized he’d already withheld so much, especially in their midnight chats by the campfires. He pointed at the pew in the first row, and indicated Laura should sit down. Joad settled beside her.

  “I did a lot of things I wasn’t proud of. Some I was told to do. But other times… .”

  He broke off.

  Gunfire rat-a-tats, bullets strafe off bodies in the desert night… .

  Joad willed away the memories of the tank and corrected course.

  “Let’s just say I decided to change my life before it was too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Ending up like those men who are after us.”

  Laura shook her head. “That would never happen.”

  “You didn’t know me back then.”

  Laura glanced around the church. Her eyes drifted from the Strangers’ ship to the remnants of the altar.

  “Were you a good preacher?”

  “Some thought so. Becky certainly did.”

  “You know—she wouldn’t want you to die just because she did.”

  Joad felt a pang in his stomach. Laura started to redden; he realized it was because she had just admitted eavesdropping.

  “Heard that, did you?”

  “Is that a sin? Listening in while a preacher talks to God?”

  Joad let her off the hook with the trace of a smile.

  “What do you say we let it go this time?”

  Laura returned the grin, but then her somber tone took over again.

  “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  Joad nodded, solemn. “We had so little time together.”

  The moment the words escaped his lips, Joad felt terrible—realizing if anyone knew the pain from being robbed of precious years with a loved one, it was the brave girl sitting beside him.

  Laura didn’t respond right away. Joad could tell she was thinking really hard. Finally, she seemed to come to some sort of answer for him—and herself.

  “But isn’t having someone, even just for a little bit, even if you don’t remember them really well—isn’t that better than never having them at all?”

  Joad stared at the girl with increasing wonderment.

  “I think you’re the one who’d make a good preacher.”

  Joad took another look around the church and let out an audible sigh.

  “I just think of all the things I didn’t get a chance to tell her.”

  “She knows what they are,” said Laura with obvious self-assurance.

  Joad realized she was giving him a healthy dose of his own medicine. “You think so, huh?”

  She raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  “You’re right,” Joad said. “I think she probably does.”

  38

  The night soon arrived, and brought with it a need for decisions.

  Joad could see the burning question on every face. He understood their hesitation to ask, knowing what he’d been through since his homecoming. Even he heard the two words racing through his head.

  Now what?

  For the first time since the Purple had filled the world’s skies, Joad didn’t have a clue. After The Seventh Day, he’d been a man with a singular purpose: getting home to the love of his life. Now, with both his town and Becky gone, he felt like the proverbial Man Without a Country—no place he could call his own or wanted to go. He had no reason to stay in Nemo. He wanted to get away as soon as possible. The longer he stayed, the deeper the pain.

  Deciding to move on was the least of it. He had to consider his traveling companions. Joad had been on his own for seven years, and had gotten used to it. He had fallen into it quite easily—a throwback to the days before he donned the reverend robes. Back then, he’d been a loner, a main reason he’d been recruited. His commanders liked a man with no emotional ties, nothing to rush home to or prevent him from putting his life on the line. Which had worked out just fine for Joad and the higher-ups, until two things occurred.

  Becky and, for lack of a better word, his calling.

  How much one had to do with the other, Joad couldn’t say. Becky being a pastor’s daughter didn’t hurt. She’d been working as a nurse at Bethesda when they met. It was the only time in his life he could thank his father for something, although it was ass-backwards and unintentional. Joad had returned from his third tour with shrapnel wounds (that plagued him to this day), and ended up in Bethesda at his father’s insistence, wanting his soldier son close by. Looking back, Joad thought the old man must have had an inkling there was another battle waging inside his son: the one for his mortal soul. Joad had grown weary of taking other men’s lives in the name of the almighty flag, and had been desperate
ly searching for a way out.

  Becky provided that. What began as a cliché—the ailing soldier falling for the selfless angel tending his wounds—became a blessed reality when, upon his release, Becky asked if she could buy him breakfast in the cafeteria. Joad had dreamed of asking her the same thing, but never thought he stood a chance. Which was embarrassingly revealed while walking her home that night. She flashed the smile he had fallen in love with when she brought his nightly meds; he fumbled like a schoolboy when she asked if he wanted to come in. Sheepishly he had said, “Not tonight.” She kissed him on the cheek and said “Good answer.”

  A week later, they had seen each other seven nights in a row. The following week, he moved in. Two weeks after that, his father stopped by and read Becky the riot act for keeping his son from his duty: serving his country on a fourth tour. Joad shut the door in his father’s face and immediately booked the trip to the Hawaiian Islands.

  Two days later, they were husband and wife.

  As for becoming a man of the cloth, Becky’s father had been a pastor, but Joad had never met him. Her parents died in a car crash when she was away at college. Though not overly religious, despite her upbringing, the one thing Becky’s father had instilled in her was the strong belief that things happened for a reason. And while she grieved truly and deeply for a long time, she also knew she had to carry on. That led to her nursing career, and honoring her father’s desire to help the needy. It eased the pain of her great loss, and opened her up to sharing her life with a soul in need.

  Admit First Class Sergeant Joad—Ward C, Bed 73.

  The longer he spent with her, Joad grew increasingly struck by her inner peace, which he realized was missing from his life. One only had to compare their patriarchs to understand where this desire was coming from. Becky had been raised in a house filled with love and giving; Joad had survived under a roof of turmoil and way-too-high expectations from a man he’d grown to hate. No wonder Joad decided to embrace the former and turn his back on the latter.

  Two weeks upon returning from the islands, Joad entered the seminary.

  After graduating, he asked Becky what she thought about going back to his hometown and settling there, knowing it was the last place his father would come see him. He was pleased when Becky said any town that produced the man she had come to love as much as life itself was fine by her.

  And so they had moved back to Nemo.

  How he had adored her.

  By the time he gave his first Sunday sermon, the loner who had spent many a night buried in sand dunes armed with guile and grenades had been transformed into a man of faith preaching against his former life, regretting only his past sins, he was determined to strive for forgiveness.

  And forgive him people did.

  They came seeking his advice, counsel, and ironically, his blessing. It would keep him up at night, and Becky would spend hours convincing him his world-weary experience made him the perfect person for his parishioners to open up to. Joad eventually came to accept it, and the congregation forgot their leader was once a man of war. He was simply their Reverend Joad.

  But he always remembered where he came from.

  After The Seventh Day, once more on his own, the old ways began to re-emerge. With so few Remaining, Joad got comfortable being completely alone again. But this time was different. When he encountered someone else, he couldn’t deny the part of him still looking for absolution, which led to the “detours.”

  The latest being Fixer, Laura, and Doc.

  He had done everything he could to keep them safe. But he had never considered some kind of permanent arrangement. Joad had been so determined to get back to Nemo, he’d foolishly figured everything would fall into place once he got there.

  That hadn’t turned out according to plan.

  And now he didn’t have one.

  With night falling, no destination in mind, and the weight of the worst day of his life still on his shoulders, Joad figured out the only thing to do.

  Nothing.

  At least let the night pass. Perhaps an answer would come with sleep and the ensuing light of day.

  Unfortunately slumber never arrived, and the dawn came way too soon.

  While the others found shelter and shut-eye on the upper floor of the rectory, Joad couldn’t settle anywhere in his former home. Each room brought another memory of his beloved, which made him ache in pain. More than once he thought about jumping on a jet-black horse and riding as long and hard as he could, until one or both of them collapsed.

  But then he would think of Laura sitting beside him in the church—his church—and how she’d said Becky wouldn’t want him to give up. It was hard to think of those words coming from an innocent child, and then cocoon in a shroud of self-pity.

  So he paced through the church until the sun came up, like a sentry guarding his master’s castle, and then returned to the garden.

  He ended up by the apple tree, standing over Becky’s grave. It was there he was finally able to lie down, and let sleep wash over him as the first rays of sun appeared on the eastern horizon.

  “Just call him.”

  “You know better than to ask me to do that,” Joad said.

  “How often does the man celebrate a birthday?” Becky asked.

  “This day. The same day. Once a year. And just like last year when I didn’t call and the three years prior to that when I didn’t call, I’m not calling today either.”

  “I don’t know which one of you is more stubborn.”

  “Him. Definitely.”

  “He’d say the same about you.”

  Joad shrugged. “Well, I guess we’ll never know, huh?”

  He really hated arguing with Becky. Luckily, they almost never did. But when they got into it, it was always the same subject.

  His father.

  “You’re so infuriating sometimes,” she said, getting out of bed and opening the curtains to let in the morning light.

  “Me?” Joad asked, getting up as well and throwing on a robe. “You see him calling on my birthday?”

  “The last time he was here you slammed the door in his face!”

  “After what he said about you? He’s lucky that’s all I did.”

  The sunlight cascaded over her. She was still gorgeous when angry; perhaps even more so.

  “He might have changed,” suggested Becky.

  “Highly doubtful.”

  “It’s been five years,” she said refusing to give up the fight.

  “Best five years of my life.”

  “Don’t turn this around like that… .”

  “… and you need to stop trying to make it better, Becky. Some things are beyond fixing.”

  Joad went into the bathroom and closed the door. Leaning against it, he quietly cursed, because he knew Becky was right. She was a much better person than him, and certainly more forgiving.

  She just didn’t know his father like he did.

  Becky started knocking on the other side of the door.

  Sometimes Joad just wished the man dead.

  “Joad!”

  It would be much better than having to ever see him again.

  “Joad! Joad!”

  For a brief second, he thought it was Becky.

  She was alive!

  Joad whirled around to say he had seen his father again and it was worse than Becky could have ever imagined.

  But the words died on his lips.

  It wasn’t Becky. She was in the ground somewhere directly below him and the grave marker he had fallen asleep against.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Aurora wore a shirt that was three sizes too big for her, and she looked awful.

  Joad was trying to wrap his head around the shirt. He knew he’d seen it before.

  And then he remembered where.

  On Secundo.

  39

  Aurora’s tale had transfixed and horrified them. They had marveled at her bravery, and been disgusted by Primo’s animal
behavior. After Aurora repeatedly assured them she had come out of the ordeal slightly scathed but not harmed, they resumed the “now what” discussion.

  Fixer said it was time to pick up and go. Sayers and Aurora agreed, but Laura didn’t say a word. She was too busy watching Joad, waiting to hear his suggestion.

  Joad knew it was too good to be true, the hope that the brothers had perished in The Fixer explosion. Joad thought it inevitable there would be a final confrontation between him and the surviving siblings. He found it interesting that Secundo had let Aurora escape, and wondered if that was something he could play to his advantage.

  Joad was certain about one thing: it was time for this to end, one way or another. Primo and Secundo’s impending arrival meant the time had come to make a stand.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to stick around. In fact, I strongly suggest you don’t.”

  They were lined up on pews in the sanctuary. Laura shared one with her stepfather; Aurora sat beside Fixer. Joad leaned against one in front of them, his back to the altar and looming like a harbinger of doom.

  “I want to stay here with you,” said Laura.

  He fully expected this response. Her increasing attachment to Joad was equally touching and troubling. Seeing as how he was a magnet for men like the brothers, Joad felt that it was only a matter of time before something horrible befell the child. He knew he couldn’t live with himself should that happen.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “You can’t make us go anywhere,” she said, the obstinate child rearing its head.

  “True,” replied Joad. “But I won’t put you in harm’s way either.”

  A lengthy debate ensued. There was talk of finding a place to hide Aurora and Laura while the men stood their ground, but Aurora considered that sexist, and what were they supposed to do if the men died? Where would the two of them be then? Left alone with Primo?

  “Thank you, but no thank you,” Aurora said.

  As other plans were hatched and discarded, Joad’s eyes kept drifting back to the interloper in the sanctuary: the Strangers’ craft. He thought about the incredible odds of it crashing right here, in his very own home, the house of a man of faith. He wondered if like so much he’d witnessed since The Seventh Day, this had also happened for a particular reason. Joad was convinced there was nothing random about who the Strangers left behind, and wondered if that went for their ships that crashed as well. Perhaps they weren’t the lemons he’d described to Laura; maybe they ended up where they did for some purpose. One could argue if it hadn’t been for the ship at the crater, Joad and the others would have died. It had been Fixer’s Gift and the resuscitated spacecraft that saved them. Was it possible this one hanging high above his altar could lead to their salvation once again?