John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  After a thoughtful pause, Moses stared beyond Roy and said in a deeper voice, "Who has ever climbed the sky and caught her to bring her down from the clouds? Who has ever crossed the ocean and found her to bring her back in exchange for the finest gold? No one knows the way to her. No one can discover the path she treads."

  "What are you trying to tell me?" Roy demanded.

  "But the One who knows all knows her, he has grasped her with his own intellect, he has set the earth firm forever and filled it with four-footed beasts, he sends the light and it goes, he recalls it-and trembling it obeys; the stars shine joyfully at their set times: when he calls them they answer, "Here we are"; they gladly shine for their creator."

  "Is that from the Bible?"

  "It's from the Book of Baruch, a deuterocanonical book. It should have always been included in the Old Testament."

  "It doesn't sound biblical."

  He stared at Roy with what could have been contempt had the beard not covered the face so totally.

  "No thees and thous ? I use the Jerusalem Bible, friend, just as do the misguided ones in the Eternal Church of the Believer. But they do not understand it."

  "Are you some kind of a minister?"

  "I am a prophet!"

  "Well, that's really nice to know, and as far as I can recall this is the first time I ever met a prophet."

  "Come back in fifteen minutes, friend. I have to clean up."

  Roy took a slow walk along the shoulder of the highway.

  Cars and small trucks slammed by at high speed, ripping the grasses with the wind of passage, whirling up dust, and laying a hydrocarbon stink across the evening air. He came upon a dry and flattened toad on the eroded asphalt of the shoulder, looking like a silhouette symbol designed for a flag of some savage tribe of prehistory. It wiggled a flattened toe at him and the tiny shocking motion made him feel dizzy. The paper-thin toad and the browsing rabbit seemed partners in some eerie celebration of death and dying. The black ant came out from under the toe of the toad, refocusing reality. Life after death is a credo in the universe of the ant.

  An oncoming car slowed, and then turned onto the shoulder and came directly at him. At first he stood in disbelief and, as it kept coming, he jumped wildly toward the ditch, turned his ankle on a hidden rock and fell into the wiry grass. He got up slowly, furious, brushing small grass seeds off his clothing. A woman with white hair as precise as metal shavings ran her window down and said, "Where is this Meadows Center Tabernacle?"

  "Were you trying to kill me?" Roy demanded.

  "I think it's got to be the other side of the Interstate, Helen," the man behind the wheel bellowed. Roy then noticed the hearing-aid button in the woman's ear.

  "If I hadn't jumped you would have hit me!"

  "We promised Dad we'd get him to the Tabernacle before he dies," the woman said loudly.

  An old man wrapped up in a blanket rose up and peered out the rear window. The rest of the seat was full of suitcases. The old man looked like a skull wrapped in gray paper.

  "Then you better hurry!" Roy yelled.

  "It's got to be the other side of the Interstate," the driver yelled, and he swerved back onto the pavement. The woman, before she closed her window, shrieked at Roy, "You've got seeds in your mustache!"

  A panel truck swerved wildly around the car, narrowly missing a pair of oncoming motorcycles. The tourist car turned around in a driveway a couple of hundred yards from Roy, and came roaring back on the other side of the highway. The woman leaned across the driver and beamed and waved, and he found himself waving back. The old man had sunk down out of sight. Maybe, he thought, they had just missed the deadline. Nebraska plates. A long motor trip into dying. He clawed the seeds out of his mustache, and as he walked, the pain in his ankle slowly subsided. When he reached the school bus he could walk without limping.

  Moses wore a fresh white T-shirt and faded blue bib overalls. His hair and beard were damp and matted. The concrete slab under the shower head was wet. The sun was just disappearing and the mosquitoes were beginning to prowl. Moses held the screen door open for Roy Owen. A ratty old bucket seat from a car, now mounted on a wooden box, had been brought out onto the screened platform, and Moses waved him into it as though offering a throne. Roy accepted some hot tea. It was strong and served in a thick ceramic mug with a has-relief of a Disney duck on the side of it. Moses had the one with the mouse.

  "I've been remembering," Moses said.

  "Sometimes it is easier to remember than it is other times. She did not complain about the truck the way other people do. She gave me fifteen dollars for my trouble. She wanted me to name a price but if I had done so, it would have interfered with her freedom of choice. That is what is important. Freedom. If she gave me five or fifty, it would make no difference to me. Or she could have given me nothing. It was up to her to make a choice."

  One floor fan was on, whirring and turning back and forth, aiming first at Moses and then at Roy, like a spectator at a match.

  "Do you have any idea what happened to her?"

  "A stubborn heart will come to a bad end at last, and whoever loves danger will perish in it. A stubborn heart is weighed down with troubles, the sinner heaps sin on sin. There is no cure for a proud man's malady, since an evil growth has taken root in him. The heart of a sensible man will reflect on parables. An attentive ear is the sage's dream."

  "Are you telling me Lindy had a stubborn heart and loved danger? What am I supposed to be learning from all these quotations?"

  "Do not meddle with matters that are beyond you; what you have been taught already exceeds the scope of the human mind. For many have been misled by their own presumption, and wrongheaded opinions have warped their ideas."

  "I have been taught nothing so far."

  "That quotation was from Ecclesiasticus. Not Ecclesiastes. It was never approved for the Jewish canon of scripture, even though it was originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek in 132 B.C. by the author's grandson. The name means The Church's Book."

  Roy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  "Mr. Moses, if we met under other circumstances, I am sure I would find all this very, very interesting. You are a true scholar of the scriptures. But what I want to know is if you remember where you drove my wife."

  "On our way back to the County Line Motel, I told her that an evil growth called pride had taken root inside John Tinker Meadows. In the Second Letter of John it is written, "Watch yourselves, or all our work will be lost and not get the reward it deserves. If anybody does not keep within the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it, he cannot have God with him: only those who keep to what he taught can have the Father and the Son with them. If anyone comes to you bringing a different doctrine, you must not receive him in your house or even give him a greeting. To greet him would make you a partner in his wicked work." ' "Why did you tell her that?"

  "A name can be dishonored by he who bears it. She had gone to speak to John. She had gone to greet him, and I told her that it would make her a partner in his wicked work. But then she told me she did not see him. She said she had talked to someone else. I do not remember if she told me. I let her off at the gate.

  They did not want me to come even that far, or wait there for her. The guards came out and told me to move along. I told them I was waiting for the woman who had just entered their building. They insisted. And so I got out of the truck and confronted them and I spoke some verses in a loud voice. They were strong verses and the guards went away. They kept looking back at me, but they went away."

  "You sound like an educated man."

  That was in another life. In this life everything I have comes from the Book." He took it from the small table and handed it over to Roy, holding it with care. It was a thick, ragged, dog-eared copy of the Jerusalem Bible, Reader's Edition, a paperback with a cover printed to look like fabric.

  "I spent seven years with this Book," he said.

  "I got up at first light to read i
t. I walked back and forth in the cell saying the words out loud. This is the third copy, and in another year this one will have to be replaced. Many parts are getting hard to read, but I can shut my eyes and see any page in this Book and read it from the picture I see in my head."

  "That's fascinating. Did my wife spend very long in that building?"

  "Not very long. Not as long as I expected. She told me she might be an hour, but it was much, much less than that."

  "How did she seem on the way back to the motel?"

  "She wanted to know why I was angry at John Tinker Meadows. That was after I quoted to her from the Book. I told her that all anger and all vengeance belong to the Lord. I told her that he was pretending to be a man of God. She said she would certainly like proof of that. I told her she had the proof.

  He had automobiles, airplanes, jewels, homes, fine clothes. I told her that he traveled all over the world living in fine hotels, drinking the rarest wines, eating the best food. Wasn't that proof enough? There was one holy man in that family. Just one."

  "Matthew?"

  He made a contemptuous snorting sound.

  "Only an actor, an entertainer, a salesman. The holy man was Paul, the third child, the second son. He tried to practice the true religion. He wandered through the countryside, preaching to anyone who would listen. He gave away all his goods and money. He stuck thorns through his flesh. He flogged himself with brambles. He trod barefoot on sharp stones. This was his land, all these fields and country roads. That's why I came here, to gain in wisdom just by being where he once was. I am his disciple and his prophet. They tried to treat him with strong medicines. They put him in a place where electricity was sent into his brain. But soon he was as holy as before. In some way he never told me how he had offended the Lord with his left hand. And so he cut it off. When his wound had healed, they put him in the same place where I was. A long, long way from here. They did not want him nearby. They did not want anyone bringing shame on their church by talking about crazy Paul. He preached to me. He gave me the first copy of this Book. He changed me from a madman, from a vicious person to a man of God. He fasted and became very thin. Then he had pneumonia. After he died I spent thirty-six hours on my knees, praying for myself. Not for him or for his soul. His soul was alive forever, nestled in the lap of eternity. I read the Book and I walk these roads and fields, and I think of Paul Meadows."

  "And you told all of this to my wife?"

  "No," he said, 'and I have not told it to anyone else."

  "Why me?"

  "Because lately I have been wondering why I was sent here. It began to seem as if I would be wasting my life if I spent the rest of it living the way I live working, reading, praying. It came to me that perhaps I was sent here to make their church remember Paul. There are some good people in that church, betrayed by their leaders. If I can make them remember what Paul stood for, they could be saved. I do not really know. I think I should try to preach about Paul or he will be forgotten.

  He told me if I ever came to this area I should not speak of him or try to talk to anyone in his family. He did not explain. I have begun to think that he was testing me, trying to find out if I am strong enough to disobey his orders."

  "Why were you in there, in that place?"

  "Because the court said I was legally insane at the time of the commission of the crime."

  "What was the crime?"

  "Paul asked me that too. I could not remember. I used to try to remember, but I gave up long ago."

  "But now you are okay?"

  "I was released. I wonder if that was part of the plan. I was on medication for years. Through Paul I found the strength to just pretend I was taking it. I would keep it in my cheek until they were gone. Then I began to be able to read the Book and remember the words. One day they let a lot of us go. They took us in a bus and let us out in front of a big building in Youngstown. We were supposed to go inside and they would find a place for all of us, and food stamps and maybe some work. There was talk that the asylum had run out of funds to care for us. The others went in and I walked down the street and around a corner. I felt that Paul was with me."

  "What is your full name?"

  "I don't know. I used to have it on a card but I lost it. Paul had started to call me Moses. I think because of my beard.

  When I first came here people came to see me and ask questions. But I did not know any of the answers and finally they stopped coming."

  Roy Owen measured the distance to the screen door off to his left, and wondered how quickly he could get out through it, and if his ankle was well enough for a fast sprint to his car.

  "I want to ask you something, Moses. You can't remember what kind of a crime you committed. My wife disappeared that same weekend. Do you think there is any chance that...

  well, you might have done the same sort of thing again. That you could have... hurt her?"

  He was silent and thoughtful for so long that Roy slowly relaxed.

  "I don't think there is any chance of that, Mr. Owen.

  Mr. Dockerty he's the sheriff in Lakemore he's a very nice man. I think he knows who I am. He took my fingerprints after I first came here and I think they found out that way. I think he knows what I must have done a long time ago. Mr. Dockerty came to see me after that woman had disappeared and he had found out I had driven her from the motel to the Meadows Center and back. He wanted to know if I had noticed whether anybody seemed particularly interested in her, or asked about her, or followed us. I hadn't seen anything like that. I don't blame you for asking me what you did. But if I'd done a crime of that kind, I think they would have asked me different questions. And more of them."

  "Moses, I want to thank you for your help."

  Both men stood up, and as Roy backed out the door, Moses looked beyond him into the shadows of night and said, in a particularly loud voice, "I will punish the ministers, the royal princes and all those who dress themselves in foreign style. On that day I mean to punish all those who are near the throne, those who fill the palace of their lord with violence and deceit.

  On that day it is the Lord who speaks a shout shall be raised from the Fish Gate, from the new town, howls, from the hills a great uproar. Men of the Mortar, howl! For the whole brood of Canaan has been destroyed, the weighers of silver are all wiped out."

  Moses went back and sat down and opened his Book, and Roy sensed the man was no longer aware of him. As he walked to his car Mrs. Holroyd came out into the night, holding her clenched hands to her chest.

  "Mr. Owen? Good heavens, what was that?"

  "Sort of like a prayer, I guess."

  "He's been praying a lot louder lately. It makes me worry."

  "I think he's okay. He's a little bit crazy, and maybe we all are. But I think he's harmless enough."

  "I can't remember anybody else staying as long with him as you just did."

  "I guess that about all I can say, Mrs. Holroyd, is that this has been one of those strange days. He seems to think everything is part of a plan, and today I was part of it too."

  He drove over to the Meadows Center, bought the last Wall Street Journal from the stand in the lobby of the Motor House and ate a solitary dinner in a corner of the dining room. He found a couple of situations which troubled him a steep decline in one issue on what seemed to be extraordinary volume, and an unfriendly takeover situation involving another issue in which they had a heavy investment.

  He phoned his executive assistant at home and he said, "Not to worry, Roy. On EGK, they're going to come out with very bad earnings for the last quarter, down nearly fifty percent, and when I heard the first whisper, I moved our stop-loss order up a couple of notches and we were sold out of it at eleven yesterday morning. I'm letting it sit in Continental for a while, okay?"

  "Very much okay. And what about that oil takeover?"

  "It's moving up on the tender offer and I give it another two and a half or three points and I think that right there we could nail down the profit we've got in
it in the options market. But it's your decision, of course."

  "Let's stay a while and keep a close watch on it. Find out which way the wind is blowing on arbitrage, and I'll get back to you tomorrow."

  "Early tomorrow, because if we're going to move, we better do it before the weekend, Roy. How.. how are things going?"

  "Today I had a conversation with a rabbit."

  "With a what?"

  "A bunny. You know. Hop, hop."

  "I guess I'm not following you too well."

  Then I had a long talk with a prophet. A prophet like in the Bible. A man who knows what's going to happen next."

  "I'd say let's hire him, but I don't know what you're talking about."

  "That makes two of us."