Andy grabbed the boy’s wrist and brought it back into contact with the small corpse. “No, I said touch it.”
Peter tried to jerk away. Andy squeezed the back of the child’s neck with his other hand and immobilized him.
As he held the boy’s hand there, a steady stream of ants followed the first, vanishing up the boy’s jacket sleeve.
3
The union rep tapped Andy on the shoulder while he was waiting for the blow to end.
“Let Jerry watch it and come with me,” he shouted in Andy’s ear.
Andy turned away from the huge dark furnace, out of whose open top refulgent light gushed, born of 330 tons of molten metal. He followed the rep across the busy mill floor and into an office. The rep sat down behind an empty desk with a green rubberized top and indicated that Andy should sit too. Andy did.
Andy wore thick brown Carhartt coveralls, work boots and gloves. From a breast pocket, held by an alligator clip, hung his photo identity badge. In the photograph, Andy looked bewildered.
Andy’s face as he sat uneasily in the chair was blackened with soot. His hair was mussed. He wore protective goggles over his eyes. Removing one glove now, he lifted the goggles atop his head and waited for the rep to speak.
“Listen, Stiles, your probation period is almost over, and I gotta make some kinda report.”
Andy nodded, but said nothing.
“Now, you’re a decent worker. You punch in on time, you don’t miss no days, and you pull your weight. But as far as sociability goes, getting along with your coworkers … well, hell, you just don’t.”
Andy continued to sit mute, staring at his hands in his lap. They looked funny, one gloved, one ungloved. The ungloved one was plainly his, but the gloved one seemed to belong to someone—to something—else.
“Like now for instance. Just look at you. You can’t even talk to me. It gives some guys the creeps. And then there’s the other thing.”
Andy looked up from the puzzle of his hands. “What other thing?”
The rep seemed embarrassed. “What your coworkers claim. That you, uh, talk to it.”
“To what?”
“To the furnace.”
Andy looked back into his lap and mumbled something.
“What?” demanded the rep. “What’s that? If you got something to tell me, tell me.”
Still with bent neck, Andy said, “It started talking first.”
“Oh, shit,” said the rep wearily.
There was mutual silence for a full minute. Then Andy spoke.
“I didn’t believe it myself at first, you know. I wasn’t, like, looking for something like this to happen. But the universe is weird, Mister Ptakcek, it really is. The Lord filled it with marvels and wonders, for our edification. And if He chooses to make the furnace talk to me—for I surely believe it’s His doing—then I ain’t got no choice but to listen, and to answer when I’m asked a question. Do I now? Have a choice?”
“Kid, you got bad chemicals, I know that. Are you still following your doctor’s orders?”
“You sound like my wife.”
“Yeah, yeah, but are you?”
“Sure.”
“Let me see ’em.”
Andy fished inside a pocket, took out his prescription bottle and exhibited it to the rep.
“Okay. Put ’em away.”
Andy did so.
“Now listen up close. You know it’s impossible for the furnace to be talking to you, don’t you?”
“The Lord spoke to Moses out of a burning bush …”
“That was then, for Christ’s sake, in prehistoric times. This is now. Jesus Christ, I’m a good Catholic myself, but the Lord don’t make no more personal appearances nowadays. Maybe the Virgin, once in a while, but not God Hisself.”
The rep paused for thought. “It ain’t the Virgin, is it?”
“No, I don’t think so …”
The rep seemed disappointed at this foreclosure. “I should just give you your notice now, Stiles. But I know you got a family, and I don’t feel like training someone new. So I’m giving you one more shot. You got a week left before I gotta make my report. If I don’t hear no more about this crazy stuff, we’ll just forget you ever done it.”
The rep stood. Andy stood. The rep conducted him to the door. On the point of stepping out, the rep said, “And Stiles—maybe you should see your priest about this too. It couldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Well, find one then.”
Andy went back to his post and relieved Jerry. The twenty-minute blow was just ending, completing the forty-five-minute cycle. The watercooled oxygen lance was withdrawn, prior to the tilting of the furnace and the decanting of the molten steel through a tap hole in the top of the furnace.
As the liquid metal began to flow, the furnace spoke. Its voice was as supple, rich and thick as the river of smelted ore.
“You did not listen to Ptakcek, did you, Andrew?”
The thing that startled Andy most was that the furnace knew the rep’s name. It was the first time it had exhibited such knowledge. Looking to left and right, Andy whispered, “No, I didn’t.”
“Good. He is ignorant, an idolater. It is wrong to heed such men.”
“I won’t,” Andy said. “I won’t, Moloch. I promise.”
4
The house of the Very Reverend Wade Demure sat in a hollow down by the tracks. It was a three-story structure clad in asphalt siding which simulated bricks. Porches scabbed to each level sagged dangerously, seeming to compress the columns that held them up almost beyond their tensile strength.
The structure sat on a lot full of used car parts. Engines and transmissions, air filters and wheel rims, brake shoes and mufflers, axles and batteries, all were threaded with weeds, goldenrod poking through machined casings, Queen Anne’s lace dancing above spark plugs scattered like dragon’s teeth.
Every Wednesday night there was a midweek assembly of the reverend’s small and eclectic congregation. The members of the informal church met in Reverend Demure’s parlor. The parlor was furnished with a dozen chairs, no two of which were alike. Straight-backed and cane-bottomed, sag-cushioned with threadbare armrests. Wooden folding chairs stenciled with the names of previous institutional owners, aluminum dinette chairs with ripped padded seats. In their variety, the chairs mimicked the parishioners.
The chairs rested along three walls atop several overlapping carpets which served to hide the worn floorboards, but which were themselves almost as disreputable in their aged condition. In the middle of the room was positioned a long table whose veneer was incised with meaningless scratches.
Andy sat between a fat black woman and a thin neurasthenic fellow. The fat black woman had a face whose left side was collapsed, from surgery, accident or stroke. The eye on that side was missing, gummed permanently shut with an exudation that resembled pine resin. Her cheek was deeply puckered, as if she were continually biting down on the inward-drawn flesh. Part of her jaw seemed to be missing. The man on Andy’s other side carried a big boxy hearing aid in the pocket of his plaid shirt. The cap of the plug in his hairy ear was big as a quarter. A tic twitched at the corner of his mouth like a creature leading an independent existence.
The reverend stood at the end of the table farthest from his audience. A big Bible was splayed open on the table to aid the reverend in his interminable sermon, although he seemed not really to need it, so thorough was his mastery of its contents.
Andy was not really listening to the reverend’s words. He was too nervous among these strangers to concentrate. It was his first time at the reverend’s church. He had come to ask one simple question, and now awaited the opportunity. While waiting, he stared at the reverend.
Demure was a bulky man with a big nose and skin spotted with blackheads. His dark hair was slicked back with pomade whose scent carried to Andy across the room. He wore a red shirt, a wide white tie with a waffled texture, and a brown suit-coat of some synthetic materia
l. He seemed full to bursting with words, which he had to vent for his health. Andy failed to listen to any of them. They went right through him without registering, like wind through a bed of bullrushes.
At last the reverend finished. He closed the Bible with a mighty thump and folded his arms across his chest, as if daring any of the congregation to challenge him. None accepted the challenge. The people rose and began to file out, each meekly shaking the reverend’s hand and offering a word or two of praise or agreement.
Andy stood back from the “Amens” and “Praise the Lords”—which seemed to hang around Demure like a cloud—until everyone had left. Only then did he approach the preacher.
“Well, son, did the spirit move you tonight?”
Andy declined to answer. “Reverend Demure, I got a question I’m hoping you can answer for me.”
“Shoot.”
“Who is Moloch? I been trying to find out for myself outa the Bible, but the way I read it, he seems like two different things. One time, it’s like he’s God, and other times it’s like he’s Baalzebub or something.”
Reverend Demure cupped his chin in one hand and his elbow in the other, signifying the ponderous nature of the question. “Well, boy, you have hit upon a conundrum all right. You see, Moloch was the name the ancient Jews invoked when they was preparin’ to sacrifice one of their offspring, immolatin’ the infants upon Tophet Hill, as they continued to do elsewhere right up to the Middle Ages. Now, the word ‘Moloch’ don’t mean no more than ‘king,’ and as such was just another name for Yahweh, Him of the Old Testament. So in one sense, Moloch was the Lord. However, later prophets done renounced Moloch, twistin’ the way they pronounced his name so as to sound like ‘shame,’ and claimin’ he was some heathen god like the Golden Calf. As near as I follow it, the jury’s still out on who was right.”
Andy thought a minute. “So you’re telling me that Moloch is just another name for God.”
“Well now, boy, you wasn’t listenin’ right. I said that was one interpretation of it—”
Andy thrust out his hand with some excitement and the reverend bemusedly took it. “Thank you, sir, thank you very much. You told me all I need to know.”
5
Since the night when the Reverend Demure had confirmed Moloch’s identity, Andy had found he no longer had to speak aloud for Moloch to hear his reply. Just as Moloch’s voice resonated in his head—and perhaps nowhere else, Andy was now forced to admit—so did Andy’s replies seem to find reception in the sun-hot stomach of Moloch without actual utterance.
This was all to the good. Andy was able to preserve the appearance that he had abandoned his “delusion” while still conversing with the being who called himself Moloch. Andy’s coworkers were less leery of him, and the number of taunts they sent his way diminished slightly, although they were never what could be called friendly to Andy.
In addition, Mister Ptakcek was happy. He gave Andy a good report. Dawn was happy too, since she had heard rumors from other wives during the period when Andy was speaking aloud to the furnace, and had worried. Now she was gratified to see that Andy’s latest “spell” appeared to be over.
The only one who was not happy was Andy. Neither was he unhappy, however. He was merely puzzled, intrigued, and even somewhat flattered.
Why, out of all humanity, had Moloch chosen to speak to him, Andrew Stiles? It was a question without easy answer. Andy sometimes tried to imagine what, if anything, he had in common with the famous Biblical prophets of yore. Some figures were simply beyond him, he knew. Moses, Saint Paul, Saint John—these were mighty individuals deserving of dealing directly with God. Others, though, seemed rather common folks, not unlike Andy. Lot, Job—these were more his kind, simple working men. Andy supposed that if God had chosen to speak to such men in the past, then He could still choose to do so today.
Whatever the answer, Andy definitely had a lot to think about. And the conversations with Moloch certainly made his shift pass fast.
One day Mister Ptakcek switched his assignment from the basic oxygen furnace—where the already molten ore was further purged of contaminants—to the blast furnace, where the ore was initially melted.
Andy was worried. Moloch had always spoken to him from the basic oxygen furnace. Would he speak from the other as well?
Positioning a wheeled container beneath the outlet from which the worthless slag flowed, Andy jumped when the voice of Moloch rumbled out. The hot air around the furnace seemed to pulse in time with the words.
“You wait upon my presence. That is good.”
Andy voiced his reply inside himself. “I wasn’t sure you could talk outa this one too.”
“My body is many, and yet one.”
“Are you the whole mill then?” Andy asked.
“I am the mill and the town, the earth and the trees, the sky and the stars. I am everything that ever was or will be.”
“Why didn’t you ever speak to me then, till I come to this mill?”
“You were not ready. And there were barriers. Even now, I find it hard sometimes to talk to you.”
“How come?”
“The medicine you take.”
Andy let the conversation drop then. He was afraid that Moloch
would order him to abandon his pills, and he did not know how to refuse.
Another time, Andy was telling Moloch about the day he and Dawn had outraced hell.
“How do you know you truly succeeded?” asked Moloch.
“Cuz the sky. It changed—”
“Did it, though? Your wife said it did not.”
Andy had not told Moloch anything about that comment of Dawn’s. Yet he knew, just as he had known Mister Ptakcek’s name.…
“You’re telling me I might still be in hell then? How can I be sure I’m not? How can a man be sure of anything in this world?”
“There is one way to determine if this is hell or not.”
“What is it?” asked Andy suspiciously.
“In hell, no one has free will. They must do what they are told. If you exercise your birthright as a being made in My image, if you show initiative, do something unexpected—only then will you be sure this is not hell.”
“What could I do? What would be enough to prove it?”
“Do not look to Me for orders,” said Moloch sternly. “Simply following My commands would prove nothing. I could be Satan in disguise.”
“I don’t want no orders. Just gimme some suggestions.”
“All right. If you sincerely wish Me to.”
“I do.”
“Do not listen to your wife or Mister Ptakcek.”
“Okay.”
“Do not take your pills.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Moloch, I don’t—”
“Do you wish to live in hell?”
“All right, ‘don’t take my pills.’ What else?”
“Bring Me your sons.”
6
The car was a ’78 Thunderbird, in fair shape. Andy and Dawn had come up in the world since he got the job at the mill.
It was a Sunday. The car was alone on the road. The sky overhead was a seamless, variegated grey, like felted lint from a dryer vent.
The car passed through the center of town, heading west on Highway 61, away from the mill. About a mile beyond the last house, it made a U-turn and headed back. It detoured through the hollow where the Reverend Wade Demure kept church. Sounds of ragged singing issued from within the asphalt-clad tenement, a dismally joyful noise that sought to rise heavenward but only filled the hollow like clammy fog. The woman with the disease-wracked face contributed a recognizable gargle.
The car navigated through residential streets, uphill and down, wandering aimlessly. Like a dog chained to a stake, however, its movements were bounded by a central pull, an almost gravitational force at the heart of its existence: the mill.
Simon and Peter were in the back seat. Peter sat on a little bolster apparatus of molded plastic. Simon still used the infant carrier t
hat had once been his brother’s. The passage of time, the friction of its two passengers, had worn the smiling faces off the multiple suns, restoring them once more to a frightful primeval obscurity. Both boys were carefully belted to keep them safe from accidental injury.
Dawn said, “Let’s be getting home, Andy. It’s almost lunchtime, and the boys must be hungry. We had enough of a holiday drive.” Dawn turned and hung one arm over the seat. “Ain’t that so, boys?”
The boys said nothing. They seemed stupefied, bemused, almost drugged.
Andy’s grip on the wheel was tetanus-tight. “Just one more stop, Dawn. I want to show the boys where their daddy works.”
“Aw, honey, they ain’t old enough to appreciate the mill. ’Specially little Simon.” Dawn reached over the seat to adjust Simon in the carrier. Her position was awkward, and she succeeded only in pushing Simon’s bonnet down over his eyes, so that his backward view of the objects they flew from—the landscape which seemed almost to push them away, to hurl itself in retreat from the car—was cut off.
Andy did not reply, but simply drove on.
The vast parking lot of the mill was empty, save for the lone car of the security guard, who, sitting bored in his gateside booth, waved the Stiles family through when Andy explained what he was about.
Andy parked the Thunderbird near the main door of the mill.
Dawn said, “Aw, Andy, why you stopping? The boys can see the mill good enough from here. Can’t you, boys?”
Andy did not reply to Dawn because he did not hear her. Moloch was speaking to him. This was unique. Moloch had never spoken to him outside the mill before. It must be because he had stopped taking his pills.
“You have brought your sons to Me, Andrew. This is good. You exhibit strength of will. You are almost assured of learning a very important truth: your whereabouts. But you are not quite done. You must bring the boys inside, to see Me.”
“What about Dawn?”
“She cannot come.”
“What’ll I tell her?”
Little Doors Page 6
