Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She was not illiterate: she could read the newspaper if she took time, and headlines never gave her any trouble. She liked to puzzle over cartoons, she was very much moved by love comics and screen romances, and she was able to pick out the tunes of popular songs on the piano, hit or miss, without any sheet music at all. Nathan disliked the sort of songs he sometimes happened to hear on the radio, he thought the music rude and profane and some of the lyrics unclean, but Leonie had a craving for them and sang them under her breath, mixed in with gospel songs, as if there were no real distinction. “Music is music,” she said, raising her plucked, arched eyebrows. “It’s all to beautify the world, isn’t it? I like to spread a joyful noise.” Reverend Beloff disapproved of her painting her fingernails and rinsing her hair in a blue-black dye, since his radio listeners would disapprove if they knew, but Leonie paid him no mind. She offered to give him a rinse and to trim his eyebrows, which were getting old-mannish lately, straggly iron-gray hairs going in all directions. It was quite likely that his gospel program would be taken up by a local television network for Sunday mornings at nine and he should naturally look his best.

  Both Reverend Beloff and his daughter, Nathan soon discovered, were lazy, vain, utterly charming people, unlike anyone he had known in Marsena. They were both physically attractive though somewhat big-boned, and their faces were unusually large and broad, drawing all attention to them, absorbing all the light in a room. They were short-tempered, peevish, silly, and exasperating, and yet they were firm believers: God and Christ and the Holy Ghost were real to them as living people and, like living people, they were capable of being deceived. God played hide-and-seek with mankind during the week but was likely to be ever-present on Sundays, fiercely intrusive on one’s actions and thoughts. Still, He could be misled and deceived, as certain clever Old Testament figures knew very well. The important thing, Reverend Beloff tried to explain, was simple love for God and fellow man and faith in the Scriptures and what else matters?—not a thing! Officially he did not smoke or drink strong beverages of any kind, not even coffee, not even cola (which was known as “dope” and which certainly did contain caffeine), nor did he participate in gambling of even a mild type—not even checkers or gin rummy; he talked repeatedly to his congregation about poverty, celibacy, humility, and the need to be reborn—baptized, in fact—every minute of every day. All of which he certainly believed. Though he frequently drank and often smoked cigars and had an uncanny gift for choosing winning race horses (only, he explained, if he didn’t use his brains but simply scanned the list of horses and allowed his pulses to flutter mysteriously at the right name), though he owned a fair amount of real estate in Port Oriskany and Derby and North Yewville (which would, he believed, expand like crazy in the next decade), and had several very casual mistresses in the state, and was so vain he sometimes wore corsets beneath his powder-blue suits, and makeup on his smallpox-scarred cheeks, and a wide-brimmed black hat of the softest imaginable wool, fashioned in London, still he was not a hypocrite: he did believe in the superiority of his beliefs, even when he was not inclined to practice them. “The Lord God,” he often bellowed over the air, “is a mighty fortress—a Rock of Gibraltar. There ain’t anything much you can do to injure Him. You can turn and walk away and come crawling back on your hands and knees, and He’s just gonna pick you up in the palm of His mighty hand and give a good chuckle, you know? On account of He ain’t susceptible to every little breeze and quiver originating in the world of man! No He ain’t! He’s above all humankind’s pettiness and sees into every heart and sees both forward and back, and there ain’t anything that would shock Him, not any little piddling sin at all. He’s ready to forgive if you’re ready . . . if you’re ready to be baptized anew every moment of every day.” And then he would go on to explain his special theology of baptism, which had saved thousands of souls thus far, and which was set forth in easy-to-read detail in a booklet he had written, “The Power of Constant Baptism,” available to his listeners for $1.98.

  For radio and preaching purposes he possessed a liquid-smooth voice, but in ordinary conversation he spoke raspily, interrupting himself often. In bright sunlight his eyes ached, so he wore glasses with blue-tinted lenses. Nathan had known the man for several months and had been his First Assistant for six weeks before he discovered, quite by accident, that Reverend Beloff’s left hand was not a hand at all—he had lost his flesh-and-blood hand as a child of nine, in a threshing machine, and had worn a hook for a while, and had then been fitted out with an artificial flesh-colored hand, complete down to imitation fingernails and dark hairs on the knuckles, by an admirer who owned an artificial limb factory in Des Moines. “Why, boy, you look white as a sheet!” Reverend Beloff laughed. “All on account of this-here thing? You’ll get used to it, son. Get used to everything in time.”

  Nathan stammered that it was a wonderful invention. “It looks the same as a real hand,” he said nervously.

  After that Mr. Beloff sometimes let his artificial hand fall on Nathan’s shoulder heavily, as a joke, just to see him start.

  “Us Beloffs just can’t take things too seriously,” he said. “Not that we’re the kind of twice-saved Christians who run around yelling hallelujah every minute of the day. But it’s in our nature, so to speak, to figure that if Jesus healed the unclean lepers He will take care of us too. Not that we mean to take things too lightly and backslide: that we would never do. But we like a good laugh, eh?”

  Nathan forced himself to laugh in their company, though in fact he rarely understood why they found amusing the things they did. (And what was humor, anyway? Why did people break into profane peals of laughter, their faces creasing like infants’ faces? What was a joke, why were jokes so valued, so sought-after? He did not quite understand and, humorless, ascetic, vaguely shocked, had the idea that Leonie and her father were pretending most of the time.) It had taken him several days to grasp the fact that Esther Leonie Beloff had simply been pretending to be saved that evening in Kincardine, staggering toward him like a drunken woman, practically falling against him in her gratitude and zeal. And how she had laughed, afterward, her eyes shut tight and her pudgy little chin creasing against her throat: the entire performance had been a fraud, a deception, a joke.

  “Leonie shouldn’t ought to have done it, not with a hard-working boy like yourself,” Reverend Beloff said soberly when they were introduced. “I wanted to meet you, son, and was fully intending to drop in myself after services, you know, but she had to slip in first—always trying to outfox her daddy, playing her damn-silly little jokes. I hope you aren’t offended—?”

  “No,” Nathan said slowly, “I’m not offended.”

  Leonie giggled, brushing his arm with her own, squeezing his cheek.

  “You’re just a doll,” she said. “You’re so perfect. I wouldn’t ever hurt you, Nathan, not in my whole life. You’re not offended, then?”

  “Of course not,” Nathan said. He paused, blushing. Both Beloffs eyed him closely. “I’ve never been offended in my entire life,” he said.

  VI

  And so it happened that the Reverend Marian Miles Beloff, pastor of the Bethany-Nazarene Church of the Risen Christ, and famous throughout the state for his gospel program (which had at first been broadcast only once a week, Sunday evenings at seven, but was soon increased to several times a week because of listener interest), saw in Nathanael Vickery a means by which the living message of Christ might be brought to the multitudes. “No, you certainly don’t need to go to any Bible college,” Reverend Beloff said impatiently. “That would be a ludicrous waste of your time. You’d know more than your teachers, you’d be overwhelmed with trivia, and what a loss to America, Nathan Vickery stuck away somewhere for four years—! I won’t hear of it. I won’t. I’m a graduate of the Eastern Bible Institute myself, and I have a Bachelor of Divinity from Berklee Theological Seminary, and a half-dozen honorary degrees, and what do they mean? Nothing! If I’ve achieved a modicum of success, my boy, it has no
thing to do with formal training . . . No, it’s entirely a matter of the Lord’s interest in us. His gifts, His power. His energy channeled into us. Your benefactor Mr. Sisley means well, I suppose, but he knows very little of the world, and after talking with him for five minutes I came away wondering if he’d even had a call, to be quite frank; and I’m rather suspicious of this fund he says he’s been raising for you over the years. I asked to see the account, but he got very nervous and tried to change the subject, and couldn’t seem to hear what I said, so I’m inclined to think there isn’t any money for your tuition anyway . . . or if there ever was, the old man has siphoned most of it off for his own use. Does that surprise you, Nathan? It shouldn’t. And it shouldn’t matter either. You can put your trust in the Lord and in Marian Miles from this day onward.”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said slowly. “I would have to think about it . . .”

  “No, you certainly don’t need any formal training. Anyone who’s heard you preach can see in your face and hear in your voice the unmistakable tones of the Risen Christ, and Bible college would only interfere with your natural gifts. You don’t want to be a settled-down Baptist minister with a back-country church, do you?—or even a city church? You’re meant for something more illustrious, for the most select of the evangelist circuits, for radio and television, for huge auditoriums and arenas—truly you are! Truly. First you’ll begin as my assistant—my First Assistant, in fact—and we’ll see what sort of mail and love-offerings you get from the faithful, and every third Sunday or so we’ll feature you, and you can lead a Wednesday-evening praise meeting at my church once a month and we’ll see about that: though I would be very much surprised if the congregation didn’t warm to you immediately. I have an eye for success, and an ear . . . And from what my shrewd little girl has said about that revival hour out in Kincardine, I gather you’re one in a thousand and there’s not a thing to worry about.”

  “I would have to discuss it with my grandmother,” Nathan said. “She’s lived in Marsena all her life and . . .”

  “Can Christ come from Marsena?” Reverend Beloff said shrilly, raising his eyebrows. He stared at Nathan for a long dramatic moment. Then he smiled and leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, sighing. “We know the answer to that, don’t we? My enemies say I’m slowing down, Nathan, but don’t believe them. They spread slanderous rumors out of sheer picklish envy. I’m not slowing down at all, but I do admit to being at that time of life when an afternoon nap is helpful, and I’m about ready to accept with gratitude and humility my followers’ offer of a vacation in Hawaii over the Christmas holidays . . . and the prospect of working with a bright and talented young assistant like yourself is pleasing indeed. I can’t keep up my breakneck pace forever, after all! I’m only a mortal man, regardless of what some people think. I must watch my health; Leonie is always after me to cut down on fats and starches, the poor child worries so about my health, poor little girl! . . . but I can’t blame her, I suppose; I’m all she has in the world and if something should happen to me she’d be alone. So we would both rejoice, Nathan, if you and your grandmother would agree to jump aboard with us and cast in your lot with ours. You do have a prodigious talent but at the same time you must learn your craft. I can help you immeasurably with the practical side of theology . . . You didn’t happen to see that slanderous story in the Sunday feature last month, did you? No? A former associate of mine sold some information regarding me and the Church of the Risen Christ and the Doctrine of Constant Baptism; betrayed me, in fact, as an act of revenge, though at one time we had been very close and he’d been apprenticed to me, in a sense . . . Not that I harbor any ill wishes against him: it’s his privilege, as it was Judas’s privilege, to betray whom he will. But as long as you didn’t see the shameful, spiteful article . . . And anyway, my attorneys and I fully expect to receive not only financial remuneration for the insult, but a full-page retraction as well. Otherwise I won’t be responsible for what the Lord may decide to do to the guilty parties! . . . I like it, Nathan, that you’re so young. Seventeen, are you? So young! Christ was a young man, a very young man. It’s His youth, His vitality, His impetuousness, that are so appealing. If He had been, well, my age . . . forty-nine, that is . . . it’s possible that certain of His actions would seem inappropriate. Certain of His teachings as well. Or shouldn’t I say such things? You seem rather troubled, my boy; I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  He got to his feet and walked Nathan to the window of the hotel room, sighing, remarking on the view, sliding his arm around Nathan’s slender shoulders. For a man of his size he was surprisingly light on his feet; he gave off a pleasant odor of cologne and tobacco. (He was spending several days in the city as a guest of one of the local churches, having been engaged to help with a building-fund campaign now in its final weeks.) Nathan would have liked to draw away but could not. He stood obediently at the window with Reverend Beloff, staring at the sky, at the mountains in the distance, seeing nothing. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here. What interest had he in a radio ministry? The possibility of a television program? Huge crowds? He had preached to gatherings of two hundred people, and while the experience had been enlivening in a strange, tumultuous way, he always wondered afterward whether the message of the Lord might not be dissipated in all the excitement. So many people, so many souls, and his solitary soul presuming to address them; wasn’t it folly? And the drugged feeling afterward, a dazed euphoria he found very unsettling . . .

  “Lovely view, isn’t it,” Reverend Beloff said companionably. “The river glittering in the sun . . . and the hills . . . and the fruit orchards . . . and the mountains. Are you from the mountains, Nathan? No? Not exactly? There’s so much space out there, space and distance and time, the visible universe spread out before us; it makes a man almost dizzy, doesn’t it, almost frightened at how small he is. Or don’t such thoughts occur to you? You’re so young, and the Lord is so much with you, I don’t suppose such thoughts do occur to you . . . or possibly . . . possibly any thoughts at all. Ah! To be young again! To be young again, and you . . . I see in you, my boy, a wondrous future. I see in you a means by which the pagan American continent may at last be brought to God. Not that the American people are wicked: not at all! I’m not sure I exactly believe in wickedness, since I’ve experienced so little of it. Anyway, the Devil takes care of that for us, don’t he?—siphoning off the evil for his own purposes. No, the American people are not wicked, Nathan, they are merely pagan and childlike and easily confused . . . and doomed to burn away like vapor in the heat of the sun, unless someone comes to their aid. They are hungry for a true prophet, for a true evangelistic voice. They are ravenously hungry for the signs and wonders that attend the coming of one of God’s chosen witnesses . . . It isn’t possible for you to deny the Lord, my son. I saw in you from the very first instant of our meeting one in whom the Lord dwells, unmistakably—unmistakably! The yearning in your voice is something I alone can hear, I alone of your hundreds of admirers, for at one time I had it myself . . . and then it was taken from me . . . But praise be to the Lord, Who works in His own mysterious ways! He ravels and unravels our destinies for us and we cannot resist. What do you say, Nathan? What have you been thinking?”

  Nathan was thinking that he would have to spend days in solitude, meditating, before he could hope to confront the Reverend Beloff and his offer. Yet he heard his voice raised in immediate response. “Yes,” he said softly.

  Someone else had spoken—?

  He had not intended to speak and yet it was his own voice.

  “Did you say—yes?” Reverend Beloff asked, delighted.

  Nathan hesitated. He did not quite know where he was. Staring into the distance, at the unclear, filmy horizon, aware of a stranger’s heavy arm on his shoulders, he felt his throat constrict with an emotion close to panic. Yes. No. But the Lord spoke through him and there was no turning back.

  “Yes,” he said in a whisper.

 
“Bless you, my son,” Reverend Beloff said, deeply moved.

  JUST AS HE never regretted any action You led him into, so Nathan did not regret his apprenticeship to Marian Miles Beloff, or his relationship with the Beloffs; though over the months and years he came to suspect that it was, in part, Leonie Beloff who had tempted him into leaving Marsena, and Leonie Beloff who had drawn him most powerfully into his new life.

  She was four and a half years older than Nathan. Though she went out often with a number of men, some of them nearly as old as Mr. Beloff himself, she was said to be engaged to a man named Elias Carroll, a deacon in the Bethany-Nazarene Church of the Risen Christ and the owner of a small canning factory. He was thirty-eight years old, a widower with a retarded daughter, a tall, stocky man given to long pauses; he was said to be very devoted to Leonie, though he would not press her to marry him until she was ready. “Oh, he’s sweet enough, but not anywhere near like you,” Leonie complained to Nathan, poking him in the ribs. “Not pretty like you.”

  “You mustn’t distract Nathan from his work,” Reverend Beloff said. “You should respect his privacy, dear.”

  “But I do! I certainly do! I respect everything about him,” Leonie said, fixing him with her sly green eyes, winking behind her father’s back. “Seeing as how I’m practically engaged to Elias, and practically dwindled into a dowdy old married woman like the ones that fuss around you, Pa, don’t I have the right to tease a sweet little boy like our Nathan? I certainly don’t mean any harm.”

  She coached him with his part on the Reverend Beloff’s radio program, explaining that he must speak slowly enough and clearly enough for the most dull-witted listeners to understand, since they would not be able to pick up any meaning from his facial expressions or the movements of his hands; when Reverend Beloff and his troupe took on a Sunday-morning television program as well, Leonie insisted he come downtown with her to pick out appropriate clothes (“You can look modest, hon, but you can’t look poor—you don’t want to dismay and terrify our audience, do you? They just hate being poor and they don’t want any reminders!”), and she trimmed his hair herself with a scissors and a razor, since he refused to go to a barber (“I’m not going to shorten it one bit, I just love that kind of hurtful way you can toss it around when you get excited; but I think maybe it should be evened up—otherwise you might look lopsided, you know”), and scolded him for grimacing and rolling his eyes when it wasn’t necessary and he was just searching for words (“On a platform you can do that all you like, but on television you hadn’t better: it picks up the least little shrug and twitch and tic”), and applauded him more than anyone when he did well. She pawed anxiously through each morning’s mail, brushing aside even those envelopes that contained cash or personal love-offerings like rings or wrist watches or loose jewels, looking for letters specifically concerning him. (“Listen to this one, Nathan—he thinks you are the very Second Coming itself! And this one, this one: the woman is obviously mad with love for you!”)