Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Nathan! There you are! Japheth cried.

  His heart had begun to beat quickly. He would have been afraid, but at once his own teaching calmed him: Be ye in the world and not of it. The body dwelt in the world, the soul dwelt elsewhere. Had You not instructed him in this simple wisdom many years ago, and were You not close by him now, protecting him against Japheth’s murderous rage . . . ?

  It was as the dream had warned him. The Angel of Destruction crept up softly behind him and then began to scream at him. Nathan! Nathan! Something was raised high into the air—a hoe, Nathan thought at first, though in fact it was a crowbar Japheth had taken from one of the barns—and brought down on his shoulder. He staggered but did not fall. He maintained his distance from his attacker, his gaze turned away as if out of shame for what was being done to him. While Japheth screamed incoherently—accusing him of beastly, abominable things—he stood with his feet apart, swaying, waiting for the next blow, for it was ordained that You would protect him, and that this violence must be allowed to run its course.

  Panting, Japheth came up close behind him and struck him this time on the back of the neck—and You consoled him yet again with Your ageless wisdom, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do . . . By this time Nathan’s companions were running to him, shouting. Japheth grunted and reared back to swing the crowbar a third time, and still Nathan did not look at him, and still he waited, half stooping, his heart now pounding in his chest as if it were a wild thing desperate to escape. Nathan, Japheth cried, Nathan, why did you—Why are you—Before the blow fell, Nathan extended his hand toward Japheth without turning, and it was a gesture acknowledging guilt and forgiveness—a benediction: yet the gesture did not appease Japheth but seemed to madden him all the more. For the third and final blow was the most brutal of all, striking Nathan on the forehead, just above his good eye. The violence of the blow was such that the skull was crushed, and blood exploded outward, and Nathan’s spirit fled from his body, and time came to a stop.

  XII

  And began again, of course.

  And again, again.

  And again.

  FOR NATHAN VICKERY, the Chosen One, was immortal: unkillable.

  For it came about as it was ordained, that the three savage blows should fall, and that Nathan should resist none of them, and that his life would be protected by Your love.

  And indeed it was a miracle. A miracle before witnesses, and before the murderous disciple himself, who later testified to police that he had struck a killing blow to Nathan Vickery and had indeed killed him but in the next half-minute life had been restored, and he knew it was hopeless, and had thrown the bloody crowbar away before he was seized.

  “I am guilty of murder,” Japheth Sproul insisted, laughing and pushing his glasses up his nose. “I did what I set out to do. I killed him. Ask him—he knows! His skull crumpled, the brain was pierced, he died; just ask him and he’ll admit it, he won’t dare deny it, he can’t tell a falsehood because he’s the Son of God! He’s God Himself! He is, that’s why I tried to kill him—tried to rid us of him. And I did kill him. But he came back. But I am guilty . . . You know, he is the Son of God. He has replaced Christ. It’s true, ask him, he’ll admit it! He admitted it to me once or twice. It was I, Japheth Sproul, who cautioned him against releasing such news to the world, for fear he would be misunderstood. But it’s true, it’s true! Ask him! Go ahead and ask him—he can’t lie! He is God Himself come to us because the time of wrath is near. Everyone knows this but won’t acknowledge it! Everyone knows! The end is come upon the four corners of the earth and no one will be spared except those Nathan has lifted up—ask him, he’ll tell you! Ask him! The rod has blossomed, violence is risen up, you will seek peace and there will be none. There will be none. I tried to avert all this. I tried to stop him. I did it alone, without any help, all alone I tried to save the human world from him, and he halfway wanted me to succeed, I know, I know him so well; and though I failed in the end I did kill him, I did accomplish what I set out to do, for at least a minute!—I, Japheth Sproul, did kill Nathan Vickery. But he came back to life again because he isn’t a human being, the Spirit of the Lord is in him, protecting him, lifting him up. He isn’t human, he can’t be killed, not really killed. Just ask him, go and ask him, he’ll tell you himself, he’ll admit it, he can’t lie!”

  AND THEY WENT to Nathan Vickery and did ask if he was the Son of God, or God Himself: but Nathan withdrew and would not reply. He had stopped speaking directly to “outsiders” some time ago. He answered certain summonses because it was ordained that he obey the law of the land until such time as the law was overthrown or annihilated, but he would not reply to such questions and to a number of others. Why did his former friend and disciple want to kill him? Why had he not protected himself? Why had he not pressed charges, why had he not even wanted medical attention? And how was it possible that the attack had injured him so slightly? (He had only a few bruises and scratches, and a swelling the size of a robin’s egg on his forehead.)

  Lawrence R. Pearce, of New York City, the Seekers’ new chief counsel, instructed Nathan in what he might say and what he need not; and Nathan in his wisdom prudently obeyed.

  XIII

  Late February.

  A universe of snow.

  As for Nathan Vickery time stopped and then began again, so for me also it has stopped. Some weeks ago it stopped when I found that I could not continue. But now, today, time begins again as it must. For despite my inertia it is still day and I must work, for the night will come when no man can work.

  YOU WHO READ this—you cannot guess at my dread, or my self-contempt because of that dread. I am sick with apprehension, I am a gargoyle crouched atop human shoulders, boar’s head, dog’s head, swollen beastly lips wet with saliva. The phenomenon of language draws us together as sisters and brothers, sisters and brothers not in Christ but in the Word; yet the phenomenon of language falsifies my experience as it is transmitted to you, for you cannot know, you cannot guess, at the meaning of the spaces between words, the blank white emptiness of silence . . . Into which I might plunge myself yet, for perhaps only so desperate an act would return the Lord to me.

  THE SKULL WAS crushed, the spirit fled from the body, time came to a stop. With the ease of a sail suddenly filled by the wind and borne away by the wind did Nathan’s soul detach itself from his body and fly some distance away, weightless, invisible, quick as a spark of electricity, unharmed. From a great height Nathan’s soul appeared to watch the clumsy activity surrounding Nathan’s fallen body. It observed with a curious detachment, and yet with absolute clarity, Nathan’s ashen face his partly closed eyes, the blood that ran so freely and horribly from his wounded forehead . . .

  Not for the first time did Nathan shake himself free from his flesh. Not for the first time did he squirm out of the compact, rather wonderful prison of his skeleton. But it was the first time he dissolved the union of his own accord, as an act of his own will: in the past You had snatched him away, bidding him fly to You. Perhaps for that reason he felt nothing more than a queer clinical dissociation. He watched the men grappling with Japheth Sproul, he watched Japheth Sproul struggling hopelessly and stupidly, he watched even his own life’s-blood draining away. A spark of light, a scrap of dandelion fluff, a mere pinpoint of consciousness: so his soul vibrated above the human spectacle, untouched, unmoved. You drew near, the radiance of old, yet invisible. Is it time to die, Nathan asked without hope. Is it time for me to come to You . . .

  There was no need for You to reply. For You and Nathan were always one, and he understood Your wishes as if they were his own.

  The spirit fled from the body, darting clear of its distress. Time came to a stop. And then—suddenly—suddenly the spirit woke again in the body: and all began again.

  One moment he had been a great distance away, contemplating without emotion his own dying self, putting his question to You. Is it time . . . ? Is it time for me t
o come to You . . . ? One moment he had been free; the next he was back in his body again, trapped in the skull of a stranger said to be himself: Nathan Vickery.

  He had not died. Yet he had not exactly continued to live.

  There was a break, a bubble, a missed pulse beat: and suddenly he woke again in his body and all was as it had been. For, as we know, there is no death without Your blessing, there is no peace without Your will.

  Nathan stirred and came into consciousness, amazing all who were witnesses. Only his murderer Japheth was not surprised—not really surprised. “He can’t be killed,” Japheth said wildly, grinning. “Some of you try it! Go on and try it! There he is, now’s your opportunity, save us from him, just try! It can’t be done.”

  Time began again and continues still.

  YET NATHAN’S DOOM was upon him, as Japheth understood.

  Still, he continued to bring many more thousands of souls into his church. With a strange, renewed, feverish vigor he traveled across the North American continent and met with unparalleled success in every church and arena and auditorium and hall and stadium the Seekers for Christ procured for him. By September of 1973 he was sufficiently recovered from the attempt on his life to begin a massive crusade that kept him and his staff on the road for nearly twelve months, covering some twenty-five thousand miles and eighty cities, and bringing him into contact with several million people. In all that he did and said he was carried out of himself, a vessel for Your wisdom, and many were the miracles performed in Your name, and in the hundreds of thousands were the joyous converts to Your church on earth. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Nashville, Chattanooga, Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, Houston . . . And on and on, across the continent, north and south across the nation, and into Mexico and Canada, a tireless crusade-for-souls that wore out all but one or two members of Nathan’s staff, so that they had to be replaced by others whom he knew less well but whom he trusted implicitly, for You guided him in all things. September, October, November, December . . . and the new year, the ceaseless progression of months, weeks, days, nights, hours . . . Nathan in a state of euphoria before thousands of believers crammed into a baseball stadium, Nathan crying out to the multitudes that the Holy Spirit had guided them to him, and him to them, and would very shortly make itself known in their hearts. Because of the power and the possible danger when the Spirit flowed into Nathan Vickery, it was the case that no one should share a platform with him: services began with an introduction by a local minister, or a fellow Seeker, and involved the testimonials of five or six or more people, some of them fairly well-known in their part of the world, and then everyone left the platform, and there was a moment’s pause and a terrific hush before Nathan himself appeared in his white robe, his arms always held aloft, opened as if in a great embrace. And how the multitudes thrilled, seeing him—knowing they were to share a certain space of time with him, who had been proclaimed as the incarnation of God Himself!

  At the state fairgrounds in Patagonia Springs in one of the western states, You sent to Nathan the seventh and most violent of Your visions, and it was here, on the eighth of August, 1974, before an estimated crowd of over a hundred thousand people, that the ministry of Nathan Vickery came to an end.

  He had known, and yet he had not known. So rarely was he lowered into his finite self, so vaguely did he attend to the details of his personal life, that perhaps he had not known at all—until the very moment of Your attack. Since he came to life only when completely surrendered to You, and when preaching Your word, the spaces between convocations became increasingly blurred. Eating, drinking, bathing, dressing and undressing, going to bed—these activities were performed for him by the fleshly creature he inhabited, done mechanically, effortlessly, while his spirit brooded over Your design and had only the most slender attachment to the exterior world.

  Thus he knew, and did not know. He knew there was dissension among his staff, that certain accusations had been made—either by Reverend Lund, or about Reverend Lund—but he did not know the details, he could not tolerate a knowledge of the details, and so he thrust the matter from him and left it with his attorneys; who (it was revealed afterward) quarreled bitterly among themselves. He knew, and did not know, that he and his church had become famous: that unauthorized articles about him appeared regularly in the public press, that fraudulent confessions by former associates were published and read eagerly by millions of people. There were cover stories about his ministry, there were bizarre photographs showing his radiant, contorted features, his wild, graying hair, his broad entranced smile; photographs of those he had converted, some of them lying on the ground senseless, or staring glassily at the camera, their faces wet with tears. He knew, and did not know, that hundreds of spurious relatives emerged to make their claim upon him in the public press, and that his convocations were often picketed, and his life threatened; and that he was protected at all times by a guard in plain clothes whose salary was—or so the rumor went—well above fifty thousand dollars a year.

  Still he continued his work on earth, fasting for days, kneeling for hours in Your presence, rising only when You bade him rise. It was Your wish that he arrange for more meetings than his staff had originally planned, for it was a pity that remote corners of the country might be slighted; and there was great urgency in the land, which the multitudes felt. It was Your wish that he avoid all strangers, all outsiders, for fear that his presence might confuse them, and something pass from him to them that might be harmful. It was Your wish that he make no comment on any of the worldly problems that arose: the picketing of his San Diego convocation by a disorderly group of young people claiming to be Maoists, and their subsequent injuries at the hands of the police; the claim made by an insurance company that one of the Seekers’ houses had been deliberately burned to the ground in Seattle and that no insurance payment would be made; the ugly news that surfaced again and again that his former disciple, Japheth Sproul, had killed himself in a private mental hospital in Massachusetts. Because he needed all of his energies for the times when he preached Your word, he could not attend to these matters, and indeed they seemed insignificant to him, and even ludicrous. For they belonged to the world and were lodged deep in time, and both the world and time itself were coming to an end, according to Your will.

  To have assimilated everything completely in himself, to have obliterated the false barriers between one form and another!—to have experienced Your grace as the cessation of all duality, all struggle!—thus he knew himself one with You, thus he gazed out upon the multitudes and proclaimed Your wisdom, that none who heard should fall by the wayside and be lost. Around him, about him, beneath his straining triumphant voice, hundreds of believers sang hymns that were like the murmuring of Your own voice, exquisitely beautiful. “The Old Rugged Cross.” “Faith of Our Fathers.” “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?” The sun reeled in the sky, Nathan himself set his foot upon it, and was one with it, and shone out upon the thousands upon thousands of adoring faces, that they should never suffer, and should never die, but have life everlasting. In their gratitude they cried out to him: Nathan! Brother Nathan! And they cried out to him: Master! And knelt before him, in utter submission to him. For days and nights on end they traveled to the great fairgrounds at Patagonia Springs, for many miracles were expected to take place here, in this enchanted land in clear view of the Rocky Mountains, beneath an extraordinarily rich and endlessly blue sky. Brother Nathan! went the cry. And Master! Master! And he held out his arms to them as if he would embrace them all, and the sound of their gratitude swelled to heaven itself.

  And—

  And yet he knew, he knew, that his doom was upon him: the time of his ministry was at an end.

  IT HAPPENED THAT, in Patagonia Springs, crouched before a microphone, gazing out into the vast crowd of expectant, greedy believers, rocked by their thunderous voices, half mesmerized by their ecstatic love for him, Nathan Vickery saw, for the first time, for what he realized was the first time, Your face—he saw
You.

  He was in the midst of crying out that we are indeed living in the Final Days, that the earth’s population is convulsed with sin, that there is corruption and futility and death—and even death by suicide—ah, how many deaths by suicide in the United States alone, committed by young people, by children, at younger and younger ages—we are in the midst of the Devil’s Kingdom, and only Christ’s Kingdom could do battle with it!—he was in the midst of an impassioned plea, as raw and direct as any he had ever given, when You allowed him to know that Your love for him was at an end. Quite suddenly, after so many years—it was over.

  He knew. In the space of a pulsebeat he knew. Yet, though his voice faltered, he tried to continue: he skipped to the final part of the sermon and spoke of the need for sin to be expelled, the need for sinners to come forward, to come forward immediately—

  Yet You had retreated from him, and it was over. His ministry and his life were over.

  How suddenly, how vividly the world declared itself! Even as he was faltering through the end of his speech he became aware of the odd ineffable reality of what was outside him. The choir, in handsome velvet robes, was singing “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?” the sky was hard and blue and depthless, he was standing, alone, perspiring, in some sort of robe himself, before a microphone, before thousands upon thousands.

  He saw. He lost the pattern of his own words. He stood there, bent, swaying, staring out into the seething mass of life before him, life that knew him not, even as he knew it not, the life that is You, a chaos of molecules dancing wildly and drunkenly in the sun.

  The sermon had ended abruptly. Individuals were standing in the aisles, blocking the aisles, halfway to him, their faces streaming with tears. But suddenly his words stopped. His voice died. The mass of quivering life stared at him, there was a sudden silence as the choir came to the end of its song, a greater silence as You dropped away from Nathan and declared Yourself in Your primary form, mocking him, a stranger to him. From the raised platform Nathan Vickery stared, his parched lips trembling, his hands, suddenly useless, ungainly, raised before his stricken face as if to ward off a blow.