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In the dusk of the spring evening the old man sat outside his home, a wrinkled figure like a
dried up brown apple on the ground. White dogwood blossoms reached out from trees
behind the shack to envelop him and insects bustled everywhere. Carl sat with him,
drawing patterns in the dust with his corkscrew. 'What's a corkscrew, Thomas? What does it do?' The old man shrugged. 'Boy, It'd take too long to explain.' If he ever knew. He was more concerned the boy still had the thing. 'Ain't you going to give it to the new Pastor like I said? Didn't you tell your father?' 'No. I didn't' 'Why not?' Thomas hissed, stretching out bony fingers to grip Carl's arm. 'Tell me!' 'I want it.' 'What good is it to you, crazy boy. Give it up!' 'No! I want a souvenir. Lots of people have souvenirs. My father says so. He says that you....' Carl stopped, embarrassed. 'He says what about me?' Thomas hand held Carl's arm so tightly that his nails dug in, but when he heard the truth he laughed so hard that, confused once more with shaking, he was almost rolling on the ground. It grew dark. Ruth was already in her new home in bed with her husband. Since it was the Eve of the Festival of Renewal the Relyts, the Willards, the Hardings and everyone else besides were celebrating in the Mission Square. Thomas stood up slowly. 'Come in. I'll light the lamp.' 'It was a good wedding' he said. 'I saw it. I was there. Your father is a proud man. I remember his father. He was a proud man too and all his brothers.' Thomas nodded to himself and sucked empty gums. 'I thought he only had one brother.' 'He had five that lived. He was the second youngest.' 'Do you remember my ma's parents too?' 'Your mother's mother. I remember her. Her father, well, I reckon he was from out of town.' In the Mission Square the body and soul of Becky danced and sang. From one man to another she went and her wild happy eyes sparkled in the firelight, and each delighted to touch her hand. The Shopkeeper was not much of a dancer but he had married for love. It had been hinted that she was below his station but she was not. They were orphans both but his father had been the Shopkeeper while hers was unknown. To the marriage she brought nothing but beauty, love and children. He sat now in a chair beyond the circle of the firelight talking to Willard and Harding and watching his wife's body dance within it. 'It was in the year of thirty-six. Your Ma must have been a year or two old at the most, I reckon. They had three times as many people in Dentonsville as now. I was like you then: independent, smart, bit of a troublemaker, I suppose. About the same age, too. Of course, our people are used to what goes on, not like your ignorant bunch who think they know everything and really don't know a thing. We go to them Collecting Centers. We see them fellas. Well, you've seen them too, though you don't know it. There'll be one there tomorrow. They call him the Winged Messenger.' 'The Winged Messenger who comes to take the Pastor back to God and bring another?' The old man spat. 'That's the fella. Only really he's what they call a Battlemaster. And there'll be more than him there too, but you won't see them. They'll be in the Bird that comes. Only their captains dress like him. The regular soldiers wear those black and gold uniforms. Well, you never seen them did you? They keeps them out of sight, generally. Giants they are, seven or eight feet tall, I reckon. They frighten ordinary people half to death just looking at 'em. Then they got those cattle prods they use. Nasty! Nasty!' He cackled and smiled, revealing the huge gaps in his teeth and said in a confidential tone, 'but they're not so bad when you get to know them. Quite friendly, really. Just doin their jobs like the rest of us. And those women they got!' The old man perked up considerably. He rolled his eyes and poked Carl in the ribs. 'I know you like our women, boy. Don't you boy? I know. They tell me. I seen yer. But they ain't nothing compared to them.' He finished in a whisper. 'You know them?' Carl was awed. Suddenly a spasm of terror wracked the old man's heart. He had sworn that this was something he would never do: it had been the condition on which he had been allowed to live and to return. He changed the subject quickly. 'As I was saying, our people know what happens to 'em when they don't pay their taxes. Don't ask me how they know but sooner or later they come and get you. They'll find you anywhere you go, boy.' He made a motion of a rope pulling on a neck and fell silent for a long time. Then he said, 'you'd think our people'd know what was coming. Funny that. In the end they acted just as dumb as everyone, 'cept me, of course.' 'What did you do?' asked Carl, but the man was silent again, staring at the floor as if Carl were no longer there. He muttered beneath his breath. 'I never did understand that.' 'And what was coming?' asked Carl insistently. The old man stared at Carl and Carl saw with great surprise a tear welling in his eye. When he finally spoke it was very quietly and with a great effort. 'Well, boy, it's what they call God's War, though there's been other names used for it. What it comes to is that when they come for you, you gotta go, and there ain't no coming back. They take everyone they can. They're not so choosy.' 'And so they took father's father, and his brothers and his wife? And my mother's mother?' 'And plenty more besides.' 'I can't believe they would take women.' 'Boy, in God's War anyone will do.' Carl reflected upon what Thomas said. He said, 'The surest way to gain God's love is to die in His service, fighting for the things He loves the best.' Thomas laughed his thin laugh. His head lolled back and his arms dropped to his sides. 'There's more to life than that!' 'Then tell me what, old man' said the boy. The old man looked at Carl in fear: fear of the pain in his side; fear of truths he had sworn never to divulge. He clenched his fists, wishing his lips to move, but they would not. The tail he had waited for so long to tell, storing for an audience which at last had come, the things he saw and did, the plans and schemes he adopted to survive, all existed but were lost forever because he could not say them. All the remained of old Thomas was a shell so tenacious, so tough and wiry that it could not surrender anything further of itself, not even life. The women hated old Thomas but the men did not. In their hearts they could not blame him for surviving. At midnight the great event began. In the Mission Square the dancing stopped and all eyes turned up to witness the first event of the Festival of Renewal when fireworks shot up from the Mission walls and the air was filled with light and sound, becoming the living window of the church. By this light the boy could see the old man clearly. His eye was bright, his jaw was set and in one corner of his mouth there was a speck of foam. He could not die, he could not tell, but on his cheek there was a tear. |
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