“Mak?”
“Jet Mak. One of The Club's owners.”
Mamere mouth made a perfect 'O' when Claire explained it. “And he just owns the club?”
“He and Tally.”
“And why would he have anything to do with a parsonage half an hour away from Karim?”
“The Maks are one of the most powerful families in East Texas. No one messes with them.”
Mamere nodded slowly, scooping up some of the gumbo with her bread. “What's going on with the angry mob, then?”
“Mak talked to the sheriff. They aren't too happy that these people not only tried to bust in the door at The Club, but they went ahead and beat up a minister, and burned church property. It seems there was a ringleader, a very angry anti-everything Christian who decided this was going to happen. He happens to have very angry friends. Doreen was able to ID him, and they arrested him. He's being held, and Mak is going to file papers on behalf of Dox to press charges. The church is going to bring a civil suit against him as well.”
“Good for them.” Mamere nodded. “Do you know how long you'll be here?”
“I'm here until the next semester starts in January. I hope it's long enough to get Maddox back on his feet.”
“I do too, but I think we can manage that.” Mamere stared at the figure lost in his own head at the other end of the table. “I trust that the reverend is going to be a stubborn patient?”
Claire cleared her throat. “He's not used to taking orders. He's used to being in charge.”
“Well, we aren't in his little hedonistic playroom, are we? We're in my bayou, and I'm in charge. So I say we're going to whip him back into shape and get him going again.” Claire watched, as did her grandmother, as he slowly brought a piece of bread to his mouth and chewed slowly. Not thoughtfully, just chewed to eat.
Claire sighed.
Chapter Eight
Maddox sat on the back porch in the wheelchair. He was staring into the sunset again, head cocked, presentably dressed, not interacting with the man seated next to him.
Claire had her arms folded as she watched the interaction. She could feel the tears in her eyes. She'd had such hopes for this meeting. While Maddox hadn't really interacted with anyone, he was moving more, dressing and eating without direction, sitting in places other than his wheelchair and bed.
When the Bishop of the Synod had called and asked to visit, Claire—and Mamere—had hoped that he might come out of his shell. Someone familiar. Someone who knew of his dedication to God.
But, there was nothing. Try as Bishop Gaines might, there was no response.
Claire stared at the man in the chair as Gaines stood and walked back into the house after a clear benediction and a hardy, kind pat on the shoulder. She let a few tears escape, then smeared them away as the bishop entered the kitchen.
“I am so sorry, Claire.”
“Anything that might bring him around, Bishop Gaines. Anything. I was so hoping that he'd respond to a man of the cloth.”
“I had hoped so, too.” He let out a sigh. “He's healed well. I am glad for that.”
“I am as well.”
Gaines opened the briefcase he'd brought with him and pulled out a manila envelope. “My other reason for coming. I know he lost everything, including all of his important personal papers. These are official copies of everything. Birth certificate, driver's license, college diplomas, ordination, and…” He paused to swallow, and shake his head. “…excommunication papers. He's been defrocked by the congregation and meeting of bishops. He can no longer call himself a minister, pastor, or any such suggestion that he might represent the will of God as through the Lutheran Church.”
Claire let the tears fall. “I knew that was coming, and I'm about as Christian as a door knob, but…”
“It's alright, child. It was painful to do it. But he was confused, and we have no recourse to prove his penance. He might not have been excommunicated if he spoke. But the congregation waited as long as they could.” Gaines slid the envelope across the table. “Do not spend your life waiting for him to wake, Claire. In there are also arrangements for a home that will care for him. He does not need to be your burden.”
“He's one burden I thought I wanted to bear.”
Gaines closed the briefcase and stood. He placed a gentle hand on her head and murmured a prayer. He took her chin and lifted it, staring at her. “I only pray he realizes how lucky he is that God gave him you. I'll go now. Please. Let me know how he is and what you decide on with the home.”
Claire grabbed the bishop's hand. “Thank you, reverend.”
“I only wish there was more I could do.” A sad smile passed over his face, and he quietly walked out of the kitchen.
Mamere took a few steps into the kitchen after the front screen door banged shut. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Nothing?”
Claire stared at the envelope. “Non. Rien.”
Mamere moved to sit in the same chair the bishop had been in. “Cher, you're doing what you can. We are working to help him. But there is a chance you may have to concede defeat. I don't want that. I still think he's in there. But the bishop is right. You can't spend your life waiting for his to start again.”
“Oh, mamere. I know… I know. Our relationship was fetal at best. But there was something so big about him, so… comforting.” Claire glanced at the window. “He's been here six weeks. We have ten more until I go back to school. Let's make it through New Years, and we'll make the hard decisions then.”
Mamere nodded. “It's a plan, cheri.” She stood. “Now, I need you to head up to Baton Rouge and pick up some stuff for an old woman.”
“Tonight, mamere? It's the Hunter's moon.”
“I know, silly girl. What I need is from the apothecary and is only available on full moons. You head up there and pick it up for me, and I'll have our fire burning bright when you get back.”
“It'll be late.”
“You have somewhere to be tomorrow morning?”
Claire cracked a smile. “All right. You have me there.”
* * *
The old woman's face was in front of his. She stared hard at him, but Maddox was practiced at not seeing things.
“I know you in there, reverend. Y'can't fool the witchy woman. We gonna have some talk time this evening. I sent our little cher off so I could talk to you in the company of the moon.”
She walked away from him, over to the fire pit. She started stacking the firewood and carefully built the pyramid that would keep the fire burning until nearly sunrise. She was meticulous.
“Now, you had a real blow to your person in that Parsonage. And I know that you took a blow before that with my cher finding out the man she was falling in love was a preacher as well as her maître. But this routine of you ignoring all of us round here is getting a little out of hand.” She smiled. “Y'don’t gotta say a thing, reverend. Just listen.”
She didn't say much for the next few minutes, just walked around, preparing things for… who knew what. She was humming “Witchy Woman” which some part of his brain thought was hilarious.
It hadn't taken long to see why Claire loved her grandmother so much. Strong and caring, she didn't mince words and she readily drew on her heritage: Creole Cajun hoodoo witches who knew their swamp and their spells. She weaved kitchen magic into the every day. Bread, the eggs she collected, the spot of land she harvested her greens and fruits from. Laundry was even magicked.
She also pulled from her other heritage: the Cherokee who were marched down out of their homes and into the forbidding flat of Oklahoma. She invoked the Mother Earth and Father Sun. She asked the Thunderbird for help. She prayed and praised each meal with more earnest love for the world and her lands than he seen in even some of the most devout.
Maddox had grown up in a place where God was invoked on the drop of a pin; love God and His Son was surpassed by nothing. His father loved the Father, and then his wife and children. It had been drilled into him. And he did lo
ve God. He did believe in the Almighty. He loved Biblical studies and Bible study.
He also loved the flesh.
There were days when he wished he'd never met Fire or learned about the dungeons. There were times when he wished he'd met her sooner.
When they beat him for being a sinner, a hedonist, a dom… he could not reconcile his two halves. The one who loved God, who wanted to help the world with the love he felt for the Almighty and the love he felt for the sins of the flesh.
He shut down.
He became an observer. Silent. Present but absent. Not alone, but lonely.
A man who could not sin again.
“I think you're thinking there, reverend.” Franny's smiled drifted through on her words. “I see the gears turning.” She walked around the area, this time with a smoldering bundle of something. “It's Hunter's Moon tonight. The full moon closest to the thinnest veil between the worlds on Samhain. We have to clean the fire pit, smudge with white sage. Sage is an amazing plant. Science finally caught up and admits that smudging is a good idea. The sage smoke purifies the air around us.”
She brought the burning, smoking bundle close to him, and circled him. “It clears the mind too. Gets the cobwebs out.”
Franny nodded and walked away pleased with herself.
“There are things in this world that we can't try to understand, reverend. We just have to go with them in the best way we can. All my ancestors…well, most of them, anyway, knew how the earth cycled. They saw the patterns in the sun and the moon. They felt the ebb and flow of the water. People were born in years and seasons, not days and minutes. They listened to the wind and rain, not the angry words of men.
“They did not seek to understand all of that. They sought the harmony of it.”
Moving some more ingredients and empty flasks and Ball jars closer to her makeshift alter near the fire, Franny doled out portions of potions and herbs, pairing them with candles and water and wine in combinations that only made sense to her. She hummed, moving on to “Night on Bald Mountain,” again playing with irony in her music choices.
“I think,” she began again a good time later, “that we have lost our collective desire for harmony. Humans want things to be as they think they ought. Instead of pausing and reflecting if it's a good idea.” She chuckled. “Jurassic Park had it right. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should.
“We pull, poke and prod at things to make them fit. You must do this, you must be that, those things are at odds.”
She smoothed a hand on the apron. “When I was born, I was an outcast. The half-black Creole daughter of a Cherokee medicine man who had Irish in his veins. And maybe because I didn't fit their puzzle, I never needed to find a place in the big, white, male world out there. I found harmony out here in my bayou.
“My mama and daddy make me feel loved. They made me see that it's not always wise to want to know why. 'Why don't you like me, Mister Jones?' 'Cause you the devil's child, with your Godly blue eyes and all that nigger and injun in ya, girl.' I had to go home and ask what my daddy what a nigger was. Mister Jones didn't come 'round much after that. Mama said he took sick quite badly.
“And that's when I started thinking, maybe it wasn't that I didn't fit the puzzle. Maybe I was trying to fit into the wrong puzzle. The conformist puzzle. The 'act like us and we'll like you' puzzle. Mama and daddy put me in a local school. I fit in there about as well as a shoe fits in a barrel of apples. And it wasn't for lack of trying, y'see. Every little girl and boy wants friends.
“But with mama as a known hoodoo witch, more often then not, I got the evil eye and a ward to keep the devil out of their homes. Daddy finally put me in an Indian School. Not the best place, because they were still trying to tamp down the Natives, but at least there I was accepted.”
Franny started peeling the apples on the alter, coring them carefully and saving the peels. She let the bayou make its restless evening noises as she hummed again. This time, she chose the love theme from “Romeo and Juliet.” It blended oddly well with the sun light's dying fire that lit the sky red above them.
“My grandpappy, Feathered Horn, used to visit me at the school, at lunch. He loved coming to visit my two boy cousins and me. They were meant to be his heirs. But he loved me, U-nv-quo-la-dv. Rainbow.
“He taught me there were too many pieces of me to fit the puzzles that were out there. I had to make my own puzzle, I had to find the harmony I couldn't anywhere else. He taught me to be a shaman. He wasn't supposed to, but he saw the Cherokee people dying out. And maybe it wasn't tradition to have a woman as a shaman, but he said my rainbow could show what harmony could be achieved if we loved without borders.
“My cousins and I have taught dozen of shamans now. The Cherokee shamanic traditions thrive because one man, my grandpappy, bucked the 'way it is' and saw things in a new light. A different light. And sometimes just a little shift in perspective changed the way things can be. Changes us enough to find harmony.”
Maddox stared at her as she kept her pace with the preparations. Her fingers were nimble and fleet, going through the motions with little thought. She made collections of the ingredients and started to package them.
“You and me, reverend, don't love God the same.”
She started right back at him with those words, waiting for him to be indignant or angry. He had none of that inside. “You're right.”
“But I'm not right the way you think I am.”
Chapter Nine
“What are you talking about?”
Franny smirked. “Your idea of loving God is different from mine. We love the Almighty in different ways.” She gestured to the altar in front of her. “All this is to honor the Goddess. The Lady who guides me. Mother Earth. Does any of this make me love the Lord less? Not at all. We have our own way of honoring Him.”
Grabbing the lighter, she started the incense burning. “I love God neither more nor less than you. You love through spreading the word you believe divinely inspired. You wish the words of Christ to touch the hearts and souls of those who hear. You spend your time devoted to study and learning and prayer. Perfecting a soul that can never be perfect and yet you try. You take your ministry to the people, offer counseling, and organizing the masses in prayer and running a food bank.”
“I refuse to believe you think those are a negative.”
“They are no such thing. They are important to the people they serve. They are pieces of their puzzles that they need and you help them complete their pictures. I know you are happy in that capacity. It fills a piece of your puzzle in.”
Maddox studied her. She was lighting another stick of incense and brought it to a specific collection of witchy things.
“But what puzzle are you working, Maddox? What puzzle do you think you're putting together. Claire loves you, and I can tell you that my little cheri isn't interested in giving up her kink. She is a soumis, and she likes it.”
“I guess I shouldn't admit that I'm falling in love with her. That enjoy being her maître.”
“And how well did that work out for you?”
Maddox sighed. “The Bishop delivered my papers today. I'm defrocked because I couldn't learn to live without the sins of the flesh. Because I am…” He trailed off. “Shit, Franny. I don't know what to do. God and the church have been my whole life. I wanted to be a reverend since I was twelve. I want to help people, and I've always been good at it.”
The old woman considered him while slicing the lemon she had plucked out of a basket. “Son of a preacher?”
“Son of two reverends who met in divinity school. Me and my seven siblings.”
“Well, the fruit was blesséd in your house.”
“A little too blesséd .”
Franny snorted. “It's the way of the Lord in Western culture. So you are somewhere in the middle of the pack?”
“Four of eight.”
“The ultimate middle child. So you made a big splash to get some attention. Princeton Divinity and an
ordained minister. How'd that work?”
“Not at all. They still had more time for Eldest Brother and his wife. It's where they are now. On a mission he runs.”
“Have you considered that maybe God called you to help, but you answered the call wrong? I mean, what would impress the parents? Following their footsteps, of course. We're allowed our hubris. But maybe, you weren't meant to do just that.”
“I know nothing else.”
“So changing churches? Religions?”
He shook his head. “I don't know. This is the first time I've utter a word in months. Well done, by the way, Franny.”
“I'm a witch and an annoying old woman. Of course, I'm going to get you to speak.” She poured a foul looking liquid into a jar. “My point in all this, reverend, is that maybe you're looking at the wrong puzzle. You're trying to fit into the wrong puzzle.”
“I don't know…”
“No church is going to let you even wipe the pews with a sex scandal behind you. It's all about forgiveness--not forgetness.” She peered at him. “Now, reverend, I suggest you get your ass out of that ridiculous chair and start moving around. And you'd better start figuring out what your feel for my granddaughter or I might just hex you at the new moon.”
Franny started laughing at the look of terror on his face.
* * *
“Mamere! I'm back!” Claire placed the bags on the counter and headed to the backyard. She knew Mamere would be setting up their altar for the Hunter's Moon, dividing up all the necessary goodies, and waiting for the few she'd had to retrieve.
What she didn't expect was Maddox, standing at the end of the dock to the bayou, staring out to the moonlit waters with his hands clapsed behind his back.
Mamere smiled at her from the altar. “Cher. Back in time for all the witchery.”
“Mamere…”
The smiling woman walked over to her. “We had a talk, your reverend and I. A good talk.”
The Fire Saga (The Club) Page 22