The Death and Life of Strother Purcell

by Ian Weir

  “Huh,” said Esther, unimpressed.

  But Brother Jacob lifted his head. “No,” he said. “She’s right. Rebekah rebukes me with the truth.” He looked at her and smiled.

  It changed him wholly; darkness lifted.

  “Rebekah is my good angel,” he said, “recollecting me to my best self.”

  This made her happier than you could imagine.

  “Reb-b-b-b-bekah,” muttered Esther.

  On they went.

  Brother Jacob would preach the Gospel and call souls to the Lord. Often he would lay on healing hands in prayer—his own right hand so horribly maimed, though the left hand was still whole. Sometimes he would cast out unclean spirits. Rebekah had never witnessed this, but Esther claimed to have seen it. Esther had travelled with Brother Jacob in a time before Rebekah knew him. It was thrilling and terrible, Esther said: standing like Samson with his two hands clasped to the head of an afflicted child, contending against the unclean spirit.

  “Did it yield?” Rebekah asked her. They were kneeling by a stream, she and Esther, washing clothes.

  “Oh, one of them devils might of did.” Esther took on a particular look, sidelong and knowing. The devil inside the afflicted child, said Esther—that devil might very well have yielded up. For the child gave out a shriek, then went limp as rags. “But as regarding to the other devil, I wouldn’t assume to say.”

  Rebekah asked: “What other devil?”

  “Oh-ho,” said Esther.

  Esther said a good many things without quite saying them at all. Rebekah took such pronouncements for what they were worth. Esther was a red-haired woman on the far slope of thirty, with a certain kind of eye and two titties that swayed together. She had left a husband behind her when she went off to follow Brother Jacob, and two children as well. Such at least Rebekah had come to conclude, from things Esther said and other things she didn’t. This might have seemed unnatural and worthy of Rebekah’s condemnation, except that would have been judging, and Rebekah knew that she must not judge, as a Christian. She must pray for folks instead, even Esther.

  She prayed for Esther every morning, in private. Rebekah had great red hands, which she clasped together as she prayed. Her Mamaw Plovis had been the same way. “God gave us fine strong hands for wringing chicken-necks,” Mamaw Plovis said once, perceiving that Rebekah had grown ashamed of those hands, as of so much else about herself. Esther had laughed out loud, when Rebekah shared that confidence. “Chicken-necks?” said Esther. “Rebekah, them hands you got could wring a goat.”

  So Rebekah prayed. “Lord, help Esther mend the error of her ways. If she don’t, I leave the judging to you. You will know what is best and needful to be done, Lord, and by golly you will do it.”

  Brother Jacob had been a drunkard and a thief. He said so every time he preached. He had laid violent hands about him, for which he was rightly locked in jail. And they should have thrown away the key, he said—this was the mistake they made, when they had him locked inside. They should have put him down like a rabid dog.

  One time, Esther said to Rebekah: “Brother Jacob done outright murder.”

  Rebekah did not want to believe this. Brother Jacob had never said that word himself, in preaching nor in private.

  “But then,” Esther said, “he don’t spend time in private, does he? Not with you.”

  They were setting together in the evening shade, the two of them. This was in the early days, when Rebekah first began to travel with Brother Jacob and his followers. Back then, she had harboured hopes that Esther might turn out to be her friend.

  “Outright murder,” Esther repeated. She spoke with relish, savouring the words. “There was five thousand dollars on his head. Then a oneeyed lawman hunted him—fifteen hundred miles, all the way into the mountains of the North. Oh, yes. It come to a reckoning at last, and that lawman shot him down. You might see the scars to this day, Rebekah—the white scars from the bullets—if he’d show them. But he won’t. Not to a gal such as yourself. A great ungainly gal, as I say in a spirit of kindliness.”

  Esther leaned in closer, then. “Will I tell you something else?”

  “N-no,” Rebekah said. “I don’t b-b-believe I want to hear it.”

  Esther said it anyway. “The one-eyed lawman who hunted him down? That lawman was his brother.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “And if they ever meet again, on this earth? Brother Jacob will kill him. Oh, yes he will. You’d like to s’pose that Brother Jacob would Save him, instead. Brother Jacob would like to s’pose that himself. But he won’t. Brother Jacob done outright murder before. And if he ever lays eyes on that brother of his—you mark my words, Rebekah—he’ll do outright murder one more time.”

  Those bullets hadn’t killed him, though. Brother Jacob had been left for dead, but he hadn’t died. He had risen.

  He didn’t rightly understand it, at all—the hows and the wherefores of this rising. Why he should have been lifted up again, of all the wretched sinners in this sadly Fallen world. He confided this in Rebekah, one evening as they broke bread together.

  “I think p’raps the Lord was not done with me, Rebekah. I think he had some task in mind, which I have yet to accomplish. I don’t know. I can only s’pose. And carry on.”

  It had been away up in the North, this rising of his; it had been some years ago. So he confided, though he did not offer up specifics. He had gone by another name in those times, too. Jacob was not the name he was born with, he said—it was his Daddy’s. He took the name to honour his Daddy, whom he never honoured while alive.

  “And that could have been the worst of all my sins,” he said. This startled Rebekah, but he meant it. “Yes, of all the sins that are writ down on my ledger—and that list is long and black, as you well know—the blackest of all might could have been the shame I felt to be my Daddy’s son, and the doubly shameful way I let him see it.”

  So: Brother Jacob. If anyone needed a second name to go with it, then he was proud to be Jacob Jacobson. His Daddy was long since gone—had grown old and died in torment, he said, a ten-years-younger man than his own son on this day.

  “And Lord knows, I am halfways old myself. I am maimed and lame and I know that my time grows short. I suspect that yours does, too—whatever age you may be.” He said this on that final night near Tempe: a hundred sinners gazing back at him. “My friends, I suspect that Time itself grows short. A Reckoning is on the way. And my friends—oh, my friends—you had best be ready.”

  Brother Jacob was dark in his eyes and complexion. His hair was silvering and his face had grown gaunt. There was scarring all down one side, from the corner of his eye to his jawbone; it showed white against his colouration, as if bitter tears had carved their way. Three fingers on his right hand were gone, and the hand that remained was clawed. His fingers had frozen black that long-ago winter in the North; they had subsequently been cut away, along with the toes on his left foot, which was already clubbed from birth. He had this maiming as a gift from God; in his ugliness, Brother Jacob was beautiful.

  But he’d grown darker than ever, that final night near Tempe. A shadow had stolen across him, long and black, despite the triumph of the Crusade: more coming out each night to hear him. There had even been a telegram. It was sent to him at the telegraph office, two days after the newspaper wrote that Brother Jacob was in Tempe saving souls. A messenger boy brought it out to the field, where the tent had been set up for his preaching.

  Rebekah had been nearby, as she almost always was, or tried to be. The messenger boy had arrived just prior to the service, in the first long shadows of the evening. Rebekah saw Brother Jacob take the telegram, and read it. She saw the look that came upon him. He stood stone-still, in deepening shadow.

  “Did someone p-pass?” she asked him, working up her nerve.

  He gave no sign that he heard the question, or noticed Rebekah looming there.

  “The t-telegram,” Rebekah said again. “Did someone d-d-die?”

  “No,”
Brother Jacob said at last. “Someone didn’t.”

  His face was darker than she had ever seen.

  He crumpled the note and slung it aside. The wind blew it into some bushes. It was still there later, when Rebekah went back to retrieve it.

  2.

  It was early in the planting season, the first time Rebekah heard him preaching. This was in Arkansas, where Rebekah had been raised.

  She had been working here and there, ever since she’d left her Daddy’s farm. Wherever they’d take her on. For a time she worked at a slaughter-yard, swinging the mallet that brought down the steers as they reached the end of the chute, but she did not find this congenial. Rebekah liked much better to work in the fields: wide-open places under the sky, where she could breathe.

  Then Brother Jacob came through those parts, as if he’d been conjured out of air. Rebekah went to listen. His text was Jesus saying to Peter, on the shore by Galilee: “Put down your nets and follow Me.”

  Well, Rebekah thought; she had a hoe. She could put that down instead.

  Esther was with him already, at that time. The simple boy from Nebraska was tagging as well, and one or two others. They were a rag-tag little band, but they had a spirit about them, and Rebekah set down that hoe and followed after.

  A few miles down the road, it grew clear to Brother Jacob that Rebekah did not intend on turning back. So he fell into step with her, limping alongside.

  “Do not mistake me for the Lord,” he said. He might have suspicioned that she was simple herself, from the earnest way he spoke. “D’you understand, Rebekah, what I’m saying?”

  Yes, Rebekah said to him. She understood. And she hoped he wouldn’t mistake her for someone as could sail a fishing boat.

  He blinked his eyes at that. Began to chuckle. “I believe,” he said, “we have an understanding.”

  Brother Jacob had been a wayfarer too, which gave them something else in common. He had worked on farms and slept under hedges, enduring such privations as could hardly be imagined, except by someone who’d done the same.

  He’d begun his wayfaring as a boy, fifteen years old. His family had cast him out, he told Rebekah. This was no worse than he deserved, being a boy much given to wicked inclination. But once cast out, his sinfulness ran riot. He fell amongst low companions, and dragged them lower still. He committed such deeds as he could not bear to countenance in himself, until at last he grew so soul-sick that he confessed his wickedness and sought out help, turning to the one man in all this world who might redeem him.

  But here, he said, he made his worst Error of all, turning not to the Lord but to a mortal creature just like himself. “Just like you, Rebekah,” he said to her—to Rebekah alone, for the two of them were walking together as they spoke, along a hard and dusty road—“a mortal creature such as yourself, but lacking the friendship that shines in your true heart.” A man he had once looked up to, Brother Jacob said. “A man I put up on an altar, like unto a god.”

  She said to him: “Your b-brother.”

  He made no reply.

  “Your b-b-brother who locked you in jail,” she said. Knowing the danger she took in speaking so free. “Then hunted you like an animal.”

  “What else did Esther say to you?”

  “N-nothing that I believe. Not unless you say it too.”

  They walked in silence then.

  It was this brother who was spoken of in the telegram—the message that had arrived before the final night of the preaching near Tempe, Arizona. Rebekah had read it while no one was watching.

  Your brother is alive, it said. Still living, but in great need. Can you come to him?

  Weaver was the name of the man who sent it.

  A few days later, the widow came out to hear him.

  They had been travelling in the meantime, but not with intent—not as far as Rebekah could determine. Just letting the Spirit move them, as they always had before. It was just the two of them now, Brother Jacob and herself. Esther had left them a week previous, taking her smirk and those titties along with her.

  The widow had two grown sons. But only one of them was with her, on the evening when she came out to hear: a great silent creature who stood staring. A simpleton, as was clear. When Brother Jacob called out to know if anyone here present knew of a soul in need of saving, the widow said: “My boy.” A wiry twist of a woman, nut-brown from toiling in the field. “My boy is in peril of his soul. He needs your prayer,” she said.

  Brother Jacob reached out his hand and asked the simpleton to come forward. But the widow shook her head. No, she said—the other son. This one, the simpleton, was a mighty comfort to her, strong as a horse and good as gold. It was his brother’s soul that was in such peril; a boy born into this world with every advantage in his person and demeanour, but he ran riot and reckless.

  She was prideful in the way some people are, who have nothing but their own two feet to stand on. Rebekah could see how it twisted her heart to ask for help, right out loud in front of others. But the widow besought Jacob’s prayers nonetheless. And Brother Jacob said to her: “No.” He would not pray nor intercede, he said.

  He stood in shadow as he said it. He spoke as if from the darkness of a wood.

  “No,” he said again. He would not pray for the likes of her son—nor would such prayers avail. For some are set beyond the pale of salvation. “Two thieves were crucified beside our Lord, but only one of them was saved.”

  This was not his own choosing, he said, but the judgement of Almighty God. And there was nothing that could ever be done for that second thief, not through prayer nor deeds nor tearful contrition. We are some of us marked out before we are ever born.

  Well, this shocked the widow. Shocked all of them, there assembled, Rebekah not least. Looks were exchanged; uneasy murmurs. The widow’s chin began to tremble.

  “Your son standing here has been marked by the Lord for His own,” said Brother Jacob. “But that other bears the mark of Cain, and all the tears of the world won’t wash him.”

  “Have I been marked?”

  Rebekah asked this of him afterward. The others had gone and the two of them were alone.

  He said: “Oh, yes.”

  “Which way?”

  “You’ve been marked out as my friend.”

  He smiled just a little as he said it. This pushed the shadow back, but only by an inch.

  They had a barn to sleep in that night. The man who owned it was a Christian and offered it for lodging, which Jacob accepted in the ravelled way he often had after preaching. It took time for him to settle, and this evening he seemed more ragged than ever. Rebekah could see the age on him, nights like this. The scars and lines on his face were furrowed deep.

  “Did you have to break her heart?” she said. Meaning that widow.

  “Her boy did that. He broke his Mama’s heart.” His voice had gone harsh. “The devil are you, Rebekah, to say such things to me?”

  “Your friend. You said it yourself. Don’t that give me the right?”

  “Take care, Rebekah.”

  Rebekah did not take care. She said: “What call have you to break that widow’s heart, just ’cause of what your brother done to you?”

  The look he gave her could have forked out lightning. And Rebekah felt suddenly sorry to have said one single word, seeing how it was costing her this friendship. Her one friend in this world, she thought—the only man who ever smiled at a creature such as herself, a gal who’d hulked away from children shying stones, on account of her face and the size of her.

  But in the morning, he rose up with first light, and went to find out where that widow was living. Rebekah followed.

  A clapboard shack on a scrap of land, it turned out to be, huddled beneath the vast blue dome of sky, with a trickle of sludge for a creek. The widow was working in a patch of corn, alongside her simpleton son. They watched him coming from a mile away, Brother Jacob limping sorely on his clubbed foot and dust rising up with each step till at last he stood before
her. He was a man himself in grievous need of Grace, he said, and would pray for the redemption of her boy.

  The widow stood straight-backed, as tall as she could muster.

  “I do not deserve your thanks,” Brother Jacob said. “But I will ask of your forgiveness.”

  The widow nodded, very stiff.

  He led them in prayer, and afterward the widow asked would he stop for a time, to rest and break bread. He would gladly accept a drink of water, Brother Jacob replied, but could not stop. “I have a journey ahead of me.”

  He did not look at Rebekah as he said it. But right then she knew what decision he had made, and her heart sank like a stone.

  Afterward they walked some miles in silence. They had taken the road west, their shadows stretching out behind as the sun crossed over, long and black and thin as blades. At last he said: “I thought him dead, Rebekah. All these years.” As if some explanation was needful, between them. “Whatever it was that happened between us—whatever was done, on either side—he’s my brother.”

  She shrugged by way of reply.

  “California is a long road, Rebekah. I don’t ask you to come with me.”

  “Are you sending me away?”

  “I’m saying, the choice is yours.”

  “Then I come with you.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder, then, as the two of them walked together. It was the nearest he would ever come to touching her as a woman.

  “Rebekah,” he said, “you are my one true friend.”

  3.

  Brother Jacob continued to save souls along the way, stopping to preach and heal, as was his custom. But always they were travelling into the West.

  Often they walked, but accepted with gratitude a ride on a wagon, if such was offered. Other times they would travel by train, covering many miles in a single night. They stowed themselves away in freight cars, having few enough coins as it was without squandering them on railway tickets. Besides, Rebekah suspected, Brother Jacob plain liked the adventure of it. When someone would stop them and demand to know their business—some switchyard worker or railroad policeman, very stern at first and then perplexed, seeing the preacher’s flat black hat and the Bible underneath his arm—Brother Jacob would smile with merriment, like a boy caught out in mischief.