by Kevin Gordon
Chapter 4
She was, without a doubt, one of the least offensive, most innocuous of women one could ever have come across—and she liked it like that. She wasn’t particularly attractive, with a body full of straight lines that looked more boyish than feminine. Even her hair was cut short, in some echo of youthful, boyish rebellion.
“You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it.” She spoke those words casually, leaning against the makeshift podium, one hand in the pocket of her black trousers, the other resting on the bible which lay open before her. Five hundred stood gathered around her in an old ice-rink, a secondary meeting place that was near to where most of the Grunts worked. They were dusty and dirty after a long day’s work cleaning out the corpses of St. Louis, and all the highways leading to and from the old mighty city. They smelled too, like days upon days of sweat and urine all piled into their armpits and crotches. It sometimes made her want to vomit, but she held it in, for they needed her, and she they.
“And we do sow, my friends! We clear the land of stones, clear the field of what was rotten and foul, and slowly, carefully, plant what shall surely be our glorious future. ‘They sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest,’ said our Lord, and it shall be true. So long as we have faith, in our Lord and in ourselves, it shall be true. Glory be to God!”
“Glory be to God!” they echoed.
Her crowd was mostly the sixteen, fourteen and eleven year-olds—the worker bees of the new America. These children spent little time in a classroom, and what time they did spend inside was only to learn about proper hygiene, along with basic math and reading skills. The most serious tracts they ever read were from the Bible, and those only reinforced the necessity and of their work, and the humility with which they must conduct themselves.
“And you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. God knows you toil hard, toil like none before you! ‘But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.’ The winds blow over the Earth, my friends. They may scorch and sting, but they are the purifying breath of the Almighty, purging the fields and the homes, cleansing the sin from our soil and our souls.”
She stood once again behind the podium, buttoning her black jacket in a sign that the sermon was almost over. Those before her had pitifully short attention spans, and grew restless the longer she spoke. Her face broke out into a slight, genial smile, and her eyes twinkled with a goodness that kept those before her coming day after pitiful day, knowing that their load was a little lighter after she spoke.
“‘If the Lord brings about something totally new, and the Earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the grave, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.’ And so we, the new citizens of America, stand, nay bask in God’s grace! It is upon us the divine light of his love shines, it is upon us that his benevolence beams, it is with us that his strength and power rest!” With each iteration of the word ‘us’ she slapped her hand on the podium, bringing a commensurate murmur from those before him. “Never forget, my friends . . . never forget! If we so choose, we can stop the wheels and cogs of this burgeoning world; we can bend it to our will. If we find this new world to be heading down the path of sin and decadence, in foul imitation of what was wiped away, it is our duty, to the Lord, to force our fellow men and women onto the path of salvation! They do not know it, but we hold the power, not only of the righteous, but of the Lord Almighty! God rule within us!”
“God rule within us!”
She stepped down, the Deaconess Rodriguez, and shook the hands of the boys and girls who still regarded her with awe and adulation. She was seventy-five, but she never felt surer of herself, never felt stronger or more determined in all his life. She had recently acknowledged her preference for women, and even reconciled it with the more conservative aspects of her faith. It made her stronger, more confident, especially when she had a small coven of nubile followers to return to when the night grew cold. She knew that know, when she raised her hand, the world would stop, and be forced to follow her desire.
Chapter 5