Thrower was aghast. All his life he had prepared to teach, persuade, exhort, expound. Never to perform a bloody-handed act like the one the Visitor suggested. “I'm not suited for such things,” he said.
“Are you suited for the kingdom of God?” asked the Visitor.
“But the Lord said Thou shalt not kill.”
“Oh? Is that what he said to Joshua, when he sent him into the promised land? Is that what he said to Saul, when he sent him against the Amalekites?”
Thrower thought of those dark passages in the Old Testament, and trembled with fear at the thought of taking part in such things himself.
But the Visitor did not relent. “The high priest Samuel commanded King Saul to kill all the Amalekites, every man and woman, every child. But Saul hadn't the stomach for it. He saved the king of the Amalekites and brought him back alive. For that crime of disobedience, what did the Lord do?”
“Chose David to be king in his place,” murmured Thrower.
The Visitor stood close to Thrower, his eyes wounding him with their fire. “And then Samuel, the high priest, the gentle servant of God, what did he do?”
“He called for Agag the king of the Amalekites to be brought before him.”
The Visitor would not relent. “And what did Samuel do?”
“Killed him,” whispered Thrower.
“What does the scripture say that he did!” roared the Visitor. The walls of the meetinghouse shook, the glass of the windows rattled.
Thrower wept in fear, but he spoke the words that the Visitor demanded: “Samuel hacked Agag in pieces in the presence of the Lord.”
Now the only sound in the church was Thrower's own ragged breath as he tried to control his hysterical weeping. The Visitor smiled at him, his eyes filled with love and forgiveness. Then he was gone.
Thrower sank to his knees before the altar and prayed. 0 Father, I would die for Thee, but do not ask me to kill. Take away this cup from my lips, I am too weak, I am unworthy, do not lay this burden upon my shoulders.
His tears fell on the altar. He heard a sizzling sound and jumped back from the altar, startled. His tears skittered along the surface of the altar like water on a hot skillet, until finally they were consumed.
The Lord has rejected me, he thought. I pledged to serve Him however He required, and now, when He asks something difficult, when He commands me to be as strong as the great prophets of old, I discover myself to be a broken vessel in the hands of the Lord. I cannot contain the destiny He wanted to pour into me.
The door of the church opened, letting in a wave of freezing air that rushed along the floor and sent a chill through the minister's flesh. He looked up, fearing that it was an angel sent to punish him.
It was no angel, though. Merely Armor-of-God Weaver.
“I didn't mean to interrupt you in prayer,” said Armor.
“Come in,” said Thrower. “Close the door. What can I do for you?”
“Not for me,” said Armor.
“Come here. Sit down. Tell me.”
Thrower hoped that perhaps it was a sign from God that Armor had come just now. A member of the congregation, coming to him for help, right after he prayed– surely the Lord was letting him know that he was accepted after all.
“It's my wife's brother,” said Armor. “The boy, Alvin Junior.”
Thrower felt a thrill of dread run through him, freezing him to the bone. “I know him. What about him?”
“You know he got his leg mashed.”
“I heard of it.”
“You didn't happen to go visit and see him afore it healed up?”
“I've been given to believe that I'm not welcome in that house.”
“Well, let me tell you, it was bad. A whole patch of skin tore off. Bones broke. But two days later, it was healed right up. Couldn't even see no scar. Three days later he was walking.”
“It must not have been as bad as you thought.”
“I'm telling you, that leg was broke and the wound was bad. The whole family figured the boy was bound to die. They asked me about buying nails for a coffin. And they looked so bad from grieving that I wasn't sure but what we'd bury the boy's ma and pa, too.”
“Then it can't be as fully healed as you say.”
“Well, it ain't fully healed, and that's why I come to you. I know you don't believe in such things, but I tell you they witched the boy's leg to heal somehow. Elly says the boy did the witching himself. He was even walking on the leg for a few days, no splint even. But the pain never let up, and now he says there's a sick place on his bone. He's got a fever, too.”
“There's a perfectly natural explanation for everything,” said Thrower.
“Well, be that as you like, the way I see it the boy invited the devil with his witchery, and now the devil's eating him alive inside. And seeing how you're an ordained minister of God, I thought maybe you could cast out that devil in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Superstitions and sorceries were nonsense, of course, but when Armor brought up the possibility of a devil being in the boy, it made sense, it fit with what he knew from the Visitor. Maybe the Lord wanted him to exorcise the child, to purge the evil from him, not to kill the boy at all. It was a chance for him to redeem himself from his failure of will a few minutes before.
“I'll go,” he said. He reached for his heavy cloak and whipped it around his shoulders.
“I better warn you, nobody up at their house asked me to bring you.”
“I'm prepared to deal with the anger of the unfaithful,” said Thrower. “It's the victim of deviltry that concerns me, not his foolish and superstitious family.”
* * *
Alvin lay on his bed, burning with the heat of his fever. Now, in the daylight, they kept his shutters closed, so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes. At night, though, he made them open things up, let some of the cold air in. He would breathe it in relief. During the few days when he could walk, he had seen the snow covering the meadow. Now he tried to imagine himself lying under that blanket of snow. Relief from the fire burning through his body.
He just couldn't see small enough inside himself. What he did with the bone, with the strands of muscle and layers of skin, it was harder than ever it was to find the cracks in the quarry stone. But he could feel his way through the labyrinth of his body, find the large wounds, help them to close. Most of what went on, though, was too small and fast for him to comprehend. He could see the result, but he couldn't see the pieces, couldn't make out how it happened.
That's how it was with the bad place in his bone. Just a patch of it that was weakening, rotting away. He could feel the difference between the bad place and the good healthy bone, he could find the borders of the sickness. But he couldn't actually see what was happening. He couldn't undo it. He was going to die.
He wasn't alone in the room, he knew. Someone always sat at his bedside. He would open his eyes and see Mama, or Papa, or one of the girls. Sometimes even one of the brothers, even though it meant he had left his wife and his chores. It was a comfort to Alvin, but it was also a burden. He kept thinking he ought to hurry up and die so they could all get back to their regular lives.
This afternoon it was Measure sitting there. Alvin said howdy to him when he first came, but there wasn't much to talk about. Howdy do? I'm dying, thanks, and you? Kind of hard to keep chatting. Measure talked about how he and the twins had tried to cut a grindstone. They chose a softer stone than what Alvin worked with, and still they had a devil of a time cutting. “We finally gave right up,” said Measure. “It's just going to have to wait till you can go up the mountain and get us a stone yourself.”
Alvin didn't answer that, and they neither one said a word since then. Alvin just lay there, sweating, feeling the rot in his bone as it slowly, steadily grew. Measure sat there, lightly holding his hand.
Measure started to whistle.
The sound of it startled Alvin. He'd been so caught up inside himself that the music seemed to come from a great distance,
and he had to travel some distance to discover where it was coming from.
“Measure,” he cried; but the sound of his voice was a whisper.
The whistling stopped. “Sorry,” said Measure. “Does it bother you?”
“No,” said Alvin.
Measure started in whistling again. It was a strange tune, one that Alvin didn't recollect he ever heard before. In fact it didn't sound like any kind of tune at all. It never did repeat itself, just went on with new patterns all the time, ,like as if Measure was making it up on the way. As Alvin lay there and listened, the melody seemed like it was a map, winding through a wilderness, and he started to follow it. Not that he saw anything, the way he would following a real map. It just seemed always to show him the center of things, and everything he thought about, he thought about as if he was standing in that place. Almost like he could see all the thinking he had done before, trying to figure out a way to fix the bad place on his bone, only now he was looking from a ways off, maybe higher up a mountain or in a clearing, somewhere that he could see more.
Now he thought of something he never thought of before. When his leg was first broke, with the skin all tore up, everybody could see how bad off he was, but nobody could help him, only himself. He had to fix it all from inside. Now, though, nobody else could see the wound that was killing him. And even though he could see it, he couldn't do a blame thing to make it better.
So maybe this time, somebody else could fix him up. Not using any kind of hidden power at all. Just plain old bloody-handed surgery.
“Measure,” he whispered.
“I'm here,” said Measure.
“I know a way to fix my leg,” he said.
Measure leaned in close. Alvin didn't open his eyes, but he could feel his brother's breath on his cheek.
“The bad place on my bone, it's growing, but it ain't spread all over yet,” Alvin said. “I can't make it better, but I reckon if somebody cut off that part of my bone and took it right out of my leg, I could heal it up the rest of the way.”
“Cut it out?”
“Pa's bone saw that he uses when he's cutting up meat, that'd do the trick I think.”
“But there ain't a surgeon in three hundred mile.”
“Then I reckon somebody better learn how real quick, or I'm dead.”
Measure was breathing quicker now. “You think cutting your bone would save your life?”
“It's the best I can think of.”
“It might mess up your leg real bad,” said Measure.
“If I'm dead, I won't care. And if I live, it'll be worth a messed-up leg.”
“I'm going to fetch Pa.” Measure scuffed back his chair and thumped out of the room.
* * *
Thrower let Armor lead the way onto the Millers' porch. They couldn't very well turn away their daughter's husband. His concern was unfounded, however. It was Goody Faith who opened the door, not her pagan husband.
“Why, Reverend Thrower, if you ain't being too kind to us, stopping up here,” she said. The cheerfulness of her voice was a lie, though, if her haggard face was telling the truth. There hadn't been much good sleep in this house lately.
“I brought him along, Mother Faith,” said Armor. “He come only cause I asked him.”
“The pastor of our church is welcome in my home whenever it pleases him to come by,” said Faith.
She ushered them into the great room. A group of girls making quilt squares looked up at him from their chairs near the hearth. The little boy, Cally, was doing his letters on a board, writing with charcoal from the fire.
“I'm glad to see you doing your letters,” said Thrower.
Cally just looked at him. There was a hint of hostility in his eyes. Apparently the boy resented having his teacher look at his work here at home, which he had supposed was a sanctuary.
“You're doing them well,” said Thrower, trying to put the boy at ease. Cally said nothing, just looked down again at his makeshift slate and kept on scrawling out words.
Armor brought up their business right away. “Mother Faith, we come cause of Alvin. You know how I feel about witchery, but I never before said a word against what you folks do in your house. I always reckoned that was your business and none of mine. But that boy is paying the price for the evil ways that you've let go on here. He witched his leg, and now there's a devil in him, killing him off, and I brought Reverend Thrower here to wring that devil on out of him.”
Goody Faith looked puzzled. “There ain't no devil in this house.”
Ah, poor woman, said Thrower silently. If you only knew how long a devil has dwelt here. “It is possible to become so accustomed to the presence of a devil as not to recognize that it is presene.”
A door by the stairs opened up, and Mr. Miller stepped backward through the doorway. “Not me,” he said, talking to whoever was in that room. “I'll not lay a knife to the boy.”
Cally jumped up at the sound of his father's voice and ran to him. “Armor brung old Thrower here, Papa, to kill the devil.”
Mr. Miller turned around, his face twisted with unidentified emotion, and looked at the visitors as if he hardly recognized them.
“I've got good strong hexes on this house,” said Goody Faith.
“Those hexes are a summons for the devil,” said Armor. “You think they protect your house, but they drive away the Lord.”
“No devil ever came in here,” she insisted.
“Not by itself,” said Armor. “You called it in with all you're conjuring. You forced the Holy Spirit to leave your house by your witchery and idolatry, and having swept goodness from your home, the devils naturally come right in. They always come in, where they see a fair chance to do mischief.”
Thrower became a little concerned that Armor was saying too much about things he didn't really understand. It would have been better had he simply asked if Thrower could pray for the boy at Alvin's bedside. Now Armor was drawing battle lines that should never have been drawn.
And whatever was going on in Mr. Miller's head right now, it was plain to see that this wasn't the best of times to provoke the man. He slowly walked toward Armor. “You telling me that what comes into a man's house to do mischief is the devil?”
“I bear you my witness as one who loves the Lord Jesus,” Armor began, but before he could get any further into his testimony, Miller had him by the shoulder of his coat and the waist of his pants, and he turned him right toward the door.
“Somebody better open this door!” roared Miller. “Or there's going to be a powerful big hole right in the middle of it!”
“What do you think you're doing, Alvin Miller!” shouted his wife.
“Casting out devils!” cried Miller. Cally had swung the door open by then, and Miller walked his son-in-law to the edge of the porch and sent him flying. Armor's cry of outrage ended up muffled by the snow on the ground, and there wasn't much chance to hear his yelling after that because Miller closed and barred the door.
“Ain't you a big man,” said Goody Faith, “throwing out your own daughter's husband.”
“I didn't do but what he said the Lord wanted done,” said Miller. Then he turned his gaze upon the pastor.
“Armor didn't speak for me,” said Thrower mildly.
“If you lay a hand on a man of the cloth,” said Goody Faith, “you'll sleep in a cold bed for the rest of your life.”
“Wouldn't think of touching the man,” said Miller. “But the way I figure it, I stay out of his place, and he ought to stay out of mine.”
“You may not believe in the power of prayer,” said Thrower.
“I reckon it depends on who's doing the praying, and who's doing the listening,” said Miller.
“Even so,” said Thrower, “your wife believes in the religion of Jesus Christ, in the which I have been called and ordained a minister. It is her belief, and my belief, that for me to pray at the boy's bedside might be efficacious in his cure.”
“If you use words like that in your praying,�
� said Miller, “it's a wonder the Lord even knows what you're talking about.”
“Though you don't believe such prayer will help,” Thrower went on, “it certainly can't hurt, can it?”
Miller looked from Thrower to his wife and back again. Thrower had no doubt that if Faith had not been there, he would have been eating snow alongside Armor-ofGod. But Faith was there and had already uttered the threat of Lysistrata. A man does not have fourteen children if his wife's bed holds no attraction to him. Miller gave in. “Go on in,” he said. “But don't pester the boy too long.”
Thrower nodded graciously. “No more than a few hours,” he said.
“Minutes!” Miller insisted. But Thrower was already headed for the door by the stairs, and Miller made no move to stop him. He could have hours with the boy, if he wanted to. He closed the door behind him. No sense in letting any of the pagans interfere with this.
“Alvin,” he said.
The boy was stretched out under a blanket, his forehead beaded with sweat. His eyes were closed. After a while, though, he opened his mouth a little. “Reverend Thrower,” he whispered.
“The very same,” said Thrower. “Alvin, I've come to pray for you, so the Lord will free your body of the devil that is making you sick.”
Again a pause, as if it took a while for Thrower's words to reach Alvin and just as long again for his answer to return. “Ain't no devil,” he said.
“One can hardly expect a child to be well-versed in matters of religion,” said Thrower. “But I must tell you that healing comes only to those who have the faith to be healed.” He then devoted several minutes to recounting the story of the centurion's daughter and the tale of the woman who had an issue of blood and merely touched the Savior's robe. “You recall what he said to her. Thy faith hath made thee whole, he said. So it is, Alvin Miller, that your faith must be strong before the Lord can make you whole.”
The boy didn't answer. Since Thrower had used his considerable eloquence in the telling of both stories, it offended him a bit that the boy might have fallen asleep. He reached out a long finger and poked Alvin's shoulder.
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