by Riley, Peggy
26
The Tiny Prophet
Sorrow doesn’t want to leave the parking lot. In fact, she’s not overly keen on leaving the car. No tug of the strap will dislodge her.
Amaranth studies the strip mall shops surrounding the parked cars: dry cleaner, doughnut shop, pet shop, nail salon. Nothing she wants, nothing she needs, but she wants to look at the things they sell, as if to pretend that they are a simple mother and daughter, like any who parked or walked past them, out for a day of frivolous spending. She tries to picture Sorrow with her lips around a doughnut or holding her nails out to be filed and painted pink. She watches the closed door of the bar where Bradley is and wishes she were in with him, then she thinks of Sorrow beside her, strapped around a bar stool.
“What are they looking at?” Sorrow points at a crowd outside a Korean barbecue.
“Let’s go see,” Amaranth says, desperate to see anything but the dirty inside of the windshield. They negotiate the parked cars together, strapped. She jerks Sorrow back as cars swish by, looking for spaces. She tells her to look both ways, as if she is leading a toddler or an alien.
Sorrow hurries toward the crowd, as if she can sense she is missing something, and Amaranth’s heart sinks when she sees the plain, flat frontage and the sign beside the barbecue: THE HOLY CHURCH OF THE ONE TRUE LOVE. Only Sorrow could find a church in a mini mall.
The glass doors open and a purple banner, felt wheat spears on a satin cross, emerges. A bone-shattering organ chord comes from mounted speakers, accompanied by the jangle of metal tambourines. Sorrow looks at her mother, all smiles now. Before the shop front, a congregation gathers, plain-dressed worshippers with paperback Bibles. A cheer comes from the crowd when a man steps through the doors, white-suited, in a cowboy hat. He lifts a hand in a blessing while before him, barely visible through the crowd, is a tiny blond boy in a shorts suit and a broad-brimmed black hat that’s held up by his ears. The crowd surges forward, cars honking, people shouting, and a final organ-chord crash.
“Can I get a ‘Hallelujah’ from someone who believes?” the man calls.
“Hallelujah!” roars the crowd. Sorrow looks about her, eyes wide at their noise.
“We come together to praise the Lord!” the man shouts. “We praise Him in the churches and we praise Him in the streets. We praise Him in the fields when the crops come! Let us pray!” He whips his hat off and bows his head, showing off his scalp.
The little boy bows and his hat tips up. Sorrow does not bow her head but studies those who do, the crowd, the preacher, and his son, while Amaranth keeps a firm hold on the wrist strap, poised to yank her back.
“O Heavenly Father, we come to You from our harvests. We come to You from our fields. We come to You with nothing, as a people humbled, blessed with Your bounty, Lord, which we do not deserve. For we are miserable sinners.”
“I’m a sinner, Lord!” a man cries out.
“Who’s a sinner?” Sorrow asks her.
A car squeals past them and a spiky-haired woman rolls down her window to holler, “Get outta the road, ya Jesus freaks!” At that, the tambourines rattle, a chord comes, and the crowd begins to sing. “How is it that they know the same song?” Sorrow asks.
“It’s a hymn,” Amaranth tells her over the singing. “All churches probably sing it.”
“All churches?” Sorrow strains forward now. “How many are there?”
“Far too many,” says Amaranth grumpily.
The preacher greets the passing cars. “Are you ready for the final days, friends?” They honk in response or salute him with middle fingers. “Are you ready for God to take you away?”
Sorrow raises her arm to him, but the man ignores her, sweeping his arms and saying, “Let’s hear from the Prophet. Speak, Prophet, speak!”
The small boy is scratching furiously, the back of his lace-up shoe hooked behind the other leg to work on bug bites. Hearing silence, he stops, puts his hat under his arm, and looks up at the sky. “I want to thank You, Lord-uh,” he chants, the end of his lines dropping off in a grunt. “I want to thank you, Jesus!”
“Thank You, Lord. Thank you, Jesus,” the crowd repeats.
“The Lord kept our rain from us and then He gave it back-uh. He took our crops and He let us reap-uh. But this is our final harvest, be in no doubt. The Lord will pull the righteous from their boots-uh, and cut the sinners where they stand-uh, like stalks with His sickle! For the Lord is a-comin’.”
“Praise the Lord,” the man calls.
“Fear God and give Him glory!” Sorrow calls back.
Amaranth tugs the strap. “Don’t.”
The man looks at Sorrow and puts a single finger across his lips.
“Mother,” Sorrow whispers. “Can anyone build a temple?”
“It looks like it,” she says.
But already Sorrow is turning back to the boy, then pushing through people to get closer to him, pulling Amaranth behind her. “Who calls you Prophet?” Sorrow calls. The crowd parts to get a look at her, this creature in the cap and dress, as Amaranth shuffles along like a string trying to keep up with its kite.
The man gives her a thin-lipped smile and reaches a hand out to greet Sorrow. “Hello, Sister.”
She doesn’t take it. “Who says he is Prophet?” She points at the little boy.
“Who are you, Sister, that you should ask?”
“I am the Oracle.”
“The Oracle?” The man looks about at his worshippers and his strained smile stretches to a full-out grin of mockery. “What’s that, then?”
“Have you no Oracle? How can he receive prophecies? How can he read the signs of God?”
The man guffaws. “Sister, we don’t need no Oracle. Everybody can read the Good Book for himself, can’t they? Nobody needs to interpret God, ’less you’re some papist. Our God speaks to all of us—if only we will listen—but the world has gone deaf!” He holds a hand up to the crowd and they cheer.
“How does God speak to you?” Sorrow calls to him.
“Well, through the Bible, Sister. You do know your Bible?”
“I should do. It is inside me.”
The little boy looks at his father for reassurance, then squares up to Sorrow, turning his scuffed chin up from her chest to look her in the eye. “How is the Bible in you?”
“I see through the Father’s eyes. I touch through the Father’s fingers. I have His holy words running through me like water, all the time. It is all I hear and see.”
“You can’t see God,” the boy tells her.
The man says, “It is foretold that in the final days false prophets will rise among us. And God will not spare them; no, He will not. He did not spare the angels when they sinned and fell! He did not spare the world from the might of His floods! The day of the Lord will come as a thief and the righteous will be stolen away!”
“The righteous have gone,” Sorrow says.
The man falters. “So are you not among the righteous?”
“I was taken away from them.” Sorrow tips her head at Amaranth, who mouths an embarrassed hello. “But the end is coming. It will come with fire.”
The boy says, “Beware of false prophets.”
Sorrow smiles. “You will know a prophet by his works and his gifts.”
“That’s the devil talking,” the man says, gesticulating. “Only false prophets try to show you miracles; it’s the devil making them boast.”
“Our work glorifies God,” Sorrow bites back. “What works do you do—what gifts have you?”
“He has the gift of tongues!” a woman in a wheelchair calls.
“Then speak, Prophet,” says Sorrow.
“Speak!” the woman urges, and the crowd picks it up. “Speak!”
“You got nothing to prove, son,” the man says, but the little boy screws his face up, throwing his head back and opening his mouth in a susurration of consonants, a string of long and sensuous vowels. A woman in a caftan falls to her knees, hands up to fondle heaven.
Sorrow flings her own head back then and roars her gift through clenched teeth. Where the boy’s words are silken, hers come as stabs. Where his slip along a slick path, hers are a switchback of barbs and hooks, grunts and clicks.
“Listen to that!” the man calls. “Will the grapes of our Lord be gathered from thorns?”
The woman in the caftan struggles to get back up, grabbing hold of the wheelchair arms. “That’s the devil’s talk!”
“It is not!” Sorrow protests.
“You’re making it up,” the boy says. “Yours is a bunch of noise.”
Sorrow pokes the boy in the chest. “You’re making yours up.”
“You are!” The boy’s face goes red. “You’re only a girl!”
“And you’re too little to make Jesus!”
“Sorrow!” Amaranth grabs Sorrow by the shoulder as the man steps forward. They each put a hand on their holy child. “I’m so sorry,” Amaranth tells him, pulling Sorrow toward her. The tambourines rattle and pretty girls produce empty baskets, even as the cars honk and the crowd threatens to engulf them, and the music surges and the baskets fill up with dollar bills. She hurries her daughter between the parked cars and the idling cars waiting for spaces. She rushes her toward the bar, fearing the wail of sirens and police, someone coming to take her child away. She rips across the busy street, cars honking, fists waving, dragging her daughter by the arm, but Sorrow’s head is turned back at the church and its people, even as she reaches the bar door and flings it open, calling into the darkness, to the smoke and the jukebox Elvis, “Bradley!”
27
The Plastic Box Oracle
Dust shouts at Amity. “You couldn’t wait, could you? You want what you want when you want it. You’re as bad as Sorrow. What if I lost you? What would you do? What would your ma do to me?”
She sits and takes it. She could take it all day, but once he’s shouted himself quiet she hops off the bench and holds her hand out to him. “Can we go get the book now?”
“Oh, jeez,” Dust says.
The purple-haired woman demands his library card, but when she sees it presented to her she says, “This is a children’s card. The Grapes of Wrath is an adult book.”
“What’s an adult book?” Amity asks.
“One with dirty bits in,” Dust says.
The woman tuts and Amity nods; the Joads were nothing but dirty.
Dust pulls a nylon wallet from his pocket. “I got ID. You can see I’m not a kid. I got a learner’s permit means I can drive.” And before Amity knows it, the librarian is stamping a new card and Dust is setting a book in her hands. “There you go. Grapes of Wrath. Happy now?”
Amity looks at the cover. “That’s not it.”
“It is. Lookit.”
“Where are the grapes and the man’s big hand?”
Dust looks at her. “You can’t read.”
She shrugs. “I don’t need to read.”
“You do,” he tells her, walking her back to the counter. “People will take advantage of you. I could tell you anything and you’d believe it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“But I could. You can’t trust people.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re bastards.” Dust hands the book to the woman and she stamps it. “You could learn to read,” he says. “I’ll find you a site on how to do it.”
“What sight?”
“Come on.” Dust pulls her to a row of veneered study carrels filled with white plastic boxes.
“What are these, Dust?”
“Haven’t you seen a computer before? Oh, man.”
“What’s a computer?”
“Here. You can read on it and look for things.”
“Like an Oracle? Is it an Oracle?” She leans toward it as he sits and taps at keys. “Could it help us find Father?”
“Maybe,” he says. “What’s his name?”
Amity tells him all she knows, even secret things, but it isn’t much. She knows his name is Zachariah and that he has fifty wives and twenty-seven children, more or less, including the first two, who were banished. She tells him about the fire. Dust nods and types the words she gives him: “Zachariah + church + fire + fifty wives.” He also types in other words, “cult + polygamy,” but he doesn’t say them to her. Then there are lights and colors and symbols, a blue spinning circle. He pulls up pictures of churches on fire, buildings consumed in infernos, but none is their temple. The box shows pictures of black children huddled together and crosses burning, then a flock of young girls in bright, ruffled dresses being put on a bus. Their hair swoops and swirls. Amity shakes her head at it. “That isn’t us, but it looks like my cousin. Look at how pretty they are.”
“Are you kidding?” he asks her.
The screen fills up with symbols and Dust takes them all in. But she stops him when she sees it—a picture of Father, but not as she’s ever seen him. It was taken a long time ago, for he looks young and dark-haired, handsome. He holds a tray of symbols across his chest.
“This says he’s wanted,” Dust says, his voice full of wonder.
“Sorrow wants him.” Dust only stares at the screen. “Am I stupid?” she asks him.
“No. You’re ignorant. That’s not your fault.”
“What does it say, all those things?”
He hits a few more buttons and walks to the counter. He gives the woman some coins from his hard-earned harvest and gets a piece of paper in return. “I don’t know what you know,” he tells her.
“I don’t know what I know.”
“You better ask your ma, then. I don’t know what she wants you to know.”
Outside, Dust folds the paper into a tiny square and then Amity can see he is wearing a new pair of jeans, stiff and dark, creased from being folded. “Look at you, fancy!” He has a brand-new red kerchief around his neck and he smiles at her looking. “Can I wear it?” she asks him, pointing.
“Jeez, you’re a pest. I only just got it.” He fingers the knot.
She pulls her cap off. “I want to be a Mennonite.”
“A Mennonite? I don’t want your dirty old hat.” He scowls, but he unknots the kerchief, begrudgingly draping it over her head.
She ties the kerchief firmly under her chin. “You don’t want fifty wives, do you, Dust?”
“I don’t even want one,” he tells her. “I’ve seen enough of wives to know that. Bradley was married, you know. You should’ve heard them.”
She nods to him, but she doesn’t believe him. Everybody’s married. It’s only a matter of time. She tosses her cap in the first trash can they pass and she tries very hard to walk back through town as she thinks a Mennonite might.
BEFORE: The Second Wife
When the old, old woman died, the ground was too hard to bury her.
Amaranth and the women cleaned her and wrapped her in her linens, then carried her to a metal barn across the frozen field, because they were not yet forbidden.
By the thaw, she was only skin and brittle bones. Her husband dug a hole in the garden six feet deep. Onto the body they dropped down her photographs, her documents, any paperwork that bore her name. They dropped in the first of the year’s shoots: kittentails, hyacinth, death camas. Her husband spoke a few words of her generosity and her capacity for love; he told them all that upon the soil and the rock of her they would build their church.
Amaranth couldn’t grieve for her. She was too full of her own grief, for the baby her body had lost the year before—their purpose for their marriage—and the husband who left her, back to the roads to preach. “This is my work,” he had told her as she clung to him, when she begged and then ordered him to stay. Her grief had skinned her raw.
The summer he was away, the old, old woman was failing. Her breaths came thin and she hovered over life like a hummingbird. Hope and the women carried on with the weeding, hoeing, deadheading, and harvesting, for their garden had to feed them through the hard winter to come. Amaranth moved like a ghost through t
he house and its rooms, weeping and waiting.
When her husband came home, the old, old woman came back to life, as if she, too, had been waiting. He went straight to her bedside, made up in the shadowed parlor, to pray. Coming to his feet, he announced that he had had a revelation: he and the old, old woman were to marry.
Amaranth raged at him, not caring whether the other women saw. “You are married. You can’t just go away and forget you’re married.”
He spoke to her and to all of them. “When she dies, we have no right to live here. We treated her like family, but we are not.”
“Fine,” Amaranth spat. “Let her adopt you.”
“All she ever wanted was a family,” he said gently. “She hoped to be a bride. That is her ring you wear. She never wore it. There was no time to have a family once she had nursed and buried her parents. She was an only child.” He looked pointedly at Amaranth.
“It isn’t legal. It isn’t right. You only want her land,” she said.
“Yes, I want her land. Why should the government have it? What did they ever give to us? They will seize this land and then where will we go?”
Amaranth rushed upstairs, sickened. She had no idea her husband had been planning this—he must have been since the first moment he met the old woman and asked her if she’d heard the good news. What did he mean to do with Amaranth, then, with his first wife? Divorce her or disgrace her? Send her away, cast her out? She wept afresh for the baby she lost; if she had been able to keep it, none of this would be happening.
He brought her a china teacup of lemon balm and an old white sheet. It was threadbare and yellowing, its edges worked with spidery stitches that had been made by hand. When she examined them, she found the stitches made names: Eugenie, Martha, Leah, Ann. He showed her the name in the bottom corner and told her it was his great-great-grandmother, his ancestor who left Missouri with her family and had arrived, widowed and childless, on the Great Salt Lake. The names in the other corners were her sister wives.