She slowly crept forward until she maneuvered her eye to the bottom tent flap opening. With her metasense she tracked the ghost until it reached a spot about fifty feet away. There. It was human shaped, in her Focus-enhanced-night vision, a short human of indeterminate sex.
The instant she saw the ghost, the ghost turned and ran.
(15)
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The son of God discloses.
And he walks with me
And he talks with me.
And he tells me I am his own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.
The strains of the hymn came wafting over the field from the Ebener farmhouse, as they had every Sunday morning for the last three weeks, ever since the Reverend Matthew Robert Narbanor had come into her life.
Gail hated the hymn. Too sappy, too sweet, too religious. She had aggressively given up religion three years ago, during her freshman year in college, when she discovered that there was more to life than the small-minded conformism of her parent’s conservative church. Now, she had a minister in her household. He was exactly as much trouble as she expected.
Her dislike didn’t matter. Every single Sunday he was up there conducting a worship service. With every word and every hymn, she heard the voice of her childhood pastor, preaching hellfire and brimstone, and how a woman’s role was to obey her husband. The nasty whispered gossip of the women. The chilly cliques in Sunday School as a teen, where anyone who wouldn’t fit in was cut dead. The universal disapproval of any spark of creativity or individuality.
She remembered Sundays after church, when her father would lecture her about a woman’s role in life, and her mother would try to persuade her that she, Gail, would really be happier if she just did what her father wanted. The last time she attended, Pastor Thompson had preached the evils of fornication, and the hells awaiting those who lived in sin before they married.
Gail had promised herself she would never return to that church, no matter how much her mother pleaded.
So here she was, finally out on her own, out from under the thumb of her family, though it took a Focus transformation and a household revolt to free her. Now this, metaphorically thrusting her back in her family’s clutches. Church every Sunday, whether she wanted it or not. With a minister in her household, she couldn’t even escape anymore. Dammit! Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
But no, there he was, every Sunday morning, stubbornly accusing. He wasn’t going to stop, not for anything a mere Focus could do.
She knew this, because, though she didn’t like to think about it, she didn’t react well to Narbanor’s services. The minute the service started, her anger took charge and she lost control of the juice. The low juice was hard on all the Transforms in the service, but her juice anger was worst on the minister. She stripped him down to where it hurt her, and yet, he still kept preaching. All but the hardiest Transforms gave up after the first Sunday, but Narbanor still preached. Sometimes he could barely talk, because of the low juice, and still he kept going.
Gail hated herself for hurting him, and the guilt only made things worse. She didn’t understand why he didn’t give up. However, he wouldn’t quit, and so he was up there again, accusing just by his stubborn presence. Disapproval washed down in waves on her from the Ebener farmhouse. Disapproval of her relationship with Van, disapproval of her refusal to be an obedient housewife, disapproval of all the choices she made in her life. The whole scene was an accusation of her failures with her household, her failures as a Focus. The pain in her people, her selfishness, her inability to control the juice.
The minister never said anything to her. He just held those services every Sunday.
Worst of all, this week, Sylvie attended. Sylvie was no more religious than Gail, and yet she stood in the farmhouse living room singing about walking in the garden. Somewhere deep within her, Gail still considered Sylvie a friend. The betrayal stabbed at her heart.
Gail didn’t understand the betrayal. She put on her muddy shoes, trooped on up to the house, and arrived just as the service ended. She waited silently as the few participants came out of the door, not noticing her at all. Sylvie spent several minutes talking with the minister after the service, and Gail waited for her. Kurt and Van appeared, walking quickly toward them, Van’s hand on Kurt’s left arm, trying and failing to hold him back. The two whispered among themselves, radiating tension.
Sylvie froze when she saw Gail and drew a deep breath. Her body went rigid with fear.
Yet another accusation.
“What are you doing here?” Gail said, as she came up the front porch stairs.
Sylvie paused before she answered Gail’s demand, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
“I was praying,” she said. “It’s been a rough week. I was praying for Bobby Kennedy’s soul. I was praying for you, to find peace. I was praying for a miracle, for God to give me a baby.”
The assassination of Bobby Kennedy last month hit the entire household hard, especially those under thirty. Praying for his soul was fine with Gail. Sylvie and her baby fever were something else entirely.
“What the hell are you doing that for? You know it’s garbage.” Gail stopped several feet away from Sylvie, fended off by Sylvie’s aggressive defiance. Beside them, the porch swing creaked back and forth in the slight morning breeze. Kurt bounded up the steps to Sylvie and took her hand, protectively. Van made a motion to bound up the steps as well, but he stopped, holding back.
“Do you have a better suggestion for how I could have a baby?”
“God dammit, Sylvie…”
“No, God dammit yourself!” Sylvie said. Her face went pale with pain and anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re torturing some innocent, kind-hearted man, just because you don’t happen to like church services. You don’t like Helen Grimm, so you always keep her short. And nobody…”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Grimm,” Sylvie said, and got in Gail’s face. “You call her the witch bitch, and you don’t like her, so she never gets enough juice. She may be a cranky old bitch, but she sure as shit doesn’t deserve to live in hell because you don’t happen to care for her. She even got fired last week because of you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, what. She’s been hiding her firing because she’s so afraid of how you’ll react.”
Gail was angry to start out with, and found herself getting more angry. “Damn it! So maybe I don’t like Grimm and I’m not handling her juice flow well, but I’m trying my best and there isn’t anyone who likes the way I handle their juice flow. Why are you blaming me for her getting fired, just because the University finally figured out she was a bitch?”
Sylvie shook now, and tears streamed from her eyes. She turned and buried her head in Kurt’s shoulder. “They fired Grimm a week ago Friday,” Kurt said. “They fired Melanie Friday of this week. People had been complaining about having to interact with Transforms, and how their performance wasn’t up to par because they were having trouble with low juice.”
“God dammit!” Gail hit the porch swing and sent it lurching wildly. “Quit blaming me for all this crap! I’m doing the best I can, and everyone blames me for everything! I can’t solve everything!”
Kurt leaned forward, nose to nose with Gail. “So what shouldn’t I blame you for? Can I blame you for what you’re doing to Sylvie right now, or is that not your fault either? Who else should I blame?” Van bounded up the porch steps, now, and gently separated Kurt from Gail.
Gail checked Sylvie’s juice count at her words and realized she had stripped Sylvie all the way down. It was a wonder that Sylvie still stood. It was no wonder at all that tears streamed down her former friend’s cheeks.
“Look at what you’re doing,” Sylvie said, her voice a cry of despair.
“No one can tell you anything you don’t want to hear. You’ve ruined the life of every Transform in our household you don’t like. Go look the minister in the eye, and then try to live with what you’ve done, because I sure as shit wish I didn’t have to.”
Sylvie flung herself out of Kurt’s grasp and walked past Gail, her back as stiff as iron. She nearly ran Van off the porch, and he scrambled back to keep from falling down the steps. The glare Sylvie gave Van overflowed with disgust. Van turned away from Gail, putting his head in his hands.
Gail opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She did fix Sylvie’s juice as she stalked away, but Sylvie didn’t as much as wobble in her footsteps. Kurt gave up his glaring anger, and turned to rush after Sylvie.
“Reverend Narbanor?” Gail said, finishing wiping her nose and eyes. She stuck her head into the kitchen, where he cleaned the little communion cups, his post-Sunday service ritual. She wondered if he had heard her heated discussion with Sylvie and Kurt on the back porch, before deciding there was no way he could have avoided it.
He gave no sign as he turned to Gail, wary. He had weathered hardship in the month he and his family had been part of her household, and the effects showed. His face was lined and the hollows under his eyes were gray, but he gave no sign of any special hate, or fear.
“Focus,” he said, nodding his head to her respectfully.
Gail had thought for a long time after Sylvie and Kurt had stalked off and Van had buried his head in his hands and stopped talking. The fight ripped at her heart, because their accusations touched her where she was most tender. She did hurt her people with her little mistakes and slips of control, her tempers and her attitudes. She did want so badly to be a better Focus, but she couldn’t keep the juice from reacting to her every mood. Her people feared her and became miserable; when Gail sensed their misery, she hurt them some more for being miserable. She wanted so badly to do well, she tried so hard, and yet, by any measure she could come up with, she was a failure. All she did was hurt people, and she didn’t have any idea how to do better. Tears leaked from her eyes whenever she thought about all her failures.
Rev. Narbanor was the worst. What she had done to him was literally torture.
She hated herself for what she did. Guilt twisted inside of her, and she still didn’t understand how to fix the situation. The other people couldn’t live without her, but they couldn’t live with her, and she couldn’t live with herself. Every day things got worse, as guilt and misery worked her way inside of her, expressed itself in anger and frustration, leading her to do further hurt to her people.
Gail half expected Rev. Narbanor to launch into her with accusations and condemnation when she greeted him, but he did none of that, for which Gail was grateful. This was hard enough as it was. She firmly and stubbornly kept his juice supply up, promising herself to keep it that way, no matter what he said.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. The words stuck in her throat, but she said them anyway. She didn’t like her words, she didn’t agree with what he preached, but she still owed him the apology.
Everything she tried so far had failed. Twenty other people suffered for her ignorance. Perhaps her parent’s way was right. Be a good little obedient Focus housewife. Have Van make all the decisions for her. Her own way wasn’t working. Her parent’s way was the only other way she knew. What else could she do?
Rev. Narbanor simply nodded. “Would you care to talk about it?”
Just then, the sound of the Ebener’s car coming up the driveway interrupted them, followed by the slam of the car door after Betha parked the old vehicle. Gail winced and crossed her arms across her chest as Betha gathered her groceries and came inside.
“Might we take a walk?” Narbanor said.
“A wonderful idea.” Narbanor gave his wife Ruth a hug and tousled the hair of the two oldest of his five children before they slipped out the front door.
The day ached with beauty. The temperature was just climbing up toward eighty degrees, puffy white clouds dotted the Michigan sky, and the smell of fresh grass filled the air. Off in the distance, the oldest of the Carlow kids mowed the far corner of the huge yard. Close in, radishes and cucumbers and tomatoes and every vegetable known to man grew in the over-sized kitchen garden. There were even a couple of rows of sweet corn in the back, shoulder high.
Scrub and a few low trees marked the north edge of the huge Ebener lot. Rev. Narbanor led them that way. Gail followed, spiritually lost. Rev. Narbanor had been the one man strong enough to stand up to her inadvertent abuse. With such strength, he must have some good ideas about how to help her be a better Focus. Whatever he came up with, his ideas couldn’t be any worse than hers. Helplessness filled her, so much so she wanted to vomit it all out and start over. She wondered how angry Rev. Narbanor would be.
He didn’t speak until they passed around a small cluster of trees and out of sight of the house. “Have you ever had any real responsibility before, Focus?” he said. His voice was soft and non-threatening.
“What do you mean?” Gail said, awkward and nervous.
Narbanor ambled on. “Responsibility for someone else. Another person. A pet?”
Gail thought, but couldn’t come up with anything. “No people or pets, just projects and work.” Her parents had made her get a job in high school for spending money. “My brother had a dog, but I didn’t get one.”
Narbanor nodded. “Baby sitting jobs?”
Gail shook her head. “Counter service at the local Baskin Robbins.”
Narbanor nodded again. “People have to learn how to deal with responsibility,” he said. “We aren’t born knowing how. A Focus household is a lot of people, a tremendous amount of responsibility to gain so suddenly.”
“So what can I do?” Gail said, her voice weak and small. “I’m trying to let other people run things the best way, and Bart and those other men have a lot of practice with responsibility, but things aren’t working.” She had never looked at it that way, before. She already followed her parent’s way. Only instead of her husband, she had given over power to Bart. Would giving over her power to Van be any better?
Rev. Narbanor stopped walking and looked at her. He opened his mouth to say something, and then turned away and was silent.
“What?” Gail said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Rev. Narbanor eyed the leaves moving on the trees and didn’t say anything.
Gail understood, unfortunately, why he didn’t speak. She carefully concentrated on his juice supply.
“I won’t hurt you. I promise. Tell me what you’re thinking, because I have to do better than this.”
Narbanor looked back at her then. The shadows the sunlight left in the creases of his face filled Gail with dread.
“I was thinking that it wasn’t Bart Wheelhouse that God turned into a Focus, it was you.”
“Yes, but I’m a Focus who doesn’t understand what to do,” Gail said. After speaking, she stopped to listen to what Narbanor said. His words were so…unexpected. She had expected him to tell her to marry and put her husband in charge.
Narbanor looked away again. “After all this, do you really want my advice?” He already knew she shorted him during his Sunday services because she didn’t like his sermons.
“I’m sorry,” Gail whispered. “I don’t ever mean to hurt anyone. But I just can’t stop it.”
He turned back to her, but he didn’t say anything, and waited, silently.
“Yes,” Gail said. “Please help me.”
Despite her plea, she was already starting to have doubts. What if he wanted her to break off her relationship with Van? Sex bad, abstinence good – advice written into the preacher DNA, she guessed.
Narbanor still didn’t answer and started on his slow walk again. Gail wrapped her arms around her torso and walked with him. She checked his juice supply again, to make sure she hadn’t done something to him without noticing, but his juice was fine.
>
They were out of range of the household, which felt strange. She rarely escaped the presence of all her household; it wasn’t allowed. Her people could manage without her for hours and even days, but after weeks of enforced presence, being out of metasense range worried her, as if she was abandoning her responsibility. She wondered how long she would have, away from her people, before someone realized she was missing and started a panic. Or a picnic.
The trees rustled, and somewhere a bird chirped enthusiastically.
“I understand that you were raised in a religious household, but rejected your faith when you left home,” he said, minutes later. The words might have been an accusation, but his soft voice spoke otherwise.
Gail nodded.
They continued to walk.
“Sometimes,” he said, “sometimes when people reject the faith of their childhood, they don’t ever stop believing in God, but they stop believing that God loves them.”
Gail smiled cynically. “I don’t see why God should.” She was just another young woman, not the least bit pious.
“But he does.”
Gail didn’t respond. Her church back home had talked far more about punishment than love.
Narbanor stopped walking again. “God has given you a tremendous gift and a tremendous responsibility. He understands the difficulties and he doesn’t hate you because of your struggles.”
She hadn’t expected thoughtful consideration from Rev. Narbanor. She expected anger and condemnation over the way she treated him, not all this talk of love and understanding. She deserved anger and condemnation. She couldn’t cope with love and understanding. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“But what do I do?”
Narbanor’s weathered face looked old and wise. “God helps those who ask for it. You might try prayer.”
Gail shook her head. She hadn’t prayed in years, not for real. She hadn’t ever felt anything special when she prayed. Prayer felt wrong, if not wrong, clearly too late. With Transform Sickness, the King and Kennedy assassinations, the race riots they were calling the days of rage, President Johnson deciding not to seek reelection, and that horrible scene they kept playing over and over on the television of the destroyed CDC research lab that some radical had driven a gasoline tanker truck into, it was amazing there was anyone left who wasn’t talking or thinking of the Final Days or the Second Coming or whatever. She wondered if God was taking a breather this year.
No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) Page 11