“The same as—” Nathan raked a violent fist across his face because of the wetness.
“But—but his own son—” Eliada’s face was troubled. “Oh, Nathan, tell me!”
“My father.” The words were bitter in his tight mouth. “He decided it was an evil power you used to heat up the crowbar. He raked it out of the fireplace with a stick and shoved it out the door into the dark. He said you had no right to warm us better than he could, and that at least we know why wood makes us warm. Lucas—” his voice died and he gulped. “Lucas cried and grabbed my father’s arm, trying to keep him from throwing the warm away, but my father back-handed him clear across the room and did anyway. And Lucas coughed and coughed and wouldn’t put the quilt around him again. He sort of settled down, only crying and coughing and shivering, and he wouldn’t go over by the fire.
“Then all at once he had the door open and was out in all that wind and storm, trying to find the crowbar in the puddle of water it had melted in the snow. By the time we got him back inside, he was sopping wet, with ice sliding out of his hair when I lifted him.
“And he died. He only lasted a day. My father killed him.”
And Nathan cried into the crook of his elbow and into the vast warm comfortingness that flowed from Eliada.
“Nathan,” Eliada said finally. “We cannot know if Lucas was truly Called or if he was sent ahead, but you must not hate. It is an evil you must not take for a burden. It will eat your heart and cloud your mind and, worst of all, it will separate you from the Presence.”
“But Lucas is dead.” Nathan’s voice was dull.
“He is back in the Presence,” said Eliada. “He is healed of the body that was so frail and so often with pain.”
Nathan shook his heavy hanging head. “Words—all kinds of words. But Lucas is dead and my father killed him.”
He surged away from Eliada and felt a sudden tightness against his forehead. It released suddenly, flooding him with the crisp, cold air. He blinked at the sun as he ran clumsily. The sun? The sun was still shining?
Spring came slowly. Then, one day, it seemed as if every drop of water tied up in every snowflake let go all at once. For days the house perched on a rise that was usually hardly noticeable but that held it above the rising waters. Then the waters began to move, coursing down to the river. The river came up to meet the house and nibbled away at the rise, slowly, slowly, with the whole world a-swim.
Then the torrents began. They ripped across the field Nathan and his father had worked so hard to clear, gouging out gullies and wiping out almost every trace of last year’s furrows.
Then the barn went, hardly splashing, as it slid into the greedy waters, just after Nathan and his father had led Kelly Cow and the other stock up the hill behind the barn and left them there with three raggedly wet chickens. The rest of the flock was gone.
Water gathered around the house closer and lapped at the bottom course of logs. The whole family watched from the small window and the door—watched the waters quiver and lift towards the house. Once, the sun came out suddenly and they were in the middle of a glittering sea of brightness. They had to squint their eyes against the glory. Then it was gray and miserable again.
Adina’s breath was a warm tickle on Nathan’s ear. “It’s gone, Nathan! It’s gone!” And hot tears started down her scalded-looking cheeks.
“What’s gone?” Nathan whispered.
“Where,” she gulped. “Where we buried Lucas. Under the little tree. The tree’s gone. The grave’s gone. Lucas is gone!” Nathan held her while she shook with crying. He lifted his head as Mama came heavily across the floor. She sat down on the bed, then lay back, her feet still on the floor. One bent arm covered her eyes and she said, in a tight, small voice, “Lucas is gone. And I have to carry this other one to be born and be killed—”
Father turned from the window, but he didn’t go to Mama.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said, his voice tired of making the same words over and over. “I didn’t kill him. Before that evil creature—”
“She isn’t evil.” Nathan’s voice was loud and defiant in the room. “She wanted to warm us—”
“With evil,” said Father. “With evil.”
“Is everything you don’t understand evil?” asked Nathan. “Do you know what makes the sun shine? But you let it warm you anyway.”
“God—” said Father.
“God,” said Nathan. “God made her, too. And taught her how to warm the crowbar.”
“The devil,” said Father. He turned back to the window, hunched inside the body that suddenly looked too big for him, that skunched down on Father, bending and stooping, trying to fit.
Then suddenly, briefly, the whole cabin lifted a little and settled again. There was a dark wetness along the long cracks of the rough floor.
“Good,” said Mama into the startled silence. “Take it all. Take it all.” And she turned her face away from all of them.
But the waters had taken all they were to take, and they shrank away from every rise, compressing down into all the low places. There was one spot in the front yard that held a puddle of water for a long time, and it glittered like a watching eye until long after everything else had dried up.
Nathan and his father now faced the task of clearing more land to replace that scoured-out, washed-away, deeply gullied part of the farm. Everything around shouted and hummed and smelled of spring and new life and abundant blossoming, but Nathan had no part in the singing, springing upsurge of delight that was on the land. He was a dark, plodding figure, bowed and unresponsive in the sunlight.
The tree shuddered under every blow of Father’s ax. The brightness of the sky hurt Nathan’s eyes, and his neck ached from looking up at the shaken branches. Every move that he made was awkward and aching because of the tight hampering of the darkness inside him. He squatted down against a bank of earth and pulled his knees up to his chest, trying to ease the endless aching.
A sharp crack from the tree snatched his eyes upward. The tree was twisting—turning unnaturally—splitting!
Something in Nathan cried out, rejoicing—Now he’ll die, too! Now he’ll die, too! But even before the thought formed itself in his mind, he was surging forward on his hands and knees, scrambling to get to his feet.
“Papa!” he yelled. “Papa!”
Papa looked up, dropped his ax, and stood for one long, stunned moment before turning to run—to run in exactly the wrong direction. The splintering tree twisted again and seemed to explode. Papa’s cry and Nathan’s cry were drowned in the crash.
“Papa!” Nathan groped frantically among the branches. “Papa! Papa!”
Then he found Papa’s face. And his hands groped to slide under Papa’s shoulders. He cried out as he fell forward over Papa’s chest. There was nothing under Papa’s shoulders! His head and neck and part of his shoulders were pushed out across the bank of the ragged gully. The weight of the splintery heaping of the tree across his legs and body was all that kept him from slithering backwards down into the rock-jumbled gully behind and below him.
“Papa!” Nathan whispered urgently. He touched the quiet face, his hand wincing away, almost immediately, from the intimacy of the touch.
The face twisted to pain, and the eyes opened, unfocusing beyond Nathan’s left shoulder. Then the eyes focused with a vast effort.
“Get it off!” The whisper jerked with the painful effort. “Get it off!” The eyes rolled shut and the head rolled to press against Nathan’s startled hand.
“But, Papa!” The words were so loud they splintered the silence. “But, Papa!” he whispered. Then he turned to the twisted mountain of limbs behind him. He scrambled over and grabbed one piece of the splintered trunk. But it was shredded to another piece that peeled from another piece that rocked the edge of the gully, spilling more dirt and rocks from under Papa’s shoulder.
Nathan let go hurriedly and could see even that little movement of release flow jerkily through the whole scrambl
ed length of the trunk. And it pushed two more pebbles from under Papa’s shoulders.
Nathan slumped down to his knees and slid sideways, his hands grabbing each other and his arms going up to hide his scared face.
“What can I do? What can I do? Oh, God, help me—!”
He jerked around, lifting himself on his knees. Nathan! Nathan! Calling him? Not Mama—not Adina!
“Eliada!” he called. “Eliada! Come help! I need—”
There’s need? Eliada’s call came dearly to him.
“Yes!” he called. “There’s need! Come help! I can’t—!”
For a long, tight pause Nathan listened to all the busy small sounds of the world of growth. Then a rustle in the trees just back of the jagged half-stump snatched his attention. The branches shuddered and parted, and an anxious-looking Eliada threw herself over the fallen tree to Nathan.
“Oh, Nathan!” She caught her eyes checking Nathan rapidly. “There was a directive—so strong! So strong! You have need?”
“Papa,” gulped Nathan. “The tree fell on him. I can’t move him—”
“Tree?” Eliada’s eyes widened. “The broken one? But your papa—”
“Can you help?” Nathan scrambled back to the branches. “Papa is caught under the tree. I can’t lift it. Can you help?”
Eliada crouched beside him. “Let me—let me—” She took a deep breath and sat back on her heels, her hand on Papa’s arm, her hair swaying forward over her intent face.
“I cannot lift the tree from him,” she said from behind the curtain of her hair. “He would fall to the rocks. I cannot lift him and the tree at one time. It is two different Persuasions—animate and inanimate. If he would not waken—but he would—”
“You gotta help!” cried Nathan. “We can’t let him—”
“So you must take from under him the rocks and dirt—” as though Nathan hadn’t spoken. “And I will hold him until you have freed him—” She backed away and huddled herself over the edge of the slope down in the gully. “You have digging things?”
“Yes, but—” he turned hopelessly to Papa and then to Eliada.
“He will hurt when he wakens.” Eliada sighed without opening her eyes. “While he is not awake—”
Nathan stumbled over to the clutter of tools under the near tree. He brought back the shovel and the crowbar. Sweat streaked his face, and dust streaked the sweat as Nathan labored. He hacked away at the bank under Papa with the bar, scrabbled at it with his bare hands, and whacked with the edge of the shovel.
Slowly, slowly, the bank crumbled. And Nathan stubbornly refused to look up at Papa, wondering why he believed Eliada could “hold” Papa, but believing desperately.
He had stopped to drag his muddy sleeve across his face again, when Papa cried out and moved, sending dirt cascading down on Nathan.
“Don’t move!” Nathan cried. “Papa, don’t move! I’m getting you out. Stay still!”
Desperately, he pried at the rounded rock that stuck out of the bank. With a sudden jolt, the rock came loose—and Nathan barely stumbled out of the way of the smothery cascade of the dissolving bank.
The dust cleared slowly and Nathan looked up. There, above him, pressed still up against the splintered tree, lay Papa. Up there! In the air! With nothing between him and Nathan except—nothing! And Papa’s terrified face peered down at Nathan.
Then Papa screamed hoarsely and, with one hand, groped blindly at the emptiness under and around him. Then both hands waved frantically. They found the splintery tree above him and clung to it with desperate strength.
“I cannot move him,” said Eliada past the still circling of her arms. “He is holding so strong. If I move him, the tree will go with him.”
“Papa!” yelled Nathan. “Let go! Let go!”
But Papa paid no attention, only fumbled with one foot, trying to find a holding place with it.
“I cannot sleep him,” said Eliada, her voice unsteady. “I am not strong enough to do it all at the same time. And, until his hands open—”
Nathan stood, fists clenched at his ribs, staring up at Papa. Then he wet his lips with his tongue. “When I holler,” he said, “let him fall—a little ways. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” said Eliada. “When you holler—a little fall—”
“Papa!” yelled Nathan. “The tree’s going! You’re falling! You’re falling!”
And Papa fell about a foot. He screamed once before his eyes rolled and his hands relaxed to let his arms dangle below him.
There was an ominous splinter above him and the tree began to sag. Eliada cried out, “Back, Nathan! Quick!” And Nathan, stumbling backward, caught his feet on the rough ground and fell heavily, feeling the scrunching under his doubled knees. He heard a cry from Eliada and twisted, to see Papa jerking away from the falling tree. For a moment Papa hovered in the dusty air above the up-puff from the broken wood landing. Then, as Nathan watched, Papa drifted over Nathan’s head. A something hit Nathan’s hand, and his other hand smeared it to a wet, red streak as Papa slanted slowly down to the uneven floor of the gully.
Nathan scrambled on hands and knees over to him. “He’s bleeding somewhere,” he said, glancing up at Eliada.
And she wasn’t there.
Nathan never could remember how he got up out of the gully and to Eliada. She was lying quietly, her face turned to the sky, her eyes closed, her mouth a little open, and blood running darkly down from her forehead where a flying stub of a branch had hit her.
Nathan afterwards remembered that day as something that had no meaning in his ordinary life. And yet, in itself, that day was a whole life-time that fitted together like a jeweled watch. All those impossibilities fitting so neatly together to make the only possible possibility.
Eliada was unconscious only briefly. Then she cried out, her hand going to her head. She lifted dizzily on her elbow and peered about in the bright sunlight. “Lytha? ’Chell? Oh, Simon, look again! Did we come this far to be Called?” The desolation in her voice called Nathan from halfway back down the gully back up to her in a hurried scramble.
“I had to go see. It’s a big cut on Papa’s leg,” he said. “I tore his shirt and wrapped it up, but something white—” He reached out a startled hand and touched Eliada’s forehead. “Oh, Eliada!”
Her wide, blind-looking eyes turned to him, then she surged across the space between them. She clung to him so tightly that he had no breath. “Oh, David, David! I thought you crashed! Oh, David!”
“I’m Nathan,” he said, prying her fingers gently loose so she could lie down again. “You’re hurt—your head—” He touched it again, his eyes anxious on her face.
Eliada’s eyes slowly cleared and focused on Nathan. The patient sorrow that resolutely came back over her face made Nathan want to cry.
“Yes,” said Eliada, touching her head, then looking at her fingers. She closed her eyes for a moment, then she sat up, leaned forward, and wiped her forehead with the under part of the hem of her skirt. “But it is not bleeding now. Your Papa—”
Weakly, as though from far off, he heard Papa’s voice.
“Nathan! You all right? Nathan!”
Nathan turned from Eliada and scrambled down the unsure footing of the slope of the gully.
“Papa! You all right?” and dropped to his knees by him.
“Don’t know,” said Papa. “Help me up.”
And Nathan sagged under the weight of Papa’s hands as he pulled himself to a sitting position. Papa got his arm around Nathan’s shoulder and the two of them strained to lift him to his feet. They had only started upward when Papa cried out and slid down Nathan to the ground again. Nathan straightened him out, moving the rocks that kept him from lying flat, then he looked up at Eliada, who was drifting down the slope.
“What are we going to do?” he asked hopelessly. “Papa’s hurt.”
“I have a need for water,” said Eliada. “And perhaps your Papa has, too. Is there water?”
Nathan hurried ov
er to where they had put their water pail and the tools. He lifted the lard bucket that sloshed heavily with water and looked back toward where Papa and Eliada were.
Maybe he ought to go get Mama. Maybe somebody else could help them better. Maybe if he just left—he grinned unhappily. With Mama in the family way? And who else to help? Just to walk off from Papa and Eliada? That was kid thinking. I can’t ever be a kid again! Nathan swung the pail and hurried back.
“It is good.” Eliada’s eyes were large and luminous on Nathan. Then she smiled a small smile. “Always you are feeding the hungry and giving the cup of water.” The smile faded and the eyes closed. “And always, I receive. It is hard always to receive.”
“You saved Papa,” said Nathan, uneasily looking up the slope.
“For you to hate—” Eliada’s eyes opened again.
“I don’t hate him,” said Nathan, startled that it was so. “Not any more. He is—is Papa.” He moved over to look at his father. Papa opened his eyes briefly to dull slits and closed them again as if forever. “Papa?”
“We must move him,” said Eliada, wearily, drifting up to her feet, leaning for a moment on some unseen support. “I cannot lift him. I am not now strong enough. But I can make him less heavy for you. Lift him.”
Nathan knelt on one knee and slid his hands under Papa, lifting him at knees and shoulders. For a moment, the sheer size of Papa made it awkward; then he had stumbled to his feet and was walking slowly toward the house, leaning back from the less-heavy load. It suddenly seemed as if he were carrying Lucas, for under the whiskered, grown-up face, he could trace in the features—as of Lucas—the other long-ago boy who became Papa. Who maybe was as unhappy and hurting now as Lucas had been—a tenderness welled up inside him and he felt his eyes get wet.
“Na—than! Din—ner!” Nathan’s head jerked up at the far, thin cry. “Na—than!” Adina’s voice came across the scarred wreckage of the field in the long, familiar calling chant. “Din—ner!”
“It’s Adina,” said Nathan. “Time to eat. Are you coming? Can you come?”
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