Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “There is only God . . . ?” the old man said, grimacing with the effort to understand. “But . . . But . . .”

  And he fell silent, his lips quivering.

  All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given, Nathan thought. But he did not say these words aloud, since he did not wish to hurt the Reverend Sisley’s feelings. And it would have been futile anyway, would it not . . . ? For only those with ears are capable of hearing.

  “There is only God,” he repeated, “and all meaning arises from God. We dwell in God, and God in us. Those of us who are chosen by God must work the works of Him that sent us while we can, for the night comes when no man can work: why question the meaning of what we do? It’s our heartbeat,” he said softly, strangely, so that the old man drew back a little, in awe of him, “it’s the very motion of our blood . . . Do you hear it? That whispering, that fluidity?”

  The old man stared at him, uncomprehending. He was too baffled even to nod as he usually did.

  “To talk of meaning—!” Nathan said, his face contracting with revulsion. “To talk of meaning in the presence of our Lord!”

  IV

  What was his life?

  A vapor.

  So it is written: a vapor that appears for a short while and then is gone forever.

  Yet it had the feel, the sensation, of permanence. There were times when it appeared to slip out of his body . . . when he was highly excited or fell into a swoon; and always when Christ approached. Was it his soul, his breath, his unfathomable incalculable life . . . ? It had the capacity of detaching itself from his body in an instant and flying free, like a butterfly borne along by a surprising gust of wind, or even like a scrap of paper. From a distance he might then be a witness to his own physical being, left behind in a state of unconsciousness or paralysis. He could hear what was being said and he could see with absolute clarity the anxious expressions on his grandmother’s face, and the queer pinched blankness of his own face, but he felt no real alarm, for You were always close beside him. There is nothing to fear, You whispered, so long as you obey me.

  At other times the body made its claim; the body pulled at him slyly. He found himself inhabiting his body like liquid filled to the very brim of a vessel, quivering as the vessel quivered, stirred at times to an odd reckless excitement.

  What were the senses? What did they mean? How was the soul attached to them? The sense of sight especially puzzled Nathan, for it seemed to him that above all it was through the eyes that the world sprang into one’s soul. “Is it possible that the Devil reigns over the senses?” Nathan wondered. “Wanting only to distract us from You . . .”

  Even when he was preaching the Gospel, standing before a packed church, even then his senses tugged at him, played with him, sought to distract him. Odd pricks and flashes of merriment, perversity, rudeness, anger—surely it was the Devil tormenting him! He existed only for the glory of God and so he knew that the exterior world should not matter. It should not matter. He was addressing souls and not people; not bodies, certainly. The bodies sat in pews or in folding chairs, the faces were turned toward him, eyes fixed upon him, but he was not addressing those illusory shapes: he was a soul speaking directly to the soul of another, and of another, one individual at a time. As Christ brought about the salvation of each individual singly so did Nathan, Christ’s servant, hope to bring individuals to salvation one by one. There was no crowdedness in God’s Kingdom.

  Yet, as he spoke, certain quirkish, unsettling thoughts buzzed about him. He would have liked to flee from them, to dart away and abide with You until such time as the thoughts died down, but evidently it was not within his power to detach himself from his temporal body; only through Your grace might the miracle occur. And it could never be anticipated. He had to tolerate his doubts even as he despised them. One of the things that puzzled him was the fact of other people—whether they were physically real as his senses seemed to indicate, or whether their fleshly appearances were as illusory as he knew his own to be. There was no doubt but that God existed, for God animated everything. And Christ had gripped him so hard, and so cruelly . . . Christ existed, Christ was certainly more than a vapor. But Nathan could not be sure whether he himself existed, and whether other people existed. The flesh was ephemeral, after all. It ripened, rottened, passed away. The spirit abided forever. This he knew. What was the self but a pinprick, a point of light, existing somewhere behind the eyes . . . ?

  In the beginning was the Word. So there were words. Inevitably: words. The Bible was words, and he, as a supporting preacher, as a young man beloved of God and of his followers, must immerse himself in words. Did it matter what he said? Did they listen carefully to what he said? They heard the music of his voice, they gazed upon the motion of his hands, and were brought to tears by what he represented. It was said that an unearthly glow danced about him at times, when he was most transported out of himself, preaching, and he did not doubt that the phenomenon was witnessed, though he had no true awareness of it himself.

  Yet he was hardly perfect; he felt himself marred and soiled and degraded. For even as he stirred his listeners to tears and to ecstatic outbursts—cries of Amen and Yes and Thank you, Jesus that appeared to be ripped from the very flesh of his people—his senses wandered, he was troubled and distracted, his gaze darted everywhere and would not be still. Leading a prayer meeting on the second night of a four-day Celebration of Praise arranged by an interdenominational organization in Kincardine, standing on the makeshift platform beneath a fairly large tent, knowing himself to be in perfect control of his voice and his gesturing hands, he was nevertheless keenly aware of certain individuals in his audience. It was foolish, it was an error, to be so very conscious of one or two or three people, when all that mattered was the communion of souls, the souls of strangers stirred by his words: which were not his words but those of God. He was merely a vessel, he was merely a pathway for God’s love to be channeled into the world; he knew himself insignificant, transparent. Yet he could not always control his vision. Though he spoke calmly and then with rising excitement, and then calmly again, though the words he said flowed from him with never the slightest hesitation or stammer, it was as if a part of him edged away from that powerful melodic voice, claiming its own freedom.

  (“How did you learn to speak so well?” other ministers asked him. They were respectful enough but curious, almost doubting his youth; as if he must be older than he appeared. Nathan could not explain, and so they turned to Reverend Sisley, or to his grandmother. Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. Was it possible these men of God did not understand . . . ? Nathan wondered, and not for the first time, whether other people were as close to God as he himself was, and whether they understood God’s wisdom as much as they claimed. The gorgeous rhapsodic language of the Bible sounded through him, the Holy Ghost descended into him and spoke through him, how could they fail to recognize it? And yet they stared and gaped at him, at Nathan Vickery! As if he had created himself!)

  Yet his gaze wandered. A fragment of his consciousness broke free of his speaking voice and seemed to stand apart from him, judging him. How strange he appeared, this “Nathan Vickery” whom so many local people admired! His eyes were darkly bright and glittering, his skin was pale, hot-looking, fiercely ascetic, his hair, falling to about the level of his jaw, swung ragged about his face. He had come to resemble one of the Sunday-school pictures of Joseph as he met his brethren: the gaze dark and urgent, the brows knitted, the lips rather dark also, grape-colored. A creature, a living presence; yet what had it to do with him . . . ?

  Most disturbing of all was his consciousness of certain individuals in his audience. It was not their souls he saw, but their external appearances; something about them drew his gaze to them compulsively, maddeningly. He could not force himself to remain unmoved . . . ! In Kincardine his eye alighted upon a red-haired, plump boy in the third row, who sat with his mother
on the aisle. A child of about eleven, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, baby-faced, yet smirking—his lips curled upward in a queer hateful grimace. How was it possible, Nathan wondered, even as he continued speaking, how was it possible that the child refused to be moved by him but set himself in stubborn opposition to the love Nathan offered? While on every side of him people were profoundly absorbed in Nathan’s words . . . ? And he had noticed a girl in the front row, far to the left, also rather plump, who in coming into the meeting had pushed her way through the crowd, stony-faced, her mouth set in an attitude of derision. She was the most disturbing, so he made every effort to keep from looking at her. When it was necessary for him to turn in her direction he tried to prevent his gaze from slipping onto her, warning himself that the mere sight of her would be painful and would arouse worrisome doubts. Yet it was hard to blot her out. She sat stoutly in her folding chair, staring boldly at him, unsmiling, as if in disgust. And her hair was alarming: black and wild and frizzy as unraveled rope . . . Nathan tore his gaze from her and continued speaking. But he found himself looking at another face, this one at the very rear of the tent, belonging to a gaunt-cheeked man of middle age, in farmers’ overalls. He too was unconvinced, he too stared coldly at Nathan, unmoved. When Nathan led the group in a hymn the man only pretended to sing, mouthing the words without enthusiasm—A mighty fortress is Our God—while his expression remained unchanged.

  They were sinners, Nathan knew. Unrepentant. They resisted him, and in resisting him they resisted Christ.

  But he too was a sinner, to allow himself to be so distracted. It maddened him, and frightened him, that he should be so helpless—that he should fail to control his thoughts. Even as he preached Christ’s Gospel he was divided against himself, his gaze seeking out—of the nearly two hundred people before him—those several individuals who resisted him, as if he were no more than a petulant child who must always have his way and must always be loved.

  What did it matter that at any prayer meeting or Sunday service there would be individuals who held themselves apart from the rest . . . ? When other preachers spoke and Nathan was in the audience, he was well aware of their frequent failures, he could easily sense the boredom and indifference of the audience; and there was no doubt that he himself was a superb speaker, far more successful than most. Yet his gaze kept drifting back . . . drifting back to the smirking red-haired boy and the censorious farmer and the girl with the frizzy black hair. Had Christ faced these people? Had Christ triumphed over them? Or had they mocked Him, had they placed themselves at the very front of the crowd that gawked at His pain-racked body on the cross? Nathan felt a touch of terror, of panic, that he must move these individuals. The others were assured: they were his. Some wept openly, some were making their way forward to the mourners’ bench, declaring themselves for Jesus. He had them, he knew them, for years now he had been drawing them to him, his impassioned voice dropping to a whisper and then rising again in a curious plaintive wail, almost a cry, that was peculiarly his own. These were the sinners who stumbled forward to be saved, and were saved, but their declaration of faith in God had been preordained from all time and Nathan could not be genuinely surprised by them. It was the others who fascinated and challenged him. He felt that he must reach out and touch them, grip them tight, force them into submission . . .

  In the confusion he lost sight of the farmer and the red-haired boy. People were in the aisles now, pressing forward. Nathan stood with his arms outspread, his face dripping sweat, and suddenly he saw the girl again: the girl with the black hair. But she had risen from her seat and was approaching him, like the others. He stared, unable to look away. Stared. The girl’s hard, defiant expression had softened, and her cheeks were damp with tears, and she was certainly making her way forward to declare herself for Jesus: making her way forward as Nathan had willed.

  A miracle!

  Nathan hurried down from the platform, down to where men and women and young people were kneeling on the hard-packed dirt floor. Some were weaving from side to side, declaring their sinfulness and their love of Christ and their desire to be washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Nathan blessed them, blessed them. He was exhilarated despite his fatigue. A miracle! At the end of the row the girl stood, moon-eyed, rapt, speechless. She was staring at him. He had broken through her sullen demeanor, he had conquered her in the name of Christ! She staggered forward as if drunk. Surely she wasn’t drunk . . . ? A young woman of about twenty, not exactly fat, with a darkly glimmering rich skin and greenish catlike eyes and magnificent hair that frazzled out about her shoulders as if charged with electricity. It struck Nathan that she was unusually attractive. “Brother Vickery,” she cried, “Brother Vickery—” reaching for him, grasping at his hands. She was his height exactly; she swayed on high heels; there was a tense, frantic tone to her rather throaty voice. She didn’t appear to be drunk. She smelled of perfume—lilac? “Brother Vickery,” she wept, “you have saved my life here tonight . . . you have looked into my heart . . . you have brought me to Jesus after so many years . . .”

  Though Nathan’s lips were numb, he heard himself say, as he had said hundreds of times, “Bless you, Sister!”

  “You don’t know what you have done! You don’t know what a miracle it is, a sinner like myself, a lost girl, a bad girl . . .”

  Her eyes were glazed with love of him, her lips were moist and slack, her breasts strained against the pink, satinlike material of her blouse. She gripped both his hands tight and pressed against him, sobbing. He could not step aside. Others were crowding him, pulling at him, calling him by name. “Brother Vickery! Brother Vickery! Oh thank you . . . !”

  He stared at the girl’s face, at her eyes that seemed all pupil. He squeezed her fingers in his without knowing what he did. A miracle! His heart hammered and he could not break free. There was no voice in him now: no Jesus: he stood paralyzed as his spirit seemed to rush forward, concentrating in his eyes, throbbing in his eyes.

  “Oh, Brother Vickery, thank you,” the girl wept.

  Which was how Nathan Vickery first encountered Esther Leonie Beloff.

  V

  Never did Nathan succumb to love for Leonie, not love of the sort he felt for his Saviour, and for the Lord. Nor did he love her as he loved his Grandmother Vickery. He felt only a coarse, sickening desire for her and a contempt for both of them: clumsy straining flesh-locked creatures as they were.

  His lust for her was perverse. It frightened him. He wondered at times if he were going insane. For it was insanity, wasn’t it, for one of God’s creatures to desire another so violently that God Himself was obliterated—?

  (Nor did it help for him to bring the subject up, in his characteristically shy manner, with her father. The Reverend Marian Miles Beloff with his cold, shrewd, merry eyes, and his gold fillings, and his pitted cheeks that were nevertheless powerfully attractive, was not a man to listen carefully to others, not even to Nathan, whom he came to be very fond of: he nodded vehemently, interrupted, punctuated his own remarks with bursts of hearty laughter. At times he appeared to know what Nathan meant, but to discount it. At other times, near the end of their relationship, he appeared to know what Nathan meant and to feel a sort of impatient exasperation for the boy, as if he did not mind Nathan’s depraved lust at all and wished only not to hear of it.)

  IN HER STOCKINGED feet she stood only about five feet four. She was feisty-chinned, always in high spirits, always acutely conscious of her appearance. She wore off-the-shoulder blouses when she dared, and colorful skirts, and patent-leather belts that pulled her waist in tightly so that her hips swelled; she loved jewelry of all kinds—imitation pearls looped carelessly about her neck, crystal earrings, a rhinestone brooch in the shape of a horseshoe. Her red-velvet jewelry box was stuffed with gifts from admirers, bracelets and chains hopelessly tangled together, ornaments with jewels missing, single earrings. Much of the time she wore, proudly, a jade cross on a genuine gold chain, which her father had given her to celebrate the start
of his gospel program on a Port Oriskany radio station.

  Of course she was a believer, an ardent Christian. Her own father had performed her baptismal immersion many years ago, dunking her in a cold-running creek, and she had risen sputtering and giggling, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. “It happened once and it’s good for all time,” she told Nathan lazily. “I don’t need to think about it.” She spent most of her time going to movies, reading comic books, attending to her hair and her clothes and her nails, and housekeeping for her father whom she loved dearly, though the house overlooking Lake Oriskany was fairly large. But she didn’t want any maids poking around in their business—especially not any blacks. “People are always trying to worm their way into my father’s life,” she said, “and I wouldn’t doubt but that they’d sell his toenail cuttings and bits of his hair—you know, like whatdoyoucallit, that the Catholics have—relics? Relics. People are so stupid.” She was the lead singer on his radio program, performing sometimes by herself and sometimes with the Gospel Choir, a group of five young women and six young men who sang hymns in rich, quavering, honeysweet tones. Her voice was surprisingly strong. When she sang she shut her eyes, and her expression took on a stark, spiritual quality, a look of vague alarm. Her skin gleamed with health, her teeth were broad and white, her very flesh seemed to strain proudly against her clothes. Her favorite hymns were “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Rock of Ages,” which usually brought tears to her eyes though she had sung them hundreds of times since she had begun her career at the age of four. (“I think of the rock as a pillow,” she told Nathan, raising her shoulders in a shiver of delight, “with a kind of crease or hollow in it that you could crawl into to hide and nobody would ever find you.”)