Son of the Morning

by Joyce Carol Oates

  A pause, and no clapping or vocal acclaim, though Japheth felt the arena fairly quiver with anticipation, and then Nathanael Vickery was on the platform, walking with a quick, stiff stride.

  Japheth leaned far forward in his seat, staring. A pity he hadn’t gotten to the arena earlier so he might be in the first row—back here in the ninth or tenth he could not see as well as he would have liked. Which of this strange creature’s eyes was the real one, and which the glass? And were those gray hairs, or simply the way light happened to be reflecting . . . ? One thing was certain: Vickery’s stage presence: his energy, his effortless confidence, the power of his raw, young, curiously aggrieved voice as it lifted to draw them all into prayer. He had no sociability, no platform ebullience or small talk, he hardly smiled, he did not seem to acknowledge his audience. He knew they were there and he spoke to them, brusquely and intimately, but he did not appear to see them in any ordinary sense. Listening to him, too surprised even to hear what he was saying, Japheth felt an unmistakable sensation of dismay, of dread.

  This young evangelist did not look young. Japheth had been expecting to see a boy’s attractive but inconsequential face, something like his own; but Nathanael Vickery was very peculiar-looking indeed. Though he was only twenty-five years old he had no air of youth, of youngness, about him. His face was lean and angular, his untidy dark hair swung harshly about it, the severe line of his jaw gave him an intense, hungry, almost greedy look. The prayer continued, melodic and yearning and eerily confident, and Japheth found it difficult still to fasten upon any of the words. He had begun to shiver. What was Vickery saying?—addressing God in that manner?—it had to do with the Holy Spirit, and the Seeking for Christ, and the Chosen of the Lord, and the intervention of Jesus Christ, and the Last Things: the Final Days of civilization, the completion of a cycle, the end of history. Japheth would have liked to take notes but he found himself leaning forward in his seat, stiffly, afraid even to glance away from Vickery for fear he would miss something. All about him people were shifting in their seats, leaning forward, straining to hear as though Vickery’s words were indistinct, when in fact the amplifying system was more than adequate.

  The prayer’s intensity came to a kind of climax: with his head bowed and his bony hands pressed together in a classic attitude of supplication, Nathan Vickery called upon the Lord to intervene tonight, to send His power into the heart of each person present who truly wished to declare himself a Seeker for Christ. “There are those who know not what they do, or why they have been drawn here,” Vickery said, his voice tremulous, “but I say unto You, Our Heavenly Father, that You see fit to show these people the miraculous light of Your love and forgiveness—that You awaken them to Your being, regardless of the ignorance in which they abide—!”

  The prayer ended, much to Japheth’s relief.

  Now the preacher began to speak more humanly, though his manner was still peremptory; he spoke of his gratitude for the warm welcome the Seekers had received so far in Port Calmar, and for the generous introduction Reverend Weston of the Disciples of Christ Church had given him, and for the fact that so many people had come here tonight, some of them already declared for Christ, and others still awaiting baptism in the power of the Holy Spirit. Japheth tried to relax; he would have sat back in his seat, except someone directly behind him was pressing forward with his knees and breathing onto the back of Japheth’s head. (The seats in the arena were uncomfortably small and jammed close together, as if, having been constructed some decades ago, they had in fact been designed for a smaller race of people.)

  There was an interlude of gospel singing. The woman in the white dress stepped forward, beaming. Her face was shiny. Japheth had no interest in her or in the song, which he found no more annoying than the earlier songs, though he could not help becoming caught up in the rhythmic handclapping; he continued to watch Nathan Vickery. How very odd he was. His skin was pale and appeared to be luminous, as if lit, uncannily, from within. His eyes were half-closed. He stood perfectly erect in a nondescript costume—a cheap gunmetal-gray suit, a white shirt, a dark necktie—and Japheth had the idea that he was trembling, attuned not to the boisterous and aggressive song, but to a private, interior rhythm.

  The song ended. The preaching began now in earnest. Japheth dropped his pen—his fingers appeared to have gone numb—and it rolled somewhere off to the right, past the feet of the young man beside him. There would be no reaching for it, no possibility of asking someone to pick it up. Even the children were staring ahead, enraptured. I don’t want this, Japheth thought. This is a mistake. Nathanael Vickery was not a man but a voice, and the voice was otherworldly, serenely and maddeningly Biblical, the spirit of the Bible (or of certain books of the Bible: Japheth was alert enough to recognize Revelation, and Daniel, and Isaiah, and Ezekiel) come alarmingly to life.

  Though his gospel was one of love, and though Japheth gathered that the Seekers, like most Pentecostal groups, would accept anyone who claimed to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and “washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” much of what Vickery was saying was upsetting indeed. Nothing matters except God: nothing. Not war, not struggle, not poverty, not disappointments, not physical or mental anguish; not the deaths of oneself or one’s family; not even happiness. Most of all it was happiness, Vickery exclaimed, that tempted man away from God. Ordinary worldly accomplishment, and love, and joy—these were more dangerous, perhaps, than suffering, and even more dangerous than sin itself, because they blind us to our predicament. Angrily he spoke of the Age of Nonbelief that was now upon us, the loathsome twentieth century, the completion of the sixth millennium since the creation of Adam and the possible—no, probable—end of history. The Last Things are upon us: it is all as the Bible predicted, and where shall we turn for aid if not to the Lord?

  But the age was materialist, skeptical, blinded, atheistic; set upon its own destruction. The human race was committing suicide and would not be deterred, because it worshiped not Jesus Christ but the Devil himself, called by many names. He knew! Nathan Vickery knew! God spoke clearly and angrily to him every hour of every day, bidding him step forward to help those who craved help—to save those drowning in the pool of filth that was the contemporary world. He that is not with me is against me: you must choose either Christ or Satan.

  And what of Satan?

  Vickery spoke coldly and passionately, beginning now to pace about, to move his arms in wide, accusing gestures. He had not been smiling earlier, Japheth realized, shocked, because he was murderously angry. Satan was the secret god of America and it was given to only a few of God’s Chosen to comprehend this fact. They were in danger of being broken by their knowledge and of falling into despair over the crisis to come, for they knew exactly how many years the human race had remaining, and consequently how little time they had to rescue souls. It was a bitter, bitter knowledge! Yet they lifted their voices in prayer to the Lord, Who will bring all history to a close, a continual prayer—Come, O Lord, cloaked in Thy wrath and righteousness, come with Thy vengeance, come!

  Japheth felt a hot wave of disbelief. Was this madman praying for the end of the world?

  Vickery went on to speak of Satan in the churches. And of Satan in the schools. In government. Pride, materialism, drunkenness, drugs, the sinful use of one another’s bodies, the making of war upon defenseless people. From all the pulpits come hollow faithless cries. American Christians! American hypocrites! Sinners! Devil-worshipers! Their fate will be that of their secret, invisible god; they will not escape any more than he escaped, before the start of human history.

  And in a voice of heart-stopping beauty, fairly trembling with feeling, he spoke those verses from Isaiah that had captivated Japheth for many years—

  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upo
n the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell . . .

  ON ALL SIDES the arena rocked with emotion. There were scattered outcries. Japheth felt his jaws lock tight: his teeth had begun to chatter: he was astonishingly weak and for a moment did not know where he was. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell. The way Vickery had spoken those words, the exquisite way his voice had dropped from the earlier pitch of feeling . . . Japheth could not stop himself from shivering. He sat hunched over in his seat, his glasses halfway down his nose, damp with perspiration, chilled to the bone.

  Vickery continued to speak of Satan, and of the monstrousness of the contemporary world, and of the continual defilement and crucifixion of Our Saviour, and of the impending doom. Japheth felt suddenly very lonely. His legs and arms were weak, his throat ached as if he wished to cry but dared not make a sound. He was so very much alone! So lonely! His grandfather was William Japheth Sproul of the Harvard Divinity School, a Biblical scholar who had been one of the first men to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls; his father, dead at the age of forty-four, had held a chair in sacred literature at Union, and had been considered the most formidable commentator of his time on the New Testament. And they were both dead, and he too would die. And he would die without having known them. Without having known anyone. There would be no woman for him—in his misery he could not even recall the name of the woman he loved. He would not marry, he would not love anyone, he would not know anyone, he would live for a while longer and then die and then—

  The notebook slipped through his knees. He stooped to pick it up and his forehead struck the back of the seat before him, and he whimpered with the pain and surprise of it; and when he straightened again his curious mood had passed. Nathanael Vickery was telling the crowd of tense, expectant people that they had only to ask God to make Himself real to them, and God would respond. “You must pray. I will lead you. You must empty your heart of willfulness, and pray to Our Lord that the Holy Spirit will descend into you this evening and baptize you with His power. Without the Holy Spirit you will not know God, you will not be able to welcome Christ into your heart, you will not become a Seeker for God, and in the Final Days you may become lost to all help and hurtled deep into the pits that wait for all who have rejected God’s love. Do you hear? Do you understand? Oh, my brothers and sisters, if I could breathe in you, if I could see through your eyes, if I could become you for only a few minutes—if through God’s miraculous love I could dwell in your heart and prepare the way for Christ—if I could see to your salvation, my brothers and sisters in Christ, then I would want nothing more on earth, nothing more on earth!—do you understand?”

  His voice was incantatory, the gestures of his hands mesmerizing. Japheth shook himself away, apart. He was not going to listen any longer. He had heard enough. Not a madman, perhaps, but a criminal: a manipulator of others’ souls. “I will lead you,” Vickery was saying, his arms spread wide. “You must come forward. You must give yourselves to the Holy Spirit. You must pray. I will lead you. There is little time remaining. You must pray. You must surrender. I will lead you. I will lead you now and always.”

  The woman to Japheth’s left was obviously distressed. She kept moving from side to side, hugging herself, moaning softly. Japheth did not wish to look at her; he did not care to see how she might be transformed. A few rows down, another woman had risen from her seat and was swaying from side to side, her hands pressed flat against her lips. As Nathan Vickery continued to speak, moving along the very edge of the platform, his arms opened for an embrace, his long, lean, pale face the only focus of attention in the entire arena, others half rose, or stumbled into the aisle, and began to speak or call out, abashed, whimpering, frightened, ecstatic: as if they were beginning to see something materialize before them and were not yet certain whether it was a thing of great beauty or of surpassing horror.

  Japheth calmed himself by pressing the backs of his hands against his forehead. His face was hot, his hands had gone cold. He must escape. Around him people were becoming hysterical just as he had suspected they would, and as he had half-hoped they would so that he might witness, in person, the phenomenon of “conversion.” A sudden shriek that ended in high clacking gibberish—a young man elsewhere who got to his feet and began shouting incoherently—a child beginning to cry, his voice climbing higher and higher in terror: it was as Japheth had supposed, yet it was terrible, terrible. He must escape. He did not want to observe anything more.

  “Excuse me—let me pass—Please let me pass—”

  He found himself stumbling over feet, desperate to get into the aisle. Already people were coming forward for Jesus. Two or three were descending the last of the steps, to be greeted by others—members of the Vickery church, presumably—“Seekers” who were positioned there to welcome the converts. And more were preparing to descend. Japheth hurried up the steps, hunched over, genuinely frightened, for what if someone mistook him for a convert and turned him about and forced him to go kneel at Nathan Vickery’s feet?

  An elderly man stumbled into Japheth’s arms.

  “Excuse me, sir—Please—”

  The man’s milky eyes rolled. A string of saliva hung from his lips. He pushed at Japheth and nearly knocked him down. “Fool! Sod! Stand aside! Don’t you block my way! Don’t you block my way this time like you done last time! Stand aside!”

  Japheth ducked around him and ran up the last of the steps.

  Now the organ music had begun again. The entire building shook with its relentless beating chords. In his mind’s eye Japheth saw with perfect clarity the merciless accusing face of Nathanael Vickery, he saw Vickery’s eyes fixed upon his fleeing back, he could hear, piercing even the organ’s frantic noise, that terrible admonishment that was meant for him: Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell . . .

  II

  It had been his expectation that the stabbing would kill Your faith in him: would reveal at last his unworthiness as one of Your Chosen. But it was not to be. During the long months that followed, during the confused nights and days of his convalescence, it was gradually revealed to him that his action had no more significance in Your sight than that of a fly’s buzzing in an attic room.

  The dullish blade of the kitchen knife had been a kind of baptism. He had not known beforehand how You led him to such knowledge.

  Afterward he woke gropingly to the realization that he was now above sin.

  “So it’s God Who chooses,” he said slowly. He spoke to his grandmother, who helped nurse him. “God acts. Not us. If we submit to Him perfectly we are above sin.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mrs. Vickery said.

  Her hands shook; her own vision had become clouded.

  “I can do anything at all,” Nathan said, “so long as it isn’t my own will, but God’s; it’s impossible for me to sin.”

  “How do you feel? Are you stronger today?”

  “This,” he said, touching his cheekbone beneath the wounded eye, “was my sanctification.”

  Small liquid-light creatures brushed against him. Birds, butterflies, tiny fish. Your fluttering fingers: blessing after blessing. He woke to the warmth of such caresses, his good eye reluctant to open as if fearful of banishing You from the world. As the small creatures touched him, the envelope of his skin dissolved and they passed into him and through him. His flesh rippled with pleasure, his eyelids trembled.

  Creature upon creature, delicate as vapor. His heart stilled in wonder as they approached—and as they touched him, and passed through him, he sighed aloud.

  Seven months You bathed him in Your infinite warmth as he slept, gathering his strength. Seven months, he was told afterward, he lay in the convalescent home, near-oblivious of his surroundings. His grandmother was always near. He begged her forgiveness, he raved that she should leave him, he forgot her for days at a time. One of the pleasurous creat
ures was a hard, plump, glassy fish, a tiny sunfish. It swam against his face. It butted against his face. With a groan he surrendered and it burrowed into his empty socket, a queer tight hard stubborn substance.

  The hand mirror, turned critically from side to side, revealed a deathly pale face coarsened by the beginning of a beard. Nathan ran his fingers across his chin, struck by the fleeting thought that he was, after all, a man. His grandfather had had a beard. Gone? Dead? They had burned him. Thrown him onto the small mountain of debris and wetted it all with gasoline and tossed a match onto it and that was that.

  “Grandpa was trying to talk to me,” Nathan said one morning. “I don’t know what he wanted.”

  “What? What are you saying?” Mrs. Vickery whispered.

  “He’s alone. He’s lonely. He doesn’t know where he is. He kept asking me what had happened—where he went. I told him to pray to the Lord for guidance but he didn’t seem to hear,” Nathan said slowly. In order to wake each morning he had to fight the drugs. He pushed his way up through layers and layers of an element treacherous as water.

  “What are you saying? Who are you talking about?”

  “He isn’t dead,” Nathan said. “But he isn’t alive either.”

  “Your grandfather? Thaddeus? You dreamed about him?”

  The old woman was alarmed. Nathan squinted at her with his good eye, taken aback at her agitation. He wished only to make contact with the Holy Spirit in her, which was their usual way of communicating, but her excitement distracted him. She wanted to know where Thaddeus was, did he have a message for her, was he in distress, did he forgive her, did he love her, did he have a message . . . ?