“Sam, of course,” Ruth said. “How else?”
Caleb sat next to them in church, riding out the heat and the humidity, keeping cool with fans as they listened to Sam preach the gospel. Underneath the revival tent, the place vibrated with energy. It reminded Caleb of a spring thunderstorm, the way the temperature would drop fifteen degrees in a matter of moments, how the wind would whip from all directions, how the sky would burn a mixture of mint and algae. At first, the thunder would rumble in the distance, the lightning muted by dark, heavy clouds, but soon it would drift overhead, and the sun would be blotted out, and all he’d be able to hear would be the thunder and the howling winds and the rain and hail pelting whatever structure it smashed. The difference, though, was Sam. Amid all the energy, he stood in front of the congregation like he knew what God knew, that they would, if they just believed hard enough, survive the storm together.
“In the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, it says ‘Pray without ceasing,’” Sam said. He sat on a solitary chair and spoke without a microphone. Caleb sat in the front row, attentive, his body leaning toward Sam as if being pulled by a magnet. “I was very young when I first read these words. I wasn’t a child, but still, I wasn’t a man, and I suppose perhaps this was one of the many reasons why I was lost at this time. I’d thought I’d welcomed Christ into my heart. I’d been baptized. I attended church. I sinned, and I asked for forgiveness, but even I knew this wasn’t enough. I felt an emptiness inside me. It was something palpable, tangible, like hunger. I felt hungry, not for nutritional sustenance. Not for a sandwich. Not for ham. But something more. A spiritual hunger is what I felt, and that’s when I came across these words, ‘Pray without ceasing.’ I’d heard sermons throughout my life about the value of prayer. I had a friend at the time, William, a young man I served with in the war. Evelyn’s stepfather, actually. Caleb’s Papa.”
Caleb’s mother grabbed his hand and squeezed.
“For hours, he’d go on about prayer. Why we do it. Why it’s important, and I listened and agreed and prayed in the morning and at night, but still, the hunger persisted. That’s when I came across these words. Pray ceaselessly. No one had ever preached about praying ceaselessly to me before, and it baffled me. The very notion of it seemed to fly in the face of logic. We’re human, of course. We have needs. We must eat and drink and work and provide for our families. We sleep, and we toil. We play with our children. It would be impossible to pray ceaselessly. Our minds wander, and we’re bothered by worldly things. Things necessary for survival. For emotional wellbeing. For making connections and fulfilling life’s goals. These are not fruitless things. Necessary, in fact, for both our physical and emotional survival. So how would one pray ceaselessly?
“This question haunted me, and it gave me pause, for I felt as though I was not fulfilling my promise to God. It was in the Bible, after all, and as we know, the scripture is a covenant between God and his subjects. We are to abide, not question, not make excuses, not abdicate our duties to him, so I asked William about it, but he at first seemed stumped. He’d read that passage before, of course, but he’d never given it much thought, this idea of praying ceaselessly. Being a thoughtful man, he said he’d have to think about this for a while, and so he did. For weeks and weeks, I waited for an answer until finally, after a couple months of my first inquiry, he told me that to pray ceaselessly, my mind, body, and spirit must always be acting in service of God. In waking and in sleep, I must remain wholly and irrevocably devoted to him. I could not equivocate. I could not waver. All my thoughts, all my energy, everything I had must be completely and wholly and absolutely devoted to him.
“I replied that this is what I feared because I didn’t understand how to achieve this. How could this be possible? How could we devote all of ourselves all the time to God? Was God not asking the impossible? Was he not setting us up for failure from the outset? If so, what kind of god would do this? William thought about this for a moment, vexed himself, but then he told me to go home, to quiet my thoughts, and to repeat the following prayer three thousand times: ‘Please, Jesus, have mercy on me.’ And so I went home and I repeated this prayer. When I awoke in the morning, I recited it, and I wouldn’t leave or begin my day’s work until I finished all three thousand. The first few days, it was difficult. My mind wandered, and I worried over the troubles I faced, how my crop was coming in and prices for bushels of corn and soybean. My back ached after sitting in the same position for an hour or two on end, and I rubbed it with my hands, wondering if I had any Tylenol remaining. Eventually, though, it became easier. I was able to recite the prayer all three thousand times within an hour, and I was able to begin my day refreshed. After the three weeks were up, I visited William once again, and he told me I had done well, but now to go back and repeat my prayer six thousand times. And so I did, and again I found it difficult at first. Once I got to three thousand recitations, my tongue hurt and my mouth turned dry. I worried about rising interest rates and if I’d make enough money to pay the bank back for the cost of seed and labor. I worried what would happen if I couldn’t. If I’d be cast out on the street, homeless and jobless, and what would I do then? What would I become then? How would I be able to feed myself? But after about a week, the prayers became easier. It was then I started to notice a change. My mood was better, and I treated others with more kindness. I looked forward to my day’s work. It was a good thing, and so when I went back to William, I told him I thought I was beginning to understand, and he told me good, good, that’s good, now go home and repeat your prayer twelve thousand times. With purpose, I went home and began right away, and, of course, I found it difficult at first. I found myself tiring and suffering from vertigo. My gums bled, and I felt faint from lack of food. I became dehydrated and suffered from fever. I even thought I was hallucinating at times from sleep deprivation and lack of nourishment, but, like the other times, as the weeks went by, it got easier, and I found that when I completed my twelve thousand required prayers for the day, I’d continue to chant them silently as I worked, when I went to the bank or grocery shopping, often using the prayer as a farewell; ‘May Jesus have mercy on us,’ I’d say, and others would smile and shake my hand and sometimes even thank me. When I slept, I even dreamt of the prayer. In my dreams, an angel would appear before me, and I’d recite the prayer for her. For several weeks, she wouldn’t speak. She just sat there silently, smiling as I chanted the prayer for her. ‘Please Jesus, have mercy on me.’ It was like I was telling her the most compelling story, she was so attentive. I felt comforted by this. It was exactly what I needed, for someone just to listen to me. When I told William about the angel, he told me good. He told me to pay attention. He told me to keep praying. This is important, he said. She is here for a reason.
“This went on for several more weeks, and soon I found I no longer needed to count my prayers; it just happened naturally. I recited the prayer when I woke until the moment I laid down for rest. I chanted the prayer while waiting in line at the bank or ordering coffee at the diner. I chanted the prayer while herding my cattle and while I went shopping for my children’s Christmas gifts. It became like ambient noise to me, always there, always on repeat, and I could hear it, I could, and it comforted me, but it didn’t impede my day-to-day activities like I feared. It helped them even, and I relied upon the prayer, both in waking and in sleeping, and all the while I continued to dream of the angel who listened to me pray. She just sat there, smiling, smiling, always smiling, and I continued to pray to her patiently, knowing that when she was ready, when I was ready, when God was ready, I’d know why she’d come to me.
“It took about a year before the angel spoke. And what she told me took me by surprise. It was so unbelievable I had a hard time accepting what she told me. ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘a group of people will soon come into your life. Good-hearted people. A people full of compassion and good intentions. A people in need of guidance. They will be a special people. The chosen people. God’s children. And yo
u are to guide them. To lead them. For God will test them, and they will need your hand to cling to.’”
Sam took a long drink of water. Caleb felt as though he levitated.
“This shocked me. It did. God’s people. The chosen people. And I, lowly old me, would have to lead them. For years I struggled with this. I have to admit, it tested my faith. But here you are.”
He extended his arms as if to envelop the congregation in a hug.
“And you will follow me, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Amen.”
“Hallelujah.”
“You will never abandon me?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Jesus.”
“You will walk with me into the kingdom of heaven?”
The congregation erupted into cheers and exclamations, testifying their allegiance, all washed up into a single organism, and Sam began to speak in tongues, his head thrown back, what hair remained on the top of his head dangling like curtains. Several of the congregation followed suit, Caleb included, the words spewing from his lips the language of God. Soon, he couldn’t distinguish between where his body ended and the person next to him began. The entire congregation melted into one body. One mind. One soul. He was sure of it. As sure as the cracked earth underneath his feet, the wind whipping against his face, as God up above, he’d found his place.
THE STORM HIT RIGHT AFTER service, intensifying as the hours bore on, the worst of it hitting around dusk. Caleb and his mom were outside pulling down the laundry from the clothesline when the temperature dropped. The wind picked up, and to the west over the lake the clouds turned dark. They coagulated over the water, turning broad and brimming up toward the heavens in the shape of an anvil. The color of it was a mixture of charcoal and bluegrass, swirling up and down, bubbling as it neared the earth. It didn’t scare Caleb. Having grown up in Oklahoma, he’d grown accustomed to thunderstorms.
His mother yelled something over to him, but Caleb couldn’t quite make it out over the storm. Sheets and her hair whipped around her head, and he could see her mouth moving, hear bits of syllables over the wind, but the sounds were indecipherable, just the cacophonous cries of urgency. The wind blew harder. Caleb struggled to grab ahold of a T-shirt, but as soon as he unclipped the clothespins, it took flight. He jumped after it, but he knew it to be futile. It was gone, hundreds of yards out in front by the time he took just a few steps.
Lightning illuminated the sky. Thunder rumbled. The first crack made Caleb jump. The storm was behind him as he watched a pillowcase float away. It jerked up, down, to the side, ballooning and collapsing in on itself. It careened through the air, almost as if it were conscious. The pillowcase seemed frightened. It was trying to flee, to find refuge, turning this way and that, but it had no idea where to go. Caleb almost felt sorry for the pillowcase. He did, even though he knew it to be ridiculous—it was, after all, just an inanimate object—but he wanted to keep it safe.
His mother grabbed him by the shoulders just as the rain unleashed. It pelted him, stinging his face, his shoulders, and his back. The drops were hard, charged with ice.
“Forget it!” his mother yelled.
“What?”
She pointed. He followed her finger to the pillowcase. It had to be forty feet in the air by then.
“It’s gone.”
She pulled him toward the trailer. It was hard moving against the wind. It clawed at them. Pushed at them. Grabbed them by the hair and the shoulders and pressed them back down toward the earth, but they kept moving. Inside, the trailer rocked, like the ground itself was unsteady. Mom grabbed an old AM/FM radio and turned it on. First, there was only static as she dialed through the stations until she found a man’s voice. Caleb had grown up listening to weather reports. Usually, the meteorologists had steady voices, reassuring. They’d seen this before. They knew what to do. It was just another day at the office. Take cover, they’d say. Get on the ground floor in a center room. Place mattresses over you. Pillows. Stay safe. That day, however, the man’s voice was laced with panic. Vowels soft, unsure of themselves. Consonants fumbling off his tongue. He lost his train of thought on multiple occasions, confusing the cardinal directions, saying there was a hook on the east side of the lake, no the west, heading east, right for Grove. It would be there within the hour. Please, everyone, get underground if you can.
Caleb pulled back the blinds. The storm had blocked out the sun. Lightning flashed every second or two. It reminded Caleb of a strobe light. Hail battered the trailer. They sounded like gunshots, and each time a larger stone crashed against the metal shell of their home, Caleb clenched despite knowing they’d keep coming for quite some time still. The wind whistled. It sounded otherworldly. High-pitched, ear puncturing, like the earth was a large teakettle about to boil over. Over the lake, Caleb thought he could see a funnel cloud spinning, but he wasn’t quite sure. It only became visible when lightning flashed, but then winked out without warning. It hung low, though. He could tell that much. And it was broad.
Usually, Caleb enjoyed storms. He looked forward to them. The heat building up to them, the short burst of chaos, followed by the cool, cleansing smell of rain and wet soil. He’d always felt reborn afterward. Every time it stormed, it seemed to signify a demarcation between past and present. Whatever had happened lost its importance, and possibilities opened up before him like a supercontinent. This storm, however, was different. An electricity buzzed through the air. The violence of it didn’t wane and ebb and come at him in waves. Instead, it thrashed. It only grew stronger, and it was coming right for them.
“Maybe we should head to Sam’s house,” Caleb said. He didn’t mean to sound so frightened when he said it, but he couldn’t help it, his words leaping from his tongue as if fleeing a burning building.
“We’ll be okay,” his mother said. “Just have faith.”
The man’s voice on the radio broke up. Static punctuated his warnings, and his description of who was in the path of the storm disintegrated into unintelligible gibberish. Vinita, Jay, Afton, Grove, all of it within the next few minutes. It was big, the man said. Wide, bigger than anything he’d ever seen before. Caleb couldn’t make out any more. He peeked back outside. He thought he could make out debris flying over the lake: paper bags, insulation, tree limbs, and newspaper. A dog barked nearby. Its yelps seemed to come from every direction, west, east, south, even from right above him. The wind was so strong even soundwaves were being altered.
Caleb’s mother grabbed his hand, and they pushed through the door. Sam’s house was close, about fifty or so yards away, and they sprinted. Hailstones battered them, striking their backs and shoulders and their heads. The pain rocked Caleb. It entered him everywhere and shook him down at a cellular level, but he pushed through. He willed his legs to keep moving across the field, and his mother pounded on Sam’s door. They pounded and pounded and pounded but nobody came. They tried the door, but it was locked. Caleb looked behind him, and the tornado sirens sounded. They blared over the storm, loud and clear. Caleb’s mom turned toward him, her skin turning pale like he could see the blood draining to her feet. Over the lake, he could see it, or he thought he could. It was a large, oscillating wall. Dark, bulbous, veined with lightning. The sound it made churned. It groaned. It growled. It was a deep and cavernous frothing. He heard metal grinding, trees uprooting, the ground vibrating like the earth was being ripped asunder, but then the door opened. It was Sam. He grabbed them, and he led them downstairs to the basement. The entire congregation was there, huddled near the floor, the children wearing bike helmets and holding their parents’ legs, their parents holding on to one another so as not to be torn apart.
Then it hit. Everything went dark. Then white. He couldn’t make out any detail, just an endless luminescence. And peace. Surprisingly, he wasn’t afraid. In reality, there was violence. Outside, trailers crumpled. Trees were uprooted. Cars tossed. Hail shattered windows and rain flooded homes. It only lasted about a minute, though. Eventua
lly, the roar subsided to a growl, then a hum. Thunder dissipated. Rains let up. For a while, they all sat there in stunned silence, everyone just blinking, but then they reemerged one by one. It took awhile for Caleb’s eyes to adjust, but when they did, he saw the devastation. It looked like a bomb had been dropped. He heard crying and a dog barking. He moved his hands and his legs and his arms, testing them for the first time since being pelted with hail. There didn’t seem to be any serious injury. Some bruises, deep into the muscle. He tasted blood on his lip. A gash throbbed on his forehead. But he’d live. He’d carry on. He and his mother and Sam and all the rest, they’d tend to the injured, mend their bones, then pick up where they’d left off, hardening themselves for an even greater storm to come.
CHAPTER 5
LATER THEY LEARNED THE TORNADO HAD BEEN over a mile wide, with winds exceeding three hundred miles per hour. An F5, they called it, the largest ever recorded in the state. Four hundred eighteen homes were destroyed. The elementary school. The sheriff’s station. The hospital. Fourteen marinas. Two hundred fourteen boats. All of it gone. A complete loss. The entire town had been razed, and sixty-seven had lost their lives. Many of them were elderly; even more were children. Caleb mourned for each one of them, and for their families. The only person he’d ever known who had died was his Papa, and he remembered the emptiness when he’d passed. It had been like a vacuum, void of air and friction and gravity, like Caleb levitated without anchor to the rest of the world. Eventually, this subsided. But it took time, and it took prayer.
At the trailer park, ninety percent of their homes were destroyed, shattered and strewn across the field in a jumbled mess. All of them soaked, bent, jagged, and dangerous. Gas lines spewed noxious fumes into the air. Broken glass littered driveways, and muddy waters flooded the drainage ditches and what had once been people’s front yards. Only three still stood, in addition to Sam’s house. It had taken damage. Windows busted, the roof a complete loss from hail damage. The detached garage smashed his ’92 F-150, but on the whole, the house was still standing, and it still provided refuge from the elements.
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