“Sorry, lord.”
When Cora joined the others in the semicircle, Poppy counted heads.
“Who’s missing? Someone’s missing.”
Deut said, “Besides Sarai, that would be Myrrh, lord. I sent her to bed because she’s sick.”
“That was hours ago. What kind of growing pains does she have?”
“A toothache, lord.”
“Well, dab it with oil of clove! Do I have to tell you everything?”
“No, lord. We’ve been dabbing it all day, but it doesn’t help.”
“Have you prayed on it?”
“Yes, lord. All of us.”
“Then it’ll pass. Get her out here. She won’t want to miss this.”
“Yes, lord. Should I fetch Sarai too so she doesn’t miss it either?”
“No! I said leave her! You’re skating mighty close to the edge, daughter.”
THERE WERE NO lights on in the bunkroom, but Deut was accustomed to finding her way by touch. It was easy to locate Myrrh’s top bunk, just follow her little mews and moans.
“Myrrh, sweetheart, Poppy wants you out there.”
“Noooo. I don’t want to.”
“Just for a little while. Did the Tylenol help?”
“No!”
“Well, Poppy wants to tell us about a miracle that happened to him today. Then you can come back here.”
“Noooo.”
Deut helped her little sister from the bunk. At the end of the room, the ghostly shape of her own twin lay on a single bed facing the wall. She was showing them her back. Not fair. Not fair. Not even a toothache is excuse enough for little Myrrh, but Sarai gets away with throwing things at Poppy. If anyone else tried that they’d be really sorry.
TT7 1.0
“I WAS SLEDDING home a few hours ago. I had just passed the Bunyan place and was coming up on the curve when an angel, an angel from the throne room of Father God, pinched my fuel line between his fingers and killed my engine.”
His audience, even the older ones, leaned forward in their seats.
“Yes, an angel stopped my sno-go and then knocked me off it and pressed me down so hard I couldn’t breathe. It felt as though he was trying to crush me. And he knocked down hundreds of trees all over the place and pressed down the snow for miles around.” Poppy Prophecy paused to study his audience. “You don’t believe me?”
“Yes, lord. We believe you,” everyone shouted.
“You think that maybe I’m making this all up? Or maybe I hit my head and imagined it all? Or maybe I’m just lying to you?”
“No, lord! We don’t think that!”
“You believe the days of miracles are all in the past and that angels don’t visit men anymore?”
“No, lord. We don’t believe that.”
Adam leaped to his feet, ashen faced. “I saw it!” he exclaimed. “I thought it must have been some freak windstorm.” Adam had passed through the area twice to prepare the vehicles. “All sorts of trees down. I could’ve used a chainsaw to get through.”
“Shut up,” Poppy snapped. “And sit down.”
Adam did as he was told.
“There was a light too,” Poppy went on. “It was no earthly light . . .” One of the middle girls sitting on cushions on the floor shifted her position a little and briefly exposed another girl who had been hiding behind her. It was Myrrh, who had just joined them. It was only a brief glimpse but enough to once again derail Poppy’s account.
“You, girl, stop hiding. Show yourself.”
Myrrh scooted into view. She looked absolutely wretched. She looked like she was experiencing the worst pain she had ever suffered in her life. Yet she made no noise.
“You have a toothache?” he said.
She nodded.
“Well, daughter, I believe you are learning an important lesson about this world that will guide you the rest of your life.”
“What lesson, lord?”
“That our earthly bodies are not our friends but our traitors. When we’re young, our bodies are the playground of Satan who uses them to tempt us from the path. And when we’re old, they begin to rot before we’re even dead. And all through our lives they fail us with sickness and disease. Only our heavenly bodies will be perfect.”
“Yes, lord.”
“I think you’ve probably learned the lesson enough, and the others through you. So let’s all pray for Father God to drive the decay from your mouth and to restore you to good health. “Let us pray.”
All together, they prayed for Myrrh’s restoration and cure for the toothache. And their father used his authority to cast out the decay and whatever evil spirits were buzzing around it like flies on roadkill.
They chorused a resounding “Amen.” Yet the girl’s torment persisted.
“Do you believe in Father God’s miracles?” Poppy asked the girl. “If your faith is weak, if you harbor any doubts in your heart, you might as well forget about it. Father God doesn’t heed the prayers of doubters.”
“I believe, lord.”
Time would tell if that was true. He’d give it an hour. If she was still suffering, he’d pull the tooth out with a special set of pliers he kept for that purpose. It wouldn’t be his first tooth extraction. You can’t hope to live as sovereigns on your own land, as he and Mama had done for nearly thirty years, and to raise so many babies without picking up some basic dentistry skills along the way.
Just then Poppy received a nudge from above that gave him pause. Pliers? Why resort to the pliers when there was a real dentist plying his trade a mere one hundred thirty miles away (209 km) by road in Glennallen and when that road was being cleared tomorrow? Why not take the girl with them?
For that matter, Poppy himself had a bothersome filling in a wisdom tooth that should be looked at. And Adam wanted a wife. And NJB had left him a mysterious code. And the clincher — for the first time in a long time, he had cash dollars for gas and more.
TT8 1.0
GURGLE, GURGLE, GURGLE went their bellies. The Holy Spirit had their father by the whiskers this time. Mama’s dinner-roll trick was a dud (as Mama herself was turning out to be). Deut moved the large pots away from the heat while their father communed with higher powers. Proverbs quietly retired to the boy’s bunkroom. Hosea went out to the porch to break a handful of carrot-sized icicles from the eaves for his brother’s back. Poor little Myrrh squirmed so much that the other children were squirming too. Meanwhile, Deut had to hang on to the two littlest babies to keep them from setting upon Mama where she lay. The center would not hold on this cartwheel much longer.
Poppy didn’t notice any of this.
After a while longer, he stirred and blinked. “I have an announcement!” he bellowed, rising from his chair. He wobbled a little and clutched the seat back to regain his balance.
Hosea and Proverbs came out of the bunkroom. Proverbs was wearing a fresh shirt — and his eyepatch!
“Hear the words I speak. Tomorrow Adam will take Myrrh to see the dentist in Glennallen.”
After a moment of disbelief, adults and children alike cheered.
“Not only that, I’m taking everyone else to the dentist too. In Wallis.”
This seemed a stretch, even in god-speak, and the children doubted their ears until Poppy nailed it down. “It’s a shopping run to Anchorage. It starts tomorrow. Everyone’s going.”
When their doubts were wiped away, the children lost their minds in celebration. Even Myrrh saw an end to her terrible trial.
“There’s not a lot of time for packing,” Poppy went on. “Eat your dinner quickly and then everyone pack. But pack light. We’ll be buying new clothes and stuff there.”
“How many nights should we prepare for, lord?” Deut asked quite sensibly.
But God the Spirit hadn’t specified a time frame. Poppy still didn’t know the day or the hour. That meant it was up to him to estimate how many days the Spirit would regard as reasonable for conducting the world’s last shopping trip. “Let’s plan to be gone
ten days,” he said tentatively. “And maybe we’ll be blessed to wrap it up in seven.”
Cora brought out the first food cart, and the children bolted for the tables without waiting for formal dismissal. And they wolfed down their food without the aid of a blessing. Poppy either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He gestured for the older ones to join him. To Deut he said, “Gather vaccination records and any broken eyeglasses that need to be fixed.” To Hosea he said, “Give the girl a quarter tab of Percodan. Just enough to hold her till Adam gets her to the dentist.” To Adam he said, “I want you to take her in the pickup as soon as the road is cleared. I’ll call ahead and tell Dr. Lee it’s an emergency. When they’re done with her, wait for us at the Hub. You’re sure to be an hour or two ahead of us.” And finally he said to Deut, “Tell your sister that her punishment is on hold, not cancelled. There’s nothing to help it, and she can only make it worse.”
“Yes, lord. I’ll tell her.”
TT9 1.0
IT WAS LATE when Poppy returned to the big house from the prayer cabin with his shopping list. All was quiet. The dog was snoozing in front of the large, warm wood stove, and she silently stole away as he came over to refill it. He had to use a flashlight to get around because there was no moonlight in the windows.
Mama stirred when Poppy entered the bedroom. Either the girls hadn’t properly covered her, or she had kicked away the covers, because a length of bare thigh peeked out from under her blanket.
Tired as he was, the sight of it stirred him.
He fumbled in the dark for the key to the nightstand drawer. He brought the tube of K-Y Jelly to her bed and hitched up her nightgown. She wore no panties — the easier for the girls to keep her clean without actually looking at her. He gazed at her, though, as was his right as husband and lord. He shined his flashlight at the gash of Eve between her thighs, her sweet hatchet wound of love.
“Ah, Little Mother, wherever you are, come spend some time with Papa.”
Poppy undressed himself and climbed into her bed. He squeezed out a bead of jelly and spread it around inside her soft folds of flesh to prepare the way. Her eyes opened at the cold touch, and for a moment he thought she had returned to him, but it was only a reflex. She wasn’t there.
He squeezed out a bit more to slather his dick, and he rubbed himself up against her. There was no change in her breathing.
He kissed her rubbery mouth. He fondled her heavy breasts. “Try,” he urged her. “Just for a little while.” But she remained stubbornly absent.
Poppy pinched her inner thigh — cruelly. It would leave a mark. “Feel that? That’s what you get.”
Nothing was happening for him either. He squeezed jelly into her palm and wrapped her hand around his dick, pumping it up and down. Her hand was as limp as he was.
“You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?” He pulled her nightgown back into place and covered her with the comforter. “Things are speeding up down here, for your information, and I could use a wife again. You got a choice to make, woman, and soon.”
TT10 1.0
THE MINUTE JACE got home from his trash run, shed his arctic outerwear, kicked the oil stove in the pants, and popped open a beer, he began browsing the news sites on his iPad. He couldn’t have been the only one on the planet to see what looked like a tiny sun descending inside a giant cone of welder’s glass. What about satellites? What about the space station?
After exhausting the news sites with no hits, he tried NASA’s site, UFO and conspiracy blogs, and legit astronomy sites. Nada, nada, and nada.
The year Jace was first assigned to the park, the only phone service in McHardy and Caldecott was via a Vietnam-era radiotelephone system provided by a company out of Valdez. Lousy reception, lousy service, expensive, and unreliable. It was also totally useless for cell phones and the internet. That first season at Caldecott, Jace had been forced to go offline cold turkey for six months, and he didn’t enjoy it one bit. In his backcountry postings in Lower-48 parks, he’d never been out of cell phone range for more than twenty-four or forty-eight hours at a time. Though he fell instantly in love with Alaska and the park, living offline half of the year amounted to cruel and unusual employment conditions, and he wondered if he had it in him to return to the park the following season.
Fortunately, before he had to decide, the Obama administration made the problem go away. Obama’s economic stimulation plan allocated five million dollars for extending high speed voice and data service to Chitina, McHardy, Caldecott, and along much of the gravel road that connected them.
As Jace browsed for news about the strange light, he fried up a can of corned beef hash in a skillet. He scanned all the hash tags he could think of on Twitter: #meteor, #lightinthesky, #UFO, #XFiles, #alieninvasion. Billions of hits, no results.
Looking for Love (in All the Wrong Places)
LL1 1.0
THE ONLY PROPHECY woman to spend an entire morning in bed who wasn’t delivering a baby or burning up with fever was Mama during the weeks before Elder Brother Jesus took her soul on a vacation. But here was Sarai, who was neither giving birth nor burning up, still in bed while the whole room churned around her.
Deut and Cora stood next to Sarai’s bed and addressed her backside. Deut said, “Are you sick?” There wasn’t a twitch of response from her twin, and Deut repeated the question more loudly. Then Cora leaned over the bed to feel her forehead.
Sarai brushed her hand away and said, “Leave me alone.”
“Are you sick?” Deut insisted.
“Yes, no. What difference does it make?”
Deut and Cora looked at each other in puzzlement. That wasn’t a typical Saria answer.
“Anyway,” Sarai added, “I’m not going.”
“Are you nuts?” Cora said. “Not going to town? What’s wrong with you?”
“Poppy will make you go,” Deut added.
“No, he won’t. Somebody’s got to stay behind and take care of the animals. And if I stay, Adam can leave Mama, Elzie, and Nummy. It’ll be a lot easier for everybody that way.”
She was correct.
LL2 1.0
IT TOOK SEVERAL round trips with all three sno-gos and sleds to haul everyone and everything sixteen miles (26 km) to the parking lot. Along the way, they were all able to see with their own eyes the angel’s giant handprint in the snow. When they arrived at the parking lot, the school bus was still frozen. Its old diesel engine was especially cranky about cold starts, and the overnight temperature had returned to the minus twenties (–30s C). But they lit the interior catalytic heaters, and the children piled in and covered up with sleeping bags and blankets while they waited for it to warm up. Meanwhile Adam and Proverbs heated the oil pan under the engine block with a propane weed burner in a stovepipe. Proverbs wasn’t wearing the eyepatch anymore, thank Elder Brother Jesus. Finally, after another half hour of heating, the 1958 Bluebird’s engine chugged to life, and everyone cheered and offered thanks.
Then, out of the blue, Ed Sulzer showed up on his sno-go with eight large cartons of finished goldpans, which seemed strange to Poppy because he had deliberately not told him about their departure. There wasn’t enough space in the bus for Ed’s cartons, and Poppy told Ed that he’d have the boys put them in the cargo rack on top.
Ed handed him his shopping list, thanked him, and left. When Hosea began to climb up the back of the bus, Poppy told him and Proverbs to stash the goldpans in the woods instead. He pointed to a stand of cottonwoods at the end of the lot. To Hosea this seemed to be an unneighborly thing to do (besides being untruthful), and he carefully asked his father, “Then why did we tell him we’d take it to Anchorage?”
“Ed don’t know it, but the time for selling trinkets to tourists is over. We do him no favor and do us a lot of wasted effort if we was to take his crap to town. We’re not taking any of our own, either. Better the pans remain here. We’ll return them to Ed if he wants them or find a use for them ourselves, even if we have to scrape the paint off.�
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When the snowplow arrived, it used the parking lot to turn around in to begin its long return trip to Chitina. But Adam jogged out to meet the operator and directed him to the back of the lot to free the idling vehicles. Soon, after a prayer and a blessing, they were off.
FIVE HOURS INTO the ten-hour trip, the bus pulled into the Hub of Alaska Maxi Mart at the edge of Glennallen. Although the town of Glennallen boasted three gas stations, the Hub’s strategic location at the junction of the Glenn and Richardson Highways gave it a commanding advantage. From the Hub one could drive west to Anchorage, south to the pipeline terminus in Valdez, north to Fairbanks, or northeast to the Canadian border. The town of Glennallen had begun its life as a highway construction work camp during the Second World War, and it remained a highway town ever since. Its civic motto was, “Need Gas?” A pointless question in light of the vast distances between Glennallen and anywhere else on the map.
Adam, Solomon, and Myrrh were waiting for them in the idling pickup in the Hub parking lot. Myrrh was all smiles. She had a new filling, a new toothbrush, and a sugar-free lollipop from the treasure chest. She and Solly joined the others in the bus while Hosea joined Adam in the pickup. Before they set off again, Adam asked Poppy if he could borrow his phone.
“What for?”
“To call her and let her know we’re coming, lord.” He didn’t have to specify who he was referring to, the girl with the lavender envelope.
“Why didn’t you use the phone in the gas station while you was waiting for us?”
“Because there aren’t no pay phones no more.”
Reluctantly Poppy handed him his Samsung. He also gave him the DC charger; there was no cigarette lighter plug on the old school bus. “Put a charge in it.”
“Yes, lord. Thank you, lord.”
For the rest of the trip, the pickup would follow the bus, and as Adam and Hosea waited for the bus to get underway, Adam offered the phone to Hosea.
“This is Poppy’s phone,” Hosea said incredulously.
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