Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  “Don’t break it, Poppy!” See-Saw shrieked, and the other children took up her plea. “Don’t break it, Poppy!”

  But he only grinned at them and swung the glass trumpet in a shimmering arc. It struck the side of the stove with a resounding thwanng that reverberated in their ears. The congregation sang out cheers and praise, but the dog slunk out of the room.

  “Again,” the children cried. “Again.”

  Poppy struck the stove again and again to the same effect. He called Hosea forward to take a swing. At first Hosea, running his fingers along the instrument’s delicate throat, held back, much as Adam had with the wrench, and barely tapped the stove. Adam jeered him, and he took another swing, this time with all his bulk. Thwannnnng sang the trumpet, jolting his hands.

  “Blow it,” Cora urged, and the others chanted, “Blow it. Blow it.”

  Poppy hushed them with a look. The party was abruptly over. “I would sound the trumpet if I could,” he said gravely. “Archangel Michael might hear the blast and fly down to fetch it, and we would all get to meet an angel. But look here, the mouthpiece is stoppered by this golden marble.”

  The end of the trumpet didn’t seem shaped for human lips, and it was indeed plugged by a small golden ball. Poppy tried to pry it out with a dinner knife, but it was jammed in too tight.

  “It prevents air from passing,” he explained. “It’s some part of the mystery I haven’t ironed out yet. Tonight we will all pray for knowledge.”

  VW7 1.0

  IN THE COMMON room, few of the wall logs were left bare. A traffic jam of hooks, shelves, and cubbies spread across every wall and stored everything from dishes and hand towels to weapons, tools, fiddles, and tambourines. Poppy circumambulated the room twice looking for the perfect spot to display the family’s new treasure. The trumpet should have a place of honor; it should have an entire wall to itself. But it would take a lot of reshuffling to make that happen.

  The sound of approaching sno-gos interrupted Poppy’s task. It should have been his wayward son and his son’s betrothed, gone now for hours without permission or chaperone. But there were two engines pulling into the yard, and neither of them sounded like the family’s Polaris.

  Poppy handed the trumpet to a boy and told him to take it to the bunkroom. The children in the common room put aside their games. Footsteps crossed the porch. The dog sniffed under the door. There was an authoritative knock, as if with bare knuckles, once, twice, three times.

  Poppy gestured for everyone to vacate the common room. They stampeded either to the kitchen or one of the bunkrooms where they crouched at the doorways to watch.

  When Poppy opened the front door, there were two rangers standing there. He didn’t offer to let them in, though frigid air flooded into the house.

  “What do you want?”

  The taller of the pair, the law enforcement ranger, spoke, “Was that you or a member of your household that rebuilt the trapline cabin in Trapper’s Slough?”

  “Come again?”

  The ranger repeated his question.

  “Where’s Trapper’s Slough?”

  The ranger scowled and got right to the point. “The cabin on Trapper’s Slough and all of its improvements and chattel are solely the property of the National Park Service, which alone has the authority to maintain it and regulate its use. Is that clear?”

  “Is what clear?”

  “Use of the Trapper’s Slough park service cabin requires a reservation. You can obtain a reservation application at the park information office in Caldecott during normal business hours, which won’t resume until April 8, 2013. Or you can register on our website. Is that clear, sir?”

  The other ranger, Ranger Rick, was attempting to peer around Poppy into the room, and Poppy half shut the door to block him.

  “I said, is that clear, sir?” said the first ranger.

  “Is what clear?”

  “Any unauthorized use of that cabin is considered trespassing and a violation of federal regulations, and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Is that clear, sir?”

  Poppy met the ranger’s simmering gaze and said, “What’s clear to me, Ranger Danger, is your intolerance for Christian people who are only trying to live the way Father God told them to live and your hatred of His law.”

  He tried to shut the door, but Ranger Rick blocked it with his boot. “We’re not finished, sir,” he said. “You are in possession of National Park Service property.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, sir, and I demand you return it at once.”

  “You do, do you? You demand? Do you also demand the sun to rise in the morning and the stars to twinkle at night?”

  The ranger turned to his partner and said, “See? I told you he has it.” He turned back to Poppy and said, “Return it at once.”

  “Return what?”

  “Don’t play games with me, sir. You know what I’m talking about. The artifact that you dug out of the ice down by the Mizina. It’s the property of the park service, and under the Antiquities Act it’s a federal crime to remove it.”

  “And you’ll persecute me to the full extent of the law. I already know that.”

  “I’ll obtain a search warrant and search your property.”

  Even while attempting to intimidate Poppy with the law, the young ranger’s eyes continued to search the room behind him. Then he asked an odd question. “Anyone here sick with fatigue and weakness?”

  Was that some kind of threat? “Go get your search warrant,” Poppy said. “It won’t do you no good since I didn’t find any ar-ti-fack. Now the two of you better get yourselves off my property while you still can.” With that he swung the heavy door shut.

  The children returned to the common room, their excitement stoked by this latest run-in with the federal devils.

  Poppy waited until he heard the rangers’ sno-gos fire up and leave the yard. Then he said, “Fetch me my coat.”

  Sadly, the house was no place to keep the herald’s trumpet.

  VW8 1.0

  THE MACHINE ROOM on the first level of the keep had once served as a steam-driven manufactory for the modest copper mine. Today, rotting leather belts hung from rusted pulleys. Gargantuan iron gears meshed with shafts and wheels of forgotten purpose. Two coal-fed boilers sat under air shaft chimneys that were blasted from solid rock. Along one stone wall of the chamber stood a row of stout, wooden workbenches. Their tops were gouged and grease-infused from decades of rough service.

  Upon one of these workbenches Poppy reverentially placed the trumpet. He became mesmerized by its shimmering reflection in the lamplight. He longed to keep it forever, a keepsake of Heaven, but he knew he must try to return it. And the most straightforward way of doing that, as the children had guessed, would be to remove the little ball from the mouthpiece and sound it. He imagined himself standing at the entrance to the keep, raising the long instrument to his lips, pointing its bell toward the heavens, filling his lungs with pure Arctic air, and blowing. Before long, Michael and Gabriel would glide down on feathery wings and hover overhead. With a knowing smile, Poppy would hoist the glass trumpet in the air with one hand and the golden marble with the other and say, Lose something, boys?

  Wouldn’t that be something?

  He already knew the trumpet was indestructible, so when he put it in the vice, he squeezed the jaws extra tight without fear of damaging it. He used a variety of tools to try to tap, pry, or heat the marble loose. Nothing doing; it was stuck good.

  Poppy lost track of time in his efforts, and long after his belly began to complain, he heard someone’s footsteps in the tunnel. It was his wayward son.

  “Family’s waiting dinner on you, lord,” Proverbs said. “They sent me out here to . . .” He broke off when he saw the trumpet. “It’s true!” he said, turning his head to shine his headlamp along its sparkly length.

  “Of course it’s true. You think your father’s a liar?”

  “Never, lord. What I thought was that
Adam and the others were playing me for the fool. I mean, an angel’s trumpet? You don’t see one of those every day, do you?”

  “I don’t guess you do. Tell me, boy, how are those stripes on your back healing up?”

  Proverbs grimaced and offered his father the spark plug. “I wanted to apologize for that, lord. There’s no excuse; it’s all my fault. Ginger was desperate to call her folks to let ’em know she was okay. She said they’d worry themselves sick if she didn’t call and she wanted to drive there herself. I wanted to get your permission, but you hadn’t come out of the prayer cabin, and yesterday was such a hard day on everybody, and I didn’t want to disturb you in case you was sleeping or praying, and, well, I wanted to show Ginger I could take care of her in case, you know, she ever decided to like me.

  “I know you love me, lord, and how you never want to, you know, spoileth me, but I was hoping you could make a tiny exception this time?”

  Poppy puffed himself up with righteousness. “And let you slide without an accounting?”

  “No, lord. I done wrong. I know I must be punished. All I’m asking is for maybe you can find another way to punish me that won’t, you know, scare her away before she has a chance to get to know us.

  “Like maybe give me my licks here.” He showed Poppy the three birch switches he’d brought with him.

  For a solid moment or two, Poppy felt genuine pity for his son. His resolve to raise him up right almost crumbled on the spot. “If it was a simple phone call, that would’a been one thing,” he said, “but you were gone all afternoon, boy.”

  Proverbs shrugged. “What could I do, lord? They needed some help moving some solar panels. Chas is building an extension to the house, and Dell’s got a pulled muscle in his back, or so he says. After all they done to help us last night, I couldn’t just refuse, could I? I asked myself what you would say, and I heard you tellin’ me to help ’em. Was I wrong?

  “And that girl of theirs — Scarlett? She glommed onto Ginger like shit on a log, and it was all I could do to separate them. Believe me, lord, I tried.”

  Poppy said, “I do believe you. But I’m not hearing anything to change my mind.”

  “Yes, lord, I understand.”

  Poppy picked up his lantern. “And as far as scaring her off goes, if she can’t bear to watch the loving administration of just punishment, then maybe she’s not the right kind of girl for us in the first place.” He turned and headed for the tunnel.

  “Yes, lord. I can see that. I guess Chas is a better match for her anyway.”

  Poppy stopped abruptly. “What did you say? Is the Bunyan boy interested in her?”

  “I can’t say that he is, lord, but she sure took to him.”

  That was a problem. Poppy approved of Chas, what little he’d seen of him, and he thought a match with Deut might be favorable. But if Chas paired up with Ginger, it would eliminate two possible Prophecy matches in one stroke.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll pray on it.”

  “Thank you, lord.”

  “Now let’s go. We don’t want the babies to go hungry.”

  “Yes, lord, except I gotta ask you — you blow the trumpet yet?”

  “Can’t. There’s a marble lodged in it.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “It’s in there good, and it’s not coming out.”

  “Did you try blowing it out?”

  “Don’t talk stupid, son. I just told you, it’s plugged up so you can’t blow it.”

  “I meant from the other end. Wait.” Proverbs went to another part of the chamber where decades worth of worn-out machinery was collected in bins and piles and returned with a short length of rubber hose. He jammed one end into the bell end of the instrument as far as it would go. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he blew into the hose. His cheeks bulged. His face turned red.

  With a pop, the marble detached from the trumpet and flew across the chamber, bouncing like a pinball against the discarded machinery. “There,” Proverbs said, catching his breath. “That’s how it’s done.”

  Poppy was amazed. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  “Blow it, lord,” Proverbs said. “Let’s hear the sound of the throne room.”

  Poppy was as eager as his son, and he loosened the vice and lifted the trumpet. Without the marble, it weighed next to nothing. The end resembled a pipe fitting more than a mouthpiece, but that didn’t stop him from trying to wrap his lips around it.

  He blew. Nothing came out the bell but old man’s breath. No resounding blast. No call to war.

  “Here, let me try,” Proverbs said, putting his hands on the instrument. “I’ve blown a bugle before. You have to shape your lips.”

  “No!” Poppy said, wrenching the trumpet from his son’s grasp. He filled his lungs and tried again.

  Fffffffffp.

  “That’s better, lord. You’re getting the hang of it. Do it again.”

  Another deep breath made Poppy lightheaded, and before he could blow, his fingers started to tingle.

  “What’s happening?” Proverbs said. “The trumpet . . .”

  The glass was turning dull and cloudy, and it broke apart in Poppy’s hands. The pieces fell to the stone floor in sizzling heaps of sand. The sand continued to disintegrate until all there was left was a thin layer of dust.

  Poppy gasped. He groaned. He grew faint.

  VW9 1.0

  WHEN THEY RETURNED to the big house, Proverbs kept his head down and tried to make himself invisible.

  Everyone was still talking about the angel’s trumpet, and the little ones begged Poppy to show it to them again. When he refused, they said, “But Ginger hasn’t seen it, lord.”

  “Whose fault is that?” he snapped. He dragged a chair to the warm corner, signaling that it was time for worship.

  Ginger approached Proverbs. “Did you see it?”

  Proverbs nodded and went to sit alone on the outermost ring of siblings. Ginger hadn’t expected that and was pleased. Maybe he was capable of taking a hint after all. She pulled a chair and sat next to Deut.

  Worship Time was brief that evening, and the homily got straight to the point: Never get ahead of yourself.

  Poppy did not open by welcoming the newcomers to their home. He did not lead his family in a prayer of thanksgiving for the success of their supply run to Anchorage or for the unexpected gift of cash from NJB, which filled so many of their corporal needs. He didn’t mention the trumpet once. Instead, he read from Obadiah:

  Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and

  though thou set thy nest among the stars,

  thence I will bring you down, saith the Lord.

  Before Poppy could raise his terrible visage to glower at his family, Ginger’s bright, young voice piped up.

  “What verse is that, Mr. Prophecy?” Ginger had her own Bible open on her lap. It was the same one Deut had looked at in Ginger’s bedroom in Wallis, a small volume with a cheery blue cloth cover.

  “Obadiah is only two pages long,” Poppy replied. “Maybe they left it out of your Bible.”

  “No, it’s here. Oh, here it is, fourth verse.”

  Poppy waited in silence until she looked up at him. He said, “I understand you brought a cell phone into my house.”

  “Uh, yes, I did.”

  “Only Mama and I have phones in this house. It’s a rule. I should’a told you to leave it behind in Wallis.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s my fault for not telling you, but no harm done. Kindly give it to me.” He held out his hand.”

  Ginger froze. She was clearly undecided what to do.

  “You’ll get it back when you leave,” he added.

  “But . . . but it’s how I communicate with my family.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll call them every Twosday when we go in for the mail.”

  Still she hesitated.

  Poppy said, “Sue has already given up hers.”

  Sue nodded in confirmation.


  At last, Ginger rose and handed him the phone saying, “It’s not like there’s service out here anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re welcome — what?”

  Ginger knew the answer to this question. She had anticipated it and decided on a proper response before leaving Wallis.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Prophecy.”

  Poppy shook his head. “Close, but no prize. You can address any man as Mr., but the head of your household, however temporary, you address as ‘lord.’”

  “I don’t believe that’s true. What do you base it on?”

  If the whole conversation were not dangerous enough already, Ginger’s challenge to debate their father made the room hold its breath. But Poppy merely raised the Book from his lap in response.

  “On this,” he said.

  “Actually,” Ginger said, “I don’t think so.”

  Little Myrrh began to cry.

  “You don’t think so?” Poppy said mildly. “That should put the saints at ease. Let me toss your question back at you. What do you base your opinion on?”

  Ginger sighed. Pity that it should come to this on her first day here, but there was no avoiding it, and maybe it was for the best. If she caved now, her entire visit would be miserable. Besides, she had rehearsed in her mind for this very confrontation. So she raised her own Bible, mimicking him, and said, “Likewise, of course.”

  “Go on.”

  All eyes went to Ginger, standing there in defiance of the Truth and the Law. When she spoke, she was addressing the girls in the house as much as their lord.

  “The word ‘lord’ appears in the Bible, no matter which translation you use, more than 6,700 times. That’s a lot for any word in Scripture. But every time it’s used, it clearly refers either to the Lord God or to the Lord Jesus Christ.” She thumbed through the book, stopping at random pages and found an example on nearly every page: “Then the Lord God said . . .” “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham . . .” “ . . . offering before the Lord.” “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .”