Children of Paradise: A Novel (17 page)

—To the infirmary! I need to say goodbye to my makeup lady.

The boards that pave the walkway rattle as they march along. He bursts into the infirmary, and the doctor and nurses bolt to attention and swarm around him. He touches the bed of each patient as he passes and makes the sign of the cross. They thank him and cry with joy. He looks at the parents of Ryan, labeled as dissidents and locked in a chemical prison of sedatives. Both are hooked to drips with bags feeding liquid into their taped arms. The preacher moves on and stops at the bed of the old woman. Who will put on her makeup? he wonders. He cannot see himself getting so old. She opens her eyes and says, Praise the Lord. The preacher leans over and kisses her.

—I miss my makeup lady.

He sets aside his Bible and pistol and hugs her for a long time. She sobs with great heaves of her chest and gasps.

—Do not cry. You’re going to make me cry. You are heading for paradise, and I cannot wait to meet you there. You will wait for me, won’t you?

—Yes, Father.

—You have nothing to fear. You know that, don’t you?

—Yes, Father.

—Thank you for your service to this community; you kept us looking good and feeling good to the end. Don’t think I have not noticed it, and if I have noticed it, the Lord has surely taken note of it and awaits your services. We will meet again in the kingdom of the Most High.

—Yes, Father, thank you, Father.

—Do not thank me. I thank you.

The reverend falls to one knee and keeps his grip on the old lady’s hand. Everyone’s eyes close. Miss Taylor grabs her compact with powder and sponge and dabs the forehead, cheeks, and nose of the preacher. He rises and thanks her. The old seamstress and makeup artist smiles through her tears, and there really is not a dry eye in the infirmary. He leans over, kisses her again, and turns and marches out of the infirmary with his Bible and pistol.

Just before he enters the tent, he hands his Bible and gun to his assistants, who duck into the tent’s entrance ahead of him. They make sure everything is in place: his jug of ice water, his towel. They place his Bible next to the jug on a small table beside a large high-backed chair. The music and singing stop. Everyone looks at the exit left of the stage where his assistants entered. The congregation fully expects the man to follow at any moment. The preacher walks with a bodyguard around the outside of the tent to the exit. He takes care to avoid the sticks that he orders his guards to pile at each exit. He straightens, takes a deep breath, pushes his dark glasses up the bridge of his nose, rolls his shoulders, flicks both arms out in front of him, and steps into the hall’s fluorescence.

The people seated near the entrance turn their heads and cry out, and everyone, even the guards at the front of the room, jumps and grabs their weapons. The man touches people’s heads and grasps their outstretched hands as he walks to the front of the congregation, careful to step over the legs of children scrambling to their feet along the aisle.

—Bless you, bless you.

He tries to catch the eyes of each person and maintain his leisurely, impeded walk to the stage. Those seated too far from the aisle to benefit from direct contact stand up and applaud, and the entire room jumps to its feet and surges forward, clapping and hollering:

—Praise the Lord.

He repeats each phase as he marches forward. About halfway up the aisle, with the preacher’s touch and blessing part and parcel of his forward trajectory, the band strikes up “When the Saints,” and the congregation begins to clap in unison and sing. The guards put aside their sticks and rifles and clap and sing, too.

The preacher hops up onto the stage and claps his hands and waves and points at individuals in the congregation. He grabs the microphone and sings “I want to be in that number,” more as a sound test than anything. He signals to the music teacher doubled as band leader, and she waves her arms for the band to come to a close with a long flourish intended to settle the congregation into their seats. Everyone finds a chair or a spot on the floor, and the guards lean on their sticks and rifles.

—Thank you, thank you, and may God continue to bless your lungs, good people.

Laughter and applause.

—We had plenty of rain these last few days, didn’t we?

—Yes, Father.

—Another thirtysomething days of that deluge, and we would have been boarding the ark.

More laughter and applause.

—But it was good, wasn’t it? It was bountiful. It was proof of the glory of the Lord. Yes?

—Yes!

—Finish my thoughts for me, good people. I know you all know what I am about to say. So speak for me as I speak for you. Our children are our own and not our own. I know and you know that they can try us sometimes, and heaven knows we have to work hard to keep them from turning into sour apples, fruit picked too early and ripened too fast for their own good, forced-ripe fruit. But the good Lord says, suffer the little children . . .

And here he cups an ear in his hand and inclines his head toward the congregation, who complete his sentence:

—To come unto me.

—That’s right. And though they may test us and we need to keep them on the straight path. We must not spare the rod and . . .

He cups his ear at the congregation again, and they shout:

—Spoil the child.

—We must see them in their innocence as already admitted into the kingdom of heaven. Tonight I want us to think about temptation, in all of its many disguises. It is a snake.

—Yes, Father.

—It is the flesh.

—Yes, Father.

—It is the promise of riches on earth.

—Yes, Father.

—But do not worry yourselves about riches. You know what the Good Book says about the rich man. It is easier for a camel to stream through the eye of a needle than—finish my thoughts for me, brothers and sisters—than . . .

—For a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

—Very good. A camel is easy to see, right? But the effort required from a rich man to be able to enter the gates of paradise is close to a miracle, isn’t it? Picture the huge camel to my left, and in my right hand see the little needle, and not just the needle, but the eye of the needle. Can you see it, madam? You, yes, you in the front row.

—No, Father.

—No, you cannot. If you had said yes, I would have asked you to go and see the doctor, for you would be seeing things, madam. Wouldn’t you?

—Yes, Father.

—You might be able to see the needle, but the eye of the needle is so small and the camel so big that it would take a miracle to feed that camel through that needle. Look, even I have to close one eye and lick the thread several times to get a thin piece of cotton through a needle.

Here the man mimics licking a piece of thread and aiming at a needle, and he closes one eye and tries a few times to perform the task. The congregation laughs and claps.

—You see how hard it is to put what should be put through a needle’s eye?

—Yes, Father.

—Well, where is that camel? Okay, now picture the enormity of that task, a camel through the eye of a needle, and that is what riches collected in this short life on earth put between you and your rightful place in heaven, eternal life, free of any want, free of all aches and pains, free of all worries. So do not wish for riches that will make it impossible for you to gain your place in heaven which is like nothing seen on this earth, not just a palace but all palaces, not just a vault of wealth but all the mountains of the world piled with wealth. That is the kingdom that awaits each and every one of us in this room. But temptation has an invisible side, a face that we cannot see and a force that is as strong as the wind and present everywhere.

He stops smiling at the end of his sentences. He takes off his dark glasses and points at the congregation.

—All of you were tempted. And all of you gave in to temptation.

The audience hushes. Their faces cloud.

—Your children, our future, ran into the rain, and what did you do? You did not watch them to make sure a coral snake did not crawl among them and bite them. You did not keep a lookout for a jaguar, panther, or viper, with your rifles ready to protect the children. You did not ask them to play but play safe. You intervened in their play in the rain by beating them. That was temptation, people. That was giving in to cruelty. That was spite. Let me tell you something. I am the first to beat one or any number of our children who misbehave, if they break the rules, if they are wicked and evil in the myriad of ways available to us all. We must not spare the rod. But that does not mean we beat the children for playing in mud. That signals surrender to temptation. That is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. Now, I asked the guards to bring along a pile of sticks, which you all saw and must have taken for firewood or something. Well, this is what I want the children to do. I want each child to take a stick, all three hundred of you or however many of you are here tonight. Go on. Take a stick.

He waits for the guards to pass sticks to the children, who hold them as if they are strange unrecognizable objects.

—I want you children to stand next to an adult. Include the guards in this little exercise. They are adults, too. Leave the sick and infirm out of this lesson. I want each child with a stick to hit each adult, on the arms and legs only, not on the head or breast.

The adults in the room open their eyes very wide, and some of them gasp.

—Make it a good hit, or we will be here all night.

Several parents look at the child standing over them with a stick and wide eyes and flared nostrils and lean away from the child as if confronted by a jungle predator. The preacher orders the guards and the parents to stand closer to the children brandishing sticks. He makes the adults in the band and choir put down instruments and lyric sheets and take up places next to children with sticks. Several children surround the young guard and lift their sticks high above their heads.

—Children, on my count of three, I want you to go ahead and hit an adult with your stick. One. Two. Three!

The children tremble so much at the prospect that they can barely operate their arms. They raise their sticks above their heads, as ordered. Their gazes follow the sticks up into the air to avoid the faces of the adults. The children bring their sticks down on the astonished bodies of the adults, and then the children drop the sticks. They drop the sticks so quickly that the action seems to bear no relation to their previous grip of those sticks and their wielding of them over their parents and guardians, a rapid act of disassociation that some of the children follow up with a small kick to push the sticks farther away. Trina touches her mother with her stick and drops it right away and rubs her hands on her dress in an exact repeat of her actions at Ryan’s beating. She blinks rapidly to keep her eyes from filling. Joyce gives Trina that soft, resigned look of understanding, an apparently unfocused stare with the hint of a smile around compressed lips to let Trina know that an order is an order and not to obey Father would result in something even more frightful.

The guards collect the sticks, and the children slink off to their places on the ground next to the seated adults. Many parents wipe their eyes, squeeze them shut, shield their faces with two hands, pull clothes up to bury their faces, but nothing stops the flow. Children cry with them. Only a few adults fume and shake their heads and hug themselves and rock in their seats as if at sea or trying to right a capsized vessel. The children cry with a trace of panic in their vocal cords. The guards and many assistants look quizzically at the preacher. They wait for his next move to make explicit the usefulness of this latest manifestation of his wisdom. He nods and lifts his hands to settle the congregation. Even in their shock and distress, their obedience of him does not falter. The man places his dark glasses on the table and picks up the Bible. He directs his gaze at the adults in the room.

—I was a child like these children. You were all children like them. Have we forgotten? Someone had to see to our needs. Each of us was helpless and needed guidance once. How could we forget? I have not forgotten. When I was a boy living in the middle of the country, a tornado warning stopped my play. My father had this serious look on his face, and I knew something was not right. All he said was tornado, and he collected me, and together we went down into the shelter dug in the backyard and lowered the trapdoor. I asked my father where our dog might be. My father took one look at my face, and I do not know what he saw, but he knew he had to find our dog for me. He said he would be right back and I should stay put no matter what I heard, and he climbed out of the safety of the shelter and closed the trapdoor. Well, you know where this is going. The tornado arrived. A dozen freight trains, a herd of stampeding elephants, that tornado took what seemed like forever to pass by. All the time I cried for my father. I forgot about my dog. I waited and could not wait anymore, and I pushed the trapdoor up and climbed out, and the house was gone, I mean torn from its foundations, and my daddy and the dog were gone. There was wreckage as far as I could see.

The preacher pauses to wipe his eyes with the towel. Some of the adults in the congregation cry with him.

—I was alone in the world, and my daddy and the dog were together somewhere waiting for me. I had to believe that, because I blamed myself for my daddy’s death. I blamed that look that I had on my face that made him leave the safety of the shelter to find my dog. That look, ladies and gentlemen, is the look of the innocent. That look is the expression that all of our children have, and we, all of us adults in this room, do not need a mirror to know that we carry the same expression when we think about our Lord God and Savior.

The reverend swallows some water and dries his face and neck with the towel. He looks at the wet faces in the room. Many of the adults reach for the children seated beside them to touch them softly, caress their arms and pat their heads.

—You see what I mean. Suffer the little children . . .

—To come unto me.