“Really?” Carole said.
Josh smiled. He seemed more interested in Carole than he did in Wilf.
Wilf dropped a dollar bill in the box. “There you go.”
“May God bless you forever and ever and ever,” Josh said, not taking his eyes off Carole.
They walked on toward the noise and the light.
“I hate this,” Carole said.
Wilf could hear Reverend Cooney’s voice soaring above all the rest. “God has blessed me with a revelation!”
“Sounds like we’re just in time,” Wilf said, sounding cheerful enough. He led Carole into a crowd milling about by the large open doors.
“Hey there, Wilf!” Ralphie was shouting at him from a few people over and looking even more excited and full of mischief than he usually did. “The Rev just cured three people and a lame horse! You missed it!” He was being jostled by four or five other farm boys of about the same age.
“Holy Rollers!” one of them roared out as loud as he could to the delight of the crowd on the fringe. And then the boys began to howl like dogs.
“Come on, Carole,” Wilf said.
They weaved into the crowd until they could see Reverend Cooney standing on top of a hay wagon, pacing up and down, his Bible in hand. He’d put on a bright necktie and he’d slicked down his hair, but other than that he looked the same as he had in town. He was easily ignoring the howls from the back.
“Sweet revelation!” he cried out.
Wilf led Carole up a wooden ramp toward the rafters. The shed was jammed full, some people standing on raised platforms, some sitting on improvised plank benches, others crowding in at the front, kneeling or sitting on the floor.
“I have a revelation!”
“Sweet revelation! Amen! Praise God! Go on!” the inner circle, the believers, called back, jumping up and sitting down.
Carole clung to Wilf and held his cane for him while Wilf snaked his arm around a roof joist for balance.
“The boy in the cage means something!” Cooney was pacing around faster now. “He means something! For those who have eyes to see. For those who have ears to hear. And not just him. No. Because it was a miracle. The whole picture. That’s what you have to see. The cage. The padlock. The boy. They are one and the same. They are inseparable. They are the whole picture!”
“Praise God!” the believers said, jumping up and sitting down.
Wilf looked over the excited faces. The bobbing heads. Arms thrown up in the air.
Where is God, he wondered to himself.
“And what is this picture?” Cooney was going on. “This twisted boy? This half a boy? You’ve heard the stories. You can see him in your mind’s eye. This little creature. Sin is what he is! Not him, no, but what made him. You see? And what made him was sin. Was he not the product of some hideously conceived union? Was he not the result of selfishness and backwardness and sinfulness and the hiding away from the light of God? And what is that cage but all our sins, our stubbornness, our pride, all the vices we can’t let go, the vices we cling to with all our might. Remember your Bible. Remember the dog who vomits and turns back to his vomit and licks it up again. That’s you, my friend. That’s whoever is locked in sin, my friend, that is the cage, my friend. And the padlock is your heart.” He began pointing out people. “And your heart. And yours! And yours! Locking God out. Locking salvation out. Locking everlasting glory out. Too proud. Too sinful. All out! And what is the key that will unlock all our hearts? What is this key? This mysterious broken man, this exalted son of God? Yes, only Jesus, my friends, only the Risen Christ, my friends. Only Jesus, yes, Jesus, yes, Jesus, yes! He is the key. He is the only one who can unlock your soul. He is the only one who can unlock you and save you from yourself. Praise God Almighty. Jesus, come! Jesus, come! Jesus, come to us all!”
The noise became tumultuous, joyful, deafening. Wails and exaltations and screams. The Spirit was descending and Josh was too late with his collection. Wilf could see him limping desperately through the crowd waving his cardboard box.
Cooney jumped down from the wagon. A middle-aged man stumbled toward him. Cooney opened up his arms. The man was crying, great wracking sobs. Cooney hugged him and both men collapsed to their knees.
Carole began dragging Wilf back down the ramp. “I’m going home,” she said.
Wilf let her lead the way through the rapturous crowd, and when they’d reached the bottom of the ramp, through the jeering ring of doubters. She was being quite aggressive about it, bulling a pathway as if all the hallelujahs had dislodged something inside her, opened up some secret place, something that frightened her.
Ralphie was rolling on the ground, caught up in a religious spasm. Carole had to step over his legs.
“I want to talk to this young fellow,” Wilf said.
Carole didn’t reply. She let go of Wilf’s arm and headed off into the dark.
“Hey, Ralphie,” Wilf said.
Ralphie, frothing and mouthing some gibberish, his head rocking from side to side, sat up. “Oh hi, Wilf,” he said.
His friends roared with laughter.
“I have a question for you.” Wilf moved away a little from the rest of the boys. Ralphie got up and followed him, a lopsided grin on his face.
“I’ve been thinking about that cage, Ralphie. What do you suppose they were going to do with it?”
“Throw it in the river. Like you said.”
“It was heavy, though.” The sounds behind them rose to an ecstatic crescendo. Wilf had to shout against it. “They couldn’t have managed to throw it very far and the river’s relatively shallow along the shore.”
“It’s in flood.”
“That’s even worse. If it’s over its banks, as soon as the water went back down the cage would be sitting there high and dry. Who would risk that? So I was thinking, maybe I was wrong. Maybe whoever left that little boy there was hoping you’d find it.”
Ralphie came to a stop. “Why me? I don’t know anything about it.”
“Do you know Josh?”
Ralphie glanced back at his group of friends. He wasn’t looking quite so sure of himself anymore. “Josh?”
“Yeah. The boy with the club foot. Reverend Cooney’s boy.”
“He’s around here somewhere. I’ve seen him around.”
“Does he know where you live? Does he know you have hounds? Does he know you hunt?”
“You think they left that cage there? The Rev and his son? Why would they do that? Holy Jesus, where would they get that little kid?”
“Out of his bed. Out of an institution. Out of a mortuary. For publicity, you see. To make a sensation. Create a show.”
Ralphie was going a little bug-eyed.
“How well do you know Josh?”
“But it’s not shallow,” Ralphie said, “not down where that path leads. There’s a drop-off there, it’s deep as anything.”
“Where?”
“Right there! It goes on for about a hundred yards. People used to swim there all the time. No one does anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Afraid of getting sick. Polio and stuff. Anyway, that’s crazy.”
“What is?”
“What you just said. That they’d steal some little kid from somewhere and leave him out there for me to find.” He looked at Wilf more closely. “That’s really crazy.”
When Wilf came limping up to the car Carole was sitting there staring down the road. He opened the driver’s door.
“If I’d had the keys I would have driven away.”
Wilf eased in. “And if you knew how to drive.”
“That wouldn’t have mattered. Revival meetings make me want to bring up.”
Wilf started the car, switched on the headlights and began to pull away. “I take it you weren’t saved then?”
“No.”
“Thanks for coming, anyway.”
“Once is enough though. We’re not going again.”
“No.”
Carole looked out her side window. She couldn’t see much of anything. “I’m glad you’ve given up on that idea.”
“What idea?”
“That Reverend Cooney could have had anything to do with that boy.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Ralphie thought it sounded crazy. Or maybe it was me he thought was crazy.”
“Who’s Ralphie?” Carole finally asked.
“That kid who was lying on the ground.”
“Oh.”
“I think God is far away from here. Don’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“According to my father, everything will be fine, though, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Precedents have been set. Laws will be written. The United Nations has been established. My friends didn’t die in vain.”
Carole kept her face turned away.
“Do you think human beings are perfectible, Carole? Do you think we can save ourselves?”
“I worked all day and I’m tired,” Carole said.
“Sorry.” Wilf turned onto the highway that led into town and fell into a deep silence.
After a while Carole reached over and put her hand on his leg.
* * *
When they reached Carole’s street there was a strange truck backed into her family’s driveway.
“Now what’s going on?” she said.
It had wooden sides attached to the back and looked a bit battered and rusted under the light of the street lamp. Wilf pulled the car up in front of the house.
They’d already discussed, or at least Wilf had insisted that he wouldn’t just let her off, that he’d come in too, in the hope that her father had returned and that they could have a more civilized talk. Carole had been secretly pleased and relieved that Wilf had wanted to do that but she hadn’t let him see it. She had her pride.
They walked past the truck as they headed for the side door. Wilf thought he detected the faint aroma of manure. He looked at Carole. She didn’t seem to notice.
Andy was sitting in the kitchen sipping on a coffee and eating a piece of cake. Mrs. Birley was sitting at the table with him. No sign of Mr. Birley.
“I guess you know Andy,” Wilf said to Carole as they came in.
Andy stood up with a friendly grin. “Sure she does. Hi, Carole.”
“Hi,” Carole said.
“I told you Andy was going to borrow his uncle’s truck.”
“But it’s late.”
“It’s not that late.” Andy looked at his watch, “It’s only, what, a little after ten. And the thing was, I knew you two were anxious and the truck was available, so I said to myself ‘Why not?’”
“Who said we were anxious?”
“Wilf did.”
“Where’s Dad?” Carole looked hopefully toward her mother who was sitting there with a quiet smile on her face. She was round of body and bleach-blonde of hair and as far as Wilf could tell seemed to take everything that came her way with an unruffled and admirable calmness. Unlike her husband.
“I don’t know,” she said
“So let’s get started.” Andy finished off his coffee and picked up what was left of his piece of chocolate cake.
“Tonight?” Carole said.
“I think Uncle John has to go to market tomorrow.”
“But if we take down my bed, where will I sleep?”
“In your new home, Dear,” Mrs. Birley said.
“Oh. Right.” Carole glanced at Wilf. She looked back at her mother. “We can leave Grandma’s settee for later.”
“Why? Take it now while you have the use of the truck.”
“Where do you think Dad is?”
“He’ll be fine,” Mrs. Birley said.
* * *
Duncan stumbled through the bush. It was hard going because there was no moon and he’d had to circle around the houses at the one end of town and then follow along the smaller of the two rivers toward the mill dam. The air felt suddenly warmer though.
He began to think about which he’d like best if he could get to choose, a full moon but cold, or no light but warmer. It seemed lately that he could never have both at the same time. Never have just what he wanted. Never.
Earlier that night he’d started off intending to search for Dandy and Babe. He’d looked first through the windows of the barn to the west of his place because the farmer was still doing chores and the lights were on. He could see Old Man Wilson milking and his son dragging the full cans to the cooler, but it wasn’t Babe and Dandy standing in the horse stalls. Or anyone else. They were empty.
He snuck right into the dark stables of the farm on the other side of the road. Four horses were thrashing around in box stalls there, their eyes rolling in the faint light coming in from the house. But none of them was Babe or Dandy.
At Eric’s place he got chased off by the dog.
He ran along Eric’s father’s pasture and then he stopped. The dog came up to him, all stiff-legged and barking. He squatted down and talked to it real low. It stopped its noise and began to move its tail back and forth in a cautious sort of way. It sniffed at his hand, at the iron on his wrist, at the sleeve of one of his old windbreakers he’d found still hanging in the back kitchen.
Duncan reached out and began to scratch between its ears and along the side of its face. He stroked it under its jaw. He couldn’t remember its name. Jasper or Jumper or some such thing. “There you are,” he said, and in one swift move jammed his free hand down on its withers, brought his lower hand up and broke its neck.