Though he was too young to fully understand the implications of a call,
ten-year-old Christopher instinctively knew that the voice that had called his
name belonged to the Lord. He was certain of it.
     Doubt came fifteen years later when he entered the seminary to become a priest.
Most of his fellow seminarians experienced similar doubts, but their doubts
were generally about their own fitness to serve God. Most of them worried they
were not pure enough. Some worried the Church was not pure enough. Still others
began to question the nature or even the existence of God. Christopher Pennant
was closest to this third group.
     While he was a seminarian, his doubt centred on a question that he had not
previously conceived of, let alone resolved: who, exactly, had called his name
that day in Cumberland? Had he been too quick to accept that the voice belonged
to God? If it had not been the voice of God, whose voice had it been? Did his
teachers not insist that Satan's voice is sweet? For a terrible moment at the seminary, it was as if he had
been living a lie. (And what could it mean to confuse His voice and the voice
of His shadow?)
     So, at the threshold of priesthood, he faltered.
     But then, influenced by his fellow seminarians, he again came to believe that
the voice calling him had been God's. Satan, they said (as if they had all been acquainted with Satan), would have
led him on a different course. He, Christopher Thomas Pennant, would not have
chosen the church if Satan had called to him. Gradually, Father Pennant's doubts were quelled. His crisis passed.
     What Lowther could not have known was that Father Pennant's encounter with âevil' (or, more exactly, with Mayor Fox) would precipitate a return to the
uncertainty that had lain unexamined within him since the end of his time at
seminary. Watching Mayor Fox walk on water had, metaphorically speaking,
plunged him into a tide of questions. Who had called him? Whose voice had he
heard? To whom was his vocation dedicated?
     At seminary, Christopher had struggled because he had not known if the voice he'd heard belonged to God or Satan. Following Barrow Day, a new thought occurred
to him. What if it had been neither God nor Satan? What if it had been the land
itself that had called him? What if it had been Cumberland â the hills, the trees, the stony fields â that spoke? If so, could one serve both God
and
 the land? Were they indistinguishable or were they, rather, two jealous masters,
only one of whom could be devoutly followed?
     These feelings were in themselves enough to shake him up, but they were
accompanied by a coldness, a critical eye on God's habits. Take the matter of miracles, for instance. Looking back on Heath
Lambert's gypsy moths, Father Pennant â though he did not know what Lambert had done to the insects or how he had got
them to fly in a circle â suddenly felt the too-muchness of âmiracles.' Not that the thing with moths had been miraculous, but it was just the kind of
thing God might do: ostentatiously contravene the laws of Nature. The Lord was
showy when called upon to prove himself: He made bushes speak, He parted the
seas, He restored sight to the blind. Honestly, making moths do His bidding was
very like Him.
     After Barrow Day, Father Pennant began to reconsider the question that had
troubled him at the seminary. He did not feel the same dismay, however. He felt
apprehensive, but he was also intrigued. Caught up with his journals and his
accounts of the natural history of Barrow, he did not mind the idea that the
land had once called to him, or that he was on intimate terms with Nature. As a
result, Father Pennant began to spend even more time exploring the fields and
streams of Lambton County. He performed his priestly duties and performed them
well, but he was now distracted. His sermons grew short and to the point. His
visits to the sick were efficiently carried out, and his attendance at
spiritual gatherings was thoughtful, not enthusiastic.
Barrow Day done, the town settled into the routines of summer: preparing for
vacation and looking forward to weekends up near Goderich.
     Robbie Myers, who believed he was in the clear with both of the women he loved,
was happily occupied with work on the farm, with his friends, with the question
of whether or not he should invite Jane to his wedding. Barrow Day had been
good. He'd spent it with Elizabeth who, though she was not her affectionate self, spoke
to him without rancour and even, once or twice, held his hand. It was sad that
she would not allow him to touch her in any intimate way and that her kisses
were perfunctory. But she still wanted to marry him and she treated him â as far as others were concerned â the way you would expect a woman to treat her fiancé. He was convinced that the Elizabeth he loved would return to him once she
realized how much he loved her. But for an argument with Jane over some strange
idea she'd got in her head â something to do with him committing public indecency â all was right with the world.
     Then, four days after the 15th, Jane invited him over and coolly gave him an
ultimatum: he was to walk naked into Atkinson's Hair Salon or she would leave town.
     Once he accepted that Jane might really leave, Robbie panicked. The ultimatum
was absurd. It made no sense, except as some torment or prank. Why should
anyone â let alone Jane â want him to expose himself to a clutch of older women? It was like asking a man
afraid of rats to snuggle into a tub full of them. His fear of public nudity
was irrational and unmanageable.
     Then again, so were his feelings for Jane. He loved her as much as he said he
did. He could have easily done almost anything for her, easily done anything
but this.
     â I need to know what you're going to do, Jane said.
     â Can't I think about it?
     â No. I want to know right now.
     Robbie was not used to thinking and he was not good at it. Under pressure, what
came was confusion: feelings, not thoughts; pictures, not words. He felt
humiliation, longing, fear. He saw Jane's face, the red birth stain on his chest, his mother's face, the entrance to Atkinson's Beauty Parlour. No single feeling or picture was distinct. But then, because
he was the man he was, one strong thing came out of the confusion: love. âLove' had caused him trouble in the recent past, but he went with it anyway,
stubbornly holding to the idea that âlove' â whenever and wherever it touched down â was always right.
     â Okay, he said. I'll do it if I have to.
     It was an acquiescence that surprised them both.
     â Oh, said Jane, her tone very like one of disappointment.
That's ⦠great.
     She kissed him, but she was not happy. She had, she realized, been expecting
him to say no. She had unconsciously put her faith in Elizabeth's knowledge of him. Not that her kiss or the emotion behind it registered with
Robbie. The man was shocked by his own decision.
     â When do I have to do this? he asked.
     â Do it tomorrow, said Jane. It's Friday. It'll be busy.
     But it wasn't the number of people that mattered to Robbie. He would have been as terrified
at the thought of one witness as he was at the thought of thousands.
     â I'm doing this because I love you, he said.
     â You can change your mind, answered Jane.
     He did not, though it felt as if he had agreed to his own execution. For a
moment Jane wondered if she weren't being cruel. But then, the cruelty was Elizabeth's, wasn't it? She herself would not have dreamed such a humiliation. It would not have
bothered her in the least to walk around town naked, so part of her was
unsympathetic to Robbie's plight. Still, at the thought of Elizabeth's wager, Jane began to wonder if Liz weren't more bitter and vindictive than she let on.
     For Robbie, the following morning came after a night of fitful sleep. He'd suffered through countless visions of himself walking naked along the streets
of Barrow. Oddly, the one place he did not dream of was Atkinson's. He dreamed he was naked in church, naked in school, naked in the Blackhawk
Tavern. He tried to convince himself that his fear was irrational and, so,
ridiculous. He told himself that human beings were born naked, that nudity was
not traumatic for him in most situations. Nothing helped. He did not want to
walk into Atkinson's naked. He could not understand why this was important to Jane. He thought
about whether or not he loved her enough to do this, but, sadly, the answer was
yes. It was always yes, like rolling the dice over and over and coming up snake
eyes forever. He also considered avoiding this one thing, making it up to Jane
in other ways if he could. But Jane was not a person whose resolve needed
testing. She had assured him she would leave if he did not go into Atkinson's and he knew, knew for certain, that she would keep her word. He was a
condemned man.
     Once he'd finished his chores, he ate breakfast as if it were to be his last: porridge
and maple syrup followed by a glass of his mother's dandelion wine.
     Catching him with the wine, his mother was alarmed.
     â What's the matter with you? she asked. You know I need that for knitting circle.
     Robbie apologized and put the cork back in the bottle. Rather than replace the
bottle on its rack in the winter closet, though, he carried it into the barn
and finished it off, disturbing a couple of mice in the straw. Dutch courage,
people called it, though no one could tell him why the Dutch should be known
for such a sensible way of dealing with distress.
He
 thought it sensible, anyway. What else could you do but drink or pray?
     â Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me â¦
      Drink or pray, however, there was no getting around his anxiety. He resolved to
go into Atkinson's early in the day. The place opened at ten. Waiting for noon or for the end of
the day would have driven him squirrelly. So, at ten o'clock in the morning, having downed a bottle of his mother's sickly sweet wine, Robbie went with a neighbour into Barrow, getting out at
Barrow Park.
     There were, naturally, things that Robbie hadn't considered. Where to undress, for instance? Where to put his clothes once he'd undressed? Too inebriated to drive to town alone, he could not put them in his
truck. Could he leave his shoes on or did ânaked' mean entirely naked? He supposed he could leave his shoes on until just before
he entered the parlour and that is what he did. With no word to anyone around
him and as if it were a thing people always did, Robbie stood up when the clock
at city hall struck half past ten, took off his shoes, removed his clothes,
then put his shoes on again. Being slightly drunk, he undressed deliberately,
with exaggerated precision. He then walked, his clothes under one arm, from the
park to the beauty parlour, some two minutes away. The walk, the experience of
it, was what others might have called otherworldly. It was as if his anxiety
had taken on a form of its own and was walking with him, a sensation so odd
Robbie felt almost relaxed. And perhaps because Robbie appeared to be at ease,
few of the half dozen or so people who were about noticed him.
     One woman, just coming home from a shift at Dow Chemical, did notice Robbie was
naked, but there was a delay in her perception. She saw Robbie and walked by
him. Then, as if out of nowhere, a thought occurred to her:
     â You know, I've seen very few penises besides Michael's.
     It was only then that she realized â to her dismay â that she had just seen Robbie Myers naked. By which time Robbie had entered
Atkinson's.
     Inside the beauty parlour, there were three older women: Emma Cavendish, Leda
Preston and Margaret Burke. The three women, all in their late sixties or early
seventies, all spry, had their hair done once a month. They inevitably went
together, and had been doing so for years. This was their day. They had left
their homes early, eaten poached eggs and toast at Boucher's Diner and presented themselves to Agnes Atkinson at twenty after ten.
     Clouds had been gathering since early morning and Leda said
     â I think it's going to rain.
     The women instinctively turned to the glass door to look outside.
     â Is there someone trying to get in? Emma asked.
     â I think there is, said Margaret.
     As she spoke, the door opened and Robbie Myers walked in.
     â Goodness, said Margaret. Is it raining already?
     All turned to Robbie. Agnes, who knew him best, though they all knew him, said
     â Robert, put your clothes on. What would your mother think?
     â His clothes! said Leda. I thought there was something missing.