No, it was none of those things, but a piece of each twisted up into the rhythmic aural collage that now gently entered his eardrums as he moved from the door to the vestibule back in front of the sanctuary.
“Yes?” he said, looking towards the back of the church, momentarily believing someone might have knocked on the door, producing a strange reverberation. But no one was there. Could it have been the wind?
But that’s when he heard it again, followed by a third and a fourth and a fifth until he finally realized that it wasn’t a single sound, but a percussive, repetitive beat arriving at a steady interval.
Figuring it must be coming from somewhere in the room, Father Billy glanced all around, but found it near-impossible to ascertain where the sound had come from, though it seemed to be all around him at once. But then he moved out until he was hanging onto the communion rail, between the pulpit and the front pew, and the rhythm got louder, pounding at his ear drums with greater force, enough to make him wince. He looked over the pews, but then realized exactly what the sound was and where it was coming from.
He slowly turned and faced the giant wooden crucifix hanging over the altar and found the eyes of the Lord focused down at him. He took a step forward, his gaze taking in the carved ridges that made up the statue’s pupils, iris, and cornea, the shadows within each what gave the sculpture such a definitive stare.
“Heavenly Father...,” the priest began, but faltered, staring up at the crucifix. “Heavenly Fath...”
The throbbing rhythm, what Father Billy realized was the heartbeat of the Living Christ coming from deep inside the Lord’s wooden chest, continued as he walked, his gaze locked in with the Lord’s the entire way. Father Billy had grown up fairly agnostic and this hadn’t changed as much as you’d think when he joined the priesthood. He saw his calling as helping his community and providing spiritual guidance to those who sought it, but he had never witnessed anything he’d remotely considered evidence of the Divine. But in an instant, that had changed.
“Dear Lord,” he said. “Why are you appearing to me? What is your meaning?”
The sound continued –
lub-dub
,
lub-dub
,
lub-dub
,
lub-dub
,
lub-dub
— but no voice came from the statue’s mouth to accompany it. Father Billy wondered if the sound was something inside his own head, but he soon shook this off, the sound getting louder as he neared the altar.
“Heavenly Father?” he said, having climbed the altar steps and now was standing at the altar with both hands pressed down on the marble countertop. “I... I hear you. What do you need of me?”
The response was merely a continuation of the rhythm. Pushing aside the sprays of baby’s breath that he’d just arranged on the altar, Father Billy pulled himself up on top of the altar and stood, now eye-level with the feet of Christ. Beads of sweat arose from his forehead and palms as he tried to maintain his balance. At the same time, he raised his hands in supplication and held them out on either side of the carved feet.
The feet were those of a man who was already thin, his skin pulled tight over the tarsal bones, which had led Father Billy to believe the man who modeled for the sculptor may have been, himself, homeless and perhaps starving. The priest liked to imagine that the artist paid for the man to sit in food and, for some reason, it brought to mind the apocryphal story that the same man who modeled for Christ in Da Vinci’s
Last Supper
also modeled Judas, a real-life parable of charity in the midst of an artistic rendering.
An iron spike, painted to resemble wood, had been driven through the feet directly between the third and fourth metatarsal bones, though a close inspection revealed that the hole had been carefully chiseled out beforehand, an actual stake likely to have shattered the delicate work. Father Billy’s eyes focused on the spike for a moment, but then his gaze traveled up to the shins, the thighs and then the chest. He tried to see if the chest was rising and falling with breath, but by now, his vision was becoming blurred and he couldn’t tell.
He closed his eyes and the sound continued –
lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub
— as he reached out to touch the feet, a little terrified of what he might feel. His hands were less than a half a centimeter from the sculpture, so close that he could feel the cool of the wood radiating up to his fingertips. He waited a beat, the sound continuing, and then – finally – reached out and wrapped his hands tightly around the Lord’s feet.
The wood felt like wood under his fingers; hard as stone, carved veins rising over the muscle as solid as bone. He ran his fingers across the hard, rounded ankle bones and down the soles of the feet behind where he could see, then under the toes. He reached up to the smooth calves to the knees, to the femur, but every surface was the same. Hard and wooden with grooves and plains whose minute angles just barely revealed the touch of the sculptor’s chisel. It was almost as if the piece sprouted forth from the soil, already in this form.
But when he brought his hands to a stop, he began to feel something moving
within
the wood. At first, he thought it was his own blood racing through his fingertips, but then he realized that the sensation was rising and falling perfectly in time to the sound.
A pulse; blood coursing through the Body of Christ.
“Dear God!” Father Billy exhaled, gripping the feet tighter. “What does this mean, Lord? Why have you revealed yourself to me?! Please, tell me!”
But the heartbeat merely continued, the sound penetrating Father Billy’s eardrums as the pulse resonated through his fingertips. He turned and stared up at the eyes of the sculpture which were still gazing beatifically down at him.
Suddenly, the pulse began to quicken and increase in volume until it was almost deafening, causing Father Billy’s jaw to drop as he took his hands away from the sculpture and squeezed them against his ears so hard he couldn’t hear himself screaming.
Father Billy was found on the floor in front of the altar twenty minutes later, a large bump on his head that was determined to have come as a result of him bashing his head into the pulpit as he fell. The only other injury he’d sustained was a bruised tailbone as he had landed on his rear end when he’d tumbled off, probably looking like a man who’d fallen off a stepladder as he went.
He was discovered by an assistant pastor, Alvin Sturgess, who had quickly gotten a couple of yard men doing some pre-Easter sprucing up of the church’s landscaping to help move Father Billy onto a pew. When Sturgess asked the banged-up priest what had happened, Father Billy told him that he couldn’t remember why he’d fallen.
A doctor was called and since it was so close to the evening service, the man – a parishioner – had agreed to make a house call rather than have Father Billy come into his office or meet at the nearest hospital.
“You seem to be all right,” said the doctor, checking the relative signs of Father Billy’s pupils for signs of concussion. “You have all the symptoms of somebody who had a nasty fall, but who didn’t sustain any real damage, except to your pride. One last question — prior to the fall, did you have any problem with your hearing?”
Father Billy glanced up with surprise at this last question. “My hearing’s always been fine, I think. Do you think there’s something wrong with my ears?”
“No, not at all,” the doctor replied. “Just, your ears are your keys to balance, more or less. If there was something amiss there, it could impact other things.”
Father Billy thought about this a moment, then shook his head.
“No, no,” Father Billy replied. “I think my hearing’s close to perfect. Must have been my foolishness trying to tap dance on the altar.”
“Good to know,” chuckled the doctor, heading for the door. “If anything changes, give me a call and just be more careful in the future.”
Father Billy nodded, but was already miles away.
II
“She likes you.”
“She doesn’t. She thinks I’m an idiot.”
“Well, you are an idiot, but not for the reasons you think
she
thinks.”
“What about that time in band hall?”
“Yeah, well, what about that time in the library?”
“That was nothing. That was stupid.”
“That was her talking to you about you. She wanted to know something about something you knew.”
Phil thought about this for a moment, glancing out the school bus window at the passing trees. The bus, one in a caravan of three, had just gotten off the highway and he figured they didn’t have far to go before they reached the turn-off for Camp Easley.
“Are you listening to me?” asked Mark, his best friend and seat mate. “Faith’s your girl for the picking.”
Phil looked up six rows up to the back of the girl in question’s head, her short, brown hair cut short for the summer in an almost boyish, Beatles-y mop top. The object of Phil’s affection was looking down, her pert nose obviously in a book, probably something lodged in fantasy featuring fairies and misty glades. He strained to glimpse the back of her neck, a single mole a few inches to the left of the ridge of her spine, the only thing darkening her otherwise unblemished skin.
Skin that he had, more than once, imagined himself pressing his lips against.
“Bullshit,” he finally said.
Mark rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? Faith wants you, simple as that. If you don’t see it, you’re blind as a bat. Heck, she probably would’ve liked to sit next to you on the bus.”
“
No one
wants to sit next to me on the bus.”
Mark was about to reply in the negative, but then hesitated, knowing a protest would ring false.
“You think anyone remembers that?” he said, making an unconvincing attempt at reassurance. “That was
sixth grade
. How many people from our junior high even ended up going to Hardin? Like, less than half. And how many of them were in band? Like,
four
. And how many were Catholics? Pretty much you and me.”
“And Faith,” Phil sighed, then looked out the window again as the bus took a left turn at a now-familiar bent stop sign, which Phil knew meant they were about an hour from the camp. He could see the two other busses up ahead, “Church of the Lamb” stenciled on their sides, same as the one he was riding in.
One by one, the busses bounced off paved road and continued down a dusty dirt track that led through a thick patch of woods.
Realizing Mark was still waiting for more of a response, Phil waved a hand and the air. “Whatever,” he grunted.
“Whatever?” Mark exclaimed. “You’re really not going to say anything to her? You’ve got an entire month to work out your phraseology, man. You, her, the lake, cabins, the woods, night, stars equals
romance
. Walk her out to the dock. Hold her hand along the way. Kiss her when you get there. We’re going to be sophomores next year, dude. It’s time to get serious. Come on!”
Phil knew that Mark meant well.
A little over a year ago, when they’d been eighth graders at Dunne Junior High back in Plano, Mark had been madly in love with a girl named Rachel Howell. She’d been receptive to his advances – Mark was undeniably enigmatic, but in a nerdy, antic sort of way – and they’d held hands during the annual band trip to Six Flags Over Texas (the same trip that, two years prior, Phil had had an unfortunate “accident” on the bus ride home following the consumption of too many poorly-prepared hot dogs leading to a couple of years of bus seat-buddy ostracization).
In the park, Mark had gone so far as to put his arms around Rachel in the cold, underground Cave ride, basically a small metal boat that sat four people canoe-style as it towed them through what was supposed to be a sort of haunted, underground surrounding complete with trolls. Mark and Rachel had rode on it four times throughout the day, each time Mark’s arms holding her more tightly in the dark, though they never uttered a word to one another on any of the trips. When they got out, they went back to holding hands and Mark continued to feel like the king of the world.
But Rachel wouldn’t let him kiss her when he tried to do just this on the bus ride home. At the time, he’d been embarrassed for trying, but six weeks later, he decided to go for it again. It was just before the end of the school year when he made his move, but this time she told him flat out that she was saving her first kiss for her wedding day. Mark was devastated as Rachel’s family was moving away that summer and he figured he wouldn’t get another chance, for awhile, at least. After she moved, they’d continued writing back and forth throughout the summer as boyfriend-girlfriend as well as into the beginnings of freshmen year, but that soon petered out. When the letters stopped coming altogether, Mark realized that she’d moved on.
Phil, of course, had known this long before Mark had, but hadn’t felt it necessary to tell him. He’d debated it, but knew that sometimes being Johnny-on-the-Spot with the information was a great way to kill a friendship.
“Fine,” Phil said, figuring he had to throw Mark a bone. “I’ll tell her how I feel before the end of camp. Maybe I’ll even try to kiss her. Okay?”
“Thank God,” Mark said, nodding his approval. “One of us should be happy.”
A few rows up, Faith, unaware of what was being planned for her at the back of the bus, stared down at the library book in her lap, hoping she’d at least get through the current chapter before they reached camp. Her mother volunteered at the local library and had arranged to renew them remotely even though the standard check-out time was three weeks. Faith was thrilled by this as her worst fear was running out of books during the camp. She’d checked out seven on her card and another five on her mom’s, filling a bag with the thickest tomes she could find including a series of four books she’d been holding off reading for months in anticipation of this trip, the first of which was open on her lap.
The girl beside her – a blonde, cheerleader-type, Leilani-something – was turned around in her seat chatting to the two girls in the row behind them, something she’d been doing since the moment they’d left the church parking lot two hours ago. Faith was actually happy about this as it allowed her to read the whole trip instead of being compelled into meaningless, time-passing conversation with a veritable stranger.
“Then, David took off his shirt and I was like, ‘Oh-my-God,’” Leilani was saying. “He was wearing these thin little sweat shorts and I could totally see his
thing
.”
The girls behind Faith erupted in gasps of laughter as Faith questioned her decision
not
to put on her headphones as she read, fearing it would run down the iPod’s batteries too quickly.
“Did he see you?” one of the girls breathlessly inquired.
“I don’t know,” Leilani said, with a coy shrug. “I just turned around and went back to the drill team room. They’d been running sprints and were really sweaty, so they might’ve been almost finished at the practice track. When I went back out a few minutes later, they were gone.”
She then added, “They were probably all in the showers.
Together
.”
More gasps and giggles.
Faith buried herself deeper in her book, shifting uncomfortably at the conjured image, but then looked across the aisle, having spotted a pair of eye-catching sandals, brown with red soles and pretty, interwoven multi-colored laces that wrapped up the wearers’ ankles. She looked up to their owner and saw a girl she didn’t know reading a book, similarly tuning out everything around her. She was tan-complected and had frizzy black-and-blonde hair with the occasional purple highlight running through it. She was wearing yellow short-shorts and a blue t-shirt with a frog on it that had “Rome” written over the frog in yellow letters. She wore glasses with brown frames and, try as she might, Faith couldn’t tell what book she was using them to read.
The fact that Faith didn’t recognize her wasn’t a surprise given the number of different schools that fed into Church of the Lamb. She thought she might not even be from Plano, but from down in Dallas somewhere.
“Everybody? Can I have your attention?” came a voice from the front of the bus. One of the camp counselors who had been seated at the front of the bus, a short, mousy-looking brunette named Pamela Springs, was getting to her feet and looking back over the thirty or so campers.
As the girl with the cool sandals looked up from her book, she caught Faith’s gaze and looked over. Faith, embarrassed, immediately looked away.
“We’re almost to Camp Easley,” Pamela began, only to get drowned out by a hail of cheers, particularly from Leilani and her girl friends, who Faith realized were all on the Hardin High cheerleading squad. “Star packing up anything you might have taken out for the drive. These busses will
not
be staying at camp with us, so whatever you leave behind, you’ll have to do without.”
As the counselor sat back down, Faith started doing just this, stuffing her book back in her purple backpack when she allowed herself another glance over at the girl in the Rome t-shirt — who was already looking back at her.
“Hi. I’m Maia.”
“Oh, hi,” Faith said, now even more embarrassed. “I’m Faith.”
“What’re you reading?” Maia asked.
Faith held up the book. “It’s about the women behind Camelot. Morgan le Fay, Guinevere, etc. They were like witches, but not really. Le Fay means ‘the fairy’ in French.”
“Wow, cool,” said Maia.
“What’s yours?” Faith asked, nodding to the book in Maia’s hand.
“It’s a biography of Sugar Ray Robinson,” Maia said. “He was a boxer.”
Faith must have given her an odd look because Maia grinned, rolling her eyes self-deprecatingly. “I just grabbed a bunch of stuff from my dad’s shelves. He reads a lot of biographies.”
Maia dug around in her bag, pulling out a handful of others. “Sammy Davis, Jr., Pelé, Douglas MacArthur, Queen Elizabeth I, a history of Motown and a book about Atlantic City casinos in the eighties. A book for any occasion or interest.”
“You’re not kidding,” replied Faith, intrigued by the esoteric selection.
“My dad’s a vet, kind of messed up, but my mom’s worse, so I live with him,” Maia said in explanation. “He works at the Salvation Army and they get so many books, they let him take home any he wants.”
Faith could hear Leilani going still beside her at the admission that a fellow camper’s father worked at the Salvation Army, obviously hoping to hear more.
“That’s... neat,” was all Faith managed in reply.
She looked at the books and saw that they did look like cast-offs, the MacArthur book having had its cover almost torn off.
“You can borrow the Queen Elizabeth one if you want to,” Maia said. “Seems like it’d be up your alley.”
“Oh, no thanks,” replied Faith, holding up her backpack full of books. “I’ll probably barely get through all these.”
“Wow – you brought homework?” asked Leilani, looking over Faith’s shoulder. “Were you in summer school?”
Faith looked up at Leilani, who looked at her so querulously that she thought she actually meant the question.
“Oh, no. I just like to read.”
“Okay,” replied Leilani airily, as if she thought Faith was making fun of her.
Faith turned back to Maia, but she was already packing up her backpack and chatting with the girl next to her. Faith looked down at the floor of the bus and sighed, wondering how she always managed to find new ways to embarrass herself.
“Tick... tick... tick... not too late to turn back.”
Cindy Elton, a lithe, blonde camp counselor with pale, intelligent eyes looked over at Pamela, the counselor who’d addressed the campers, as she leaned in conspiratorially.
“Remember last year, how they were even worse than the year before?” she whispered. “How do you think they’ll be
this
year?”
Cindy grinned, but then shook her head.
“I just can’t imagine summer without church camp,” she replied. “Besides, this is my last year. I know I’m going to miss it, so I might as well do one more tour. What’s your excuse?”
“My parents hate my boyfriend,” Pamela said, referring to their fellow counselor, Humberto Mendes, who was already at the camp working alongside Father Billy to get it ready for the campers. “It’s a month where I don’t have to listen to their shit.”
Cindy laughed again, but then looked back at the campers behind them.
“Come on,” she said. “Part of you wouldn’t miss dorking around with the camper-kids?”
“Not a bit,” Pamela said, shaking her head. “If the church didn’t pay me better than waiting tables, I’d be counting tips right now.”
Cindy pretended to sigh, but then looked out the window. She’d been coming to Camp Easley, first as a camper and then as a counselor, for eleven years now. Though she didn’t admit it all that often, it was what she most looked forward to throughout the rest of the year.
An hour later, the busses reached the dusty camp parking lot and pulled to a stop alongside each other. As the doors swung open, the campers – ninety-two total, all between the ages of 12 and 17 – piled out and were immediately met by Father Billy and two camp counselors, Pamela’s baby-faced Hispanic boyfriend, Humberto Mendes and the somewhat zaftig, curly-haired blonde Judy Ketonis, both in their early twenties.
“Welcome back to you returning campers, welcome-welcome to you newbie campers,” Father Billy announced as the children and teens dutifully gathered around the backs of their respective busses as the drivers opened the back doors where the luggage had been piled. “As soon as you collect got your bags, line up over here according to last name to get your cabin assignments. A to M’s – sign in with Judy. N’s through Z’s, with Humberto. While today’s a free day where you can unpack and get acquainted with the camp and other campers, you’ll also be required to sign up for your camp duties, so start thinking what you’d like to do.”
Inside the busses, the counselors who had ridden down with the campers made their way up and down the aisles to make sure nothing had been left behind and, in her bus, Cindy found it completely empty.