The red church (18 page)

Linda turned from her front-row pew and looked at the others. Lester Matheson smiled at her, his teeth yellow. His wife Vivian swayed as if in rhythm to an inaudible hymn, her eyes closed. Old Mamie Pickett was beside Vivian, her wrinkled and spotted hands folded carefully across the waist of her blouse. Nell and Haywood Absher sat erect in the back row, Nell in her blue hat with the diaphanous net-ting. Their daughter Noreen wore a blissful, vacant expression. Others filled the church, their eyes bright with joy. Mama Bet sat in the last row, her wrinkled mouth pressed in solemn joy.

Abshers. Mathesons. Greggs. Picketts. McFalls. Only one family was missing. No, two. The Potters and the Houcks.

The sheriff had said that old man Potter had died. And
Boonie Houck had lost his sinful eyes and tongue and penis. Linda couldn't mourn their loss. They had found their own path to the everlasting glory that Archer spoke of. They had paid in blood so that the other families might live unto the fourth generation.
Nobody gets anything without a little sacrifice. Archer needed them. He just sent them home ahead
of the rest of us, that's all.

Archer lifted his head, his brown eyes as intense as truck headlights. Linda quit thinking. He was about to speak.

"We have done God's work," Archer said, swivel-ing his head to indicate the refurbished interior of the church.

"We done Him proud," Lester shouted.

"Amen," Vivian said, not opening her eyes. A clamor of approval spread across the room. Linda glanced at the black world outside the windows, mo-mentarily sorry for all the blind, misguided fools who had been led astray by that devil, Jesus. Even her very own sons had fallen for the devil's tricks. Her eyes welled and spilled over.

I'll bring them. They should know of the true path before it's too late.

She looked back at Archer, so grateful for his
res-
cuing her from the flames of Christianity. She slid from her hard pew and knelt on the floorboards, bowing to Archer. Her heart was a tortured mix of love and regret. She had found Archer, then had lost him, and now she had found him again.
Archer says that the truth will always win out. Faith will beat Satan and Jesus both.
She bent lower, her head near the floor she had spent hours cleaning.

Faith is sacrifice. And sacrifice is the currency of God-She
kissed the floor, tasted the red church. And she knew—
knew
—that Archer would need her chil-dren.

Ronnie and Tim.

But what were their sins?

A voice came to her, unbidden:
They don't pay for their own sins. They pay for yours, Linda.
She looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor. Archer smiled at her, eyes moist and arms spread in supplication.

Remember Abraham from the Old Testament? When God asked him to kill his beloved son Isaac? Do you think
Isaac was the one who had sins to pay for? Of course not. Abra-ham was the one who needed to suffer a
little, who needed to prove his faith.

Around her, the parishioners stood and began to file out, talking quietly among themselves. Their words were joyless now, muted, as if the gathered had given all their emotions to the walls of the church. Outside they went, shuffling sacks of skin and fluid and organs, while within, the wood seemed vibrant, soaked with light and energy and the ghosts of prayers.

Archer stepped off the dais and came to Linda. He offered her his hands. For a moment she thought she saw stigmata, tiny red pocks in the white palms.
The mark of Jesus.
She recoiled in horror even as the image faded.

"What's wrong, my child?" Archer said. He was the Archer of old, aged and ageless, wise and inno-cent, his eyes sparkling with love and hate.

"I-I'm . .." she stammered, looking back down to the floor. She couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't stare into the hot hells inside them, couldn't bear his gra-cious cruelty. Because she knew she would see the threat in them, the hunger, the need for her chil-dren.

But then, Archer was a divine incarnation, the flesh of God, sent among the mortals with a mission to perform. What were her needs next to the needs of Archer?

She felt Archer's strong arms pulling her to her feet.

"Do you doubt?" he asked simply. There was no anger in his voice, no accusation. Linda shook her head. She could hear the others talking outside, seemingly revived by the fresh spring night. A few cars started and drove away with a crunch of gravel.

Archer cupped her chin and tilted her head up until their eyes met. "You're as lovely as you were in California."

Linda thought for a moment that he was going to kiss her.
If only . . .

But she was mortal and he was the Second Son. He didn't need love the way that others did, the way that David did. For Archer, love was a fuel, a human juice that would propel the world to heaven. Love wasn't for the soul, not a contract between two people in defiance of death; no, to Archer, love was for the
Soul,
the collective, the glory. Not an ounce of it could be spared on carnal yearnings. Oh, she had loved him. Archer with his long hair and his Volkswagen bus with peace signs painted on the rear and sides. Archer who could never fit into the small-town mountain life. Archer who had dreams, who saw visions, who accepted the taunts and jeers with equanimity.

It was just after her high school graduation, when she and David had been busy planning their mar-riage and their careers and their future together. And that was when Linda first recognized the glass walls that surrounded her, that would forever keep her caged in the mountains. Oh, she could leave, she could go to Charlotte or the Outer Banks, but only for days at a time. Her life was here, as bound to the mountains as the granite foundations of the Earth were. That long-ago summer, she had carried the cer-tainty of it like a lump in her throat.

She was waiting tables at the Mountaineer Diner when Archer came in. She'd noticed Archer in high school, but he kept to himself, carrying at times a Bible or thick books that weren't required reading. That in itself was enough to mark him as an outcast. But coupled with the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of the Hung Preacher, he might as well have had a sign that read KICK ME stuck to the back of his shirt.

He sat in a corner booth that day, under the fake antique Pepsi-Cola sign. Linda looked around, hop-ing Sue Ann, the other waitress on duty, would take the "weird one." But Sue Ann was leaning over the counter, showing her cleavage to some red-eyed trucker. So Linda pulled out her order pad and walked over to the booth.

"What do you want?" she said, sizing him up as a lousy tipper in addition to being a long-haired creep. He fumbled with the menu and scraped a bit of gravy away with his thumb.

"Coffee," he said.

"That all?" She was irritated by the way he watched her, as if she were a piece of chocolate cake. He nodded. She turned to hurry back to the kitchen.

"Your name's Linda, isn't it?" he said.

Maybe he would tip after all. "Yeah," she said, giv-ing him her two-dollar smile.

"My name's Archer."

"I know. You go to Pickett High, don't you?"

"Did. I graduated."

Linda didn't remember him from the ceremony. Of course, she and David had hit a little Jim Beam before crossing the stage. Suddenly she felt guilty, as if his stare saw through her, into her. Then she was angry at herself for feeling guilty. Who cared what some longhaired bum thought?

His eyes were brown, vibrant yet distant. She felt dizzy looking into them.

"Uh . . . coffee, coming right up."

She brought the coffee but he didn't drink it. "The body is a temple," he said. "And sacrifice is the currency of God. For He is a jealous God, and He punishes children for the iniquity of the par-ents."
What a weirdo,
she thought, but within fifteen min-utes she was taking a break and sitting across from him in the booth, on the edge of the cheap vinyl seat. He talked matter-of-factly, and damned if he didn't know just what he was talking about.

"You're tired of this place," Archer said. "You're tired of these people and all this arguing over whether Chevy is better than Ford and what caliber bullet takes down a deer the fastest. You're about to be married, your union blessed by God, and you think that this is your dream come true, that it's hap-pily-ever-after from now on. But scratch the sur-face"—he leaned forward as he said this, their faces only a foot apart—"and you find that you're scared to death that this is
it,
this is all there is to life." She tried to protest, tried not to show that he had completely peeled back the layers of her soul like an onion. But she was already enthralled, already hooked, already mesmerized by the cadences of his speech. And by the time Sue Ann was calling Linda to get back to work, she had agreed to meet Archer for dinner. She had to lie to David, but sinning was much eas-ier back then. She and Archer ate at the Chick'n Shack over the line in Tennessee. She didn't resist when Archer took her out behind the old red church after dinner. They rode back through town in his van, her with her head down, hoping no one would see her. At the same time, she was thinking that this was it, she was going to do it, she was going to cheat on David and damn the consequences. It was time to finally get around to the business of taking chances. But Archer only wanted to talk. She thought at first it was just another come-on line. He wasn't really her type. She was no longer sure just what
was
her type, even though she had always thought it was David. So they sat in the dark and Archer talked, and even though she was aching with lust and the fire of her flesh would lead her to the fires of hell, she some-how couldn't get up the courage to touch him, Archer talked of strange things. He made her look at the stars. He pointed to the church bell and the dogwood and told the story of the Hung Preacher. Linda thought at first he was trying to spook her so that she would slide close and he could put his arm around her. But he told the story wrong. In Archer's version, the Hung Preacher was a vic-tim of persecution. "It was all a conspiracy of Jesus," he said. His eyes seemed to gather the scraps of stray light and glistened like oil. "Jesus got in the heads of all those people and made them kill my great-great-grandfather. And Jesus had to pay nothing for his own sins. Because God loved Jesus more than He loves the entire world."

Linda knew she should be getting the hell out of the van, that he was insane, but he spoke so reason-ably and kept his voice level. So she listened to the rest of it, how Jesus hated the McFalls because they would bring forth the holy child. And that child would rise up and reveal Jesus for the fallen angel that he was. By morning, when the first timid rays of the sun peeked over the hills, she was more than in love; she was devoted.

She went through that summer with a bounce in her step, seeing David throughout the week but sav-ing every Sunday night for Archer and his private sermons. When she found out that Archer had oth-ers, like Mandy Potter and Esther Matheson, she got jealous. But Archer explained how each had a part in the Divine Plan and that Linda would always hold a special place in his heart.

They moved to California at the end of the sum-mer. Linda wrote a good-bye letter to David, three pages. At the end, she'd written,
I hope you understand, but there's a larger mission that I must attend
to. I love you.
Archer helped her write that last bit, and she cried until Archer made her stop. They headed west in the van, Archer driving, the seven girls taking turns sleeping, singing silly songs by the Eagles and the Beach Boys, at least until Archer pointed out the sinful subtexts in the lyrics. Then they passed the time wondering aloud what California would be like.

"What are we going to do out there?" Linda asked from the front passenger seat. They were halfway across Tennessee, and the hills were rounded and green. Archer was hunched over the steering wheel, wearing a faint, peaceful smile.

"Get delivered," he had said.

Now, with his face only inches from hers, Linda wanted so very much for Archer to deliver her once and for all.

TWELVE

Sheriff Littlefield looked around the churchyard at the trees. The moon bathed the open hill with light, and the tombstones were like silver sentinels, mute and mocking. Littlefield took a deep breath of the chilly air, trying to clear his head. His tongue was fouled with a sweetly putrid aftertaste. He felt as if he had just walked out of the long tunnel of a dream.

He had come to the church to see if he could learn more about Archer McFall. His plan had been to keep a polite smile on his face and sit quietly through the service. He would shake hands if necessary and bow in prayer at the right time. But his eyes would always be slightly open.

His plan had failed. The green digital display on his watch read 1:57. Somehow he had lost nearly two hours. He leaned against the front of the Trooper and tried to remember what had brought him to the red church.

The others had gone already, shaking hands with each other and saying "God bless," and driving back to their dark farmhouses. Linda Day and the preacher were inside the church. He could hear them talking. The sheriff was hit by a sudden wave of nausea that almost drove him to his knees. The candlelight dancing from the open church door blurred in his vision. The huge, twisted dogwood swayed, as if mov-ing to invisible music. His head roared with the first soul-ripping toll of the church bell. He covered his ears and looked up at the bell tower, his mind scattered by the noise.
No rope. It can't be ringing.