Tuesday, October 27

End of all time

Tuesday dawned bloody red. Red streaks ran in ribbons across the sky. The lake reflected a crimson universe. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning—and all the rest of us, too, I thought, and hugged myself.

I figured it was as good a sky as any to end with—if it was all truly over. I got ready early—but not too early—and actually dressed up, a little. I wore an old blue cashmere sweater and a pair of pressed black pants. After all, what did you wear to burn in hell for eternity? And why was I expecting to burn? I’d never been a bad person. I’d done some good. I found myself hoping all of that would be taken into account when … well, I didn’t know what to expect. This was going to be a very different day.

Sorrow begged to come along but all I could do was pat his black head, look into those distressed, dark button eyes, and tell him I hoped I’d be back. No matter how it worked out, it would be sad. I think he’d picked up on my melancholy.

When I got to the campground it was already after ten. The crowd was huge, reaching back out of the open space to between the trailers, and beyond. I took a place at the edge of the crowd and looked around for Dolly, or Officer Winston, or Lucky Barnard. It seemed no matter what went on out there that morning, it would have to do with the murders.

Everybody from Leetsville had lined around the periphery of the crowd; even Eugenia was there with Gloria, Simon, and Cate. Eugenia had puffed her hair to an impossible height, ready for eternal damnation. I saw a man ask her to change places with him so he could see.

Crystalline, Sonia, and Felicia arrived fifteen minutes after I had. I called out, beckoning them to join me.

“The guy knows how to draw a crowd,” Crystalline said as she elbowed her way to my side, nodding her head of red curls caught with tortoiseshell combs.

“What do you think, Emily? We gonna be here at twelve-o- one?” she asked.

I shrugged. “No clue. Something’s going to happen. I just don’t know what.”

“This have to do with Marjory’s death?” Crystalline asked, bending close to my ear.

I shrugged.

Slow, mordant music began at eleven o’clock. These weren’t the rousing hymns they’d played on revival nights. I recognized Bach. I recognized Beethoven. I recognized a few hymns I’d heard once. I’d gone to a little independent church with a friend of mine when I was twelve years old. I never forgot that clapboard church in the country, nor the slow, chilling music.

The stage we all looked toward was empty.

The men who had milled around up there before weren’t in sight. There were the hanging lightbulbs and a long, white tarp draped overhead. Nothing else. We waited. The music drowned out talk. Our nervousness was palpable. It wrapped around, became a thing you could feel coming from the skin of the person next to you.

Overhead, the sky had changed from sunny to an odd shade of yellow—as if wind might be in the offing. The red streaks of that morning were gone, replaced by a deck of heavy black clouds coming out of the north. I heard thunder over the loud music—and felt thunder move through the ground.

At eleven-thirty, the Reverend Fritch climbed onto the stage with two people helping him. He was wrapped in a wide and very white robe that whipped around his ankles. The man was huge, taking up a great deal of space. He seemed weak—holding on with pale-fingered hands to the robed figures beside him, then looking over his shoulder to a third person, as if to make certain he was there.

One of those figures was Dolly. Another was Sister Sally. The third, walking behind, was Brother Righteous, his cowl back, sleeves rolled up, tortured face contorting as he looked over the gathered crowd.

Reverend Fritch shook off the helping hands when he stood at the front of the stage. The women didn’t move far as Reverend Fritch raised his arms for quiet. Silence fell. The music died. At that moment, there came a roll of thunder from the north. The ground shook. The air shook. I didn’t know about the others, but I began to shake like the last leaf on a bare tree.

“The moment nears,” the preacher called out, head back, arms wide, voice gathering strength. “Soon. By noon it will begin. Do you hear the thunder? Only the start, my friends. The wind will grow. The thunder will beat at us. The lightning will strike. And then …”

He paused, arms raised above his head. “And then … and then
… and then … my Lord! The sky will split open and the hand of God will reach out from among the clouds to smite the wicked. The Four Horsemen will be among us, striking left and right with their mighty swords …”

A woman off to my right fainted dead away. Her friends left her where she’d fallen. Children, throughout the crowd, were crying. A few people moaned.

“This is the moment the Righteous among you have been waiting for.” His voice reached the level of a screech, causing the microphones to squeal, the grating noise hurting my ears. “The earthly toil is over. Today … I said TODAY we will join our loved ones in heaven, to sit among the angels …”

Moans grew as thunder rocked the campground. In a few minutes I knew I was going to get wet. Maybe I wouldn’t be carried away on a bloody sword, but I sure was going to be soaked with rain.

“And we will have miracles …” the Reverend Fritch shouted out, voice booming around us along with thunder. Lightning split the sky—sideways overhead. The thunder was immediate, roaring, shaking even the trees, echoing off as no earthly sound can echo. A generator behind the stage sparked high arcs of fire. Light bulbs hanging above the stage on wildly dancing wires blew in bright showers of glass as a backup generator whirred to life.

On cue, Sister Sally and Dolly took Brother Righteous by the arms and escorted him to the front of the stage. The reverend stepped aside, with a flourish of his robe, to make room. He turned a benign, fatherly smile on the trembling Brother Righteous, put a hand on his back, and patted encouragement.

The emaciated man opened his mouth. We waited, expecting words that would save us. Sally leaned in close, urging him to speak. He tried again, and then again.

There was no heckling from the audience. Everyone held their breath, including me. The wind picked up and pushed hard at our bodies. Every ounce of will in each of us was directed toward the stage and the trembling man trying so desperately to speak.

Black clouds moved faster, roiling overhead. The stage and the clearing grew dark. People became shadows. Urgency gripped us. We stood as still as statues, waiting as the driving rain struck.

Brother Righteous stepped back, then clasped his hands together near his mouth. He looked up into sideways rain beating at his face, then looked hard down into the crowd. His face changed. His look of fear turned into astonishment. He recoiled, seemed to take a breath, then straightened, his back tall and firm. I tried to find what he was seeing down in the crowd but there were only rows of indistinguishable robed figures lined in front of the stage. He looked down again, squinting hard. He licked rain from his lips.

Reverend Fritch, his robe soaked, took a step toward the Brother, coming to his side, grabbing his elbow to support him then pushing him slowly closer to the microphone.

The two men became as one; their robes blowing out on hard gusts of wind and rain. They became entangled, commingled—two men in a single wildly blowing robe. They bent close, heads together as one person, fighting to stand.

“Five minutes left,” the reverend grabbed the mic and shouted, turning to point at the clouds rolling faster and faster over us. “Brother Righteous must speak …”

One of the brother’s hands came out from the folds of his robe. His shaking hand formed into an accusing finger. He pointed at something or someone in that first row.

Over the whining microphone came the sound of a throat trying to be cleared, a voice trying to be heard. Brother Righteous’ lips moved. An unintelligible sound, coming through the sputtering amp, flew over the heads of the crowd.

“Four minutes!” the reverend intoned around his friend as he fought to keep his footing on the stage floor.

My clothes hung heavy against my skin. The cold grew intense as the wind whipped around us.

“I …” Brother Righteous cried out, followed by a shriek of the mic. “… am not … my brother’s keeper.”

Quiet was absolute as the words moved off, falling on the heads of the faithful, and disappearing as if they rode on thunder.

Behind me someone whispered, “A miracle!”

The reverend looked down at the place where Brother Righteous pointed. He put a pudgy hand to his lips and whispered something. Brother Righteous nodded and pulled the mic close, leaning in.

“I … buried … my … own … mother,” the poor, struggling man blurted. “My brother … I didn’t … know. It was … an accident … he told me. But … I … helped bury her … and never told.”

We looked quizzically at each other, not understanding.

Brother Righteous, obviously under great strain, leaned forward, speaking to all of us but also to someone in the crowd. “I didn’t know … my brother … was a murderer.”

Everything that happened after that was a blur. The rain hit harder. The trees bent in half. The wind tore off the overhanging tarp and wrapped the men and women in a shroud they fought hard against. There were screams and shouts and curses. The Reverend Fritch went into amazing motion for a man his size. He launched his body into the air—as if about to fly. There was a terrible, loud crack. I couldn’t tell if it was a tree limb falling, or if this was the sound of the heavens opening. Then another crack, and an echoing retort: around and around the clearing, into the trees. Panic set in. People grabbed each other, some screamed; there were frightened cries and pleas for mercy. I fought off clutching hands, dealing with my own terror. I ran toward the stage. Something was going on there. A mass of flying robes, and people, and shouts.

The Reverend Fritch lay on the stage floor, his white robe transformed by the blood, his body like something pierced, stopped in mid-flight. His large hands grasped at his middle. He stared down in wonder as blood streamed through his wide fingers. I heard terrible gasps for air when I got up there. Brother Righteous knelt in the reverend’s blood. His hands were clasped together, his head thrown back, mouth filled with a terrible keening.

Dolly was the first to look up from where she knelt near the dying man. She screamed at me and pointed toward a robed figure pushing back through the stunned crowd. There were other shouts and screams. Another shot rang out and everything stopped.

The rain passed on by. The clouds rolled off—as clouds always do. There was no more thunder; no lightning. Within moments the sun shone down again and, as with all storms, fear drifted away.