The Godsend of River Grove Read online

Chapter 13 Worse and Worse

  Aggie Lambert opened her front door to find Hila Grant standing there in a long, light-gray coat, her face very pale in the porch light, looking like an exceptionally pretty ghost. “Hello, Aggie. I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”

  “I know why you’re here,” Aggie said. “I’ve been sort of expecting you. Come on in and sit down. Here, I’ll take your coat.”

  They settled in Aggie’s living room after she sent her teenage son and daughter away to finish watching their TV show in another room. Looking around from a big, aging sofa, Hila saw that the room was a comfortable mess: plenty of throw pillows, empty pop cans, old newspapers, and what not. Aggie turned off the TV and sat on the other end of the couch, turning to face Hila with one foot on the floor and one off. She smiled and lines showed in her squarish face.

  “You want to know what happened when Mark died.”

  “I think so,” Hila said. “Actually, I want to understand the whole picture, I mean how the whole River Grove congregation got to be the way they are, that they could ever have made Ollie Fulborne an elder in the first place, let alone taken him back.”

  “Oh, is that what you want to know? Well, he makes it easy for them. Everyone likes to do things the easy way.”

  “But all the work he wants them to do. Is that easy?”

  “Most do very little,” Aggie said. “Oh, honey—you don’t mind if I call you honey? —if they just show up on Sundays, they’ll never lose their membership. If someone gets on a few committees too, then what a saint, huh? You bet it’s easy. You don’t have to study the Bible, you don’t have to pray, you don’t even have to really believe in God or anything as long as you don’t let on. That’s where Mark went wrong, thinking that he would wake people up about Fulborne. They don’t want to be woke up.”

  “Why?” Hila said in a small voice. “Why go to church at all if it’s just a farce?” She proceeded to answer her own question. “They feel guilty and they want someone to tell them they’re OK.”

  Aggie nodded. “But Mark wanted them to experience the grace of God. He went around challenging assumptions and talking up rebellion.” She laughed. “My Lord, he had an attitude. I can see it in Quentin and Carey, the same thing. Most people just wanted Mark to shut up, but he wasn’t made that way. My God, they had to kill him to shut him up. All right, yes, it was an accident. Kyle Dottison never meant to knock him over the rail. You know, even from the start I felt sorry for Kyle.”

  “But not for Ollie,” Hila supplied

  Aggie seemed to concentrate on her polished nails for a while. “I don’t say Ollie meant for it to happen. Probably he even felt bad about it. But that and a few other things cost him two years as an elder while I—lost Mark.” She looked up smiling. “No I never felt sorry for him. I’ve tried to forgive him. But you know I lost other things too. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to River Grove anymore. I tried following Cora to that house church, because she and I go way back to when our husband’s were in seminary together. Funny we’re both widows now. Anyway, I didn’t like the house church. Now we just don’t go to church.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Hila. “During the year when Ollie and Betty left River Grove and went to First Baptist, couldn’t you have attended River Grove then?”

  “No. I guess you don’t see that place the way I see it. I know now that it’s the sort of place where a man can be hated for reminding them of what Jesus said. Sure Mark was strident, but what he was telling them was straight out of the Bible. I don’t see it like a church; more like—I don’t know—a prejudice school. It’s where you go to learn to despise your inferiors, which is anybody who’s not a good churchgoer. I don’t want Quentin and Carey exposed to that. But I don’t know how to raise them, and I miss Mark so much.”

  Now at last her composure was broken. She waited and collected herself. “Anyway, I heard about what you did, I heard through Carla Novinsky, who still goes there and she tells me what happens, and she was there that Sunday night. I think you were the only one who really said much of anything against him, just you and Jerry Oker. Only now you’ve left there, and so did we, and so have the Okers. That’s how it works.”

  “And Cora too,” Hila said, sliding closer to her. “You mean we all leave, all of us who might fight it. We drift in a few at a time and leave in disgust a few at a time. But only think how many of us over the decades! Every church, most anyway, must have a ghost army of people who rejected it, or were rejected. No one keeps track of us, but who’s to say we don’t come to outnumber the members? It isn’t improbable.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of us. I could name you several families that used to go there. Some are going to other churches now, some not.”

  Hila was thoughtful. “But that means—that I’m one of many. Lots of fed up, angry people. To the River Grovers I look like an isolated oddball, a crazy woman, but I’m one of maybe hundreds, if you count back to when the church was founded in the forties.”

  “Honey, you’re not crazy.” Aggie patted her shoulder.

  Hila focused on a framed photograph on the table beyond Aggie, a picture of a smiling Mark Lambert. “You don’t know what it means to me to talk to someone who gets it, who understands. What would you say if I said to you, ‘But they do so much good after all; let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater; and, uh, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs?’”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard all that,” Aggie said softly. “And ‘don’t judge the church by the people in it; just look to Jesus.’ Well, I guess that’s true to a point, but maybe none of those people lost a spouse because a church had gone rotten. I mean how far do you want to go with that? Should I ‘just look to Jesus’ if someone’s teaching my kids to be sanctimonious prigs?”

  Hila stared into space. “There’s something evil at River Grove,” she said.

  “Yes, evil.” Aggie seemed surprised and pleased that Hila had used the word. “I used to feel it when I walked in there, like a spirit of bondage.”

  Hila had never felt it that way, but she nodded. “I want God to show me how this could happen, how it could be like that.”

  “Now, honey, don’t start telling God to show you this thing or explain that thing. Haven’t I asked why Mark is gone? You’ll just drive yourself nuts asking questions like that. I had to give it a rest.”

  “But I can’t let go of it,” Hila said. “Because then what would I do for the rest of my life, afraid to go to another church, afraid that God would let that, that spirit of bondage come again or whatever it was, that spirit that no one can resist and that He permits?”

  “Well, you’ve got me there. I guess that’s where I am, hiding out because I don’t want to trust anyone. I may never darken the door of a church again. Yeah, I’m afraid.”

  Hila shivered. “I just won’t. Go on living without an answer, I mean, living in fear and defeat. I don’t mean to be offensive to you, Aggie.”

  “It’s all right, kid. No offense taken. And if you break through to something, let me know.”

  After a few more minutes Hila stood. “Thanks, Aggie. Do you have any idea where I should go from here? How can I understand River Grove?”

  “Um, maybe. You just go on home, and if you get a call from someone, you’ll know I talked her into it. Just wait and see.”

  Because of his busy schedule Evan had had difficulty getting together with Hila again, but they had at last settled on a Friday night date at a second-run movie house where The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was playing. A meal first at the Steak ’n Shake. Hila did not much feel like going, for she was afraid that they would argue about her attitude toward church, but she brightened when he called back suggesting that Kathy Hofrider and Richard Ozark go too. That would make it more of a party. She wondered fleetingly about Richard’s status on this outing: was he considered to be Kathy’s dat
e? The situation was a little sticky, but at least Jane Burson was not coming.

  At six-thirty they were all in a booth, having ordered, and Evan was quoting lines from old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, complete with his imitations of the character’s voices. Soon Kathy was answering his Boris with a dead-on Natasha, and they were all smiling. There followed a discussion of the movie time, which was solved when Richard fetched a used newspaper from a wall rack. The conversation then settled into random comments.

  Presently Kathy caught Hila’s eye. “Did you hear that Pastor Steve is leaving? He turned in his resignation to the board Tuesday.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Hila said. “He was on the phone to me Monday while I was sick, and dropped a few hints. Is he going to the Shiloh church in Oblong?”

  “How did you know that?” Evan asked.

  “Secretaries know everything.” Hila immediately regretted her choice of words, for she imagined that the other three were remembering that some secretaries are spies. “So I guess it’s pastor-search all over again, and after just two years,” she said with a show of cheerfulness.

  “They’re bringing in a man to candidate right away,” said Evan. “By the end of the month.”

  Hila raised an eyebrow. “You’re not…?”

  “No, I’ve been advised not to.”

  “I see. Well, maybe I’ll just tiptoe past that.”

  “The bigwigs on the board don’t see Evan as senior pastor material,” Kathy said. “But shouldn’t the congregation be allowed to decide that?”

  “You don’t tiptoe past anything, do you?” Evan said with a grin. “I’m not sure I want it anyway.”

  “And this guy who’s coming to audition,” Kathy said, “is Ollie’s handpicked boy.”

  “Uh, Kathy, that’s not for general consumption,” Evan said.

  “Well, I’ve said it now.” Kathy waved this away. “Steve found that out from By Hoplinger, and he told Evan. Before he was a pastor, this man used to be in Gideons with Ollie. There’s not even going to be a second candidate.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Evan said.

  “There may not be. I hope the guy’s good, because I’ve almost decided to become a member. I guess you’re safe either way, Hila. Grandma told me you’ve started going to her church. Do you like it?”

  “It was nice to meet Myra,” Hila said diplomatically.

  “Isn’t she a gas? I hope she didn’t spill the beans about all our family scandals. Did she say anything about my Uncle Ernie? Say, what is it?”

  Hila was looking fixedly at a folded newspaper section lying near her.

  Richard looked at it from his side of the table. “It’s a mummy—huh!” he said. “I saw that in my paper this morning.”

  “Me too,” Hila said. “They found a new one in Egypt in a good state of preservation and there’s the picture of it. You can actually see the features of the face.”

  Kathy pulled the section toward her. “I always think these things are so gross. Nobody better dig me up and unwrap me after I’m dead. Who does it look like?”

  She stared as if groping for some connection in her mind. Richard and Evan looked closer too. A few moments passed.

  “It’s Ollie,” Hila said quietly.

  “Oh, yikes, it is!” Kathy shrieked, and the men laughed. “Look at that nose and chin. Just put glasses on him and it’s Ollie.”

  “I thought it was quite appropriate,” said Hila and took a bite of sandwich.

  Evan firmed his mouth. “Hila, he may not be one of your leaders anymore, but let’s not get started on him.”

  “What do you mean appropriate?” Kathy said, ignoring this.

  Hila hesitated, glancing at Evan. “I meant, of course, that like this royal mummy, Ollie is to be respected and honored. No doubt old pharaoh whoever-he-is was a venerable person—” Evan was making disapproving sounds “—an upholder of laws and in charge of many slaves.”

  All four were silent for a moment.

  Evan forced a smile. “That’s tactfully put, Hila.”

  “The parallels are endless,” she said carelessly and mouthed a French fry.

  “Well, it certainly does look like him,” Kathy said, trying to sail past the tension. “But I’d never tell him so. Somebody told me once that I look like Margaret Hamilton, and I was sorely offended, whether she meant with or without the green make-up. Who does Richard look like, do you think?”

  “Nobody,” said Richard. “I don’t look like anyone—huh!”

  “Well, Evan then? I think Evan looks a lot like a young Jimmy Cagney.”

  After the movie, Evan took Hila home and walked her to the door, both standing on the cold screened-in porch. Enough light came through a window from inside the house that he could see her, see how her blonde hair lay over the wide collar of her gray coat. She looked sensational, and he said something of the sort. She thanked him.

  “But you’re not happy with me.”

  “I, uh, know you warned me to expect anything from you, but I thought we could just have fun with our friends this evening. It’s a little hard to take when you mock an elder.”

  “The sarcasm was to your benefit,” she said. “It was to avoid saying right out what I think of him.”

  “You couldn’t just be silent?” She shook her head. “You know, the Bible says that we should speak well of our leaders. OK, maybe he isn’t your leader now, but still, for the sake of us who are part of his congregation, you might have said nothing.”

  She turned away, looking across the yard and down the lamp-lit street. “When I saw that picture at breakfast this morning, I could hardly breathe. It doesn’t just look like Ollie, it is him, if you know what I mean, with all his associations of death and the Law and—and slave driving. River Grove has propped him in the pulpit, wrappings and all, and they’re glad to build his pyramid for him.”

  “Can you hear your voice? How full of bitterness it is?”

  She turned back to him. “No, you’re mistaken. Not bitterness. Evan, these people’s souls are at stake. Do you think this is just a petty, little personal game to me? Doesn’t whether they go to heaven or hell have anything to do with it? Or is it all just whether little Hila like or hates an old man?”

  Evan felt that no souls, except perhaps Hila’s, were endangered so he passed this by. “I’m talking about what happens to you personally. That’s what matters to me.”

  “Then find out what’s happening to me. I am soul-sick, you’re right, but not from hatred of Ollie Fulborne.”

  “Well, what is it, then?”

  She hesitated. “You’ll just listen and not comment?”

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “Then it’s this. I thought I’d block Ollie out of returning to power, but what I encountered is a whole congregation full of willing slaves. They deserve him. Then to make matters worse, I have had to face it that I—I don’t like…”

  He touched her coat sleeve. “Don’t like what?”

  “I don’t…” She backed away a step to where the light did not reach. “It’s that Christianity is way too difficult in reality. I don’t mean the sunny, Sunday School substitute, but what we’re actually called on to go through and put up with. We’ve got to see the truth and say it but be rejected and cast out and be like…‘He was despised and rejected of men.’ That’s the ideal, that’s the best we can hope for. You’re not doing it right, I guess, unless you’re miserable. Not that I’ve lived it out, you understand. I’m not claiming that. But I’ve gotten close enough to see that cross.”

  “And that’s what you don’t like.”

  “That’s what I don’t like. But what I was going to say is that I don’t like Jesus Christ.”

  “What! What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t shout. It’s not as if I’d announced I’m going to murder my parents.” She added in a murmur, “Anyway, you promised no comment.�
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  “You can’t expect me to say nothing about that. What do you mean?” He stepped closer but could hardly see her face.

  “I mean what I say. I don’t say He doesn’t take it harder than anyone, but the fact is He leads us to defeat. And I—I don’t like Him, and I tried hard to take the control of the River Grove situation away from Him, thinking I was doing Him a favor. When that didn’t work, I’ve had to face it that I wasn’t exactly on His side to begin with. I don’t want to be on His bus that goes over the cliff, I mean full of His devoted disciples, like I thought I was. Now He can go on without me. I don’t claim Him.”

  A car went by on the narrow side street, then another.

  “This is just getting worse and worse,” he said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Well, what are you going to do? You need to pray.”

  “Who says I haven’t? It’s not like I said to myself one day, ‘Hey, I’m going to deny Jesus Christ.’ I just gradually discovered that I do deny Him. That’s who I am, where I am. If He were here in Viola in the flesh, I believe I would sell Him out.”

  “And you’re telling me you’re praying? Regularly?”

  “Believe it or not.”

  “Well, if you feel like betraying Him, that doesn’t leave you an awful lot of scope for prayer, does it?” he said angrily.

  “No, not much. Other than telling Him off, I’m down to one word: help, help, help.”

  “He will help you, if you mean it.”

  “Oh, I mean it all right. But He’s not going to remake the nature of the world just to suit me. Say, do you want to come in? I think Bill’s here, judging by that light. We could have a snack.”

  “Yeah, it’s cold. I can see our breath. But Hila, if you’re not a Christian, then I can’t date you. I need to know how much of what you’re saying is exaggeration. Are you a Christian?”

  He waited. At last she said, “I don’t know, but I think I am.”

  “You need to know. I need to know. So I guess I’ll go now. I’ll be praying for you.”

  She thanked him, watched him to his car, and went in. As she had expected, she found Bill in the living room, and he obviously had something on his mind for the TV was not on.

  “What was that all about?” he said from the recliner.

  She took her coat off. “Evan’s unhappy with me because my faith is in crisis,” she said unemotionally. “So what’s happened with Bafilia?”

  She knew that for weeks Bill had left his written-in self at the point when the Bafilians had refused to believe in him. At that point he had simply stopped writing. He had since been deciding whether his written-in self would disappear from the Whiskers, or perhaps be imprisoned by the Bafilians, or perhaps be allowed to wander the land as a presumed lunatic.

  “I made a miscalculation,” he told her a few minutes later as they sat munching Doritos. “I started writing again tonight, and I made my character disappear. Well, naturally I didn’t want to find out what they would do with me if I stayed. Besides Sir Miff and Lady Amelia and the rest were due back from their adventure, and I didn’t want to try to explain to them. It was hard enough with Miff’s servants.”

  “So you went poof?”

  “No special effects. I was just gone. But I did it right before their eyes. Miscalculation.”

  She thought about this. “Now they’re having second thoughts on whether you’re a fraud.”

  “Sort of. Miff and party have come, heard all about it, and—they think I’m an evil wizard hanging about. Miff is having his own wizard patrol the place, but they’re all so stressed that they can hardly sleep at night. The Garden Mole is particularly antsy.”

  She yawned. “OK, I get the picture. But tonight I have real-world crises.”

  “No, Hila, don’t go to bed yet.” He pushed down the foot support on the recliner with a clang and leaned forward. “I’ve gummed this up and I want to fix it. I need your help. Would you go in, by yourself I mean, and do some explaining, do some soothing and paw-holding?”

  “Oh, you can write me in if you want,” she said shortly.

  “No, I can’t charm like you can. You’ve got the words. I need you to write yourself in, and all you need to do is convince them that I’m gone and won’t come back and that they can forget about me.”

  “Why don’t you just cross out and rewrite? Going back to before you went there.”

  “I’ve thought about that, but you know we’ve never done that. A line here and there, sure, but not whole series of events. It’s like they’ve happened and we can’t change it, we shouldn’t change it.”

  She vaguely agreed without paying much attention. “I’ll think about it later. Run this by me when I’m not limping through life.”

  “Yeah, you said you’re having a crisis of faith,” he said. “Lousy bad timing for me. How long do these things last?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Well, how will I know when you’re over it?”

  She stood. “Oh, all right, I’ll do it. Sometime, not tomorrow. But what makes you think my incarnation will be any more successful than yours?”

  “I’ve got it all figured out. They believe in angels, so we’ll have you go in the guise of an angel. You look like one anyway.”

  “Why, thank you, I—”

  “And you’ll tell them I was a holy man who went mad from too much praying and fasting and that you snatched me away to have me cured at some monastery. We can give you a halo, wings, the works. They’ll buy it, you know they will.”

  She did not want to consider this. “Give me the details tomorrow. It’s late.”

  “Yeah, I’ve still got to walk home. But I wanted to get this worked out. Thanks for the Doritos.”

  She saw him out the door, checked on the dog and on Eddie, and eventually settled in her bedroom, in pajamas and a robe. There she at last gave some thought to what Bill had asked her to do. She quickly determined that she would not lie, not even to Bafilians. Therefore, no epiphany. But if Bafilian nerves needed soothing, then she would give it one try because she had promised.

  She looked at her Bible on the bedside table as she did every evening lately, as if it were a huge homework assignment. Her time of prayer would be the same tonight as last night and all recent nights: cries of accusation against God followed by—help, help, help. Possibly accompanied by a few sticky tears. She hated to cry.

  The phone rang downstairs and she went to it as a welcome distraction.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, is this Hila Grant?” It was a girl’s voice, uncertain and low.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Nothing but breathing for a few moments. “Aggie Lambert said I should call you. She said you needed to hear from me.”

  “But she didn’t tell me who would be calling,” said Hila.

  “I’m Pam, Pam Oker.”

  I should have known, she thought. “Hi, Pam.”

  “Hi. I guess you want to ask me about what happened. Mom and Dad are over at our neighbors’, but they won’t be gone long, so tonight’s no good. But I thought maybe you could meet me somewhere, or maybe I could come over there, like tomorrow evening.”

  “Don’t you want your Mom and Dad to know you’re talking to me?”

  “No. They like you, but they say it’s not good for me to talk about it.”

  “I see. Well, if you come around tomorrow night, I’ll be here.”

  “By yourself?”

  Hila thought quickly. “Yes, I’ll send Eddie to the movies or something. Come about eight. Do you drive?”

  “No, not by myself yet, but I have a friend I’ll be visiting who can drop me off. Can you take me home?”

  “Sure.” Hila gave her the address.

  “OK, I better get off the phone in case Mom and Dad come back.”

  “Goodby, Pam.”

  She pushed the off button, feeling dissatisfied with what sh
e had just done. What was Aggie Lambert’s point? Unless this girl was an awful liar, she had been sexually harassed; but Hila already knew that. What could a high schooler tell her that would explain the spiritual sickness at River Grove and not just accentuate the fact that, yes, the place was indeed sick? In that case the next evening promised to be another step down the spiral staircase of depression. But she dared not call back to cancel. Pam’s parents might be coming in the door. Neither could she be absent when Pam would come, for that would be cruel. The girl obviously thought she had something worth saying. But Hila had become someone who did not feel worthy enough even to sit and listen. She could no longer say what was the point of her existence.

  Pam arrived promptly at eight, and Hila led her to a comfortable chair and sat down near her. She had been aware of Pam for some years, having seen the Okers at church when she was home visiting from Indianapolis. Pam was slim and fair, with very short dark hair and large eyes. Like many girls, she would use mascara, creating a slightly ghoulish effect. Hila made small talk with her for a few minutes; then observing that the girl was unable to get to the point, decided to help her and, she hoped, get this over with quickly.

  She cleared her throat to indicate a change of subject. “I’ve been trying to fathom why the River Grove congregation is so stubbornly, immovably partial to Ollie Fulborne, no matter what he says or does. Aggie seems to think you can give me some insight.”

  Pam shifted her eyes away. “She just said I should tell you my story.”

  Hila grieved that there was no pardonable way to tell the girl to keep it short. “Did she?”

  “Yes, and I came because I know what you said that night at the election meeting. Darla Basserman told me all about it, how you stood up and told them not to vote for him. Only she said you said that it was just his word against mine, which is what everyone says except Mom and Dad. They believe me.”

  “Pam, I believe you enough that I’ve warned a young friend of mine not to ever be alone with him.”

  “That’s right.” Pam’s voice quavered slightly. “Tell her to stay away from him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “It doesn’t sound like much compared to, like, women who’ve got raped—it was only a few seconds. But it was awful.” Hila said nothing and presently Pam went on. “Dorie Lakin and me were at the church after choir practice, and she was waiting at the front doors for her Mom to pick her up, but I thought I had some time yet, so I went to my Sunday School room to see how the mural was going that Ben Linderflos was doing on the wall. Ollie was around, but I didn’t think anything about that ’cause he had always been so friendly and nice, and I thought I liked him. I thought he was the sort of person who could touch you, like put his arm around you, and it would be pure. Well, he followed me down the hall…” Pam started crying.

  Hila did not want to feel compassion for this girl. It was over, over two and a half years ago. Dark things do happen in dark places. Why should this victim find her way to this house and tell her story? She could do nothing for the girl, only let her talk through it, not erase it or make the world safe. Hila had been groped herself, long ago, by a young man who had laughed at her terror and had refused to leave her dorm room. She almost never thought about it anymore: an incident from her college days, her pre-Christian days. But it had shattered her sense of security. Yes, that’s what happens, and God cares very deeply but does nothing.

  Pam had found a Kleenex box on a table beside her and was dabbing mascara off her eyes. “I really didn’t think I’d break down. Maybe it wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “It was,” Hila said.

  “He, uh, said he’d go see the mural with me. And we looked at it, and he put his arm around my shoulders, which I thought was a little funny. I had said something like ‘this mural is beautiful,’ and he said, ‘So are you.’ I just tried to laugh about it. But he kept talking about me and saying something about me being a woman now, not a girl, and how my skin was so—smooth. His face was near me and I looked up and I could see it in his eyes. I made to get away, and he slipped his hand down to my waist, and he wouldn’t let me go.” She quavered out the last word. “Then I was so scared like I’ve never been in my life. Oh God, it was worse than if somebody aimed a gun at you. I wanted to scream but my throat was all sort of stuck. He was saying things to me, I don’t know what. But he could see I was shaking, I was scared, and he didn’t care. Maybe he liked it. I pushed at his chest and got away from him, and I ran out, and Dorie had already been picked up. And you know, I had to wait for Mom to come, so I hid in the bushes and just shook and cried. Then Mom came and I got to go home.”

  Pam was staring at a wall and breathing quickly. Hila knew what counselors are supposed to say to such things for she had said them often enough at the half-way house in Indianapolis where she had volunteered. But she had changed since then. Although she knew she could make Pam feel a little better, somehow a little better did not count for much anymore.

  The girl turned to her. “Oh, Hila, my Dad is the only older guy I trust now. Like, at school, I can’t joke around with the male teachers. I keep thinking one of them will turn into a fiend.” Still Hila said nothing. “Dad went to the church board and Ollie denied saying those things or holding on to me, and Dad didn’t know whether maybe I was misinterpreting, so he didn’t push it with the board. But then one evening when Mom and I had been talking, I just broke down and couldn’t stop sobbing. Dad came in and saw me and after that he never stopped believing me. He says he’d like to kill Ollie.”

  “So would I,” said Hila in a whisper.

  “I wouldn’t. I pray for him. I pray he’ll repent and not do it anymore.”

  Hila gave her a searching look. “You’re not saying you think he’s still doing it?”

  Pam flopped from one position to another in the chair, like a nervous otter. “I don’t know about now, but back then, after he harassed me, I found out about other girls. Five.”

  “Five,” Hila repeated flatly. She felt as if she had been hit by some poisonous wave. “But—no one else came forward.”

  “They thought nobody would believe them or that maybe, like, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the time. But I talked to some of them and heard about others. He had the same way every time. Nobody else around and saying sticky-awful things about how great they looked. A hand on the girl’s shoulder or maybe he’d touch her face.” She started crying again. “One of them, Dot LaSalle—was eleven.”

  Hila sunk back. Oh, God. Eleven. After a moment, she leaned forward again. “Didn’t Dot tell her parents? Doug and Evelyn? Didn’t any of them tell?”

  “I don’t know. If they did, maybe their parents thought they were exaggerating.”

  Hila looked down at her own clutching white hands. “I’m going to buy a gun.”

  “Don’t say that,” Pam said gently. “I didn’t think you would be like that. We can’t hate or we could get to be just as bad. Even Dad says that when he’s calmed down. I thought you’d understand.”

  “I do understand,” Hila said bitterly.

  “Then how come you don’t…” Pam stopped herself, swallowed, and gave Hila a little-girlish look of importunity. “I just thought you’d cry with me and hug me.”

  “Doesn’t your mother do that?”

  “She did some at first, not now. She says I’m getting over it.”

  “You’re not.”

  Presently Pam sobbed again. Hila went to her, helped her up from the chair, and hugged her stiffly. She was not surprised that this triggered her own tears.

  As Hila drove her home, they were both very red-eyed but able to laugh together over some small jokes of Pam’s. Somehow things became more hilarious as Pam guided her into country roads, rough and unlighted, and the odds of Hila’s finding her lone way back to town seemed to lengthen.

  Pam was dropped off at a little distance from a dark
farmhouse, and with some confidence Hila started back. However, after fifteen minutes on gravel roads untraveled at this hour, she had to admit that she really was lost, and by then all her giggles were gone. She pulled over and searched in her glove compartment for a county map that should have been there but was not. She was not even sure that she could find her way back to the Okers, but that was out of the question anyway since Pam’s visit must be kept secret.

  She turned off the overhead light and after a moment the headlights too and the engine. She was in a low area with large trees on each side and, just ahead, concrete bridge rails where apparently a creek ran under the road. She opened the window and listened but could not hear running water. Something within her said: this is the end of the line. She had run out of people to pump for answers; had run out of strength; and she was, oh, so appropriately lost. As for the Mystery of Evil, which she had wanted explained, she felt she had gathered everything that could be known about it. Her fate now was to draw conclusions, sickening ones that she was unwilling to face.

  The equation was easy. Under the banner of Christ, the River Grove Monster captures people and injures them, turning some into lame, bewildered accomplices and others, like Pam, into permanently impaired cast-offs. Those who see it all and object eventually join the pile of cast-offs. Hila felt rather impaired herself. Furthermore, nothing stops the Monster. Nothing stops him. If God is stronger, which theology certainly says He is, then it makes no practical difference, because He lets it win. The Monster is effectively omnipotent. Such is the Rule of This World, the rule of the Prince of Darkness. And if you save an Elly Montcrieff or a Crystal Beikreider from the teeth of his machine, you may have your little victory for an hour, but he will still get her eventually. Knock a Fulborne off the elder board, and he will come back, or if not him then someone of his mindset. Burn the building, and they rebuild it bigger and grander than before. Fight the system, and be flicked aside as if by some gigantic finger. Yes, this was the end of the line.

  For some reason she could not understand, Hila got out of the car. Then she realized it was because she wanted to look for the creek, because that was a way to put off facing Him, was one little thing she could do before the absolute end, a gratefully accepted interlude of a few last steps. She walked to a rail and looked over it into shadows. Sure enough, she could hear and dimly see the water, a very narrow and shallow stream. Definitely too small to drown in.

  She stood looking at the half-seen creek, the trees and the undergrowth for a long time. Far off she could hear the rumble of traffic somewhere and once the whine of a small plane; other than that just the ripple of the water and the whistle-and-creak of late autumn trees in the wind. As her eyes adjusted she could see things more clearly.

  The Lord was present, of course. She visualized Him again, as she had so often done, in rough and ragged clothes, dirty and blood-stained. But now He was about ten feet on the other side of the bridge rail, standing on air in the shadows, His bearded face scarcely visible.

  “You pitiful, pitiful Christ,” she said out loud. “Well, if you’re really the Son of God, you should have come down off that cross and done something. Yeah, beaten by three nails! And now you come begging to me again, saying, ‘Help me, Hila, help me.’ You’ve got another widow for me to visit or another teenage girl for me to cry with. Always something to do for you. You just don’t seem to get it, I’ve denied you.”

  He brought to her mind that she had told Evan that she was still a Christian.

  “That’s—true,” she said. “I told him that I thought I was. But don’t push it off on me, that’s up to you to decide. Follow your own rules, whatever they are. Do I have any faith left?”

  No answer.

  “I keep telling you to do something, anything, or I won’t follow you. And you keep coming back at me, loud and clear, that you won’t do anything and to follow you into the—nothing. And as for me, you say, ‘Do nothing, Hila’; or at least accomplish nothing—and to follow you into that nothing too. The Prince of Darkness is busily building an empire with thousands of willing hands to help him, and you say ‘Pay no attention, girl. The price of discipleship is paralysis. So drop your sword and shield and forget about answers to prayer.’ I’m supposed to just join you at whatever pathetic place, like this one, that you hang out. And that’s lifetime, sister. Yeah, here’s your three nails, Hila, have a merry time with them.” She took a deep breath. “And that’s the only help you offer: just to be with you, to be like you.”

  A long time passed in which she did not so much consider the offer as sink into it. “OK, it’s better than nothing,” she muttered. “I’ll take it.”

  With that, some of their old closeness began to return. She was able to pray normally about a number of small things, including that Steve Wurz might find some peace in his new ministry position and that her mother might be less anxious. Before she returned to the car she received from Him a sort of wordless impress on her mind, telling her that very soon she would be called on to pass through a deep humiliation. ‘Things are going to get worse,’ He seemed to say.

  Still wondering to herself how things could conceivably get any worse, she got in the car, and driving on, came to a rural service station with a grimy attendant who himself looked a little like Jesus. He gave her clear directions and, driving on, before long she recognized where she was.

  All the way back she felt as if she had had some unlooked-for, narrow escape, like someone shot at from close range and miraculously unhit. I’m alive, she thought. I went to that bridge and came back alive. It occurred to her that, as an intelligent woman, she could have found some ready means to do the job, despite the lack of water depth in the creek. She believed there was a length of rope in the trunk. Then the feeling of miraculous escape intensified.

  As for the warning of coming humiliation, she took it calmly. She did, however, remember with a smile how as a young Christian she had often prayed for the gift of prophecy, hoping to be given knowledge of the future. Now, years later, finally a prophecy, and what was it? That things were going to get worse. Some lovely knowledge of the future! And I needed you to tell me that? she thought and was surprised at her sudden ability to share a joke with Him. Then once more the thought: but really, how can things possibly get worse?