Men and Angels (14 page)

Soon Laura was tired of the financial ministry. She wanted to help with the Healing Masses. She had seen Father Joe laying his hands on the heads of the sick. She had felt his power. She knew she, too, had that power. She knew that one day she would be beside him, sharing in his work, healing even as he healed, healing those whose sickness was beyond him.

Father Joe asked if she would have time to do both: to help with the Healing Masses and to work on the tally afterwards. She told him she thought she would. She didn’t want him to know that this was all she had, him, the church, the work she did for him. In the daytime, or weekdays, she worked in the knitting store, selling yarns and threads and needles, giving instructions in knitting and needlepoint. But the weekends were empty; she had nothing to do but stay home, where her parents wished she was not. So she told Father Joe that she was sure she would have time for both the healing and financial ministries.

He assigned her to helping the sick to the altar, to making sure they had seats if they couldn’t stand on the long lines, to getting them drinks of water, taking them to the bathroom.

She liked this less than she liked counting the money, putting the dull-green heavy paper tubes of coins in perfect rows, writing the numbers down in black ink on the clean white ledger. The sick people were querulous and talkative. Sometimes they had trouble with their underclothes and didn’t get to the bathroom in time. But she knew she could cure them. She was only waiting. For now, she would walk slowly beside them, her hand under their elbows, taking one step when she would have taken four, wiping the floor from them, rubbing dry the spots on the backs of their dresses with the church’s paper towels.

She developed a friendship with one of the sick women she helped. Mrs. Prendergast was crippled with arthritis. Her spine was bent, so she could not walk straight ahead. She listed like a heavy ship. Her hands, gripping her cane, were knobbed. Mrs. Prendergast had been coming to Father Joe for thirteen months now. He had been able to do nothing for her. This winter had been her worst. Her children refused to take her to the Healing Masses any longer. They lived twenty miles away and said they would no longer give up their Sundays for some smart aleck’s mumbo jumbo.

Father Joe asked Laura if she could get Mrs. Prendergast in a taxi (Mrs. Prendergast would pay, of course) and bring her to the church on Sundays. He put his arm on her shoulder and told her she was terrific, she was incredible, she was one in a million. She smiled up at him. She thought then that he knew, that the Spirit had spoken to him.

Every Sunday for three months she took the bus to Mrs. Prendergast’s, helped her out the door into the taxi. After church, someone else drove her home, since Laura had the collection. But during the week, Laura visited Mrs. Prendergast in the evenings.

Mrs. Prendergast said God had sent Laura to her. She showed Laura pictures of herself as a young girl, pictures of her wedding, her babies, her children’s graduations, their weddings, and their children sitting under Christmas trees, in swimming pools. Laura was not interested in any of this. She wasn’t really interested in Mrs. Prendergast. Except she knew that she could cure her.

One day in the winter when Laura arrived, Mrs. Prendergast was crying. The pain, she said, was terrible, as if her fingers had grown roots, like tree roots in her fingers. She couldn’t button her clothes; the top of her dress was open. Laura could see the old skin at the top of her breast, the yellowish slip, the loose pink straps of her bra. Laura buttoned Mrs. Prendergast’s dress for her, and Mrs. Prendergast thanked her. She said just being with Laura made her feel better.

When she said that, a jet of flame lit up Laura’s spine, as if a match had been lit at the base. It sent light through her veins, and fire. She felt herself newly powerful. She looked at Mrs. Prendergast. Pain had swollen her features, drained the color from her eyes, turned her skin a brownish yellow.

Laura brought Mrs. Prendergast to the couch. She said they weren’t going to church today.

Mrs. Prendergast looked up at her with fear. “I must,” she said. “I need to see Father Joe.”

“Father Joe can’t help you,” said Laura, looking in the woman’s eyes, grown smaller now with pain, with fear. “We’ll pray here. I can help you.”

But the Spirit of Darkness entered. When Laura put her hands on the old woman’s head, felt the thin, limp hair under her fingers, she knew she had no power.

“You must pray with me,” Laura said firmly.

“But you’re not a priest,” the old woman said and began to whimper. The Spirit of Darkness had made her fear. “You have to leave,” said the old woman. “What you’re doing isn’t right.”

Laura smiled. The Spirit of Darkness had conquered. She was not ready yet; she had tried too soon. Now the old woman would sit in pain, go on walking like a twisted animal. She deserved it for her lack of faith. Laura knew she could have cured her. But the woman’s blindness had stopped her hand.

It was late afternoon when she got home. Her mother was playing cards with Debbie; her father was watching the television. She went to sleep. She could imagine the garish colors her father was watching, green false grass, red uniforms. Half asleep, she heard the doorbell, then the voice of Father Joe. She got up, expecting to be called. But no one called her. From the end of the hall, she saw the priest walk into the den with her parents. She saw her father close the door.

She heard the priest’s voice, then her parents’: grave and troubled, the sounds had weight, they thickened in the air, some heavy liquid metal that would harden in a moment like a dense coiled spring. She heard her mother’s voice, thin needles stitching gold and some bright color. She heard the priest laugh.

It was then she knew. It was then the Spirit revealed that that man was not of the Spirit. She heard her father making coffee in the kitchen, and in the den her mother’s words, and laughing. She heard her parents close the door behind the priest.

She left home the next morning. What she could fit in her Girl Scout knapsack she took. An extra pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, a shirt, some underwear. Already she was taking more than Jesus said to take.

In the clear light of that fall morning, she walked to the bus station and took a bus west to Syracuse. She left no word for her parents, for the Scripture said, “A man shall leave father and mother.”

It had been a year since she had left her father and mother. Her parents had not found her. Had they looked for her? She knew they couldn’t send the police after her. She was of age; her life was her own.

She had been traveling a year; it would be good to settle someplace now. At Anne’s house. She would live with Anne. That was the Spirit, looking out for her, caring for her with a love more tender than any human parent could begin to try for.

At first in Syracuse she thought it would be easy. She had found a room two blocks from the university on the top floor of an old yellow house. From her window she could see an aspen. Although she had never noticed what people referred to as nature, she liked the tree outside her window. Or perhaps it was simply having a window that was her own, a window she could sit at for hours without fearing the voices of her mother and her sister, high, sharp, shattering the texture, the clear pane, of things (her life, her thoughts), springing against her life like shot against a window. Or her father’s voice, heavy as a wounded bird, flapping, flying blind against the glass with his defeats and his apologies. Here she could sit for the first time in front of a window, looking at the aspen with its flat gold leaves, embroidering them into a dresser scarf that she was making to cover the gray plastic surface people had burned with cigarettes, ringed with the glasses holding what they drank there at the window. She could read her Bible, close her eyes, pray for guidance, open anywhere and know the Spirit was directing her.

One day as she got off the bus coming back from her job at Nettie’s Needles—the same job she had had at home—a young man walked up to her as if he knew her. He smiled at her and said, “Excuse me, miss, but have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”

She felt her heart light up, grow solid against the bones of her breast. It was the messenger of the Lord. How kind his voice was (she had spoken little since she had arrived, except to Nettie Rosa, whom she worked with, and they spoke about her work). How clear, how open his eyes seemed. He looked straight into her eyes, took both her hands and held them. “Praise the Lord,” he said. “Welcome, my sister.”

Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. She had not been wise. She had followed the young man—Don Kingston was his name—to the house where he lived with what he told her was his family. He belonged to a community that called itself the Children of the Light.

They lived in a house five blocks from where her room had been, six of them, and their leader, whom they called Father but whose name was Fletcher Voss. They embraced her—all seven of them—when they saw her; they embraced her when she left the house and when she came back into it. They sang as they did the tasks they’d been assigned—the girls cooked, the boys did yard work and repairs. They told her to give up her room. No need to be alone, they said, you are one of us, the family, we love you as our own. She moved in with them; she slept in a room with Shelley and Susan. They called each other sister and embraced each night after the evening prayers were said. And each day before they left for their “outside jobs,” they prayed together and embraced each other. For the world was wicked and dangerous, they were sent out among wolves, they were safe only in the walls of the house.

She had told them of the Spirit coming to her and they had said, “Praise the Lord,” and taken her hands and thanked God that she was among them. She had friends around her, more than friends, brothers and sisters who loved her, who appreciated her gifts. She was never lonely. There were chores for her to do when she came home from work, and since her outside job was a day job (as were Shelley’s and Susan’s; Scott worked at night in the donut shop and Robert at the post office so they could be free for the daytime ministry), at night she went out onto the streets to speak to people, to warn them of the Coming of the Lord, the Blood of the Lamb, the corruption of their flesh, the wickedness in which they walked, the separation of the sheep and goats that was coming, coming, for the Lord was on His way, and many would not be saved.

She did not know that she was prophesying falsely, that they were all false prophets, that they walked not in the Spirit but in Darkness led by the Devil in the guise of Fletcher Voss.

Many came and went while Laura lived there. Some off buses stayed only for the meals, the beds, left when they had saved up money, when they had bathed and washed their clothes and eaten regularly for a week. These, Fletcher said, were minions of the Devil. But devils themselves were those who left because they disagreed with Fletcher, because they wouldn’t give up their money, or wouldn’t go out on the streets at night, every night, to preach the Word. She, too, had had contempt for them, had prayed with joy and with thanksgiving when they left that the house (where they were safe, the only place they could be safe) was cleansed of their presence.

Fletcher Voss was older than the rest of them and handsome with his dark hair and dark blue eyes. He had been to Vietnam. He had fought and suffered, he said, seen those he loved die, seen immorality, committed sin himself. And then he had had his vision.

His vision was not like the coming of the Spirit to Laura, the Spirit who came in love. At the time she believed it was because he had seen war and she had not, had suffered as she had not. But now she knew it was because his vision—if he ever had a vision—was the work of Darkness. The vision of Fletcher Voss had come in fire and thunder; it was a man with flaming hair whose voice boomed like thunder, whose swords glittered in the sun, their golden handles burning. He had told Fletcher that Fletcher had been sent by the Lord to save a chosen remnant from the vengeance of the Lord. The remnant would be called the Children of Light; they would be recognized on the last day by the oil of anointing placed upon their foreheads by the hand of Fletcher Voss.

At first she thought that he was greater than she; that the coming of the Lord to him was greater, since the Lord spoke to him of the people he was to save, while the Spirit spoke to her only of her personal condition, to say she was the chosen one, the favored of the Lord. So for three months she was pleased to be subordinate to him, glad to follow his instructions, to ask his permission to keep some of her money for toilet articles, for thread and patterns, for stamps. (She had written to her parents at Fletcher’s suggestion; he said it was better not to antagonize the natural family, since the Devil working through them and through the law could do the Children of Light harm. Her father had written to say he was glad she was well, they were worried about her, the door was always open to her. From her mother she heard nothing.)

She could see that Voss was fond of her. He complimented her on her work in the kitchen, on never complaining about money, on her zeal in bringing converts in. She had brought two African boys, students at the university, to the weekly prayer meetings. They came for two months, then stopped coming. She saw them later, dancing with other students in a bar.

By March she had been in the house longer than anyone except Don. She told Voss that she had helped the healing priest (Voss said he was the Devil in priest’s robes; established churches were the Devil’s favorite seat), that she was good at bookkeeping, that Mrs. Rosa, whose only real interest was knitting, left all the books to her. She said she would help him keep track of the household money so that he would be more free to preach, to bring in converts from the street.

Voss smiled at her. He took her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I realize that you believe you’re trying to help me. But money is evil, not only is it the root of evil, it is evil in itself. I believe that anyone who touches it is in danger; I will run the risk myself rather than expose one who has been less tried, whose spirit is more delicate, more fine and beautiful.”