Ollie's Cloud (41 page)

Chapter 38

Over the next month Ollie weakly honors his agreement with Thomas Sharp by publishing several articles critical of the Mormons. In Ollie’s mind, though, the Mormon issue fades daily as the world seems to rapidly pitch toward the Second Coming. Every conversation and each prayer anticipates that auspicious event. Reverend Crenshaw has assured everyone that Christ will return by the end of the year—before the start of 1844, he has promised. Though no one will put a date or time on His Glorious Return, the Rochester Christians almost universally look to New Year’s Eve as the perfect occasion.

In the week following Christmas, emotions begin to erupt. The clock is ticking down. Many Christians report that they can’t sleep. Many non-Christians suddenly declare their belief in Jesus and beg forgiveness for their lives of slumber and sin. Prayers rise like a continuous mist from the city and surrounding villages. Work all but ceases. Procrastinating wives and daughters sew white ascension robes. Apocalyptic nightmares cause brave husbands and sons to tremble and scream. Many farmers say their animals are growing restless. A waitress in Rochester breaks down sobbing and has to be sedated by Doc Anderson. The bell ringer at the Baptist church begins singing a hymn and can’t be stopped.

On New Year’s Eve, the whole family gathers at Ollie’s house for the Big Event. Except for Jonathon, they are all wearing white ascension robes. The afternoon passes slowly with the offering of many prayers and the singing of many solemn hymns. Isaac can feel his gut tightening in anticipation of the Appearance of Jesus in the clouds. It could come at any time now.

As the sun sets and darkness envelopes the farm, Phebe offers to make some supper. “I’m sure everyone is hungry by now,” she says.

“Phebe, we have no need for food, my dear,” Reverend Crenshaw says. “Come and sit by me. These old bodies of ours will soon be called up to a place where food has no meaning.”

Ollie cradles his wife on the sofa. “You’re trembling,” he says. “Afraid?”

“I don’t think so,” Alice replies. “A little maybe. Excited mostly.”

“When He comes,” the Reverend explains with great confidence, “we will wonder why we were ever nervous about it, so wonderful it will be.”

Phebe takes her husband’s hand and squeezes it. “Still, I’m a little scared.”

“So we will be able to enter heaven without dying,” Isaac says. “Just like Ezekiel.”

Jonathon is preparing his camera for the event. He is quite certain that he will not be going anywhere with his friends. In fact, he is quite sure that no one will be leaving the farm this evening. At the start of the New Year, 1844, he will take a picture of the friends he is with, just as he has for the past two years. And if by some chance his friends vanish, he will make a self-portrait and title it “
I Was Wrong
.”

For a few minutes the crackle of the fireplace is the only sound in the house. Reverend Crenshaw takes out a pocket watch, studies it, and then puts it away. “Less than four hours on this earth,” he says.

A loud knock on the door interrupts them.

Phebe shrieks. Isaac scurries across the floor to sit by Ollie. They stare at the front door. Is this how it will happen? A knock on the door to collect them for their journey to heaven?

Another knock! Louder.

Bravely, Ollie stands and walks to the door. “Who is it?” he asks.

“Edith Talbot. And Winnie,” a voice replies.

Ollie opens the door and the two Talbots enter with a cold wind. Nine-year-old Winnie, the local oracle, stomps her feet to clear off the caked snow.

“We got here as soon as we could,” Edith says excitedly. “Didn’t know where else to go.” She turns to Reverend Crenshaw. “Thought you would be here tonight, Reverend. Glad you’re all here.”

Ollie escorts them into the center of the room. “Please, take off your coats,” he says.

“No, we don’t have time.”

“For goodness sake, Edith, what’s this all about?” the Reverend says.

Edith turns to the old man. “It’s Winnie, sir. She’s had another vision.”

The Reverend stands and approaches Winnie, then turns to look at the faces of his family as if to say, “
It’s beginning
.” Winnie is absolutely calm, but the Reverend’s eyes reveal a nervousness that was not present before.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Reverend. It’s wonderful,” Winnie says.

“How is it wonderful, Winnie?”

“I saw a cloud in the night sky that was filled with lights. It flashed bright, and the lights rolled around inside it. And then the dark sky started to glow, and a wind started up. I could feel it on my face, and even though it was cold outside, the wind was warm. I looked away for just a second, and when I looked back a hundred angels were starting to gather around the cloud. Maybe a thousand. I think they’re getting ready for Jesus.”

These words penetrate Reverend Crenshaw and the strength goes out of his legs, which buckle. On his knees he raises his hands and shouts, “It’s true. He is coming at last!”

They do not feel the frigid air as they race out of the house into the moonlit night like white ghosts. Jonathon trails them with his camera and tripod.

Storm clouds have eerily gathered on the horizon like a bunched-up shroud. The clouds roll ominously and threaten to obscure the full moon just beyond them.

“Quickly now,” the Reverend urges, “Up onto the barn.” He and Isaac lift a wooden ladder from the side of the barn, setting it upright against the roof. “Careful now.” The Reverend climbs the ladder first. Once he is on the roof he turns and helps Phebe off the ladder, then Alice. Edith and Winnie are next, followed by Isaac.

Edith places her left foot on a patch of ice and begins to slip, but Isaac catches her dress and she regains her footing.

It seems to Ollie that being a few feet closer to heaven is not much of an advantage. Besides, heights bother him. “I’m staying down here,” he replies. He turns to see his friend setting up a camera and flash pot. “With Jonathon,” he adds.

The roof dwellers find places to sit. The Reverend turns to the oracle and says, “Winnie, do you see any clouds that look like the ones in your vision?”

The girl scans the horizon. “Not yet,” she says, “but they’re changing real fast.”

“And they’re quickly coming towards us,” Alice says. For the first time, seated there in the winter chill, she feels cold. She wishes that Ollie were there to put his arms around her.

For five minutes, nothing happens. The sky watchers begin to shiver.

“Anything, Winnie?” the Reverend asks hopefully.

The girls shakes her head no.

“Let me get your coats!” Ollie yells, but he is shushed by the others. He looks up at the sky. Just to the east is a growing mountain of clouds. It looks like a thunderhead, rare as that would be in winter.

“There!” Winnie says, pointing to the thunderhead. “There!”

All heads swivel to look in the direction of her finger. The cloud formation is both frightening and awe-inspiring. It tumbles and tilts. And then it happens.

A single flash!

Then more lights. They’re in the clouds. They dance.

The Reverend stands up. “It’s time!” he shouts. “Just like Winnie said!” And then he helps Phebe up. Alice is still grasping her knees, too mesmerized to stand. Isaac helps Edith and Winnie to their feet.

Below, Ollie stares at the spectacle and says to himself, “It’s really true.”

Jonathon looks up at the sky as another flash ignites the center of the thunderhead in a yellow-blue burst.

“Winter lightning,” he says. “Very rare.” No one hears him.

No one is listening.

As the thunderhead lights up again, Alice starts to stand. She is just saying, “I’m ready, dear Lord…” when a terrifying clap of thunder tears through the night, startling her. She starts to fall. Steps backward to catch herself. Skids on a patch of ice. Tumbles over the edge of the roof, arms outstretched, robes flying majestically, body suddenly crunching against the frozen ground, eyes still open, smiling.

Horrified, Ollie rushes to her. Scoops her into his arms. Sees the spattered blood and lifeless eyes. Knows she is gone.

With gasps and moans the others scurry back down the ladder. The reality of death has erased their thoughts of eternal life. The spectacular meteorological exhibition continues, but by the time Alice’s body is carried into the house the show is over.

Alice is the only one who is taken that evening, but not in the way they had thought. Everyone else is left behind, and the torment is as terrible as they had imagined.

Jesus did not come in the clouds.

At least not in Rochester, New York.

At the time of Alice Crenshaw’s fall from the roof, Siyyid Kazim lies on his sleeping mat surrounded by nine of his students. Perspiration drains from his fevered body, soaking his white garments. One of the students, Jahangir, reaches for Kazim’s hand and is startled by its heat.

“Your fever grows,” Jahangir says.

“Perhaps the fire within me,” Kazim replies hopefully, “is purging the last of my imperfections before I depart this world.”

“I have been praying that you will be healed!” Jahangir replies.

“You should be praying that you will accept God’s will.”

“It cannot be God’s will that you die before the Qa’im appears. That would be unfair. No one has worked harder to prepare us for His…”

Kazim angrily interrupts the young student. “And who are you to question God’s fairness?” He painfully raises himself up on one elbow to look into his student’s eyes. “Have you the foresight to see the end in the beginning? My death, which God told a shepherd would happen on the day of ‘Arafih, is the beginning of the end. And what day is this, Jahangir?”

“The day of ‘Arafih,” Jahangir sadly replies.

Kazim collapses onto his mat but continues to converse with the young student, though his words now come in short bursts between gasps for breath. “Of which offense do you accuse God, then? Of being in error when he revealed the time of my death, or of being unfair to take me before the Qa’im appears? Which is it?”

“God is Perfection,” Jahangir replies. He struggles to focus on the logic of this argument when his Master is dying. “He can be neither in error nor unfair.”

“In that case—” Kazim’s words grow more feeble—“do not pray for God to place himself in error by healing me, for the one thing that God cannot do is contradict his own perfection. And do not judge God’s fairness by the standard of your shortsightedness.”

Kazim smiles, takes a deep breath, and says, “God be with all of you in the times ahead.”

Tears fill Jahangir’s eyes and he wipes them away with a coarse sleeve. By the time that Jahangir looks again upon his master, Siyyid Kazim is dead, a teacher to his last breath.

Chapter 39

Like a hungry crow on a corpse, grief plucks out Oliver’s eyes, blinding him to the naïve hospitality of his family and friends. In the fog of the funeral and the cold days that follow, he staggers through the barest routine of survival.

The Reverend, himself a derelict of sorrow, prays insufferably that God will remove from him the burden of sin that surely had caused God to punish him in this unbearable way. Jonathon wonders at how a “man of God” can turn a daughter’s death into such a narcissistic rumination.

Through sheer will, Isaac and Phebe keep the family troupe going, as if the oldest and the youngest members of this glowering cast somehow had been exempted from mourning. They cook and serve meals to the distraught. They clean the houses, feed the animals, travel to Rochester for supplies, thank the well-wishers for their kind thoughts, even try to raise the spirits of the emotional invalids in their charge by singing cheerful duets after dinner (to no applause) and importing parlor games into the sitting room (Oliver and the Reverend decline to participate.)

Isaac is particularly troubled by his father. Ollie seems more than sad; he seems to be simmering with repressed rage. Isaac fears the day that this molten flow will erupt. But Ollie is not the first to blow.

At the end of the third week of “self-pity,” as Phebe calls the unrelieved bereavement, she snaps. It’s not that she minds helping out on the farm and taking care of her loved ones, but when Oliver sullenly eats her beef and potatoes, made with her own weary hands, and then swoons into an even deeper spell of foul temper, Phebe throws a cast-iron skillet across the room and screams. The piercing shriek startles them all, even Phebe; no one has ever heard Phebe as much as raise her voice. The sound is a fingernails-on-a-blackboard, child-yelling, coyotes-howling kind of screech that boils the blood and sends shivers down the spine. The cats disappear and the dogs cock their heads in dismay.

“Stop it stop it stop it!” Phebe yells. “I can’t take this any longer! What’s the matter with you?
All
of you?”

The force of Phebe’s voice rocks Oliver back in his kitchen chair.

“You can’t mourn forever!” Phebe says, breaking into a sob. “I lost two dear ones as well, you know. First my dear granddaughter, then my stepdaughter. You’re not the only one in pain around here.”

She marches over to Ollie. Fixes her gaze on him. Bends so her red face is close to his. “You might lift a finger to help around here. Seems to me that Isaac and myself are the only ones left alive in this family.” She straightens up; her back is hurting. “Maybe the Reverend was right, that Winnie’s dream about the man under the palm tree meant that the world would die on New Year’s Eve. My world died, and yours too, I expect, when Alice fell off the roof. But if the Reverend was correct, we would then be born again—and to my reckoning, that means we’d come back to life. Well, I’m still waiting for the two of you.” She shifts her gaze from Oliver to the Reverend.

“Woman, you’re speaking madness,” the Reverend interjects, “and very possibly blasphemy.”

“Oh, go to hell, Reverend!” Phebe says.

The Reverend gasps as Jonathon smiles to himself.

“Or maybe you’re already there,” Phebe continues. “You’re no better than this one”—she points to Ollie—“and maybe worse. Who do you think you are—Jesus Himself? Who made you so cockamamie important that only
your
sins could be responsible for Alice’s death. Maybe you should take on the sins of the world and have yourself crucified!”

The Reverend is speechless. He simply stares wide-eyed at his wife.

Phebe goes on: “And who’s to say that your daughter’s death was punishment for
anything
? People die every day. New babies are born. The sun rises every morning. And I’m
so sorry
that Jesus didn’t come on your schedule.”

With a thud, Phebe sits down. And as she does, Oliver rises ominously from his chair. None of this speechmaking has improved his mood. In fact, he appears ready to burst into flame.

“You speak of God as if he is just,” Ollie begins. “Well, where is God’s mercy in the death of my mother?” He turns with reddened eyes to Phebe and says, “Where is God’s love in the death of Mary Rogers?”

Then finally he turns to the Reverend and says, “Where in the name of heaven is God’s righteousness in the killing of our good and pure Alice Chadwick?”

The Reverend is bright red and twitching. He bursts from his chair with the words, “I, sir, will not tolerate your blasphemy! Come, Phebe—we’re leaving at once.”

The Reverend grabs Phebe’s hand, yanks her from a kitchen chair, and whisks her into the living room where they hurriedly pull on boots and coats before plunging through the front door into the cold night.

Isaac wants to abandon his father, run after the Reverend and Phebe and ask for safe harbor. He is frightened by the darkness that has overtaken his father. But in the end his loyalty is to the man who saved him from the harsh streets of New York City. In those days, Isaac remembers, he was a miserable and unlovable wretch—maybe more unlovable than Ollie is now. Yet Ollie stood by him, adopted him, cared for him. Now it seems time to reciprocate.

Ollie is standing by the kitchen window, staring into the night. Isaac walks up behind him. In Farsi the boy quietly says, “I love you, father.”

Olie turns and looks at his boy. He has grown so tall! The others may have abandoned Ollie—and why should they not have?—but his son has stayed. Ollie wraps his arms around Isaac and says, “I will always love you.”

It is the only love that remains in him.