Power in the Blood (11 page)

In the evening an angel came. Morgan saw it standing above him on the far rim of the ravine. The angel’s hair was long and white, its clothing loose, stirring slightly in a rare breeze. A peculiar package was cradled in its right hand. The light of the setting sun was behind the angel, preventing a more detailed inspection of its face and form. It was enough for Morgan to know that mercy had arrived.

He watched the angel disappear from view, then suddenly materialize at his side. Morgan felt water pass between his parched lips. The angel was older than expected, an ancient soul with wisdom in its eyes, but where were its wings? He asked the angel to give water to his wife and son. No words passed from Morgan’s mouth, but the angel understood, and moved across the intervening ground in a distinctly earth-bound lope to administer life from what appeared to be a leather bag. Morgan had been anticipating a silver flask, but was in no condition to voice a complaint.

The water, far from reviving him, sent Morgan into a deep sleep from which he did not awaken until the morning of the seventh day. Where was the long-haired angel? He turned to his wife, and was devastated to find her dead. Scrambling to Drew’s side, he saw the boy’s eyes open. If Morgan and Drew had survived, why had Sylvie been taken from them? His conscious mind would not admit it, but he hated God at that moment, hated with a passion so intense he swooned and fell back once again to the dust.

Drew knew his mother was dead, just by looking at her. His father was still alive, but with eyes closed in the painful half-sleep Drew had just woken from. His first thoughts, knowing Sylvie was gone, were of sadness for himself; without her he couldn’t possibly be happy anymore. For his father, Drew felt a kind of bafflement that almost turned to anger. He recognized that Sylvie’s death was Morgan’s fault, for having led them into the desert, but Morgan was a good and loving man, so Drew could not allow himself the easy pleasure of hating him for what he had done.

There had to be another culprit, someone equally culpable. The only suitable individual was God. It was God’s fault. Drew opened himself fully to hatred of the Almighty, and his anger thrust him up from the ground, onto his feet. He took several steps in search of God, and tripped over a leather water bag. The sloshing of its contents erased all notions of revenge; Drew fell to his knees and pulled at the crude wooden stopper, tipped the bag and inundated his burning throat with tepid water, choked, drank more and fell back beside his father, carefully holding the bag upright to avoid spilling a drop. Where had it come from, this miraculous thing?

He shook Morgan to consciousness and pressed the water bag to his lips. Morgan drank deeply, coughed some of it back up again, then passed out anew.

Drew continued sipping from the bag. He looked again at Sylvie, then away. She hadn’t been his real mother, he told himself, so it was all right not to cry; he doubted his dried-out body could make tears anyway. If he kept telling himself she wasn’t his mother, then this thing that had happened to her could be lived with. Drew wanted above all else to continue living, and he reasoned, bit by bit, that living was best accomplished while a person wasn’t crippled up with sadness. So she was not his mother. And the man lying with mouth open a short distance away was not his father.

Moments before, Drew had wanted to blame God for everything, but staring at Morgan rekindled his original anger, the anger he had stifled. No gun, no compass, no map or guide, and not enough water. The man was a fool. And yet Drew loved him. He tried again to summon hatred for God, but God seemed less substantial than the afternoon heat waves dancing over the wagon, and so Drew was left with nothing but despair and a great hunger to live, even if living meant being aware at all times of this same unresolvable despair.

His head hurt even more now, from the effort of thinking. He turned from his parents, and decided to walk away from this place on his own if Morgan didn’t agree to give up the search for whatever it was he thought was out there. Drew decided also he would take the water bag with him when he went; if Morgan didn’t quit searching, he was crazy, and Drew wasn’t about to let a crazy man drink his water.

It was night again when Drew next opened his eyes. A campfire was burning close by, Morgan hunched over it, turning a rabbit carcass on a stick. Drew reached for the water bag, and in lifting it discovered the impossible—it was heavier than it had been earlier. He decided he must be wrong about that.

Morgan was smiling at him as he drank. “It’ll be ready soon. Are you hungry?”

Drew nodded, and came closer to the fire.

“How’d you catch it?”

“I didn’t. The Lord provided, or should I say, His angel.”

“Angel?”

“I saw him once. He was old, not like you’d expect from pictures. He must have made the fire as well. It was already burning when I woke up, and the rabbit was on the stick.”

“An angel did it?”

“Without doubt.”

Drew did not accept this. He would eat the rabbit, enjoy the fire’s warmth and light, and drink from the water bag, but he would do so without believing these things came from God. There had to be another answer.

“We need to bury your mother. We’ll do that directly after we have partaken of the manna.”

“It isn’t manna; it’s a rabbit.”

“Its purpose is the same, to sustain us in pursuit of our goal.”

“It’s a rabbit!”

“Please don’t upset yourself. We’re both too weak for argument. We have only each other. Come to me.”

Drew moved around to Morgan’s side of the fire and leaned against him, tucked under a fatherly arm. He instantly forgave Morgan everything. It would be better to leave with his father too; that was far less frightening than his plan to walk out alone. He loved Morgan still, even if Morgan loved God too much. The arm tightened around him. Morgan was crying; Drew joined him. They had enough water in them now for tears.

Food and water came by night for two nights, their deliverer silent, unseen. “We are blessed,” said Morgan. Drew said nothing.

Sylvie was buried, the grave dug with wagon strakes, the mound piled with rocks to keep off coyotes and cougars. Morgan spent an entire day scratching her name and the dates of her birth and death onto one of the digging boards, then set it up as a grave marker. He preferred to do this unassisted. Drew was inclined to let him, having no knack for woodworking, but it disturbed him to hear Morgan holding a conversation while he worked.

He thought at first his father was talking with Sylvie, addressing her spirit or some such, but the tone of the conversation lacked the sense of intimacy Drew had grown used to between Morgan and his wife. The man was talking to someone else entirely. Realizing this, Drew became scared, and his fear assumed the shape of bad temper.

“Who are you talking to!”

Morgan turned to him, a slightly dazed look on his face.

“Talking?”

“You’re talking all the time. Whisper, whisper …”

“With God.”

“You’re not!”

“Why do you not believe?”

“You’re not talking to God! Stop it!”

“I talk with the one who has saved us both.”

“He never did! It was someone else!”

“Calm yourself. I know now where the desert place is. Have you forgotten our purpose?”

“Where is it?”

“Here. This is the desert place, where I have buried my wife. This is the place because she is here, and we are here.”

“That’s … stupid!”

Morgan smiled tolerantly. “There is much I don’t understand. He speaks in riddles. Something is being revealed to me, some vast thing. I’ll share it with you when I can.”

In the following days Morgan showed no inclination to leave the wagon and grave site. His conversations with God continued; he did more listening now than talking, it seemed to Drew.

“Aren’t we going to leave here?”

“When the time comes. We have suffered terribly just finding the desert place, and we’ll remain until I’m told we may leave.”

“Did you ask God what we need to wait for?”

“One does not question; one listens.”

“So we’re staying here.”

“For the time being, yes. The angel brings us all we need. Why are you not satisfied?”

“It’s not an angel; it’s an old man. I think he’s an Indian. I saw him last night, sneaking away. He’s got a bag over his hand.”

“A bag?”

“Like a big glove with no fingers. He’s got long white hair. He left that pile of firewood over there.”

“You’re mistaken, Drew. That was an angel of God. It’s possible that such beings appear in different guise to different people, so as not to frighten them. You expect to see an Indian in this region, so an Indian is what you see.”

“He
is
an Indian.”

“Why would anyone, even an Indian, wear a bag over his hand?”

“Maybe he uses it to bring water, and tips it into the bag that’s always here.”

“That is ridiculous.”

Drew could only frown angrily. His father wasn’t the same man he’d been back in Illinois. Drew thought maybe the sun was cooking Morgan’s brain, even if he always kept his hat on. Morgan didn’t even go near Sylvie’s grave anymore, too busy listening to the whisperings of God.

Drew seldom approached Sylvie himself. The last time he sat by the marker he found himself talking out loud to his mother, complaining about how Morgan was turning into a crazy man for sure; if he hadn’t been when he led his family into the Jemez Mountains, he was now, with his muttering and head-nodding whenever God made a point that Morgan agreed with. Drew didn’t want to be a talker with invisible presences, and so avoided the grave.

He revived his plans for escape. The ravine was becoming a prison without walls. Morgan’s behavior continued to deteriorate. One night by the fire he ordered Drew to recite in order the books of the Bible. Drew began stumbling badly after Ecclesiastes. When his guesses ran down to a sullen silence, Morgan leaned over and slapped him hard across the face. “You, sir,” he said, “do not deserve a savior!” He shoved his Bible into Drew’s hands. “Study it! That is the book of all things!”

Drew flung it into the fire. Morgan roared and thrust his hand among the flames to retrieve it, was burned along the wrist and jerked back. He used a stick of firewood to flip his Bible out onto the ground. Drew moved away while Morgan did this. They glared at each other across the fire. Morgan’s face twisted lopsidedly with pain as he clutched his wrist. “Unbeliever …,” he growled.

Drew almost felt guilty. He’d thrown his father’s Bible into the fire, the very book Morgan and Sylvie had entered his name in on the births-and-deaths endpaper, to show they considered him a true member of the family. He could see naked loathing in Morgan’s eyes. With firelight illuminating him from below, the man looked like a demon. Walking backward, Drew took himself away into darkness to avoid him.

For several hours afterward, as Drew hid among shadows, he could hear Morgan moaning, whether from the pain of his burn or from some particularly intense dialogue with God, Drew couldn’t tell. He was determined to stay awake that night for two reasons, the first being a genuine fear of being found and murdered by Morgan, the second being a wish to catch the old Indian in the act of bringing them what they needed. Why would an Indian be doing this? It was almost as worrisome as Morgan’s escalating madness.

His vigil faltered through drowsiness. When Drew woke after dawn, he rose and came closer to the fire. Morgan was still asleep, the charred Bible in his hands. Drew saw a freshly skinned jackrabbit by the embers. Drew preferred rabbit to the strange long-legged bird their benefactor had twice left them; he always skinned the rabbits, but apparently couldn’t be bothered plucking the birds. The water bag had also been replenished. Drew decided today was the day he must escape. He would leave the jackrabbit, but take the water bag. It was a fair division of resources.

“Good morning, son.”

Morgan was awake, smiling at him. He looked like the old Morgan, kindly and sane. He stood and stretched himself, but made no move toward Drew.

“I know now what must be done here,” he said. “The answer has been given to me. When we accomplish what must be done, there will be no need to linger.”

“What is it?” Drew asked, his expression guarded.

“We must build a fire.”

“A fire?”

“In the wagon; pile it high with brushwood.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the wish of our God. I ask you to believe me. Will you help?”

He sounded like the old Morgan, quietly explaining himself.

“All right.”

A fire in the wagon seemed foolish to Drew, but if Morgan was prepared to leave that awful place afterward, then he would help build a fire Morgan could be proud of. Despite everything, it would be better to walk out of the desert with his father, instead of alone. Maybe Morgan’s crazy talk would pass with time, as his grief over Sylvie’s death eased. They would build a fire (for Drew, it would be lit in Sylvie’s honor, not God’s), then leave, to be father and son again.

“Do we start now?”

“Gather every stick, every twig, but don’t wander far in case you become lost.”

The gathering lasted several hours, and resulted in a pile of dead sagebrush. It came nowhere near to filling the wagon as Morgan had specified. Drew thought it would probably all burn away in just a few minutes, too quickly to set the wood beneath and the wagon itself ablaze, if that was what Morgan wanted. He didn’t ask. Asking questions might cause his father to begin spouting nonsense again. This way the fire would be over and done with that much faster, and they could be on their way.

“Enough,” said Morgan. “Rest.”

He drank, then passed Drew the water bag. They inspected their work, the wagon’s insubstantial load. Morgan seemed content. “Do you have faith in me?” he asked, turning to Drew.

“Yes,” Drew said, not wishing to provoke him.

“That is good. That is as it should be. The severest test will be mine, but yours is no easy task, I admit. Your trust in me is natural, since I am your father, but the trust I must place in the father of us all is a true act of faith. Fetch me a rock, one that will fit in my hand. The choice shall be yours.”