In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [45]
She remembered Brother Lang’s fast, how weak and brittle he’d become, and she could not imagine her husband’s body wasted, his broad chest and strong legs gone to bone. She believed in his need to do this thing. She believed in divine inspiration. Yet the voice of the world still reached her, in that gray sea of near sleep: He’s abandoned you in the middle of nowhere. He thinks he sees demons. He’s obsessed, dangerous, mad. The voice was sometimes one she recognized, come from the past to haunt her. What would her grandmother think, her mother? She could see their eyes narrow, their mouths tighten, their judgment settle heavy and unspoken. Even some of the church people were sure to view such conspicuous self-denial as suspect, and she steeled herself to ignore their looks of pity, the wagging of heads when they thought her back was turned. Perhaps, too, she feared for the sake of me and my brother. Our school friends might find out, taunt us, deny us a place on the merry-go-round, throw rocks at our backs as we walked from the bus. Already we were set apart by our dress and our daily prayer over sack lunches.
These fears raised yet another fear: that Satan was weakening her in order to reach my father. If she were not strong enough to resist such trivial concerns as gossip and peer exile, she would fail in her role as helpmate. She remembered the words of Christ—“O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” She prayed that the vision would come soon.
• • •
On the third day of my fathers seclusion, a Saturday, a white Ford station wagon bumped down the narrow road to our house, Uncle Barry grinning behind the wheel. My cousins sat in back, holding strawberry sodas and Planters peanuts. Aunt Mary grasped the dashboard with one hand and the door handle with the other. “Surprise,” they yelled as they crawled from the mud-spattered car. “Surprise!”
My mother stood still in the doorway as my cousins handed me and Greg a soda. Their mouths were circled in red.
“You didn’t call that you were coming.” My mother looked from them to the shelter and back.
“Where’s Neil? Tell him his little brother’s here. He ain’t working, is he?”
I sipped the warm pop. Greg had already run across the bridge with our cousins, who thought the outhouse was a castle.
“Barry, Neil’s not here. He’s searching for the Spirit.”
Mary stood fanning herself by the car. She got carsick a lot. Barry, who had no religion at all, stared at my mother as though it were she who had lost her mind.
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
My mother wiped her hands on her apron and nodded toward the shelter. I kept my eyes on the car and wondered if my father could hear us.
“He’s set himself off, Barry, so God will speak to him. He’ll stay in there forty days and forty nights if he has to.” My mother’s voice was steady, and I took my cue from her, straightening my shoulders and bringing my gaze up to meet my uncle’s. He looked from one of us to the other, then ran his fingers hard through his hair.
“Well, for Christ’s sake!” He turned several small circles, as though trying to get his bearings, then stopped and glared at the bunker. X-ray vision, I thought. He wants to be like Superman.
“Lezlie! Chad! Get in the car.” His bellow echoed through the hollow, and my cousins came running, something in his voice that made them think trouble. Aunt Mary was already in. I don’t remember that she had said a word. She was watching my mother.
The station wagon left a cloud of gray smoke that settled around the house and shelter. I tasted the sweet pop, savoring its syrup, then thought of my father and his sacrifice. I stepped to where the bridge crossed the spring