The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [64]
I was too young to stand against it.
THE STARS ARE the eyes of God and they have been watching us from the beginning of the earth. Do you think there isn’t an eye for each of us? Go on and count. Go on and look in the Book and total up all the nouns and verbs, like if you did somehow you’d grasp the meaning of what you held. You can’t. The understanding is in you or it isn’t. You can hide from the stars by daylight but at night, under all of them, so many, you are pierced by the sight and by the vision.
Get under the bed!
Get under the sheet!
I said to you, stand up, and if you fall, fall forward!
I’m going to go out blazing. I’m going to go out like a light. I’m going to burn in glory. I said to you, stand up!
And so there’s one among them. You have heard Luce, Light, Lucifer, the Fallen Angel. You have seen it with your own eyes and you didn’t know he came upon you. In the night, and in his own disguises like the hijacker of a planet, he fell out of the air, he fell out of the dark leaves, he fell out of the fragrance of a woman’s body, he fell out of you and entered you as though he’d reached through the earth.
Reached his hand up and pulled you down.
Fell into you with a jerk.
Like a hangman’s noose.
Like nobody.
Like the slave of night.
Like you were coming home and all the lights were blazing and the ambulance sat out front in the driveway and you said,
Lord, which one?
And the Lord said, All of them.
You too, follow, follow, I’m pointing you down. In the sight of the stars and in the sight of the Son of Man. The grace is on me. Stand up, I said. Stand. Yes and yes I’m gonna scream because I like it that way. Let yourself into the gate. Take it with you. In four years the earth will shake in its teeth.
Revelations. Face of the beast. In all fairness, in all fairness, let us quiet down and let us think.
Billy Peace looked intently, quietly, evenly, at each person in the crowd and quoted to them, proving things about the future that seemed complicated, like the way the Mideast had shaped up as such a trouble zone. How the Chinese armies were predicted in Tibet and that had come true and how they’ll keep marching, moving, until they reached the Fertile Crescent. Billy Peace told about the number. He slammed his forehead with his open hand and left a red mark. There, he yelled, gut-shot, there it will be scorched. He was talking about the number of the beast and said that they would take it from your Social Security, your checkbooks, these things called credit cards—American Express, he cried, to Oblivion, they would take the numbers from your tax forms, your household insurance. That already, through these numbers, you are under the control of Last Things and you don’t know it.
The Antichrist is among us.
He is the plastic in our wallets.
You want credit? Credit?
Then you’ll burn for it and you will starve. You’ll eat sticks, you’ll eat black bits of paper, your bills, and all the while you’ll be screaming from the dark place, Why the hell didn’t I just pay cash?
Because the number of the beast is a fathomless number and banking numbers are the bones and the guts of the Antichrist, who is Lucifer, who is pure brain.
Pure brain gonna get us to the moon, get us past the moon.
The voice of lonely humanity in a space probe calling Anybody Home? Anybody Home Out There? Antichrist will answer. Antichrist is here, all around us in the tunnels and webs of radiance, in the transistors, the great mind of the Antichrist is fusing in a pattern, in a destiny, waking up nerve by nerve.
Serves us right. Don’t it serve us right not to be saved?
It won’t come easy. Not by waving a magic wand. You’ve got to close your eyes and hold out those little plastic cards.
Look at this!
He held a scissors high, turned it to every side so the light gleamed off the blades.
The sword of Zero Interest! Now I’m coming. I’m coming down the aisle. I’m coming with the sword that sets you free.
Billy Peace started a hymn going and he walked down the rows of chairs, singing,