All That Lives (58 page)

Very far away, buried in the breathless silence, I heard the wailing of the hog outdoors and I understood how it was they
knew when they were marked and it was time to call their angels down. There was much unspoken knowledge but it was possible
to hear it. The hogs knew of their future as God spoke it to their hearts and they did listen. This was the Being’s gift to
me, this knowledge of all things, spoken and not, unending time and silence, the life of all that lives. I understood it for
a moment, but only for a moment.

Betsy Bell, do not have Josh Gardner.

I felt as though the Spirit removed me from my body and threw me out across a great stretch of rolling green fields of time,
hurtling me toward a log cabin in a clearing. I felt as I had when I rode up the hill and saw the vision of Father’s skeleton.
I knew there was something mean and ugly behind the door, and frightened it was my future self, I did not want to look. The
Being laughed and the door swung open and I did see myself, older and holding a broom, sweeping the floor, crying. A huge
sadness unlike any I had ever known before made my sweeping heavy-handed and the dust off the bare planks itched my nose.
I did not know what was wrong, but I seemed frightfully alone in the woods. The Spirit was not present, yet somehow I knew
that was part of my sorrow. The future me wished to talk with the Being and could not. A huge regret ached inside me. Abruptly
I felt I was falling backward through a night sky, spinning, with only the light of the stars. I grew very cold and it seemed
far too long since I had taken a breath.

This is why you must heed my counsel. Do you wish to lose your love?

What you have shown me is harsh and cruel in my future and my past.

I felt as though any moment I must relinquish consciousness and cease to be. I did not want the future the Spirit had shown
me, and yet I struggled to remain living.

This is the last time we will speak, Betsy Bell. Do not have Josh Gardner, for with him you will learn the meaning of despair.

Why should I believe you? You have tormented me most grievously. You said you came to bring me buried treasure. You said you
were of Kate Batts’s making. I know you to be most like the witch rabbit on our sleigh ride, evil, and capable of regeneration
and mischief for all of eternity.

All that is true, but so is what I tell you now.

Your protection was a curse to me.

Why do you persist in your wrong thinking? I am your most dear friend, yet I have a mind to smash you like the bed frame,
Betsy Bell, for you are an ungracious participant in your own education.

I thought of Mother pulling tight my braid, insisting I keep my faith in God contained within my head. How was it possible?
I was distracted by the many events of my suffering. Yet, how foolish and wasted were my days, abused and fearful. If only
I could have the chance to claim the love I knew was meant for me. Only the image of Josh’s full lips made it possible for
me to hold out against the Spirit’s crushing grip on my breath.

Were you not certain in the knowledge I WOULD speak? My words appeared as possibilities in your heart before they were uttered
in your ears.

There was the swoosh of a bird wing and I had the feeling I was waking from a dream. I was still the size of the room but
I could breathe and I could see Mother’s lips moving in prayer at my feet, so time had resumed. My lungs filled easily without
gasping.

“You cannot frighten me with a vision of future tears. I have already known the limits of despair and it is my resolve to
find peace in sharing love.” My head was dizzy and my speech broke unevenly into the silence.

The dark is more vast than you know and it is within you.

“I know the darkness, I know it, for you have brought it to me with your rattling thistles and foul poison and bad memories.”
It was difficult to choke the words out, but I was determined. “You say you are the life of all that lives but I am all that
lives as much as you! I am
more
of it than you, for I have what you do not, which is a body and a single mind. Do what you like with the dead and the unborn
and the thousands of souls having their say in the other worlds. Know everything you will, but understand you cannot know
the pleasure of two lips pressed together or rays of sun against your cheek. I am alive and you are not!”

You are a beautiful girl. Be of it, but not it.

I thought the Spirit meant I must fulfill my potential and I hoped it would agree with me in how I should do it. I thought
of Dean striking the witch dog down and Kate Batts filling with Spirit without encouragement from the congregation. I thought
of Chloe mixing lye and ash to make a perfect soap and of Mother sorting the beans for seed and drying. I pictured Mother
engaged in any simple task, sewing, or cutting the lavender blooms in the garden, or wrapping our scarves around our necks
to protect us.

A sad sigh filled the room and I could feel as well as hear it. The black nausea within me began to dissipate as though the
sigh opened the door in my breast and released it all. The cold darkness fled my body and I could see it as a cloud of black
leaving the room. I watched it hover at the window, then thin itself and slip through a crack in the parlor sill. That it
could all add up to just so much darkness in one soul. I was overjoyed to see it released and gone from me. Whoever placed
it there, my father, God or the Being, it no longer mattered, for I would no longer be afraid. The depths of God would not
be for me like the long drop from the cavern to the fishing hole. Instead they would be part of each moment lived. I planned
to fill my soul with the lightness I had felt on my birthday. A lightness that smelled like lemons and let me know I was blessed
by God.

You threw away my gifts, Betsy Bell. As the worms give richness to the soil, so evil and suffering give depth to the soul,
for without them there is no good, no joy. It may seem heavy knowledge for you to hear, but it is your responsibility to use
it wisely.

A sublime warmth overcame me and I thought of the days after John Jr. and I had met the Being in the cave. I recalled the
hours of dusting and sewing when I had thought deeply about the intelligence of the intelligent and unending time and silence.
I had understood more about it than I had realized. I could accept as truth what the Being said, and I recalled feeling its
intention to protect me before it spoke for the first time. I had not understood it then and I had abruptly forgotten I ever
felt it. I understood it now.

“My past will be ever present and my history will inform my future actions,” I reassured the Spirit.

Nature will take its course with you, Betsy Bell.

It was difficult to comprehend, the knowledge of all things, but I had the feeling of it, like the velvet hand against my
cheek and the sweet meat of the Spirit’s cherries in my mouth. I felt my limbs and head shrinking back to my regular size
and my whole body tingled as if the Being had run pins and needles through my veins. I gave my forehead to the parlor carpet
as earlier I had laid it on the purslane and violets and months previous I had laid it in the snow, crying after Father breathed
his last, certain in the knowledge the day approached when my own heart would thump and heave no more. The snow, the flowers,
the parlor carpet, the plank floor of my room, my forehead had laid against them all. I felt the light inside me spreading
from my fingers to my toes, melting all the sadness I had suffered. The stone in my belly was gone and I knew it would not
return. I thought back to when I was nine and felt the Spirit in the woods and wondered how God’s good earth could have such
cold and frightening places and I understood for certain, God’s good earth contained it all.