How They Were Found (7 page)

In the morning, the other leaders of the congregation are waiting for Spear when he steps out of the cabin. On his porch are other preachers, mediums, the newspapermen who months before published excited articles in support of the project. The men stand in a half-circle in front of his house, smoking their pipes and chatting. Their voices drop into silence as Spear descends the steps from his porch onto the lawn.

One of the preachers speaks, saying, John, this has to stop. Whatever you're doing in that shed, it's bankrupting the community.

The newspaperman nods and says, We thought this was a gift from God, that his spirit spoke through you, but—

He breaks off, looks to the others for support. He says, John, what if what you're making is an abomination instead of a revelation? 

And what about the girl, John? What are you doing with the girl?

The others mutter their assent, close ranks against him. Spear doesn't move. They aren't physically threatening him, despite their new proximity. He closes his eyes, and waits a long minute before responding. He holds out his small hands, displays the creases of grease and dirt that for the first time in his life cross his palms.

Spear says, I am a person destitute of creative genius, bereft of scientific knowledge in the fields of magnetism and engineering and electricity. I cannot even accomplish the simplest of handy mechanics. Everything I tell you is true, as I do not have the predisposition to make any suggestions of my own for how this device might function or how to build what we have built.

He says, This gift I bring you, it could not have come from me, but it does come through me.

It comes through me, or not at all.

The men say nothing. They tap their pipe ash into the snow, or shuffle their feet and stare down the hill. There is no sound coming from the shed, even though Spear knows the workers have all arrived. They're listening too, waiting to hear what happens next.

Spear says, Four more months. All I need is four more months. The Motor will be alive by the end of June.

He promises, and then he waits for the men to each take his hand and agree, which they eventually do, although it costs him the rest of his credibility, what little is left of the goodwill earned through a lifetime of service. It does not matter that their grips are reluctant, that their eyes flash new warnings. Whatever doubts he might have when he is alone, they disappear when he is questioned by others, as they always have. The Electricizers will not disappoint, nor the God who directs them.

While he is shaking hands with the last of the men, he hears the cabin door open again. Thinking it is Abigail coming to join him in the shed, Spear turns around with a smile on his face, then loses it when he sees his wife instead, standing on the porch, holding his oldest child by the hand. Their other child is balanced in the crook of her arm, and all are dressed for travel. He looks from his wife to the men in his yard—his friends—and then back again. While the men help his wife with the two chests she has packed, Spear stands still and watches without a word. Even when his family stands before him, he has no words.

He blinks, blinks again, then he looks at this woman. He looks at her children. He turns, puts his back to them, waits until they are far enough that they could be anyone's family before he looks once more.

He watches until they disappear into the town, and then he goes into the shed and begins the day's work, already much delayed. He sets his valise down on the work table at the back of the shed, unpacks his papers detailing the newest revealments. While the men gather to look at the blueprints, he wanders off to stare at the Motor itself. It gleams in the windowless shed, the lamplight reflecting off the copper and zinc, off the multitudes of burnished magnetic spheres. He puts his hand to the inscriptions in the table, runs his fingers down the central shaft, what the Electricizers call the grand revolver. It towers over the table, vaguely forming the shape of a cross. There are holes punctured through the tubing, where more spheres will be hung before the outer casing is cast and installed. It is this casing that he has brought the plans for today.

Spear does not need an explanation from the Electricizers to understand this part. Even he can see that the symbols and patterns upon the panels are the emblematic form of the universe itself. They are the mind of God, the human microcosm, described at last in simple, geometric beauty. He does not explain it to these men who work for him, does not think they need to know everything that he does.

The only person he will explain it to is Abigail, and then only if she asks.

With his family gone back to Boston, the cabin is suddenly too big for Spear and Abigail, with its cavernous cold rooms, but also too small, with no one to mediate or mitigate their bodies and movements. Everywhere Spear goes, he runs into the girl, into her small, supposedly virginal form. Despite her bright inquisitiveness whenever she visits the shed, she is quieter in the cabin, continuing her deference to his status as both a male and a church leader. Abigail keeps her eyes averted and her hands clasped in front of her, preventing her from noticing that in their forced solitude Spear stares openly at her, trying to will her to look at him, to answer his hungry looks with one of her own, only to punish himself later for his inability to control these thoughts.

By March, he is actively avoiding her within his own home, so much so that he almost doesn't notice when she begins to show around the belly. The bulge is just a hand's breadth of flesh, just the start of something greater yet to come.

He is elated when he sees it, but the feeling does not last.

Spear knows he has chosen wrong, has known for months that the Electricizers' refusal to discuss the girl is his own fault. In the shed, he stops to take in the New Motor, growing ever more massive, more intricate. There is much left to do before June, and now much to pray and atone for as well. He is sorry for his own mistakes, but knows Abigail's pregnancy is another matter altogether, a sin to be punished separately from his own. Spear drags Randall out of the shed by his collar and flings him into the muddy earth. The boy is bigger than he, healthier and stronger, but Spear has the advantage of surprise and it is all he needs. He cannot stop to accuse, to question, must instead keep the boy on the ground, stomping his foot into the teenager's face and stomach and ribs. The boy cries out his innocence, but Spear keeps at it until he hears the unasked for confession spray from between the boy's teeth.

When Randall returns to the shed, Spear will welcome the boy with open arms. He will forgive the boy, and then he will send him to collect Abigail and return her to her father's home. Let Abigail's father deal with what she and Randall have done, for Spear has his own child to protect.

Even after Abigail leaves, Spear waits to go to Maud Trenton. He walks down the hill to his offices in the meeting hall, a place he hasn't been in weeks, and sends one of the deacons to summon her. When she enters his office and closes the door behind her, Spear barely recognizes the woman before him.

Her face is clear, her acne scars disappeared, and the thin gray hair that once hung down her face is now a thick, shining brown, healthy and full. Even her teeth have healed themselves, or else new ones have appeared in her mouth, grown in strong and white. She is shy, but when he catches her gaze, he sees the glory in her eyes, the power of the life that rests in her belly.

Spear says, Forgive me, Mother, for I did not know who you were.

He gets down on his knees before her and presses his head against the folds of her dress. He feels his body shudder but does not recognize the feeling, the new shape of sadness and shame that accompanies his sobs. While he cries, she reaches down and strokes his hair, her touch as soothing as his own mother's once was. In a lowly voice, he gives thanks that his lack of faith was not enough to doom their project, or to change the truth, finally revealed to him: This woman is the Mother and he is the Father and together they will bring new life to the world. He reaches down and lifts the hem of her dress, working upward, bunching the starched material in his fists. He exposes her thick legs, her thighs strong as tree stumps but smooth and clean, their smell like soap, like buttermilk and cloves. He keeps pushing her dress up until he holds the material under her enlarged breasts, until he exposes the mountain of her swollen belly, her navel popped out like a thumb. He puts his face against the hot, hard flesh, feels her warmth radiate against his skin. She moans when he opens his mouth and kisses the belly, and he feels himself growing hard, the beginning of an erection that is not sex but glory. Maud's legs quiver, buck, threaten to collapse, and he lets the fabric of her dress fall over him as he reaches around to support her. He stays for a long time with his face against her belly and his hands clenched around her thighs. He waits until she uncovers him herself, until she takes his weeping face in her hands. She lifts gently, and he follows the movement until he is once again apart from her, standing on his feet.

Maud kisses Spear on the forehead, then crosses herself before turning away, keeping her back to him until Spear leaves her there in his own office. He walks outside into the warmth of a sun he has not felt in months. He has supplicated himself, has seen the mystery with his own eyes, and he has been blessed by this woman, the one he failed to choose so long ago. It is enough to put faith in God and in what God has asked of him. It is enough to cast aside all doubts, forever more.

Jefferson wakes Spear with a touch to his shoulder, the specter's hand a dagger of ice sliding effortlessly through muscle and bone. Jefferson says, Come. I want to show you what will happen next.

The reverend gets up and follows the spirit outside, where they stand together on the hill and look down at High Rock, at the roads that lead toward Randolph and the railroad and the rest of America.

Jefferson says, As the Christ was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, so the New Motor has been built here by the people of High Rock. When it is finished, it must go forth to unite the people, and you with it.

Spear says, But how? It gets bigger every day. Surely it's too large to rest on a wagon.

Jefferson shakes his head. He says, Once the machine has been animated, you will disassemble it one more time, and then you will take it to Randolph where you will rebuild it inside a railroad car.

Spear says, The railroad doesn't go far enough. We'll never make it across the country that way.

Jefferson ignores his objection, saying, One day it will, and in the meantime the Motor will grow stronger and stronger. You will take our New Messiah from town to town, and He will reach out and speak through you to the masses. He will use your mouth and your tongue to relay His words, to bring about the new Kingdom that awaits this country. This is why your family was taken from you. This was why we could not allow you to keep the girl, even after the Motor was finished.

He says, As much as you have given, there is more that may be asked of you. You must give up everything you have to follow the Motor, as the disciples did before you.

Spear looks at Jefferson, stares at his ghostly, glowing form. He wants to say that there is nothing left to give, that already he is a shell of a man, reduced to a mere vessel, an empty reservoir, but it is too late to protest, too late to go back. Whatever else remains, he does not care enough for himself to refuse any of it.

THE TWO HUNDREDTH REVEALMENT

BIRTH will commence upon the arrival of the NEW MARY, who will arrive pregnant with the energy necessary to bring the machine to life. Through the WOMBOMIC PROCESSES, the NEW MARY will be filled with the THOUGHT-CHILD, the necessary intellectual, moral, social, religious, spiritual, and celestial energies that will fill the PSYCHIC BATTERY and give BIRTH to the new age. The BIRTH will be attended by the MEDIUM, who will become more-than-a-male—a FATHER—even as the NEW MARY becomes more-than-a-female—a MOTHER. The womb has had its season of desire. It has had its electrical impartation. The organism of a choice person was acted upon by our LORD and MAKER. The NEW MARY is a person of extraordinary electric power, united in a harmonious, well-balanced physical, mental, and spiritual organism, and when she is brought within the sphere of the NEW MOTOR she will give it life.

The first week of June, Maud Trenton struggles up the hill in the pre-dawn dark, her arms wrapped under the largess of her belly, supporting the baby inside. She climbs alone, as she has done everything else in her long life, but she also feels watched, as she has since even before the stirring in her body began. She feels the presence of spirits, of angels, of men who care for her, protect her, keep her safe. When she stumbles to the stony path, it is these angels who give her the strength to rise again, lifting her with hands as warm and soft as they are invisible. The rest of the climb, they hold her by the elbows as she walks, keeping her ankles from twisting, from casting her again to the ground beneath her feet.

At the top of the hill, both the cabin and the shed are dark and quiet. She looks up into the sky, into the pink dawn obliterating the star-flecked heavens by degrees. She moans, squatting over her knees to wait out the horrible pressure of the next contraction. She wants to go to the cabin to wake Reverend Spear, but even a mother as inexperienced as she knows time is short. The angels whisper to her, guide her away from the cabin and toward the shed instead. She must be inside when she gives birth, must be near this new messiah that the reverend has revealed to her.

She tries to open the shed's wide, sliding door, but can't. For a moment, she sees the lock clasped around the latch and despairs, but then—after another crushing contraction—the door slides open at her touch, helped along its tracks by her angels. Inside, the room is dark and cool, the dimness softened by the slow sunlight following her inside. At the direction of the angels, she moves to lie down on the floor, to lean her head back on the dusty floorboards, but only after she stares at the machine, at its metallic, crafted magnificence. She does not understand its purpose, but its beauty is undeniable.