Your Body is Changing (17 page)

“We must not expect an instantaneous miracle. Indeed we must not expect anything. It could well be that God will not cure you at all.”

“Fair enough,” said the old farmer.

Later that evening Brother Lampey and Henry spread a blanket out on the floor at the foot of the old farmer’s chair, and Henry lay down to rest.

The old farmer smoked. Brother Lampey sat at the card table drinking warm tap water.

“We are looking for a way to the north,” Brother Lampey said. “We are looking for a way out of the public’s scrutiny. We are doing the Lord’s good work, and as His Book instructs, we seek to do it in private.”

“Hell of a rig you got for somebody so shy.”

“I can only do as my Lord instructs me.”

The old farmer closed his eyes and recited in a voice made resonant and profound by the numerous tumors through which his words were channeled and dispersed:

Better by day to sit like a sack in your chair;

Better by night to lie like a stone in your bed.

When food comes, then open your mouth;

When sleep comes, then close your eyes.

“Well, if I have ever heard of a more direct road map to the provinces of sloth and corruption I cannot recollect it,” said Brother Lampey.

“Them’s the words I live by.”

“And look where it has led you. Words of despair, brother. Words of godlessness.”

“Found it on a thought-for-the-day calendar. Weren’t godless atall. Had a whole mess of upstanding Christian people on it—everybody from Winston Churchill to Mortimer Snerd. This particular one was by an old Chinaman lived about a billion years ago. I believe his name was Poor Choppy.”

“If I heeded the advice of Chinamen and took to living like you, I would not today be pulling a replica of the Ten Commandments to New York City with an army of spotless rams.”

“That’s right, you wouldn’t.”

“You have made clear the disdain in which you hold my enterprise, but I ask you again: Do you know of a lonely and desolate route whereby we may travel undisturbed?”

The old farmer said that when the power company had put up the poles they had cleared a lot of land. The silver poles now stood along the way like beacons, maybe (the old farmer speculated) as far as the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway, where all the power of Alabama came from.

“Course it’s all growed up now. You’d kindly need some help to make it through the brush.”

“What manner of help?”

“Say a feller with a tractor and bush hog.”

“Have you a tractor and bush hog?”

“I’m a farmer ain’t I?”

“Do you dangle these items in front of me wherefore to mock my faith or do you intend to come to our aid and do the work of the Lord?”

“First time anybody’s ast me to do anything in fifteen, twenty years. I reckon Poor Choppy would approve on principle. Go with the flow, that’s his motto, I reckon.”

The next morning, the old farmer traveled a good ways ahead of them “making the crooked places straight” like John the Baptist, taking down saplings and brambles in the path of the goat cart with the bush hog he towed behind his tractor. Occasionally the bush hog would sling up a snake that whipped through the air and landed in the path of the goats, who trampled it underfoot like the Lamb of God bruising the head of the Old Serpent. Henry hadn’t been sure that the snakes were snakes at first; it was hard to tell through the binoculars.

The binoculars came from under the buckboard. Perhaps they had been strapped there with ropes. Henry didn’t know because Brother Lampey made him swear not to look under the buckboard for any reason, ever. The bottom of the buckboard was hung all about with a thick purple fabric such as you might make curtains out of, and when Brother Lampey slipped under to fetch something he acquired all the secrecy of a Levite priest.

From time to time Brother Lampey would crawl under and come out with all kinds of things—the binoculars, a can of gasoline for the tractor, a checkerboard, a 12-pack of Charmin Ultra. On the first night, after they had made camp, Henry asked if he could use some of the toilet paper and Brother Lampey said there wasn’t any. Henry accepted the answer though he could not figure how the whole 12-pack could be gone, nor could he understand why Brother Lampey would lie about such a thing. Brother Lampey suggested that Henry use a pinecone. It was good enough for Brother Lampey when he was a boy. The old farmer agreed that there was nothing so marvelous and apt as a pinecone for sanitary purposes. Toilet paper was only a scheme for some crooked paper mill owner to get rich by, playing on the snobbery of college-educated elitists who thought their butts were too good for a pinecone.

Henry went into a thicket, looking for a good place to go number two, and he could hear Brother Lampey and the old farmer laughing in the clearing. He felt around on the ground for a pinecone but all he could find was a pointy stick.

A cool spell was followed by a nice warm spell, and in any case Henry’s robe was surprisingly comfortable in a chill (thanks to the terrycloth) or in the heat of the day (its breezy looseness). Sleeping outside was kind of fun and Bumpy the Cat, who rode by day on the old farmer’s lap, took a liking to Henry and usually slept on his chest at night, making friendly pawing motions as though he was parsing out biscuit dough. Henry had never been around cats and he was surprised to discover that they were not as bad as he had heard on TV comedy shows, where the funniest thing you could do was accidentally kill somebody’s cat—or if you were a very old person who died while having sexual intercourse.

One night it rained heavily and Brother Lampey produced (once again from the forbidden underside of the buckboard) a roll that unfurled into an elaborate system of sticks framing a kind of crazy quilt made of sailcloth and oilskin—more or less a tent (or “tabernacle” as Brother Lampey called it) to protect the Commandments. Once it was constructed, everybody—including the cat and a few of the goats—huddled under it and listened to the rain and thunder, feeling pretty safe there in the shadow of the Lord’s Word.

One night, two of the goats—a black-and-white one that was the largest of the team and his meek brownish friend—became intent upon making love one with the other. Brother Lampey got a fire extinguisher from under the buckboard and sprayed them until they stopped.

The brownish one rolled around on its back, raising much dust, trying, it seemed, to rid his coat of the fire-extinguisher chemicals. The other—the one who had been in charge of the dirty deed—butted Brother Lampey to the ground and stamped on his ribs, ignoring the commands to submission signaled by the whistle. During the stamping, in fact, Brother Lampey swallowed his whistle. Henry tried to help but he couldn’t get the fire extinguisher to work and anyway Brother Lampey kept screaming at him not to “tamper with the valuable equipment,” even while he was being stamped into the ground.

After the stamping Henry tried to help Brother Lampey to his feet but he angrily shook Henry aside, rose to his knees, clasped together his hands and quaking with righteousness prayed very loudly:

“Lord, I do not understand your ways. You have commanded me to take unto my bosom one hundred and eighty male sheep and no female, wherefore to prevent such acts as are unclean in Thine eyes. And then You did everything in Your power to keep said rams from me, and that is how I became stuck with goats, according to Your Sacred Will. And still did I make them all males, in accordance with Your wishes, even though I could only scrape together nine. This world is nothing but a series of sordid compromises, Lord! I understand that. But so many tests, Lord! The cup You put before mine lips! What wouldst Thou have me do?”

The old farmer and Henry made themselves scarce while Brother Lampey awaited an answer from the Lord.

They ambled through the woods for a spell and the old farmer settled in a bed of lush green vines that were choking the exposed roots of an enormous crooked tree.

“What if that’s poison ivy?” said Henry.

“What if it is?” said the old farmer. He lit a cigarette. His cat Bumpy came out of nowhere.

Henry smoothed out his robe and sat down on a mound of soft dirt that looked almost manmade, like a circle. The cat came over and sat next to Henry and started cleaning himself.

“Look at how he washes his face!” Henry said. “It’s just like a regular person would do, just about. You could put a little washcloth in his hand and it would look like he was doing a trick.”

The old farmer didn’t look over. He just smoked his cigarette.

“Well, you missed it now,” Henry said after awhile.

“I seen a cat wash his face before,” said the old farmer. “Nothing against it.”

“How you feeling this evening?” Henry said.

“Tumory,” said the old farmer. He smoked his cigarette.

Henry listened to the tree frogs saying weep weep weep. Sooner or later Brother Lampey showed up, already talking.

“I do not wish to cause undue alarm but the Lord has made it known unto me that the goat who felled me is possessed with a devil. In ancient times the ignorant pagans believed in a man who was part goat and pranced about playing a flute effeminately. These gods as we now well know were naught but devils that roamed the earth for a spell. Tonight, as you have witnessed, a possessed goat attempted to procreate with me as if I was a woman goat. He trampled upon my breadbox, his great horned head leering, but the raiment of the Lord protected me and I wore His strength as a girdle about my loins.”

Brother Lampey was shaking a little. He looked at Henry.

“Rise,” he said.

Henry rose.

“You will lead the two homosexual goats deep into the woods, and there you will slay them. I have found that a large stick will slay just about anything that needs to be slain.”

Brother Lampey led Henry away. The old farmer snapped his fingers a couple of times, softly, and Bumpy came running over to him to get scratched. Henry looked back. The old farmer, as he absently scratched his cat, seemed to be thinking about the rippling tops of the trees, green-black against the black-green sky.

As Brother Lampey led Henry back to the campsite he chattered in a strange new tone, kind of high-pitched, that Henry had not heard before: “I have seen the face of Satan as he tried to mount me! O, my child, we are blessed! The devil and all the pagan gods of Greece and Rome are most assuredly upset and on the run!”

With that they pushed into the clearing, where the two nodding goats were tied to a silver power pole with stout rope. Brother Lampey stopped abruptly. He threw his arm in front of Henry’s chest, as Henry’s mom did when she stepped on the brakes too fast.

“I can go no closer to them. I have given the deviant critters a goodly quantity of sleeping pills, but the devils stir inside them still. Do you sense it? The Evil One sets in wait for me. Go—and come back with their heads.”

“How do I—”

“Go,” said Brother Lampey.

Henry tugged them along and the sinful goats followed in doped obedience. It was already dark but it seemed to get darker as he went along. Low branches hit Henry in the face. He walked through spiderwebs. Everything was dead quiet except that one of the goats seemed to be snoring as it walked.

When Jesus had cast all those devils out of that one guy they had flown right into a bunch of pigs and the pigs had gone crazy and run off a cliff. Henry thought that would be awesome to see in a movie.

But why slay the goats when the demons were just going to hop into the next thing around? It could be a rabbit or a skunk or anything. How’d you like to have a skunk rear up at you and show its sharp teeth? Maybe it would say something in a deep voice. “Hello, Henry.”

The larger goat stumbled or fell asleep and rolled down a hill. The rope went slack and Henry dropped it. He had to jump out of the way of the tumbling goat, which disappeared into some heavy brush. The sounds of crackling twigs and smashed shrubbery continued, becoming fainter and fainter. Henry left the second goat behind and ran to check on the one that had fallen. “How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?”

Henry knew in his heart that he wanted to help the goat and not especially to slay it.

He pushed through the black leaves and was blinded by a glorious light.

There before him was the last silver power pole, bigger than all the rest, lording it over a chain-link fence full of thrumming, sputtering metallic caskets, furious arrangements of rods and burning beacons like jungle animals in a pen. Light flashed on the siren-red danger signs, silver sparks sprayed from the machinery.

The goat was already up and shaking its coat. It moved slowly past the power plant toward the town at the bottom of the hill.

“We’ve come to the end of the woods!”

Henry’s side hurt from running. He was not sure why he was so excited. He had lost the goats entrusted unto him for vengeance but it didn’t seem to matter.

The old farmer was pulling a blanket over Brother Lampey, who was asleep on the ground beside the Ten Commandments, with his hands over his head bent like claws and a look of horror on his sleeping face.

The next morning Brother Lampey seemed to have forgotten all about the homosexual goats, except for the yoking inconvenience caused by their absence. He didn’t ask Henry for their severed heads or anything. He was more concerned—to the point of panic, nearly—that seven goats were not divisible by three, as nine had been. He spent several hours getting Henry to help him hook and rehook the goats in various combinations. Once he was satisfied with the arrangement they were out of the woods in twenty minutes and the goats were unyoked again to graze in the weeds. Before long, workers and their supervisors streamed out of the power plant to see what was going on. Brother Lampey started preaching them a sermon.

Henry heard the tractor crank.

Brother Lampey kept preaching. Henry ran to the edge of the woods and called to the old farmer.

“Hey!” he called.