The Summer That Melted Everything(42)
Later, when she was out of the hospital, she stood in front of the windows, the moonlight upon her flat stomach. She pulled her hair all the way around her waist, just as she always had before.
“Now you can love me again. Fielding? I said, look, the hair goes all the way around, just as before. Now you can love me again. We can start over.”
That night, while she slept in her castor oil crown, I went to the back bedroom, picked up the cradle, and threw it into the lake, watching it sink like a ship beneath the dark water.
I never went back to Maine. I did buy a rope. I did make a necklace on a porch one night. I did think of Sal as the stool wobbled. I did make the rope too long, as my toes landed on the porch floor and became the son who saved me, if only for that one, brief moment.
12
All good to me is lost
—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 4:109
THE FLYERS ABOUT him first came as inserts in the vegetarianism pamphlets. By July, Elohim started writing so much about Sal that those inserts became pamphlets all their own. These pamphlets led to meetings held every afternoon in the woods.
When I overheard the sheriff telling Dad he was going to stop by Elohim’s to have a chat, I ran through the neighbors’ backyards as the sheriff drove down the lane to Elohim’s. I snuck up through the side of Elohim’s yard, hunkering below his windows, should he be near them. Then I crouched by the lattice, waiting for him to answer the sheriff’s knock.
They sat down on the porch in the padded wicker chairs while the sheriff reminded Elohim of how he said he wouldn’t speak ill of Sal anymore.
“Now, Sheriff”—Elohim’s smile was careful—“I never said that. What I said was I would talk to folks and help ’em understand the possibility of Dovey fallin’ on her own. I said I would tell ’em that that car hittin’ that boy was perhaps an accident after all. I never said I wouldn’t go further. I never said I wouldn’t speak ill of him on other issues. Folks have got a right to know about the devil in their midst, and I am merely describin’ his flames for them. Now, I ain’t sayin’ I’m tellin’ folks to run ’im outta town. That wouldn’t do me no good.”
“Do you no good?” The sheriff spit between the columns of the porch.
Elohim quickly controlled his disgust as he turned from the spit that had landed on the leaves of the hostas, which were drying and yellowing in the drought, though still relevant and lining the front of his porch.
“It would do none of us any good, runnin’ an evil off like we’re too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can’t forget, we are the lords of our own ’round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent.”
“Now, Elohim, I’m warnin’ ya right now to leave that boy alone. I trusted you to do no harm. You waited till the Blisses got custody, and now you’re startin’ up again. You best get used to that boy. Their custody might not be temporary after all. We’re talkin’ ’bout a boy that could be part of their family permanently. Every family is part of this town. Don’t hurt the town, now, Elohim. You hurt us all, and there ain’t gonna be enough bandages to heal every wound.”
“Sheriff, I am merely keepin’ information and knowledge alive and healthy.”
“Shit, Elohim.” The sheriff crossed his snakeskin boots at the ankles. “You got more followers than the church now.”
“That’s ’cause the preacher finds it hard to point the snake out. That preacher has always been on the cautious side of things. Him and his khakis. He’s from Canada, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is he doin’ down here? We ain’t his people. He ain’t one of us. He ain’t got Ohio soil shakin’ off his roots, he ain’t got hands for squeezin’ river mud through fingers, and he sure the hell ain’t got the holster that the hills and the hollers put at our hips.”
“I ain’t got Ohio soil on my roots either. You forget that?”
“But ya got the South on ’em, and ain’t that a magnolia closer than anything Canadian? Listen, it ain’t my fault if that careful preacher can’t keep an audience. Folks come to me ’cause I’m one of ’em. Maybe more than that, they come to me ’cause I don’t candy the horns and I certainly don’t dignify the demon.
“But don’t you worry your badge, Sheriff. We are a refined group, me and mine. We don’t force our ideas or pamphlets on nobody, we simply offer them. As I will offer them to you now.”
The sheriff accepted Elohim’s offered pamphlet with a grunt. As the sheriff started to read it, Elohim spoke more about his group.
“Our meetin’s are held out in the woods, far from the town. You don’t have to hear or see us if you don’t wanna. We are simply a concerned group. I can assure you we are not on hunt. We are merely on guard.”
The meetings were held, just as Elohim said they were, out in the woods in that abandoned one-room schoolhouse close to the tree house. The schoolhouse had at one time caught fire, burning the roof away and leaving only the brick shell. Inside this shell, Elohim raised his religion to his followers, which at first was a small group that steadily gained members over the course of that summer. It was a funny thing. One day you’d hear someone warning about Elohim’s cult. Then the next day that very someone would be at the meetings like they’d always been there.