Lead woke in a comfortable bed with sheets that smelled of lilacs and bleach. His room was painted a shade of green he remembered as glow-in-the-dark. The Old Preacher watched him from a stool in the corner. On a wooden plank table lay the parts of Lead’s gun, dismantled and oiled. The Old Preacher smiled.
“What were you going to do with no ammunition?”
Lead mumbled about demons in the night. The sliver of metal left by Century’s knife was cold in his chest. In contrast, the knife wound in his shoulder was hot and puckered.
“Demons, boy, you should have given those Jimson eaters wide birth. That flower will make you blind or crazy as sure as it’ll make you high.”
Lead tried to sit up but his head was too heavy. Pain shot up his arms and legs. The air in the room was musty and hard to breath. He shifted his gaze to the old Preacher. Terence had shaved his beard and combed back his white hair into a thick main. His eyes flashed ruby red and then turned back to yellow-blue. Lead whispered a prayer.
“Preacher, you’re going to need a lot more than prayer, look at me. You’ve been poisoned. No demons. No smiting or plague. Your mind is not right and won’t be for awhile. You need to reckon this. You need to know that the wrong you’re seeing isn’t real. It’s the Jimson weed in your blood.”
Lead lifted his hand to his face. His fingers traced rainbow afterimages of themselves. He shook his arm and watched the images overlap, turn, and flex like wings of a bird with no feathers. Sweat streamed down his face. He closed his fist and felt the numbness across his palm. The old Preacher’s words were far away. Lead closed his eyes. His dreams brought him back to the demons in the desert and running blind into the night.
Terence examined Lead’s dismantled gun. The six-shooter was at least a hundred years old; a thirty-eight, maybe an old cop’s gun. Its barrel was scratched and pitted, the rubber grips were worn and showed metal patches. Terence reassembled the gun and slipped it into his knapsack. Somewhere outside, galloping hooves broke the silence of the day. Terence looked to the unconscious Preacher. He drew his Van Cleef and silently crept to the front door. The galloping stopped. Footsteps sounded on the front porch.
“Speak.” Terence yelled through the door. He pressed his gun barrels against the door just below head’s height. It was an old habit of his.
“It’s Philip, Philip Magenty, from the Dead. My news is urgent.”
“I know you Philip, are you alone?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
Terence cracked the door and looked upon poor ugly and marked Philip. A cross-shaped scar ran across his face vertically from forehead to chin and horizontally under the eyes. The scar dug misshapen canals into his nose. Philip held up a metal triangle.
“Be at peace sir, you know me.” Philip said.
“I never forget any who I’ve set free from the Church.” Terence slipped his gun back into his shirt. He touched Philip’s triangle.
“Whose idea was this symbol?”
“Twas Century’s, I’ve brought you one.” Philip reached into his pocket and withdrew another cobalt triangle.
“No. We shouldn’t be identified with symbols. Makes keeping secrets difficult.” Terence said.
Terence admired the triangle for its beauty and simplicity. He reluctantly handed it back to Philip.
“It didn’t help Century none. He’s dead,” Terence said.
Philip recoiled, “How?
“Preacher’s bullet, what’s your news?”
“I was at the South Parish when three strangers rode in with goodly bred horses and armored vests. One wears his Cleef out of shirt. It looked sharp, probably just pre-Storms.”
“Ah…shit.” Terence let the foul language slip out of his mouth for the first time in years. Philip winced as if struck.
“Those are Crusaders. Leave now with discretion, leave town, I’ll not have you taken by their lot.” Terence said.
Philip knew better than to question the panicked look in Terence’s eyes. He left immediately.
Terence ran through the house, checking the windows. There was no time. He returned to Lead’s room. In the distance he heard the hooves of Phillip’s horse fleeing and the gallop of more horses coming from the south.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Havasu Parish, like most of the towns in the Zona, was full of hunger and desperation. Information and morality were made cheap by despair. Crusaders paid silver notes. Terence knew their sanctuary was defiled. He hoped Philip remained untouched. He looked again at Lead.
Eliphaz the Crusader dismounted in front of the mark’s hideout. Terence’s horse stood tied to a pig iron fence. The creature whinnied and kept a suspicious eye on the Crusader. Eliphaz motioned for his men to circle the house. He thumbed the hammer of his Browning Hi-Power and looked to the weather-beaten front door. The house slanted as if the wind had tried to push it over and half succeeded. Eliphaz kicked the door open.
Terence peered through tattered curtains at the Crusaders down the street. He had moved his horse to a decoy house after Philip’s warning. Terence hefted Lead over his shoulders. His back crackled in protest. He sprinted through the back door into an overgrown cactus garden. Behind the homes of Havasu Parish a natural network of flashflood washes stood as a safeguard against monsoon rivers; a holdover from the Broken Times. The floods were all but extinct with the new scalding heat, but the washes stood as a testament to what was. Terence jumped into the ditch, the soft sand gripped his boots up to the ankles, and his knees joined his back’s protests. Terence ducked and plodded through the wash.
Eliphaz scanned each room with his Van Cleef pointed low, precise, and trained to hit sudden targets. By the second room he knew it was a ruse, an empty home, but he finished the sweep anyway. Better to be safe. Eliphaz exited the house and whistled loudly, the other Crusaders left their posts and returned to the front of the house.
“He’s not here,” Eliphaz said. “But they are or were here. Search each house up this block. Be ready for resistance.”
Eliphaz turned and shot Terence’s horse in the face. Blood painted the house’s exterior wall. The horse’s aquiline eyes showed confusion and hurt. The horse shook its head as though it were tormented by an insect both powerful and strange. The beast stepped backwards and slumped lifelessly against the iron fence.
The crack of a pistol shot echoed through the neighborhood. Terence quickened his pace. Running through loose sand with deadweight was a herculean task. His calves burned. The wash was intersected by an asphalt road. Terence broke into a run on the surer ground. Lead mumbled from his comatose state.
Terence kept out of the Crusader’s line of sight by running crouched next to houses long abandoned by humanity. He cut through streets and yards layered with sand on their return to nature.
Terence was past exhaustion by the time he laid Lead’s body down in a long abandoned mine shaft. A faded metal sign declared it BISON MINE. The shaded cavern provided cool relief. Terence took a drink from his canteen. He poured water into Lead’s mouth, over and past cracked lips. Terence leaned against the cavern wall and assessed their situation. He closed his eyes and rested. Fear warded off sleep.
Eliphaz pushed through the bat-wing doors of the Xanadu Inn. He entered alone; his companions remained in the suburbs hunting for the ex-Preacher’s trail. Conversation stopped. The iron shod heels of Eliphaz’s boots clicked against hardwood floors. He strode to a table full of men eating from a platter of hard bread and cheeses. The men abandoned their feast at the sight of the Crusader, giving him free reign of the table. Eliphaz sat and motioned to his informant. The man was small and hunched, giving the impression that he was somehow part beetle. The right nostril of his nose was missing, a wound of syphilis or combat, one as likely as the other. Eliphaz set a roll of silver notes on the table.
“He was in the neighborhood but not at the house. Thou led us to his horse and no better,” Eliphaz said.
The informant eyed the silver notes and licked his lips, he wanted to reach for them, but was unsure what the Crusader expected of him. Eliphaz drew his Browning and pointed at the informant’s face.
“Know this child, I know when lies are told to me and when sin is committed and had thee known better than what thee stated, thou’d be bleeding out on this floor.”
Eliphaz tapped the toe of his boot against the floor for emphasis. The informant did not move, his survival instincts were keen, he calculated the odds of quitting this situation alive and richer, and his mind told him to remain still, hold his breath, and for the love of God don’t look the Crusader in the eyes.
Eliphaz released the hammer. A small manic grin touched his lips. He waved his gun, beckoning the informant to come closer. The informant took a step and was suddenly grabbed and pulled by his collar. Eliphaz whispered into the informant’s ear.
“Go now child and let thy peers know more notes are to be had by those who find the marks, and a redemptive death will be claimed by those who assist marks.”
Eliphaz batted the roll of notes to the floor with his gun and released the informant. The beetle man let out the breath he’d been holding. He picked up the notes and pocketed them without counting.
“I witnessed a young boy name of Philip riding hard out east end not an hour ago. Stands to reason a boy fleeing these parts does so with reason. Good information or not I’m sure your Holiness will pay fair bounty,” the informant said.
The night winds added to the chill damp of the mine shaft. Terence dug a shallow pit and buried Lead to his neck. He could think of no other way to insulate the sick man from the cold. Lead woke in a half-conscious panic. He tried to reach for his chest but the sand prevented his arms from moving. Terence placed a hand over Lead’s mouth.
“Don’t make a sound. They’ve sent the Crusaders.” Terence kept his hand over Lead’s mouth until he ceased to struggle.
“Crusaders, the Church would not be so rash.” Lead whispered in disbelief. His mind reeled. Crusaders were the Church’s dogs of wars, sent to bring ruination on the heads of those who were too strong, too dangerous. They were the Churches arm against the armies of Satan. It must be a mistake that they’d been set to hunt this old mark. If they had, it meant that the Church had lost faith in Lead’s mission; that he too was out of favor with the Church’s holy influence. That he too might bear the Mark of Cain.
“That don’t matter, son. I’ve seen them, they’re here.” Terence said. He stared out of the cave’s opening into the mouth of darkness.
“We need to leave.” Terence said.
Philip formed a cocoon of blankets around his body. He hunched in front of a fire just off of the road to Kingman. His fire’s light created an island in a vast black sea of cloud-covered night. The night’s creatures chirped and scuttled and made small noises unappreciable by men. Philip sat in a void that could have been the desert, or hell, or distant starless space for all he could perceive within the sightline of his camp. Despite the comfort of blankets and fire, his body shook in the bitter wind. He carefully placed a wire tray over the fire and set a coffee pot on it. Philip clutched the blankets to his body. Out west, past the California border, lightening flashed and reflected blue on Philip’s saddle and coffee pot. Philip said a prayer for good weather.
From the darkness a small rock flew and struck Philip above the left eye. He cried out in mixture of surprise and pain. He touched his face and his hand came away streaked crimson; blood ran into his eye. Philip leapt to his feet, half blinded, and pulled a hunting knife from his belt. He leapt closer to the fire, a primitive notion for seeking safety.
A pistol report silenced the night creatures. A bullet tore through Philip’s calf, spinning him to the earth and sand. Eliphaz walked softly into the firelight, gun pointed at Philip. He circled Philip outside of reaching distance.
Philip beheld his attacker’s Van Cleef and armored vest with his good eye. He recognized the Crusader and tossed his knife out to the darkness. He bit his cheek against the pain in his calf and put forth a brave visage.
“I yield, sir! Why did you shoot me?” Philip said as he gripped his wounded calf.
“Why? Why?” Eliphaz emulated Philip’s voice and laughed. He kicked Philip’s hands away from the wound and pressed the tip of his boot against it. Philip yelled out and tried to twist his leg away. Eliphaz pressed harder. Lights flashed in Philip’s vision, thunder crashed in the distance.
“I’m going to let thou know a secret. It’ll save us both time and aggravation.” Eliphaz said. “God speaks to me. Not metaphorically. Not in my dreams or through fasting or prayers or any of that horseshit. God speaks to me just like I’m speaking to you right now, man to man, person to person. He comes down to earth and he…speaks…to…me!” Eliphaz pressed his foot harder to emphasize the point. Philip’s world was immersed in pain.
“God and I talk. We spoke today. Guess what he said?”
Eliphaz twisted his boot in the wound.
“Guess what he said!??”
Philip tried to answer, but the pain wouldn’t let him catch his breath. Eliphaz pulled back his boot. He spoke in a low, soothing tone.
“Guess what he said?”
“What did he say?” Philip said in desperation. His sweat shined in the fire light. He wanted to help, he wanted to talk, anything to ease the pain.
“He told me that thou art a liar. He told me that thou art a sinner and a backslider and that lies spew forth from thy mouth like a child’s spittle. So I made him a promise. I told our Lord that I’m going to hurt thee until thou tells me what I came to hear or God tells me thou speakth true or both and if neither occurs I will deliver you unto him and let him be the bearer of your misfortune.”
Eliphaz shot Philip in the foot and then kicked it mightily. A chunk of Philip’s boot holding the torn remnants of two toes flew off into the night. Philip loosed an animal scream beyond the range of what is sane and rational. His vision turned red and rain peppered the sand and everything became ethereal and unreal to him. Blood mixed with rain and fed the desert and scrub and life moved from one to the other as it always has. Eliphaz bent over the whimpering boy.
“Let’s begin again,” he said in a quiet, friendly tone.
“Shit!” Terence whispered again. He paced a tight circle in the mine shaft. Lead had long ago passed out and was mumbling in fever dreams. Terence thought about the Crusaders in Havasu. Crusaders were trained to track, investigate, interrogate. The world’s information was theirs to uncover. They would find his trail. He had to move, now.
“Oh, wake up.” Terence pushed against Lead’s head.
Lead woke swaddled in earth’s warm embrace. His mind swam and ached, the tracers had left his vision.
“Can you walk?” Terence asked.
Lead closed his eyes to stop the cave from spinning. He turned his head and vomited into the sand. Terence scooped mounds of dirt off of Lead’s body.
“For the time being you are in my care. I won’t leave a hurt man to Crusaders. Can you walk?”
Lead stood on one knee and pressed a hand to the cavern wall. His body was caked in dirt. Night air wisped cold through the mine. The wound on his shoulder radiated heat in contrast to the wind. Lead spoke a prayer of healing and pushed off of the wall. His legs wobbled like a new born animal. He took a step and then collapsed to the ground.
“Shit!” Terence said again and walked out of the cave and into the night.
Lead dreamt again of the Storms. His mother’s face loomed over him, yellow with sickness. He saw water turning streets into rivers fast and violent, powerful wind and shifting earth ripped apart buildings. People fled the buildings only to be consumed by the waters. All that death, images on a television screen watched while he sat next to his mother, who was ill and had not left their home in days and who would never be well again. Lead’s mind turned and he saw the face of the matriarch of the Jimson-eaters. He saw her wide bloodshot eyes transform into sparkling rubies while her followers hummed in the unseen distance.
Lead woke to find himself bound to a sled of palm fronds. Terence was dragging his body across the desert, through the darkness of night. Lead’s lower back was raw from rubbing against the sand.
Terence followed a rhythm. He sprinted a few yards, stopped, took in a few heavy breaths, and then sprinted a few more yards.
Lead looked up at the sky. The moon was projecting a ring onto the clouds. A light rain fell.
“Where am I?” Lead asked.
“Oh thank God,” Terence wheezed as he dropped the palm stems.
“You need to drink this.” He pressed his canteen to Lead’s mouth and tipped in water. The warm liquid hurt Lead’s throat, his eyes closed and his mind went back to dreams.
Terence took up the palm fronds and sprinted a few more yards. This was not the first time he wished for his body to be young again. As a younger man he could have run through the night and into the next day. He was too old and too tired and his back pain was only dampened by the distraction of the pain in his knees. Terence had been a strong man in his youth. He’d been a strong man in his life as a Preacher. He’d killed in the name of God, ended life at the word and command of the Church. He’d played a role at the razing and utter decimation of Las Vegas. He’d seen bodies staked and crucified to the luminous glow of neon lights.
Terence shook the image from his head and peered across the dunes. In the near distance, candlelight flickered in a cabin window. By the smell, Terence guessed it was the ranch house of a javelina farm. He took up the palm sled and dragged it a few more steps. Terence let go of the palm fronds and caught his breath. He pulled the cross from Lead’s pocket, having left his own in Cibola days past.
“Don’t go anywhere, Preacher.” He said to Lead’s unconscious body.
Pious Doland read by candlelight every night. Daylight hours provided no time for the enjoyment of books. The sun was for dealing with butcher merchants in Havasu, or tending his javelinas, or hunting woyote dens, or any of the other myriad tasks God burden men of farms and ranches with. Besides, reading books in the visible light of day might get people talking about Pious, questioning what it was that consumed his interest so.
Every night, Pious Doland lit a candle and read the old book he kept hidden under his bed. The cover was missing, but Pious knew they were plays by an English heathen named Shakespeare. He could tell the man was a heathen because some of his plays involved Jews or satyrs, but Pious didn’t care. The words were magical. They flowed with a rhythm that calmed his mind.
There was a knock on his door. Pious blew out his candle and flung the book under his bed. There was another knock, louder this time. Pious ran up to the door with his hunting ax in hand.
“Speak,” he called through the door.
“I come here on behalf of our Lord and Savior seeking sustenance and sanctuary” a man said.
Fear gripped Pious. That was the call of a Preacher. He eyed his living room for visible contraband. He didn’t see any, but he had no time to really search, to keep a Preacher waiting was to cast suspicion on yourself. Pious opened the door.
Terence stepped back and held up Lead’s cross to the farmer at the door. Terence judged the man before him. The farmer was not yet out of his twenties but his body was hunched and creased in a way customary of desert living. The farmer held a wood ax in front of himself like a walking staff.
“I come seeking sustenance and sanctuary,” Terence said.
The farm looked him over and nodded. “You’re welcome to my sustenance and sanctuary, Preacher. Be at peace in my homestead.” Pious propped his ax against a wall. “Let me get you food and water.”
“Hold on, good sir,” Terence said. “I have a man in my binding. I need to bring him in.” Terence ran back into the night.
Pious watched the Preacher’s shadowed form in moonlight pick up another man and carry him back. Terence had tied Lead’s wrists together with what remained of his leather cord to help the illusion of imprisonment. He was not proud of his dishonesty to the farmer or any dishonesty from which he was the source, but between deception and death, Terence counted deception as the lesser. Terence returned to the cabin with his false captive.
“This man is to be left alone. I will soon return. Please have food and water ready,” Terence said. He propped Lead’s unconscious body against a wall and tied his ankles together with braided palm fronds.
“This man is powerful sick, and as you can see, his appendages are bound. I want your word that in my absence you will not harm him. There will be no need to harm him.”
“You have my word, Preacher,” Pious said.
“The Lord thanks you,” Terence replied. He smiled as the old words left his mouth. For a moment he missed the pomp and authority of being a legitimate Preacher.
Terence left the farmer’s home and took up his palm frond sled. The trail of this rig was unmistakably easy picking for well-trained Crusaders. The drizzle of rain ended too promptly, the winds were too weak, nothing in nature favored the cover of his ingress. Terence dragged the fronds behind him and ran towards the distant hills.
Lead woke from fever dreams and found himself on a dry floor wrapped in a woolen blanket. A man with an ax hefted in both hands stood over him. The man stared with eyes like cracked river pebbles, misshapen and red.
“I recommend you not move, stranger,” the man warned.
Lead let out a strangled cough. He struggled against the rawhide and palm cords, but found no strength. His body ached and radiated fevered heat.
“Assist,” Lead whispered.
“No, Goodman,” Pious spit and wiped his mouth. “We’re just gonna wait here for the old Preacher. You need to sit still.”
Pious was anxious about the book under his bed. Was it hidden? Was it visible? What if the Preacher came back and discovered it? In his mind he swore to God that if his heresy escaped detection he would bury the book in the desert sand. He would leave all things unsavory and walk a path righteous with the Lord.
“I’m here on behalf of our Lord and Savior.” Lead whispered and turned back to the darkness.
Terence abandoned his sled in a hillside crevice. He split a palm frond and swept his footsteps. He felt ridiculous using the old trick, but now was not a time for innovative thought. The Crusader’s presence was imminent and the night’s obfuscation was closing. Old tricks traded for time and time traded for rest and nourishment and the hope of an actual escape.
Terence swept the path.
Pious lit a mesquite fire in his big-bellied stove and considered his problems. Would the wounded man need food? What about the Preacher? If Pious gave from his feedbox, would he have sufficient meat for trade? Was the old Preacher really a harrier; a thief in disguise? This was not the first time Pious wondered if the old man wasn’t some sort of road agent. He banished the thought from his mind. Any road agent falsely using the crucifix was hunted and eliminated with all the prejudice and might of the Lord and Church. It was one of the few laws everyone knew aside from the Commandments. Pious once saw a false Preacher sentenced near Quartzite Parish. The parishioners hung the scallywag from a Joshua tree and let the sun and buzzards carry out the sentence of execution. No rope or blanket, just three days of screaming and rocking and looking to unforgiving eyes, for the parishioners watched in shifts and none gave aid. The scene had left an impression on Pious.
The farmer took three javelina steaks from his salt box. The steaks were bundled in plastic bags of the type floating throughout the desert, accompanying tumble weeds in travels blind and chaotic. He placed the steaks in a battered stainless skillet and set them to sizzle on the stove’s hot plate. Pious retrieved a water pitcher from his pantry.
The prisoner had not moved. The smell of fried pork filled the cabin.
Terence entered Pious’ home without knocking. His right hand clutched his four-barrel pistol behind his back. Pious was startled and sloshed water on the cabin floor.
“If you don’t mind the inquiry, sir, where were you?” Pious asked.
The farmer set the pitcher down and gripped the frying pan with a false casualness, as if checking the meat required Pious to handle the metal and keep a sightline with Terence. His body tensed in a way both visible and animal. The old Preacher realized the threat and responded in kind. The click of the pistol hammer echoed off the close cabin walls. It was an unmistakable sound and issued a threat more credible than any words Terence could muster.
“Men are trailing me and mine. They would take our lives, opportunity given. I set a false trail.”
Terence and Pious spent a moment of stretched time staring at each other, regarding small and dangerous motions. Pious gripped the skillet. Terence gripped the pistol. Pious twisted his face into a disingenuous smile and released the panhandle.
“Please sit and eat,” Pious said.
Pious picked a steak out of the frying pan with calloused fingers. He laid it on a wood slab and offered it to Terence. Terence took the slab with his left hand and sat on the floor. He released the hammer from his pistol and strung it back around his neck. Pious plated the remaining steaks without acknowledging the firearm. He sat by the stove. A slab was placed near Lead, who remained unconscious despite the smell. Pious and Terence continued to regard each other with nervous apprehension.
“I can tell by your gray hair that you were a grown man before the Storms,” Pious said. “What was your livelihood?”
Terence picked up the steak, looked it over, and put it back on the slab. Pious poured water into an earthen mug. He pushed the mug toward Terence. Pious swigged from the pitcher directly.
“There isn’t time to tell it all, nor would I want to. I lived in a place called San Diego, a city empire near the old Pacific line. I was a school teacher. I had a family.” Terence smiled in the brief reflection of a good past. He drank the water and savored it. “All those things are gone and don’t matter and never again will. It’s not the life this one is,” Terence said.
“I apologize if my question brought harm.” Pious said.
The men ate in silence disturbed only by Lead’s dream whispers, urgent and incoherent.
“I said, I apologize,” Pious declared, agitated at Terence’s silence.
“I accept, no harm done. It’s just not a story I want to tell,” Terence replied. He worked on his steak with hands and teeth and then paused. “You ever hear the story of Job?”
Pious took a bite of his steak and shook his head.
“It’s a book of the Old Testament.” Terence said. “Job was a man who lived a long time ago, before the technology and knowing were created and lost. Job was a righteous man, a wealthy farmer who loved God true in his heart. God knew Job was his best man and was proud to have a servant so clean. One day God was talking with Satan.”
Pious’ face flushed crimson at the mention of the Devil. Terence continued.
“God and Satan were talking about what makes a man holy or unholy. Satan told God that it was suffering that made men unholy and comfortable men, men who lived life without worry, could afford to live a life free of sin. As an example, Satan spoke of Job. He offered a bet with God. He wagered that if he were to take away Job’s comfort, Job would curse God’s name and turn against him. Job would embrace sin and forsake God like the other sinners of low means and birth. God took the bet.”
The words made Pious nervous. The parish pastors never spoke of God and Satan consorting directly.
“So Satan waved his claw and destroyed Job’s life. His evil infected and slew Job’s children and cattle. His crops withered and turned to ashes. Coins and jewels vanished from his coffers. His soft robes unwound into brittle thread. His house collapsed into a pile of rotten timber and insects. His hair fell out and his body was plagued with hissing boils.
Job clothed himself in burlap sacking which hurt his tender skin and sores. He walked into his field and sat among the ashes and contemplated his undoing. Friends from distant lands visited Job, but when they saw what had become of him, they were upset.
‘What sin hath thou committed, Job? Why hath God smote thee?’ They asked.
Job replied, ‘To my knowledge I have committed no sin. If any of thee hath knowledge of my sin, please speak it.’
The friends looked down on Job, hideous, dressed in burlap, wallowing in ashes.
‘We have not beheld thy sin, but what God hath done to thee is proof enough of the evil thou hath committed. The righteous and innocent never need fear suffering and the wrath of God. Thou art an awful man to be stricken so.’
And with that they left Job to his misery. Job pondered and prayed but his suffering and agony was ceaseless. Finally Job raised his fist to the heavens.
‘Why have thou forsaken me Lord? Why must I, one righteous and without sin, suffer loss? Why must I live on in pain and be scorned and humiliated by my friends?’
Job had finally sinned; he’d questioned God’s infinite grace, which angered God. God came down to Job and stood before him.
‘Who are you to question me?’ He said. ‘I created the universe and all life. Everything you’ve see before, everything you’ve ever thought, everything that’s ever existed, everything that will be until the end of the days, tis all here because I say it is to be, for my own reasons. Who are you to question what I do? Who are you to question my infinite wisdom? Your mind is not able to understand all that I do. I know this because it was I who created your mind.’
Job was awestruck. Here he was, in the presence of his Creator, who was scolding him for complaining about suffering. Job said the first thing which came to mind.
‘I’m sorry my Lord, I did not mean to offend.’
God looked upon Job and smiled.
‘I forgive you.’ He said and swept his arm over Job and fields around him.
Job’s skin healed as did his lands. New cattle and crops sprung from the earth, and a new home fell from the sky. Over time Job and his wife conceived new children; daughters whose beauty was legendary.” Terence took a long drink from his mug. “Nobody knew what the wager was for, only that God lost.”
Pious looked at the uneaten remainder of his steak.
“Why did you tell me this story, Preacher?”
“You asked me where I’m from, what I used to be. I lived in a place that no longer exists. I had a wife and child who are dead. I don’t know why. I’ve never known why and I’ll never understand why. I am Job.” Terence stood up from the table. The early morning sun flooded the room with light.
“I must sleep now. I put you in charge of the well-being of myself and my bound.” Terence stretched his body on the hardwood floor. He slipped the gun back into his pocket.
“I trust your Christian judgment in keeping the safety of your guests.” Terence closed his eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep.