The red church (14 page)

Her goat bleated below the porch. She kept a few chickens, too, but they were free-ranging up in the woods. She was getting too old to track down their eggs, and plucking their feathers was too rough on her fingers. Come to think of it, she didn't know why she bothered with a goat, either. She hated the taste of goat's milk, and she didn't know how to cook the animal up even if she could bear to kill it.

"What are you thinking about, Mother?" asked Archer. He sat on the porch swing, uncomfortable, his face rigid, as if holding his earthly flesh together took all his concentration. He was a fine boy, hand-some and respectably clean-shaven, with the whole world laid out before him. All a mother could want for her
son.

She felt a tug in her heart, or maybe it was a spell of the murmurs. The murmurs were coming on a lot more often lately. God was priming her for a trip up to the kingdom, striking her with all the little ail-ments that added up to the miseries of old age. God could be downright cruel when He set his mind to it. But He allowed good stuff to happen, too. Like Archer.

"I was just remembering," she said. "When you was little, you used to go up yonder on that knoll and pick gooseberries. You'd eat them things till you turned green and got sick to your stomach. And I'd lay you down in bed, tuck you in, and give you a nice cup of peppermint tea."

"And you'd tell me stories," Archer said. His voice was different from the one he'd used on television. It was softer, more down-home, a little of his Carolina mountain accent creeping in between those Califor-nia words.

"Sure did. You probably don't remember any of them silly stories."

Archer leaned forward, sniffed the air. "I remem-ber them all."

"All of them?"

"Yeah. The Old Testament. Jack tales. Ghost sto-ries. And the real story of Jesus. Except that one al-ways gave me nightmares."

"I hope I done right. It wasn't easy, raising you by myself. I reckon I made some mistakes along the way, but I always acted out of love."

Archer left his porch swing and knelt before her rocker. He took her hands and looked up, his brown eyes shining with that same radiant depth they'd had when he was a baby. As he grew older, those eyes got him in trouble. They made the other kids suspicious and made adults uncomfortable. Those eyes, plus the fact that he was a McFall, pretty much brought the persecution on him. Many were the times he came home from school with a black eye or a skinned knee or his little shoulders shaking with sobs. All she could tell him was that the lamb must walk among wolves. He seemed to accept that he would be persecuted, that the human hatred was all part of God's plan. He came up with that bit about "There will come great trials" all by himself. What willpower it must have taken to keep from lashing out, what patience and understanding Archer had possessed even from an early age. Of course, he always knew that he was the Second Son. She was up-front about that right from the moment he could speak.

"You did everything perfectly," Archer said. "God should be proud."

"Well, I ain't so sure about that. If I was so all-fired perfect, maybe I'd be out of this place by now."

"Why don't you let me buy you one of those cha-lets at Ski Village?" Mama Bet looked at the scar that ran up Wellborn Mountain. The steel threads of the lift cables arced along the barren slope. The snow had melted weeks ago, leaving nothing but a mud patch. She despised those ski people. "No. People best stick to their own kind. Besides, I reckon God put us here for a reason."
And that reason just might have something to do with that little hellhole in back of the root cellar, the one I
got to keep plugged with prayers. But I ain't going to worry you with that.
Something beeped in Archer's pocket. Mama Bet looked at him suspiciously.

He smiled. "Cellular phone. You ought to let me get you one, Mother."

"That's the devil's tool," she said, frowning. "I don't even trust words that come over wires. When it's invisible, there's no telling where the messages are coming from."

Archer pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open. He put it to his head. "Archer McFall."

He listened for a moment, then put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Excuse me, Mother. It's the foun-dation offices in California."

She nodded. She'd been against his exodus to Cali-fornia from the start. Nothing out there but hea-thens and hippies and all manner of strange cults. Archer had no business among that sort. But children had to learn on their own, didn't they? All you could do was fill them up with love, and let them wander the path. You couldn't hammer faith into them. You couldn't drive goodliness and grace into them like nails. You couldn't
make
them believe the things God wanted them to believe. They just had to search in their own hearts, and, God will-ing, come up with the truth.

She watched him as he carried on a conversation, something about stock splits, portfolios, and divesti-tures. She didn't understand why God kept Archer meddling in such affairs. But then, there was a lot she didn't understand about God. And she had to admit, that black Mercedes looked awfully shiny and clean down there in the driveway.

She rose from her rocker and headed for the door. Archer glanced at her questioningly, but she waved him back to his phone conversation. She entered the house, walking over the same boards that the McFalls had trodden for more than two hundred years. The main room was the original cabin, thick hand-hewed logs chinked with yellowed cement. Not much had changed in the room since her great-great-great-grandparents Robert and Hepzibah McFall had first blessed these walls with love and devotion.

The old stone fireplace was black from ten thou-sand fires. The room was dark, the small wooden win-dows nailed shut. Three sides of the cabin were partially underground, built that way to cut down on the wind leaking through the cracks, though the room always stayed as cold as a Christian's heart. Water was piped from a spring up the hill, and a leak dripped steadily into the freestanding ceramic sink in the corner.

A few rooms had been added onto the south side of the cabin, and these had glass windows. The sun poured through, God's pure light, but it barely touched what had once served as kitchen, bedroom, and living room combined. When electricity first reached these parts in the 1950s, Mama Bet wouldn't allow them to hook up the original part of the house. Some things were to be kept sacred, untouched by the progress that marked the spread of the devil's influence.

Mama Bet went past the rough hemlock table where Wendell McFall had once taken his meals. She parted the gingham that curtained off the pantry. She took a candle from a counter and lit it, and looked to make sure Archer was still outside. She stepped inside among the shelves and rows of can-ning jars, dried beans, and sacks of cornmeal. The chill from the back of the pantry crept over her like a live thing, a giant shadow, an ice-cold invisible lover.

She pushed aside the rotted boards that lined the back of the pantry. A fungal
,
earthy smell filled her nostrils. She extended the candle into the root cellar, peering over the rows of potatoes and red apples into the darkness. The candle shrank from the stale, still air, its light swallowed by the dirt walls of the cellar.

"I'm getting too old for this, God," she whispered in silent prayer. God said nothing, but she knew He was up there, watching, biting His tongue to keep from laughing. She wiggled the base of the candle into the red clay until it stood without her holding it. She could see the stone that blocked the narrow tunnel, a tunnel that wound down and down and deep into the earth.

This was the one secret she had spared Archer
,
the one that had been passed down through eight gen-erations of McFalls. The Appalachians were the old-est mountains in the world, had risen from the hot magma when God crushed the world together. And she knew exactly why God made the Earth. He had trapped the devil inside it, wrapped billions of tons of rock and dirt and molten lava around the beast. And, oh, how the devil must have kicked and strug-gled to get free, shoving up mountains and causing the rifts that became the oceans.

She knew this as surely as she knew that Archer was a savior. You didn't question universal truths. You ac-cepted them on faith. You tucked them in your heart and made the best of them. You fought for them. You made the sacrifices that kept those truths alive.

Who knew when the devil had first wormed its way finally to the surface of the world? It could have been tens of thousands of years ago, or a few hundred. All that mattered now was that the devil was loose upon the face of the Earth, and Archer had to defeat it.

That had to be why Archer had returned to Whis-pering Pines, why God had called His son back home. The devil was still here, tied to this mouth of hell, living in those original families. The devil had hidden behind the faces of the Littlefields, worn the masks of the Houcks, slipped into the blood and meat of the Mathesons.

Archer would have to perform the cleansing. And she had to help. Even though she was as worn as these mountains, eroded by time and tides, by the forces of God's tireless punishment. Even though she was only mortal.

She crawled to the rear of the root cellar and rolled away the flat stone. In the weak light, she could see the small crippled cross that had been carved into its surface. She stuck her face near the black opening. She never understood why the path to hell was so bone-chillingly cold. It should have been blaz-ing hot, and smelling of sulfur and brimstone and smoke instead of dirt. But God worked in mysterious ways, and the devil worked just as strangely.

She cast her prayers into the pit. She could hold back the hordes. With her faith, she could win the battle below. Let God and Archer take care of the devil up here.

Mama Bet finished her prayers, the same ones the McFalls had been saying for over two centuries. She replaced the stone, sweating with effort even though her fingers were stiff from the cold.
O
n aching knees she backed her way to the pantry, retrieved the can-dle, and replaced the boards along the back w
all
. She wiped the dirt from her hands and cussed God for burdening her with this holy work. As if filling her up with a messiah weren't bad enough. No, He made her crawl on her belly like a serpent. She blew out the candle and peeked through the gingham curtains. Archer was still outside. She could hear him carrying on with his business deals over the telephone, acting for all the world like an ordi-nary person. Well, Jesus had taken on work as a car-penter before starting up his career as a liar. Archer might as well be a rich preacher as a poor one.

She turned on the kitchen tap and stuck her hands under the frigid springwater. The dirt ran red down the drain. She put the candle away and wiped her hands on a towel. Her dress was stained at the knees, but she didn't like to change clothes in midday. That was wasteful, the kind of thing a Christian might do. She heard voices outside.
They ain't supposed to gather here, not with Archer around. The church
will be ready soon enough.

She hurried onto the porch. Archer folded his phone and put it away. At the edge of the yard, in the shade of the trees, stood some members of the congregation: Stepford Matheson, Sonny Absher, Donna Gregg, and Rudy Buchanan. Rudy carried a shotgun and a Bible.

They started forward, Rudy's broad face split with a grin, Sonny and Stepford red-faced from drink. Donna Gregg hung back, tugging Sonny's sleeve. He brushed her away and scowled.

"What do y'all want?" Mama Bet called, shading her eyes so she could see them better. Archer stood beside her, looking down on them.

"We been thinking," said Rudy, apparently the leader of this shoddy crew.

"Well, there's a first time for everything."

Rudy's thick lips curled. Mama Bet could almost hear the gears churning rustily inside his head as he tried to think of a comeback. He soon gave up, and settled for raising the shotgun barrel until it pointed at the sky.

"We've been hearing a lot about the red church, and the day of reckoning, and all this foolishness about

'great trials,' " Rudy said. "Now all of a sudden you're telling us that Archer's the Second Son of God. And that somehow we're all part of it, because of what our kin did way back when." He looked at Stepford and Sonny.

Stepford swayed a little, and Rudy pressed the Bi-ble against him until he regained his balance.

"Yeah," Stepford said. "You're telling us that
this"
—he pointed to Archer—"is the earthly face of God?

Then God must be one hell of a practical joker, I say."

Mama Bet started to speak, but Archer raised his hand. "I don't blame you for your doubts," he said to them. "I know some of you were raised as Chris-tians. But people use God for their own purposes, they twist His ways to benefit themselves. People build up the idols that are easy to accept. And they always destroy what they can't understand."