Resurrection (8 page)

The problem was that her body burned for her husband’s touch, and the flames of her desire threatened to consume her.

On Thursday afternoon, summoned by the blare of a trumpet loud enough to be Gabriel’s own, a stream of wagons, horses, and pedestrians spilled out of Plentiful and onto the road leading to the open field where Brother Joy would conduct the preaching. Emmeline and Izannah, riding in the surrey with a picnic basket and blankets on the floor behind the seat, were among the pilgrims.

“I don’t see why we can’t camp out for the duration, like everybody else,” Izannah complained, folding her arms. “We’ll miss all the fun if we go home every night. How am I supposed to get saved, if I’m not even here when Brother Joy calls forth all the repentant souls?”

Emmeline wore simple clothes, fit for sitting on the grass, and a broad-brimmed hat, chosen to protect her delicate skin from the ravages of the late-day sunshine.

She did not deign to give her cousin so much as a sidelong glance. “You were saved last year,” she said. “And the year before that. Surely it is as much a sin to bore the Lord as to ignore Him.”

Izannah was determined, as always. “I feel the need,” she said, “to be washed in the blood of the lamb.”

“By all means, do so,” Emmeline responded. “Just be back at ten o’clock so that we can go home.”

“You are a pagan,” Izannah accused.

“I must be,” Emmeline replied, drawing the surrey to a stop at the edge of the field among a bevy of wagons and buggies. “Because just now, I have an intense longing to sacrifice you to the moon goddess. Ten o’clock, Izannah.”

Izannah scrambled down from the surrey with a lack of grace meant to irritate. “Ten o’clock,” she confirmed, her
lower lip protruding slightly. “You won’t be able to treat me like this, once I’m married.
Then
who will you persecute?”

Emmeline scanned the gathering from the shadows of her hat brim, looking for Gil. “I shall have to find another victim, I suppose,” she answered in a distracted tone.

Izannah spotted a friend on the horizon and fled in high dudgeon, and Emmeline watched the girl’s retreat with a smile. She hoped she wasn’t being too arbitrary with Izannah, insisting on a curfew, but the fact was that people got caught up in the fervor of these events and sometimes did things that were unwise. There were always more than a few babies conceived in the tall grass and the little copse of birch trees down by the creek.

Emmeline had lifted the picnic basket from the back of the surrey and was busy hobbling Lysandra, who sometimes took it into her head to roam, when his shadow fell over her.

“Come to get yourself saved, Miss Emmeline?” Gil asked as she looked back at him over one calico-clad shoulder. Rising, she held her hat in place with one hand, and hoped he couldn’t see that she was quivering inside like the jellied fruit tucked away in her basket.

She shook her head, smiling a little. “Once,” she answered, “ought to be enough. And you, Mr. Hartwell? Are you here to be, as Izannah puts it, ‘washed in the blood’?”

He shuddered at the thought, although he was smiling too. “I came for the spectacle of it,” he said. “According to Jake Fleming down at the general store, Brother Joy plans to celebrate three days of bringing in the sheaves by setting off a fireworks display.”

Not wanting to be petty, Emmeline refrained from pointing out that there was only one Jake Fleming in town, and one general store, thereby eliminating the need to clarify the matter. “And since you want to see the fireworks, you feel honor-bound to listen to the preaching first?”

Gil was wearing wool trousers, a white shirt, and suspenders, and he pushed his hands into his pockets and shrugged, regarding Emmeline with his head tilted slightly to one side. “I’d better tell the truth,” he said, “lest God strike me down for a liar. I was hoping to find you here.”

Emmeline felt a blush climb her neck to pulse in her cheeks, but she was pretty certain that the brim of her hat hid her face. She made a business of reaching for the picnic basket, only to have Gil step up close and take it from her.

“Will you sit with me, Miss Emmeline?” he asked.

Emmeline’s heart was pounding, and her breathing, though silent, was too fast and too shallow. “I don’t reckon I can stop you,” she answered coolly, “without making a scene.”

His laughter was a sweet, unexpected sound, wholly familiar, and just hearing it made her soul resonate and brought tears to her eyes. She offered her first, and last, prayer of the day in the silence of her spirit—
Whatever happens, or doesn’t happen, thank You for sparing him.

After Emmeline had set her jar of jellied fruit and crock of fried chicken in the cold creek with dozens of other jars and crocks, Gil put the basket inside a small, ramshackle shed, along with the rest.

They found seats on the long benches inside Brother Joy’s main tent, near the back. Folks had been arriving since daybreak in order to get a good view of the platform, and the places up front had been taken for hours. A baby cried lustily on the far side, and a farmer’s wife fainted, probably from a combination of heat and excitement. The invisible energy of anticipation swirled in the worshipers’ midst, like Pentecostal fire just waiting to burst forth.

Emmeline, despite a long and settled relationship with the Lord, found herself shifting on the bench, partly because she was eager for the festivities to begin and partly because Gil Hartwell was sitting so close. She tried not to think of the way
his thigh and upper arm pressed against hers, but it was a losing battle.

Finally, when the tent was packed and the tension was palpable, Brother Joy’s personal choir trooped in, mounting the platform steps and solemnly taking their places in front of a portable pulpit. If their robes were a bit shabby and their hymnals dog-eared, nobody minded. They began to sing, accompanied by a wheezing organ balanced on a wheeled cart, and slowly, awkwardly, earnestly, Brother Joy’s borrowed congregation joined in.

Somewhere during that first song, Gil took Emmeline’s hand in his, and she didn’t pull away. His touch made her too excited to trust her singing, so she simply listened.

Brother Joy, a large, strikingly handsome man in a frayed suit, delayed his appearance, like the showman he was, until his audience had been roused to a fever pitch, then took the pulpit. Not only was he an orator to be reckoned with, but he was fascinating to watch, now weeping without restraint for the sins of the world, now calling down the wrath of heaven, now pacing the platform, talking of fire and brimstone in a low but thunderous voice. His skin glistened with sweat, and his energy was boundless.

One hour passed and then another. During that time, Brother Joy preached almost without ceasing. Now and then he paused to douse himself, as if to drown the very fires of hell, with a ladleful of cold water from a bucket on one corner of the platform. The people of Plentiful were spellbound the whole while; some of them even toppled off their benches and onto the sawdust floor, overcome by a combination of the heat and the power of Brother Joy’s preaching.

Emmeline barely blinked, even though she, like most everyone else in that tent, had heard every word before and knew every Bible passage by heart. It was Brother Joy’s delivery that captivated her, and if anybody on earth could
have talked her into getting saved again, Emmeline supposed he’d have been the one.

After a full three hours of preaching, Brother Joy showed no signs of tiring, but he took pity on his congregation—several of whom had already been carried out of the tent, revived, and brought back in again—and sent everyone out to “feast upon the loaves and fishes and ponder the word of the Lord.”

Lacking loaves and fishes, the faithful spread blankets by the stream and ate ham sandwiches, fried chicken, and baked beans, along with cakes and pies of every kind. Women nursed babies in the shade of the birch trees, and small children sprawled under wagon beds, slumbering in the soft, sweet grass. Men smoked and spat and talked, Emmeline suspected, of matters unrelated to the Lord.

For all that, people took note that Gil Hartwell was sitting on Emmeline’s blanket, sharing her picnic lunch, but she didn’t care. Though he was apparently set on barring her from his bed, Gil was Emmeline’s husband, by decree of the very God they were there to worship. It was right and good that they were together, even if Emmeline thought with sadness, it was only temporary.

When the food was gone—except for what had been put aside for supper, of course—a few of the most devout returned to the tent, jealous of their seats at the foot of the platform. Gil lay back on the blanket with a contented sigh, a piece of grass between his teeth, his hands cupped behind his head.

“I’ve been working real hard out at the ranch,” he said presently, without looking at Emmeline. “There’s a good roof on the house again, and I mean to start shoring up the barn on Monday morning.”

Emmeline wondered what she was supposed to think. Was he telling her he wanted her to come and live with him as his
wife, or just making idle conversation? “That’s nice,” she said.

Gil propped himself up on one elbow and tossed aside the piece of grass. “About last Sunday afternoon—”

Emmeline stiffened. The hat didn’t hide the color in her face, and she was too indignant to give a damn. “I hardly think this is the place to discuss last Sunday afternoon!” she hissed.

“Damn it, Emmeline, we have to discuss it somewhere, sometime, and you haven’t come near me since!”

Several heads turned, and Emmeline considered standing up, striding into the middle of the stream, and trying to drown herself. Unfortunately, she realized, some sincere soul would probably haul her ashore while she was still breathing.

“In case you’ve forgotten, Mr. Hartwell,” she replied in an acid whisper, “a gentleman calls on a lady. The reverse is not acceptable!”

“Then why did you come out to my place last week and let me rub your feet?”

Emmeline distinctly heard a giggle from the next blanket, and shot the miscreant a look fit to curdle sweet cream. “I have had enough of this conversation,” she told her husband.

Gil reached out and grasped Emmeline’s wrist when she would have gotten to her feet and stormed away. His hold, while not painful, was too firm to resist without stirring a ruckus. “I apologize,” he said quietly. His blue eyes flashed with an unholy fire and there was a tense edge to his jawline, giving Emmeline to believe that he wasn’t actually sorry about anything.

“You are not forgiven,” Emmeline said, in a voice that was barely more than a breath.

“That,” replied Gil, “is the problem.”

That afternoon, Emmeline’s heart wasn’t in the preaching. If it hadn’t meant spoiling Izannah’s fun, she would have
packed up her blanket and basket, unhobbled Lysandra, and driven home. Instead, she sat numbly on the bench, beside Gil, considering what he’d said.

He really and truly had been kidnapped that night in San Francisco, seven years before, and there could be no doubt that he had suffered the agonies of the damned aboard a ship—the
Nellie May,
he’d called it. Such an ordinary, innocent-sounding name for a vessel maintained by the blood and sweat of slaves.

Gil had felt the bite of the captain’s whip, not once but several times, and had worked his way back from Australia after his escape.

Emmeline knew all those things, and believed them with her whole heart, and yet Gil was right. She had yet to forgive him for leaving her, for putting her through years of grief, for robbing her of the babies that might have been born of their love. It was insane to resent a man for something he couldn’t help, and yet she did. Her fury was as powerful as her passion; she wanted to mate with Gil with all the ferocity of a tigress in the jungle, but she also wanted to fling herself at him, claws bared, screaming and biting, kicking and crying.

She loved Gil and, at one and the same time, hated him.

The realization was devastating, and Emmeline did not know how to resolve the problem. One thing was certain, however—she could not go to this man she loved so desperately until she’d found a way to lay down her anger, once and for all.

Brother Joy ranted and thundered all afternoon, and through half the evening, too. It was almost dark when he called another truce between good and evil and the believers filed out of the tent. Bonfires were lit, and people ate their suppers and told stories about other revivals, who’d gotten healed, and how and who’d gotten saved and why.

Mr. Dillard, the postmaster, had been wrested from the
grip of sin that very afternoon, before their very eyes, and the sight had been a memorable one.

Emmeline shared her supper with Gil, just as she had shared her lunch, but few words passed between them, and when the meal was over, she announced that she was going home. Izannah was waiting when she reached the surrey, followed by Gil, who’d insisted on carrying the picnic basket and the blanket.

“Mrs. Bickham says I can stay with Becky and sleep in their tent,” Izannah blurted. “Please, Emmeline—say it’s all right! It’s likely to be five years before there’s another preaching like this one.”

Emmeline was conscious of Gil, standing so close behind her, listening. He would know, if she granted Izannah’s plea, that she would be home alone that night. On the other hand, to refuse would be both unkind and unfair, when the girl had such trustworthy chaperons as the Reverend and Mrs. Bickham.

“All right,” Emmeline agreed with a sigh. “You may stay. But mind you don’t do anything foolish.”

Izannah thanked Emmeline with an exuberant kiss on the cheek, promised not to be foolish, and hurried away, with Becky, in search of adventure. Emmeline stood for a long time, watching them go.

Gil placed the basket in the backseat, along with the blanket, and crouched to remove Lysandra’s hobbles. After tossing those into the rig as well, he came to stand next to Emmeline.

“I love you,” he said in a grave and quiet voice. “When the last star winks out, you will still own my soul.”

With that, he turned and strode into the darkness, leaving Emmeline standing mute beside her surrey, her heart falling into fragments.