Holding Smoke Read online

  “Felton was so loyal that he once fainted right in front of you. Not from the blessed light of the Holy Spirit, but simply from exhaustion, from his dedication in standing up here by my side. I’m sure you all remember that. How he hit the boards like a sack of wet sand. How he wept after. Sniveling. So loyal he was ashamed. So loyal he begged for forgiveness on his knees. Clutching at the hem of my dress. How could any of us forget?”

  Tulah turned on her heel to circle back.

  “And those of you old enough to have watched Felton grow up from a child are true witnesses to his unwavering singlemindedness. You all know that he has never so much as touched a girl, never stolen a furtive kiss, never allowed his hands or eyes to wander. He was so loyal, to you, to me, to God, that he never considered the idea of marriage, never thought to seek comfort in a woman’s arms, never allowed himself to even imagine bringing a woman into his bed.”

  Tulah found Felton’s face as she smacked the Bible into her open palm.

  “So loyal that he never allowed himself to truly become a man.”

  She could sense the escalating misgiving in the room. Some of the women were blushing, some of the men were studying the backs of their hands or the floor, but Felton’s face was still pacific, still an untroubled mask. Still vexing in its impassivity. The color was high in Juniper’s cheeks, though, more from outrage than shame most likely, and, in the back, Dinah was fidgeting uncomfortably. Sister Tulah took her time meandering back to the pulpit, letting her followers’ apprehension amplify.

  “But dogs!”

  Sister Tulah slammed her Bible down onto the pulpit.

  “Dogs aren’t the only creatures who drag themselves, whimpering, on their bellies. And loyalty does not last forever.”

  Tulah fluttered the Bible, though she didn’t choose a page.

  “You know, I look at our Brother Felton and I’m reminded of another man. A man from the Gospel. A loyal man, whom we all know well. His name was Job.”

  She let the cover fall closed.

  “I look at Brother Felton and I think of Job. I think of when he cowered before God and admits, I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.”

  Tulah couldn’t resist flicking her eye back to Dinah.

  “Because like dogs, worms crawl in the dust. But also in the muck and the mud and the slime. And I think you deserve to know the truth.”

  Sister Tulah jabbed her finger in the air.

  “Our Brother Felton has been lost, yes, but more in soul than in body. He has spent his time away from us consorting with deviants. With degenerates. With harlots.”

  Sister Tulah dragged out each word. To her delight, Juniper was finally startled as all eyes in the room fell on her. Tulah could feel the scorn of the congregation, but she needed it focused on Felton, not some inconsequential hussy. She barked and cracked her arm like a whip, pointing once more.

  “He has become backslidden! Heretical! A spineless, eyeless worm, writhing blindly in the base darkness of the wicked world. So close to the crumbling edges of the pit of hell that he could fall into the endless, boiling mire at any moment.”

  “Amen!”

  The church was rising up. Now to bring Felton home.

  “Our brother has fallen! He has been overtaken by his own cowardice, lured into the clutches of the world’s foul devils by their wagging tongues. Their teeth are in him, they have rent him, they are chewing him to pieces. Even now, I can hear them gnawing away at his soul.”

  “Halleluiah!”

  “Call on Jesus!”

  “Pray for him!”

  Half the congregation was suddenly on their feet, arms in the air, their faces imploring. Tulah slid a smug glance Felton’s way. The two women on either side of Felton and Juniper were standing, one gripping Felton’s shoulder tightly like a general bracing a soldier. Juniper, with the other woman pawing her, was trying to wriggle away, terrified. Sister Tulah flung her arms out wide, beseeching.

  “Yet even through the darkness, like Job, I know that Brother Felton is crying out, And where is now my hope?”

  “It is here!”

  “Praise Jesus!”

  “God is here!”

  More followers leapt to attention, raising their arms, stepping out into the aisle. Those nearest Felton were creeping closer. More hands were on him, one spread over the crown of his head, as if to push him underwater, to baptize or to drown. Tulah pitched her voice even higher.

  “Oh, Brother Felton! Let us save you! Let us heal you! Let us bring you forth from your wanton ways.”

  She picked up her Bible and stepped around the pulpit, reaching out to Felton.

  “Will you stand before me now? In the sight of God’s true followers, his true saints? In the sight of God Almighty himself and endure His flame, but also His forgiveness, as we cast out these devils? These fiends of the world? Will you stand before me and be saved?”

  Felton stood. Not a Sphinx, but a Halcyon. Completely undaunted, taming the rough sea as it parted around him. He slipped through the grasping hands and the congregation fell silent in shuddering anticipation. With his head still slightly tilted, Felton climbed the steps. Sister Tulah glanced at Juniper, bewildered, and Dinah, stricken. It was clear she understood what Tulah was doing and why she had been invited to witness it.

  Sister Tulah turned to face Felton, shouting at him as he took slow, measured steps across the stage.

  “I will set a mark upon you, Brother Felton. I will cast out Satan and I will fortify you against his temptations. I will make these hordes who have taken up residence within you grovel for mercy. I will stamp them out! I will break their hold! I will set you free!”

  Tulah arched back and raised the Bible high over her head as Felton approached.

  *

  Felton’s hand shot up, colliding with the Bible, stopping it in midair before it came crashing down on his head. One long, low collective gasp reverberated across the church. Felton kept his eyes firmly on the Bible in the air, the keystone of the bridge between Sister Tulah and himself. It was shaking. Felton wrapped his thumb around the spine to get a better grip and pulled the Bible down, revealing Sister Tulah’s livid face. Her cheeks were splotched crimson and her arm was trembling. For a moment, her pale eye was a tower of flame, but then he narrowed his focus back on the Bible and finally wrenched it from Tulah’s grasp.

  “No one will be broken here tonight.”

  Tulah teetered unsteadily for a moment, thrown off balance, and Felton had the giddy desire to hoist the Bible over his head like a trophy. A rush surged behind his ears and he gazed, triumphant, out over the congregation. Hands to mouths, noses wrinkled, brows furrowed. Out of the corner of his eye, Felton glimpsed Juniper. There was a smile on her parted lips, but it was wary, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was witnessing, but understood its singularity. Juniper didn’t know the magnitude of the sin Felton had just committed and the price it would exact, but he did. He would need to be cautious.

  Sister Tulah regained her balance and Felton stepped back deferentially. Before she could speak, however, he brought his voice to the church.

  “My brothers and sisters! My aunt was once generous enough to let me share my words with you. For many, those words were the last you heard me utter before I was called away.”

  Felton glanced at Tulah. She was incensed, but also watching her followers, keenly aware of their reaction. Their shock and surprise had given way to curiosity. The fervor she had whipped up in them had died down and they were anxious to see what would happen next between their preacher and the man who dared to challenge her.

  Felton could feel a current rising up from the floorboards, the very ones that Sister Tulah would have had him groveling upon for forgiveness. It was a voltage, flowing from the soles of his feet up to the crown of his head, and Felton wanted so badly to abandon himself to it, to let himself be galvanized, to bend back his neck and
open his mouth wide and let the Holy Spirit take his tongue from him. To give himself up to the white Snake, beginning to coil, to lose himself in the glory.

  But there was something he wanted even more.

  “Mayhap, since I have already been called up here before you, Sister Tulah will grant me such an opportunity again. To share the blessing of the Lord as it has been given to me.”

  Felton looked directly at his aunt, waiting for her response. Sister Tulah was seething, her physical wrath barely under control, but Felton could see the doubt warring with the rage across her face. An uncertainty was creeping over Tulah’s followers, and to deny Felton now would only further widen the cracks he had already begun to expose. Felton could almost see the machinations clicking in Tulah’s head as she weighed out the consequences of her answer.

  “Very well.”

  Sister Tulah nodded stiffly. She backed away to far left of the stage, her movements awkward and rigid, as if walking on a bed of nails, but Felton paid her no more mind. He stepped to the very center of the stage and clasped his hands down low, his fingers still wrapped around Tulah’s Bible.

  “I will keep this very short. Very simple. I am not defending myself in the sight of you and our Lord, but rather, imparting to you what the Lord has seen fit in mysterious ways to give me. I left this church, this town, this land, to flee from a darkness and discovered within further darkness that there is light out there beyond our fears.”

  Felton’s eyes scanned the room. Most of the congregation was still standing from Tulah’s rousing, but all were quiet now, truly listening to him. Those who had been crowding around Juniper had backed away to give him their full attention. Felton dipped his head humbly.

  “I am speaking to you as one of you. A man who has stood beside you his entire life, as you have been entreated to remember tonight. I have walked the same path, my footsteps falling in time with yours, reveling in the same moments of ecstasy when the Spirit lifts us up, and cringing from the same despair.”

  Felton smiled down at Juniper.

  “Yes, I went out into the world and saw there was evil, but I found such goodness, too, at times I thought I would burst with the joy of it. As I walked through the wilderness and rode through the cities, the Lord brushed the cobwebs from my eyes and helped me shed the terrors that had clung to me all my life. It was out in the world that I found my salvation.”

  He rubbed his thumbs across the worn cover of the Bible and then cast his gaze in a net, trying to meet as many eyes as he could.

  “Now, you might be wondering why, if I found myself in such a light, would I return? In truth, I have spent many hours asking myself that very question. The Lord directed me homeward with His signs, but it was here, among you, that my answer was revealed.”

  Felton lifted the Bible and his voice pealed, as if coming down from a tower.

  “And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

  The Bible fell to Felton’s side.

  “You are my people. Simply put, it is to you I have returned. And it is for you that I have returned.”

  He bowed his head, biting back the rest, keeping it locked behind his teeth. Felton turned to meet Sister Tulah, striding forward to take his place. If she were smart, she would dismiss Felton’s speech altogether and launch into a generic sermon about the Latter Rain or baptism by fire, but it was of no concern to Felton. There was a loathing in her eye that would have formerly brought Felton to his knees, but now he only flashed her a benevolent smile as they passed one another. It was not until he had stepped down from the stage, taken Juniper’s hand and led her to the doors, that he severed his smile and, under his breath, finished the sermon.

  “Yes, I have returned. Not as a sheep, but as a shepherd. And one who will make no peace with wolves.”

  *

  Judah froze with the spotlight on his face and warily lifted his hands above his head. Out of the glare, a rasping, disgruntled voice shouted across the field.

  “Huh! Was wondering if you’d bother stopping by to pay respects, or if you was just planning on trespassing and then moseying on along like I wouldn’t know.”

  In response to Judah’s sharp elbow jab in the ribs, Benji jostled his cane around and lifted his arms as well, hissing as he squinted into the blinding white light.

  “What the hell?”

  “Shhh.”

  “I think we came out the woods in a different spot.”

  “Shut up.”

  Judah dropped one hand to his brow, trying to block out some of the light to see exactly where the beam was coming from. It was a useless gesture. The spotlight was so bright and the night already so dark that Judah could only be sure it was coming from somewhere in the middle of the overgrown field on the other side of the eroded, rock-strewn dirt road.

  “I think if we go that way, the road might go ’round to meet up with where we left the truck. We could run for it. I can bob and weave.”

  Judah kept staring at the light, trying to make out a silhouette, at least.

  “I said shut up. And stop waving your arms around like that. You’re just asking to get shot.”

  Judah slowly put his hand back up above his head and yelled across the distance.

  “Ramey called you, right? Told you we were coming?”

  The spotlight swung off to the right, though it was still hard for Judah to make out who he was talking to. From atop a singlewide trailer bristling with antennas and—Judah strained his eyes—what looked like machinegun mounts, an old man stood up from a plastic lawn chair and raised one hand in the semblance of a greeting. In the bluish glow emanating from some sort of electrical contraption at the man’s feet, Judah could just make out the outline of a rifle’s barrel, pointed directly at him. The old man’s scraggly gray hair, hanging down past his shoulders, and long, droopy mustache stood out eerily in the spectral light. He laid the rifle back to rest against his shoulder, then switched it to the other shoulder, then dropped it again to aim. Just a nervous tic, Judah hoped.

  “You think you would’ve gotten one foot into them trees earlier if she hadn’t?”

  Benji choked out a whisper.

  “Judah, the hell? You know this guy? Is he going to shoot us?”

  Judah’s already aching arms were growing tired.

  “Just don’t make any sudden movements. Not yet.”

  “Oh man, oh man—”

  Judah called out again.

  “Can we come out there and talk? If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not stand here, hollering across a minefield all night.”

  Benji about fell over.

  “A minefield? What? Are you insane?”

  Judah jerked his head over. Benji had a wild look on his face, he was starting to crouch down, as if preparing to bolt, and Judah finally gave up. He swung his arms down and gripped his brother by the shoulder, pointing out into the field, which must have looked like nothing more than rough pasture to the untrained eye.

  “Minefield. Booby traps. Lasers, explosives, tripwires. Pits filled with sharpened sticks and shit like that.”

  He squeezed Benji’s shoulder, and not gently.

  “So, don’t go getting any harebrained ideas. Just stay on the road ’til we hear otherwise.”

  Benji looked petrified. Then the spotlight was flashing in their eyes again, but only for a second. Judah could see nothing now but spots twinkling before his eyes.

  “Hey, who the hell’s that? Who’re you talking to out there?”

  Judah kept his hand on Benji.

  “My brother.”

  “His name Lazarus? How deep you bury him?”

  Judah gritted his teeth.

  “My other brother. Hiram, this is Benji.”

  He gestured across the field.

  “Benji, Hiram.”
r />   Judah blinked, straining his eyes. He couldn’t see the expression on Hiram’s face, but he was still holding the rifle. Pointing it their way.

  “Well, what the hell’s wrong with him? He some sort of gimp? And what happened to his face? Looks like something the dog’s been keeping under the porch all summer.”

  “Hey now, asshole…”

  Benji started to twist away and Judah dug his nails in deep.

  “Let it go, I’m telling you. And whatever happens, whatever he says to you, you just roll with it.”

  Benji scowled.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Trust me, I’ve gotten my share.”

  Benji kept trying to shrug Judah off.

  “You really want to go up there and talk to this crazy old coot?”

  “Just keep it together, okay? I know it’s been a long couple of days and Hiram can come at you like nails on a chalkboard. But we need him.”

  Judah let him go. Benji, looking away, poked at a rock with his cane.

  “Fine. If you say so.”

  Judah cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled again.

  “Hiram? Well?”

  Hiram lowered the rifle and set it on what Judah could’ve sworn was a ping-pong table next to the lawn chair. The old man flapped his bony arms out like a chicken settling and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Want me to talk to you through the maze?”

  It was about time.

  “We do.”

  It seemed to take forever—with Hiram standing on top of the chair on the singlewide’s roof, cursing, pointing, and eventually waving two glowing red marshalling wands as he guided them through the knee-high burnweed and wiregrass—but Judah knew better than to complain. He tried not to think about the hazards all around him and instead kept one eye on Benji, shuffling ahead, and the other on Hiram, until they finally made it to the front door. Just as Hiram came rattling down the extension ladder bolted to the side of the trailer, Judah stumbled, knocking over and cracking a ceramic garden gnome. He jumped back, anticipating its explosion in his face. Hiram leapt off the bottom rung of the ladder, frowned at the shattered pieces of the gnome, and muttered as he shoved his shoulder between Judah and Benji, knocking them aside.