As Matthew Logan rolled out the words, Covenant felt their spell falling on him. The promise of punishment caught at his heart; it snared him as if it had been lying in ambush for his gray, gaunt soul. Stiffly, involuntarily, he moved toward the tent as the curse drew him to itself.
“ ‘And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. My soul will abhor you. I will lay your cities waste. I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you; and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
“ ‘Then the land shall pay for its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate.’ ”
Covenant ducked under an edge of the canvas and found himself standing beside an usher at the rear of the tent. The usher eyed him distrustfully, but made no move to offer him a seat. High on the platform at the other end, Matthew Logan stood like a savage patriarch leveling retribution at the bent, vulnerable heads below him. The curse gathered a storm in Covenant, and he feared that he would cry out before it ended. But Matthew Logan stopped where he was and flipped through the Bible again. When he found his new place, he read more quietly:
“ ‘Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.’ ”
Slapping the Bible closed, he returned stolidly to his seat.
At once, Dr. B. Sam Johnson was on his feet. Now he seemed to bristle with energy; he could not wait to begin speaking. His jowls quivered with excitement as he addressed his audience.
“My friends, how marvelous are the Words of God! How quick to touch the heart. How comforting to the sick, the downtrodden, the weak. And how easily they make even the purest of us squirm. Listen, my friends! Listen to the Word of the Apocalypse:
“ ‘To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life. He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the unbelievers, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’
“Marvelous, marvelous Words of God. Here in one short passage we hear the two great messages of the Bible, the Law and the Gospel, the Old Covenant and the New. Brother Logan read to you first from the Old Testament, from the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus. Did you hear him, my friends? Did you listen with all the ears of your heart? That is the voice of God, Almighty God. He doesn’t mince words, my friends. He doesn’t beat around the bush. He doesn’t hide things in fine names and fancy language. No! He says, if you sin, if you break My Law, I will terrify you and make you sick. I will make the land barren and attack you with plagues and pestilence. And if you still sin, I will make cannibals and cripples out of you. ‘Then the land shall pay for its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate.’
“And do you know what the Law is, my friends? I can summarize it for you in the Words of the Apocalypse. ‘Thou shalt not be cowardly, or unbelieving, or polluted.’ Never mind murder, fornication, sorcery, idolatry, lies. We’re all good people here. We don’t do things like that. But have you ever been afraid? Have you ever faltered just a bit in your faith? Have you ever failed to keep yourself clean in heart and mind? ‘Then the land shall pay for its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate.’ The Apostle Paul calls a spade a spade. He says, ‘That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.’ But Jesus goes further. He says, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’
“Do I hear you protesting? Do I hear some of you saying to yourselves, ‘No one can be that good. I’m human. I can’t be perfect.’ You’re right! Of course, you’re right. But the Law of God doesn’t care for your excuses. If you’re lame, if you’ve got arthritis, if you’re going blind or your heart is failing, if you’re crippled, if you’ve got multiple sclerosis or diabetes or any other of those fancy names for sin, you can be sure that the curse of God is on you. But if you’re healthy, don’t think you’re safe! You’re just lucky that God hasn’t decided to ‘walk contrary to you in fury.’ You can’t be perfect, my friends. And the Law doesn’t care how hard you tried. Instead of telling yourself what a valiant try you made, listen to the Bible. The Old Covenant says to you as plain as day, ‘The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, “Unclean, unclean.” ’ ”
He held his audience in the palm of his hand now. The orotund resonance of his voice swept them all together in one ranked assembly of mortality and weakness. Even Covenant forgot himself, forgot that he was an intruder in this canvas tabernacle; he heard so many personal echoes and gleams in the peroration that he could not resist it. He was willing to believe that he was accursed.
“Ah, my friends,” Dr. Johnson went on smoothly, “it’s a dark day for us when illness strikes, when pain or dismemberment or bereavement afflict us, and we can no longer pretend we’re clean. But I haven’t told you about the Gospel yet. Do you remember Christ saying, ‘He who loses his life for my sake shall find it’? Did you hear Paul say, ‘When we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world’? Did you hear the writer of the Apocalypse say, ‘He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son’? There’s another side, my friends. The law is only half of God’s holy message. The other half is chastening, heritage, forgiveness, healing—the Mercy that matches God’s Righteousness. Do I have to remind you that the Son of God healed everyone who asked Him? Even lepers? Do I have to remind you that He hung on a cross erected in the midst of misery and shame to pay the price of our sin for us? Do I have to remind you that the nails tore His hands and feet? That the spear pierced His side? That He was dead for three days? Dead and in hell?
“My friends, He did it for only one reason. He did it to pay for all our cowardly, unbelieving, unclean Sabbaths, so that we could be healed. And all you have to do to get healed is to believe it, and accept it, and love Him for it. All you have to do is say with the man whose child was dying, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Five little words, my friends. When they come from the heart, they’re enough to pay for the whole Kingdom of Righteousness.”
As if on cue, Matthew Logan stood up and began singing in soft descant, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.” Against this background, Dr. Johnson folded his hands and said, “My friends, pray with me.”
At once, every head in the audience dropped. Covenant, too, bowed. But the wound on his forehead burned extravagantly in that position. He looked up again as Dr. Johnson said, “Close your eyes, my friends. Shut out your neighbors, your children, your parents, your mate. Shut out every distraction. Look inward, my friends. Look deep inside yourselves, and see the sickness there. Hear the voice of God saying, ‘Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting.’ Pray with me in your hearts.
“Dear holy Jesus, Thou art our only hope. Only Thy Divine Mercy can heal the disease which riddles our courage, rots the fiber of our faith, dirties us in Thy sight. Only Thou canst touch the sickness which destroys peace, and cure it. We lay bare our hearts to Thee, Lord. Help us to find the courage for those five difficult, difficult words, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Dear Lord, please give us the courage to be healed.”
Without a break, he raised his arms over the audience and continued, “Do you feel His spirit, my friends? Do you feel it in your hearts? Do you feel
the finger of His Righteousness probing the sick spot in your soul and body? If you do, come forward now, and let me pray for health with you.”
He bowed his head in silent supplication while he waited for the repentant to heed his call. But Covenant was already on his way down the aisle. The usher made a furtive movement to stop him, then backed off as several members of the audience looked up. Covenant stalked feverishly the length of the tent, climbed the rough wooden steps to the platform, and stopped facing Dr. Johnson. His eyes glistered as he said in a raw whisper, “Help me.”
The man was shorter than he had appeared to be from the audience. His black suit was shiny, and his shirt soiled from long use. He had not shaved recently; stiff, grizzled whiskers roughened his jowls and cheeks. His face wore an uncertain aspect—almost an expression of alarm—as Covenant confronted him, but he quickly masked it with blandness, and said in a tone of easy sonority, “Help you, son? Only God can help you. But I will joyfully add my prayers to the cry of any contrite heart.” He placed a hand firmly on Covenant’s shoulder. “Kneel, son, and pray with me. Let’s ask the Lord for help together.”
Covenant wanted to kneel, wanted to submit to the commanding spell of Dr. Johnson’s hand and voice. But his knees were locked with urgency and inanition. The pain in his forehead flamed like acid gnawing at his brain. He felt that if he bent at all he would collapse completely. “Help me,” he whispered again. “I can’t stand it.”
Dr. Johnson’s face became stern at Covenant’s resistance. “Are you repentant, son?” he asked gravely. “Have you found the sick spot of sin in your soul? Do you truly ache for Almighty God’s Divine Mercy?”
“I am sick,” Covenant responded as if he were answering a litany. “I have committed crimes.”
“And do you repent? Can you say those five difficult words with all the honest pain of your heart?”
Covenant’s jaw locked involuntarily. Through clenched teeth, he said as if he were whimpering, “Help my unbelief.”
“Son, that’s not enough. You know that’s not enough.” Dr. Johnson’s sternness changed to righteous judgment. “Do not dare to mock God. He will cast you out forever. Do you believe? Do you believe in God’s own health?”
“I do”—Covenant struggled to move his jaw, but his teeth clung together as if they had been fused by despair—“I do not believe.”
Behind him, Matthew Logan stopped singing his descant. The abrupt silence echoed in Covenant’s ears like ridicule. Abjectly he breathed, “I’m a leper.”
He could tell by the curious, expectant faces in the first rows of the audience that the people had not heard him, did not recognize him. He was not surprised; he felt that he had been altered past all recognition by his delusions. And even in his long-past days of health he had never associated with the more religious townspeople. But Dr. Johnson heard. His eyes bulged dangerously in their sockets, and he spoke so softly that his words barely reached Covenant. “I don’t know who put you up to this but you won’t get away with it.”
With hardly a pause, he began speaking for the people in the tent again. “Poor man, you’re delirious. That cut is infected, and it’s given you a bad fever.” His public voice was redolent with sympathy. “I grieve for you, son. But it will take a great power of prayer to clear your mind so that the voice of God can reach you. Brother Logan, would you take this poor sick man aside and pray with him? If God blesses your efforts to lift his fever, he may yet come to repentance.”
Matthew Logan’s massive hands closed like clamps on Covenant’s biceps. The fingers ground into him as if they meant to crush his bones. He found himself propelled forward, almost carried down the steps and along the aisle. Behind him, Dr. Johnson was saying, “My friends, will you pray with me for this poor suffering soul? Will you sing and pray for his healing with me?”
In a covered whisper, Matthew Logan said near Covenant’s ear, “We haven’t taken the offering yet. If you do anything else to interrupt, I’ll break both your arms.”
“Don’t touch me!” Covenant snarled. The big man’s treatment tapped a resource of rage which had been damned in him for a long time. He tried to struggle against Logan’s grasp. “Get your hands off me.”
Then they reached the end of the aisle and ducked under the canvas out into the night. With an effortless heave, Brother Logan threw Covenant from him. Covenant stumbled and fell on the bare dirt of the parade ground. When he looked up, the big man was standing with fists on hips like a dark colossus between him and the light of the tent.
Covenant climbed painfully to his feet, pulled what little dignity he could find about his shoulders, and moved away.
As he shambled into the darkness, he heard the people singing, “Blessed Assurance.” And a moment later, a pathetic childish voice cried, “Lord, I’m lame! Please heal me!”
Covenant dropped to his knees and retched dryly. Some time passed before he could get up again and flee the cruel song.
He went homeward along the main road, defying the townspeople to hurt him further. But all the businesses were closed, and the street was deserted. He walked like a flicker of darkness under the pale yellow streetlamps, past the high, belittling giant-heads on the columns of the courthouse—made his way unmolested out the end of town toward Haven Farm.
The two miles to the Farm passed like all his hikes—measured out in fragments by the rhythm of his strides, a scudding, mechanical rhythm like the ticking of overstressed clockwork. The mainspring of his movement had been wound too tight; it was turning too fast, rushing to collapse. But a change had taken place in the force which drove him.
He had remembered hate.
He was spinning wild schemes for vengeance in his head when he finally reached the long driveway leading into Haven Farm. There in the cold starlight he saw a heavy sack sitting by his mailbox. A moment passed before he remembered that the sack contained food; the local grocery store delivered to him twice a week rather than face the risk that he might choose to do his shopping in person; and yesterday—Wednesday—had been one of the delivery days. But he had been so occupied with his restless fasting that he had forgotten.
He picked up the sack without stopping to wonder why he bothered, and carried it down the driveway toward his house.
But when he looked into the sack in the bright light of his kitchen, he found he had decided to eat. Vengeance required strength; there was nothing he could do to strike back against his tormentors if he were too weak to hold himself erect. He took a package of buns from the sack.
The wrapping of the buns had been neatly cut on one side, but he ignored the thin slit. He tore off the plastic and threw it aside. The buns were dry and stiff from their exposure to the air. He took one and held it in the palm of his hand, gazed down at it as if it were a skull he had robbed from some old grave. The sight of the bread sickened him. Part of him longed for the clean death of starvation, and he felt that he could not lift his hand, could not complete his decision of retribution.
Savagely he jerked the bun to his mouth and bit into it.
Something sharp caught between his lower lip and upper gum. Before he could stop biting, it cut him deeply. A keen shard of pain stabbed into his face. Gasping he snatched back the bun.
It was covered with blood. Blood ran like saliva down his chin.
When he tore open the bun with his hands, he found a tarnished razor blade in it.
At first, he was too astonished to react. The rusty blade seemed beyond comprehension; he could hardly believe the blood that smeared his hands and dropped to the floor from his jaw. Numbly he let the bun fall from his fingers. Then he turned and made his way into the littered wreckage of his living room.
His eyes were irresistibly drawn to Joan’s picture. It lay face-up under the remains of the coffee table, and the glass of its frame was webbed with cracks. He pushed the table aside, picked up the picture. Joan smiled at him from behind the cracks as if she had been caught in a net of mortality and did not know it.
He began to laugh.
He started softly, but soon scaled upward into manic howling. Water ran from his eyes like tears, but still he laughed, laughed as if he were about to shatter. His bursts spattered blood over his hands and Joan’s picture and the ruined room.
Abruptly he threw down the picture and ran from it. He did not want Joan to witness his hysteria. Laughing madly, he rushed from the house into the woods, determined even while he lost control of himself to take his final breakdown as far away from Haven Farm as possible.
When he reached Righters Creek, he turned and followed it upstream into the hills, away from the dangerous lure of people as fast as his numb, awkward feet could carry him—laughing desperately all the while.
Sometime during the night, he tripped; and when he found himself on the ground, he leaned against a tree to rest for a moment. At once, he fell asleep, and did not awaken until the morning sun was shining full in his face.
For a time, he did not remember who or where he was. The hot white light of the sun burned everything out of his mind; his eyes were so dazzled that he could not make out his surroundings. But when he heard the thin, wordless cry of fear, he began to chuckle. He was too weak to laugh loudly, but he chuckled as if that were the only thing left in him.
The thin cry repeated itself. Inspired by it, he managed a fuller laugh, and started to struggle to his feet. But the effort weakened him. He had to stop laughing to catch his breath. Then he heard the cry again, a child’s shriek of terror. Supporting himself on the tree, he looked around, peering through his sun blindness at the dim shapes of the woods.
Gradually he became able to see. He was perched high on a hill in the woods. Most of the branches and bushes were bursting with green spring leaves. A few yards from him, Righters Creek tumbled gaily down the rocky hillside and wandered like a playful silver trail away among the trees. Most of the hill below him was free of brush because of the rockiness of the soil; nothing obscured his downward view.