When Betty told me she would go that night to Walter John Harmon, I didn’t think I reacted. But she looked into my eyes and must have seen something—some slight loss of vitality, a moment’s dullness of expression. And she understood that for all my study and hard work, the Seventh Attainment was still not mine.
Dearest, she said, don’t be discouraged. The men have more difficulty. Walter John Harmon knows that and commends your struggle. You can go see him if you wish, it is the prerogative of husbands.
No, I said, I’m all right.
—
AFTER SHE HAD GONE I went walking in the evening light across the pastures. It is beautiful country here, a broad undulant valley with brooks and natural ponds and no ground light to dim the stars or the moving lights of the jets up among them. This is where the Holy City will descend. The community has in just two short years assembled the parcels of this valley. I did some real estate law back in Charlotte and I am proud to say I have had no small hand in our accomplishment. It is in the nature of a miracle that Walter John Harmon has in his effortless way drawn so many of us to his prophecy. And that we have given everything we possess—not to him, to the Demand that comes through him. We are not idiots. We are not cult victims. In many quarters we are laughed at for following as God’s prophet a garage mechanic who in his teens was imprisoned for car theft. But this blessed man has revolutionized our lives. From the first moment I was in his presence I felt resolved in my soul. Everything was suddenly right. I was who I was. It is hard to explain. I saw the outside world darkened, as in a film negative. But I was in the light. And that I was blessed seemed to be established in his eyes. Walter’s pale blue eyes are set so deep under the ridge of his brow that the irises are occluded at the top, like half-moons. It is almost a chilling gaze you feel on you, as gentle as it may be, something not of this world but ineffable, expressive of God, like the gaze of an animal.
So I knew the failing within me when Betty was this night summoned for Purification. Walter is at a level beyond lust. This is apparent, since all the wives, even the plainest, partake of his communion. His ministry annuls the fornications of a secular society. Betty and I, for example, made love many times before we were married. And the Community’s children, the children in white, who have never known carnal sin, are not permitted to look at Walter John Harmon lest he inspire them to their confusion. They are the precious virgins, girls and boys, whose singing brings him such joy. He says nothing to them, of course, but smiles and closes those remarkable eyes, and the tears stream from them like rain down a windowpane.
—
BETTY AND I LEARNED about Walter John Harmon from the Internet. I found myself reading someone’s weblog—how that happened I can’t remember. I think of it now as the beginning of His summons, for there is nothing without significance in this world made by God. I called Betty and she came into my study and together we read of this most remarkable event of the tornado that had occurred the year before in the town of Fremont in west Kansas. There were links, too, all from this locality and all telling the same story. I logged in to the archives of the regional newspapers and confirmed that there had been a series of tornados all through the state at that time, and a particularly destructive twister that had hit Fremont head-on. But beyond that not one news report had the key thing. Not even in the Fremont Sun-Ledger was there an account of this one inexplicable occurrence of the cyclone that came through the middle of town, flinging cars into the air, shattering storefronts, lifting houses off their foundations, and, among other disasters, setting off a gas-and-oil fire that pooled on the floor of the repair shop of the Getty station on the corner of Railroad and Division Streets, where Walter John Harmon worked as a mechanic.
I hold in my mind a composite account of what happened, from the weblogs and from what we have since heard recounted by the townspeople who witnessed this or that particular moment and who followed Walter in his ministry and are now the Community Elders. Walter John Harmon himself has not been persuaded to write down a testament, nor has he permitted anything to be written in the way of documentation. “It is not the time for that,” he says. And then, “May it never be the time, for the day we falter and lose our way, that will be the time.” In fact nothing in the Community is written. The Ideals, the Imperatives, the Assignments and Obligations are all pronounced, and once spoken by the prophet are carried and remembered by means of daily prayer. The miracles of the tornado are held in the imaginations of our minds and we speak of them to one another in our workday or social gatherings, so that as the years pass there will be a Consensus of the inner truth and its authority will be unquestionable.
As he stood by the pool of fire, the garage doors first, and then the roof and then the collapsed walls, were lifted and spun into the black funnel. Only Walter John Harmon stood where he stood, and then was slowly raised in his standing and turned slowly in his turning, calmly and silently, his arms stretched wide in the black shrieking, with the things of our lives whirling in the whirlwind above him—car fenders and machines from the Laundromat, hats and empty coats and trousers, tables, mattresses, plates and knives and forks, TV sets and computers, all malignantly alive in the black howling. And then a child flew into Walter John Harmon’s left arm and another fell into his right arm, and he held them steadfast and was lowered to the ground where he had stood. And then the dreaded wind that takes all breath away was gone, having blown itself to bits. And the fields beyond the town were strewn with the several dead and dying among their possessions. But the pool of fire in the Getty garage was nothing but a ring of blackened concrete, and the sun was out as if the tornado had never been, and the mothers of those two children came running and found them bruised and bleeding and crying but alive. Only then did Walter John Harmon begin again to breathe, though he stood where he stood, unable to move as if in a trance, until he collapsed and lost consciousness.
All of this is in the Consensus. Other elements of the miracle are still debated by the Community and I suppose come under the heading of apocrypha. One of the Elders, Ansel Bernes, who had owned a clothing store, claims that seven mercury streetlamps on the walking street in the Fremont business district came on and stayed on when the tornado hit. I can’t quite accept this. According to the Sun-Ledger, Fremont’s power outage was total. It took the local utility two days to get everyone back online.
—
WHEN WE CAME HERE Betty and I had been married a dozen years with no children to show for it. One of the appeals of the Community is that we are all parents of all children. While the adults live in distinct quarters of their own, as in the outer world, the children room together in the main house. At present we are a hundred ten in number, with a human treasury of seventy-eight children, ranging in age from two to fifteen.
Except for the main house, which was once a retreat for elderly nuns of the Roman Catholic persuasion and to which we have added a new wing, all the Community buildings were built by members according to the specifications of Walter John Harmon. He called for square, box-like structures with gable roofs for the adult houses, each of which contains two apartments of two rooms each. His own residence is slightly larger, with a gambrel roof, which gives it the appearance of a barn. All buildings in the complex are painted white; no colors are permitted exterior or interior. Metal fixtures are not allowed—window frames are wood, all water is drawn by hand from wells, there is no indoor plumbing, and communal showers, men’s and women’s, are jerry-rigged in tents. Walter John Harmon has said: “We praise what is temporary, we cherish the impermanent, for there can be no comparison with what is coming that is not an impiety.”
But in the business suite in the new wing of the main house we do have computers, faxes, copiers, and so on, powered by a gasoline generator behind the building, though we intend when it is practical to switch to solar cells. There are metal filing cabinets as well. All of this is by dispensation because, regrettably, we do have necessary business with the outside world. We handle legal
challenges from state and county officials and must deal also with private suits brought by unthinking or opportunistic relations of our family members. But only the Community lawyers, and Elder Rafael Altman, our financial officer and CPA, and his bookkeepers, and the women who provide clerical help, can enter these premises. Three of us practice law, and after morning prayers we go to work just like everyone else. By dispensation we own the habiliments of the legal profession—suits, shirts, ties, polished shoes, which we don for those occasions when we must meet with our counterparts in the world outside. We are driven by horse and wagon to the Gate down at the paved road some two miles away. There we have the choice of the three parked SUVs, though never the Hummer. The Hummer is reserved for Walter John Harmon. He does not proselytize, but he does schedule spiritual meetings on the outside. Or he will attend ecumenical or scholarly conferences on this or that religious or social issue. He is never invited to participate but is eloquent enough sitting quietly in the audience in his robe, his head bowed, his face almost hidden in the fall of his hair and his hands folded under his chin.
—
BETTY RETURNED EARLY THE next morning, the sun coming with her through the door, and I welcomed her with a hug. I meant it, too—I love seeing her face in the morning. She is very fair and rises from her sleep with her cheeks flushed like a child’s and her hazel eyes instantly alert to the day. She is as lithe and fit as she was when she played field hockey at college. If you look closely some tiny lines radiate from the corners of her eyes, but this only makes her more attractive to me. Her hair is still the color of wheat and she still wears it short, as she did when I met her, and she still has that spring to her step and her typically energetic way of doing things.
We prayed together and then we had our bread and tea, chatting all the while. Betty served as a Community teacher, she had the kindergarten, and she was talking about her day’s plan. I was feeling better. It was a beautiful day dawning with coverlets of white webbing on the grass. I had a renewed confidence in my own feelings.
All at once the most hideous carnal images arose in my mind. I wanted to speak but could not catch my breath.
What is it, Jim, what?
Betty held my hand. I closed my eyes until the images disappeared and I could breathe again.
Oh my dear one, she said. Last night was not the first time, after all. And have our lives changed? I’m telling you it is not a normal human experience with any of the normal results.
I don’t want to hear about it. It is not necessary for me to hear about it.
It is no more, or no less, than a sacrament. It is no more than when the priest placed the wafer on our tongues.
I held my hand up. Betty looked at me inquiringly, as in the old days, a pretty bird with its head cocked, wondering who I could possibly be.
You know, she said, I had to tell Walter John Harmon. You should go see him. Look how your mouth is set, so hard, so angry.
It was not for you to tell him, I said.
I recognized an Obligation.
Outside in the sun, I breathed the sweet air of the valley and tried to calm myself. Everything around me was the vision of serene life. We are the quietest people. You will never hear a loud argument or see a public display of temperament anywhere in the Community. Our children never fight, or push each other, or band together in hurtful cliques the way children do. The muslin we wear that suggests our common priesthood quiets the heart. The prayers we utter, the food we grow for ourselves in our fields, provide an immense and recurring satisfaction.
Betty followed me. Please, Jim, she said. You should talk to him. He will see you.
Yes? And what if I am excused from my work, if I am remanded, who can argue the case?
What case is that?
You’re not entrusted to know. But believe me it’s critical.
He will not remand you then.
How can you know that? I may not be an Elder, but I’m approved to go beyond the Gate. And doesn’t that presuppose the Seventh?
Why was I having to defend myself? Please, I said, I won’t talk about this anymore.
Betty turned from me and I felt her coldness. I had the maniacal thought that the Purifications wouldn’t be a problem for me if I no longer loved my wife.
At our supper at the end of the day she asked me to do something, some minor chore that I would have done without her asking, and I thought her tone was officious.
—
TO WHAT EXTENT WAS my legal work in the outside world holding me back from the prophetic realization offered by Walter John Harmon? Didn’t I have one foot in and one foot out? But wasn’t that my Imperative? He himself had said the higher Attainments are elusive, difficult, and, as if they had personalities of their own, they were given to teasing us with simulacra of themselves. So there was no shame in being remanded. Perhaps for my own sake I should have requested it. But then would I not be putting myself before the needs of the Community? And wouldn’t that be to relinquish the Sixth Attainment?
The following morning before work I went to the Tabernacle to pray.
Our Tabernacle is no more than a lean-to. It stands at the high end of the lawn bordering the apple orchard. On a wooden table of our own making and without any ornamentation or covering sits a white stone and a common latchkey. I knelt in the grass in the sun with my head bowed and my hands clasped. But even as I uttered the prayers my mind split in two. As I mouthed the words all I could think of was this question: Had I come to the Community from the needs of my own heart, or had I deceived myself by taking for my own the convictions of my wife? That’s how badly the doubts were assailing me.
When I looked up Walter John Harmon was standing in the Tabernacle. I had not seen him approach. Nor was he looking at me. He was staring at the ground, seeing nothing but his own thoughts.
Walter does not deliver sermons because, as he maintains, we are not a church, we are an Unfolding Revelation. He will appear at the Tabernacle unannounced, any time of the day, any day of the week, as the spirit moves him. At such times, the word goes out and the members who can manage it run to hear him, and those whose work prevents this will hear his words later as committed to memory of those in attendance.
People came running now. Because Walter John Harmon is so soft-spoken it became apparent to the Elders at one point that a dispensation had to be made for a wireless microphone and a loudspeaker. As he stood in the Tabernacle in his characteristic way, with the fingertips of one hand touching the wooden table, and as he began to speak as he would have even if there were no one to listen, someone arrived with the speaker and set up the microphone on a stand in front of him. Even amplified, the prophet’s voice was barely more than a whisper. There was such a diffidence about him, for as he had told us more than once, his was a reluctant prophecy. He had not sought it, or wanted it. Before God came to him in that whirlwind, he had not even thought about religion. He had led an unruly life in his youth and had done many bad things, and felt perhaps that was why he’d been chosen—to demonstrate the mysterious greatness of God.
—
WHAT WALTER JOHN HARMON said on this morning was along these lines: Everywhere and at all times, numeration is the same for all mankind. This is because, no less than the earth or the stars, numbers are the expression of God. And so as they add and subtract and divide and multiply, as they combine and separate and conclude, they are the same always to the understanding of human beings no matter who we are or what language we speak. God in the form of numerical truth will weigh the fruit on the scale, He will measure your height, He will give you the tolerances of your engine parts and tell you the length of your journey. He will offer you numbers to go on forever without end, and we call this infinity, because our mathematics count up to God. And when Jesus the Son of God died for our sins, He took to Himself the infinity of them because He was of God and could die for the sins of the dead and the living and the unborn for generations to come.
A prophet is not the Son of God, he
is one of you, he is an ordinary man of remorse, like you, and so his numbers are no more infinite than the years of his life are infinite. He cannot die for mankind’s sins. He may only work to remove the sin of this or that soul, taking it into himself and adding it into himself. Whatever faults you in the eyes of God—your carnal desires, your greed, your attachment to what is unworthy—your mortal prophet lifts from you and takes unto himself. And he does that until the weight of the numbers will bury him and he is welcomed in Hell. For he is an ordinary mortal and if he takes on your sins they become his own and it is to Hell he will go—not to God at His right hand but to the Devil in the depths of Hell’s eternal torment. “Only the adults purified by this prophecy will join the virgin children in the Holy City to come,” Walter John Harmon said. “And I will not be among them.”
—
THERE WAS CONSTERNATION AT those words. We knew because the Transference of Sin was the key to his teaching that Walter risked exclusion from the Holy City. We had discussed it at our Meetings. The prophecy was Jesus-like but not Jesus, it was Moses-like but not Moses. Yet to hear it put in mathematical terms was shocking—people stood and cried out, because now Walter John Harmon was speaking of something as incontestable as a sum, as measurable as a weight or a volume, and the reality of such a cut-and-dried formulation seemed almost too much for us to bear.
He did not walk away but looked over us with a faint smile on his lips. Was he suggesting that his doom was imminent? His blond and graying hair was tied this morning into a ponytail, which made him seem younger than his thirty-seven years. And at this moment his pale blue eyes were those of a youth unaware of the tragedy of his life. As he stood and waited, the members were slowly calmed by his silence. We went to him, and knelt, and kissed his robe. Perhaps I was the only one this day to feel that his words were a personal communication. They seemed to be responding to my torments, as if, having intuited my reluctance to seek his counsel, Walter John Harmon had chosen this way to remind me of his truth and to restore the strength of my conviction. But that was the effect always, after all, for the power of his word was in its uncanny precise application to whatever had been in your own mind though you might not have before realized it.