Tremble (10 page)

Look at him, how can he call himself a holy man? she thought, all the fear and hatred of her father rising up. If I could, I would shout these walls down. Oh, rainmaker…do you hear me? Do you feel me pressed against you? She shut her eyes and wished him closer. Between her knees lay her manacled wrists.

The preacher blessed the congregation, coughed, then began his sermon.

“And the weak should be wary of the charlatan, for he shall lead them into a corruption of the spirit, into a falsehood of faith.” He glared at the gathering, his eyebrows bristling. “And there is a charlatan among us, an unclean man, a man not of our race, a man who is the very personification of evil for he seeketh to corrupt this town!”

A farmer in the front row clutched at his heart, old Shirley Kelly lost her false teeth but caught them with her handkerchief, while Hank Thurson, the diner owner, found his thoughts turning to his accountant.

“I speak of the so-called rainmaker!” the preacher thundered, his voice echoing through the church. “A man devoid of spirituality or humanity, a man who has demanded the most disgusting of payments—human flesh—the bodies of the respectable wives and daughters of this fair town!”

There wasn’t a woman in the building who did not feel a delicious spark of anticipation run down her thighs at the preacher’s indignant words.

Behind the curtain Miranda’s eyes flew open. The rainmaker needed a woman for his magic. If it could not be her, then let him feel her as he made love to other women. Despite the scratches across her breasts and the marks of a whip on her back, Miranda took stock of her own strength. There was no doubt in her mind: Jacob was there for her alone.

“Preacher! You are wrong!”

The whole congregation swung around. Standing at the back of the church was the rainmaker. Dressed immaculately in a white Armani suit, with mirrored shades that reflected the worshippers, he looked like a modern-day saint.

“What kind of holy man are you?” he challenged. “A man whose spirit has atrophied into a wizened semblance of humanity! How can you claim that it is I who is lacking in spirituality? I am a miraclemaker! All I need is belief…and a woman who is willing to moisten the very air with her sighs.”

Immediately thirty women consciously locked their knees to prevent themselves from leaping to their feet to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause.

“Carnality is not spirituality!” spat the preacher in response. “You, sir, are the devil incarnate, sent to destroy these people! Leave this town! There is no place in Sandridge for foreign con men!” he screamed, transported by the conviction that he was administering divine justice.

The church erupted into chaos. Four of the Kaufmann brothers advanced upon the rainmaker, who remained strangely unperturbed. He had become distracted by the image shining at him from behind the altar. Invisible to others but crystal clear to him, it was a vision of Miranda. In his forty-six years he had never seen a woman so complete in her beauty and suffering. Incredibly humbled, he dropped to his knees.

“You see how he is struck down! Struck down by the Holy Spirit itself. And the Almighty shall smite down the disbeliever!” Bill Williams screamed. The choir of the Aryan Fellowship of Jesus burst into a country and western rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Still on his knees the rainmaker looked up. Some assumed he was praying, but Jacob was studying the sun, the heat of which he could feel through the roof. At his silent command the temperature shot up five degrees and a crack appeared in the roof, through which sunlight
streamed down illuminating him like a saint. Several women screamed. The preacher gestured and two of the hefty Kaufmann brothers hauled the rainmaker to his feet. As they dragged him out the door, several pious female parishioners couldn’t help noticing how long and shapely his legs were as they trailed behind him, feet bumping across the stone floor.

Outside, Jacob lay in the dirt. He had never been happier, this was what he’d been waiting for: a woman who shared the same powers as he, a soul mate who was not bound by time or physicality, but who traversed the laws of nature. He had to rescue her; they belonged together.

Infused with an inspiration he hadn’t felt for years, he got up and dusted himself off. The Kaufmann brothers watched suspiciously until he had disappeared from sight. Satisfied, they went back into the church. A moment later Jacob emerged from behind a small hillock and darted around the back of the building. Finding an open window, he eased himself through it, landing silently in a storeroom.

I am here
. Her words rang in his head as soon as he was inside. Her presence radiated so strongly Jacob felt like he was standing beside a blazing fire.

Through the door and behind the curtain on the left
. She guided him until he found the concealed archway. In the background the preacher’s voice droned on. Holding his breath Jacob pushed the curtain slowly aside.

She was standing next to a chair, her back to him, the curves of her body visible even through her shapeless cotton dress. She was tall, almost as tall as he was, with long tapering legs, a high waist, and high buttocks. She looked like the willowy Nubian woman he’d seen in photos or woodcarvings. Silently he moved up behind her and placed his arms around her. Without turning, she leaned back against him, arching her face against his. Her scent was extraordinary: a heavy musk that reminded him both of the sea and of the waxy cactus night-flowers he’d seen in Mexico. Instantly aroused, he twisted her around and looked into those violet-brown eyes.

“When the women come to me, it will be you who I am loving, and then, when I have freed you, it will always only be you and me,” he whispered, the only spoken words between them and the only time he had uttered such words to any woman. Her luminous eyes gazed into
his and for a moment he was gripped by a novel sensation—fear of rejection. Then she smiled sadly and he realized she was mute.

“What’s your name?” he whispered. She caressed his face with her fingers, tracing his mouth in wonder. It was then that he saw her chains and the seeping raw skin on her wrists.

“Miranda?” It was the preacher’s voice. Terrified, the girl pushed Jacob back toward the storeroom, gesturing wildly that he should leave. But just before he stepped away, she pulled him to her and kissed him. For the first time in his life Jacob felt his heart contract.

It was a horribly hot night. The rainmaker lay wide awake. Even as a man whose life had been shaped by impulsive emotions and visions, he had always felt in control. Now, he was losing that control and part of him was petrified. Outside a twig broke; he listened for a second, then decided it was the coyote on one of her nocturnal scavenges. He turned over but found that the image of Miranda remained pressed against his burning eyelids.

The mayor’s wife paused, frozen in the moonlight. She was wearing nothing but a Victoria’s Secret camisole under Chad’s old parka. The sound of cicadas was intense; the incessant buzzing blocked out most other sounds. All she could hear was the thudding of her own heart.

Cheri hadn’t been able to analyze the sensation that possessed her when she woke beside her sleeping husband. She had arisen like a somnambulist, slipped on the camisole, and walked silently out the back door to find herself gliding down Main Street like a ghost. An invisible rope of a thousand glistening tingling threads pulled her along, tugging at each nipple, sucking at every part of her long-neglected sex.

“I’m not in command of my actions,” she repeated to herself, trying to take some comfort in the mantra. “I am under a spell,” she muttered as she quickened her pace toward the caravan, a silver zeppelin under the moon.

“At the very least,” she concluded as she arrived at the trailer’s doorstep, “this is the kind of sacrifice only the mayor’s wife should be expected to make for the greater community.” And with that consoling thought, she knocked softly.

Above, a tawny owl that had been following her progress with great
curiosity, hovered for a second, its beady eyes watching as she stepped into the van. Perching carefully on top of the vehicle, using its claws to balance, it made its way to the window.

It wasn’t exactly the woman Jacob had been hoping for, but he’d always nurtured the philosophy that womanhood was elemental, and, as such, the individual manifestation wasn’t really so important. He smiled at the mayor’s wife, a voluptuous woman whose vital juices, he assessed with one glance, were long overdue for liberation.

I dedicate this lovemaking to you, Miranda—he sent the thought to his captive lover as the matron fell into his arms in a timely swoon.

As Jacob carried Cheri over the threshold, a light flickered on in Rebecca’s bedroom across the road. Sandridge’s cultural ambassador wasn’t one to leave anything to hearsay. Meanwhile, hanging upside down, its round feathery face pressed against the window, the owl’s eyes widened.

The mayor’s wife lay across the quilt, her eyelids fluttering. “I’m here,” she murmured coyly, “I’m here to make…rain.”

But Jacob’s hands had already lifted the hem of her camisole, were massaging their way up her thighs, touching her in a manner she had not thought men capable of. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’m making,” she managed to say between gasps, as he caressed the secret part she’d spent many a wasted night praying that Chad, in his clumsy fumblings, might find.

“I’m here for the town,” she screamed as Jacob buried his face in her sex.

As he worked his tongue, the rainmaker conjured up gargantun clouds that gathered on a night horizon, rolling cumulus, decorated with silent flashes of lightning that twisted magically into Miranda’s hair blowing wildly around her face as she smiled at him.

As he caught Cheri’s clit between his lips, he imagined the trees bending in a stormy wind. Swaying, they transformed into the dusky arch of Miranda’s naked back.

Meanwhile, over at the diner, Hank Thurson’s barometer swung to
Humid
for the first time in over a year and the weather vane atop the town hall burst out of its rust to spin wildly.

With her legs pinned to the bed, Cheri had no choice but to surrender. A spiderweb of ecstasy ran from nerve end to nerve end. Experiencing sensations she hadn’t known existed, she clutched at his
hair, pulling violently. The pleasure was so intense she thought she might faint, but still the rainmaker held her down, pausing only to bite gently at her inner thighs in brief respite before fastening his mouth again to her sex. Above the trailer, storm clouds gathered. The owl shook her feathers.

Cheri cried and moaned. Deep within her the rainmaker felt all the trapped disappointments, the sorrows of missed opportunity, the tedium of mindless duty building like a massive tidal wall. Maestro that he was, he took his time, allowing the longing to subside for a moment, only to build it up again, knowing that the higher the wall, the greater the outpouring.

Miranda, Miranda, he thought over and over, sending her every shiver of pleasure he felt. He intensified his lovemaking, calling on all his prodigious abilities, blowing, licking, and teasing every nerve end to the point of explosion.

Finally, when he sensed he had brought Cheri to the brink, he raised himself high on his hands and plunged his heavy sex deep into her. Finally Cheri understood the true function of the male organ. As Jacob thrust into her she clutched at his buttocks, shocking herself with loud guttural cries, wanting more and more. Recognizing her urgency he quickened his pace. The tsunami rose and rose until it filled Cheri’s mind, then broke, flooding her with glorious, unadulterated pleasure.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” she screamed, her first ever orgasm rippling through her like an epiphany. A second later Jacob followed, his body trembling violently. In the bell tower, Miranda, her pelvis raised up in bliss, twisted in ecstasy at exactly the same moment.

Suddenly the residents of Sandridge were woken by a huge peal of thunder, and the owl flew off in the direction of the church.

It rained and rained and rained. In the early hours of that first day the townsfolk came out and danced under the heavy droplets of water, their naked legs and arms splashed with black mud that had been dust for so long. Jeremiah, shaking with relief, went to his son’s grave and thanked God and the great buzzard—talisman of his people—his tears mingling with the rain.