Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I (22 page)

“Why, Reverend Thrower, if you ain’t being too kind to us, stopping up here,” she said. The cheerfulness of her voice was a lie, though, if her haggard face was telling the truth. There hadn’t been much good sleep in this house lately.

“I brought him along, Mother Faith,” said Armor. “He come only cause I asked him.”

“The pastor of our church is welcome in my home whenever it pleases him to come by,” said Faith.

She ushered them into the great room. A group of girls making quilt squares looked up at him from their chairs near the hearth. The little boy, Cally, was doing his letters on a board, writing with charcoal from the fire.

“I’m glad to see you doing your letters,” said Thrower.

Cally just looked at him. There was a hint of hostility in his eyes. Apparently the boy resented having his teacher look at his work here at home, which he had supposed was a sanctuary.

“You’re doing them well,” said Thrower, trying to put the boy at ease. Cally said nothing, just looked down again at his makeshift slate and kept on scrawling out words.

Armor brought up their business right away. “Mother Faith, we come cause of Alvin. You know how I feel about witchery, but I never before said a word against what you folks do in your house. I always reckoned that was your business and none of mine. But that boy is paying the price for the evil ways that you’ve let go on here. He witched his leg, and now there’s a devil in him, killing him off, and I brought Reverend Thrower here to wring that devil on out of him.”

Goody Faith looked puzzled. “There ain’t no devil in this house.”

Ah, poor woman, said Thrower silently. If you only knew how long a devil has dwelt here. “It is possible to become so accustomed to the presence of a devil as not to recognize that it is present”

A door by the stairs opened up, and Mr. Miller stepped backward through the doorway. “Not me,” he said, talking to whoever was in that room. “I’ll not lay a knife to the boy.”

Cally jumped up at the sound of his father’s voice and ran to him. “Armor brung old Thrower here, Papa, to kill the devil.”

Mr. Miller turned around, his face twisted with unidentified emotion, and looked at the visitors as if he hardly recognized them.

“I’ve got good strong hexes on this house,” said Goody Faith.

“Those hexes are a summons for the devil,” said Armor. “You think they protect your house, but they drive away the Lord.”

“No devil ever came in here,” she insisted.

“Not by itself,” said Armor. “You called it in with all your conjuring. You forced the Holy Spirit to leave your house by your witchery and idolatry, and having swept goodness from your home, the devils naturally come right in. They always come in, where they see a fair chance to do mischief.”

Thrower became a little concerned that Armor was saying too much about things he didn’t really understand. It would have been better had he simply asked if Thrower could pray for the boy at Alvin’s bedside. Now Armor was drawing battle lines that should never have been drawn.

And whatever was going on in Mr. Miller’s head right now, it was plain to see that this wasn’t the best of times to provoke the man. He slowly walked toward Armor. “You telling me that what comes into a man’s house to do mischief is the devil?”

“I bear you my witness as one who loves the Lord Jesus,” Armor began, but before he could get any further into his testimony, Miller had him by the shoulder of his coat and the waist of his pants, and he turned him right toward the door.

“Somebody better open this door!” roared Miller. “Or there’s going to be a powerful big hole right in the middle of it!”

“What do you think you’re doing, Alvin Miller!” shouted his wife.

“Casting out devils!” cried Miller. Cally had swung the door open by then, and Miller walked his son-in-law to the edge of the porch and sent him flying. Armor’s cry of outrage ended up muffled by the snow on the ground, and there wasn’t much chance to hear his yelling after that because Miller closed and barred the door.

“Ain’t you a big man,” said Goody Faith, “throwing out your own daughter’s husband.”

“I didn’t do but what he said the Lord wanted done,” said Miller. Then he turned his gaze upon the pastor.

“Armor didn’t speak for me,” said Thrower mildly.

“If you lay a hand on a man of the cloth,” said Goody Faith, “you’ll sleep in a cold bed for the rest of your life.”

“Wouldn’t think of touching the man,” said Miller. “But the way I figure it, I stay out of his place, and he ought to stay out of mine.”

“You may not believe in the power of prayer,” said Thrower.

“I reckon it depends on who’s doing the praying, and who’s doing the listening,” said Miller.

“Even so,” said Thrower, “your wife believes in the religion of Jesus Christ, in the which I have been called and ordained a minister. It is her belief, and my belief, that for me to pray at the boy’s bedside might be efficacious in his cure.”

“If you use words like that in your praying,” said Miller, “it’s a wonder the Lord even knows what you’re talking about.”

“Though you don’t believe such prayer will help,” Thrower went on, “it certainly can’t hurt, can it?”

Miller looked from Thrower to his wife and back again. Thrower had no doubt that if Faith had not been there, he would have been eating snow alongside Armor-of-God. But Faith
was
there and had already uttered the threat of Lysistrata. A man does not have fourteen children if his wife’s bed holds no attraction to him. Miller gave in. “Go on in,” he said. “But don’t pester the boy too long.”

Thrower nodded graciously. “No more than a few hours,” he said.

“Minutes!” Miller insisted. But Thrower was already headed for the door by the stairs, and Miller made no move to stop him. He could have hours with the boy, if he wanted to. He closed the door behind him. No sense in letting any of the pagans interfere with this.

“Alvin,” he said.

The boy was stretched out under a blanket, his forehead beaded with sweat. His eyes were closed. After a while, though, he opened his mouth a little. “Reverend Thrower,” he whispered.

“The very same,” said Thrower. “Alvin, I’ve come to pray for you, so the Lord will free your body of the devil that is making you sick.”

Again a pause, as if it took a while for Thrower’s words to reach Alvin and just as long again for his answer to return. “Ain’t no devil,” he said.

“One can hardly expect a child to be well-versed in matters of religion,” said Thrower. “But I must tell you that healing comes only to those who have the faith to be healed.” He then devoted several minutes to recounting the story of the centurion’s daughter and the tale of the woman who had an issue of blood and merely touched the Savior’s robe. “You recall what he said to her. Thy faith hath made thee whole, he said. So it is, Alvin Miller, that your faith must be strong before the Lord can make you whole.”

The boy didn’t answer. Since Thrower had used his considerable eloquence in the telling of both stories, it offended him a bit that the boy might have fallen asleep. He reached out a long finger and poked Alvin’s shoulder.

Alvin flinched away. “I heard you,” he muttered.

It wasn’t good that the boy could still be sullen, after hearing the light-giving word of the Lord. “Well?” asked Thrower. “Do you believe?”

“In what,” murmured the boy.

“In the gospel! In the God who would heal you, if you only soften your heart!”

“Believe,” he whispered. “In God.”

That should have been enough. But Thrower knew too much of the history of religion not to press for more detail. It was not enough to confess faith in a deity. There were so many deities, and all but one was false. “
Which
God do you believe in, Al Junior?”

“God,” said the boy.

“Even the heathen Moor prays toward the black stone of Mecca and calls it God! Do you believe in the true God, and do you believe in Him correctly? No, I understand, you’re too weak and fevered to explain your faith. I will help you, young Alvin. I’ll ask you questions, and you tell me, yes or no, whether you believe.”

Alvin lay still, waiting.

“Alvin Miller, do you believe in a God without body, parts, or passions? The great Uncreated Creator, Whose center is everywhere, yet Whose circumference can never be found?”

The boy seemed to ponder this for a while before he spoke. “That don’t make a bit of sense to me,” he said.

“He isn’t supposed to make sense to the carnal mind,” Thrower said. “I merely ask if you
believe
in the One who sits atop the Topless Throne; the self-existing Being who is so large He fills the universe, yet so penetrating that He lives in your heart.”

“How can he sit on the top of something that ain’t got no top?” the boy asked. “How can something that big fit inside my heart?”

The boy was obviously too uneducated and simple-minded to grasp sophisticated theological paradox. Still, it was more than a life or even a soul at stake here—it was all the souls that the Visitor had said this boy would ruin if he could not be converted to the true faith. “That’s the beauty of it,” said Thrower, letting emotion fill his voice. “God is beyond our comprehension; yet in His infinite love He condescends to save us, despite our ignorance and foolishness.”

“Ain’t love a passion?” asked the boy.

“If you have trouble with the idea of God,” said Thrower, “then let me pose another question, which may be more to the point. Do you believe in the bottomless pit of hell, where the wicked writhe in flames, yet are never burned up? Do you believe in Satan, the enemy of God, who wishes to steal your soul and take you captive into his kingdom, to torment you through all eternity?”

The boy seemed to perk up a little, turning his head toward Thrower, though he still didn’t open his eyes. “I might believe in something like that,” he said.

Ah, yes, thought Thrower. The boy
has
had some experience with the devil. “Have you seen him, child?”

“What’s
your
devil look like?” whispered the boy.

“He is not
my
devil,” said Thrower. “And if you had listened in services, you would have known, for I have described him many times. Where a man has hair on his head, the devil has the horns of a bull. Where a man has hands, the devil has the claws of a bear. He has the hooves of a goat, and his voice is the roar of a ravening lion.”

To Thrower’s amazement, the boy smiled, and his chest bounced silently with laughter. “And you call
us
superstitious,” he said.

Thrower would never have believed how firm a grip the devil could have on a child’s soul, had he not seen the boy laugh with pleasure at the description of the monster Lucifer. That laughter must be stopped! It was an offense against God!

Thrower slapped his Bible down on the boy’s chest, causing Alvin to wheeze out his breath. Then, with his hand pressing on the book, Thrower felt himself fill up with inspired words, and he cried out with more passion than he had ever felt before in his life: “Satan, in the name of the Lord I rebuke you! I command you to depart from this boy, from this room, from this house forever! Never again seek to possess a soul in this place, or the power of God will wreak destruction unto the uttermost bounds of hell!”

Then silence. Except for the boy’s breathing, which seemed labored. There was such peace in the room, such exhausted righteousness in Thrower’s own heart, that he felt convinced the devil had heeded his peroration and retreated forthwith.

“Reverend Thrower,” said the boy.

“Yes, my son?”

“Can you take that Bible off my chest now? I reckon if there was any devils here, they’re all gone now.”

Then the boy began to laugh again, causing the Bible to jump up and down under Thrower’s hand.

In that moment Thrower’s exultation turned to bitter disappointment. Indeed, the fact that the boy could laugh so devilishly with the Bible itself resting on his body was proof that no power could purge him of evil. The Visitor had been right. Thrower should never have refused the mighty work that the Visitor had called him to do. It had been in his power to be the slayer of the Beast of the Apocalypse, and he had been too weak, too sentimental to accept the divine calling. I could have been a Samuel, hewing to death the enemy of God. Instead I am a Saul, a weakling, who cannot kill what the Lord commands must die. Now I will see this boy rise up with the power of Satan in him, and I will know that he thrives only because I was weak.

Now the room was stifling hot, choking him. He had not realized until now how his clothing sogged with sweat. It was hard to breathe. But what should he expect? The hot breath of hell was in this room. Gasping, he took the Bible, held it out between him and the satanic child who lay giggling feverishly under the blanket, and fled.

In the great room he stopped, breathing heavily. He had interrupted a conversation, but he scarcely took notice of it. What did the conversations of these benighted people amount to, compared to what he had just experienced? I have stood in the presence of Satan’s minion, masquing it as a young boy; but his mockery revealed him to me. I should have known what the boy was years ago, when I felt his head and found it to be so perfectly balanced. Only a counterfeit would be so perfect. The child was never
real
. Ah, that I had the strength of the great prophets of old, so I could confound the enemy and bear the trophy back to my Lord!

Someone was tugging at his sleeve. “Are you well, Reverend?” It was Goody Faith, but Reverend Thrower did not think to answer her. Her tugging pulled him around, though, so he faced the fireplace. There on the mantel he saw a carven image, and in his distracted state he could not at once determine what it was. It seemed to be the face of a soul in torment, surrounded by writhing tendrils. Flames, that’s what they are, he thought, and that is a soul drowning in brimstone, burning in hellfire. The image was a torment to him, and yet it was also satisfying, for its presence in this house signified how closely bound this family was to hell. He stood in the midst of his enemies. A phrase from the Psalmist came to his mind: Bulls of Bashan stare upon me, and I can tell all my bones. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?