The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (11 page)

Taller buildings loomed over even these. In the farthest distance, bleached pale by the rain’s vapors, was a twelve-story bank building whose top three floors had been gutted by fire several years ago. Several other structures rose from the leaves and fog, faces streaming with water.

“‘Do you see a man skillful in his work?’” said the preacher, a tall and lanky black man in a much-too-large jacket. His gravelly, powerful voice belied his fragile frame, and carried easily in the soft crash of falling rain, even over the faraway noise of traffic, even though he had to be in his eighties or nineties.

“‘He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.’ That is Proverbs 22:29. I have to admit that I am not familiar with E. R. Brigham’s fantasy series, but from what I gather, he was a skillful man. Skillful at something that I believe serves to fulfill that most basic and sacred of requirements for what constitutes a man.

“God created man in His own image. God was a creator, and may it be said that—just short of childbirth—in literature does man find his destiny most intertwined with the original Creator.

“Because from the mind of the writer springs forth entire worlds full of creatures and continents, plots and pomp, and memories and also man. Man with a capital M, Mankind in all its features and flaws, Men full-formed, that walk straight out of the imaginations of these great luminaries and onto the page, where we may love or hate them like any other.

“Exodus 35:31-32 says, ‘And he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze.’ Matthew 25:16 says, ‘He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more.’

“And much it works the same way as for writers, even as it does for artists, and even, indeed, as it does for us bound by the holy Word,” said the old man. “By virtue of his creativity and the power of his generous talent, Mr. Brigham made loaves and fishes with the flour of the written word, and his talent multiplied itself through inspiration of those who would read his works and be motivated to create their own worlds beyond these.”

The preacher thrust one of his gnarled old fingers at the crowd, “I daresay there are some of
you
here today to see our dear friend into Paradise.”

I appraised the people around me again, and saw the glitter of tears in most of their eyes. I knew that they probably didn’t see my dad as of much of a father figure as Sawyer Winton did, but I knew they still loved the man in the casket for taking them to worlds they would most likely rather live in, and introduced them to people they would have given anything to personally know.

I glanced at my mother, who stood by my side, a whole foot shorter than I. Her eyes were dry, but I recognized the expression on her face as one of genuine loss and pain. She looked up at me and I reflected her sympathy back at her.

“My friends, you may not know who I am,” said the preacher. “My name is Moses Atterberry. I am the pastor over Walker Memorial Church. When I began my career in the Lord’s light, the Brighams were one of the first families to become involved with church charity functions in the neighborhood, and I saw them on frequent occasions, so I came to know the teenaged Mr. Brigham personally.

“Even then, I knew he was a very talented individual.

“It would be several years before he wrote the first book in his fantasy series, but that did not stop him from using his prodigious way with words to entertain and educate the boys and girls in our Sunday school class every week with his own brand of parable, full of dragons and knights and so unlike those you might find in the Bible, but valuable and enviable nonetheless.

“It saddens me greatly to see a man so good-hearted cut down in the prime of his career,” said Atterberry, his voice weakening with emotion. I felt my own eyes burn when I saw the pain cross his face with a heart-breaking grimace. The rest of his words were choked by the threat of tears.

“I hope this most untimely death reminds you all, everybody standing here today, that chasing your dreams is one secret of life that is of utmost importance,” he said, pressing a indicative fingertip to the casket hanging in front of us.

“And if you are going to catch them, then by God and all his heavenly host of angels, do it,
do it,
because only God knows when you are going to run out of time.”

I was absolutely wrecked. My eyes unfocused, and I let them drift over the old man’s shoulder into the trees. I realized my hands were in my pockets, looking for something to keep my hands busy, and as I absent-mindedly rubbed the key in my pocket, I noticed the steeple of Walker Memorial Church spearing up out of the carpet of green.

When I looked back to the podium, Sawyer was there.

“The Buddhists had it right,” he said. “The impermanence of all things is the key to contentment. Nothing lasts forever. The only constant is change. Why pull your hair out over something when it will be gone a week from now, a month, a year from now? Nothing in your life, nothing you do is written in stone, not the books you write, not the movies you make, not the mountains you climb. You and your name are written in magic marker.

“Your job is to write your life as big as you can, and bear down as hard as the marker can take it, and have fun doing it. Life is a bumper car arena. Drive the hell out of it until the man at the control panel turns your car off.”

_______

I went back to the motel for a little while to get out of the rain, get some lunch, and dry off. Since Noreen and Sawyer drove me back, I invited them in to hang out before I revealed my next destination to them. I figured they might appreciate a few minutes with my dad’s notes, and I was right.

They each took a notebook and took turns making noises of awe and recognition, showing each other pictures and especially resonating articles.

“So that’s what he intended the Swordwives to look like,” one of them would say, or “I had no idea the political structure in Ain was so complex,” or even such enigmas like “What the hell is Obelus?” and unfortunately, the conversation was a labyrinth of terms to me.

I contented myself with paging through whatever they weren’t engrossed in. Sawyer’s camera lay on the table, passively recording them.

I envied their curiosity. To put so much emotional stake in something must have been fulfilling. I could not remember the last time I’d felt so damned enthusiastic about anything except for the key. While my motivation to work on the final book of
The Fiddle and The Fire
grew by the hour, I couldn’t turn my back on the mystery of the key.

Even if it were just a junk key, a spare or an obsolete original, why would it have been in a box of
Fiddle
material?

I sat on the bed, eating the other half of my gigantic hamburger from last night’s visit to Jackson’s, watching the Discovery Channel, listening to Noreen and Sawyer discussing the notes, indulging my own inner monologue, realizing just how empty and tired I was.

It was beginning to dawn on me just how unlustered my life had become. One long parade of self-denial, self-loathing, boredom. Not for the first time, I felt gratitude that I wasn’t a heavier drinker, like my father had been in his hey-day. He had been the Hemingway of genre fiction, a booze-fueled Tolkien.

Maybe I was afraid of taking on the series because I thought on some level that I wasn’t good enough. Oh, who was I kidding—I
knew,
openly, that I wasn’t good enough.

Maybe it was my tiredness that was making me morose. Or maybe it was the burial. I put down the hamburger, looked down at the notebook open on the bedspread in front of me, and realized that it wasn’t going to happen this way.

If I was going to get the gist of the series, subjecting myself to the unfiltered contents of E. R. Brigham’s head, exploded and disarranged like exotic car parts, wasn’t going to do me any favors. I was going to have to read the series end to end, witness the assembled Maserati in action, and immerse myself in the lore that way.

“I guess I need to get a copy of the first book in the series,” I said, half to them and half to myself. “This chaos just isn’t going to cut it. I need to read the series.”

“Good luck on that one, Chief,” said Sawyer. “The first book was printed in 1973. I don’t even know if you can get a paperback of it these days without one hell of a scavenger hunt.”

“Really? I guess I’ll have to head up to the house later and see if my dad has any copies.”

I called Bayard on my cell to see if he had any copies of the first book. He didn’t, at least, not on him—there was a first edition on the bookshelf in his office. He promised to mail it to me as soon as he got back. I hung up and massaged my aching left arm.

“Hey guys, when you two get done, I wondered if you want to go with me to check out a lead I have on the key.”

“Walker Memorial?” asked Sawyer.

“Yep.”

“I figured so, from the way you were looking at it earlier.”

They looked at each other and Noreen winced. “Actually, I have to get back home pretty soon. I have a hell of a drive and I have work in the morning. I’ll see you when you get back, I gotta go pack.”

Sawyer shrugged. “I have all this week off,” he chuckled. “I told my boss there was a death in the family. Which, now that I think about it, wasn’t too far off the mark, I guess. So I guess I’ll go with you.”

I stood up, rolling my shoulder, and turned my computer off. “I hate to cut it short, you two, but I want to get down there before it gets dark. Sneaking around churches at night trying locks might fly on TV, but in the real world, they call it trespassing.”

“What do they call it during the day?” asked Sawyer, wallowing his way out of the Queen Anne chair and slipping into his jacket.

I put my motel room key in my shirt pocket and smirked. “Seeking guidance.”

Sawyer and I piled into my car. The rain had tapered off to another misty drizzle and the gray sky was an unending wool blanket, turning the world into a Cezanne painting. I sat there for a moment, letting the inside of the car warm up, watching the vapors outside bead up on the windows.

The windshield was clear by the time Noreen opened the door and slid into the back seat. I twisted in my seat to look at her. She was putting on her seat belt. “Just shut up and drive.”

I grinned. “By the way,” I said to Sawyer, “Where did you dig up that little speech you gave at my dad’s grave?”

“It was in the afterword of his last book,” he said, looking out the window.

Too Many Heebies

& Not Enough Jeebies

T
HE CHURCH TURNED OUT TO
be an imposing structure. Walker Memorial was a tremendous, sprawling castle of a building made of some sort of pale yellow stone that made it look like a cross between a Germanic monastery and Alexander the Great’s desert fortress. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d driven past it in my life, as it was directly on the main street in town—so I was familiar with it by sight, but I’d never bothered to learn its name.

All three of us were gazing up at the belltower out the windows as we approached it and pulled into the parking lot out back. There were a few other cars here; as I parked, I wondered whose they were. It was late afternoon, so I didn’t have much room to speculate. The clergy had every reason to still be here.

When we got out of the Topaz, the subtle majesty of the church made itself evident. Sidewalks were protected by corridor battlements held aloft by flying buttresses. Whimsical tavern-style mullioned windows perforated those elevated hallways. The towers, each side sporting two narrow archers’ windows for each floor, were peaked with sharp steeple points. Each steeple except for the bell tower ended in tiny onion minarets.

There was no one in sight as we walked toward the nearest door, an ornate, heavy-looking wooden door at the base of one of the corner towers. Sawyer poked me in the arm with a finger. When I turned to address him, I saw that he was aiming the GoPro at me and he asked, “What do I say if someone catches me nosing around?”

“Tell them you’re looking for Jesus.”

“Okay. What do I do if I find Him?”

“That means it’s your turn to hide.”