Tremble (13 page)

At the church Preacher Williams was busy mopping the floor. The water had crept in under the door and got halfway up the aisle before he’d rushed in and discovered a small plaster statue of the infant Jesus
floating on its back clutching an empty packet of Marlboros. As he pushed the mop he imagined he was prodding the rainmaker’s tortured corpse.

A rustling from the bell tower caused the preacher to look up. She must have woken, he thought, and wondered whether he should go up and unchain her. No, let her suffer a little longer, he concluded. A little pain was always educational.

If he had bothered to walk outside and turn to the belfry, he would have seen that his attempts to confine his daughter were, at best, cosmetic. Miranda had managed to loosen the chains so that she could sit up and look out the window. She gazed over the flooded fields—a patched quilt of brilliant green and blue. But it wasn’t the revived land that caught her attention; it was a small dark cloud that appeared to be heading toward the rainmaker’s silver trailer. The intense concentration with which she stared at it gave the impression that she herself was directing the flock of starlings as it wheeled and plunged through the sky.

The rain continued to fall. From his office Chad looked out toward the trailer park. Why was it still raining, he thought bitterly. What else could he do? No woman had been seen entering the trailer for over forty-eight hours nor had the rainmaker left. It was a mystery. There was only one option left: he would have to enlist the support of Cheri, something he’d been avoiding ever since she had tearfully confessed to him that she had been the first to visit the rainmaker. And that now, having achieved the orgasm that had been so elusive throughout their marriage, she wished to file for divorce—a move that would spell political downfall for Chad. Being an elected representative of the people is so damn difficult, he thought, and wondered whether it was too late to revive his football career.

“I swear by my allegiance to the Wheatgrowers’ Wives Association of Oklahoma that I have not had congress with the rainmaker in the past four days, nor will I in the near future. I realize that this is for the greater good of the farming community as well as for my marriage.
So help me, God.” Her voice barely audible, a stout farmer’s wife on the wrong side of fifty finished the pledge. The other women crowded into the health center burst into encouraging applause. The farmer’s wife sat down, adopting a fierce scowl to disguise the fact that she was about to burst into tears.

Cheri Winchester, holding a microphone, strode through the crowd like a TV evangelist on a mission. “Now I know this is difficult; I know many of us have tasted pleasure like never before, but our livelihoods are at stake! This is an emergency! The rain still falls. There is a Judas among us, and it is our responsibility to root her out!”

The women erupted into another round of applause. Endorphins surged through Cheri as the possibility of a shimmering new future began to unfurl in her mind.

“Now who will be next to open her soul?” she continued dramatically.

Rebecca clutched the edge of her seat. Her life before her sexual encounter with the rainmaker had been like a black-and-white nightmare, arid and repetitive, devoid of joy. Could she return to that? Torn, she swayed, then sprang to her feet, sobbing uncontrollably. “Take me!” she cried. “Cleanse my soul!”

The crowd yelled encouragement and Cheri, staring at the elated face of her friend, suddenly realized with absolute clarity what her bright new future was to be: politics. But outside the rain kept falling.

That night Jeremiah stood beside his patrol car, clutching a silver hip flask as he prodded the sodden ground with his boot. There was more water now than mud and he was deeply worried. He looked up at the moon; it was almost full. At this time of year they should be preparing to harvest. He’d thought of arresting Jacob but he was convinced the rainmaker was connected to some newfangled criminal cartel. “Probably Islamic terrorists,” Jeremiah muttered to himself and spat on the ground.

He flicked open his pocket watch. It was nearly midnight, and, as far as he was concerned, the rainmaker hadn’t left his trailer in two days.

Jacob sat on the floor in the center of the trailer, meditating in the moonlight that filtered through the clouds. He focused on one elusive image: Miranda, free in his arms. His heart was hollow with longing. He hadn’t eaten in two days and he knew that if he was to save himself he should really leave town.

The whiskey was making Jeremiah drowsy. Tired of the incessant drizzle down the back of his collar, he climbed into the car and turned on the heater. He stared out of the rain-blurred window; the silvery blob of the trailer became smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely as he fell asleep.

A second later the flock of starlings hovered above the trailer. Their shadow fell across Jacob’s face. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that he’d been summoned.

Magic is something we often don’t recognize until after the event. Perhaps this inherent elusiveness adds to the mystery. The terrible truth is that magic and tragedy are sometimes interchangeable. Jacob Kidderminister was painfully aware of this as he climbed out of the skylight and onto the roof. But, as we all know, foreknowledge is defenseless in the face of love. Surrendering to the inevitable, Jacob opened his arms wide to the sky and allowed the birds to fasten themselves to his arms. A second wave of starlings lifted up his legs and then the flock took flight, carrying the prostrate lover across the fields to the preacher’s daughter.

The starlings took him to the top of the tower. As they hovered there Jacob reached out and grabbed the huge bell. For a second he dangled precariously, his arms wrapped around the curved bronze circumference. “Please, please, don’t make a sound,” Jacob prayed, hoping that the metal tongue wouldn’t clash against the sides. Miraculously it didn’t. Carefully he rocked himself so that the bell tilted toward the floor of the belfry. When it was safe he dropped down. He crouched, waiting.

I’m here, below you.
Miranda’s voice sounded clearly in his head. Jacob ran his hands across the floor, searching. He found what he was looking for—the edge of a trapdoor. He lifted it and there she was. Her hair matted, blood still staining her shoulders and face.

“What has he done to you?” Shocked, Jacob spoke out loud. He jumped down into the room and in an instant she was in his arms, touching his face, his hair, covering him with kisses.

None of it matters now that you’re here
, her mind sang to him,
and we will be free
. Her mouth drank him in, and Jacob realized that it
was
possible to desire with one’s heart and soul. So this is love—this blinding feeling of familiarity and, at the same time, of mystery, this sense of coming home, his mind rambled, forgetting that she could think with him.

He pushed open her dress and kissed her scratches. Her breasts were high and round; she pushed them against his chest, longing to experience the sensations he had sent to her through the bodies of other women. He stared down at her, momentarily overwhelmed by the contrast between the delicacy of her body and the violence wrought upon it.

Very gently, as if he were caressing the air itself, Jacob ran his fingers across her skin, reading the quivering nerves beneath. He circled the dark nipples that covered most of her small breasts; she felt like a child beneath his large hands. He cupped her hips, the fragility of her gleaming like ivory. Her pubic hair curled out; a lush thick black bush startling against the dusk of her thighs. Carefully he played her until he knew that every millimeter of her thirsted for more. It was only then that he buried his face in her breasts and collapsed for a second, overtaken by an intense sensation of fear and excitement. Projected desire became reality and with it came the crushing intuition that in all beginnings there is inevitably an end, but with her he did not want the moment to finish but, impossibly, to stretch on forever.

And so, with all the courage of a man who finds himself suddenly free-falling against all the knowledge he has armed himself with, Jacob took her flesh into his mouth. He drank a path down her body in hungry kisses—until he was buried in the very core of her. She tasted like honey; she tasted like the sea he knew as a boy. And the beauty of her would have shamed the most exquisite orchid.

He made love to her with his mouth until she was writhing, and then, very gently, he placed himself between her legs and eased himself into her. All the while he held the gaze of those mauve-black eyes, losing himself deep in the color until he forgot who he was and who she was, and, wrapped in an intimacy he had never experienced before,
a profound burden lifted from the top of his head, a writhing knot of fear that unraveled and evaporated above him with each delicious thrust.

Squalls of rain lashed the steeple and the flock of starlings sheltered beneath the bell, silently ruffling their feathers. Outside, under the gray sky, the owl swooped and circled in a wild frenzy of joy.

Jacob’s lovemaking grew faster and faster as Miranda gasped in pleasure, until finally, reaching that moment when all perception melts, both were caught in shuddering ecstasy together.