“Not here to study with you, Reverend Gull. Bill Smith. I’m a friend of Harry Hershkowitz’s. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Oh.” Gull’s eyes filled with sympathy. He stepped out onto the porch, shut the door behind him. “Mr. Hershkowitz. I did suggest gently to Mr. Hershkowitz that if he were to come to the Lord—”
“Harry has a Lord he’s fond of, reverend. He also has a business he’s been running in Hanover since before the Flood. He’d like to keep it going.”
Gull shook his head sadly. “The concerns of man are so temporal, aren’t they?”
“And your concerns?”
He smiled, his lips curving under the sharp point of his nose. “At Heaven’s Messenger, we are concerned with souls. With preaching the word of the Lord throughout the land. Isaiah 61:1, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath annointed me to preach good tidings to the meek.’ ”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, some of the meek aren’t getting it. I’ve spent the week tracing some of your graduates. Four have phone-solicitation businesses — one also runs a phone sex line, by the way; two have pulpits in churches with shaky charters; and one is wanted by the Feds, something to do with mail fraud. And those are just the ones easy to trace in a short week. Not a very holy bunch, reverend.”
Gull’s eyes grew gently sad again. “It’s tragic but true, some of my flock have strayed. It’s always the way, and it causes me great pain, but I can hardly be held accountable. Genesis 4:9, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, but I do know you’re getting rich off your brother. I checked you out, too, reverend. You’re worth quite a bundle.”
“Ecclesiastes 5:19, ‘Every man to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him the power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.’ ” He smiled benignly. I felt my blood begin to boil. I lit a cigarette to give myself time to cool off.
“Mr. Gull, sir,” I said, “I was baptized Catholic and raised Baptist. I can tell a can-rattier from a man of God; you don’t even make it hard.”
His face saddened. “Your lack of faith is distressing, Mr. Smith. I do think a course of Bible study here at Heaven’s Messenger would do you a world of good.”
“I doubt it, but I won’t argue. I’m just here to ask you to move your final exams to a different place and time. Harry needs his Sunday business, and you’re ruining it.”
“Alas, the Bible says nothing about preaching the word at a time and place convenient for the heathen. Quite the opposite — Romans 1:15, ‘So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.’ ”
“A block up from Harry’s store is still Rome.”
“Ah yes. But that magnificent old oak is at the center of Main Street. That’s the perfect spot. The Sabbath is the perfect time. A hostile shopkeeper and an indifferent crowd are excellent practice for my students. That’s why they come to me; my training methods ensure their success. No, I’m sorry, I’ve found what I need.” He gazed out over the darkening hills, watched the red-streaked sky with a satisfied, proprietary air.
“If I have to,” I said, “I’ll keep digging. I’ll turn up something on you that will wipe you out.”
Gull smiled again. “I think not. I’m a careful man. I’m well established here and prospering. All my sessions are full; Heaven’s Messenger is doing quite well. No, Mr. Smith, I believe I’m here to stay.”
Gull’s sharp, smug face was too much of a temptation. I had to leave or take a swing at it. Halfway down the front path I turned.
“Jeremiah,” I said. Gull’s eyebrows lifted. “Five: twenty-seven. ‘As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.’ And check Matthew. Something about camels, needles, and rich men going to Heaven.”
Gull seemed disconcerted. As I drove off, leaving him staring after me, I hoped that was true, and not just a trick of the fading light.
I went back to Pearl and Harry’s, reported the results of my meeting with Gull — “He won’t quit, and he won’t move” — begged off dinner, and drove over to my cabin with Harry’s worried look and Pearl’s confident smile lingering in my mind. “Leave the man alone,” Pearl had commanded Harry. “He can’t think with you hovering like a vulture.” To me she’d said reassuringly, “Go home, sleep on it, tomorrow you’ll have an idea.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t have any other idea where to get an idea. At the cabin, I settled myself on the porch with a bourbon, watched the fresh spring evening. Then I went in and tried the piano. I played for awhile, Schumann and then Liszt. I played well and felt good about it, but it didn’t give me any ideas. Finally I gave up, folded myself under the quilt, and went to sleep.
In the morning I didn’t have any ideas, either. I took my coffee out onto the porch, watched the pale sun burn off the mist, listened to the chatter of the birds. It was a busy time, an early spring morning, birds in pairs and flocks staking out territory, grabbing up the best places to nest and feed. They hopped on branches, dived through the air, flicked to the ground. I sipped my coffee, tried to think.
A sudden screeching made me look up. Two birds, small and large, soared, swooped, hurtled through the blue of the sky. The big one, a hawk, circled, faked, and cut back, aiming for the branches of a great ash tree. The small one, screaming and flapping, wouldn’t let him near it. The battle was balletlike in elegance and dead serious in content: a mother bird protecting her young from a predator. It was over fast, and the smaller bird won. The whole thing became too much trouble for the hawk; he circled, lifted onto an air current that took him over the trees and across the valley. The mother bird disappeared into the branches of the ash.
I stared after her for a moment, then laughed. I was still laughing as I pulled the car out of the driveway, heading for Hershkowitz’s.
All over the world, hardware stores open early. Even upstate, even in Hanover. It was eight thirty by the time I got there, and Harry’s day was already well begun. “Okay,” I said. “Time to get to work.”
“One of us is already working,” Harry pointed out.
“Where’s your nearest lumberyard?”
“Sheppard’s, off the highway. You had an idea?”
I was moving through Harry’s shelves, grabbing what I’d need. “No,” I said. “Divine inspiration.”
I spent the rest of the morning hammering, sawing, glueing. Out on the porch of my cabin I had quite a little assembly line going. It occurred to me halfway through that I probably could have just gone to the Agway and bought these things, but I decided I liked the personal touch better anyway. Just after three I pulled up to Hershkowitz’s again, trunk and back seat crowded with the work of my hands.
I stuck my head in the hardware store door. “You have a ladder?” I called to Harry.
“This is a hardware store, I better have a ladder. How long?”
“Long.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Climb the tree.”
I climbed the ladder and climbed the tree, twelve times altogether because I couldn’t carry much each time. Luckily I only needed to work in the lower branches; ten to twenty feet above the ground, I reasoned, was just about what this plan needed. When I was done, Harry and I stood back and admired my craftsmanship.
“This will work?” Harry asked.
“Harry,” I said, “this will work. Isaiah, 31:5.”
Harry gave me a sideways, appraising look. “I didn’t know this about you, that you know so well the Bible.”