‘Your chapel? Where is it? Point the way.’
The child lifted a sheet from the bedding. A woman lay beneath it, her skin alive with the parasites of the long dead. Said the little girl with difficulty, ‘The worms git Ely… git Maw now…’
Abie Poe covered up the woman, leaning her against a stone-slab sign that had been made illegible by the passing of the years.
The girl turned and walked off into the mountains, the evangelist following closely. He looked at every shrub and stone for sinners.
It would be seven months before Abie Poe rode his nag back out of the Black Morton Range. A pint of moonshine in his saddle-bag. A six-gun on each hip.
Though his guns remained holstered, the measure of his inclemency tempered not; rather Preacher Poe stormed the church in a rampant state of crazed malediction, raving prophecy, revelation and inflated promises – reboant echoes of his black-clad gestures – and winning the occasionally renitent but generally beseeching trust of those in attendance, Ukulite and non-Ukulite alike.
One or two of the elder Ukulites made token attempts to quiz the preacher, but Poe danced through their snares, skipping deftly through their jaws. Even the ill-tempered Wilma Eldridge, always ready with a crow to pluck, had her affront turned upon her when she questioned Poe’s insistence that he was invested with the spirit of Elijah, and had been sent to the valley under divine instruction. Wheeling her squealing chair toward the preacher, she cut him off in mid-sentence with her bitter croak: ‘Forgive my not standing, Prophet Poe, but I wish to know just what sign has the Lord given you to prove that you are what you profess to be?’
‘They who are not blind see it,’ answered Poe and took a pace forward, refusing to be intimidated by the cripple.
‘Surely the Almighty makes His signs more evident?’ she replied, rubbing her numb legs till her knuckles showed white.
‘Blinder than he who has lost his eyes is he who closes them tight and refuses to see the light of day.’
Then the preacher stretched forth one accusatory finger and moved his hand in a slow semicircle until it had pointed to everyone present. Proffering not a word, Poe allowed the slow, pained squeal of the wheelchair to speak for him. A weary Wilma Eldridge made her retreat, retracing her muddy tracks.
‘And ye,’ said Poe, finger pointing at one and all, after the chair had at last stopped its terrible puling and the attention of the congregation was his again, ‘ye cocks of the dunghill, ye strutters on the muckheap of the world, ye who have kissed the devil beneath the tail, pray to the Lord God Almighty that He have mercy upon you! For His hunter has his arrows drawn, and, like the way to the kingdom, his aim is straight and clean. Pray, wallowers, for His hunter’s heels are raised! Wicked hearts shall be lanced, and their carcasses swallowed into the earth!’
‘Who is the hunter?’ called a trembling voice.
‘He is before you, even now,’ said Abie Poe.
Ah listened to the preacher’s first sermon from unner the church that tottered upon two feet of pine-wood stilt. Ah could hear his words plainly from that crawl-space, his limping footfall, the murmurous throng uttering hallelujahs in solemn communion, the cry of the cripple’s wheels, and ah knew from the force of his thunderings that they were as much a self-delusion as they were a public deceit.
‘Who is the hunter?’
‘He is before you, even now!’
Ha! The irony of it all! Poor deluded Poe! The mad preacher’s prophecy was almost correct! O, the torment of saints and would-be saints. Ha! Never to bask in the glory of his forecast affirmed! Had he only known that the hunter of whom they inquired was, in fact, me!
‘Who is the hunter?’
‘He is beneath you, even now!’
The floorboards rumbled as the congregation rose to leave. Fearing detection and not chancing a dash across the coverless plateau, ah crawled beneath a large tarp that lay across a pile of pine planks. Ah heard them descend the stairs only an arm’s stretch above me, but ah felt safe in mah funk-hole, eyes closed and breathing deeply the not unpleasant odour of mould and damp canvas. Scarlet bouquets blossomed beneath mah eyelids. A web breathed upon mah face and the spiders of sleep spun their sweet slumber –
Ah dream ah am a hunter, naked but for a quiver and a bow, leaving in mah wake a trail of dead beasts. Ah stalk an unknown quarry amongst tall cane. Cosey Mo steps into mah path, barefoot and dressed in a thin white petticoat. Ah am ashamed of mah nakedness but she smiles and beckons me toward her and though ah have pitted mahself against the most ferocious of beasts, ah tremble like a leaf as ah approach her. Her shivering garment slips from her shoulders and crackles over the rise and fall of her breasts, her belly, her hips, her buttocks, her thighs, spitting static the length of her body and pooling about her feet. Her toenails are red. She is incomparable in her pulchritude, her golden hair lifted from her shoulders by the gently fanning fronds. A panther slinks toward her, unner cover of the cane – and glad of the chance to display mah prowess as a fearless hunter ah draw back mah bow, aim, and send an arrow through the cane, piercing the heart of the big blue cat. A rabid bloodhound appears, crashing through the cane. Mah arrow stops it in its tracks. Cosey draws breath, her hillocks of pleasure rising like full, golden moons. An eagle wings yet closer and mah arrow finds its feathered breast. Cosey lets forth a stifled cry and, sobbing, she calls out, ‘Oh Jock!’ as a naked man crashes through the cane into the clearing, three arrows embedded in his body, the white feather tailfins bright against the kingdom of ink-blue beasts that roam his body. He falls into Cosey’s arms and is dead. Ah pluck each arrow from the corpse and return them to their quiver. Ah hear harp music. The blood dries on Jock Snow’s body and the animals all go still. The music swells and a host of cupids descend in the guise of Love. The cupids shoot a volley of tiny silver arrows from their curlicue bows into the air. The arrows dip and sing and lance and kill Cosey’s body, for they are envenomed with asp drool. Ah am the hunter and mah mark is sure. Ah empty mah quiver into the breasts of the pink, winged babes, grounding the entire flock. They squirm on mah arrows in the nodding, rocking cane. Ah lay me down by Cosey’s corpse, and folding her blood-specked petticoat across mah face ah listen to the music of their moaning, swallowed by the darkness. Yellow bouquets. Red bouquets. Ah inhale the scent of the unnergarment – mould and damp canvas.
*
Poe wasted no time in putting to the test the boundaries of his sanity. Three days after arriving in Ukulore, on a wet Sunday, the maniacal preacher embarked on one of his most farcical exploits. It began at the church.
Satisfied that all the townsfolk were present, Poe began.
‘Sinners! Look not to your neighbours’ hands, but to your own. Not a soul among you is clean. You are all steeped in filth. Muck is upon you and your neighbour. But behold, backsliders. The wicked are known from the womb and they are sullied as such till death spits them into the abyss. They stand amongst you now. Before we can know the truly corrupt, we must first ourselves be cleansed. Harken to my word, sinners. Ah speak of the conversion of the spirit through the mystery of baptism! Too long have you wallowed in the muck and mire. Forward! Follow! The healing-pool of the spirit is pure! Come, sinners! His waters await your apotheosis of faith.’
Abie Poe limped to the rear of the chapel and stood before the huge double doors. Again he addressed the congregation.
‘Heed this, sinners! The purification of the spirit begins here at this very door. Attend to my word and obey it completely! Before leaving the chapel, remove your hats and cauls. Make bare your heads before the Almighty! Take off your shoes and remove your gloves, so that heads nor hands nor feet are hidden, for these are the places of the stigmata. Now, Onward! Forward! Ah can smell the blood upon you! Leave everything, sinners! Follow on foot! To the blessed waters! To the blessed waters! Onwards!’