He whirled away, zigzagged down the dirt path between the hummocks, jinking and cutting like a halfback in the open field. On the beach he tore off his clothes, splashed out to let the surf batter him with icy fists, knock him off his feet, kick his ribs, smash him against the bottom upside down. He fought his way out of the moon’s lead-foil wake, shivering, his hair full of sand.
Long after moonset, wrapped in sweatshirt and windbreaker, he drifted into uneasy teeth-chattering slumber.
Chapter Nineteen
A few miles north on the Coast Highway I, Fayme and Angela, Muffy on her lap, directed him down a steep blacktop past a weathered sign reading CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK. He parked behind a bankrupt motel next to a hulking olive-green army-surplus Jimmy six-by-six personnel carrier with slat sides and a canvas top. The cabins were set around a circular gravel drive. There was a cross over the office door. The swimming pool was half filled with foul water, its concrete apron tilted and broken.
The women took the last two of a score of deck chairs set out on the crumbling concrete; Dunc sat on the side of the pool. Rephaim, the Seventh Priest of Melchizedek, a tall man in white robe and leather-strap sandals, stood on the tip of the diving board and gently bobbed up and down as he spoke to his congregation.
“ ‘Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.’ Genesis.” Hector appeared behind him wearing an ecstatic look and yesterday’s clothes. “Now come we to the 110th Psalm. ‘Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’ ”
Rephaim easily rode the narrow springy plank up and down as it bounced, silver-bearded face crosshatched with wrinkles, lustrous hair gleaming long and silver in the morning sun.
“Paul echoes this, pointing out that the Psalmist was speaking of a Davidic Savior who was also a High Priest.”
The sun was making Dunc sleepy... He came awake with a start. Rephaim’s eyes, dark and hawk-piercing and much younger than the man himself, seemed fixed on his.
“Now, who do the Psalmist and the Epistle writer mean will be a priest forever after the Order of Melchizedek?”
Hector slipped away into the former office. Rephaim, arms spread like an eagle’s wings, bounced on his diving board.
“Paul knew, Paul understood, Paul remembered, and Paul gives us the answer in his Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter Five.”
A score of short, silent, hard-bodied Mexicans with dusky faces and straight uncut black hair right out of Viva Zapata! had joined the otherwise all-white congregation. They stared at Rephaim with uncomprehending eyes.
“It is Jesus Himself Who is forever a priest after the Order of Melchizedek — and His message is love. That is why I am here, I, the Seventh Priest of Melchizedek. Are you stuck in your lives while other people seem to be going somewhere?”
Dunc stole a quick look over his shoulder. Fayme and Angela, and the other women, were leaning forward intently. They were actually buying this tripe! He couldn’t believe it.
“That’s all right! Where you are is where you should be. Your job is to love. Love God and love God’s works, nothing else matters. The Kingdom of God is in your own backyard.”
Not my backyard, thought Dunc. He asked, “How can there have been only seven priests of Melchizedek since the time of Christ? Do each of you live like three hundred years?”
“You choose to misunderstand. There are always seven of us in the world; when one dies another is chosen to take his place.”
Hector reappeared in a dingy white robe with gold trim, cradling a woven wicker basket. Behind Dunc, Fayme said, “I’m glad I’m going to Mexico. There’s no one here to love.”
“There’s Muffy,” said Angela. “I have Muffy.”
“Hector the Seminarian will now pass among you,” said Rephaim, “so that you may tithe to our Order of Melchizedek.”
Hector and the loot had departed, the knot of Mexicans had disappeared. The faithful were milling about as if a movie had just let out. Rephaim made his way to Dunc. His eyes burned.
“You do not believe,” he said in deep rolling tones.
“Maybe I just don’t understand,” Dunc told him earnestly. “Who chooses a new priest when one of you dies? The other six?”
“None of us knows the others.”
“Then how do you even know one of the priests is dead?”
“One feels the call here.” He laid a hand over his heart.
“Will you ever move up to Sixth Priest of Melchizedek?”
“I shall forever remain the Seventh.” Then he thundered, “Enough questions! You do not believe!” and Dunc found himself thrust into the outer darkness by eager female devotees. A remarkably pretty girl about Dunc’s age fell into step with him.
“You do not believe,” she said in a Rephaim voice.
“Nope. Do you?”
Laughter danced in her eyes. “Nope. But even Aunt Goodie takes advice from him. Drives Uncle Carl nuts.” She offered her hand. “Penny Linden.”
“Pierce Duncan. I’m sure we’ve met before.”
“I’d have remembered,” she said gravely. Her chestnut hair was in a sort of bun at the back of her head. Her face was round, with a generous mouth that laughed easily, a short nose, sparkling wide-set hazel eyes under beautifully arched brows.
The army six-by-six came wheeling past, Hector at the wheel, to disappear up the gravel road to the highway with roaring motor and clashing gears. Under the canvas top, tight-packed figures.
“Hector making his getaway with the loot?”
“Hector? Never. He spends every Saturday night here, helping Rephaim with his Sunday sermon.”
“And the guys in the back?”
“Fruit pickers from the San Fernando Valley. Hector gets them for the Sunday service and takes them back afterwards.”
“You’re saying they understand this guy?” She just laughed and shrugged, so he said, “You don’t seem to fit in with—”
“With Angela and Fayme and Birdie? The coven? Of course they aren’t a real coven of witches, but don’t you think Rephaim might be some sort of mystic con man?” Her clear hazel eyes flashed sideways at him from beneath luxurious lashes. She took his arm. “Come on. Aunt Goodie and Uncle Carl were in pictures, they can give you all the dirt on Rephaim.”
Uncle Carl was a short man in white shirt and slacks with crisp blue-black curly hair and bright eyes and a recent layer of fat on his cheeks. Aunt Goodie was a plump cheerful-looking blonde in shorts and red halter. Their arms were entwined.
“Your niece says you used to be in the movies.”
She grinned. “Birdie and I were extras at Paramount for a few years after the war.” She nudged her husband. “But Carl was a chorus dancer in all those MGM musicals, weren’t you, hon?”
Uncle Carl said, “How did you like Rephaim? I keep telling Goodie, the man’s selling snake oil. Back in the thirties, before he started dating Christ, he was in a slew of B pictures that—”
“Carl!” Goodie gasped. “What a way to talk!”
Penny said quickly, “Weren’t they sort of horror films?”
“Most of them with Bela Lugosi,” nodded Carl.
As they started away, Aunt Goodie said to Penny, “See you at the car, love,” leaving them alone together.
Dunc ventured, “Uh, Penny, have you heard of Muscle Beach?”
“Isn’t that where all those bodybuilders hang out?”
“That’s it. I was thinking of going down there to look the place over next Saturday. If you aren’t doing anything...”