Jason pulled away hard enough that he left a fistful of his hair with Green, and drove his fist crosswise into the other man’s gut. Green coughed and bent, and Jason got the upper hand for an instant—just enough to get high and come down hard on Green’s shoulders, so he pinned him in the mud. He reached up to where Green’s burned-up fist held the jar. He closed his own hand around it and tugged. But Green wouldn’t let go.
“You can’t kill a thousand folk,” said Jason. “I seen less than that killed and it was awful. You can’t kill a thousand. Not like that.” He yanked again at the jar, but Green’s fist tightened.
“Boy, that jar’s a gift from God. If what your aunt says’s true, it’ll be enough to stop this.”
“You can’t kill a thousand.”
Jason realized he was crying, his eyes soaking up with tears. His voice was weak, a child’s voice. Some damn hero he was being for Ruth Harper and his mama and everyone else.
And Green—that bastard—he saw it too.
“No, Jason. You can’t kill a thousand. You might’ve. If you’d killed your aunt… you might’ve been able to. But you can’t and you shouldn’t. Leave it to one with blood enough on his hands already. You run on and—oh Jesus—look after that girl.”
Green glanced over to where Ruth stood, and perhaps trying to distract Jason, shifted in the muck, and pushed up hard. But Jason had the leverage and pushed back harder.
Green glared up at him. “God damn it, boy. She’s got my gun.”
“It’s all right, Ruth,” said Jason, not taking his eye off Green. “I got him.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ruth move into view. There was the sound of a hammer drawing back.
“She wants to make sure,” she said, in a strange, strangled but supremely confident voice; it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Green struggled and motioned to her. “God damn it, boy. Look at her!”
Jason spared a glance, then looked again. Ruth stood like a lost child, feet close together, eyes darting here and there… one arm up over her breast—the other holding up Sam Green’s Russian, pointed at them both. Her eyes were wide, and the lids trembled—like there was a scream inside her that couldn’t get around that strange talk.
“She wants to make sure you don’t turn on Me too,” said Ruth, in a voice like a chorus.
“Jason,” whispered Sam, “you got to let me up. She’s gone like old Bergstrom went.”
“Like Bergstrom?”
“Thought the Juke was talkin’ through him. Before he died.”
Ruth’s lips parted—and between them, wasn’t there the hint of teeth, sharp and ready to tear at him?
Jason looked back at Green.
“What’s happened to her?”
“Juke’s in her, I’m guessin’. You two got taken away—didn’t you now? Bergstrom said it, before he died. She was in a safe place. Somethin’s made her like Maryanne Leonard.”
“Raped her, you mean.”
“Raped her.”
Jason let up on Green.
“And it’ll kill her.”
“Might just.”
Ruth spoke, but this time nothing like words came out—rather a trilling, high song that Jason now understood was not entirely or even mostly coming from her. The trees around the hospital were filled with it—the whistling that he’d heard from the creatures, the Jukes, that filled this town… the quarantine.
They were the things that had tried to prick him, and put those eggs inside him, under the skin like a fly lays… they were the things whose call Ruth had heard, as they crept around the quarantine last night… the things that had drawn her in, to lie with Mister Juke.
The gun moved as though at the end of a tree bough, and settled on them. Jason felt transfixed—like he was when he stepped up to Mister Juke himself, in the quarantine, and only a cut hand broke the spell.
Now, Ruth Harper herself held his gaze, as she aimed the gun at the two of them.
“She will hide herself,” said Ruth, “while I make manifest.”
And then, the world became brilliant, as the voices—Ruth’s included—coalesced, and one solo voice rang out across the Kootenai river valley. Jason swallowed, and felt himself swept in it.
“There are not ghosts,” said Andrew Waggoner.
He stood on the highest steps of Heaven, and looked down on the multitudes before him. At his side, the Dauphin’s woman—black-haired Oracle girl—stood, and whispered to him, in the fast and unmistakable tongue of the Dauphin… and she whispered: Worship nothing but him.
“There are not ghosts—there are not Devils from Hell,” said Andrew, and the people before him nodded, agreeing. “There’s no point in trying to impersonate them. You won’t fool anybody—any more than you will live well, coming here and sawing up wood for a rich man.”
The Oracle whispered to him, and he nodded, and went on:
“You won’t live well following those priests—your pastors. Because they talk about God far removed, who promises things later that might not be as fine as you’d heard. Not the one you see, right here in front of you.”
As he spoke, Andrew found he could also see farther, and that made a certain kind of sense. This place was high up—a mountain-top. The Oracle whispered at him, and he craned his neck and looked down the great river—all the way down, where men toiled in darkness and made up ways to hate, to elevate themselves above one another. He thought he might be able to see all the way to New York, where his father and his horses toiled too, hauling barrels of beer from a brewer to a tavern—thinking that well, at least he’d sent his son, his boy, to Paris.
“And you’ll live as poorly,” shouted Andrew to the multitude here, “following your reason. Why, reason misleads us. Same as those false priests, those frightening ghosts. It takes us to places where we can say such is so, and such else is so, and then—without knowing it—this further thing must be so. But it’s an error. A fellow could think himself away from—” from the Juke “—from this here…” the Dauphin “… this Son.”
The Oracle whispered once more: Get them ready.
The world swirled about Andrew then, as the golden sands of Heaven flew into the air in a great cyclone, and Andrew drew higher. And he saw this multitude, turning to the south, and in a great line, making their way down the riverbank—some of them crawling on board the steamboat—and bearing on their shoulders a great Ark, that held in it the substance of the Son. Down the river they crawled and floated—until they came upon another Cathedral like this one, filled with folk, but empty of God. With guns and axes, they overtook it. And Andrew—Andrew preached the truth to the ones that lived; and gathered them into their army.
And from there, they swept the world.
Andrew spoke it—but he didn’t speak it: with the Oracle at his side and Annie Rowe holding his arm, he sang it. The whole world sang too, sang, and whistled—while in His Cathedral, the Son—the Juke—the Dauphin… was pleased.
And if a shadow moved beneath—if it didn’t sing as clearly—well, Andrew thought, what’s a small speck, in the all-seeing eye of God?
She has chosen him.
Lothar Feeger stepped forth from the shadow, his burden thrown over his shoulder. He carried his hatchet in one hand, and looked upon the back of the Oracle. She stood next to the nigger, bent, and held her prize—the prize that he, Lothar, had brought her—she held it between the two of them.
Lothar was not wise—he knew this about himself, and every time he forgot this someone would remind him—but he was wise enough to know that when he lay with Patricia, he had not taken her as a bride and had no claim over her. She was bride to the Old Man if to anyone, now that she had gone Oracular.