"I was wondering if Nettie was here,” Lemly said. “Said for me to pick her up at six o'clock sharp, and it's nigh on."
"She's in the vestry, Brother. Probably didn't hear us because of the rain."
"Mind if I go on back?"
"Help yourself, Brother. Just don't take Nettie away before she's got the Lord's bank account balanced."
Lemly's laughter thundered again, and he left the room, his wet shoe soles squeaking across the oak floor of the dais.
Damn. Armfield had been hoping Lemly might have some new angle to work, a tent revival or gospel singing to fill up the old coffers of Windshake Baptist. And maybe a few dollars could trickle their way into Armfield's pockets. But Lemly was here after Nettie.
Hmm. Might not be too seemly. Both of them single and dedicated to the church. Still, fairly young and prone to the call of lust, weak against the devil's whispers. And local tongues might wag.
He'd have to keep an eye on them. That wouldn't be much of a problem, especially in Nettie's case.
"Now, what are you doing here, young lady?" he said to his daughter.
"Mom sent me over to tell you supper's ready," she said.
Her face practically shone with innocence and youth, like the Virgin Mary's did in those Renaissance paintings. She had her mother's fair skin, with some delicate freckles on her smooth cheeks. Of course, he didn't really know what her mother's skin looked like these days, because she wore more makeup than a white-trash trailer queen.
Armfield looked down at the open Bible, then cupped it in his hands as if it were an infant. He held it lovingly to his chest. The weight of the book comforted him. Its gilt-edged pages gave him strength. And it made a damned fine prop when he went into one of his "whopped upside the head by the staff of Jesus" routines, when he twitched and gibbered across the dais on those Sundays when the congregation needed a little extra stimulation.
The routines were the reason why Windshake Baptist Church had recruited him. While a lot of the Southern Baptist churches were letting divorced ministers and liberals and even a few converted Episcopalians do their preaching, Windshake was going to hold the line. At last year's Baptist Convention, some formerly conservative pastors were arguing for what they called "continued accessibility in the face of modernity." Whatever that translated to in common English, it sounded like selling out to the devil to Armfield.
So a touch of fire and brimstone was welcomed in Windshake. Most of the congregation felt that if it was good enough for their grandparents, then, by God, it was good enough for them.
Except some rivals had popped up along the outskirts of Armfield's territory. First Baptist over at Piney Ford was starting to pack them in. There was a Methodist church around the back side of Sugarfoot and a little Lutheran church in a converted vegetable stand out in the Stony Creek community. He'd even heard a Unitarian group was meeting in the basement of a used bookstore.
But Armfield wasn't worried. A little competition just made you work harder. It was also a sign that Windshake was prospering, as some big-money tourists had settled in the area over the last few years. Windshake Baptist's take had picked up about eight percent a year over Armfield's reign at the pulpit. Well, make that three percent, after Armfield skimmed off his "tribute."
"So, are you coming, Daddy?" Sarah said, her voice echoing off the polished wood and plate glass and into his hairy ears.
"Depends on what's for dinner. If it's another one of those vegetarian omelets, then I'll be heading down to the steakhouse." Armfield snickered.
"Oh, Daddy," she said.
"Just picking, honey."
Sarah's accent was fading, her open vowels getting flattened like a flower in an old diary. She was a sophomore down at Westridge University, and she had been picking up all kinds of figures of speech and mannerisms from those Yankee intellectuals. Armfield wondered what else she might be picking up.
"May the Lord watch over her," he offered in silent prayer, and set his Bible gently on the pulpit, where it would be ready to provide inspiration on Sunday. He wondered if he should tell Nettie and Brother Bill that he was leaving. Naw, Nettie would lock up. Besides, he didn't want to walk in on the lovebirds.
Armfield was afraid he would suffer the sin of envy. He'd suffered enough sins for one day. It was going to take a good half hour heart-to-heart chat with the Lord to wash those wrongs away. But the Lord would forgive. He always had.
Armfield walked down the aisle, under the high wooden ribs of the church. The only noise was the creaking of his knee joints and the muted roar of the rain pounding on the roof. He joined his daughter in the foyer, where she held the umbrella poised and open outside the door, ready for the thirty-yard trot to the parsonage.
Armfield was so focused on his looming penance that he didn't resent the falling rain. As he looked at it slicing across the streetlight in fat needles, he thought he saw a faint green shimmering. He shook his head and hunched under the umbrella.
At least it’s not frogs.
“Race you,” Sarah said, and she was gone, along with the umbrella.
Armfield laughed, and then the sky split with a streak of thunder and lightning, the bolt touching ground near the church.
“Spare me, Jesus,” he whispered, then dashed against the rain to the house.
Don Oscar was tangled in a forsythia hedge, its sharp green buds scratching into his skin. He felt ready to bloom, ready to explode into velvety yellow orgasms. He felt alive, more than he had ever felt while human. He was chlorophyll and carotene, watery tissue and carbon, a metastasis of animal and vegetable. He burned in joyous rapture as his energy was drained by the parent.
He was food of the gods.
The parent’s slender white tongue-roots were stretching under the skin of Bear Claw, siphoning and converting the Appalachian fauna all across the stony slopes. Now it had sent out its disciples, fish and fowl and man and beast all marked by the touch of the cosmic reaper. And Don Oscar was one of the children, providing nourishment to the beloved space-seed so that its mission could continue.
He was dimly aware that his wife Genevieve was nearby, nosing in the dirt like an old sow snouting up succulent truffles. The wild lilies were sending green shoots into the sky along the banks of the creek, and Genevieve was among them, rolling in the rich swampy mud. Her torn calico dress was damp and black, sticking to her ample thighs as she wallowed without shame.
Don Oscar had never loved her as much, had never appreciated the glorious depths of her organic wealth as much as he had while converting her. Now they were bound in a far holier matrimony than they had ever achieved in their human relationship.
Now they served the parent, and it in turn served them, blessing them with the radiance of the sun, granting them the boon of moisture drawn through their epidermis, allowing them the pleasure of transpiration. Parting the clouds of their ignorance so that they might be aware, sloughing off their sinful skins so that they were made pure.
Don Oscar had lost his sense of time, but he thought maybe it was all science, only now there was a new science, with new natural laws. He regretted the wasted mortal effort of survival, the long struggle of the flesh. He was filled with self-loathing for the resources he had needlessly piddled away, for his avarice and selfishness. But then, his path had been worthwhile if it had ultimately led to this perfect day.
Was it only yesterday that he had been converted? Or did days matter anymore? Now there was only eternity, a blissful servitude that stretched forever ahead as the hot golden rays of the sun reached across the fingers of the galaxy.
He sprawled among the forsythia, leaning against the slender branches, leaking opal fluid from his wounds and scratches, absorbing carbon dioxide as he died and was reborn a million times over.