In his empty office, he cries out, All that you helped me create is crumbling. Why won’t you tell me what to write?
His words are met with silence, as they have been since the birth of the Motor. The Electricizers are no longer distinct to him, just blurred specters at the periphery of his vision, fading more every day. Their abandonment is near complete when Maud begins to help him instead, comforting his anxiety and giving him strength with her words. She has not gone down the hill since the day she gave birth, and Spear knows that this is the reason his family had to leave, that his congregation had to abandon him. Even the Electricizers leaving him, he recognizes it not as an abandonment but as making room for what is to come next.
Like Mary and Joseph’s flight with the newborn Jesus into Egypt, he and Maud will flee with the New Motor across America, taking it by railroad to town after town after town.
Like Mary, Maud will not love him, only the Motor she has birthed.
Like Joseph, he will have to learn to live with this new arrangement, this adjusted set of expectations.
Spear tears up all the letters he has written so far, then starts new ones, ones infused not with the bitterness he feels but with the hope and inspiration he wishes he felt instead. Soon, the Motor will begin to speak to him, and he must be ready to listen.
It takes a month for the letters to come back, but Spear receives the responses he requires. He runs into the cabin, where Maud awaits him. He says, They’re coming to help us, with money and with men. They’ll be waiting for us in Randolph, ready to assist me in reassembling the Motor.
He hesitates, then says, I’ll start tonight. I’ll disassemble the Motor, and get it ready for travel, and then I’ll send word to Randolph for a wagon to transport it. The worst is nearly over, and soon our new day will begin.
Maud rises from the dining table and takes Spear in her arms, cradling his head against her shoulder. She does not tell him what the angels have told her about what must happen instead, about what has always happened to those who have served God with hearts like his, too full of human weakness, of pride and folly and blinding hubris. She does not tell him about Moses at the border of the promised land, about Jonah in the belly of the whale. She could, but she chooses otherwise, chooses to repay his one-time lack of faith with her own.
Despite his intentions to start immediately, Spear finds that he cannot. Once he has locked himself in the shed with the New Motor, he is too in awe of its ornate existence, of the shining results of all the months of effort and prophecy that went into its construction. He watches the pulsation of the magnets and tries to understand what they might mean, what message might be hidden in their infant energies. He doesn’t know, but he believes it will be made clear soon, even without the Electricizers’ help.
Spear sits down on the floor of the shed and crosses his legs beneath him, preparing for the first time in many months to go into a trance, to purposefully pierce the shroud between this world and the next. The trance comes easily to him, in all of its usual ways: a prickling of the skin, a slowing of the breath, a blurring of the vision. He stays that way for many hours, listening, and so he does not hear the knock at the door, or the raised voices that follow. By the time something does snap him out of his trance—the first axe blow that bursts open the shed door, perhaps—it is far too late to save himself.
The men of the village surround him, swear they have come only to help him, to set him free of this thing he’s made. Men who were once Spear’s friends promise they won’t hurt him, if only he’ll lie still, but he can’t, won’t, not in the face of what they’ve come to do. Held between the arms of the two Russians, he watches disbelieving as one of High Rock’s deacons steps to the New Motor, emboldened by the encouragement of the others. The deacon reaches up toward the grand revolver and takes hold of one of the magnetic spheres suspended from its crossbeams, and then he rips it away from the Motor.
Spear waits for intercession, for Electricizer or angel to step in and stop the destruction, but none appears. He struggles against his attackers, tries to warn them against what they plan to do, against the wrath of God they call down upon themselves, but they do not listen. Eventually he twists free and attempts to take a step toward the Motor, where others have joined the deacon in dismantling the hanging magnets. The Russians stop him, knock him to the ground, fall upon him with fists and boots, and when they tire of striking him they step aside so that others might have their turn. Spear no longer cares for himself, only for his new god, for this mechanical child gifted not just to him and to Maud, but also to all of mankind, if only they would accept it.
By the time Maud arrives in the doorway to the shed, he is already broken, in body and face and in spirit. The motor is crushed too, axe blows and wrenching hands tearing its intricate parts from their moorings, rendering meaningless the many names of God written in copper and zinc across its components. He cries to her for help, but knows there’s nothing she can do. All around him are the men he once called to himself, who followed him to High Rock and up its steep hill to this shed, where he had meant for them to change their world. He watches the Russians and James the metalworker and the carpenters, all of them striking him or else the machine they themselves built. When they finish, when his teeth and bones are already shattered, he sees Randall, the youth he once admired above all others, and he lowers his head and accepts the vengeance the boy feels he’s owed.
Before the beating ends, Spear lifts his head to look up at Maud, to take in her restored youth and beauty. For the last time, he sees the Electricizers, sees Jefferson and Franklin and Rush and Murray and all the others assembled around her. He cries out to them for protection, for salvation, and when they do not come to his aid he looks past them to Maud, who glows in their light, but also with a light of her own, something he wishes he had seen earlier, when there was still some great glory that might have come of it.
HER ENNEAD
HER BABY IS A JOKE, just a tiny bundle of cells dividing, too small to be taken seriously. For another week or two, it will still be smaller than the benign tumor she had removed from her breast two years ago, a realization that leads to her touching the place where that lump once was whenever she’s alone. She jokes about this to her friends, who don’t find it funny. She doesn’t either, but she can’t stop herself from sharing about her tumor-sized baby, growing and growing and growing, taking over her body. This time, no one wants her to stop it or get rid of it. This time, people say congratulations and hug her instead of pretending she’s contagious, instead of forgetting her number until they hear she’s better. Like before, she’s only angry because everyone always assumes they already know exactly how she feels about the events that happen to her. She is careful to keep her true feelings to herself, to see that, as with the tumor, there is much she could lose.
Her baby is a seed, barely planted but already pushing roots through its waxy coat, searching for the dank soil it needs to grow inside her. She pictures it flowering but knows it’ll be years before her baby is old enough for flowers, for seeds of its own. Her doctor emphasizes nutrition, suggests she drink six to eight glasses of water every day. She doesn’t respond, doesn’t tell him how many more she’s already drinking. At home, she holds her face under the faucet, her throat pried open to swallow all the water she can. When she stands, her face and neck and shirt are soaked through, but it is not enough. She puts her lips back to the flowing water and drinks as deep as she can, as deep as she knows she must.