In the morning the wire cages were bright with beads of dew, and the carcasses I had left behind were gone—some hungry animal had carried them off, I supposed.
* * *
The day before I left Williams Ford I asked my mother whether she believed in God, and Heaven, and Angels, and that sort of thing.
It was a bold question, and it took her by surprise. “That’s not the sort of thing a polite person ought to ask,” she said, “outside of church.”
“Perhaps not; but it’s the kind of question Julian Comstock enjoys asking, almost every chance he can get.”
“And it gets him in trouble, I expect?”
“Often enough.”
“You can take a lesson from that. And you know the answer, in any case. Haven’t I read to you from the Dominion books, and told you all the stories in the Bible?”
“As a parent to a child. Not as one adult to another.”
“You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes—you’ll see.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Do you, though? Believe in God, I mean?”
She looked at me as if to gauge my earnestness. “I believe in all sorts of things,” she said, “though I don’t necessarily understand them. I believe in the moon and the stars, though I can’t tell you what they’re made of, or where they come from. I suppose God falls into that category—real enough to be felt from time to time, but mysterious in His nature, and often confusing.”
“That’s a subtle answer.”
“I wish I had a better one.”
“What about Heaven, though? Do you think we go to Heaven when we die?”
“Heaven is generally regarded as having strict admission requirements, though no two faiths agree on the details. I don’t know. I expect it’s like China—a place everyone acknowledges as real, but which few ever visit.”
“There are Chinamen in New York City,” I volunteered. “And a great many Egyptians, besides.”
“But hardly any angels, I expect.”
“Next to none.”
That was as much Theology as she would tolerate, so we dropped the subject, and spent our last day together discussing more cheerful matters; and in the morning I said goodbye to her, and left Williams Ford behind me for the second and last time.
* * *
“In your many travels since we last met,” Ben Kreel said to me as we drove back down the Wire Road to Connaught, “did you ever get as far as Colorado Springs?”
“No, sir,” I said. It was another sunlit day. The telegraph wires hummed in a warm breeze. The train that would take me away from my childhood home and all its memories was due in just three hours. “Mostly I was in various parts of Labrador, well north and east of Colorado.”
“I’ve been to Colorado Springs five times,” Ben Kreel said, “for ecclesiastical training. It isn’t at all like the pictures in the Dominion readers. You know what I mean—the Dominion Academy is all they show, with its white pillars, and those big paintings of the Fall of the Cities.”
“It’s very impressive, and worth a photograph.”
“Certainly it is; but Colorado Springs is more than just the Academy, and so is the Dominion.”
“I’m sure they are, sir.”
“Colorado Springs is a town full of pious, prosperous men and women who are loyal to the Union and to their faith; and the Dominion isn’t strictly a building, nor even an organization, but an idea.
A very bold and ambitious idea, an idea about taking the battered and imperfect world we live in and making it over fresh and new—making a Heavenly Kingdom of it, pure enough that the angels themselves wouldn’t be reluctant to tread there.”
Unlike Manhattan, I thought to myself. “It seems as if we’re a long way from that. We haven’t taken Labrador yet, much less the world.”
“It’s a chore for more than one lifetime. But we can’t commune directly with Heaven until we perfect the world, and we can’t perfect the world until we perfect ourselves. That’s the job of the Dominion, Adam: to make us all more perfect. It’s a stern duty, but it arises out of the common instincts of charity and good will. Those who chafe under it are generally too attached to some imperfection of their own, which they love with a sinful stubbornness.”
“Yes, sir, that’s as you used to tell us at holiday services.”
“I’m pleased you remember. Our enemy is anyone who rebels against God—perhaps you remember that aphorism, too.”
“I do.”
“What form do you suppose that rebellion generally takes, Adam?”
“Sin,” I guessed.
“Sin, yes, certainly, and plenty of that to go around. But most sin only sabotages the sinner. Some sin is more insidious, and aims directly at impeding the Dominion in its work.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Though I had my suspicions.
“Don’t you? When you were in the Army, did your regiment have a Dominion officer in it?”
“Yes.”
“And was he universally loved?”
“It wasn’t a unanimous sentiment, no.”
“Nor could it have been, since it was his job to elevate virtue and excoriate wrong-doing. Thieves do not love prisons, and sinners don’t love the Church. My point is that the Dominion stands in relation to the United States as that pastor stood to his troops. His purpose wasn’t to be loved for himself, but to coax and herd a recreant population into the corral of divine love.”
For some reason I had a recollection of Lymon Pugh and his description of the meat-packing industry.
“The Dominion takes a profound interest in the destiny of this nation, and every nation,” Ben Kreel said. “Compared with that institutional interest, the whims of Presidents are fleeting.”
“This conversation is too cryptic,” I complained. “Is it about Julian? If that’s what you mean, just say so.”
“Who am I to stand in judgment of the Chief Executive? I’m just a country pastor. But the Dominion watches, the Dominion judges; and the Dominion is older than Julian Comstock, and ultimately more powerful.”
“Julian has nothing against the Dominion, except in some particulars.”
“I hope that’s true, Adam; but, if so, why would he attempt to sever the ancient and beneficial connection between the Dominion and the Armies?”
“What! Did he?”
Ben Kreel smiled unpleasantly. For many years this man had seemed to me a minor deity, above reproach. He was a kindly voice, a useful teacher, and a sturdy peacemaker when there was conflict in the community. But looking at him now I detected something sour and triumphant in his nature, as if he delighted in having stolen a march on an upstart lease-boy. “Why, that’s exactly what he did, Adam; don’t you know? The news came by wire from Colorado Springs this morning. Julian Conqueror, so-called, has ordered the Dominion to withdraw its representatives from the nation’s Armies and cease participating in military counsels.”
“That’s a bold step,” I said, wincing.
“It’s more than a bold step, Adam. It’s very nearly a declaration of war.” He leaned close to me and said in an oily and confiding tone, “A war he cannot win. If he doesn’t understand that, you ought to enlighten him.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him what you said.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Ben Kreel. “You’re a good friend to Julian Comstock.”
“I try to be.”
“But you shouldn’t walk in the footsteps even of your best friend, Adam Hazzard, if the road he’s following leads to Hell.”
I was tempted to tell Ben Kreel that my belief in Hell was even shakier, these days, than my confidence in Paradise. Or I might have said that I had met a man in New York who claimed the only God was Conscience (“have no other”), under which standard the whole Dominion was an Apostasy, if not something worse; but I didn’t want to engage him in any further discussion, and I sat sullenly the rest of the way to Connaught.