“But—”
He hoisted the crate. The muscles in his arms bulged, veins standing out on them. “Come on, kiddo. Walk with me.”
I followed him out to the car. He set the crate down beside the back fender, inspected the trunk, and said he’d have to move the suitcases to the backseat. “Can you take the small one, Jamie? It’s not heavy. When you’re traveling far, it’s best to travel light.”
“Where are you going?”
“No idea, but I think I’ll know it when I get there. If this thing doesn’t break down, that is. It burns enough oil to drain Texas.”
We moved the suitcases to the back of the Ford. Reverend Jacobs hoisted the big crate into the trunk with a grunt of effort. He slammed it closed, then leaned against it, studying me.
“You have a wonderful family, Jamie, and wonderful parents who actually pay attention. If I asked them to describe you kids, I bet they’d say that Claire is the motherly one, Andy’s the bossy one—”
“Boy, you’re right about that.”
He grinned. “There’s one in every family, boyo. They’d say Terry is the mechanical one and you’re the dreamer. What would they say about Con?”
“The studying one. Or maybe the folk-singing one since he got his guitar.”
“Perhaps, but I bet those wouldn’t be the first things to pop into their minds. Ever notice Con’s fingernails?”
I laughed. “He bites em like mad! Once my dad offered him a buck if he stopped for a week, but he couldn’t!”
“Con is the nervy one, Jamie—that’s what your folks would say if they were to be completely honest. The one who’s apt to turn up with ulcers by the time he’s forty. When he got hit in the neck with that ski pole and lost his voice, he started to worry that it would never come back. And when it didn’t, he told himself it never would.”
“Dr. Renault said—”
“Renault’s a fine doctor. Conscientious. He turned up here Johnny-on-the-spot when Morrie had the measles and again when Patsy had… well, a female problem. Took care of both like a pro. But he doesn’t have that air of confidence the best GPs have. That way of saying ‘Bosh, this is nothing, you’ll be fine in no time.’”
“He did say that!”
“Yes, but Conrad wasn’t convinced because Renault isn’t convincing. He’s able to treat the body, but the mind? Not so much. And the mind is where half the healing takes place. Maybe more. Con thought, ‘He’s lying now so I can get used to having no voice. Later on he’ll tell me the truth.’ That’s just the way your brother’s built, Jamie. He lives on his nerve endings, and when people do that, their minds can turn against them.”
“He wouldn’t come with me today,” I said. “I lied about that.”
“Did you?” Jacobs didn’t look very surprised.
“Yeah. I asked him, but he was scared.”
“Never be angry with him for that,” Jacobs said. “Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves—like Con manufactured his muteness—but they can’t help it. It’s the way they’re built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”
He turned to the parsonage, which already looked abandoned, and sighed. Then he turned back to me.
“Perhaps the ENS did something—I have every reason to believe the theory behind it is valid—but I really doubt it. Jamie, I believe I tricked your brother. Or, if you don’t mind the pun, I conned him. It’s a skill they try to teach in divinity school, although they call it kindling faith. I was always good at it, which has caused me to feel both shame and delight. I told your brother to expect a miracle, then I turned on the current and activated my glorified joy buzzer. As soon as I saw him twitching his mouth and blinking his eyes, I knew it was going to work.”
“That’s awesome!” I said.
“Yes indeed. Also rather vile.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. The important thing is you must never tell him. He probably wouldn’t lose his voice again, but he might.” He glanced at his watch. “You know what? I think that’s all the powwow I have time for, if I’m going to make Portsmouth by tonight. And you better get home. Where your visit to me this afternoon will be another secret we’ll keep between us, right?”
“Right.”
“You didn’t go past Me-Maw’s, did you?”
I rolled my eyes, as if to ask if he was really that stupid, and Jacobs laughed some more. I loved that I could make him laugh in spite of everything that had happened. “I cut through Marstellar’s field.”
“Good lad.”
I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want him to go. “Can I ask you one more question?”
“Okay, but make it quick.”
“When you were giving your… um…” I didn’t want to use the word sermon, it seemed dangerous, somehow. “When you were talking in church, you said lightning was, like, fifty thousand degrees. Is that true?”
His face kindled as it only did when the subject of electricity came up. His hobbyhorse, Claire would have said. My dad would have called it his obsession.
“Completely true! Except maybe for earthquakes and tidal waves, lightning is the most powerful force in nature. More powerful than tornadoes and much more powerful than hurricanes. Have you ever seen a bolt strike the earth?”
I shook my head. “Only in the sky.”
“It’s beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying.” He looked up, as if seeking one, but the sky that afternoon was blue, the only clouds little white puffs moving slowly southwest. “If you ever want to see one up close… you know Longmeadow, right?”
Of course I did. Halfway up the road leading to Goat Mountain Resort, there was a state-maintained public park. That was Longmeadow. From it you could look east for miles and miles. On a very clear day, you could see all the way to the Desert of Maine in Freeport. Sometimes even to the Atlantic Ocean beyond. The MYF had its summer cookout at Longmeadow every August.
He said, “If you go up the road from Longmeadow, you come to the Goat Mountain Resort gatehouse…”
“… where they won’t let you in unless you’re a member or a guest.”
“Right. The class system at work. But just before you get to the gatehouse, there’s a gravel road that splits off to the left. Anyone can use it, because that’s all state land. About three miles up, it ends at an outlook called Skytop. I never took you kids there, because it’s dangerous—just a granite slope ending in a two-thousand-foot drop. There’s no fence, just a sign warning people to keep back from the edge. At the Skytop summit there’s an iron pole twenty feet high. It’s driven deep into the rock. I have no idea who put it there, or why, but it’s been there a long, long time. It should be rusty, but it’s not. Do you know why it’s not?”
I shook my head.
“Because it’s been struck by lightning so many times. Skytop’s a special place. It draws the lightning, and that iron rod is its focal point.”
He was looking dreamily off toward Goat Mountain. It was certainly not big compared to the Rockies (or even the White Mountains of New Hampshire), but it dominated the rolling hills of western Maine.
“The thunder is louder there, Jamie, and the clouds are closer. The sight of those stormclouds rolling in makes a person feel very small, and when a person is beset by worries… or doubts… feeling small is not such a bad thing. You know when the lightning’s going to come, because there’s a breathless feeling in the air. A feeling of… I don’t know… an unburned burning. Your hair stands on end and your chest gets heavy. You can feel your skin trembling. You wait, and when the thunder comes, it doesn’t boom. It cracks, like when a branch loaded with ice finally gives way, only a hundred times louder. There’s silence… and then a click in the air, sort of like the sound an old-fashioned light switch makes. The thunder rolls and the lightning comes. You have to squint, or the stroke will blind you and you won’t see that iron pole go from black to purple-white and then to red, like a horseshoe in the forge.”