Armor didn't answer for the longest while. The silence made Thrower quite uncomfortable, but he had no idea what more he could say. It hadn't occurred to him before that Armor could possibly believe in such things. It was a startling perspective. It was one thing to abstain from witchery because it was nonsense, and quite another to believe in it and abstain because it was unrighteous. It occurred to Thrower that this latter view was actually more ennobling: for Thrower to disdain witching was a matter of mere common sense, while for Armor and Eleanor it was quite a sacrifice.
Before he could find a way to express this thought, however, Armor leaned back on his chair and changed the subject entirely.
“Reckon your church is just about done.”
With relief, Reverend Thrower followed Armor onto safer ground. “The roof was finished yesterday, and today they were able to clap all the boards on the walls. It'll be watertight tomorrow, with shutters on the windows, and when we get them glazed and the doors hung it'll be tight as a drum.”
“I've got the glass coming by boat,” said Armor. Then he winked. “I solved the problem of shipping on Lake Erie.”
“How did you manage that? The French are sinking every third boat, even from Irrakwa.”
“Simple. I ordered the glass from Montreal.”
“French glass in the windows of a British church!”
“An American church,” said Armor. “And Montreal's a city in America, too. Anyway, the French may be trying to get rid of us, but in the meantime we're a market for their manufactured goods, so the Governor, the Marquis de la Fayette, he doesn't mind letting his people turn a profit from our trade as long as we're here. They're going to ship it clear around and down into Lake Michigan, and then barge it up the St. Joseph and down the Tippy-Canoe.”
“Will they make it before the bad weather?”
“I reckon so,” said Armor, “or they won't get paid.”
“You're an amazing man,” said Thrower. “But I wonder that you have so little loyalty to the British Protectorate.”
“Well, you see, that's how it is,” said Armor. “You grew up under the Protectorate, and so you still think like an Englishman.”
“I'm a Scot, sir.”
“A Brit, anyway. In your country, everybody who was even rumored to be practicing the hidden arts got exiled, right away, hardly even bothered with a trial, did they?”
“We try to be just, but the ecclesiastical courts are swift, and there is no appeal.”
“Well, now, think about it. If everybody who had any gift for the hidden arts got shipped off to the American colonies, how would you ever see a lick of witchery while you were growing up?”
“I didn't see it because there's no such thing.”
“There's no such thing in Britain. But it's the curse of good Christians in America, because we're up to our armpits in torches, doodlebugs, bog-stompers and hexifiers, and a child can't hardly grow to be four feet tall without bumping headlong into somebody's go-away or getting caught up in some prankster's speak-all spell, so he says everything that comes to mind and offends everybody for ten miles around.”
“A speak-all spell! Now, Brother Armor, surely you can see that a touch of liquor does as much.”
“Not to a twelve-year-old boy who never touched a drop of liquor in his life.”
It was plain that Armor was talking from his own experience, but that didn't change the facts. “There is always another explanation.”
“There's a powerful lot of explanations you can think up for anything that happens,” said Armor. “But I tell you this. You can preach against conjuring, and you'll still have a congregation. But if you keep on saying that conjuring don't work, well, I reckon most folks'll wonder why they should come all the way to church to hear the preaching of a plumb fool.”
“I have to tell the truth as I see it,” said Thrower.
“You may see that a man cheats in his business, but you don't have to name his name from the pulpit, do you? No sir, you just keep giving sermons about honesty and hope it soaks in.”
“You're saying that I should use an indirect approach.”
“That's a right fine church building, Reverend Thrower, and it wouldn't be half so fine if it wasn't for your dream of how it ought to be. But the folks here figure it's their church. They cut the wood, they built it, it's on common land. And it'd be a crying-shame if you were so stubborn that they up and gave your pulpit to another preacher.”
Reverend Thrower looked at the remnants of dinner for a long time. He thought of the church, not unpainted raw lumber the way it was right now, but finished, pews in place, the pulpit standing high, and the room bright with sunlight through clean-glazed windows. It isn't just the place, he told himself, but what I can accomplish here. I'd be failing in my Christian duty if I let this place fall under the control of superstitious fools like Alvin Miller and, apparently, his whole family. If my mission is to destroy evil and superstition, then I must dwell among the ignorant and superstitious. Gradually I will bring them to knowledge of the truth. And if I can't convince the parents, then in time I can convert the children. It is the work of a lifetime, my ministry, so why should I throw it away for the sake of speaking the truth for a few moments only?
“You're a wise man, Brother Armor.”
“So are you, Reverend Thrower. In the long run, even if we disagree here and there, I think we both want the same thing. We want this whole country to be civilized and Christian. And neither one of us would mind if Vigor Church became Vigor City, and Vigor City became the capital of the whole Wobbish territory. There's even talk back in Philadelphia about inviting Hio to become a state and join right in, and certainly they'll make such an offer to Appalachee. Why not Wobbish someday? Why not a country that stretches from sea to sea, White man and Red, every soul of us free to vote the government we want to make the laws we'll be glad to obey?”
It was a good dream. And Thrower could see himself within it. The man who had the pulpit of the greatest church in the greatest city of the territory would become the spiritual leader of a whole people. For a few minutes he believed so intensely in his dream that when he thanked Armor kindly for the meal and stepped outside, it made him gasp to see that right now Vigor Township consisted entirely of Armor's big store and its outbuildings, a fenced common with a dozen sheep grazing on it, and the raw wood shell of a big new church.
Still, the church was real enough. It was almost ready, the walls were there, the roof was on. He was a rational man. He had to see something solid before he could believe in a dream, but that church was solid enough now, and between him and Armor they could make the rest of the dream come true. Bring people to this place, make this the center of the territory. This church was big enough for town meetings, not just church meetings. And what about during the week? He'd be wasting his education if he didn't start a school for the children hereabouts. Teach them to read, to write, to cipher, and, above all, to think, to expunge all superstition from their minds, and leave behind nothing but pure knowledge and faith in the Savior.
He was so caught up in these thoughts that he didn't even realize he wasn't heading for Peter McCoy's farm downriver, where his bed would be waiting for him in the old log cabin. He was walking back up the slope to the meetinghouse. Not till he lit a couple of candles did he realize that he actually meant to spend the night here. It was his home, these bare wooden walls, as no other place in the world had ever been home to him. The sappish smell was like a madness in his nostrils, it made him want to sing hymns he'd never even heard before, and he sat there humming, thumbing through the pages of the Old Testament without so much as noticing that there were words on the paper.