“Ain't you a big man,” said Goody Faith, “throwing out your own daughter's husband.”
“I didn't do but what he said the Lord wanted done,” said Miller. Then he turned his gaze upon the pastor.
“Armor didn't speak for me,” said Thrower mildly.
“If you lay a hand on a man of the cloth,” said Goody Faith, “you'll sleep in a cold bed for the rest of your life.”
“Wouldn't think of touching the man,” said Miller. “But the way I figure it, I stay out of his place, and he ought to stay out of mine.”
“You may not believe in the power of prayer,” said Thrower.
“I reckon it depends on who's doing the praying, and who's doing the listening,” said Miller.
“Even so,” said Thrower, “your wife believes in the religion of Jesus Christ, in the which I have been called and ordained a minister. It is her belief, and my belief, that for me to pray at the boy's bedside might be efficacious in his cure.”
“If you use words like that in your praying,” said Miller, “it's a wonder the Lord even knows what you're talking about.”
“Though you don't believe such prayer will help,” Thrower went on, “it certainly can't hurt, can it?”
Miller looked from Thrower to his wife and back again. Thrower had no doubt that if Faith had not been there, he would have been eating snow alongside Armor-ofGod. But Faith was there and had already uttered the threat of Lysistrata. A man does not have fourteen children if his wife's bed holds no attraction to him. Miller gave in. “Go on in,” he said. “But don't pester the boy too long.”
Thrower nodded graciously. “No more than a few hours,” he said.
“Minutes!” Miller insisted. But Thrower was already headed for the door by the stairs, and Miller made no move to stop him. He could have hours with the boy, if he wanted to. He closed the door behind him. No sense in letting any of the pagans interfere with this.
“Alvin,” he said.
The boy was stretched out under a blanket, his forehead beaded with sweat. His eyes were closed. After a while, though, he opened his mouth a little. “Reverend Thrower,” he whispered.
“The very same,” said Thrower. “Alvin, I've come to pray for you, so the Lord will free your body of the devil that is making you sick.”
Again a pause, as if it took a while for Thrower's words to reach Alvin and just as long again for his answer to return. “Ain't no devil,” he said.
“One can hardly expect a child to be well-versed in matters of religion,” said Thrower. “But I must tell you that healing comes only to those who have the faith to be healed.” He then devoted several minutes to recounting the story of the centurion's daughter and the tale of the woman who had an issue of blood and merely touched the Savior's robe. “You recall what he said to her. Thy faith hath made thee whole, he said. So it is, Alvin Miller, that your faith must be strong before the Lord can make you whole.”
The boy didn't answer. Since Thrower had used his considerable eloquence in the telling of both stories, it offended him a bit that the boy might have fallen asleep. He reached out a long finger and poked Alvin's shoulder.
Alvin flinched away. “I heard you,” he muttered.
It wasn't good that the boy could still be sullen, after hearing the light-giving word of the Lord. “Well?” asked Thrower. “Do you believe?”
“In what,” murmured the boy.
“In the gospel! In the God who would heal you, if you only soften your heart!”
“Believe,” he whispered. “In God.”
That should have been enough. But Thrower knew too much of the history of religion not to press for more detail. It was not enough to confess faith in a deity. There were so many deities, and all but one was false. " Which God do you believe in, Al Junior?"
“God,” said the boy.
“Even the heathen Moor prays toward the black stone of Mecca and calls it God! Do you believe in the true God, and do you believe in Him correctly? No, I understand, you're too weak and fevered to explain your faith. I will help you, young Alvin. I'll ask you questions, and you tell me, yes or no, whether you believe.”
Alvin lay still, waiting.
“Alvin Miller, do you believe in a God without body, parts, or passions? The great Uncreated Creator, Whose center is everywhere, yet Whose circumference can never be found?”
The boy seemed to ponder this for a while before he spoke. “That don't make a bit of sense to me,” he said.
“He isn't supposed to make sense to the carnal mind,” Thrower said. “I merely ask if you believe in the One who sits atop the Topless Throne; the self-existing Being who is so large He fills the universe, yet so penetrating that He lives in your heart.”
“How can he sit on the top of something that ain't got no top?” the boy asked. “How can something that big fit inside my heart?”
The boy was obviously too uneducated and simpleminded to grasp sophisticated theological paradox. Still, it was more than a life or even a soul at stake here– it was all the souls that the Visitor had said this boy would ruin if he could not be converted to the true faith. “That's the beauty of it,” said Thrower, letting emotion fill his voice. “God is beyond our comprehension; yet in His infinite love He condescends to save us, despite our ignorance and foolishness.”
“Ain't love a passion?” asked the boy.
“If you have trouble with the idea of God,” said Thrower, “then let me pose another question, which may be more to the point. Do you believe in the bottomless pit of hell, where the wicked writhe in flames, yet are never burned up? Do you believe in Satan, the enemy of God, who wishes to steal your soul and take you captive into his kingdom, to torment you through all eternity?”
The boy seemed to perk up a little, turning his head toward Thrower, though he still didn't open his eyes.
“I might believe in something like that,” he said.
Ah, yes, thought Thrower. The boy has had some experience with the devil. “Have you seen him, child?”
“What's your devil look like?” whispered the boy.
“He is not my devil,” said Thrower. “And if you had listened in services, you would have known, for I have described him many times. Where a man has hair on his head, the devil has the horns of a bull. Where a man has hands, the devil has the claws of a bear. He has the hooves of a goat, and his voice is the roar of a ravening lion.”
To Thrower's amazement, the boy smiled, and his chest bounced silently with laughter. “And you call us superstitious,” he said.
Thrower would never have believed how firm a grip the devil could have on a child's soul, had he not seen the boy laugh with pleasure at the description of the monster Lucifer. That laughter must be stopped! It was an offense against God!
Thrower slapped his Bible down on the boy's chest, causing Alvin to wheeze out his breath. Then, with his hand pressing on the book, Thrower felt himself fill up with inspired words, and he cried out with more passion than he had ever felt before in his life: “Satan, in the name of the Lord I rebuke you! I command you to depart from this boy, from this room, from this house forever! Never again seek to possess a soul in this place, or the power of God will wreak destruction unto the uttermost bounds of hell!”
Then silence. Except for the boy's breathing, which seemed labored. There was such peace in the room, such exhausted righteousness in Thrower's own heart, that he felt convinced the devil had heeded his peroration and retreated forthwith.
“Reverend Thrower,” said the boy.
“Yes, my son?”
“Can you take that Bible off my chest now? I reckon if there was any devils here, they're all gone now.”
Then the boy began to laugh again, causing the Bible to jump up and down under Thrower's hand.
In that moment Thrower's exultation turned to bitter disappointment. Indeed, the fact that the boy could laugh so devilishly with the Bible itself resting on his body was proof that no power could purge him of evil. The Visitor had been right. Thrower should never have refused the mighty work that the Visitor had called him to do. It had been in his power to be the slayer of the Beast of the Apocalypse, and he had been too weak, too sentimental to accept the divine calling. I could have been a Samuel, hewing to death the enemy of God. Instead I am a Saul, a weakling, who cannot kill what the Lord commands must die. Now I will see this boy rise up with the power of Satan in him, and I will know that he thrives only because I was weak.