“We are all of us sinners,” he was fond of saying. “And I am a great sinner, unworthy of God’s love, worthy only of being trampled under His feet.” He always sounded so proud saying that. God, it seemed, had shown compassion and had seen fit to shine His light upon him.
There was a picture that some child had drawn in Sunday school. It was part of the unofficial legend of Father Fisher, a comic strip showing Father wrestling with the Devil in a cave, the Devil overpowering him and laughing in his face, and God’s finger lighting a nearby torch that Father Fisher could thrust into the face of the Devil.
The child had coloured it with pencil crayons. He had made the cave all shadowy and the devil fire-engine red. The fire had been yellow and orange and the Sunday schooler had broken his pencil making Father Fisher’s hair black. The Sunday school teacher had urged the young artist to give it to the pastor. It was hanging in the basement meeting room even now, years later.
From what Jim knew, Fisher had lived just up the road from him. Jim had never seen Wilfred Fisher, the Godless capitalist of the story. They had never talked about him at home. Was he the Devil? Had Father actually fought with his own father? Who was to know? That was the problem with Sunday school stories. Who was to know which parts were real?
And what were the sins that made Father Fisher such a great sinner? Were they real sins or did he mean he was a bad person because he was just human, the son of Adam?
Father’s voice suddenly cut into Jim’s thoughts. He had mounted the pulpit and Dickie Patterhew, from his control station at the back of the church, had turned on the pulpit mike.
“Let us pray,” said the pastor.
Everybody bowed their heads. But as Jim bowed his, he heard the sound of the entrance door opening. He turned to look.
It was her!
She was dressed all in black. Like a thief.
Jim glanced over to where Nancy Fisher was sitting in her corner. She had seen her daughter, too. For a moment her face lit up and then, just as quickly, she paled.
Jim’s gaze returned to Ruth Rose. She was standing perfectly still, her head bowed, her hands folded in front of her. She looked humble, as if she were praying along with the rest of the congregation. But there was something in her hand. Something dark. For one horrible instant, Jim thought it was a gun. But it was too small.
Jim snapped his head back to look at the pastor. If Father had seen Ruth Rose, he showed no signs of it. And then Jim figured that from the pastor’s angle up high, he probably couldn’t see her under the lower roof of the narthex. Father Fisher’s head was bent solemnly in prayer and his voice did not falter.
Jim dared to look back at Ruth Rose. She was sidling along the back wall of the church. Her mother was watching her intently with a frightened look in her eyes, her hands grasping the rims of her wheelchair.
What was going on?
Jim’s mother touched his arm and gave him a look that he hadn’t seen in years. It was a quit-squirming-around-in-your-seat look.
Jim faced the front again, but as the pastor finished his prayer and asked the congregation to please be seated for the sermon, Jim managed another quick glance towards the back. Ruth Rose was nowhere to be seen.
“The leaves are turning to glorious gold,” began the pastor. “And we, Lord, call it fall.”
Slowly, so as not to draw his mother’s attention, Jim turned his head to the right until he could see Nancy Fisher. Her eyes were rivetted on something happening on the other side of the church.
Jim carefully returned his attention to the front, glanced at his mother to see if she was watching, and then very cautiously turned his head to the left until he could see all the way to the back. He could see Dickie the sexton, the only person in the back row. He was seated but his head was bowed in prayer. Or so it seemed. Upon further inspection, Jim was quite certain the sexton was dozing.
Behind him, Jim caught a glimpse of black. It was Ruth Rose. She must have ducked down behind the last pew.
“We see in the fallen leaves, the bare trees, the end of things. Death. But the Lord in His bounteous wisdom has seen fit to give busy Mother Nature a break. A nap. That’s all. The beautiful maple isn’t dead, it’s just having a little snooze.”
The members of the congregation chuckled and took the opportunity to make themselves more comfortable in their seats. In the resulting racket, Jim caught sight of Ruth Rose again. She had dashed behind the wooden podium that housed the controls of the public address system.
Suddenly he knew what he had seen in her hand. An audio tape.
His mother nudged him and frowned. Obediently, Jim looked towards the front.
“Come spring, as we all know, the sap will run again. The gold of the fall will have been distilled. We will see it again, taste it again — and, oh, how sweet it is! — that golden syrup of which Lanark County is so justly famous. It is elixir. The elixir of rebirth.”
Jim heard the sentence but there was something wrong. The sound had gone off. He was hearing Father Fisher’s voice live. The pastor himself hadn’t noticed yet. He went on sermonizing while all over the church people could be seen straining to hear, looking around, wondering what had gone wrong.
And then there was another sound, a hissing sound. And at last Father realized something was wrong. He tapped the mike. There was no sound, just the hissing that seemed to fill the church. Father Fisher strained to see the sexton who was snoring now, oblivious to the commotion.
Then the hissing was replaced by the sound of moaning. The congregation held its breath in hushed anticipation.
The moaning sounded like that of a grown man. What followed was unmistakably a grown man.
“O, God...” groaned the voice. uYou have revealed Your great plans for me. And I am Your faithful servant. Help me, Lord, I beseech Thee. Keep at bay those who would stop me. Those who, filled with hatred, hound me.”
“Dickie?” cried Father Fisher, straining to see the sexton. “What in tarnation is going on?”
The taped voice gave way to sobbing. “As Thy transfigured Son, Jesus Christ, commanded His disciples on the mountain to keep what they had seen to themselves, may my sins be something just between us, O, most merciful God, I humbly beg of You.”
“Would somebody please wake Dickie,” said Father Fisher. But his other voice, on the tape, suddenly transformed into the voice of a youngster, and said, “Hub? Hub, it’s okay, old buddy. Nobody ever, ever is gonna find out.”
A baffled murmur went up from the congregation. Jim felt his mother gasp and tense all over. Father Fisher in the pulpit raised his voice.
“We seem to be having some technical difficulties,” he said. A few people laughed nervously, and Father Fisher called out to his sexton, loudly, so that Jim, straining, couldn’t catch the next bit of the tape. But he saw Father Fisher clutch the edge of the pulpit and lean out as if he was a sailor in the crow’s nest who had just spotted an iceberg.
“Mr. Patterhew! For heaven’s sake.”
One of the church elders who had hurried to the back yelled out. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”