flowed with a rhythm that calmed his mind.
There was a knock on his door. Pious blew out his candle and flung the book under his bed. There was another knock, louder this time. Pious ran up to the door with his hunting ax in hand.
“Speak,” he called through the door.
“I come here on behalf of our Lord and Savior seeking sustenance and sanctuary” a man said.
Fear gripped Pious. That was the call of a Preacher. He eyed his living room for visible contraband. He didn’t see any, but he had no time to really search, to keep a Preacher waiting was to cast suspicion on yourself. Pious opened the door.
Terence stepped back and held up Lead’s cross to the farmer at the door. Terence judged the man before him. The farmer was not yet out of his twenties but his body was hunched and creased in a way customary of desert living. The farmer held a wood ax in front of himself like a walking staff.
“I come seeking sustenance and sanctuary,” Terence said.
The farm looked him over and nodded. “You’re welcome to my sustenance and sanctuary, Preacher. Be at peace in my homestead.” Pious propped his ax against a wall. “Let me get you food and water.”
“Hold on, good sir,” Terence said. “I have a man in my binding. I need to bring him in.” Terence ran back into the night.
Pious watched the Preacher’s shadowed form in moonlight pick up another man and carry him back. Terence had tied Lead’s wrists together with what remained of his leather cord to help the illusion of imprisonment. He was not proud of his dishonesty to the farmer or any dishonesty from which he was the source, but between deception and death, Terence counted deception as the lesser. Terence returned to the cabin with his false captive.
“This man is to be left alone. I will soon return. Please have food and water ready,” Terence said. He propped Lead’s unconscious body against a wall and tied his ankles together with braided palm fronds.
“This man is powerful sick, and as you can see, his appendages are bound. I want your word that in my absence you will not harm him. There will be no need to harm him.”
“You have my word, Preacher,” Pious said.
“The Lord thanks you,” Terence replied. He smiled as the old words left his mouth. For a moment he missed the pomp and authority of being a legitimate Preacher.
Terence left the farmer’s home and took up his palm frond sled. The trail of this rig was unmistakably easy picking for well-trained Crusaders. The drizzle of rain ended too promptly, the winds were too weak, nothing in nature favored the cover of his ingress. Terence dragged the fronds behind him and ran towards the distant hills.
Lead woke from fever dreams and found himself on a dry floor wrapped in a woolen blanket. A man with an ax hefted in both hands stood over him. The man stared with eyes like cracked river pebbles, misshapen and red.
“I recommend you not move, stranger,” the man warned.
Lead let out a strangled cough. He struggled against the rawhide and palm cords, but found no strength. His body ached and radiated fevered heat.
“Assist,” Lead whispered.
“No, Goodman,” Pious spit and wiped his mouth. “We’re just gonna wait here for the old Preacher. You need to sit still.”
Pious was anxious about the book under his bed. Was it hidden? Was it visible? What if the Preacher came back and discovered it? In his mind he swore to God that if his heresy escaped detection he would bury the book in the desert sand. He would leave all things unsavory and walk a path righteous with the Lord.
“I’m here on behalf of our Lord and Savior.” Lead whispered and turned back to the darkness.
Terence abandoned his sled in a hillside crevice. He split a palm frond and swept his footsteps. He felt ridiculous using the old trick, but now was not a time for innovative thought. The Crusader’s presence was imminent and the night’s obfuscation was closing. Old tricks traded for time and time traded for rest and nourishment and the hope of an actual escape.
Terence swept the path.
Pious lit a mesquite fire in his big-bellied stove and considered his problems. Would the wounded man need food? What about the Preacher? If Pious gave from his feedbox, would he have sufficient meat for trade? Was the old Preacher really a harrier; a thief in disguise? This was not the first time Pious wondered if the old man wasn’t some sort of road agent. He banished the thought from his mind. Any road agent falsely using the crucifix was hunted and eliminated with all the prejudice and might of the Lord and Church. It was one of the few laws everyone knew aside from the Commandments. Pious once saw a false Preacher sentenced near Quartzite Parish. The parishioners hung the scallywag from a Joshua tree and let the sun and buzzards carry out the sentence of execution. No rope or blanket, just three days of screaming and rocking and looking to unforgiving eyes, for the parishioners watched in shifts and none gave aid. The scene had left an impression on Pious.
The farmer took three javelina steaks from his salt box. The steaks were bundled in plastic bags of the type floating throughout the desert, accompanying tumble weeds in travels blind and chaotic. He placed the steaks in a battered stainless skillet and set them to sizzle on the stove’s hot plate. Pious retrieved a water pitcher from his pantry.
The prisoner had not moved. The smell of fried pork filled the cabin.
Terence entered Pious’ home without knocking. His right hand clutched his four-barrel pistol behind his back. Pious was startled and sloshed water on the cabin floor.
“If you don’t mind the inquiry, sir, where were you?” Pious asked.
The farmer set the pitcher down and gripped the frying pan with a false casualness, as if checking the meat required Pious to handle the metal and keep a sightline with Terence. His body tensed in a way both visible and animal. The old Preacher realized the threat and responded in kind. The click of the pistol hammer echoed off the close cabin walls. It was an unmistakable sound and issued a threat more credible than any words Terence could muster.
“Men are trailing me and mine. They would take our lives, opportunity given. I set a false trail.”
Terence and Pious spent a moment of stretched time staring at each other, regarding small and dangerous motions. Pious gripped the skillet. Terence gripped the pistol. Pious twisted his face into a disingenuous smile and released the panhandle.
“Please sit and eat,” Pious said.
Pious picked a steak out of the frying pan with calloused fingers. He laid it on a wood slab and offered it to Terence. Terence took the slab with his left hand and sat on the floor. He released the hammer from his pistol and strung it back around his neck. Pious plated the remaining steaks without acknowledging the firearm. He sat by the stove. A slab was placed near Lead, who remained unconscious despite the smell. Pious and Terence continued to regard each other with nervous apprehension.
“I can tell by your gray hair that you were a grown man before the Storms,” Pious said. “What was your livelihood?”
Terence picked up the steak, looked it over, and put it back on the slab. Pious poured water into an earthen mug. He pushed the mug toward Terence. Pious swigged from the pitcher directly.
“There isn’t time to tell it all, nor would I want to. I lived in a place called San Diego, a city empire near the old Pacific line. I was a school teacher. I had a family.” Terence smiled in the brief reflection of a good past. He drank the water and savored it. “All those things are gone and don’t matter and never again will. It’s not the life this one is,” Terence said.
“I apologize if my question brought harm.” Pious said.
The men ate in silence disturbed only by Lead’s dream whispers, urgent and incoherent.
“I said, I apologize,” Pious declared, agitated at Terence’s silence.
“I accept, no harm done. It’s just not a story I want to tell,” Terence replied. He worked on his steak with hands and teeth and then paused. “You ever hear the story of Job?”
