making the tops of the pews gleam.
A broad aisle led down the center of the church to the raised pulpit. Set into the wall behind the pulpit was a recessed archway that contained the baptistry, a cement pool sunk below the floor.
His father stood in the pool, water up to his waist, praying or preaching or both at the same time.
His cheeks shone with tears. One hand gripped the panel of glass that acted as a kind of splash guard for the pool, and the other was raised above his head, fingers spread. He wore a white dress shirt, too tight to be buttoned over his stained T-shirt. His hair had been combed back from his head.
“Forgive us, Lord!” he called, his voice echoing. His eyes were tightly closed, his face anguished. Blisters stretched across his forehead and cheeks, larger than Pax had ever seen them. What he’d taken to be tears could have been oil from ruptured sacs.
His father clenched his raised hand into a fist, opened it again. “Let your mercy come down on us. Forgive us now, our weak flesh, our corruptible hearts…”
Deke and a beta woman in a skirt and loose shirt stood off to the side of the sanctuary, next to the organ, talking in low voices. They saw Pax and waved him forward.
As Pax drew closer to the pulpit he could smell the spicy-sour tang of vintage. His father was still praying-
Deke said, “Paxton, have you met the Reverend Hooke?”
Pax recognized the woman’s clothing, if not her face. She’d worn a shirt and vest like that when she’d led the singing at the funeral. They shook hands, and Pax said, “I’m sorry about this, Reverend. How long has he been in there?”
“I got here a half hour ago,” Hooke said. “Who knows how long he was here before that-long enough to overflow the baptistry. I turned off the water as soon as I realized what was going on. I don’t even know how he got in.”
“Probably still got his keys,” Deke said. He was keeping his volume low, as if reluctant to disturb Harlan’s praying.
“Probably,” Pax said. “Or he could just come in the side door-you just have to yank on it to get it to unlatch. They ever fix that?”
Hooke did not seem amused. “He won’t listen to us at all, and of course we can’t go in after him-look at him.”
The blisters. They were afraid of touching him.
“Okay,” Pax said, “why don’t we let him finish? Whatever he’s doing.”
The reverend shook her head. “We can’t let him stay in there all day. Now Paxton, you may have heard that your father and I had our differences, but that’s got nothing to do with this. I respect him as a man of God. But it just isn’t safe to have him in there, not with… not in his condition. I told Deke we ought to call Aunt Rhonda, and have her boys-”
“But I said that was your call to make,” Deke said to Pax.
“No, you’re right,” Pax said. “My dad didn’t want to go with her, but… look at him.” He should have brought the papers with him. Rhonda had guards, gates, medical equipment-everything to stop this kind of thing from happening. “I don’t think I can handle this.”
“Well, today you’re gonna have to,” Deke said.
Pax felt his face flush. He didn’t look at Deke, instead turned to the reverend and said, “Call Aunt Rhonda. I’ll try to get him out of there. You have any rubber gloves? Or some plastic I can put over my hands?”
The Reverend Hooke said she had some garbage bags in her office, and Pax followed her up the steps of the pulpit and through the narrow door behind the podium, to the hallway that led back to the offices and Sunday school rooms. To their right was a door, left ajar, that opened onto the baptistry.
“I’ll be right back,” Hooke said, and headed down the hall.
Pax opened the baptistry door. Steps led down into the pool, and the water was as high as the top step. His father was within arm’s reach. His huge body almost filled the pool, and every movement sent water lapping over the edge.
This close, the smell of the vintage was strong, made heavier by the moisture in the air.
“Dad,” Pax said. Then, louder, “It’s me, Paxton. It’s time to go home.”
His father’s eyes remained closed. “-to die in the flesh, Lord,” he prayed. His voice bounced around the enclosed space, but it seemed both quieter and more desperate. “And yet to be resurrected in the spirit. We ask these things in your name, amen.”
“Dad, you’re hallucinating.”
The Reverend Harlan Martin opened his eyes, turned. His face looked like it had been pummeled, a mass of protuberances and swelling flesh. It took him a moment to focus on Pax through eyes closed almost to slits.
He smiled and extended an arm to him. “Don’t be afraid, Son,” he said, his voice low, as if to keep a congregation from hearing. “Take my arm and I’ll help you down.”
The surface of the water seemed oily, reflective.
“I’m not coming in there, Dad.” Pax breathed in through his mouth, tasting the vintage. “Step out now, okay? Can you climb out?”
His father glanced toward the front of the church. Who was he seeing, out there-and when? Pax remembered standing in this spot when he was twelve, his father reaching out to him exactly like this. Paxton’s mother had bought him a new white dress shirt and had told him to wear an undershirt so he wouldn’t look naked when the water soaked through.
His father chuckled, shook his head. “All righty then.” He turned toward Pax, sloshing water over the sides of the pool, and moved toward the steps.
“That’s it. Come on out and we’ll get you dried off,” Pax said.
His father grasped Paxton’s forearm, his fingers surprisingly strong.
It’s okay, Pax thought. His arm was covered by his sleeve, no skin contact. “Easy does it,” he said.
“That’s the spirit,” his father said. He backed up, pulling Pax down to the second step. Pax yelped and grabbed the door frame with his free hand. The water splashed cold against his shins.
“Dad! Stop it!”
“In the name of the Father,” his father said. He looped an arm around Pax’s waist. “And of the Son-”
He yanked Pax toward him. Pax lost his grip on the door frame and fell onto his father’s chest. The big man overbalanced and tipped backward and they plunged under the water.
Cold water surged into Pax’s ears, his mouth.
Pax’s left arm was smashed between his father’s body and the side of the pool, his right arm trapped at his side. Pax arched his back, trying to get his head up above the surface. His father’s arm cinched tighter, hugging him close.
Someone else was in the water with them. Pax felt something grip the back of his neck, slide down to tug at his elbow, freeing it. Pax reached up, found the top of the glass panel, and held on.
Pax got his legs under him, pushed. The arm around his waist loosened and his head broke the surface. He gasped, and immediately coughed up water.
From the sanctuary, murmurs of “amen.”
Deke stood in front of the baptistry, reaching down, his arm covered to the elbow by a black plastic bag. Behind him the room was full of light, the pews crowded. The women wore colorful summer dresses. The men, in white shirtsleeves because of the heat, draped their arms across the pew backs. All of them were unchanged-not an argo or chub or blank among them. The organ played “Rock of Ages.”
My church, Pax thought, but it was his father’s voice saying it. My church, my church. Pax felt the tightening in his chest, love and gratefulness and sorrow blossoming like heat.
Chapter 7
