The first day of the storm I took Kaiser out for a walk, trussing my hiking boots in antique snowshoes I’d found hanging beside the French doors in the lower level and grabbing a set of poles from an umbrella stand. I didn’t bother with a leash, knowing the old dog would stay close. In the sandy, acidic soil of the property, the white pines grew immense, their trunks gnarled and gigantic, the upper reaches soughing in the wind. Grandfather trees with white frock coats and mossy, dripping beards.
Kaiser ambled along beside me. Released from his side yard pen, the dog appeared ready to bound through the snow, if only his body would allow it. He wheezed and struggled in the deeper drifts, his back legs stiff and arthritic. Balanced on my balsa wood poles, I commiserated. Under my skin I could sense the alien piece of ceramic prosthetic the surgeon had grafted to my hip bone.
Kaiser and I discovered a pond at the edge of the birch grove. Beneath the glazed surface of the ice, koi swam in sluggish circles, mottled blurs of flame. I cracked the ice with the hard plastic end of my pole and the koi squirmed away. Kaiser snorted beside me, a questioning bark, before using his paws to break more ice so he could slurp the cold water. Soon the small pond would freeze solid around those fish, leaving them trapped and breathless. Already a new skin of ice was forming around the holes we had made. The Krolls hadn’t left any instructions about tending the koi and I felt certain they were going to die but didn’t know how to save them. We were gazing down into their icy tomb, our shadows blocking out their light. Yet, it didn’t seem like a bad way to go, all things considered. “The parable of this world is like your shadow,” I told Kaiser, one of my notes from the religion class that got stuck in my head, though I couldn’t recall who said it. Kaiser sat on his haunches, slobbery icicles dangling from his muzzle. “If you stop, your shadow stands still. If you chase it, it distances itself from you.”
Tomorrow was Sunday. I had a shadow to chase.
Most of what I knew about Rose of Sharon, a church just outside Ursine Lake, was that Maura’s husband was a pastor there. The church sat in a valley between two round recently logged hills now humped with snow, the building a converted ranch house with a cross pinioned to the chimney. People parked on a flat plain just outside, no more than a dozen cars. A gated cemetery nestled in the crook of one hill.
After maneuvering my Lincoln Continental into a tight space, I almost turned around. And I would have, except this ridiculous boat of a car made such simple tasks trouble. My dad had insisted I buy the Continental with the insurance money after he viewed the crushed remains of my Civic. What did I think I was doing here? Perhaps there was time to pull out, before anyone recognized me. Would Maura’s husband know who I was? I knew from Maura that her husband was named Elijah Winters and that he was a pastor who was mixed up in a movement similar to the apocalyptic, white supremacist stuff that got some members of Randy Weaver’s family killed halfway across the country in Idaho. I knew that Maura had been afraid of him.
A tall man with a cadaverous face watched me from the front steps of the church, his hands on his hips. It was too late to turn around now. I had been spotted. I shut my engine down, got out of the car, and walked toward him.
The bulletin board beside the man identified the church as Apostolic/Christian Identity. I had little idea what that meant. Holy Rollers, my dad would call them. My family was Easter-and-Christmas Presbyterians who attended a neighborhood church on holidays but otherwise didn’t think much about religion.
I tried to disguise my limp under that man’s gaze, but my hip had stiffened during the long car ride, so crossing the icy gravel lot seemed to take an eternity, the man watching with that smile frozen on his face. “Welcome,” he said when I got close, extending one large, bony hand. “I’m Roland, one of the deacons here.”
“Meshach,” I said, taking his hand. The false name just slipped out. I winced as he pumped my grip, in part because his hand felt strong enough to break every bone in my body, and also because if Maura ever had a son, she had vowed to name him Meshach, who had stood in the fire for his faith and was not harmed. Maura knew her Bible, though she had not been devout. A seeker like me. I couldn’t forget how lovely her singing voice had been. Those old-time hymns. She’d sung one for me once, late at night after the bank closed, her voice pitched with all the loneliness and longing in this broken world. There had been nothing between us then, but I was already in love with her. Surely her husband would know what she hoped to name a boy, if they were blessed with a second child. Already with the first words out of my mouth I had given myself away. Maybe that was okay. Maybe that was why I had come here. I had questions that needed answering.
A muscle twitched in Roland’s long jaw. He had sunburnt, weathered features, his skin still deeply tanned in winter, permanently marked from a life spent working outdoors, even his hair burnt white as if scorched by frost and sunlight. “What brings you to our service this morning?” he asked, squinting at me.
“I was out for a Sunday drive, saw people going inside. Thought maybe I should check it out.”
That caught his curiosity at least. Let him think I was led here by the Spirit. It surprised me how easily I took to lying. “Well, it’s good to have you with us, Meshach,” he said, setting a hand on my shoulder and guiding me within.
Organ music swelled and filled the small sanctuary where a congregation of around thirty or so people rose from metal folding chairs, and began to sing and sway. Roland insisted I sit next to him near the back, his tweed blazer falling open as he guided me to the row, revealing a holster and a big nickel-plated pistol strapped to his side. Roland passed me a red hymnal, showed me the right page for “As the Deer Pants for the Water.” He had a big enough voice for the two of us, which was good, because I only mumbled along, my throat strangely thick, my armpits and hands clammy with sweat, my hip aching.
People think of the Deep South or someplace like Idaho when they think of the crazies. They forget that Randy Weaver was born and raised and radicalized in Iowa. They forget about the Posse Comitatus in North Dakota or the Aryan Republican Army robbing banks across the Midwest or rumors of Timothy McVeigh cooling his heels in Elohim City before committing his act of terrorism. What kind of man carried a holstered gun into worship? I thought that Roland had likely been chosen to receive visitors like me, make sure I wasn’t an ATF agent or spying on behalf of some other federal agency. Did I look like an agent? I had lost so much weight this last month, dropping to a hundred and fifteen pounds the last time I climbed on a scale, that I felt like my skeleton and brain were composed of tumbleweeds. Nonetheless, I was investigating a mystery. The mystery of Maura. Roland and his big horse pistol were here to remind me that I was an outsider and therefore under suspicion. I hoped this church at least served good coffee.
After the hymn finished and we sat again, the preacher prowled the front. He was an athletic, lantern-jawed man dressed in blue jeans and plaid, his tan sports coat with leather patches on the elbows, a Bible hefted in one fist like a football he might heave to a lumbering tight end. This was my first glimpse of Maura’s husband. Black-haired, with a trim mustache and sideburns, and small gray eyes, the Reverend Elijah Winters looked more like a professor than a white supremacist who had done time in Stillwater. His gaze kept finding me, the lone stranger in the back.