Chapter Text
The way to the 1918 Sabbath had been paved with miracles.
Like His best disciple, he spread his arms.
“Come here, dear Sister.”
“Will you give me this?” He gestured to the staff.
She said nothing, gripped it still with some potent fear.
“You won’t be needing it any longer.”
“Where does the Devil nest?”
And before she could reply his finger rose to the air.
“Is it the knee? Right knee?”
“Yes. It is.” He answered himself. “Yes it is.”
He then rested by her and his sacred cries filled the coping of the church. Banished, the evil spirit crawled on the ceiling and all before his eyes. Its dark blue, contorted claws drew sparkles, and Eli wondered if he was the only one to hear those screeches punctuated by bellows of a bull.
He panted, eyes filling with tears of exhaustion.
“And it left…”
He embraced them once more, the city folk, one he’d not so long ago tainted a different species. Almost. It could have been on his part a retaliation to being dubbed as a “province wonder” by many of those kind yet narrow. Some had with them their proud pins that proclaimed none too shyly I own a liberty bond. Soon enough the prophet of the Third Revelation looked at them cross, for it should come without saying, Eli’s pins, the symbols of the new spiritual guidance, should take precedence.
“It is understandable, perhaps natural and expected to carry on one’s breast the pride of one’s motherland, our great and beautiful country that fights for peace in His name. But why should such pride prevail over the mark of my Church? One that says you are His and mine, my sheep.”
Some would take to that decree, some would wear both. An act maybe courageous, yet still that of the backbenchers.
Taft was a place that despite its certain grandiose, didn’t cause shyness anymore. Nor the unpleasant feeling in his mouth, that came with heirdom of a goat farm, which had evaporated, just as he’d acquired the first suit. As he’d first been invited to sit on an unreasonably white and clean padding of a limousine. As he’d stopped recognizing its sharp, perfumed smell, for it had become too frequent to be tagged exotic.
Being in Bakersfield, he would routinely visit the Curtises. Norman had accompanied him in the suit endeavour, being the only man in the house, he’d felt presumptuous responsibility for the boy. Eli had first intended to go alone, only asking the patriarch for a recommendation as to which establishment would be most worth his while. The man couldn’t let that be, insistent to advise him. There wouldn’t be anything particularly strange about the prospect, hadn’t it been for that hypochondriac inkling that he’d been subtly tested; his vanity that is. But Eli decided not to worry much about it. For he had to keep himself neat, as those cars he was driven in and the men he’d meet and whose hands he’d shake after each of his shows. Old, dazed hands with signets on them.
It would be sin not to cherish what He’s brought me.
It came as a natural finding, for their bond was mutual, Eli would give and be given in turn. He always would be. His devotion was maybe not as immaculately pure, but that weakness of character Eli knew he could battle with the glacial, unfaltering spirit.
He could get one.
Maybe it was a selfish sentiment, or maybe just a way of adjusting. The latter seemed to be the case, for as Eli had scrupulously advanced in his transformation, the patent leather shoes invited trust and stability. So much so, more and more well-to-do eyes started looking his way.
And he hadn’t been idle either. His word had been spreading far and wide. Twisting amongst many towns, coming alive in many homes.
“We’ll collect those crutches. The Prophet will take them off your hands!”
That very week a certain investor he’d been eyeing for a moment reached out to notify him of his willfulness to see. To join Eli’s congregation he’d heard so much about. And God those fliers had nettled him before but he understood it was just how things were, and people were stubborn, he knew, for he was himself, and if they’d lead the way to Him, then so be it.
Such dedication had bore fruits, for Charles Frasier had proven not to be one of too many bored, rich men in California going through some sort of a personal or spiritual crisis; Eli had dealt enough with fickle men like that, no, that man had panned out a loyal benefactor. After all he wasn’t willing to be a shoulder to cry on if the tears weren’t running gold.
Frasier, like many others, had prayed as successfully in a shrine as he had in the Midway-Sunset Oil Field. Beginning as a lease hound. Someone Paul would have wanted to be, no doubt.
Eli offered him a cordial handshake and a polite nod of acknowledgement. The oilmen or for that matter, people who aspired to the title were a different breed of curious city folk. One would not blame Eli, taking into consideration the prior experiences, if he wanted nothing to do with them. But as it happened the world would not stop for him.
Though it was worth noting, the oil business came to Frasier as what he liked to refer to as “God’s plan for him”. From that alone one could asses, he had little skill or insight in how things operated beyond that notion.
It seemed to come to him as a slight surprise that a preacher, and a preacher so young should know the basics he thought were sacred knowledge passed amongst the cognoscenti. Coveted in the dangerous oil game.
After all, he’d been thrown in at the deep end, what was taking place now was wading the shoal.
“They’re fiddling with something. Who knows, we might even see to that, you’ll be talking to thousands, Reverend, maybe tens of thousands…”
Eli cocked his head like a hen. “How do you mean, Brother?”
“Have you ever tried talking through the phone?”
The preacher rubbed his chin. “It’s complicated…costly…”
“I know. But soon enough, they say, it’ll be easy. And we’ll be happy to get the best deal for the Third Revelation.”
So they say.
It was a beautiful dream, but as it happened the same year, America had joined the War, and all efforts of radio development had been confiscated and Eli could do nothing else, but admit it was a safe precaution. He would have to settle for the not-inconsiderable crowds that he drew in for his shows in person . It should be said, there were few who could compete with him in that regard. And yet that mirage of possibility hadn’t left him.
Speaking to tens of thousands.
The war still did him well; he’d reject that disclosure of his temperament, but it was simply the truth. The insecure political climate had lured in more sheep desperate for his affirmation, be it tender or thunderous; it was up to him to decide. He’d visit encampments of the men drafted, ensuring the victory was near. And they’d ask for his blessing, those who in the upcoming months would see the soils of France, amongst them boys younger than himself. Eli’s pins would see the Old World.
“He protects those who carry His word. You have a mission, Brother, and He’ll let you get hurt none.”
He’d noticed it already, and enjoyed even despite himself - that gentle wooing of his person. Kern, Santa Barbara, Ventura…When they’d visit him in the church, his brothers in Christ, they’d try and charm him, try and have him. Over there at theirs. Or maybe he’d been lulled, just as those pious men and women who’d try for his blessing, his word; who’d grab him by the shoulders and have him bring to their knees. Make him make them scream with the crowd; shake in unison till only the voice of the Spirit bellowed through them.
“But we’ll have to ease out a little.” Said Frasier. “I’m not sure about those dances .”
Eli blinked.
“This kind of stuff…I bet it gets the folks going back in backwater…”
“It’s part of the performance.” Eli insisted.
Frasier rubbed his balding head.
“Right.” He bit his lip and tipped the hat to the young man, leaving through the pale-blue open doors.
There was a band of musicians there. Why should they go to waste? The resonance guided Eli through the layers of elation, much more enchanting for his ardent heart than the pregnant silence of the wooden box in the midst of the plains. A little bit of extravagance, for the soul this time.
“Father, don’t you find it appalling?” He’d hear while leaning on the pulpit, a whole day of work coming to an end. Those were the times he could feel his body failingly mortal. “An honest cent they’re tearing out of the American pocket to fight a war that’s not even ours!”
“How so it’s not?”
“Bah, you won’t understand, Reverend. You never had to wrestle with them shysters.”
Even as the gleam in the eyes of those men could have well been a reflection of his own, his smile concealed the contempt he'd feel.
A ruby nest had been rising and falling to finally start dimming out on the square in front of the church. The local authorities had been notified of similar occurrences, thus thought none of it when the Pentecostals gathered around the fire like a group of benevolent brigands. The ritual burning of the crutches was coming to an end, the nostrils of the onlookers filling with the sharp odour of the kindling. Some stood still, some circled the hearth in quiet reverie, some moved like hypnotized, speaking in tongues.
“Amen.”
Eli’s face and hair had soaked with smoke by the time he’d made his way back to his office. On the desk loomed an envelope, the correspondence had been addressed from Little Boston.
He hadn’t received any word from home, real word, that wasn’t carefully clothed, polite hints that money had been short by the hand of not Ruth, but Mary.
Ruth had stopped writing. Eli had stopped writing too, in fact. He'd to admit, he’d been quite hurt; his sister decided to announce that the issue of her long-awaited marriage had been well taken care of by Pastor Sage, and signed the very piece of paper from Ruth Reid.
Not that the boy had had any desire in him to come back home so soon; to so abruptly be torn from his new oneiric reality. But it was still, well…wrong.
This letter, however, by the hand of Mary Sunday, had some new revelations to unveil. A short one, comprising just the plain gist - their father, Abel Sunday, after a joyous Sabbath, had recovered for the night and hadn’t woken up.
The way had been long like the place of his birth had been buried in the remnants of a civilization lost to time. Eli rubbed his open hand. He’d been scratching it mercilessly the entire way, so much so he couldn’t remember what prompted it, a splinter, a mosquito bite, or nothing at all.
Mary met him on the curtilage, they stood still until after a moment Eli had invited his baby sister into an awkward embrace, not full, for by the state of her, she must have just got back from the goats. She looked like Mamma, now that he got a better look at her, those puffy features had sunk slightly, chiselled like by an invisible hand of time.
The mourning march of the Sundays opened with Eli. Behind him walked Thomas Reid, Ruth and their daughter Frances, a five-year-old little thing, washed in the Blood by Pastor Sage. Eli thought once or twice whether to touch on this subject, that of his great debarment, but soon found the fatigue of Little Boston crawling on him, immobilizing. Nothing good would come from it anyway.
Mamma walked hand in hand with Mary who now was just as tall.
“The world’s turmoil put a toil on him.” She leaned on her younger girl. “Just as all this ceased at last…He couldn’t even share the joy with us. He’d always check those papers…”
But the stink of Abel was still there.
Eli’s holy hands laid on him, now with a grazing signet. A signet his father would never see. Even for a moment. The boy spoke those words, like in a different language, as his congregation looked at him for the first time maybe, without elation. Like they'd look at a boy mourning his father.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
His body was too numb to muster up something other than words ironed into his skull since birth. But it wasn’t grief that clenched his throat, that filled his windpipe with poisonous breath.
All he could think about was the house now empty, left like scorched earth, and if it all had been a dream. He’d be prone to embrace that theory, having it not been for the figure meek that made its way into the gloomy church.
He was surprised to spot the young oil prince.
Where do you fly from, little crow?
H.W., now seventeen years old, had arrived with his teacher in a flashy yet elegant automobile, which could concur with Eli’s own drive. With him came a man Eli knew as Fletcher Hamilton. A man to whom belonged the voice beckoning a simple word Daniel, looming somewhere behind his consciousness while he’d been hauled on the ground by the oilman’s grip. He couldn’t tell how long such attempts had held up for, as mud had barged into Eli’s eyes, ears and mouth.
The preacher wasn’t sure if he should extol him for it or curse his name for daring to have remained there and watched.
The Plainview heir graced Eli with a polite look of dark eyes. He conducted himself neatly, in a tailored dark suit, and a head of dark hair combed to the back. You’d think Abel had been some great man to him. Delicate features of his face couldn’t seem to arrange in Eli’s mind as derived from those sharp feline lines he’d committed to memory. It made you wonder how he had come from him; how something so crude, so overtly savage could lend a hand in producing a thing so innocent, uncompromised?
Some of that virtue disbanded, as the boy had laid that first gaze onto Mary. She returned what looked like condolences he expressed in a swift movement of his hands. To Eli’s surprise, she signed back. In fact, she seemed quite operative. Quiet, they spoke with their eyes and with their hands down by their bellies.
Eli felt somehow galled by the fact they could well be saying anything, and yet he wouldn’t know.
The desolation remained. It wasn’t clean for the mind.
That’s for the best, Eli thought, breaking through to his heart which sulked and brooded in the dry, thin air on the known tract back home. They spent those late hours together by the table, assembled around the dim light of the oil lamp.
Eli had touched on the affair of the will, it had been discussed, but soon Ruth proclaimed it was unseemly and she was going home, beckoning Thomas to take little Frances who had fallen asleep in the vestibule.
Cicadas didn’t sleep, and neither did he. As the heat melted with the elope of the sun, the evening laid its kiss on the azure soil. Its chilly breath played in his hair as the fiery tears of the sky were slowly dissipating, compromised like scolded dogs.
Dim whites of his eyes fixed on the horizon. The one constant and cruel.
“Who are you waiting for?” He heard behind himself the novelty, which was now Mary’s new, full-fledged voice.
Eli didn’t respond for a longer moment. He could only imagine how she felt welcoming that small joy amongst the sea of woe. Even if it lasted but a blink of an eye before said joy climbed into the passenger seat once again to be separated from the common people.
“No one.”
“I like your hair. It’s a bit long, though.” Her spirits seemed high. Perhaps there was something she wasn’t telling.
“Will you cut it for me before I leave?”
He’d spent that night on his old bunk, and it was like a nightmare, truly; one could not describe his joy upon opening the eyes to see his suit and hat lying loyally on the chair.
Eli’s father had passed. But the war was over. And with it came back William Bandy.
William was a new presence to be sure. In the otherwise sulky household where the air was lush with prayer, he almost seemed an intruder. The most polite intruder. His straight white teeth shone with an aggressive gleam, as his shoulder pranced with vigour. He’d lost weight.
“Beans.” He commented, as Eli’s hand closed instinctively on the arm now somehow withered.
“You did well by the Lord.”
“Eli. I’m sorry, I didn’t show…”
Eli’s slender frame almost froze, at the healthy, bull-like grasp. He looked like a young sailor. His blond hair, curled ever so slightly at the ends, adorned symmetrical features.
“William.” He put a hand on his shoulder. “I missed you.”
He squinted at the rigorous greeting. Nearly as though Eli was welcoming his disciple who’d returned to him from a land far away. He stretched his head moving it from side to side. It was red from the sun, a healthy kiss of the desert.
They spent that day at William’s. Old Bandy was absent, and to Eli it was inconceivable the man of his age still had strength for galavanting.
William made them both coffee and they sat on the porch. “Pity. He would have liked to have seen you, Eli.”
Dusting that place off carefully, the preacher settled in the shadow offered by what the Curtises wouldn't dare call a verandah.
He could well understand, certainly, why William sought solace there, why he'd so rarely graced the town with its presence. It seemed almost fortuitous Eli should catch him.
“My duties call me. I’ve already overstayed. Wanted to do right by Abel.”
“It was so unexpected.”
“It was hardly unexpected.” Said Eli, voice brassy.
William decided not to dig deeper. His eyes moved for a moment before he reached for something from his jacket. It was a hip flask. Eli didn’t even have the mind in him to question this shameless indulgence, even as the sun was as high as it only could be. But it was too his house. And he was his only friend.
The Bandy boy had welcomed a new prospect as well. During his short visit in Ventura, having returned to the country, he disclosed a peculiar meeting. A man he’d met in a bar, and began conversing with once the gentleman learned of William’s veteranship.
“ See? ” He said to the other man he was with. “ See? They’re sending the young blood across the ocean, say, young man, is it true what they’ve been talkin’ about in the papers?”
And William said alright, some of it, most of it, he could dare say, but he hadn’t yet had time to catch up. They had pleasant talk until the first man squinted at him.
“Look at him, Joseph would like him.”
Said Joseph, or Bowyer was allegedly a character in Hollywood, one William could reach out to if it met his fancy, his kind friends even gave him his card. They even paid for him, saying their goodbyes and shaking his hand.
“That was…the nicest thing that came out of all of this.” Said he to Eli, who examined the card in his slender fingers.
“I'm happy for you. And I know you'll make the best of it."
William's downcast stare teased the inside of the flask. "I hope."
Then came time for Eli to share of his reifs. He finished that story with a chuckle.
“Would you look at that…those roughnecks, those lease hounds…They’re not heartless creatures.”
”One in a hundred, I reckon.” William smiled back.
Then he stood up, some idea brewing in his head.
"Someone ought to calculate that.” He said in a showy voice and Eli could tell he was a natural. “Send us another one! Excuse me, Uncle Sam, there's been a grave misunderstanding! Refund! We want one with a heart!”
“It’s getting late.”
“Why don’t you stay the night?”
“I can’t, I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Let me walk you then.”
It was just another night in Little Boston. Just another one of those he’d befriended and made enemies of. Two slender silhouettes made their way through the plains, as trees distant stared at them with chupacabric arms. As they were nearing their destinations, Eli stopped for a moment. He sat on the ground.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.” He said again.
And so they stayed for just a moment longer, on the tough ground that did them no service. The evening cut William’s jaw so perfectly, that Eli could not understand how he’d been the one to have been pillaged.
“I…didn’t have to, you know,” William spoke to the air. “Grandpa needed help back home, I could be excused. But I didn’t want that y’see…It wasn’t right.”
“Eli, we are barren.” He said. “How else you’re gonna help your country? With rocks and goats and…”
“With oil.” Eli shrugged. “We have oil here, that means something.”
The Bandy boy nodded. His absorption cracked once again, and it was glaringly obvious, how often he was reaching for his hip flask.
“Eli, am I soft?” William asked him. “I don’t know…I…Some folks didn’t even flinch…”
Eli was silent.
“Does the Lord want us to fight bravely or shed tears while we do it? I don’t know, Eli, I don’t know Him like you do.”
“He never responds to me. Does He love me, Eli?”
William leaned on him, idle, and Eli wondered if he knew how lovely he looked like that. His light eyes shivered under the dim orange glow of the lantern. Moonshine danced in their thoughts. Silvery string of heat grazing their dormant bodies.
”Eli…” William mumbled through his lush, pink lips.
He didn’t know what he was asking for. But Eli knew.
“You’re so lovely like this.” He murmured to the boy’s nape. It glistened lazily with sweat. ”You know that. I bet you know that. You’ve always been, William.”
William shook in something akin to embarrassment.
“Eli, what are you saying?”
The dark eyes grew larger, asking.
“Is there something wrong? You don't think you’re lovely? You must think you are, William, If you didn’t, you wouldn’t go there be in the pictures, now would you?”
William was silent. Then he hummed, coy.
“A little.”
“A little?” Eli smiled his cherubic smile ”Just a little? Now that can’t be all? If you were just a little lovely, William, would you go and leave everything to an accident?”
Pearly eyes of young Bandy raised to him breaking through the haze. His brows danced.
“I suppose.” He almost hiccuped. “Eli, I’m not gonna….I’m not gonna be in the pictures…maybe propaganda ones, God. He didn’t say that, but I knew what he meant. How pitiful.”
The desert hummed in their ears.
“Eli, you think we-”
“Yes.” Eli breathed and grabbed onto William with barely concealed hunger. It was almost like the space broad around them had filled with toxic fumes and there William was his only window of air.
They fell onto the ground, fiddling with each other, it was Eli who found his place against the smooth rock.
“Eli…” William broke the kiss laying on top of him like a confused dog who’d just pawed at a little bird. With no intention to hurt, no…
“Don’t stop.” Eli breathed nearly pleading. He had to have this. There wasn’t just any way around it. He had to.
William’s eyes were like two lanterns, slightly shaking. The expression that floated over the preacher was unreadable, was it the rattle of their bones, was it the dimness that brazened but detached?
“C’mon” Eli found himself saying. And who was William to be stronger than him? Who was he to try and flaunt his own restraint?
William bent forward, his ox-like shoulders closing on his sides, as that lovely face that’d seen France hung uncertain.
“I’m not sure about this…”
“Why are you doing this to me?” The sting in Eli’s heart was inflated, but it was still there. “I thought, I thought…”
“Eli.” Bandy was too close to crying. “Can I still be something else…with this blood on my hands? Oh, Eli I see it as clearly as I see you….”
No matter what he did, it was a coyote face that lingered. Revolted still, the sentiment just made him shudder in hunger.
“I’ll absolve you. Come closer to me.”
“Please.”
You’d laid your rotten seed in me.
And William did.
Their lips pepperd against each other, here Eli knew he wasn’t getting much, perhaps somewhere else. Although his grip on him wasn’t something that his body had heralded. It wasn’t how he thought it’d feel.
You’d laid your rotten seed in me.
Eli looked down at his consolation prize, who descended.
“Be- ahh …Be good to me…”
Shivers went through him as he’d realized he wanted to use his mouth on him. Disgust and excitement he knew strained in his core like a too-tight knot.
Cobalt reigned in front of his leaden retina; he let out a trembling sigh of rapture. It didn’t take long.
Feast of famine before him.
Where is my cold embrace of Hell?
A pert, apricot serpentine loomed somewhere in the distance, and Eli envisioned should William’s hands be not soft with him, should they be calloused, rough, and dexterous, should his mouth be not the sweet mouth of a lady, should it be a gaping hole taking a taste of him as it’d once promised.
William looked at Eli who, rammed against a round rock, had an expression on his face. Reverie broke through the breath of his climax. Some very noble thought, he could not read, but he trusted Eli, he trusted him with his life.
He saw him twist a small pebble in hand, pressing against his scratched, open palm. Firm then firmer.