LITMIR.BIZ

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it all figured out for us. ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for’—that was said by a man I think a few of you here have heard of. His name was Jesus and he’s saying: Sow your faith in Him. What’s that mean? It means: Don’t go hoping you’re going to change your situation overnight, buying lottery tickets with the chance you’ll score. Lottery winners, that’s just poor people with money. They get it only a while before it’s gone, because they’re not wealthy in the Holy Spirit. You have to be smarter than that.

      “I want to get results.” He points his finger at the audience, allowing his words to ring around the open auditorium. Then he continues. “Isn’t that what we’re asking? Well God’s got the answer. He’s been telling us since Adam and Eve: ‘You want results? Come to Me.’ He’s saying, plant a little mustard seed—come on, folks, we all know the parable—plant a little mustard seed of faith. Sow your faith and reap great rewards. . . .”

      The sermon lasts longer than Greuel had expected; his eyelids flutter as he drowses, and in his drowse he pictures the coffee and brunch coming after, the pleasures of food, medicine-sour stomach willing. Since he’s been sentenced to the wheelchair again he no longer cares about dietary concerns or his weight. How’s that for my reward, preacher? Still there is common ground to be found here. He’s guessing this Ponder has an interesting take on that rich man in heaven, camels through the needle’s eye, however that parable went. Common ground. His eyes open again and Greuel leans over to Noe.

      “This boy know anything about horses? He should be on his elbows at the rail.”

      Noe’s mirth is mechanical, functional, and silent. His yellow teeth bare and remain bared. He still betrays marks of the true morphine fiend himself, though he kicked it near twelve years ago and it’s hard to detect due to the blue pallor of his skin. Greuel hopes dope isn’t the link that brought Arley Noe to the preacher. He dismisses the notion as soon as it arises; Noe has too much of the unfeeling night about him, Greuel doesn’t think he feels hunger for anything but the fun of crime anymore. Now Brother Ponder is speaking of laboring to rest, and to sleep without worry because a person’s faith was enough to pluck them from debt, their little mustard seed was going to score them the house of their dreams one day.

      “I like him,” Greuel murmurs, “but I don’t trust the type as a rule. True believers worry. He won’t back out on us?”

      “We get the right signature on the right paper and him and his board can worry all they want, they won’t have a say to back out of,” says Arley.

      “I’ve noticed you’re a big supporter of the law when it’s on your side.”

      “It’s our game; we make the rules. The preacher stays quiet.”

      “It’s your game when I’m no longer around to play. Do we even have a claim on this land?”

      “I am not a believer. By your logic, I am not worried.”

      “Of course you’re not. I’m worried. I put up most the money and get to handle all the worry. We make a donation yet?”

      Noe nods, taps his knee. Brother Gil is still going at it from the stage, having broadened his sermon—is that what stands for worship nowadays, boogie jams and a sermon?—from the individual needs of the congregants to the enveloping needs of his ministry; specifically, the need to build their own Galilee and the fundraising required to make such a move possible. Again with mustard seeds. Greuel peers at his watch, scowling.

      “Thought you said this’d be over by noon.”

      “What the adverts say. Think I been here before?”

      Greuel snorts again, and the coat of flab that is his torso quakes at the precision of the absurd image his mind presents. “Not your style.”

      “I have no style. It’s a conscious decision.”

      Brother Gil stops in the midst of speaking as though he has overheard them, and glances at his own watch. It’s a gleaming timepiece over which Greuel furrows his brow with a curate’s informed inspection—the preacher wears a platinum Bulova encrusted with diamonds. Preaching must pay better than he gave it credit for. He marks a mental note to update his own watch even as he wonders whether later he’ll remember making the note at all. The preacher announces that his sermon needs to stop here.

      “We’ll pick this up another time. I could talk all day, most of you know that already, but you have lives to get back to. Come on, let’s bow these heads.”

      Quickly he runs through the invocation and benediction. Then the band starts up again and Ponder waves as he makes his way beneath the spotlight to the back of the stage, where he disappears. The applause is shortened by the number of people heading to the exits, the wheelchair sailing forth in the lead, Creed pushing from behind, Noe lagging off on his own. It bothers him how easily Noe can abandon him, but this afternoon Greuel has other things on his mind. He has made a decision, and it requires that he figure where he’s going to find the money to make some things happen now that Fleece Skaggs has disappeared with a season’s worth of reefer.

      It’s not like he was raised by wolves but Cole thinks himself half-feral, not exactly raised by anyone, a handful of aphorisms to guide his way. Do not cause waves. Don’t try to get famous. Never knock how a man makes his living. Never start a fight you can’t finish standing up. Never call a man a liar anywhere but to his face. The maxims carry the weight of eternal law. Keep your head to yourself and don’t go around with a greasy eye; there’s always someone slicker than you. Rules of conduct handed down by Fleece; navigating codes for Pirtle County and Lake Holloway; life advice for the little brother from the elder who warned he wouldn’t be around forever.

       Never corner something meaner than you.

      Fleece said: Anyone asks you live on the lake you best investigate why they asking. You may be Prather on paper but you’re still a Skaggs to lots of people here with long memories. Ol’ Bethel didn’t make friends. I haven’t rolled out the red carpet for you here either, come to think of it.

      And where are you now, big brother? What carpet have you rolled out for yourself, where did it lead?

      Already the rumors have started. Fleece Skaggs burned up his own car to throw off the scent. He’s kicking it easy with Mister Greuel’s run in the Panhandle somewhere. California. Fleece Skaggs saw his opening and took it, he’s the one who got away.

      Or: Mister Greuel had someone disappear that upstart and that is one body, man, nobody will ever find.

      His brother used to tease him that just because Cole was half-fool didn’t mean he couldn’t use the little sense he had. But when he was kneeling with Shady and Spunk looking over from the seminary rooftop at the sight of a Chevy Nova burning in the middle of the night he didn’t know what to make of its meaning. He knew only it was his brother’s car and that it meant nothing well.

      Cole says he’s from Lake Holloway but he spent only his first twelve years there. In Montreux, the city where he passed through high school as a guest in his uncle’s family, to say I grew up on the lake meant nothing; anything outside town is hicksville to the people there. In Pirtle County, though, lakers had earned a reputation nobody born to the fact could speak against. You either wrapped yourself in its dirty flag or moved away.

      It was the kind of place people often disappeared from. The manmade lake was originally part of a spa retreat built early in the century for wealthy families, but the spa failed before the Depression. A suspicious fire destroyed the resort hotel in time to help the original investors; then the forest overtook the walks and bungalows over the years, until scavenger types began to sneak in and lay claim, people Cole’s mother Lyda described simply as: us. Men with one pair of cracked leather boots and a duffel bag of laundry, who belt-chained their wallets and could never wash the dirt from their fingernails—the kind of men who fell in love with

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