Son of the Morning Read online

  If he did not speak of his early visions it was because, lacking a sense of their strangeness, not knowing they did not appear to everyone else, he was simply ignorant: simply a child.

  In a waking trance he saw Jesus, and heard Jesus’s gentle words, and even took Jesus’s hand when it was offered to him. As everyone did. After all—they sang of Jesus, did they not? They smiled happily, their eyes glistened with joy, they knew all the words of all the stanzas, did they not? He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am his own . . . Reverend Sisley spoke easily and companionably of Jesus; it seemed to Nathan that the man was only telling them what Jesus had told him, and that was why they must listen, must honor his ministry. (Years later, talking with the theology student Japheth Sproul, Nathan had to admit it still seemed preposterous to him—that the altogether goodhearted, zealous Baptist minister had not, in fact, directly spoken to Jesus at all; had never even seen Jesus!)

  Something moved above the cradle—a hand, a face?—and though Nathan could hear raised voices in the darkness he was not frightened, for the person who stared at him, leaning over his motionless, crafty little body, surely meant him no harm. Nathan? Nathanael? The voices rose and fell. Distant, they were—caught up with the wild, buoyant cries of the wind at the top of the house. There was a man said to be his grandfather, and a woman said to be his grandmother. And another woman said to be his mother. He had pressed himself against her body, trying to burrow into her soft, warm, intoxicating flesh, but he had failed: and so he lay alone in the dark—alone, waiting, staring at the stranger who approached him.

  No need for fear. No need to cringe beneath the covers, his knees drawn up against his chest. Jesus saw, Jesus knew. Nathanael? He whispered.

  The voices quarreled as they must, and someone wept; and the noise was mixed in with the sound of the wind, picking at the shingles of the roof.

  “They cannot touch you, not even to bless you,” Jesus said.

  Nathan listened eagerly.

  “. . . certainly not to hurt you,” Jesus said.

  (Which turned out to be true.)

  “The inhabitants of this world cannot touch you, neither to bless nor to hurt,” Jesus whispered. “Will you remember? For you are of the same substance as I—you are not like other men.”

  Nathan stared. He knew he must reply, but he did not know what words to use. And so he said nothing—but as his dry lips twitched, Jesus heard and understood just the same; Nathan’s unvoiced words slipped into His heart as a thread is slipped into the eye of a needle—in an instant, with extraordinary grace. And so it came to pass that Jesus knew in His heart what Nathan wished to say, and He drew closer to the bed, saying, “Will you remember? Always remember? The fruitless sorrow of the world of other people, and my blessing—?” and the fingertips that touched Nathan’s overheated skin were cool, marvelously cool. He was to remember them, that particular startling pressure, all his life.

  “I thank you, Jesus,” he whispered.

  So he knew himself blessed by Christ from that hour forward.

  Yet in a dream he could not resist fighting his way to a mirror, to see; to know. The mirror would tell him whether the mark of Christ’s fingers was on his forehead and whether the secret baptism would be proclaimed to the world.

  But there was nothing—no sign.

  Merely a child’s face. The chin rather weak, the nose long and pale and sensitive, the eyes dark, the lips trembling. A dreamface trapped in a dream-mirror, across which dream-fingers groped frantically. No sign? No sign?

  “No? No? But why?” he cried aloud.

  For days afterward he tried to tell his grandparents about what had happened during the night. He chattered, he interrupted himself, words flew from him in garbled breathy patches; he flung his hands about. His grandfather pretended to be listening closely. Then he peered at him over the top of his glasses and gave him a rough hug, saying, “What a lively little cuss, eh?” and made him a present of a twist of stale licorice out of the box he kept in his desk drawer, to hand out to children who behaved well when he examined them; and so Nathan knew that his grandfather did not understand. His grandmother appeared to be more interested. She questioned him closely about Jesus—what He was wearing, what His hair was like, what words, exactly, did He use—and gazed with love at Nathan as he spoke, brushing his hair from his forehead. “Jesus did come to you, and Jesus did bless you,” she said, stooping to embrace him, “and do you know why? Because you’re made in His image. Because He loves little children best, little children like yourself—because He is always with you.”

  Words choked and frightened him. Sometimes he stammered—there was so much to be said, and adults did not take time to listen, not to really listen. If he ran into the kitchen to tell Grandmother Vickery that Mrs. Stickney was coming up the front walk, or that one of the heavy quilts she was airing had fallen to the ground, she reacted at once; she believed. If he ran up to her to speak of Jesus she smiled and listened patiently, and when he paused, breathless, overwrought, she dampened a cloth at the sink to press against his forehead and asked if he would like something cool to drink—fruit juice or tomato juice? And wasn’t he exciting himself too much? He had a weak chest, he often began coughing helplessly and couldn’t stop for several minutes.

  There were times when he despaired of explaining anything to them, and so he tried to draw instead—feverish spirals and eyes that stared and stared and stared, as Christ’s did: looking directly into your soul. The eyes gave way to suns, the suns to balls of blazing flame. It exhausted him to do these drawings, hunched over strips of shelving paper his grandmother had given him; his heart beat quickly as his hand moved, knowing that he must fail—it was impossible to draw what he had seen. Christ’s gentleness, Christ’s sorrowful, patient smile; the bruises and scratches on His forehead; His somber, loving voice as well—impossible to express all that he had witnessed! So he crouched above the messy drawings, trembling with frustration.

  Then he tried to write, imitating his grandfather’s handwriting and other handwritings he had seen. He filled up pages he dared not show anyone, fearing they would laugh; certainly the other children in the neighborhood, and his cousin Davy Sayer, would ridicule him—already ridiculed him for the stories he told. And then again he could not resist showing what he had written to his grandmother, and sometimes to his grandfather as well—for it seemed to him that they must understand, that his meaning was clear enough. Hadn’t the frantic lines and squiggles that ran across the pages been driven by a passion that went beyond Nathan, that came directly from God?—

  But his grandparents saw only

  and sometimes humored him by saying that in another year he would learn to write. But clearly they did not understand.

  IN THE MT. LAMBETH TABERNACLE of Jesus Christ Risen it was Jesus Himself who appeared to Nathan and beckoned him to come forward.

  And so he obeyed. As he was always to obey.

  The singing and the chanting and the raucous, discordant music faded; the floorboards ceased to tremble beneath his feet; his panic lessened. Nathanael, came the whisper. Nathanael: you know Me: come forward.

  He had known beforehand that something would happen to him that evening. He had known. Ascending into the foothills, clutching his grandmother’s damp hand, he had known; and he had been frightened. The Holy Spirit would pour Himself into Nathan’s flesh and that flesh would be illuminated; and what if it were burned away, charred hideously?—what if everyone who gazed upon him screamed in horror? Yet it must be: it must come to pass. He would not dare resist. Thus far nearly every visitation of Christ had taken place in secrecy, sometimes in his bed, sometimes in the carriage house or in the unused chicken coop; or back in the woods, or the irrigation ditch, where he could talk aloud freely and not be overheard by his grandparents or other children. Every visitation had been gentle and dreamlike and assuasive; the person of Christ had not been overwhelming, not very physical; His message to Nathan had always been a
private one. But Nathan had known as Mr. Bell drove them deeper and deeper into the foothills that the evening’s revelation would be like no other he had ever experienced, and that he would never be the same again.

  The midsummer heat: the noiseless bodiless flashes of lightning: Grandmother Vickery’s and the Bells’ increasing nervousness. It was clear that something was going to happen. He felt his heart race and he had to fight the instinct to move about, to shift his weight from foot to foot, to mutter aloud. No, he didn’t want to be here tonight; not in the poorly whitewashed little church with the clumsy steeple; not in the presence of Brother Micah, whom God had surely touched. A moment’s exchange of glances—Brother Micah’s queer green eyes flashing into his—and he had known, had known. There would be a revelation, the very landscape would come crashing through the windows, the clotted, layered sky would be pierced; nothing would ever be the same again. Jesus, he begged, don’t come for me here: not here: not tonight.

  Brother Micah led them in prayer. Nathan pressed his hands against his face, shutting his eyes tight. Words scuttled about, brushed near him, fell away. He had no need of words. Then the little congregation began to sing, keeping time with the music by clapping hands and stamping feet. The building shuddered and rocked. Nathan’s mouth went dry. When he drew his hands away from his eyes he saw that the interior of the church was bathed in light, and for an instant he thought it was lightning, or the setting sun, or a prodigiously bright moon. Brother Micah’s face glowed with perspiration, the guitarist’s narrow, intense face glowed, the boy with the ukulele played as if the Holy Spirit Himself were guiding his fingers—and still Nathan prayed that the miracle would not happen. Not in front of so many people—so many witnesses.

  He heard his name called. The voice was a familiar one. Nathan. Nathanael. The light grew stronger, searing his eyes. He would have liked to hide his face but there was no hiding from the Holy Spirit.

  The floor shook beneath his feet. He was being drawn forward, like a sleepwalker he was being drawn forward; the interior of the church blazed. Dimly figures danced about him, their faces indistinct. The brilliance of the Holy Spirit was such that ordinary human beings were hardly more than blurs, shadows, phantasms. Suddenly he remembered having seen such creatures before—in a void of sheer, quivering light, a radiance ten times brighter than the sun, where bodiless souls flowed into one another, blending with tiny stings of pleasure, fainting together like water plunging into water. Before he and God were separated: were two. Before the turbulence of birth.

  And so he was no longer terrified. It was a coming-home, then; a return. The Holy Spirit drew him deeply into the center of the void, setting his feet hard upon the rock of faith, of God’s love. How could he wish to resist, how could he have been frightened? For you are of the same substance as I, Christ had whispered. You are not like other men.

  At the very center of the palpitating light there was not the human figure of Christ but the spirit, the form of Christ: Christ’s voice: toward which Nathan hurried. Nathan, Nathanael. My own child. No one else mattered. No one else existed. Brother Micah had disappeared, Grandmother Vickery had disappeared, no one was in this place but Nathan, nearly blinded by the intensity of God’s light. He was aware of dim, shadowy things, of illusory creatures; mere phantoms of the Devil’s imagination. He was aware of the fact that through God’s intervention he, Nathanael Vickery, had absolute power over these creatures, and that they could do him no harm.

  Suddenly he was being lifted bodily into the air. It was Christ Himself, now in His physical manifestation, who bore him aloft, caught snug in the crook of His muscular arm. The Devil’s creature whipped and coiled about them futilely, lashing against Nathan’s face. But it had no power! No power! The Devil himself had no power! Christ cried in a ringing, terrible voice, holding Nathan high above the multitude so that all could see: Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven . . .

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT before he came out of his trance, and even then he could not speak coherently. His small taut body was bathed in perspiration; his hair had become a damp, tangled mass of curls; the pupils of his eyes were dilated. Dr. Vickery examined him, whispering to himself in his panic. “What? What? What has happened to the child?” Mrs. Vickery, frightened into speechlessness, brought wet cloths and a rubber bag filled with ice water to control the fever. “Oh my dear God, what has happened to the child?” Dr. Vickery whimpered. He seized his grandson’s pale, peaked face in both hands and stared into the boy’s glassy eyes; he could not keep himself from crying openly.

  They put him into their big double bed and kept watch at his bedside. All that night Nathanael thrashed about, babbling, spittle edging out of the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolling. Dr. Vickery was concerned lest he swallow his tongue, or gnaw at the inside of his mouth, or dislocate his neck by whipping his head about so violently. “What has happened? What has happened?” The boy had been in perfect health—he had had no more than a cold that past winter, which he’d thrown off within a few days. And he had not been bitten by the copperhead. (The miracle was that no one had been bitten—no one at all. The snake-handling part of the services lasted between twenty and twenty-five minutes, and involved some six poisonous snakes and at least a dozen people; yet no one had been bitten, and the evening ended upon a jubilant, triumphant note.)

  But the child Nathanael continued to throw himself about, his legs kicking, his teeth grinding furiously; he clawed at the sheets they tried to draw up to his chin. Dr. Vickery, who knew about the Pentecostal ceremony but not about the snakes—for his wife had not had the courage to tell him—stared at the child’s pale, contorted face and could not think what to do. It was as if all his medical training and his years of experience had left him—had never been.

  What has happened to our strange, beautiful child, he wondered, is this the start of a neurological disorder?—a kind of epilepsy? Is it some sort of fever? Did he see something no one else saw?

  And how should he be treated?

  VIII

  His linen was never quite clean, and his little potbelly strained against his trousers. And his beard, graying more quickly than the hair on his head and being less bushy, less curly, sometimes took on a mangy, feeble appearance: so that, glancing at himself by accident in the unflattering mirror of a patient’s bathroom, or seeing his image rearing up defiantly in a glass, he sucked in his breath in alarm and did not know, when expelling it, whether to sigh mightily or to laugh.

  “Not quite the handsome old dog I used to be, eh? But no matter, no matter! Having women chase you—what’s the use?—only a lot of silly goddam fuss—needless complications—little melodramas—I never gave a damn, to tell the truth—was always a one-woman man, for better or worse, in sickness in health etcetera. You don’t believe me? It’s true, it’s true!”

  He muttered to himself, to Nathan and Mrs. Vickery and friends who stopped by, raising his eyebrows to show he was jesting—he was jesting. They should not take him seriously. He loved to complain about his own ailments—“Physician, heal thyself!—is that what you’re thinking, Nathan?”—and about his patients’ naïve faith in him; he loved to complain about those patients who were fanatically loyal, running to him with the most trivial of symptoms, and those patients who were indifferent to their own health—“As if they live in a body not their own, which they operate like a car or a tractor: which isn’t theirs. Such ignorance! Such asses!” There were those who paid their bills at once, in cash; and those (a growing number, unfortunately) who put off paying for months at a time, expecting Dr. Vickery to bill them as if he were running a big-city kind of business; there were those (also a growing number) who did not pay at all. It was logical for them to pay in installments for cars and refrigerators and overpriced clothes, but for health?—for their own health? Then there were those who not only wouldn’t pay, but couldn’t; and it was important that he respect their pride, their des
perate vanity, by appearing to believe they refused to pay out of stubbornness or even meanness, rather than that they were unable to pay at all. So he must press them for payments: but not too emphatically. And he must be sharp enough to distinguish between these people; an error on his part might lead to humiliation all around.

  “You let everyone take advantage of you,” his brother Ewell complained. “Then they imagine they can take advantage of me.”

  But Dr. Vickery was inclined to make excuses for them; he had the idea, after all, that he knew them better than anyone else did, since he tended to their bodies. Perhaps he was mistaken—his vanity often led him into sentimentality—but he defended them nevertheless. “They didn’t ask to come into the world,” he shrugged, “especially not this world. Especially not as themselves.”

  The recent war had come upon his generation too swiftly: far too much had happened. One day they had been assured there would be no war, there would never again be a war, and the next day there were confronted with enormous scare headlines and a peacetime draft and amazing prices, and finally the speeding-up of events that led to Pearl Harbor and the war in Europe—and everything shifted about, tossed into the air and allowed to fall where it would. Dr. Vickery had read about the Nazi concentration camps, he had studied certain photographs, and he had not quite—he had not quite been able to comprehend. (His wife, and many other Marsena citizens, did not read about such things at all: considered them none of their business.) Too much had happened since the late thirties. He could not hope to absorb it all; so he argued himself into believing he knew as much as he needed to know for his time and place. “I’m just a small-town G.P., after all,” he said often. There were younger men pressing forward—let them struggle as he’d struggled. Someday they would replace him; very good. He was willing to be replaced when the time came, but it would not be for many years. He planned to retire at seventy or seventy-five, or eighty. There was no hurry. When the time came he would be replaced by younger men, and he would not resist; but that time was far off.