Lily Page 5

  Right on schedule, the bus came crawling down the street. It pulled up in front of the gas station with a hiss like a hundred horses sighing, and the doors opened. Lily’s mother started up the stairs, and Lily stepped on behind her.

  “Two tickets to Pilotsville,” her mother told the driver, a young man with closely-cropped hair and large teeth.

  The man grinned, making his teeth seem even bigger. “Sorry,” he said. “This bus only goes as far as Salvation. Special charter for the big meeting there. Wouldn’t even be stopping here except as I need gas.”

  “When’s the next bus to Pilotsville?” her mother asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” the driver said. “All the buses tonight are only going to Salvation.”

  Lily’s mother sighed. “Well, I guess it’s better than nowhere. Maybe we can find someone there to take us to Pilotsville.”

  “Never know what you’ll find in Salvation,” the young man said, handing her two tickets and taking the money she took from her bag.

  Lily and her mother started down the aisle of the bus as the man shut the doors and pulled away. The seats were filled with people talking to one another, eating sandwiches, and knitting. Many of the people were reading black books, their lips moving silently as they turned the thin pages. Towards the back of the bus there were two empty seats, one on either side of the aisle. Lily’s mother sat in one, and Lily slipped into the other beside an old woman whose white hair looked as soft as lamb’s wool. She was clutching one of the black books in her tiny hands, and there was a bouquet of sunflowers on her lap.

  The woman smiled at her, and Lily smiled back. She was thankful to be sitting. It was very hot, but the motion of the bus as it rolled along created a small breeze that darted in the open window and played with her hair. She shut her eyes and let the steady rhythm of the wheels settle into her bones. She had never been on a bus before, or even in a car, and she felt as though she’d been swallowed up by a large animal that was now running down a road as she floated in its belly.

  Outside the bus, the night sped along beside her as the town was left behind and a flat stretch of road rolled ahead of them, disappearing into the blackness. Lily was tired, and she almost wished the bus would roll on forever while she slept. She didn’t know where she would be when the doors opened again, but she knew that, wherever it was, she would still be unhappy and she would still be carrying the girl who brought death inside of her.

  Just as she was beginning to drift off to sleep, Lily heard someone begin to sing. The voice came from behind her, rising up like a crow and flapping around in the air. “Jesus is my King,” said the voice in an ancient warble. “Jesus is my Lord.”

  Another voice took up the song, and soon the bus was filled with the sounds of many different voices mingling in happy, if not exactly tuneful, joy. “Jesus is my King. Jesus is my Lord. I’m coming home to see Him with gladness in my heart.”

  Raised from sleepiness by the singing, Lily sat up and looked around. All throughout the bus, men, women, and children were joining in the song. Some began to clap, and soon the bus was vibrating with the sounds of hands slapping together. Lily looked over at her mother, who had fallen asleep and somehow managed to stay so despite the rousing activity. Her head tilted to one side, and her lips were parted slightly.

  “How come you all aren’t singing?” asked the woman next to her in a gentle voice.

  “I don’t know the words,” Lily said.

  The old woman smiled. “It’s one of my favorites,” she said. “We always sing it at the meetings. You’ll learn it there. You are going to the meeting, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know about the meeting,” said Lily. “We’re just on our way to Pilotsville.”

  “You should come to meeting,” the woman said. “Nothing like it at all anywhere in the world.”

  Lily was filled with curiosity. “What kind of meeting is it?” she asked.

  “Why, the Reverend Silas Everyman’s Holy Gospel Caravan, of course,” said the woman. “Don’t you know it?”

  “We’re not from around here,” said Lily.

  The woman laughed. “Reverend Silas’s known everywhere. He’s a miracle worker. The Lord touched him when he was a child, and ever since then he’s been doing His work.”

  “What kind of work?” asked Lily.

  “Healing,” the woman said. “Saving souls, fighting the Devil himself. He has the power of Jesus, he does. Last year at meeting he put his hands on Bessie Crauck and took the cancer right out of her. I saw it myself. And, oh, his preaching. You should see the souls rush to his feet when he gives the call.”

  Lily was confused. “He puts his hands on people?” she asked.

  The woman nodded. She held up her own small, delicate hands and pressed them out towards Lily. “He lays them on you,” the woman said, her eyes filled with wonder. “And the spirit of the Lord himself moves through him and into you. Bessie said it was like receiving an electric shock it was so powerful. Right near lifted her off her feet.”

  “And this heals people?”

  “Burnt Bessie’s cancer clean out of her,” the woman said. “Praise Jesus.”

  Lily put her hands in her lap and dug the nails into her palms. “Can he do anything else?”

  “He can do anything,” said the woman. “I’ve seen him make the blind see and the lame walk. I’ve seen old men throw out their canes and dance just from his touch. Child, the Reverend Silas Everyman is God’s messenger and instrument, plain and simple.”

  Tears ran down the woman’s face as she held her hands up again. “Praise Jesus, he saved me.”

  Lily couldn’t help but stare at the woman as she cried. Nothing of what she said made any sense to Lily, but she seemed to believe that the Reverend Everyman could work magic. And the talk about his hands made Lily wonder if, like herself, he saw what others couldn’t. She wondered if he knew how to stop the magic as well, and if he could take it from her hands into his. Her head half-filled with thoughts, she settled back into her seat and listened as the chorus of voices rose up in a great fountain and broke over her head.

  After an hour had passed during which the passengers had sung dozens of songs and shouts of “Praise Jesus!” had sailed out the windows like candy wrappers tossed into the wind and left to blow about the lonely highway, the bus pulled off the paved road onto a dirt one. It bumped and ground its way for another twenty minutes until, cresting a hill, it descended into a valley filled with cars and trucks and people.

  “It’s Salvation!” cried the woman next to Lily, and the passengers cheered.

  Lily peered out the window and saw that the bus was headed for what looked like a small village lit with colored lights that twinkled on and off in random patterns. She saw hundreds of people walking excitedly towards the village, their faces alive with smiles. Even the children being dragged or carried along seemed filled with excitement, despite the fact that most of them should have been asleep hours ago.

  The bus came to a stop, and the people gathered up their things and filed off quickly. Lily and her mother were the last to leave, stepping out into the sea of scurrying people and pressing against the side of the bus so as not to be swept up in it.

  “We have to find a bus that’s leaving here,” her mother said. “There has to be a way out.”

  Lily wasn’t listening. She felt something in the air, a feeling of excitement that flowed out of the bodies of the people rushing by her and made her head swim. They were all eager to see something, and Lily knew that what they were so eager to see was Reverend Silas Everyman. Again she thought about what the woman on the bus had said, and she made a decision. While her mother scanned the plain of cars for a bus, she stepped quickly into the crowd and was carried away towards the lights.

  E I G H T

  THE SINGING WAS starting to annoy Baba Yaga.

  “Jesus is my King,” warbled the woman behind her, very loudly and very much in Baba Yaga’s ear.

  “King,” Baba
Yaga said, snorting. “There’s nothing so very special about a king. They die like any other man. Usually worse, because somehow they don’t think it will ever happen to them. That’s the fault of their mothers.”

  “Jesus is my Lord,” the woman shouted.

  Baba Yaga turned to the child seated beside her. The girl was perhaps eight or nine years old. She was part of a family of twelve that was scattered throughout the bus. To her credit, she had sat quietly with her hands in her lap for the duration of the ride. Baba Yaga attributed this to the fact that with so many siblings, she was probably used to not being heard, and had simply given up trying.

  “Who is this Jesus?” Baba Yaga asked her.

  The girl blinked bright blue eyes. “The son of God,” she said.

  Baba Yaga sighed. “Which one?” she said impatiently.

  The girl seemed not to understand the question.

  “Which god?” Baba Yaga tried.

  The girl shrugged. “Just God. Him.” She pointed to the roof of the bus, as if the father of Jesus was perched up there.

  “Don’t be dim,” said Baba Yaga. “It’s tiresome.”

  The girl turned away, not even having the sense to understand that she was very close to being eaten. Baba Yaga considered pinching her, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for it.

  “I’m coming home to see Him with gladness in my heart,” exclaimed a chorus of voices.

  Baba Yaga began humming to herself, a wild tune she had learned as a girl. She’d long forgotten the words, but the melody remained, haunting the halls of her memory. It was, she thought, something about a man who had lost his true love to a wolf. Or perhaps the man had fallen in love with a wolf. Whatever the case, the tune fought against the singing of the bus passengers.

  As she hummed, Baba Yaga sought out the girl called Lily. She sat a few rows up, on the other side of the aisle. She was talking with her seatmate, and seemed interested in whatever conversation they were having. Baba Yaga wished she were sitting closer, or that the people singing would be quiet. Now they were clapping as well, making it utterly impossible to hear anything other than their inane voices.

  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her own song, but the man and the wolf slipped away from her. The melody stumbled, then died away as Jesus the King rose up triumphant and filled the world with his glory.

  “Jesus is my Lord,” sang the girl next to Baba Yaga, her voice thin and wavering.

  Baba Yaga glared at her, and the girl stuck out her tongue.

  “Maybe there’s hope for you after all,” Baba Yaga said. She admired this show of defiance from the child, however small it might be and however much it was directed at her. It showed that the girl had some spirit. Probably not enough to ever become someone interesting, but maybe. If the world didn’t crush her.

  She glanced again at Lily. The girl was looking out the window with a hopeful expression. Something had changed. Baba Yaga wondered what it was. She would find out soon enough, she imagined. In the meantime, she closed her eyes and cursed Jesus the King and the god who sired him.

  N I N E

  THE CROWD MOVED around her in swift eddies, people talking in excited voices and pointing towards the colored lights blinking like electric berries. Lily found herself filled with a growing sense of excitement as she lost herself in the shifting patterns of people. The air was warm and filled with a sweet smell, and she quickly forgot about her mother.

  After several minutes, she came to the edge of the village, and she saw that it was actually a group of tents arranged in row after row. They were striped in red and white, and from each one flags fluttered like clothes on a line. The lights she had seen were strung between the tents, covering everything in a galaxy of colored stars.

  “Come inside,” said a woman standing on a small platform that rose up out of the crowd. She had wings like an angel, and her blonde hair fell around her shoulders in waves. She leaned out over the crowd, beckoning to them with a long, delicate finger tipped in gold. “Welcome to the Holy Gospel Caravan,” she said, her voice filled with joy. “Come inside and see the miracles of the Lord.”

  Lily stared up at her, transfixed, while people moved around her to enter the tent city. The woman’s wings shimmered gold and blue in the lights, and she seemed to float in the air as she called to the people in her sing-song voice. The woman looked down at her and smiled. “Come,” she said, looking into Lily’s eyes. “See the miracles awaiting you inside. Come find what you are looking for.”

  The crowd jostled Lily, and she allowed herself to be pushed along until she was standing among the tents, clutching her small bag of belongings to her chest as she tried to figure out what to do next. As she looked around, she saw that the tents all held different things. On one side of her was a row of booths offering games. Inside them, wheels spun and rows of bottles waited to be knocked down by people throwing balls. On the other side were tents with closed flaps. Standing outside each one was a strangely-dressed person calling out to tell the people what was inside.

  Lily walked down the row of tents, looking at each one. She wasn’t sure where she was going, and didn’t even know really what she was searching for. She wondered where she would find the Reverend Silas Everyman. She knew he must be somewhere inside the tent city, but she had no idea where.

  “You there,” said a loud voice. Lily looked around. A clown was staring at her. His face was painted white, and there were large red dots on his cheeks. His hair was an explosion of yellow, and he was dressed in a baggy suit of white and blue silk. He danced over to where Lily stood, his feet making big jumps through the air. When he reached her, he held up his hands, which were also white.

  “Would you like to see a trick?” he said.

  Lily nodded.

  The clown grin-ned and rolled his eyes. He reached behind Lily’s ear and pulled out a white flower. He held it out to her, laughing. He leaned towards her, “It’s the flower of salvation,” he whispered. “Picked just for you.”

  Lily was puzzled. The flower was beautiful, but she didn’t understand what the man was asking her. She remembered how her mother had exchanged coins for food. “I have no money.”

  The man laughed. “You can’t buy the flower,” he said. “You must simply ask for it. Do you want it? Do you want salvation?”

  Lily looked at the flower in the clown’s hand. Then she looked at his face. Close up, she saw that some of the white makeup had worn away in spots, and that beneath it she could see his skin. There was a long scar running the length of his cheek, and the makeup was caked over it in a thick line. His eyes inside their blue circles of paint were bloodshot, and stared at her in much the same way that the man at the gas station had.

  She turned and ran away, pushing her way through the crowd and making several turns between the rows of tents. She hoped he wasn’t following her, and when she looked behind her, she was relieved to see that he was nowhere to be seen.

  She stood in the small space between two tents and listened. Somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of music playing. It was a sad, lonely tune played on a flute, and it reminded her of the sea and twilight and feeling alone. It seemed to rise above the tents and spread out over the tops of the flags.

  Listening for the music to tell her where to go, Lily worked her way deeper and deeper into the tent village. She passed tents filled with people singing, animals dressed in coats and hats, and a man walking on legs twelve feet high. She saw a little girl eating a purple cloud from a stick, and three boys riding one bicycle. But none of it interested her enough to abandon the call of the music.

  She turned a corner and saw the tent she was looking for. The flap hung partially opened, and the music poured from the inside like a thin stream of clear water. The flag fluttering at the pinnacle of the tent was blue, and there was a crescent moon on it. Unlike the rest of the place, the tent was not surrounded by throngs of curious people looking inside or hanging around waiting to see who went in or out. It was
oddly quiet, and Lily was all alone as she approached.

  She peered past the flap and saw that the inside of the tent was filled with flickering light from many burning candles, and in the center was a small table. A woman sat on one side of it, facing the opening to the tent and looking at a series of cards laid out before her. She appeared lost in concentration, and did not look up when Lily entered. Behind her, a small child sat on a low stool.

  It was the child who played the flute, although he appeared to be no more than three or four years old. The slender reed sang as he ran his tiny fingers up and down its length, his lips blowing a steady stream of air into its throat. When he looked up and saw Lily watching, he stopped playing and looked at her with dark eyes.

  I was wrong, Lily thought, unsettled by the way she was being looked at. It isn’t a child at all. It’s a very old man.

  The woman seated at the table looked up at Lily. Her eyes shone even in the dim light of the tent, and Lily found herself unable to speak as the woman studied her face.

  “The music,” she said. “I heard the music and I came.”

  “What did the song say to you?” asked the woman.

  It seemed to Lily an odd question. “It spoke of light and sadness and the heart.” She paused. “And it spoke to me of death.” She didn’t know why she suddenly thought of these things, but she realized that she had been thinking them all along as she followed the music to the tent.

  “You heard its words well. Come.” The woman gestured to the empty chair across the table from her own.

  Lily went to the chair and sat. She looked at the cards on the table. They were covered in pictures, and when she looked at them she felt her mind filling with voices.