“At the lookout Tower,” Micah replied. “On duty.” He ushered them to a seat.
“Is that his punishment?” Cal asked. He wanted to add for spilling the beans, but Micah’s confused look made him shake his head. “Never mind.”
Cal slid into the pew first, then Frida, and then Micah next to her. Cal faced forward because he didn’t want to seem too eager to sum up this group of people. They believed in containment, which probably meant they were skeptical of curiosity as well.
The women behind him were talking in hushed voices. He leaned back to listen.
“If you want to keep that shirt, you’ll need to retrieve it from the line while it’s still damp, before anyone else takes it for themselves. Not everyone here is as crazy about wearing the same clothing all the time as you are, they like to mix it up. And then you get upset.”
“I know, I know.” This woman gave a little laugh. “I shouldn’t care.”
“But you do. We all have those things. We can’t help it, even Mikey admits that.”
“True. I should just wash it already. It stinks!”
They both laughed and fell silent.
Cal placed his hand on Frida’s thigh and kept his gaze ahead. Micah had been right: this couldn’t have been how the Church looked originally. Surely, the ghost town’s stage would have been built of rough wood planks like everything else, or maybe bricks. In its place, the developers had built a smooth sanded stage, with a piping of metal around its soft edges. The door behind the stage matched.
Who was waiting behind the door? What was on the second floor?
A few people ventured to the front of the room to see Micah. One asked about something called Morning Labor, and another came to apologize for drinking the milk Micah had requested. “You never came for it. It was on its way to curd,” the man said, and laughed, trying to catch Cal’s eye and, when that didn’t work, Frida’s.
Micah sent away all of these visitors with a curt nod or a subtle shake of the head.
When he put his arm across Frida’s front and said to a visitor, “We’ll begin the meeting shortly,” Cal realized there was no one behind the stage door. The meeting would start when Micah started it. He was the televangelist here.
And just like that, the voices in the pews behind them faded away. Cal heard someone close the front doors, and a man’s baritone groan about the heat that would descend soon enough. The doors were reopened, and someone else, a woman, complained about the bugs that would soon be in the Church, attracted to the brightness. No one listened to her. Micah hoisted himself to standing.
He walked up the two steps leading to the stage and stood behind the pulpit. There had once been a microphone up there, no doubt, but now whoever wanted to keep the congregation’s attention simply had to project. But it wasn’t a problem, Micah’s voice was so loud, Cal leaned back.
“Peter was supposed to run tonight’s meeting, but it looks like you’re stuck with me.”
Cal had expected a more eloquent welcome from his brother-in-law, some comment on the evening, the day’s momentous events, but Micah acted as if nothing new had happened that day, as if he hadn’t in fact come back to life for his own sister. The lack of preamble should have eradicated Micah’s charm, but the people’s silence proved that they respected him, were magnetized by his presence alone.
Or maybe this was just normal. Perhaps the Land didn’t require niceties, fancy speeches. They’d stripped away the fake and dangerous veneer of modern culture, the one Cal himself had been eager to leave, in order to live freely. Micah was just being himself up there, and people were listening, not in the name of etiquette, but because it didn’t occur to them not to.
“I know we need to discuss Morning Labor and the issue with people missing their shifts, but…” Here Micah smiled, and a few people at the back of the Church laughed. Cal thought he heard someone stamping their feet.
“You all learned today that I have a sister and that she’s been just a few miles off for the past two years.” He paused. “As you probably already know, she’s here now. She’s come to the Land.”
Frida was leaning forward in the pew, her hands shaped into a steeple like the one above them. She reminded Cal of a high school basketball player, watching the game from the bench, hoping to be called in. Micah said her name, and her hands fell. She turned around to take in the crowd. Cal kept his eyes on Micah.
“Frida’s with an old friend of mine. His name is Cal. Short for Calvin, but call him Cal. Everyone does.”
So Cal wasn’t Frida’s husband, or even her partner, or her boyfriend. He was Micah’s pal.