CHAPTER 3
The Quest and Questions of the Quists
WHETHER THE INHABITANTS OF INDEPENDENCE WERE SLEEPING very soundly that night, or whether such trouble had been anticipated in official quarters, after the blinding firestorm that had been released from the Eye, the dark of stars and the dim reflections of the moon in pools and rivulets returned, afterimages dwindling away like fiery leaves turned to ash. A lone stable dog howled at the other end of town, answered by the cry of coyotes or a wild pack in the distance. Soon the morning light would come creeping across the sky, the aroma of breakfasts would begin to rise—steel-cut oats bubbling and freshly laid eggs cracked and popping on buttered grills. Another steamboat would bring wagons and carriageloads of newcomers—barrels and crates of goods, workhorses dragging fresh timber, the smell of smoke, sweat, and the river clinging to their thickening coats. But all was still now, except for the mess of depraved and wounded humanity before them.
“Come quick,” urged Lloyd, pocketing his treasures and trying to raise Soames back up. Drucker kept blinking and batting the air, but it was clear that he had not been permanently debilitated. Both men could see all right again after a few moments, but neither could believe what he had seen. With the exception of the charred leader, the vigilantes lay sprawled on the mushy ground groaning, limbs tangled, fumbling for one another—for help, for answers to what had happened to them. Lloyd took charge and led the two Quist guards between the bodies and back toward the storehouse as fast as they could move, given their stunned, disoriented condition. After his miraculous performance, Soames and Drucker seemed more than willing to be led, boy though he was.
That Lloyd had no idea what sort of power had been unleashed or how he had unleashed it, he vowed he would not reveal. His one objective now was to return his bewildered new comrades to their families and fellows and deliver the warning about reprisals or further action against them.
Once back at the storehouse, Soames and Drucker poured forth a tale that made the Quists tremble and ululate. Even McGitney, practical man of decision that he had become, was distraught—flapping his arms for order and calling for more details all at once. Lloyd let the hoo-ha run its course and then reemphasized the admonition he had offered the moment they returned through the heavy door.
“You must leave town,” he told them. “By the fastest, straightest way you can. Those that waylaid us will not harm anyone again, but they have friends and other fools ready to do the same that they tried. Every moment you stay in this town you run the risk of being hunted down and—”
“We know, lad.” McGitney nodded. “We know too well the trials and risks we face. We have faced and suffered them before. That’s what brings us here and on the path before us. Our plan was always to leave this burg at first light. It was, in fact, your unexpected arrival that has delayed us. And, as fate or divine will would have it, has saved us, too. This is a night we will muddle over in times to come. But what of you and your family? Are you not at risk from these same marauders, too, now?”
“I don’t reckon this boy is at risk from anyone,” Drucker pronounced. “He is the next prophet—the one that Saint Kendrick foresaw. The box he carries is a match to the Headstones, and he can draw lightning down from a clear sky and make it do his bidding.”
This statement, presented so forcibly, offered a concise and unavoidable distillation of his and Soames’s initial attempt at a report. Lloyd dutifully presented Urim and Thummin’s box for inspection by McGitney and the others, and squawks of recognition and befuddlement filled the storehouse. The Eye he would not present, and as neither Drucker nor Soames had seen it clearly or grasped what role it had played in their deliverance, he was not about to stir up more chaos and inquiry now. What was more, of course, he had no idea what made the Eye work. It had been but an interesting if grotesque piece of jewelry minutes before—a souvenir of a lost part of his life that he was both afraid and hopeful of finding again. The real value he had placed on it had to do with Hattie LaCroix. The Eyes were a pair that might one day be reunited. That was his dream. That was why he had given her the other one.
McGitney tried with great patience to maintain order and take in the facts presented to him. It would not be long before the blinded vigilantes were found by their co-conspirators and, come the dawn, the tribe of Quists needed to be on the move. But they could not leave without knowing what their night visitor-savior had to tell them.
“Lloyd, are you who we think you are?”
The boy shook his head. “I’m not a prophet or your holy one. But you should listen to me just the same.”
“Because of your power?”
Lloyd dodged this. “Because I speak the truth.”
McGitney opened his arms to the group, as if calling for their opinion.
“You spoke the truth about the sacred markings. You helped save two of our own. I think you are the one Saint Kendrick foresaw. I know I speak for all the Quists when I say we want you to join us, to lead us to the promised land we know awaits us beyond the wilderness.”
Lloyd thought of his parents asleep in their coffins and shook his head. If he could not join the ranks of the Spirosians or the Vardogers, he certainly could not take up with the Quists—and he felt a great weight upon his shoulders when he thought of what he had to tell them, before any more of them were hurt or killed at the hands of night riders.
“I am not your messiah,” he said again. “And your faith … your theology—”
He was trying to think if that was the right word. To him, religion was what people who lacked magic and science had to fall back on.
“Go on,” McGitney encouraged. “We trust you, Lloyd. We would follow you if you would lead us.”
“Well, first I think you should stop this following business,” Lloyd began (which perhaps showed that, in spite of his prodigious mental faculties, his grasp of human nature was still weak or at least self-deceiving, for he himself was an avid follower—the only problem was that he was devoted to a phantom). “Not all can lead, but no one necessarily must follow.”
“What would you have us do?” a pretty young woman, who nestled a sleeping baby to her breast, implored. “Flounder blind like those men Brother Drucker says you left yonder?”
“Those men accosted us—and their blindness is a punishment,” Lloyd replied, not mentioning that he had no idea how that particular form of punishment had been inflicted. “The kind of blindness you mean is just not knowing. Uncertainty. Doubt. If you are not able to face that and keep on seeking, you will never find anything worth trusting.”
He thought of the Clutters, seeing a riddle in the simple, albeit esoteric instruction on the bottom of the Vardogers’ music box.
“You will build a church of meaning and procedure upon a mystery you have mistaken. Your church, even if it is a cathedral, will be a house of cards, and the genuine mystery will be missed.”
McGitney scratched his red beard. If this boy was not the Enlightened One that had been promised, he sure sounded like him.
“All right,” he said. “Supposing you are not he whom we have been expecting. Nevertheless you say you have a truth to tell us about the sacred markings and what we believe. Tell us your truth.”
“I’m afraid you won’t like it,” Lloyd answered, shuffling his feet on the sod floor to wipe off the mud he had accumulated.
“It is written that the truth will set you free. This must be why you have found us tonight. There can be no other explanation. And if, as you say, there are things about the Headstones that exceed your understanding, too, then perhaps there is a larger truth at work than any of us knows—or can ever know. But tell us the truth you came to tell, whoever you really are, wherever you really come from. It must be important. After all that has happened tonight, that much is clear.”
Lloyd looked McGitney in the eye, then scanned the faces around the room. Then he held up the box the professor had given him, in what seemed another life.
“The markings on this box, which you can all see are exactly like the markings on the strips of wood you carry, were not made thousands or even a hundred years ago. They were made in recent times by twin brothers. Wild, sad creatures. Freaks of nature, you would call them. From Indiana.”
A great choral sigh was released around the storehouse.
“The twins were deformed and disabled. A man who ran a medicine show had found them and taken them in, intending to exhibit them for profit, although I think he had too much heart to exploit them. Maybe because of their monstrous appearance they seemed to have grown up in their own world, never a part of the life that we know—though alert enough and smart in their own way. At least they were not imbeciles. But they could not speak English. Instead, they spoke a language all their own, which was every bit as odd to hear as these markings are to look at. The pitchman thought their speech was just animal chatter, but I know that it had a pattern and a depth—and a variety at least as great as English, perhaps much greater. I was given this box with their written language carved into it, because I hoped to study it and understand its meaning. I first believed it was something they invented, although both the writing and their speech had a—I’m not sure of the right word—an authority that some made-up code is not likely to have. But if they were specimens or representatives of some bigger group or a people whose language this is, I don’t know where to look for them.”
Lloyd paused, and McGitney tugged at his beard.
“You’re saying these writings are the creation of idiots from Indiana, and only a few years old?”
“I did not say they were idiots,” Lloyd answered. “It appears they were from Indiana, but there is no actual proof of that.”
“But why do the characters and symbols spring to life? Why do they glow?”
“That I do not know—yet,” Lloyd responded. “I agree with you that it’s wondrous strange, but you have assumed that the illumination is somehow inherent in the symbols—that they have a life of their own. Maybe the cause lies rather in how the symbols have been made. I have seen luminous fungi in caves. There are water creatures with strange properties, and any number of minerals with unusual characteristics. I cannot account for the capacity just now, but I propose to you that the mystery of the gleaming could be reconciled and the secret of the symbols still remain unsolved.”
“But your contention is that the sacred markings are not old and do not tell of the grand historic legacy that we, the Quists, have come to know and worship through the Book of Buford?”
“The sheets of bark are old,” Lloyd replied. “Clearly. The markings on them may or may not be. But I saw the wild twins making such symbols and figures with my own eyes not long ago. They would use any surface that was made available to them, and a range of implements from charcoal stick and quill to awl or sharpened bone. You will note that all the illuminated examples we have here are carved, which allows for the indentations to have been treated with some unknown material or by some undetermined process after creation. Sadly, we lack any examples of their writing system produced by pen or chalk on paper or parchment. It would be very interesting to see if such specimens would also demonstrate the same luminosity now. If they did, that would suggest that there is something, however difficult to understand, about the symbols themselves. If not, it would support the theory that the figures have somehow been treated. I myself have never observed the glowing of the writing on my box. In any case, I can see that all this is hard for you to follow, because you did not know other examples of the writing existed. Believing these bark fragments to be unique, you have therefore attributed special significance to them, which by definition they do not have—although they may very well have other kinds.”
“But you say this is not a message to us? That these are not a whole that tell a story. A lost book of revelation and prophecy?” asked a man with a large wart on his forehead that his turban was trying to hide.
Lloyd pursed his lips and then replied, “It seems the one thing that is certain in this matter is that none of us know for certain what these markings mean. The showman who was looking after the brothers thought it was just scribbling. We here all agree that there is a beauty and an order to the markings that lie far beyond any aimless scrawling. Far! This is a language—a true, full, rich language, however indecipherable it may seem. It may even be that it opens an unknown door on the nature of all languages. The characters, their shapes and repetitions, are the most intriguing and hypnotic things to look upon I have ever seen. But why the brothers would need to communicate to each other in writing is unclear. And if they were writing for someone else to read, who did they have in mind?”
“So, you maintain,” Soames piped up (his eyes still smarting), “that the Book of Buford is not based on an interpretation of these symbols?”
“I know nothing of your Buford,” Lloyd said, shrugging. “I gather from what you have said that you think these writings make up some lost book of the Bible, and that you trace some connection with the people you think it describes. I say again, I do not know what this secret writing means, but I doubt very much that it has anything to do with the Bible—unless it is some interpretation made by the twin brothers, which from what I know of them seems unlikely.”
“What about the woodpecker?” a sleepy knock-kneed lad called out.
“What woodpecker?” Lloyd puzzled. As distinctive as the story behind the Ambassadors’ language was, these people had even more peculiar ideas of their own.
“All right, then,” McGitney said in his summing-up voice. “The truth you have to tell us is that our theology is based upon a lie.”
“A misunderstanding,” Lloyd interjected.
“Kendrick Quist and his relative Buford were frauds.”
“They may honestly have believed what they said and taught.”
“In that case, dupes. They may have duped themselves, but they certainly have duped us—and we have endured persecution and exile because of it!”
“So it would seem,” Lloyd was forced to agree.
“The real source of the sacred writings is a couple of mooncalves from Indiana, where Quist was from. He may even have known them. Do you know anything more about them?” McGitney asked, as members of the group frowned and whispered.
Lloyd considered recounting the brothers’ experience with the tornado, but decided against it. The Quists had had enough miracles and unexplained phenomena. He shook his head.
“And what became of these weird brothers?” McGitney queried. “Where are they now?”
“They disappeared,” Lloyd answered. “I believe they are dead now. A tragic accident.”
“Hmm,” McGitney said, pondering. “If we are to believe you, then the true authors of our sacred texts are gone from this earth—and, with them, any hope of penetrating what it seems that you would call the real mystery.”
“I would not say any hope,” Lloyd replied. “The problem is having enough of their writing to examine. I have had but the symbols on this box and little time or privacy for study. Your so-called Headstones are much more extensive samples. There is also the vital matter of the glowing. If my box has never done this before but does so now, it suggests some association or intercourse between the pieces.”
“The markings change!” a young horse-faced girl sang out.
Lloyd took this comment as a reiteration of his point and continued. “Proximity may influence the luminosity. Cause unknown.”
“What about you—when you touch them?” asked a man with a mustache that curled in a way that reminded Lloyd of the “f” hole in a violin.
“There may be several other factors at work, which we do not comprehend as yet,” he answered.
“Fools, fools, fools we are!” an old dark woman gibbered.
“I would not say that,” Lloyd barked (somewhat surprised at himself). “The Headstones are not what you thought them to be. But while they may not be sacred in the way that you have believed, they are worthy of great interest and perhaps much more than that, if their secret were fully understood.”
Lloyd had intended his comments to be consoling, but, coming after all that had transpired, they were more than the Quists could bear. A woman in a sunflower calico dress and a knitted shawl thrust her googling baby into her husband’s arms and began unwinding her turban. Several others started to do the same.
“Ah,” McGitney lamented, remembering his moment of cowardice in the barn back in Illinois and his mad dash through the laundry line. He felt once again on the run, his vision clouded. Could he emerge to advantage once again?
“Dark night of the soul!” he mourned. “A messiah comes to us at last, who says he is not our messiah and yet calls the lightning down to aid our members. Then he tells us that our faith is based on false teachings—that our prophetic forebearers are in fact lunatics or lusus naturae suitable for naught but display alongside the sawdust and hogskin mermaid, and the two-headed calf at a village fair!”
There followed much grumbling and argument and more than a little weeping and wailing. Lloyd could find nothing to say that he had not already said and, in being there to witness the unraveling of the Quist theology, regretted the effect his knowledge had imposed, although he was canny enough to realize that without his performance with the Eye they might well have talked their way around his words. Truly, faith is a kind of blindness, he told himself. But, then again, so is being too sure of what you see. The first pale light of dawn began seeping into the storehouse. It was time for him to get back to his coffin, and for the Quists to mobilize.
“I must go,” he told them. “And so must you. Whether you take off your head wraps or not, you will not so easily lose your reputation.”
McGitney, who had been comforting one of his wives, turned to Lloyd.
“You are right again, young warrior. We must carry on and come to terms with this new revelation at a safe distance.”
“Why? What’s the point?” one of the young people hollered.
“I’m a-goin’ back to Indy-anna!” an old codger croaked.
“What say you, Brother McGitney? What in God’s name do we do now?”
“Who said he’s leader now?” A scraggly man choked and started snuffing the candles with a square-toed boot.
“Silence!” McGitney bellowed, recalling that moment of exhilarated surprise when the contents of the clothesline were removed from his head and he had found himself a hero. “Here is what I say. We must try to see the blessing in what has happened here. We are all still alive and unhurt, and if our pride and our faith have been challenged, perhaps in another way it has been renewed. If we are to put stock in what this boy has said—and it seems that we do—then we must remember that we have in our possession these things that have no less meaning than we supposed, just different. Perhaps we are more pioneers and pilgrims than we supposed. I say that we forge on as a family, as a clan and as a community, committed to freedom, industry, and the search for the significance of these tablets—an endeavor we can all participate in without the need for prophets or messiahs. It strikes me that I myself have never looked more closely at the symbols than tonight because I had some inkling, I believe, of what they represented. The Book of Buford was a kind of curtain, not an exegesis. I say that what we leave behind in this meeting place is our arrogance of special providence, not our loyalty to each other or our fascination and reverence for these enchanted characters. It was them that brought us all together—that made us risk life, limb, and old ties. That is powerful significance indeed, worthy of many lifetimes of devotion and study. Other beliefs and sects have but copies or imagined texts, relics and articles of faith. We at least have originals, whose meaning is as undiscovered and untapped as the wilderness waiting for us outside that door. I say we should wipe our eyes and gird up our loins and be grateful. For tonight we have been saved. We have been released and we have been refreshed. From the dark night of despair, we have been given a new dawn!”
Lloyd considered McGitney’s speech an example of both sod-level wisdom and true poise under pressure, worthy of both Hattie and St. Ives. If nothing else, the Quists had chosen the right leader, he was sure—a fact that contrasted sharply with the mesh-hatted bigot who had been incinerated. Perhaps an even brighter future lay ahead for the Quists than the one they had envisioned. He hoped so, for all their sakes.
McGitney had much to do now, holding the flock together, repairing breaches in trust and confidence, and trying to organize the group off to their hidden horses and wagons—to reassemble and disperse, or to bid farewell to those insistent members who had lost faith forever and were now determined to return East to their old lives or to team up with other settlers headed West. But still, he made sure that Lloyd was sent off with, if not consensual thanks, then at least an acknowledgment of respect.
“Young Lloyd,” McGitney said. “I know you would seek to have these tablets to assist your own inquiry. But these we must keep, because for better or worse they have been entrusted to us. You have your box, and in some way that we may yet decipher, our fates have been connected and may remain so. Go forth with what new blessings we have to give. You will not be soon forgotten.”
Soames and Drucker together gave Lloyd a deep bow, which he returned. Then he stowed the box under his garments and stepped out through the door into the ghostly morning, taking a longer, more circumspect route back to the Clutters’. After his earlier performance with the vigilantes, it was deemed that he needed no escort. He thought Hattie would have been proud of the Li’l Skunk.
He glimpsed many shapes and shadows along the way, and smelled the smoke of early cooking fires, the salivatory tang of bacon, and the glug of grits but garnered not a hint of any particular malice or intent toward himself or anything relating to either the vigilantes or the Quists. By the time he reached the undertaker and coffinmaker’s establishment and had scraped the mud from his boots, the sky was streaked with bloody color. Softly, he cracked the door, relatched, and bolted it—and had just snuggled back down into his coffin to think of Hattie when his father rose, stretched and farted simultaneously, which almost set him giggling. Hattie could change pitch! Moments later, Rapture squirmed awake.
“Yeh all fine?” she cooed to her husband.
“Lord, I feel like the risen dead!” Hephaestus exclaimed. “I have a crook in my back that will need a poultice. Or, better still, a knee and a yank. But we need to be shoving on. I’m hankering to be gone now. On our way.”
“I be there,” his wife promised, swallowing a yawn. “How’s Lloyd?”
“Ah, just look!” Hephaestus gestured. “A-peace like a suckling. You’d think there were no troubles a’tall in the world. He probably hasn’t changed position the whole night. Leave the rousting to me. We have tracks to make.”