Ivy '05: The Holy Dark

"The Lord hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. - Zephaniah 15, chapter three, thanks be to the word of our God, amen."

Josiah licked his lips and listened to the reverberations of the words as they carried from his chest, sailing down from the altar to sweep through the pews to finally push out into the sunshine-dried air beyond the hush of the small church.

He waited a breath then two. He let the words absorb, let them land and catch and spread. He patted the razor-thin page then closed the bible with a soft sigh, fingers obscuring the nearly rubbed clean gilt embossing of the word 'holy.' His pinkie flicked against the worn, softly curled corner of the leather, so old the black had faded to brown.

Josiah opened his eyes and looked out into the seats. He frowned, thumb pulling an absent line up and down the fraying binding.

Despite standing here the pulpit was the same for him as it'd always been: empty and alone.

The seats were bare, darkened only by dust. The windows rattled in a sudden gust of wind and the dust rolled onto the floorboards to chase into the shadowy corners.

He could imagine them before him, could picture the faces of the townsfolk, their Sunday best out in full plumage, knowing where they would sit and how much space they would leave between the groups that didn't come together.

Josiah knew the blunt angle he'd look down on those in the front pew, knew the delicate syncline he'd gaze to those in the back pew. He knew the look that would be in their eyes, the earnest mien of their expressions, the fervent need to believe, the serene eyes of the few among them who truly did.

Of the Seven Nathan would come. Maybe JD, if his attention wasn't elsewhere.

The rest would gamble biscuits from Sunday brunch - pouring their own coffee for Inez would be before Josiah and God - Ezra dealing, Chris smoking and enjoying a drink, Vin intently watching Ezra from behind his oft-winning hands and Buck making them all laugh with bawdy tall tales of conquests and other such scarlet, ribald things.

He huffed a near-silent, derisive laugh. He knew so well those Sunday games because he was most often there, not here behind this sturdy oak lectern, two steps above the congregation and countless steps below the crucifix that hung behind him. He absolved his friends - his brothers - of biscuits come Sunday morn, not sins.

Oh, what his father would make of him now.

It wasn't denial of pride and humility before God that kept him from actively preaching the word - it was stark terror.

Not turning the other cheek wasn't the full truth of his priestly impediment. Although, he granted, he wasn't very good at doing that, either.

Your voice is your power, Josiah. Your voice is their way. Your voice condemns them to damnation or raises them to salvation.

Follow me, Josiah, follow me as you must. The words are in you - you know them by heart. Your voice must carry them. It must deliver them. You brandish them as David did his sling and stone! We need no greater weapon than our voices, Josiah. It is our power, our mercy, our divinity.

At my knee you have learned this - you know its truth and have seen its truth every Sunday when He speaks through me. You have known only the words and known my voice - now use yours, use His. It is your destiny; it is your duty. Speak, Josiah. Speak.

He could hear it as it would have been, filling the tents and meeting halls and churches, splintering the rafters: the strenuous tones and the madness - god, the willing madness - and the frenzy. The words and charisma spiraling higher and tighter, no meaning save for the carrying tide that was sweeping them away with the power of righteousness, all last remnants stripped bare by the merciless undertow of no forgiveness.

The belch of brimstone was there - palpable - scorching them all where they sat or stood, licking against their toes then their ankles then their calves if they were wholly unsure.

The voice and the words would drive it back, promises and deliverance and the golden ecstasy of forever, soothing the torture of sin's gnashing teeth.

Sweet mercy in heaven, hallelujah amen, take my brothers and sisters into your redeeming arms for they are worthy. For they are worthy and my words and beseeching voice has made it so. Hallelujah and amen.

Oh that strong voice of blessed surety, his father's.

Tell them this, Josiah, his father ordered come midnight, past the time of rained fire and prayers stove deep into the belly of heaven. Make them know. Make them understand.

Look at them, Josiah. Meet their eyes. Look into them - deep into them - see their fear and their faults. They surrender to you, Josiah, surrender as they would to God! It is your mission, my son. Your sworn divinity to deliver them lest they be lost and cut from the shelter of the herd. Without us they are mere sheep, cast aside to fend for themselves. We are their guardians, Josiah, the hand of the shepherd. With us they are our flock, His flock.

Failing them would bring no greater sin.

Speak, Josiah. Speak.

But he couldn't. Not a single utterance or even one feeble, pitiful sound.

It was too great a responsibility to be borne - the faith of his Father, the faith of his father, the faith of their flock.

The few times he'd been made to try he'd failed miserably. He'd stand in front of the gathered crowd turned over to him, whipped to anxious frenzy by a torrent of impassioned words, the dark gray, steely eyes meeting his, prompting him to speak before them.

It was his father's dream they would preach together, that God's instrument would be passed from father to his only son, just as God had passed himself to his only son.

Josiah would not pick up where his father had left off.

He would stammer and swallow and sweat. He would look over them and see terrible things: their souls rising from their bodies, caught and blackened, ruined before he could catch them to be saved; Satan laughing below, a hideous caricature, pointy chin and pointy beard and pointy teeth and pointy triton stabbing the feet of his father's people; God above, dispassionate and remote, sad eyes waiting without hope for him to take fire from the holy light and deliver these people unto Him.

It was more than he could do.

If he failed it would be all his fault. Their lost souls, Satan's revenge, God's misery.

No sooner would he have stumbled through an old testament passage - read more like a lulling nursery rhyme than a lashing-whip call to arms of faith and devotion - and his father would be glaring at him underneath his seemingly understanding smile, arm come about him, chest booming with the words in a voice Josiah simply could not find.

The worst of his failings was his father's disappointment, a condition for which he knew no penance.

As he'd grown he'd learned his father was no man to make reparation to; there was nothing Josiah wanted to atone to that bastard - a lesson he hadn't yet learned at thirteen.

Time wore on and Josiah got no better at preaching the Word and rattling the heavens. His father's bitter disappointment had etched deeper and deeper, the untenable gulf between them splitting further and further until, eventually, it was the endless chasm that would keep them forever apart, even after the old man's death.

He'd gone from his father without sorrow or a backward glance, banished the instant before he'd been able to brag that he was leaving anyway, the man and his church and his words and his goddamned voice be blighted to hell.

Fire and brimstone was clearly not for him, ready voice or no; his father could well keep them.

The words were in Josiah, though, despite his hatred of his father and the sin-obsessed teaching that he'd witnessed being wreaked upon packed church after packed church. So he'd taken the words and his heavy heart and buried himself in the silent sanctity of the seminary.

Learning to be a priest had been as close to content as Josiah had felt in years; being a priest had been no better than the abortive attempts to speak when his father had so commanded.

He'd been wrong that it would.

He thought he would find safety and success in the ancient ministry. The cold austerity, the ceaseless drone of latin, tradition so old the parishioners knew themselves saved the moment they walked through the imposing doors and stood beneath the vault of manmade heaven, thick with incense and gold and light stained to a rainbow as it raked through the saints, mute and absolute where they stared down from the windows.

Josiah had wrongly sought his own salvation, not theirs. His voice had been no better then than it ever had. His shame and his burden of penance redoubled.

He'd fled the cathedral for the church. Tore from the church to the chapel. Broke from the chapel to the desert.

There he felt closest to Jesus as he'd ever been, alone, faith abandoned by fear and question, only a man.

He'd stayed in the desert, even when he'd left to travel through the lush fields and rice paddies of Asia and the balmy, drinkable air of South America.

It had taken him years, but finally he'd returned to the desert. Years was something Josiah figured he had, especially when he'd lost everything else. He began moving rock - God's true earth, whatever god you loved, of that he had no doubt. He also knew no doubt that he was supposed to have found and settled within the desert once more, for it was here that salvation finally found him.

Josiah's last doubt had also been answered and appeased - this is where he would remain and where he would finally meet god, fitting snugly in the palm of their hand when he was at last delivered.

His penance had found true purpose; the words had at last found a voice.

He'd rebuild this church and let it pass to whomever could speak aloud. He'd rebuild this town and watch it grow and prosper then drift to the desert once more. He'd rebuild the spirits of his six brethren and they would rebuild his, the seven of them forged in an alliance holier than any cleric or pope or mulah dripping with all the trappings of mortal sin and vanity that he'd ever known.

Josiah's gut stirred then settled; it was warm and felt comfortably full. His fingers stilled over the bible, digits relaxed and at ease. He sighed, deep and replete, released from his earlier memories of defeat and fear.

Peace in the word, peace in his voice. At last.

Josiah opened his eyes when he heard it: voices, muffled by the walls surrounding him, but familiar despite it. He searched then found them, last vestages of the sadness and blur of times past evaporating from his gaze as he reentered the life he now lived with joyful abandon.

Ezra and Vin walked past the church, their figures revealed and obscured, revealed and obscured, as they went by the windows.

Their shoulders were pressed tight and now and again if you paid close enough heed you could see fingers, swift and sure, finding one another to caress and tease between them. They almost looked as if they weren't hurrying to get to Ezra's room above the saloon.

Josiah watched them, past the wide doors open to the arid world, on and across the street, their blue-black shadows lengthening to meld into one, slanted together at the far side of the road. He watched until the church hid them from view once more, imagining them with the freedom to burst into a careless rush as they turned the corner down the alley then beat a hasty flight up the back stairs.

A wide smile broke his face and he ducked his head with a rumbled laugh, fingers finding by rote the Song of Solomon - a favorite that he'd long ago bound into the bible himself - going by feel to a particularly ardent stanza penned in celebration of love and devotion.

In a sure voice he murmured the words, smile alive on his lips.

My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. - I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.

Hallelujah and amen.