The Returned. Jason Mott
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just curious,” Pastor Peters said. “We all are. Do you...or, rather, does the Bureau or the government as a whole have anything to say?”
“The government as a whole?” Agent Bellamy asked, not breaking his smile. “You overestimate me. I’m just a poor civil servant. A little black boy from—” he lowered his voice “—New York,” he said, as if everyone in the church, everyone in the town, hadn’t already heard it all in his accent. Still, there was no sense in him wearing it on his sleeve any more than he had to. The South was a strange place.
* * *
The meeting began.
“As you all know,” Pastor Peters began from the front of the church, “we are living in what can only be called interesting times. We are so blessed, to be able to...to witness such miracles and wonders. And make no mistake, that’s what they are—miracles and wonders.” He paced as he spoke, which he always did when he was uncertain about what he was saying. “This is a time worthy of the Old Testament. Not only has Lazarus risen from the grave, but it looks like he’s brought everyone with him!” Pastor Peters stopped and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.
His wife coughed.
“Something has happened,” he belted out, startling the church. “Something—the cause of which we have not yet been made privy—has happened.” He spread his arms. “And what are we to do? How are we to react? Should we be afraid? These are uncertain times, and it’s only natural to be frightened of uncertain things. But what do we do with that fear?” He walked to the front pew where Lucille and Jacob were sitting, his hard-soled shoes sliding silently over the old burgundy carpet. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, smiling down at Jacob.
“We temper our fear with patience,” he said. “That is what we do.”
It was very important to mention patience, the pastor reminded himself. He took Jacob’s hand, being sure that even those in the back of the church, those who could not see, had time enough to be told what he was doing, how he was speaking of patience as he held the hand of the boy who had been dead for half a century and who was now, suddenly, peacefully sucking candy in the front of the church, in the very shadow of the cross. The pastor’s eyes moved around the room and the crowd followed him. One by one he looked at the other Returned who were there, so that everyone might see how large the situation already was. In spite of the fact that, initially, they were not supposed to be there. They were real, not imagined. Undeniable. Even that was important for people to understand.
Patience was one of the hardest things for anyone to understand, Pastor Peters knew. And it was even harder to practice. He felt that he himself was the least patient of all. Not one word he said seemed to matter or make sense, but he had his flock to tend to, he had his part to play. And he needed to keep her off his mind.
He finally planted his feet and pushed the image of her face from his mind. “There is a lot of potential and, worse yet, there is a lot of opportunity for rash thoughts and rash behavior in these times of uncertainty. You only need to turn on the television to see how frightened everyone is, to see how some people are behaving, the things they’re doing out of fear.
“I hate to say that we are afraid, but we are. I hate to say that we can be rash, but we can. I hate to say that we want to do things we know we should not do, but it’s the truth.”
* * *
In his mind, she was sprawled out on the thick, low-hung bough of an oak tree like a predatory cat. He stood on the ground, just a boy then, looking up at her as she dangled one arm down toward him. He was so very afraid. Afraid of heights. Afraid of her and the way she made him feel. Afraid of himself, as all children are. Afraid of...
* * *
“Pastor?”
It was Lucille.
The great oak tree, the sun bubbling through the canopy, the wet, green grass, the young girl—all of them disappeared. Pastor Peters sighed, holding his empty hands in front of him.
“What are we gonna do with ’em?” Fred Green barked from the center of the church. Everyone turned to face him. He removed his tattered cap and straightened his khaki-colored work shirt. “They ain’t right!” he continued, his mouth pulled tight as a rusty letterbox. His hair had long since abandoned him, and his nose was large, his eyes small—all of which conspired together over the years to give him sharp, cruel features. “What are we gonna do with ’em?”
“We’re going to be patient,” Pastor Peters said. He thought of mentioning the Wilson family in back of the church. But that family had a special meaning for the town of Arcadia and, for now, it was best to keep them out of sight.
“Be patient?” Fred’s eyes went wide. A tremble ran over him. “When the Devil himself shows up at our front door you want us to be patient? You want us to be patient, here and now, in the End Times!” Fred looked not at Pastor Peters as he spoke, but at the audience. He turned in a small circle, pulling the crowd into himself, making sure that each of them could see what was in his eyes. “He wants patience at a time like this!”
“Now, now,” Pastor Peters said. “Let’s not start up about the ‘End Times.’ And let’s not go into calling these poor people devils. They’re mysteries, that’s for certain. They may even be miracles. But right now, it’s too soon for anyone to get a handle on anything. There’s too much we don’t know and the last thing we need is to start a panic here. You heard about what happened in Dallas, all those people hurt—Returned and regular people, as well. All of them gone. We can’t have something like that happen here. Not in Arcadia.”
“If you ask me, them folks in Dallas did what needed to be done.”
The church was alive. In the pews, along the walls, at the back of the church, everyone was grumbling in agreement with Fred or, at the very least, in agreement with his passion.
Pastor Peters lifted his hands and motioned for the crowd to calm. It dulled for a moment, only to rise again.
Lucille wrapped an arm around Jacob and pulled him closer, shuddering at the sudden recollection of the image of Returned—grown folks and children alike—laid out, bloodied and bruised, on the sun-warmed streets of Dallas.
She stroked Jacob’s head and hummed some tune she could not name. She felt the eyes of the townspeople on Jacob. The longer they looked, the harder their faces became. Lips sneered and brows fell into outright scowls. All the while the boy only went about the business of resting in the curve of his mother’s arm, where he pondered nothing more important than glazed peaches.
Things wouldn’t be so complex, Lucille thought, if she could hide the fact of him being one of the Returned. If only he could pass for just another child. But even if the entirety of the town didn’t know her personal history, didn’t know about the tragedy that befell her and Harold on August 15, 1966, there was no way to hide what Jacob was. The living always knew the Returned.
Fred Green went on about the temptation of the Returned, about how they weren’t to be trusted.
In Pastor Peters’s mind were all manner of scripture and proverb and canonical anecdote to serve as counterargument, but this wasn’t the church congregation. This wasn’t Sunday morning service. This was a town meeting for a town that had become disoriented in the midst of a global epidemic. An epidemic that, if there were any justice in the world, would have passed this town by, would have swept through the civilized world, through the larger cities, through New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, Paris. All the places where large, important things were supposed to happen.
“I say we round them all up somewhere,” Fred said, shaking a square, wrinkled fist at the air as a crowd of younger men huddled around him, nodding and grunting in agreement. “Maybe in the schoolhouse. Or maybe in this church here since, to hear the pastor tell it, God ain’t got no gripe with them.”
Pastor Peters did something then which was rare for him. He yelled. He yelled so loud the church shrank into silence and his small, frail wife took several small