Chapter 14. A Turkey Returns
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover
December 27th Lee received a piece of recycled red construction paper from Mexico made into an envelope; inside Rusty had written: "I love you." Lee and Arthur talked intimately about the letter in bed the next morning.
"I'm in love with two men," she said. "What's going to happen?" She meant the question rhetorically, was not expecting him to answer.
"You'll go with him," he said.
He was shocked that he had said it. He remembered her saying two years ago, "Will you fight for me if I ever try to leave you?" "I will," he had said. He had hoped he would, else how would she know he needed her? "Do," she had said.
"Do you want me to go with him?" she said. "Your saying that hurts me, you know."
"I'm sorry. I didn't like hearing it either and I hope I'm wrong."
Arthur wished he’d said nothing, but each knew what he'd said would prove true unless there were a change. He thought that he wanted her to stay with him, believed he did, and even considering the possibility he didn't felt like a violation; he was hardly, though, fighting to keep her.
Wednesday night the 28th Arthur returned to the Holy Trinity Spiritualist Church. Alice, Lee, and Lucia chatted with one another on the way about Lucia's ill-fated rendezvous the week before Christmas in San Francisco with Shell. As Stoner drove he wished he were with Sandra at a party he knew was just beginning; he was unquestionably in love with her. Arthur had toked before leaving the house. He had not thought of his bare legs till he was in the van, nor, this time, had Lee, and he ruefully wished he’d brought his serape. On the other hand (the first high rush from the pot was passed and he was into the second, which typically manifested as one or another on-the-other-hand), tonight whoever worked on him would not have to guess how to position his or her hands in relation to his feet.
The five friends arrived before the service had begun; the Christmas tree was still up and the front of the church still filled with Christmas flowers. Soon the Rev. Samuels, wearing white robes, entered from the back of the church and walked down the center aisle to his place at the pulpit. He spoke briefly of the service he had conducted Christmas Eve and, after reading the Spiritualist Creed, launched into his sermon. The creed had smelt overly doctrinal to Arthur's twitching nose and he had wondered what he was doing here. Anything twice, he’d said to himself, and concentrated on reining in his wandering mind, suspending judgment, and paying attention.
The Rev. Samuels used the back of his hand to brush away the white foamy spittle that gathered as he talked at the left corner of his mouth; when it returned he wiped it away again. He was interesting, Arthur thought, and probably inspired. Probably? He might be inspired, might be as dedicated to, in touch with, and thankful for Spirit as he claimed. Arthur’s faith in his own ignorance was profound; to the sufficiently ignorant, all seems possible.
Arthur had arrived wearing the turquoise from Hilda in the setting Stoner had made, but he had felt wearing the jewelry in church inappropriate and had taken it off. Now he noticed that a man seated near him had several large rings on each hand and that the Rev. Samuels' himself had beringed fingers; he slipped his ring back on, feeling that removing it had been subtly rude.
The Rev. Samuels ended his sermon and began delivering messages.
"There is a child speaking to you," he said to Lucia.
"Me?" It was participatory theater, she unexpectedly with lines.
"Yes," he said. "I do not know who it is, but it seems to be a little girl." Lucia's period was late and her first rush was that she was pregnant. Arthur thought of Ramona, who had braided her hair at the séance. "She is encouraging you. She says she is with you watching over you. You have a very strong healing aura and are even now doing healer's work. You are gaining strength. I feel you are about to write something, some treatise on a specific healing art."
This was true. Lucia and Greg had exchanged handsome notebooks for Christmas, and she had begun to write notes in hers for an ambitious essay on acupressure points. The last of the confusion she had felt since seeing Shell fell away; back in touch with spirit, she felt normal again.
After he had delivered half a dozen messages, the Rev. Samuels introduced the man whose jewelry Arthur had noticed. He too was a psychic, and delivered more messages.
"I have a message for you," he said, looking at the woman who had been sitting in front of him during the service. "It is coming to me very strongly. At first I thought my feeling that I was directed to speak to you was only because I was sitting so close to you, but now I know I really am to speak to you."
He described a purple sash with several white stars on it that the woman seemed to be wearing and said that behind and above her head there was a shimmering tiara that seemed both to attract and emit light. He seemed uncertain, stopped talking, and briefly put his hand to his head as though trying to concentrate, then lowered it and shook his head in resignation.
"I'm sorry," he said. "There are too many spirits speaking at once, four, five." He smiled, laughing at himself. "I'm still new at this. I've learned some to hear them when they talk to me, but I haven't learned yet how to ask them tactfully to shut up when too many talk to me at once."
Lee laughed. She heard Alice smother a laugh and, knowing she mustn't look at her; smothered most of a further giggle. The novice smiled at her gratefully.
"Thank you," he said. "I can hear your sympathy in your laughter and it means a lot to me." Arthur was sure he meant exactly what he said, that he was grateful for her sympathetic laughter; Lee was not so sure and managed to maintain her hard-won silence.
The Rev. Samuels resumed his place at the pulpit to offer a healing prayer. He, like Stoner, Lucia, and many of the other congregants, held his arms and hands out horizontally with the palms up to begin. As the prayer continued Stoner gradually raised his spread arms higher and by the time it had ended he looked as though he hung unconscious on an invisible cross, his head fallen to the side, his arms spread well above the horizontal, and his hands down. The Rev. Samuels' hands, too, were above head high, but he held his head straight and had brought his hands in front of him and tipped them toward the congregation, as he would have were he pouring energy into the body of the church.
Arthur could feel sweat trickling inside his sweater and frequently dried his hair and forehead with the towel he always carried. Lucia, sitting next to him, several times straightened his left foot. The Rev. Samuels saw her love and felt his own for his past-life friend. He lowered his arms and sat in a chair that had been placed against the wall behind the pulpit and underneath a picture of Jesus; head-bowed, he prayed for the members of his congregation and, soon, specifically that Arthur walk again.
Tonight's three healers were two men and a woman. Arthur watched the fortyish heavy-set man closest to him work on a slim attractive woman in her mid-thirties. His hands were very close to her as he traced the aura of her neck and shoulders and then, very gently and, thought Arthur, sensually, touched her neck and closed his eyes; her eyes were already closed. The man opened his eyes and touched her shoulders. His hands caressed the air about her breasts, hovering so close that Arthur surreptitiously glanced to see if her nipples underneath her sweater were responding. He sensed no resentment from her and wondered whether they were lovers. When she left the chair the Rev. Samuels took her place, received healing, and returned to his seat behind the pulpit.
When Lucia was ready to receive healing she started toward the woman healer's empty chair, but when another person took it she retreated. One of the other chairs was soon vacated but she waited until the woman's chair was again empty before going forward and sitting. Her eyes closed, she felt the heat of the woman's hands smoothing her aura. Arthur watched; Alice bathed in the peace, which she loved; the Rev. Samuels prayed against the wall, feeling the presence of the Lord growing within him.
The Rev. Samuels stood abruptly and spread and raised his arms; his robe's long loose-hanging sleeves looked like the wings of a great bird. For several seconds he didn't move and then, his arms still raised and the swishing of his robes audible, he swiftly walked directly to Arthur. He stood with out-stretched arms in front of him a moment and then lowered them and turned to take the hands of the healer whose sensuality Arthur had imagined.
"Stand before this man," he said to him, pulling him up from his chair and nodding towards Arthur, "that he may be healed by the grace of Jesus in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."
He again faced Arthur, raised his hands high, stood aside so his assistant could take his place, and circled behind Arthur's chair. Arthur felt a slightly moist and trembling touch on his neck and closed his eyes and bowed his head; he heard muttered snatches of what seemed incantatory prayer and waited for a burst of sensation to fill his body; he flexed his legs, feet, and toes. The three men breathed together, a conspiracy.
The Rev. Samuels was now in front of Arthur, his assistant behind, and Arthur's eyes were open as he accepted what it was that he was being given. The Rev. Samuels kneeled and touched Arthur's bare ankles and again invoked the Trinity, after which he quickly stood and turned and walked to his chair by the wall; he sat, clasped his hands, and bowed his head. It was as though, the healing done, he had to change from what he'd been to be himself again.
Arthur's left big toe raised off the pillow on which his foot rested, stayed in the air a moment, and relaxed.
"Did you like that, Cricket?" said Arthur silently, and smiled. The Rev. Samuels heard a child's laugh; he didn't know from whence it came.
In dismissing his flock, the Rev. Samuels urged all to attend the communion service Sunday January One. "Each of us should begin the new year here," he said. "It is important." Afterwards he came to Arthur.
"Wait here until my wife can give you a container of our holy water," he said. "It is ordinary Tucson tap water to begin with, but we bless it Thursdays. My wife will give you a container full and you should drink it first thing in the morning before you take anything else into your body."
Arthur and his friends waited until Mrs. Samuels brought him a small bottle of the blessed water. Each morning for the next week he drank it first thing in the morning.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover