Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“There would be a special remuneration for your efforts, of course.”

Wren fell quickly silent. He licked his lips. “Pray tell.”

“An Indian ledger book in need of conservation.”

“Indeed.”

“It appears to be a particularly important one.”

Wren pressed the phone close to his ear. “Tell me.”

“At first, I thought it to be the work of the Sioux chief Buffalo Hump. But further examination convinces me it is the work of Sitting Bull himself, most likely composed in his cabin at Standing Rock, perhaps during the Moon of Falling Leaves in the final months before his death.”

“Sitting Bull.” Wren said the words carefully, lovingly, like poetry.

“It will be in your hands by Monday. For conservation only. You may enjoy it for two weeks.”

“And the journal—if indeed it exists—will be in yours.”

“It exists. But let me not disturb your work any further. Good afternoon, Wren. Be careful.”

“Fare thee well.” Replacing the phone in his pocket, Wren returned to his laptop, going over the physical layout of the Selden Collection in his mind, his veined hands almost trembling at the thought of holding, a day or two hence, Sitting Bull’s ledger book.

From the pool of darkness behind the glass-fronted cabinets, a pair of small, serious eyes watched intently as, once again, Wren began to type.

Twenty-Eight

S mit Ludwig rarely attended church anymore, but he had the gut sense, as he rose that brutally hot Sunday morning, that it might be worth going. He couldn’t say why, exactly, except that tensions had risen to a fever pitch in the town. The killings were all that people could talk about. Neighbors were glancing sidelong at each other. People were scared, uncertain. They were looking for reassurance. His reporter’s nose told him that Calvary Lutheran was where they would seek it.

As he approached the neat brick church with its white spire, he knew he’d been right. The parking lot was overflowing with cars, which also spilled out along both sides of the street. He parked at the far end and had to walk almost a quarter mile. It was hard to believe so many people still lived in Medicine Creek, Kansas.

The doors were open and the greeters pushed the usual program into his hand as he entered. He eased his way through the crowd in the back and moved off to one side, where he had a decent view. This was more than a church service; this was a story. There were people in church who had never been inside the building their entire lives. He patted his pocket and was glad to see he’d brought his notebook and pencil. He removed them and surreptitiously began jotting notes. There were the Bender Langs, Klick and Melton Rasmussen, Art Ridder and his wife, the Cahills, Maisie, and Dale Estrem with his usual buddies from the Farmer’s Co-op. Sheriff Hazen stood to one side, looking grumpy—hadn’t seen him in church since his mother died. His son was beside him, an irritable look on his puffy face. And there, off in a shadowy corner, stood the FBI man, Pendergast, and Corrie Swanson, all spiked purple hair and black lipstick and dangly silver things. Now there was an odd couple.

A hush fell over the congregation as the Reverend John Wilbur made his fussy way toward the pulpit. The service began, as usual, with the entrance hymn, the prayer of the day. During the readings that followed, the silence was absolute. Ludwig could see that people were waiting for the sermon. He wondered just how Pastor Wilbur would handle it. The man, narrow and pedantic, was not known for his oratory. He larded his sermons with quotations from English literature and poetry in an attempt to show erudition, but the effect only seemed pompous and long-winded. The moment of truth had come for Pastor Wilbur. This was the time of his town’s greatest need.

Would he rise to the occasion?

The reading from the Gospel was complete; the time for the sermon had arrived. The air was electric. This was it: the moment of spiritual reassurance that people had yearned for, had waited for, had come to find.

The minister stepped up to the pulpit, gave two delicate little coughs into his balled hand, pursed his thin lips, and smoothed with a crackle the yellowed papers that lay hidden behind the elaborately carved wood.

“Two quotes come to mind this morning,” Wilbur said, glancing over the congregation. “One, of course, from the Bible. The other, from a famous sermon.”

Hope leapt in Ludwig’s heart. This sounded new. This sounded promising.

“Recall, if you will, God’s promise to Noah in the Book of Genesis: While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And in the words of the good Doctor Donne, God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sheaves in harvest. ” Wilbur paused to survey the packed church from over his reading glasses.

Abruptly, Ludwig’s spirits fell, all the harder for having been falsely raised. He recognized these quotations all too well. Wilbur’s air of practiced improvisation had fooled him. Oh my God, he thought, he’s not going to do the harvest sermon again, is he?

And yet, beyond all understanding, that seemed to be Wilbur’s intent. He spread his arms with magisterial pomp.

“Here we are, once again, the little town of Medicine Creek, surrounded by the bounty of God. Summer. Harvest. All around us are the fruits of God’s green earth, God’s promise to us: the corn, the stalks trembling under the weight of the ripe ears beneath the giving summer sun.”

Ludwig looked around with a kind of desperation. It was the same sermon Wilbur always gave at this time of the year, for as long as Ludwig could remember. There was a time, when his wife still lived, that Ludwig found Wilbur’s cycle of sermons—as predictable as the cycle of seasons—comfortable and reassuring. But not now. Especially not now.

“To those who would ask for a sign of God’s bounty, for those who require proof of His goodness, I say to you: go to the door. Go to the door and look out over the great sea of life, the harvest of corn that stands ready to be plucked and eaten, to provide physical nourishment to our bodies and spiritual comfort to our souls . . .”

“To be made into gasohol for our cars, you mean,” Ludwig heard someone nearby mutter.

He waited. Maybe the minister was just warming up and was going to get onto the real topic soon.

“. . . While Thanksgiving is the accepted time to thank God for the bounty of His earth, I like to offer thanks now, just before harvest, when the gift of God’s goodness is made incarnate all around us, in the fields of corn that stretch from horizon to horizon. Let us all walk, as the immortal bard John Greenleaf Whittier impels us to, ‘Up from the meadows rich with corn.’ Let us all then pause, and look out over the great Kansas earth covered with the harvest and give thanks.” He paused for effect.

The mood in the room remained one of suspension, of desperate hope that the sermon would take an unexpected turn.

“The other day,” the minister began in a more jocular tone, “I was driving to Deeper with my wife, Lucy, when our car ran out of gas.”

Oh, no. He told this story last year. And the year before.

“There we were, by the side of the road, completely surrounded by corn. Lucy turned to me and asked, ‘Whatever are we going to do, dear?’

“I answered, ‘Trust in God.’ ”

He chuckled, blissfully ignorant of the ugly undercurrent that was now beginning to ripple through the congregation. “Well, she got mad at that. Being the man, you see, I was supposed to have filled up the tank, and so it was my fault that we’d run out. ‘You trust in God,’ she said. ‘I’m going to trust in my two good legs.’ And she started to get out of the car—”