Matt Bell - How They Were Found

Inside the work shed, construction continues as Spear shows Abigail what has been done, what the New Motor is becoming. He explains her role as the New Mary, that she has been chosen to give life to the machine.

He says, I am the architect, but I am no more the father than Joseph was. This is your child, and God’s child.

He says, Do you understand what I am telling you?

The Electricizers are gathered in the shed, watching him. He looks to them for approval, but their focus is on the machine itself. Inside the shed, the words he says to them never have any effect, never move them to response or reaction.

Work stalls while they wait for supplies to come by train to Randolph, and then overland to High Rock by wagon. For two weeks, Spear has nothing to do but return to the ordinary business of running his congregation, which includes acting as a medium for congregation members who wish to contact their deceased, or to seek advice from the spirit world. A woman crosses his palm with coin and he offers her comforting words from her passed husband, then he helps a businessman get advice from an old partner. Normally, Spear has no trouble crossing the veil and coming back with the words the spirits offer him, but something has changed with the arrival of the Electricizers, a condition aggravated since the beginning of construction on the Motor. He hears the other spirits as if his ears are filled with cotton or wax, as if there is something in the way of true communication, and the real world seems just as distant, just as difficult to navigate.

By the time the spinster Maud Trenton comes to see him, he can barely see her, can barely hear her when she says, I’m hearing voices, Reverend. Receiving visitations.

She says, Angels have come to me in the night.

Spear shakes his head, sure he has misunderstood the woman. He feels like a child trapped in a curtain, unable to jerk himself free. He hasn’t crossed the veil, merely caught himself up in it.

He says, What did you say?

Maud Trenton, in her fifties, with a face pocked by acne scars and a mouth full of the mere memories of teeth, she says, I told the angels I was afraid, and the angels told me to come to see you.

Jefferson appears behind her, with his sleeves rolled up, wig set aside. His glow is so bright it is hard for Spear to look directly at the specter, who says, Tell her that God loves her.

Spear’s eyes roll and blink and try to right themselves. He can feel his pupils dilating, letting more light come streaking in as wide bands of colors splay across his field of vision. He’s firmly on the other side, closer to what comes next than what is.

Jefferson says, Tell her we’re thankful. Tell her we venerate her and protect her and watch over her. Tell her the whole host is at her service.

Spear is so confused that when he opens his mouth to say Jefferson’s words, nothing comes out. And then the specter is gone, and Spear is freed from his vision, returned to the more substantial world, where Maud sits across from him, her eyes cast downward into her lap, her hands busy worrying a handkerchief to tatters. Suddenly Spear feels tired, too tired to talk to this woman anymore, or to concern himself with her problems.

Spear opens his mouth to say Jefferson’s words, but they won’t come out, and although he knows why he blames her instead. He says, Woman, I have nothing to say to you. If you feel what you’re doing is wrong—if you’ve come to me for absolution—then go home and pray for yourself, for I have not been granted it to give you.

At dinner that night, Spear’s forehead throbs while his wife and daughters chatter around him, desperate for his attention after his day spent down in the village. He continues to nod and smile, hoping his reaction is appropriate to the conversation. He can’t hear his family’s words, cannot comprehend their facial expressions no matter how hard he tries.

He does not try that hard.

What is in the way is the New Motor. The revealments are coming faster now, and Spear understands that there are many more to come. It will take eight more months to finish the machine, an interminable time to wait, but there is so much to do that Spear is grateful for every remaining second.

The New Motor is ready to be mounted on a special table commissioned specifically for the project, and so Spear brings two carpenters into his expanding crew, each once again hand-selected from the men of High Rock. The table is sturdy oak, its thick top carved with several deep, concentric circles designed to surround the growing machine. When the carpenters ask him what the grooves mean, or what they do, Spear shakes his head. Their purpose has not been revealed, only their need.

Abigail becomes a fixture in the shed, spending every day with the men and the Motor. Spear sets aside part of every morning for her instruction, relating scriptures he finds applicable. The girl is an attentive student, listening carefully and asking insightful questions. Spear finds himself wishing his own children were so worthy, and more than once he finds the slow linger of a smile burnt across his cheeks long after he and Abigail have finished speaking.

In the afternoons, he joins the others in the day-to-day work of constructing the machine, but even then he continues to watch her, to notice her. This is how he observes the way she sees Randall, the talented young worker who will have his pick of trades when the time comes. Metalworking, carpentry, even the doing of figures and interpretation of the diagrams come easy to Randall, the boy’s aptitudes speaking well of his deeper, better qualities. Spear has often been impressed with the boy, but now, watching the quick glances and quicker smiles that pass between Randall and Abigail, he knows he will have to study him even closer.

He tells himself that it is not the girl he cares about, but the Motor. After she gives birth to his machine, Randall can have her. But not before. Spear is sure that, like Mary, Abigail must be a virgin to bring the Motor to life, and he cannot risk Randall ruining that. He decides that he will take the girl home to live with him, just until summer. She will become part of his household, and he himself will keep her safe. Although he trusts all those he surrounds himself with, it is only himself that he can vouch is above reproach.

Spear is no engineer, but he knows enough to understand that the New Motor is different. Where most machines are built in pieces, one component at a time, the Motor is being built from the inside out. It is being grown, with the sweat and effort of these great Spiritualist men, all excellent workers, excellent minds. Tsesler and Voichenko especially seem given to the task; their ability to translate the complexities of the diagrams and explanations into their own language is almost uncanny. The others work nearly as hard, including Randall. Despite Spear’s misgivings about the boy, he knows the young man is as dedicated as any other to the completion of their work. Six days a week, for ten or twelve or fourteen hours, they slave together in the forge-heated shed to fulfill the task handed down to them by the Electricizers. By the time snow covers the hill, the machine has enough moving parts that a once useless flywheel becomes predictive, turning cogs that foretell the other cogs and gears and pulleys not yet known to Spear. The first gliding panel is set in the innermost groove of the table’s concentric circles, moved all the way around the Motor once to ensure that it works the way it is intended to. The panel’s copper face is inscribed with words that Spear does not know, but which he believes are the long-hidden names of God, revealed here in glory and in grace.

On the day of the fall equinox, the men work and work. When they finish after dark, Spear gathers them all around himself. He is covered in sweat and dirt and grease and grime. They all are, and Spear smiles, prouder than he has ever allowed himself to be.