Michael Blake - The Holy Road

With unmitigated violence she was assaulting the metal bed, alternately kicking and grappling at it with such demonic force that the entire frame was being pulled this way and that. Every hair on the Reverend Tooey's body sprang to terrified attention as he realized she was trying to secure a weapon.

Frantic to escape, he crawled along the floor, scooped up his Bible, and scuttled, crablike, toward the salvation of the door, which, to his frenzied despair he could not open. The door was locked.

"Help!" bleated the Reverend Tooey. "Open the door! In the name of God, open the door!"

Fortunately for the panicked Tooey, Cousin Gunther and his family had gathered at the door on first hearing the commotion, and he flew out when it finally opened, landing face first at the feet of the aghast family. With the help of many fumbling hands, the reverend's sticklike frame ascended from the hallway floor amid a clamor of succoring voices.

The reverend didn't respond to their solicitous remarks but glanced back at the open door, where he saw that the object of his fright still concentrating her fury on the unyielding bed frame.

"Close the door," he intoned. "Lock it!"

Again he was peppered with inquiries as to his condition.

"I am all right," he announced, hoisting a hand to silence the Gunthers. Then he gazed over the heads of the anxious clan, and in a tone both distant and final, declared:

"The woman is a hopeless idiot."

Reverend Tooey's failure drove the Gunthers away from miracle cures and into a more utilitarian realm. A modified version of the plan to make Christine the town domestic was put into motion, but because Stands With A Fist knew nothing about maintaining a box and seemed incapable of grasping even elementary tasks, like where to empty a chamber pot, that, too, was a failure, so much so that ultimately no one in Jacksboro would allow the repatriated Gunther in their front yard, much less their home.

People altered their path of travel to avoid contact with the family. The local pastor asked them, in the interest of preserving decorum, to sit in the last pew of God's house, a request to which the family glumly acceded. Visits to the Gunther habitat quickly trickled down to errands of necessity, and the family felt the sting of its pariah status for the first time in their long and unstoried tenure.

All of them wanted desperately to rid themselves of the cancer they had unwittingly embraced, and when Cousin Gunther's wife struck on the idea of somehow marrying her off they realized a perfect candidate existed in the person of Axel Strunk, a dimwit far past marrying age who lived with his mother only a few miles away.

Certain overtures were made to the simpleton's mother and expectations soared when Cousin Gunther's discreet inquiry was greeted with unalloyed zeal. Nearing the end of her life, the old woman had long dreamed of seeing her son married before she passed on, and the contrived courtship was commenced when the Strunks came calling a few days later.

Unfortunately, the first close-up view of the prospective groom reminded the Gunther clan of how pitiful his condition was, and their spirits dipped.

A futile attempt had been made to drag a comb through his thick, yellowish hair. His clothes were reasonably tidy but a clue to his implausibility lay in the fact that he was wearing two left boots. Though his hands had been recently washed, the stunted sleeves of his jacket showed that it had been some time since his arms had encountered a cleaning agent.

Hygiene aside, it was the essence of Axel himself that caused a momentary deflation in the family's hopes. His small, close-set eyes peered out of a bony promontory that was more ledge than brow and was complemented by a wide, impenetrable jaw. In rustic parlance he was what was called a “mouth breather" and he shuffled wherever he went in the short, careful gait usually associated with advanced age. His great paws hung lifelessly at his sides and, aside from an occasional expression of glee at some childish stimulus, he rarely spoke unless by way of a response to some simple instruction.

It was patently clear to all who saw him that for a dullard of Axel's magnitude to conduct a courtship was impossible. Nor was it conceivable that he could form any kind of proposal, even if his unknown desires were to hit upon the idea.

But nothing could deter the Gunthers in their desperation and, despite the suitor's total lack of qualification, they pressed forward. After a short-lived repast, they managed, through a flurry of hasty, bald-faced maneuverings, to isolate the trio of Axel, Christine, and her undemonstrative offspring on a porch bench. Once the players were in place, the Gunthers retreated into the house to monitor developments from behind a curtained window.

Stands With A Fist's back felt their eyes, but the surveillance did not bother her. To sit alone on the porch freed her from the constant and annoying presence of the whites, whom she had come to regard as incessantly antic. Here she could think and dream and feel without interruption. Nor was she concerned with Axel's presence. Far from being ostracized, the feebleminded of Ten Bears' village were fully accepted, and there was nothing unusual about sitting next to one of the "slows," whose behavior was harmless and easily predicted.

To be alone in thought also gave her the opportunity to muse about her secret. When she thought about it, she indulged herself with an inward smile. It was hard not to smile openly, or even laugh out loud, when she considered the monumental foolishness of the whites.

It had surprised her when it all came back during the long ride as a prisoner of the rangers, and she remembered thinking at the time that such a thing, coming so easily and so completely, must have emanated not from her own mind but from the Great Mystery.

There were words she still could not understand, but the gist of everything had been plain almost from the beginning. She knew who the Gunthers were supposed to be and was aware of political and social divisions in the town. She had not expected Reverend Tooey to touch her, but she had known who he was and why he was coming long before she faced him. She also knew why the slow one sitting next to her had come.

The secret had made it possible for her to navigate the trials of captivity one step ahead of her keepers while allowing her to use her own language, in fact her entire being, as a part of the subterfuge, and even now, sitting in the still, heavy air of summer, it infused her with hope.

To the consternation of the ever-vigilant Gunthers, more than an hour passed in which the thrown-together couple shared neither word nor look. Once or twice Stays Quiet made brief inquiries of her mother but that was all and it is likely that the couple, both of whom were quite content to sit, would have continued in silence had not Axel happened to lay one of his huge hands on the trouser pocket in which he kept his sizable collection of marbles.

He loved his marbles completely, and the simple act of rubbing them back and forth inside the pocket was enough to produce a ferocious-looking, gap-toothed grin on his face. The light clacking sound drew Stays Quiet's interest. When she gazed first at the pocket, and then at Axel, the moron nodded smugly. Gurgling happily, he lifted his bulk off the bench and shuffled down a short flight of steps to the yard. There he selected a patch of bare earth just below the porch and tamped it gently with one of his left boots.

Stays Quiet was now hanging over the railing, peering down inquisitively at the moron's ritual. Axel knelt in front of the spot he had chosen, and, using the side of his hand, spent a minute or two smoothing the surface with extraordinary care. Satisfied at last, he made a fist, then flipped out an index finger as if it had been sprung from a jackknife, and, marshaling all his concentration, began to draw a circle in the ground he had so assiduously prepared. When the circle was complete, Axel leaned back to better regard his effort, and, pleased with it, started a hand into the marble pocket with a delicacy that gave the impression he was after something fragile as a flower.