Cloud's Rider

Enjoylife? He could get along with this preacher.

Randy fidgeted. He always had fidgeted in church. Carlo nudged his ankle and Randy slouched. Randy always would do that, too. Neither of them had ever favored church—but it was a comfortable and comforting thing this morning, after so much was out of joint, to be sitting in the smells of winter Sundays and hearing a sermon just like every week. Reverend Quarles went on, in his quiet ma

The sermon didn’t conclude in hellfire. It meandered off into how there was a horse out there, but they had it on good information it wasn’t mad, or even particularly dangerous. Reverend Quarles praised the riders for going out to deal with it, praised the Lord that the world worked and the seasons happened on schedule, and segued somehow to the choir’s next social. There was, the preacher a

Then the preacher got up again. “Carlo and Randy Goss,” he said. “Would you come up to the front, please? Praise the Lord for that loose bell that night. Praise the Lord He guided you through the dark of the storm, lost sheep brought to His blessed fold.”

Carlo thought to himself that he’d just as soon the Lord had lightened the dark of the storm instead of guiding them through it, or at least dropped the wind a little or let them see that rider-shelter, but there were a lot of reasons, too, the Lord shouldn’t be too happy with him and didn’t owe him many favors. He stood up, taking Randy with him, and had a lot rather not stand up in front of the congregation, but he didn’t see any way out of it.

Randy was no happier than he was. But they stood in front of the altar while (the most embarrassing moment of his life) the preacher laid hands on them, prayed over them, and then invited the whole village to come by and welcome them to the congregation and introduce themselves.

“I don’t want to do this,” Randy said in anguish.

Their clothes weren’t church clothes. They didn’t own any church clothes. They only had one change, and something was always sooty and something was always drying in the heat of the forge. What they had on was what was clean.

And he wasn’t usedto going to church dressed in work clothes. He was embarrassed. He thought Randy was going to die of embarrassment or bolt for the door—at that age when the whole world was looking at him constantly, anyway. But two old women were first in line, who called them heroic boys, and Randy shook hands and smiled—

Kid ought to run for office, Carlo thought, dealing with the same elderly women. Once Randy got into the swing of handshaking and being congratulated, he seemed to have discovered he likedbeing a hero, and positively blossomed under that much attention—so did the Mackeys, who were over in the aisle being congratulated right along with them, Carlo caught that fact out of the corner of his eye. Van Mackey and Mary Hardesty had maneuvered up to the front seats right where the outflow of congregation was going to pass them, and there they were, shaking hands, gri

Sons of bitches, Carlo thought. For all the preacher’s talk about redeeming the world, he didn’t see Da

But then, Da

He hopedDa

They had to stay through absolutely everybody coming by and shaking their hands, including some of the girls—the boys on their own weren’t so inclined. The younger girls—there were three—giggled. Two older ones showed better sense.

After that, they could escape, except a last handshaking with preacher Quarles and an actually friendly embrace, out to the foyer to get their hats and coats.

Then it was out to the street where the Mackeys were lying in wait. Mary Hardesty immediately took Carlo’s arm and beamed and prattled on and on how they were their own personal miracles.

Amazing, Carlo thought, wishing he knew how to break that hold with some kind of grace. Truly amazing, the depth of godly enthusiasm the Mackeys found when the neighbors were watching.

Totally oblivious, apparently, to the shading of lips with gloved hands, as certain village folk spotted the show and talked about it, Carlo could just imagine—the Mackeys not being universally believed as saints.

But neighbors were neighbors. Two hundred permanent neighbors in a village, and you couldn’t afford open feuds with anybody. Even if you’d like to shoot them. You shook hands and you smiled.

God, they could put off going to see Brio

They walked back to the end of town in the company they had to keep, sanctified, prayed over, written down in the church rolls, and gossiped about all the way, till the most of the traffic left in the general outflow from the church was miners and loggers on their way to The Evergreen for a pint of philosophy.

Behind them, the church bell rang. Sometimes down in Tarmin after a snow-fall, when there were few sounds on the mountain but nature and when the wind was just exactly right, you could hear bells in the winter air. The bells of heaven, he’d thought when he was a little boy.

He’d never known that sound had come from here.

The year past was a bad dream, but this morning with the church bells ringing out through the village and echoing off the mountain, Darcy had put on one of her prettiest winter outfits—Mark had brought her the blue wool sweater from the store before she’d ever seen the shipment up from Tarmin that summer, that happy summer before Faye’s accident, and she’d hired Angie Wheeler to sew up a pair of gray wool slacks out of a book of patterns.

She hadn’t had occasion to wear them until now. She scarcely went out except for groceries.

Still, it was the sort of day to think about the condition of things. She wiped the year’s accumulation of dust off the bureau and swept the carpet. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been aware of the dust piling up and the passage of a spring and a summer and a fall—because she wasn’t crazy. She knew how much time had passed that the sweater had lain in a drawer. She knew Mark was dead. She knew Faye hadn’t waked from her drowned, chilled sleep. She’d cleaned the office herself of Mark’s blood and she hadn’t greatly blamed him for deserting her. Faye had just cost him too much, and she with the relationship they’d had, all revolving around Faye, couldn’t make that loss up.

The dust just hadn’t mattered after that.

But today she found herself thinking that the dust had gotten too thick on the downstairs table and remembering that it had had a nice sheen and a pretty grain.

And once she’d done that, she saw the curtains, how dingy the white had become.

She started around the office polishing the tables and Mark’s bookshelves.