The note of Henry's deep emotion penetrated into Bleys' thoughts.
"Thank you, Uncle," he said, looking at Henry, "I thank God for those words of yours."
They were home. Bleys got out of the cart as Will and Joshua came tumbling out of the door and took over disposal of the cart and goats from Henry. Henry steadied him as they went up the steps and inside.
"I think I'll lie down now, Uncle, if you don't mind," said-Bleys.
"By all means," said Henry, "you'll need to rest now, and build yourself back up again."
Bleys fell asleep the moment he touched his bunk, for the first time in nearly two weeks. But he woke during the night; and lay staring at the darkness overhead. Gazing at it, he realized he had never given up on anything he had gone after; and this was to be no exception.
To become a True Faith-holder, no matter what was or was not, was still his goal. He would be a better Friendly than any of them from now on. He would live as if he walked hand in hand with God; and if the others remarked on this, it did not matter. He would not discuss it, he would merely be what he was going to be. And from that he would eventually build to the kind of society and the kind of human race and the kind of God-ordained universe that he had envisioned from the beginning.
Chapter 15
Bleys woke late
in the morning to an empty house. His first thought was that he had slept through breakfast and the cleanup afterwards; and that Henry and the two boys were already outside working. Then he remembered that today was a church-day. The other three had let him sleep past the time when he could have got up to go with them.
He started to get out of bed and was surprised at the effort it took. Still, he persisted; and, once out, dressed in his ordinary clothes—since it would now be too late for church for him—and went into the main room of the house. The table had one setting on it, and a bowl of porridge was being kept warm in the iron cooking utensil, by the side of the fire. On the table he found a note from Henry. Typical of Henry, it was short and to the point.
/ thought it best that you should rest today and not go to church. You can go next week.
Henry
Bleys put the paper aside on the table. It was true that he was in no shape to go to church. He felt physically weaker now than he had at any time during his fasting. He went to the porridge and spooned it into a ceramic bowl of glazed, gray-white clay, then brought the bowl back to the table and collapsed in the chair before it.
He sat for a few moments, merely catching his breath. Then he took up a spoon and made an effort to eat the porridge. It tasted good, but as with the soup the day before, half of what was there more than filled him.
He told himself that he should scrape what was left of the porridge back into the pot to warm and drove himself to do so; then went back to his bunk; kicked off his boots and crawled once more under the covers with his clothes on.
He went to sleep immediately.
When he woke again, Henry and the boys were still not back from church. He went back to the dining room, put what remained of the porridge in a bowl, and this time managed to finish it. It felt good inside him, for all the reluctance his body had to accept it spoonful by spoonful.
Henry had been very right about the physical shape Bleys was in. It took him most of the next week to recover, although, once started, he came back fast.
In the middle of the week Joshua returned from a trip to the store having plainly been in a fight. But he refused to tell them with who or why.
"Father," he said to Henry, "haven't you always told us we must face and fight our own battles? Well, this was simply one of my battles and it's no one's business but my own."
Henry shook his head.
"Son," he said heavily, "when you quote my own words back to me I can't insist you tell me."
And that had been the last word said on the subject by any of them.
By the following Sunday Bleys felt as well as ever, although Henry still had him doing only light chores around the house. But he put on his best black suit that Dahno had got him and went with them when they left for church this time.
They were among the first few families to get there. Gregg stood at the entrance to the church, as he always did, welcoming those who had come for the service. His welcome to Bleys was no different. Bleys noticed, however, that the other families that were already there, and those that arrived after—for he, Henry and the boys stayed outside until the actual time for the services themselves—-all greeted Henry and the boys but ignored him.
Both Joshua and Will were a little paler than usual. But Henry's face showed nothing. Bleys, on his part, was used to the fact that the rest of the church membership had not strongly taken to him, long before this. He left Henry and the boys outside and went into the church, toward the back of which he found one other person who did not seem to have changed at all, but welcomed Bleys in as kindly and as friendly a manner as he always had: Adrian Wiseman.
He spoke with Bleys for a little while, then went back through the cloakroom and out onto the porch where Gregg was standing, greeting people. Bleys sat where he was; and eventually the people in the churchyard began to file inside. Soon Gregg came in and mounted his pulpit and the service began.
But this particular service was to have the kind of interruption Adrian had described to Bleys a long time before, and which Bleys himself had seen at least a dozen times in the past few years. There was a sudden whooping and hollering outside; and the thud of some thrown rocks, or other missiles, hitting the side of the church. Adrian was immediately on his feet, moving out into the cloakroom to pick up his pistol and step outside. Bleys rose immediately and followed him; but as he approached the door, the constable pushed him back in.
"One of them's armed," said Adrian.
Behind Bleys, Gregg's voice sounded from the pulpit interrupting his sermon.
"Please leave the constable to his duty," he heard Gregg say, "and return to your seat, Bleys. There's nothing you can do out there."
Bleys turned back and reseated himself in the final pew.
"I ask God's pardon and yours, Teacher," he said.
It was the sort of apology that was standard for such occasions as this. But Bleys was suddenly alerted by the fact that murmurs were running through the congregation; and members among it were casting hostile glances at him. From being an object generally ignored, he seemed to have suddenly become one who was actively a target for general criticism; and his last attempt to join Adrian had triggered off that attitude.
The glances he saw occasionally directed back at him from the pews further front were looks of pure enmity.
He puzzled over this, now more concerned rather with what this would all mean to Henry and the two boys, than how it would affect him. It all turned upon whatever had made the sudden change in community feeling. He decided, finally, that he would try to talk to Gregg after church.
If anyone, Gregg would tell him straight out what was wrong; or what had caused the congregation to start to feel this way about him. It could not be his relationship to Dahno, because that had been an established fact for years. Moreover, far from being disliked locally, Dahno was generally admired.
How much of that admiration was due to the fact that he seemed to have been someone who had gone to the city and gotten rich, Bleys had no idea. But it was a fact. And if they liked Dahno, why should they have anything against him?
At the end of the service, Bleys slipped quickly from his bench and tried to get up to Gregg. However, the mass of congregation, now leaving, were a human tide running against him and Bleys gave up the idea of pushing through them, particularly under the present conditions of the way they were feeling toward him.
He shrugged his shoulders, turned and went outside to wait for Henry and the two boys, who had been seated, as usual, together at the very front of the church.
The rest of the congregation poured out and began to sort themselves out around their various vehicles. Outside of a few unfriendly glances, none of them looked his way. He was continuing to stand by himself when something hit him from behind on his left shoulder.
He reached up automatically to feel it and brought his fingers away grimy with dirt. Looking down, he saw simply a clod of earth with some variform grass attached, that had evidently been thrown at him. Experience had taught Bleys, even back in the years when he was with his mother, that there were times to confront things, and times not to. Now was clearly a time to confront. He turned about and walked toward the people by the carts standing almost directly behind him.
In front of them was a group of boys about Joshua's age. They all had two or three years of age on Bleys, but none of them was his height. It might have been any one of them who had thrown the clod; but Bleys had learned as a young child that the thing to do was to pick out the most worthy opponent in the group and confront him. He would either take the responsibility, on being challenged, or indicate the person who was guilty of throwing.
In this case, the one most likely to be the leader, and to have thrown the clod himself, was Isaiah Lerner, a tall, somewhat swarthy boy going on seventeen years old. He was one who had had a fight or two with Joshua in the past; and Joshua had lost. Not, reflected Bleys, that that would ever save Joshua from having to fight him again. Henry's teaching was deeply ingrained in his oldest son. If you felt that right was on your side, the only way to go was forward.
The group of boys seemed to be waiting for Bleys. He came up to them, face to face with Isaiah, and looked a little down into his eyes. This, he knew, would additionally annoy the other. Isaiah outweighed Bleys by a good twenty pounds or more, beginning already to have the musculature of a man, but to be looked down on was always an affront. Still, in the case of any physical conflict between the two of them, there was little doubt among the locals who would be the winner.
Isaiah met his gaze boldly and did not move.
"You threw that, Isaiah?" asked Bleys.
"That's right," answered Isaiah. He stood with his arms
dangling loosely at his sides, square on to Bleys. "Something about that bother you?"
"Only when you do it," said Bleys.
Isaiah laughed and half turned away; and as if it was a signal the rest of the boys around him also laughed.
"You haven't got an answer?" said Bleys, "I thought as much."
He turned his back on them and began to walk away again and a voice spoke behind him.
"Whore's baby!" It was Isaiah's voice, and it sounded almost in his ear. "You don't belong in our church, whore's baby!"
Bleys swung back to face him. Isaiah was already getting ready to hit him, his right fist starting from low by his thigh and back a ways. Bleys had had training, oh and off, while he was with his mother, both from hired instructors in the martial arts, and some unofficial tutoring by friends of his mother's. He waited until the hand began to move, and then he swayed aside gently. Isaiah's punch shot past his jaw and hit empty air.
Bleys' own bony right fist struck Isaiah's throat. The other boy fell to the ground, choking and breathing in great whooping gasps, trying to get air into his lungs. Looking at him, Bleys hoped that he was more frightened than hurt.
Behind him the other boys- stared; and there was a dead silence from most of the adults, who by this time had also turned their attention to what was going on. It was a silence for a moment only. Then a low, building roar of anger grew among them; and the adults moved forward as a body, and the boys with them.
"Hold it! Just as you are!"
Henry's voice came from the entrance of the church. The moving crowd checked suddenly. Henry had just come out of the church onto its small front porch where Adrian stood, pistol in his holster. Henry had emerged on the side of the constable where the holster hung. He reached down now and closed his hand around the butt of the weapon, but without withdrawing it from its holster.
There was a coldness and a finality to Henry's voice, that
Bleys had never heard before. It was a voice that could and did stop the crowd. The combination of it with his hand on the power pistol that could incinerate them all in seconds, on wide aperture, was more than enough to bring them all to stillness and to silence.
His eyes swept the crowd from side to side, missing no one.
"You all know me!"
The slow, hard words dropped like stones, one by one, upon them. He paused for a moment.
"No one touches any of my family without dealing with me, first."
Once more his eyes swept over them and stopped on a heavy, round-faced man. "Carter Lerner, your boy started that fight. Now, pick him up. He's not hurt."
Indeed, Isaiah, still on the ground, had stopped choking; but he was still breathing in great whooping gasps and holding his throat with one hand.
"Joshua, Will," Henry went on in the continuing silence, as Carter Lerner bent to lift his son to his feet, "get in the goat-cart. You too, Bleys. Adrian—"
He turned to the constable.
"—You can pick your pistol up again at the storekeeper's."
With that, he took the pistol from the holster; and, holding it in his hand with the muzzle down, descended the steps and joined Bleys, Joshua and Will in their movement toward their own goat-cart. In the absence of any sound from the crowd, they got into the cart and drove away down the road.
Henry handled the reins without a word, the pistol in his lap. His sons were equally silent, though both of them threw glances at Bleys, in the back seat of the goat cart, that were clearly intended to be comforting. Henry drove on until he came to the store. Here, finally, he stopped, got out, and spoke to the three boys.
"I'm going to use the storekeeper's phone," he said. "The three of you stay here. I'll be right back."
He went up to the store, which was unlocked. The storekeeper himself had been at the church and was left behind them; but as with everything in this community, no doors were locked. Henry disappeared inside.