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“When she found me,” he continued, “I was a broken man. I know what it means to be as low as a man can get and still draw breath. The White King,” Jilo’s ears pricked up at the name, as she used to hear folk whisper about the “kings” from time to time back in Savannah. She had no idea how such an odd bit of superstition could have gotten its start. “He nearly had me. But Mrs. Jones, she found me, and she patched the pieces of this raggedy man back together.”
He fell silent, and for a moment, Jilo felt as tempted as Lot’s wife to cast a backward glance. “I know you think I am behind the times,” he finally said. “A creature of another era. I understand. In your shoes, at your age, well, undoubtedly I would have seen myself in the same light. It’s right that the young move us forward. It’s necessary. Bu
t sometimes that desire to buck the past can be dangerous and reckless. If I seem to hold on to my ideals too tightly, know that it is because I have walked up many a slippery hill. However you see me, remember this when you are appraising my character; I’m not a strong man, but I do care for you. I would like to think that in time, you’ll come to see that. I hate that we so often find ourselves facing off like adversaries.”
Jilo didn’t look back, but she nodded in agreement. This time she wasn’t tempted to turn. Speaking face-to-face might break the fragile spell that seemed to hold them in this place of peace, of understanding. “Why didn’t you?” she said, then, realizing that her thought had been elliptical, added, “Have children. Of your own, I mean.”
His reply came slowly, causing Jilo to fear she’d overstepped, but then he sighed. “We tried to have children, Sally and I, but it wasn’t His will.” The pew behind her moaned as he shifted his weight. “I know she blames herself, but I think . . .” He paused. “Well, you’d think I was crazy if I told you what I think.” The pew moaned again, this time with greater vehemence. Jilo realized he was standing, and she spun around. Without quite meaning to, she clasped his hand. For a fearful moment their eyes met, but she felt at peace with him, and judging from the way he relaxed back onto the pew, he seemed to feel the same way.
“What do you care what a silly girl like me thinks anyway?”
He smiled and shook his head. “You might be surprised by how much I care.” He leaned a bit forward. “And you’re not a silly girl. You’re an intelligent young woman. A headstrong young woman . . .” he started, but held up his hands and laughed when she pursed her lips and looked down her nose at him. “You are very much like the daughter I imagine I might have had, if I had been so blessed.” She returned his smile.
What would her father have thought of this man as her guardian? Nana Wills had certainly approved, so she figured Jesse Wills would’ve, too. Her thoughts turned dark. What would her father have thought of Lionel? She knew what Nana would think. She’d kill him if she found out what they’d done.
The pastor leaned back and draped his arm over the back of the pew. “I always knew I wanted to preach the word of God. Ever since I was a little boy.” He bit his lip and squinted at her. “You see, I knew I had been called . . . chosen, if you will. Many in this world are filled with doubt, but not I, ’cause I know there is something out there. The grace of God has allowed me to see with my own eyes what others perceive through faith.” The corners of his mouth twitched up into a nervous smile. “I’ve seen His angels,” he said, “I’ve been taken up by angels. And well, they changed me. I think they did things to prevent me from becoming a father. To ensure I could concentrate on spreading the word.”
Jilo blinked with surprise, but bit her tongue.
“See, you do think I’m crazy.”
She weighed her words before speaking. “No, I don’t think that. I do think that when we’re children, we can have dreams that seem very real to us.” She laughed. “I once dreamed that my big sister Poppy tried to eat my baby sister. Took days for my nana to convince me it’d only been a dream.”
He nodded, a sad expression washing over his face. “Yes, I understand what you say is true, but these visitations, they happened more than once.” He lowered his gaze, as if he didn’t want to see her response. “Still do from time to time. I see their holy light, and I am taken up”—he raised his hands and waved them in praise—“ ‘whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;’ Second Corinthians, chapter twelve, verse three,” he quoted, his reference to the good book causing his voice to lift and take on the animated quality it had when he was preaching. But then his voice fell flat and came out in a whisper. “They’ve shown me things, things to come on this earth. Clouds of fire rising up from the earth to the sky. Death and destruction like this world has never known, with only a remnant to survive.”
He leaned forward, clenching the back of her pew, and she felt herself leaning away from him. “ ‘And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.’ And I did, for they gave me no choice. I turned my head. I sought to avert my gaze. But no matter where I looked, it was the same. Stretched out before me was a desolate wasteland. Everywhere, fire and wind, and the seas burned clean away.” His voice trailed off, and his face turned ashen as his eyes looked out into nothingness. “Not even Mrs. Jones knows any of this.” His eyes turned toward her, a flicker of some dawning awareness in them.
He shook his head. Pushing against the pew, he rose to his feet. “Please forget I’ve said any of this.” He towered over her, slowly regaining control of himself, and raised his hand to his temple. “I spend too much time contemplating things that are not of this world. Perhaps you’re correct. Perhaps I let my imagination carry me away. Just forget my nonsense.”
But then his expression changed again, and the wide-eyed fright melted away into a mask of nearly paternal disappointment. His chest rose and fell, and he reached out and placed his hand along her jaw. She felt the urge to look away, but he turned her face up so that her eyes met his. “But another seal has been broken.”
FIVE
May 1953
“I’d like to thank you for joining us today, Miss Wills,” said the dean of students, Lewis Washington, looking over his spectacles at her like he was considering a slug he’d just uncovered in a prize flowerbed. The wooden smile he forced to his lips came too late to sweeten the tone that underlay his words. He sat facing her, his substantial desk forming an effective barrier between them. The office’s other chairs had been pulled into a straight line, stretching out from her left side to the ominously closed door.
These other seats had been filled by Jane Temple, the school registrar, Professor Charles, head professor of chemistry, and Lionel. She forced herself to think of him as Professor Ward lest she make a slip and an untoward familiarity show through. Graduation was less than six weeks away, and she was counting on recommendations from him and the others with him. “It’s an honor, sir,” she said.
Dean Washington smiled again, though this time the expression struck her as sincere. He looked from side to side, giving both professors and Miss Temple a look that seemed to tell them that they could relax, that there would be no trouble here. He leaned back in his large leather wingback chair, turning a bit to the side, and folded his hands on his round stomach. “I have been looking over your records, Miss Wills, and I have to tell you that I am impressed.” He spun the chair back to the center, not taking his eyes from her or his hands off his gut. “Your achievements here have indeed been outstanding.”
He stared at her, his face beaming with benevolence, and rocked in his chair, seeming to await a response. “Thank you, sir,” she said a moment after the silence began to feel heavy.
No longer rocking, he leaned forward and planted his hand on his desk, his stomach reaching out to touch its drawer. “Such a fine young lady,” he said, looking first at Charles and then at Ward.
Professor Charles must have read the comment as an invitation to speak. “One of the finest students I have ever had the pleasure to teach.”
Somehow his words affected her more than the dean’s compliment. Winning this man’s approval meant a lot to her. Jilo blushed and lowered her head.
“Don’t you agree, Lionel?” Dean Washington asked.
Lionel—Professor Ward’s lips curled into a smooth smile. “Unequaled.” Jilo glanced over at him, wishing that he still looked at her in private the way he regarded her now. Although their affair had continued, he no longer volunteered the words, “I love you.” When pressed, he would offer her, “You should know that I do,” but he grew cooler with each passing day. He cited pressures from work—although Jilo had begun to write and grade the exams for his courses over a year and a half ago, long before the physical aspect of their love had begun to be expressed. He blamed his wife’s continued declining health, alth
ough Mrs. Ward had begun to spend more time at her sister’s home than her own. He spoke with resentment of Jilo’s “clinginess”—explaining her own insecurities as the reason he had begun to pull away.
Last week Jilo had spotted Jeannette Walker, a freshman, a pretty girl with an hourglass shape and a secondhand intellect, carrying Professor Ward’s copy of Leaves of Grass. With a singular lack of care, she had left it deserted on a picnic table outside the auditorium with heavy clouds building overhead. Jilo had rescued it . . . and then watched later as the panicked girl returned, frantically seeking to retrieve that which she had so callously abandoned. It wasn’t stealing. This book belonged to Jilo now. She’d earned it.
Lionel had used this book as a tool to seduce her, and she had paid for it with her flesh. With her heart. The words “the embrace of love and resistance,” haunted her now, for they seemed to have divined the course of the affair, understanding it in a way Jilo herself only did now that she’d witnessed its full fruition. “I sing the body electric,” Ward had quoted, “The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them,” he’d continued, pressing her back into the wall as he leaned one arm forward to brace himself and wrapped a leg around hers. He’d held them locked together like that, his lips hovering a mere hairsbreadth from her own, as he spoke in a soft whisper the remainder of the stanza. That moment. Yes, it was precisely then that she had fallen in love with him. “You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.” A gate he now shunned in favor of a new portal.
