Road to Bliss by Joan Clark

Author:Joan Clark [Clark, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tundra Book Group
Published: 2009-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

14

That night Jim dreamed he was falling into a chasm of blue-white ice darkening to grey and then to black the deeper he fell, his mouth locked in a continuous scream that followed him all the way down. The scream woke him before he hit bottom—if there was a bottom—and he sat up, shivering with cold. The blanket had fallen onto the floor and the cool night air flowing through the open shutters had chilled him to the bone. The warm weather Asa called Indian summer was over.

Closing the shutters and pulling on his socks and jeans, Jim wrapped himself in the blanket and lay down again, vowing to clean the chimney so that he could make himself something warm to drink. What he wouldn’t do right now for a cup of hot chocolate! Without the comfort of a stove or hot chocolate, he imagined Miriam curled beside him on the narrow sofa bed and after a while was warm enough to fall asleep.

He awoke knowing he would attend the prayer meeting again tonight. Maybe tonight Miriam would find a way of meeting him afterwards, and he’d be there even though it meant having to listen to one of the pastor’s sermons. That morning Jim and Asa dug a grave-size hole where the fireplace-oven would be built. It was easy work because the house foundation had already been marked with stakes and twine. Also, the cooler weather had got rid of the black-flies. In the afternoon they dug holes for the cement posts that, as Asa explained, would support the concrete flooring. When they were done, Asa and Jim put down their shovels and went to the meeting hall for a supper of chicken stew and rhubarb pie. After the meal was eaten and dishes cleared away, the women returned to their places. Tonight the unhappy baby was crying in fits and starts. Shusss, a woman said, Shusss, which only made the baby shriek louder.

The pastor stood up. Right away Jim noticed Miriam’s father was in a very different mood from the one he’d been in the night before. Gone was the hypnotic storyteller and in his place was an angry ruler who stood, robed and hatted, a sheaf of paper in his hands. Tonight there was no attempt to hypnotize his listeners—his children—with a tale of a misspent youth and redemption. Tonight the pastor was intent on driving home the rules he demanded his followers obey.

Jabbing the sheaf of paper with a finger, the pastor said in a voice rigid with anger, “Tonight’s lesson is based on His first words that in His infinite wisdom, He bid me write down as I sat on His tower.” The toadish eyes swelled as he spat out the words “Thou shall not want!” A finger stabbed the air, a reminder of the words burnt into the wood above the barn door. “As you are well aware,” the pastor said, “wanting what you do not have is the work of the Devil.” He waved toward the window.

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