obadiah 1.1

by Cooper Clarence

With a stomp on the brake pedal and a cloud of whirling dust, I brought the van to a halt on the side of the road. I shut the engine off—I don’t believe in wasting gas—and cranked down the window. A wall of hot, dry air took my breath away as I leaned out to have a look, the desert sun pushing like a weight on the back of my head. Under the hood and inside my skull, I could hear the engine block tick-tick-tick-ticking.

Behind me at a distance of thirty yards stood the man with the briefcase. I was used to seeing backpackers—bearded, burnt, and lean, one thumb hooked in a shoulder strap and the other poking up into the air, tickling Luck’s underbelly—but this man was no backpacker. He wore a brown mohair suit and institutionally parted hair, with muscular whiskers but a chin shaved smooth as a polished brass doorknob. And then there was that briefcase. That I’d never seen before, not in the desert. Sunlight glanced off its polished side and lanced into my eyes, making me squint.

I gave a wave that turned into a comealong gesture and the briefcase-holder hopped into the air and began jogging down the road toward me, his leather dress shoes kicking up miniature puffs of dust from the scrubby, sunbaked verge, his orange paisley tie flapping over his shoulder.

Thankee! he gasped, as he opened the door and I swept empty beer cans and crumpled fast food burger wrappers off the passenger seat and onto the floor.

No problem, pard, I said, accidentally sliding into a Texas drawl as out of place on my New Englander’s lips as a longhorn in a lobster trap.

From round here? he asked, leaping up into the seat. He was a spry fellow, older than I’d first thought him, and shorter sitting next to me than he’d looked standing on the side of the road. North of fifty-five, if I had to guess, and south of five-five. Sweat glistened on his forehead below the gleaming span of his graying coif. He dabbed at it with a wrinkled handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

Just passing through. I put the van in gear and lurched us back onto the road. You?

From here? No. I’m just passing through myself.

Where you headed?

That depends. How far you going?

Today, or in general?

He paused to think about it, frowning and massaging the knob of his chin with a curled index finger, his eyes swiveling up so that all I could see of his eyes were the whites and a thin sliver of brown iris.

Either, he finally said.

Well I’m hoping to hit Marfa by nightfall, but beyond that I don’t know. West, I suppose.

Huh. Man on the road, and he don’t know where he’s headed the day after tomorrow. Now if that ain’t passing strange, my name ain’t Carl Patrick Sounder.

Is it? Your name, I mean.

No doubt. But that’s reserved for my poor lamented mammy, her and Christ the Redeemer on the day of judgment. In the meantime folks call me C.P.

Nice to meet you, C.P.

There was a pause. Sounder’s feet rattled among the empty cans.

It would seem you have me somewhat at a disadvantage, brother, he said. I didn’t catch your handle.

Never gave it.

Ahhh, the Man With No Name.

I got a name. I just don’t pass it out willy-nilly.

Got something to hide?

Call it discretion.

Sounder rubbed his chin. I wondered if he even bothered to shave it, or if he just buffed the hairs right out.

‘As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’ So says the good book—Proverbs eleven twenty-two.

Sorry?

The Bible, son! You’re no woman, neither fair nor foul, but I think the point has legs. As far as our savior goes, discretion has got the stamp of approval.

I slit my eyes and looked at him narrowly. You some kinda God-botherer?

I was beginning to regret the fleeting curiosity that had made me pull over and pick him up, and tried to think of plausible excuses for why I might suddenly need to turn the car around and start driving in the other direction. I liked carrying a hitcher, it made the miles go faster to have someone to talk to, but the prospect of getting Bible thumped all the way across West Texas made my balls shrivel. I’d grown up with religion, but put it down in my youth and never had cause to pick it up again. At best a crutch to prop up the morally unstable, at worst a trap for the foolish and vulnerable, it seemed to me a hoax any way you looked at it.

Botherer? Naw, I wouldn’t say that. The Lord and I do got a relationship, and like any relationship you sometimes get to bothering, but at the foundation it’s built on love. I had a wife, once, before I took my vows. There was love there, and lovin’ too—maybe too much lovin’ if I’m to be truthful, for I was still a young buck back then—but it was of the earthy kind. What I got now is another thing entire. Love for a woman, that’ll make you weak, but love for the Lord? ‘Let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.’ Judges five thirty-one, and the Judges speak for themselves.

Unwilling to engage in theological sparring this close to cocktail hour, I tacked.

Vows? So you’re a priest.

Not a priest. No, my calling’s in another direction. I belong to the monastic order of Saint Obadiah-in-the-Tree, hallowed be his name.

Never heard of any Obadiah of the trees, I said.

Not trees—tree. So far as the stories go he was only ever up in one of ‘em.

Okay. My voice doubted. So who is he, this Saint Obadiah-up-a-Tree?

In the, buttressed Sounder. He’s the man in whose name my order was founded. A Saint, confirmed and canonized by his Holiness the Pope in Rome. Or at least, the paperwork is all in, and I’ve been assured that his Holiness is making time to review it. It’s only a matter of waiting until he receives the proper recognition.

And why’s he got that funny name?

Sounder’s face lemoned. ‘But they continually mocked the messengers of God, until the wrath of the Lord arose, and there was no remedy.’ Second Chronicles thirty-six sixteen. You may laugh, but the Lord takes note, and the Saint remains unshaken.

I’m sorry, I said. I’m not a religious man myself, so I don’t know all the rules. Tell me the story, I want to hear it.

Mollified, Sounder made up his face and tucked in his frown at the corners. I will tell you the tale of the Saint’s life, because it is my earthly duty to spread the word of his good acts. But be forewarned: There is great power here, and many a man who has come up against the inrushing tide of the Saint’s story has found himself yanked from the rut of his own life and placed onto the path of the Saint’s. Go warily, my son, lest you find yourself unmoored and cast into the current of God’s will.

I’ll watch my step, I said, caulking the joints of my voice to keep mockery from seeping in.

So be it, said Sounder, and licked his lips. He leaned back, fluttering his eyelids once and then closing them, like lights flashing in a theater as the show is about to begin. In a low voice he started to speak, the words coming in the rehearsed flow of a story told dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but that for the teller had lost none of its potency.

The Saint’s life has its origins in humble means. Born to an undistinguished family in an undistinguished town, his father died when he was very young and he grew up in poverty and hardship. As a boy he was quiet and shy and kept mostly to himself, eschewing the society of his fellow children. Schooling he did his best to avoid, for he loved to be outside, surrounded by nature, not cooped up with four walls to contain him and a ceiling to block out the sun. And so his playmates became the creatures of the forest, both large and small, while his tutors were the trees and the four winds and the stars in the night sky. At the time, his connection to the Lord had yet to reveal itself, but even then he could hear in his head whisperings of the truth.

How do you know all these details? I asked.

Sounder’s eyes mousetrapped open and caught me fast. It has been revealed to me through faith, he graveled. Don’t interrupt.

I mimed zipping my lips, locking them, and throwing the key into the slipstream. Sounder watched me, nodded his head in satisfaction, closed his eyes, and continued.

The years passed, and as Obadiah grew older the burdens of the world weighed heavier upon his shoulders. His mother fell ill and took to her bed, and in order to survive Obadiah was forced to take up her place in the kitchens of their scarlet lord, far below the soaring golden arches of his abode. Where his afternoons and evenings and long summer days used to be times of escape, now they were tithed away in toil, his spirit traded shred by shred for filthy lucre.

Around him the world grew dull and gray as the horizons of his life crowded in like so many beggars, demanding fragments of his soul. To keep them at bay he gave them away, and in time he forgot the natural world, and the trees, and the hills and the rills of his childhood. In their place loomed the works of man, dark sentinels keeping watch over a prisoner to protect against his escape. So passed his youth, until the hairs withered gray from his scalp and the whiskers of age twined like kudzu over the smoothness of his face.

In another universe that might have been the end of the story of Obadiah—it is the end of so many stories like his—had not a bolt from the Lord shivered him from his shackles. Like so many boons from above, it came cloaked in the mantle of tragedy: One day, the first of summer, the Lord God gathered the mother of Obadiah unto his bosom, saving her from the filth of this world and leaving the Saint utterly alone. On the rainswept morning of her funeral he spread ashes in his hair and helped lower her into the soggy ground, and scooped up the first shovel of earth to drop upon her casket. When it was done, and all the mourners fled, and the graveyard drained but for his one battered soul, Obadiah went for a walk.

Bareheaded beneath the downpour, the Saint walked until he left the graveyard. He walked some more, until the path entered a wood—not the wood of his childhood, but one that kindled in him some of the old wonder, the old happy memories from years long-past. The path he trod narrowed and narrowed and finally terminated in a dappled glade, just as the rain finally passed and the sun strode out from behind the screen of clouds, proud in his naked glory. Obadiah stopped, removed his shoes, and stepped into the clearing. On the other side stood a tree, a magnificent oak, with a trunk like a column to hold up the sky and branches like the arms of a giant.

But as he gazed into the crown of this forest king, awed into silence, a stranger stepped out of the shadows of the woods. Upon his belt the stranger bore tools—tools to rip and to cut, to saw and to sever—and now, faintly in the distance, Obadiah could make out the shriek and whine of an unholy harvest.

On what business do you enter this place? asked the stranger, thumbing his gleaming iron. You’re not allowed to be here.

In answer, Obadiah indicated the princely tree before them. The woodsman looked with clouded eyes that did not see, then turned back to the Saint.

It’ll have to come down, along with all the rest, he said. Be gone when I return with my fellows.

And with that he lumbered away, crushing the plants beneath his clumsy boots, heading in the direction of the distant wailing trees.

You can imagine the Saint’s dismay—on the very day of his cherished mother’s death, he was to witness a second death, no less tragic. Must he again bear helpless witness? He cast his eyes about, but no aid appeared. He was alone. And in that moment of solitary helplessness, an idea kindled in his brain. From whence it came is impossible to say, only that it entered him from without, pierced his fleshy corpse and struck him deep within his immortal soul: HE must be the one to act.

Striding up to the great father oak, he laid a hand on his bark and gazed up into his branches. Many a treeless year had passed for the Saint, but the body remembers where the brain forgets: Wrapping his arms around the trunk, he lifted a foot off the ground and in a trice shinnied up it. Where the limbs branched he found a comfortable crotch to sit and wait, feet bare and twigs in his hair, for the workman to return.

Return he did, and when the Saint refused to climb down he brought forth his fellows.

Come down from there, they called to him, but the Saint refused.

You’re mad, they said, but still the Saint refused.

Next came their leader, a small man with a starched collar and hands the color of cream who carried no tool but his voice:

Be reasonable, he said, not shouting as his men had done, but softly, gently. I understand where you’re coming from, truly I do—I even agree with you. A shame it is to cut down this beautiful tree, a shame to scar the face of the forest. But this isn’t the way to go about it. Come down out of the tree and we’ll talk and figure this whole thing out—maybe over an iced beverage. I’ve a draught here for you, if you’ll come down.

For a moment, the Saint wavered—with the departure of the rain, the day had turned hot and sunny and his throat was dry like old parchment. A cold beverage seemed just the thing. But the voice of the man with the starched collar tasted too sweet by half, so again he refused, and at that the man’s voice turned bitter:

So be it, then—enjoy your perch, little bird. 

Twelve days and twelve nights the Saint stayed in the tree, eating nothing, drinking the raindrops that fell from above, praying to the Lord for strength and fortitude. In the daytime he burned under the summer sun, and in the nights he shivered under the cold stars. Men came each day to talk and see if he was ready to relent, but each day he refused. And so twelve days passed, but on the morning of the thirteenth the Lord saw fit to relent. Another man, a man Obadiah had not yet seen, came to the foot of his tree and shouted up to him:

You win! he told the Saint. You’ve beaten us. We’ll go, and leave the forest in peace.

This man wore a heavy suit of dyed wool, and from under the jacket he brought forth a document, signed and spotted with seals, showing that what he said was so. And so Obadiah climbed down and stood once more upon the earth, and shook the hand of the man, and of all those who stood by, and blessed was that day in the sight of the Lord.

Sounder, who had talked continuously for almost half an hour, now fell silent, and when I looked over at him he was staring out the window, watching the telephone poles whip past. Outside, the sun had fallen below the horizon and the sky was the color of bruises and endings. I waited, but the only sound in the car was the humming of the tires on the asphalt.

So then what—

Care to see some literature? he asked, abruptly, cutting me off before I could finish my question. I always carry it with me, in case I meet a soul in need.

Before I could think of a polite rephrasing of hell no, Sounder pulled his silver case onto his lap and clicked it open with a flick of his thumbs. Looking over, I saw it was full of glossy green pamphlets, stacks of them rubber-banded together and loose ones shuffled into clumps like fallen leaves. Plucking one out, he handed it to me. I was driving, but it wasn’t as if there was a lot to hit out there—flattening the pamphlet against the steering wheel, I glanced down at the cover.

Topping the page, words in bright red and all caps shouted: HAVE YOU HEARD THE WORD?!? Below that on one side was a picture of a tree, old and gnarled but standing tall in an open field. On the other was the photograph of a man in profile.

Who’s this guy? I asked.

That would be the Saint himself, Sounder answered.

You have a photograph of him?

Oh yes! Many. His life is well documented.

But aren’t Saints supposed to be, like, old? From the Bible?

Many of them, yes, but Saint Obadiah’s tale is more recent.

How much more recent? I was beginning to have suspicions. Something was off—I have a nose for trouble, and all of a sudden I caught its stench. I looked again at the photo of the man on the cover of the pamphlet. It was dark in the car, but somehow he seemed vaguely familiar.

Let’s see… Sounder did some quick math on his fingers. Almost two years.

Wait a minute—two years? You’re telling me that story is from less than two years ago? That’s basically nothing!

Perhaps, said Sounder. The Saint’s deeds may be young, but his virtue stands tall in this era of sin—sins against ourselves, against our brother man, and against our God-given earth.

Two years, I said. So he’s still alive?

Oh, yes! Alive and well and still serving the Lord.

Still climbing trees, you mean?

Not quite, said Sounder. He’s taken to a more direct style of action.

What does that mean?

Sounder didn’t immediately answer. He had closed the briefcase again, and he gripped the sides of it, rubbing his thumbs against the latches and staring into the distance out the window. After a few seconds, he repeated himself:

More direct.

Okay. Well, what does he think of all this?

All what?

This, I said, tapping the pamphlet against the steering wheel. The pamphlets, the Saint thing, the monastic order—everything.

Oh, that? He thinks as I do.

You must be good friends, I said.

We are all one in spirit—me, and you, and the Saint, and all others as well.

But especially you and the Saint.

Again Sounder didn’t answer. He stared straight ahead, out the windshield, showing me the profile of his face. By now I knew, but I punched the ceiling light anyway. It burst into yellow light, filling the cab. Sounder squinted against the sudden brightness and held up his hand to shield his eyes. I looked down at the pamphlet, at the picture of the man on the front.

Move your hand, I said.

Sounder lowered it to his lap, and I looked at his face.

Then back at the pamphlet.

Then back at his face.

You’re him, I said. You’re Saint Obadiah. All that stuff—the story, the tree, everything—that was about you.

Sounder nodded. Indeed, he said, his voice grave.

So you’re your own follower. How many other people are in your order?

Many souls are aligned in spirit with the Saint’s cause, he said.

Yeah, yeah—but how many people? In numbers.

Sounder shuffled his shoes in the trash of the footwell and looked down at the case.

At this time I walk the path alone, the better to focus on my goal.

So none, then. You’re your own follower, and you’re also your only follower. Great.

Others will join! he said, raising his voice again. When they learn of my cause, they will flock like birds to the sun!

How’s that going so far?

Sounder said nothing.

Yeah, that’s about what I thought. Look, here’s your pamphlet back. I held it out to him. I think I’ll pass, thanks.

Keep it, he said. You may come to it in an hour of need.

Take it or it’s going out the window, I said. I wouldn’t have done it, but I thought the threat of littering might get his attention. Reluctantly, he took the paper from my hand and clicked open his case again to slide it back inside. As he did so, I clipped a pothole in the road and the case jerked and fell from his lap, spilling its contents. As I said earlier, it was mostly filled with rubber-banded stacks of pamphlets identical to the one I’d just handed back, but a portion of the suitcase was also given over to a compact roll of clothing—a pair of socks, a battered truss, and some spare underclothes. As it fell it came unrolled, and in the light of the overhead I could clearly see something tumble out.

Sounder snatched for the something, missed, and it fell to the floor. He lurched forward to go after it but he went too fast and his seatbelt caught him up short. Unbuckling, he tried again and this time he got his hand around it, but by then I’d seen enough.

The size of a small brick, the thing was beige-colored and wrapped in plastic. A cell phone, the cheap kind with a rubberized keypad and a screen the size of a postage stamp, was electrical-taped to the top. From the bottom protruded a pair of wires which snaked their way into the wrapping of the beige lump, disappearing in the folds of plastic.

In all, I probably got a two-second look at the thing before Sounder rolled it back into his extra pair of underwear, but it was enough.

I stomped on the brake. Sounder had never buckled himself back in, and the stop was so sudden he nearly disembarked through the windshield. As it was, he slid forward out of his seat, losing his case all over again and bashing his knees and elbows against the glovebox. He yipped in pain and surprise, a sound like a coyote makes, and the van came to a halt on the shoulder of the road, canted over to the right with two tires sitting in the roadside ditch. I turned the keys and the engine died.

Now what did you go and do that for? Sounder demanded, rubbing his elbow as he scooped himself up and splatted back down in the passenger seat.

Get out.

Beg pardon?

Get out of the van, I repeated, reaching across him to the door handle. I popped it open and pushed and the door swung wide on its hinges, pulled by gravity.

Have I done something to offend you? Is this because of the pamphlet?

You know why. He was trying to look me in the eye, but I stared determinedly over his shoulder and out the open door. It’s not the pamphlet. Out.

Sounder stopped rubbing one elbow and switched to the other. Please, young man, I plead ignorance! Can you not shed light, as it is said in the Book of Ephesians that the son of God shed light upon the sleepers risen from the dead?

You want to play dumb? Fine: You’ve been in my van what, an hour? An hour, yapping away about God and religion and nature, spinning your yarn, and all this time you’ve got a goddamn bomb bouncing around in your briefcase. Not the pieces of a bomb, mind you, but the real McCoy, assembled, primed—everything but armed, for Christ’s sake!

Sounder flinched. You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.

And you shouldn’t insert the goddamn detonator into a goddamn improvised explosive device until you’re ready to blow something to goddamn Hell! That’s rule number one of working with explosives! Don’t you know anything?

As yet I am a novice in the techniques of direct action, said Sounder, his voice just poking its head out of his mouth, like a whipped dog checking to see if the coast was clear.

No shit. Now get out.

Sounder clicked shut his briefcase and slid out of the seat, landing in the ditch below. As he turned back to close the door, I couldn’t help myself.

Hey. Sounder. He looked up at me. What on earth are you doing with that thing way out here in East Jesus?

Sounder polished his chin and looked at the ground.

Do you know what happened after the Saint climbed down out of the tree?

No.

At first, nothing. They left the forest alone, as they’d promised they would, and the Saint thought he’d won. A week passed, and then a month, and then a year. The Saint traveled on, preaching the good word, going from town to town and bringing it to the people. But after a year he came home to visit the grave of his lamented mother, and do you know what he discovered? The forest was gone. The tree—his tree—was gone. Sawn off at the roots, along with all the others.

They tricked you.

They played me for a fool, and a fool I felt, standing there in the open field of what had once been a forest, surrounded by the chopped wooden headstones of a new graveyard.

So what, you decided to start building bombs?

I decided to do something they couldn’t ignore.

Sounder, who’d deflated some since I kicked him out of the van, now straightened up again. Bolting his jaw back in place, he stabbed at me with his eyes. In the floodlight of the desert moon, with the mountains rearing up behind him and his shoulders fiercely squared, he almost looked the part of the Biblical hero he so desperately imagined himself to be.

My whole life I’ve been ignored. Even mother, bless her poor soul, never thought I would amount to much—and she would’ve been right, too, except I found my purpose. And now that I have my method, they won’t be able to brush me aside anymore. I’d like to see them try!

He raised his briefcase overhead and rattled it like a war spear.

Don’t shake that, I said. Rule number two.

Right, sorry.

He cradled the case in his arms, rubbing a hand soothingly against the side like it was a temperamental baby, and just then a thought struck him. I could see it in his face.

You know, you seem to have some knowledge of the explosive arts, Sounder said. I wonder—might you be interested in joining with me? I could use a man with experience. As you can tell, my own knowledge is somewhat…rudimentary.

I barked a laugh right in his face. I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t help myself, so there it is. Ah, no, I said. I’m not interested in that. Shut the door, Sounder—gently, please, that contraption of yours doesn’t need any more agitating.

Reluctantly, Sounder swung the passenger door shut. I started the car, but paused before putting it in gear. Leaning over, I rolled down the window. Sounder looked up at the noise, a beggar’s hope in his eye.

If I were you, I said, I would stick to climbing trees.

Sounder looked around. Outside the van, the desert flats extended for miles in all directions, featureless until the mountains on the horizon.

There aren’t any trees out here, he said.

Exactly.

For as long as he remained visible in my rearview mirror, I watched Sounder watch me as I drove away. Bathed in the red glow of my tail lights, he stood like an abandoned mannequin by the roadside until eventually he disappeared, eaten whole by the night. I didn’t think of him as I drove the last half-hour into Marfa. I had other things on my mind, and although he’d been entertaining for a time, and the bomb scare had certainly gotten my heart pumping, at that point the Saint still hadn’t made a strong impression on me.

Eventually he would. But that moment was yet to come.

BIO: Cooper Clarence is a New England-based librarian and writer. He loves reading, the great outdoors, and fighting the good fight. His story "Telemachy" was previously published in Blood+Honey.