Fire Watch

SAMARITAN

Reverend Hoyt knew immediately what Natalie wanted. His assistant pastor knocked on the half-open door of his study and then sailed in, dragging Esau by one hand behind her. The triumphant smile on her face was proof enough of what she was going to say.

“Reverend Hoyt, Esau has something he wants to tell you.” She turned to the orangutan. He was standing up straight, something Reverend Hoyt knew was hard for him to do. He came almost to Natalie’s shoulder. His thick, squat body was covered almost entirely with long, neatly brushed auburn hair. He had only a little hair on top of his head. He had slicked it down with water. His wide face, inset and shadowed by his cheek flaps, was as impassive as ever.

Natalie signed something to him. He stood silent, his long arms hanging limply at his sides. She turned back to Reverend Hoyt. “He wants to be baptized! Isn’t that wonderful? Tell him, Esau.”

He had seen it coming. The Reverend Natalie Abreu, twenty-two and only one year out of Princeton, was one enthusiasm after another. She had vamped the Sunday school, taken over the grief counseling department, and initiated a standard of priestly attire that outraged Reverend Hoyt’s Presbyterian soul. Today she had on a trailing cassock with a red-and-gold-embroidered stole edged with fringe. It must be Pentecost. She was short and had close-cropped brown hair. She flew about her official duties like a misplaced choirboy in her ridiculous robes and surplices and chasubles. She had taken over Esau, too.

She had not known how to use American Sign Language when she came. Reverend Hoyt knew only the bare minimum of signs himself, “yes” and “no” and “come here.” The jobs he wanted Esau to do he had acted out mostly in pantomime. He had asked Natalie to learn a basic vocabulary so they could communicate better with the orang. She had memorized the entire Ameslan handbook. She rattled on to Esau for hours at a time, her fingers flying, telling him Bible stories and helping him with his reading.

“How do you know he wants to be baptized?”

“He told me. You know how we had the confirmation class last Sunday and he asked me all about confirmation and I said, 'Now they are God’s children, members of God’s family.’ And Esau said, 'I would like very much to be God’s beloved child, too.’”

It was always disconcerting to hear Natalie translate what Esau said. She changed what was obviously labored and fragmented language into rhapsodies of adjectives, clauses, and modifiers. It was like watching one of those foreign films in which the actor rattled on for a paragraph and the subtitle only printed a cryptic, “That is so.” This was reversed, of course. Esau had signed something like, “Me like be child God,” if that, and Natalie had transformed it into something a seminary professor would say. It was impossible to have any real communication with Esau this way, but it was better than pantomime.

“Esau,” he began resignedly, “do you love God?”

“Of course he loves God,” Natalie said. “He’d hardly want to be baptized if he didn’t, would he?”

“Natalie,” he said patiently, “I need to talk to Esau. Please ask him, ‘Do you love God?’”

She looked disgusted, but signed out the question. Reverend Hoyt winced. The sign for “God” was dreadful. It looked like a sideways salute. How could you ask someone if they loved a salute?

Esau nodded. He looked terribly uncomfortable standing there. It infuriated Reverend Hoyt that Natalie insisted on his standing up. His backbone simply wasn’t made for it. She had tried to get him to wear clothes, too. She had bought him a workman’s uniform of coveralls and a cap and shoes. Reverend Hoyt had not even been patient with her that time. “Why on earth would we put shoes on him?” he had said. “He was hired because he has feet he can use like hands. He needs them both if he’s going to get up among the beams. Besides which, he is already clothed. His hair covers him far more appropriately than those ridiculous robes you wear cover you!” After that Natalie had worn some dreadful Benedictine thing made of horsehair and rope until Reverend Hoyt apologized. He had not given in on the matter of clothes for Esau, however.

“Tell Esau to sit down in the chair,” he said. He smiled at the orangutan as he said it. He sat down also. Natalie remained standing. The orangutan climbed into the chair frontwards, then turned around. His short legs stuck out straight in front of him. His body hunched forward. He wrapped his long arms around himself, then glanced up at Natalie, and hastily let them hang at his sides. Natalie looked profoundly embarrassed.

“Esau,” he began again, motioning to Natalie to translate, “baptism is a serious matter. It means that you love God and want to serve him. Do you know what serve means?”

Esau nodded slowly, then made a peculiar sign, tapping the side of his head with the flat of his hand.

“What did he say, Natalie? And no embellishments, please. Just translate.”

“It’s a sign I taught him,” she said stiffly. “In Sunday school. The word wasn’t in the book. It means talents. He means-e—”

“Do you know the story of the ten talents, Esau?”

She translated. Again he nodded.

“And would you serve God with your talents?”

This whole conversation was insane. He could not discuss Christian service with an orangutan. It made no sense. They were not free agents. They belonged to the Cheyenne Mountain Primate Research facility at what had been the old zoo. It was there that the first orangs had signed to each other. A young one, raised until the age of three with humans, had lost both human parents in an accident and had been returned to the Center. He had a vocabulary of over twenty words in American Sign Language and could make simple commands. Before the end of the year, the entire colony of orangs had the same vocabulary and could form declarative sentences. Cheyenne Mountain did its best to educate their orangs and find them useful jobs out in society, but they still owned them. They came to get Esau once a month to breed him with females at the Center. He didn’t blame them. Orangs were now extinct in the wild. Cheyenne Mountain was doing the best they could to keep the species alive and they were not unkind to them, but he felt sorry for Esau, who would always serve.

He tried something else. “Do you love God, Esau?” he asked again. He made the sign for “love” himself.

Esau nodded. He made the sign for “love.”

“And do you know that God loves you?”

He hesitated. He looked at Reverend Hoyt solemnly with his round brown eyes and blinked. His eyelids were lighter than the rest of his face, a sandy color. He made his right hand into a fist and faced it out toward Reverend Hoyt. He put the short thumb outside and across the fingers, then moved it straight up, then tucked it inside, all very methodically.

“S-A-M—” Natalie spelled. “Oh, he means the good Samaritan, that was our Bible story last week. He has forgotten the sign we made for it.” She turned to Esau and dropped her flat hand to her open palm. “Good, Esau. Good Samaritan.” She made the S fist and tapped her waist with it twice. “Good Samaritan. Remember?”

Esau looked at her. He put his fist up again and out toward Reverend Hoyt. “S—” he repeated, “A-M-A-R—” He spelled it all the way through.

Natalie was upset. She signed rapidly at Esau. “Don’t you remember, Esau? Good Samaritan. He remembers the story. You can see that. He’s just forgotten the sign for it, that’s all.” She took his hands and tried to force them into the flattened positions for “good.” He resisted.

“No,” Reverend Hoyt said, “I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about.”

Natalie was nearly in tears. “He knows all his Bible stories. And he can read. He’s read almost all of the New Testament by himself.”

“I know, Natalie,” Reverend Hoyt said patiently

“Well, are you going to baptize him?”

He looked at the orang sitting hunched in the chair before him. “I’ll have to give the matter some thought.”

She looked stubborn. “Why? He only wants to be baptized. The Ecumenical Church baptizes people, doesn’t it? We baptized fourteen people last Sunday. All he wants is to be baptized.”

“I will have to give the matter some thought.”

She looked as if she wanted to say something. “Come on, Esau,” she said, signing to the ape to follow her.

He got out of the chair clumsily, trying to face forward while he did. Trying to please Natalie, Reverend Hoyt thought. Is that why he wants to be baptized, too, to please Natalie?

Reverend Hoyt sat at his desk for some time. Then he walked down the endless hall from his office to the sanctuary. He stood at the side door and looked into the vast sunlit chamber. The church was one of the first great Ecumenical cathedrals, built before the Rapture. It was nearly four stories high, vaulted with great open pine beams from the Colorado mountains. The famous Lazetti window reached the full four stories and was made of stained glass set in strips of steel.

The first floor, behind the pulpit and the choir loft, was in shadow, dark browns and greens rising to a few slender palm trees. Above that was the sunset. Powerful orange, rich rose, deep mauve dimmed to delicate peach and cream and lavender far over the heads of the congregation. At about the third-floor level the windows changed imperceptibly from pastel-tinted to clear window glass. In the evenings the Denver sunset, rising above the smog, blended with the clouds of the window. Real stars came out behind the single inset star of beveled glass near the peak of the window.

Esau was up among the beams. He swung arm over arm, one hand trailing a white dusting cloth. His long hairy arms moved surely among the crosspieces as he worked. They had tried ladders before Esau came, but they scratched the wood of the beams and were not safe. One had come crashing down within inches of the Lazetti window.

Reverend Hoyt decided to say nothing until he had made up his mind on the matter. To Natalie’s insistent questions, he gave the same patient answer. “I have not decided.” On Sunday he preached the sermon on humility he had already planned.

Reading the final scripture, however, he suddenly caught sight of Esau huddled on one of the pine cross-pieces, his arms wrapped around a buttress for support, watching him as he read. “‘But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well-nigh slipped. I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a beast toward thee.’”

He looked out over his congregation. They looked satisfied with themselves, smug. He looked at Esau.

“‘Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou dost hold my hand. Afterward thou wilt receive me to glory My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’” He banged the Bible shut. “I have not said everything I intend to say on the subject of humility a subject very few of you know anything about.” The congregation looked surprised. Natalie, in a bright red robe with a yellow silk chasuble over it, beamed.

He made Natalie shout the benediction over the uproar afterwards and went out the organists door and back to the parsonage. He turned down the bell on the telephone to almost nothing. An hour later Natalie arrived with Esau in tow. She was excited. Her cheeks were as red as her robe. “Oh, I’m so glad you decided to say something after all. I was hoping you would. You’ll see, they’ll all think it’s a wonderful idea! I wish you’d baptized him, though. Just think how surprised everyone would have been! The first baptism ever, and in our church! Oh, Esau, aren’t you excited! You’re going to be baptized!”

“I haven’t decided yet, Natalie. I told the congregation the matter had come up, that’s all.”

“But you’ll see, they’ll think it’s a wonderful idea.”

He sent her home, telling her not to accept any calls or talk to any reporters, an edict he knew she would ignore completely He kept Esau with him, fixing a nice supper for them both and turning the television on to a baseball game. Esau picked up Reverend Hoyt’s cat, an old tom that allowed people in the parsonage only on sufferance, and carried him over to his chair in front of the TV Reverend Hoyt expected an explosion of claws and hurt feelings, but tom settled down quite happily in Esau’s lap.

When bedtime came, Esau set him down gently on the end of the guest bed and stroked him twice. Then he crawled into the bed forwards, which always embarrassed Natalie so. Reverend Hoyt tucked him in. It was a foolish thing to do. Esau was fully grown. He lived alone and took care of himself. Still, it seemed the thing to do.

Esau lay there looking up at him. He raised up on one arm to see if the cat was still there, and turned over on his side, wrapping his arms around his neck. Reverend Hoyt turned off the light. He didn’t know the sign for “good night,” so he just waved, a tentative little wave, from the door. Esau waved back.

Esau ate breakfast with the cat in his lap. Reverend Hoyt had turned the phone back up, and it rang insistently. He motioned to Esau that it was time to go over to the church. Esau signed something, pointing to the cat. He clearly wanted to take it with him. Reverend Hoyt signed one rather gentle “no” at him, pinching his first two fingers and thumb together, but smiling so Esau would not think he was angry.

Esau put the cat down on the chair. Together they walked to the church. Reverend Hoyt wished there were some way he could tell him it was not necessary for him to walk upright all the time. At the door of Reverend Hoyt’s study, Esau signed, “Work?” Reverend Hoyt nodded and tried to push his door open. Letters shoved under the door had wedged it shut. He knelt and pulled a handful free. The door swung open, and he picked up another handful from the floor and put them on his desk. Esau peeked in the door and waved at him. Reverend Hoyt waved back, and Esau shambled off to the sanctuary. Reverend Hoyt shut the door.

Behind his desk was a little clutter of sharp-edged glass and a large rock. There was a star-shaped hole above them in the glass doors. He took the message off the rock. It read, “And I saw a beast coming up out of the earth, and upon his head the names of blasphemy.”

Reverend Hoyt cleaned up the broken glass and called the bishop. He read through his mail, keeping an eye out for her through the glass doors. She always came in the back way through the parking lot. His office was at the very end of the business wing of the church, the hardest thing to get to. It had been intended that way to give him as much privacy as possible. There had been a little courtyard with a crab apple tree in it outside the glass doors. Five years ago the courtyard and the crab apple tree had both been sacrificed to parking space, and now he had no privacy at all, but an excellent view of all comings and goings. It was the only way he knew what was going on in the church. From his office he couldn’t hear a thing.

The bishop arrived on her bicycle. Her short curly gray hair had been swept back from her face by the wind. She was very tanned. She was wearing a light green pantsuit, but she had a black robe over her arm. He let her in through the glass doors.

“I wasn’t sure if it was an official occasion or not. I decided I’d better bring something along in case you were going to drop another bombshell.”

“I know,” he sighed, sitting down behind his littered desk. “It was a stupid thing to do. Thank you for coming, Moira.”

“You could at least have warned me. The first call I got was some reporter raving that the End was coming, I thought the Charles had taken over again. Then some idiot called to ask what the church’s position on pigs’ souls was. It was another twenty minutes before I was able to find out exactly what you’d done. In the meantime, Will, I’m afraid I called you a number of highly uncharitable names.” She reached out and patted his hand. “All of which I take back. How are you doing, dear?”

“I didn’t intend to say anything until I’d decided what to do,” he said thoughtfully. “I was going to call you this week about it. I told Natalie that when she brought Esau in.”

“I knew it. This is Natalie Abreu’s brainchild, isn’t it? I thought I detected the hand of an assistant pastor in all this. Honestly, Will, they are all alike. Isn’t there some way to keep them in seminary another ten years until they calm down a little? Causes and ideas and reforms and more causes. It wears me out.

“Mine is into choirs: youth choirs, boy choirs, madrigals, antiphonals, glees. We barely have time for the sermon, there are so many choirs. My church doesn’t look like a church. It looks like a military parade. Battalions of colored robes trooping in and out, chanting responses.” She paused. “There are times when I’d like to throttle him. Right now I’d like to throttle Natalie. Whatever put it into her head?”

Reverend Hoyt shook his head. “She’s very fond of him.”

“So she’s been filling him with a lot of Bible stories and scripture. Has she been taking him to Sunday school?”

“Yes. First grade, I think.”

“Well, then, you can claim indoctrination, can’t you? Say it wasn’t his own idea but was forced on him?”

“I can say that about three-fourths of the Sunday school class. Moira, that’s the problem. There isn’t any argument that I can use against him that wouldn’t apply to half the congregation. He’s lonely. He needs a strong father figure. He likes the pretty robes and candles. Instinct. Conditioning. Sexual sublimation. Maybe those things are true of Esau, but they’re true of a lot of people I’ve baptized, too. And I never said to them, 'Why do you really want to be baptized?’”

“He’s doing it to please Natalie.”

“Of course. And how many assistant pastors go to seminary to please their parents?” He paced the narrow space behind his desk. “I don’t suppose there’s anything in church law?”

“I looked. The Ecumenical Church is just a baby, Will. We barely have the organizational bylaws written down, let alone all the odds and ends. And twenty years is not enough time to build a base of precedent. I’m sorry Will. I even went back to pre-unification law, thinking we might be able to borrow something obscure. But no luck.”

The liberal churches had flirted with the idea of unification for more than twenty-five years without getting more accomplished than a few statements of good will. Then the Charismatics had declared the Rapture, and the churches had dived for cover right into the arms of ecumenism.

The fundamentalist Charismatic movement had gained strength all through the eighties. They had been committed to the imminent coming of the End, with its persecutions and Antichrist. On a sultry Tuesday in 1989 they had suddenly announced that the End was not only in sight, but here, and that all true Christians must unite to do battle against the Beast. The Beast was never specifically named, but most true Christians concluded he resided somewhere among the liberal churches. There was fervent prayer on Methodist front lawns. Young men ranted up the aisles of Episcopal churches during mass. A great many stained glass windows, including all but one of the Lazettis, were broken. A few churches burned.

The Rapture lost considerable momentum when two years later the skies still had not rolled back like a scroll and swallowed up the faithful, but the Charles were a force the newly born United Ecumenical Church refused to take lightly. She was a rather hodgepodgy church, it was true, but she stood like a bulwark against the Charles.

“There wasn’t anything?” Reverend Hoyt asked. “But the bishops can at least make a ruling, can’t they?”

“The bishops have no authority over you in this matter. The United Church of Christ insisted on self-determination in matters within an individual church, including election of officers, distribution of communion, and baptism. It was the only way we could get them in,” she finished apologetically.

“I’ve never understood that. There they were all by themselves with the Charismatics moving in like wolves. They didn’t have any choice. They had to come in. So how did they get a plum like self-determination?”

“It worked both ways, remember. We could hardly stand by and let the Charles get them. Besides, everyone else had fiddled away their compromise points on trespassers versus debtors and translations of the Bible. You Presbyterians, as I recall, were determined to stick in the magic word ‘predestination’ everywhere you could.”

Reverend Hoyt had a feeling the purpose of this was to get him to smile. He smiled. “And what was it you Catholics nearly walked out over? Oh, yes, grape juice.”

“Will, the point is I cannot give you bishops counsel on this. It’s your problem. You’re the one who’ll have to come to a fair and rational decision.”

“Fair and rational?” He picked up a handful of mail. “With advice like this?”

“You asked for it, remember? Ranting from the pulpit about humility?”

“Listen to this: ‘You can’t baptize an ape. They don’t have souls. One time I was in San Diego in the zoo there. We went to the ape house and right there, in front of the visitors and everything, were these two orangitangs…’” He looked up from the letter. “Here she apparently had some trouble deciding what words were most appropriate. Her pen has blotted.” He continued to read “‘…two orangitangs doing it.’ That’s underlined. ‘The worst of it is that they were laying there just enjoying it. So you see, even if you think they are nice sometimes…’ etc. This, from a woman who’s had three husbands and who knows how many ‘little lapses,’ as she calls them. She says I can’t baptize him on the grounds that he likes sex.”

He flipped through more papers. “The deacons think it would have what they call a negative effect on the total amount of pledges. The ushers don’t want tourists in here with cameras. Three men and nine women think baptizing him would somehow let loose his animal lusts and no one would be safe in the church alone.”

He held up another letter triumphantly, this one written on pale pink rosebudded stationery. “You asked us Sunday what we thought about apes having souls. I think so. I like to sit in back because of my arthritis which is very bad. During the invocation there were three tots in front of me with their little hands folded in prayer and just inside the vestry door was your ape, with his head bowed and his hands folded too.’” He held up the paper. “My only ally. And she thinks it’s cute to watch a full-grown orangutan fold his little hannies. How am I supposed to come to any kind of decision with advice like this? Even Natalie’s determined to make him into something he isn’t. Clothes and good manners and standing up straight. And I’m supposed to decide!”

Moira had listened to his rantings with a patient expression. Now she stood up. “That’s right, Will. It is your decision, not Natalie’s, not your congregations', not the Charles'. You’re supposed to decide.”

He watched her to her bicycle through the star of broken glass. “Damn the Congregationalists!” he said under his breath.

He sorted all the mail into three piles of “for” and “against” and “wildly insane,” then threw all of them into the wastebasket. He called in Natalie and Esau so he could give Esau the order to put up the protective plastic webbing over the big stained glass window. Natalie was alarmed. “What is it?” she asked when Esau had left with the storeroom key in his hand. “Have there been threats?”

He showed her the message from the rock, but didn’t mention the letters. “I’ll take him home again with me tonight,” he said. “When does he have to go to Colorado Springs?”

“Tomorrow,” She had fished a letter out of the wastebasket and was reading it. “We could cancel. They already know the situation,” she said and then blushed.

“No. He’s probably safer there than here.” He let some of the tiredness creep into his voice.

“You aren’t going to do it, are you?” Natalie said suddenly “Because of a lot of creeps!” She slammed the letter down on his desk. “You’re going to listen to them, aren’t you? A lot of creeps who don’t even know what a soul is and you’re going to let them tell you Esau doesn’t have one!” She went to the door, the tails of the yellow stole flying. “Maybe I should just tell them to keep him tomorrow, since you don’t want him.”

The doors slamming dislodged another splinter of glass.

Reverend Hoyt went to the South Denver Library and checked out books on apes and St. Augustine and sign language. He read them in his office until it was nearly dark outside. Then he went to get Esau. The protective webbing was up on the outside of the window. There was a ladder standing in the sanctuary. The window let in the dark blue evening light and the beginning stars.

Esau was sitting in one of the back pews, his short legs straight out in front of him on the velvet cushions. His arms hung down, palms out. He was resting. The dustcloth lay beside him. His wide face held no expression except the limpness of fatigue. His eyes were sad beyond anything Reverend Hoyt had ever seen.

When he saw Reverend Hoyt he climbed down off the pew quite readily They walked to the parish house. Esau immediately went to find the cat.

The people from Cheyenne Mountain came quite early the next morning. Reverend Hoyt noticed their van in the parking lot. He saw Natalie walk Esau to the van. The young man from the center opened the door and said something to Natalie. She nodded and smiled rather shyly at him. Esau got in the back seat of the van. Natalie leaned in and hugged him goodbye. When the van drove off he was sitting looking out the window, his face impassive. Natalie did not look in Reverend Hoyt’s direction.

They brought him back about noon the next day. Reverend Hoyt saw the van again, and shortly afterward Natalie brought the young man to his office. She was dressed all in white, a childishly full surplice over a white robe. She looked like an angel in a Sunday school program. Pentecost must be over and Trinity begun. She was still subdued, more than the situation of having her friends argue for her would seem to merit. Reverend Hoyt wondered how often this same young man came for Esau.

“I thought you would like to know how things are going down at the Center, sir,” the young man said briskly “Esau passed his physical, though there is some question of whether he might need glasses. He has a slight case of astigmatism. Otherwise he is in excellent physical condition for a male of his age. His attitude toward the breeding program has also improved markedly in the past few months. Male orangs become rather solitary, neurotic beings as they mature, sometimes becoming very depressed. Esau was not, up until a few months ago, willing to breed at all. Now he participates regularly and has impregnated one female.

“What I came to say, sir, is that we feel Esau’s job and the friends he has made here have made him a much happier and better adjusted ape than he was before. You are to be congratulated. We would hate to see anything interfere with the emotional well-being he has achieved so far.”

This is the best argument of all, Reverend Hoyt thought. A happy ape is a breeding ape. A baptized ape is a happy ape. Therefore…

“I understand,” he said, looking at the young man. “I have been reading about orangutans, but I have questions. If you could give me some time this afternoon, I would appreciate it.”

The young man glanced at his watch. Natalie looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps after the news conference. That lasts until…” He turned to Natalie. “Is it four o'clock, Reverend Abreu?”

She tried to smile. “Yes, four. We should be going. Reverend Hoyt, if you’d like to come—”

“I believe the bishop is coming later this afternoon, thank you.” The young man took Natalie’s arm. “After the press conference,” Reverend Hoyt continued, “please have Esau put the ladder away. Tell him he does not need to use it.”

“But—”

“Thank you, Reverend Abreu.”

Natalie and her young man went to their press conference. He closed all the books he had checked out from the library and stacked them on the end of his desk. Then he put his head in his hands and tried to think.

“Where’s Esau?” the bishop said when she came in.

“In the sanctuary, I suppose. He’s supposed to be putting the webbing on the inside of the window.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Maybe Natalie took him with her to her press conference.”

She sat down. “What have you decided?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday I managed to convince myself he was one of the lower animals. This morning at three I woke from a dream in which he was made a saint. I am no closer to knowing what to do than I have ever been.”

“Have you thought, as my archbishop would say, who cannot forget his Baptist upbringing, about what our dear Lord would do?”

“You mean, ‘Who is my neighbor? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.’ Esau said that, you know. When I asked him if he knew that God loved him he spelled out the word Samaritan.”

“I wonder,” Moira said thoughtfully “Did he mean the good Samaritan or—”

“The odd thing about it was that Natalie’d apparently taught him some kind of shorthand sign for good Samaritan, but he wouldn’t use it. He kept spelling the word out, letter by letter.”

“How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?”

“What?”

“John 4. That’s what the Samaritan woman said to Jesus at the well.”

“You know, one of the first apes they raised with human parents used to have to do this test where she sorted through a pile of pictures and separated the humans from the apes. She could do it perfectly, except for one mistake. She always put her own picture in the human pile.” He stood up and went and stood at the doors. “I have thought all along that the reason he wanted to be baptized was because he didn’t know he wasn’t human. But he knows. He knows.”

“Yes,” said the bishop. “I think he does.”

They walked together as far as the sanctuary. “I didn’t want to ride my bicycle today,” she said. “The reporters recognize it. What is that noise?”

It was a peculiar sound, a sort of heavy wheezing. Esau was sitting on the floor by one of the pews, his chest and head leaning on the seat. He was making the noise.

“Will,” Moira said. “The ladder’s down. I think he fell.”

He whirled. The ladder lay full-length along the middle aisle. The plastic webbing was draped like fish net over the front pews. He knelt by Esau, forgetting to sign. “Are you all right?”

Esau looked up at him. His eyes were clouded. There was blood and saliva under his nose and on his chin. “Go get Natalie,” Reverend Hoyt said.

Natalie was in the door, looking like a childish angel. The young man from Cheyenne Mountain was with her. Her face went as white as her surplice. “Go call the doctor,” she whispered to him, and was instantly on her knees by Esau. “Esau, are you all right? Is he sick?”

Reverend Hoyt did not know how to tell her. “I’m afraid he fell, Natalie.”

“Off the ladder,” she said immediately. “He fell off the ladder.”

“Do you think we should lay him down, get his feet up?” Moira asked. “He must be in shock.”

Reverend Hoyt lifted Esau’s lip a little. The gums were grayish blue. Esau gave a little cough and spewed out a stream of frothy blood onto his chest.

“Oh,” Natalie sobbed and put her hand over her mouth.

“I think he can breathe better in this position,” Reverend Hoyt said. Moira got a blanket from somewhere. Reverend Hoyt put it over him, tucking it in at his shoulders. Natalie wiped his mouth and nose with the tail of her surplice. They waited for the doctor.

The doctor was a tall man with owlish glasses. Reverend Hoyt didn’t know him. He eased Esau onto his back on the floor and jammed the velvet pew cushion under his feet to prop them up. He looked at Esau’s gums, as Reverend Hoyt had done, and took his pulse. He worked slowly and methodically to set up the intravenous equipment and shave a space on Esau’s arm. It had a calming effect on Natalie. She leaned back on her heels, and some of the color came back to her cheeks. Reverend Hoyt could see that there was almost no blood pressure. When the doctor inserted the needle and attached it to the plastic tube of sugar water, no blood backed up into the tube.

The doctor examined Esau gently having Natalie sign questions to him. He did not answer. His breathing eased a little, but blood bubbled out of his nose. “We’ve got a peritoneal hernia here,” the doctor said. “The organs have been pushed up into the rib cage and aren’t giving the lungs enough space. He must have struck something when he fell.” The corner of the pew. “He’s very shocky. How long ago did this happen?”

“Before I came,” Moira said, standing to the side. “I didn’t see the ladder when I came.” She collected herself. “Before three.”

“We’ll take him in as soon as we get a little bit more fluid in him.” He turned to the young man. “Did you call the ambulance?”

The young man nodded. Esau coughed again. The blood was bright red and full of bubbles. The doctor said, “He’s bleeding into the lungs.” He adjusted the intravenous equipment slowly. “If you will all leave for just a few moments, I’ll try to see if I can get him some additional air space in the lungs.”

Natalie put both hands over her mouth and hiccuped a sob.

“No,” Reverend Hoyt said.

The doctor’s look was unmistakable. You know what’s coming. I am counting on you to be sensible and get these people out of here so they don’t have to see it.

“No,” he said again, more softly. “We would like to do something first. Natalie, go and get the baptismal bowl and my prayer book.”

She stood up, wiping a bloody hand across her tears. She did not say anything as she went.

“Esau,” Reverend Hoyt said. Please God, let me remember what few signs I know. “Esau God’s child.” He signed the foolish little salute for God. He held his hand out waist-high for child. He had no idea how to show a possessive.

Esau’s breathing was shallower. He raised his right hand a little and made a fist. “S-A-M—”

“No!” Reverend Hoyt jammed his two fingers against his thumb viciously He shook his head vigorously “No! Esau God’s child!” The signs would not say what he wanted them to. He crossed his fists on his chest, the sign for love, Esau tried to make the same sign. He could not move his left arm at all. He looked at Reverend Hoyt and raised his right hand. He waved.

Natalie was standing over them, holding the bowl. She was shivering. He motioned her to kneel beside him and sign. He handed the bowl to Moira. “I baptize thee, Esau,” he said steadily, and dipped his hand in the water, “in the name of the Father”—he put his damp hand gently on the scraggly red head—“and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

He stood up and looked at the bishop. He put his arm around Natalie and led her into the nave. After a few minutes the doctor called them back.

Esau was on his back, his arms flung out on either side, his little brown eyes open and unseeing. “He was just too shocky,” the doctor said. “There was nothing but blood left in his lungs.” He handed his card to Reverend Hoyt. “My number’s on there. If there’s anything I can do.”

“Thank you,” Reverend Hoyt said. “You’ve been very kind.”

The young man from Cheyenne Mountain said, “The Center will arrange for disposal of the body.”

Natalie was looking at the card. “No,” she said. Her robe was covered with blood, and damp. “No, thank you.”

There was something in her tone the young man was afraid to question. He went out with the doctor.

Natalie sat down on the floor next to Esau’s body. “He called a vet,” she said. “He told me he’d help me get Esau baptized, and then he called a vet, like he was an animal!” She started to cry, reaching out and patting the limp palm of Esau’s hand. “Oh, my dear friend,” she said. “My dear friend.”

Moira spent the night with Natalie. In the morning she brought her to Reverend Hoyt’s office. “I’ll talk to the reporters for you today,” she said. She hugged them both goodbye.

Natalie sat down in the chair opposite Reverend Hoyt’s desk. She was wearing a simple blue skirt and blouse. She held a wadded Kleenex in her hands. “There isn’t anything you can say to me, is there?” she asked quite steadily. “I ought to know, after a whole year of counseling everybody else.” She sounded sad. “He was in pain, he did suffer a long time, it was my fault.”

“I wasn’t going to say any of those things to you, Natalie,” he said gently.

She was twisting the Kleenex, trying to get to the point where she could speak without crying. “Esau told me that you tucked him in when he stayed with you. He told me all about your cat, too.” She was not going to make it. “I want to thank you… for being so kind to him. And for baptizing him, even though you didn’t think he was a person.” The tears came, little choking sobs. “I know that you did it for me.” She stopped, her lips trembling.

He didn’t know how to help her. “God chooses to believe that we have souls because He loves us,” he said. “I think He loves Esau, too. I know we did.”

“I’m glad it was me that killed him,” Natalie said tearfully. “And not somebody that hated him, like the Charles or something. At least nobody hurt him on purpose.”

“No,” Reverend Hoyt said. “Not on purpose.”

“He was a person, you know, not just an animal.”

“I know,” he said. He felt very sorry for her.

She stood up and wiped at her eyes with the sodden Kleenex. “I’d better go see what can be done about the sanctuary.” She looked totally and finally humiliated, standing there in the blue dress. Natalie the unquenchable quenched at last. He could not bear it.

“Natalie,” he said, “I know you’ll be busy but if you have the time would you mind finding a white robe for Sunday for me to wear. I have been meaning to ask you. So many of the congregation have told me how much they thought your robes added to the service. And a stole perhaps. What is the color for Trinity Sunday?”

“White,” she said promptly, and then looked ashamed. “White and gold.”