Nobody questioned why Terah didn’t show up again until the next gathering. As unlikely as it seemed, life soon fell into a routine. Terah’s leg healed. He shared the tasks around Dickinsheet, and was elected the official chaplain. It was odd. He’d grown up with Bible-believing parents and had gone to college so he could become a minister. His experience with Wendy wasn’t an obstacle in that regard since Methodist clergy married.
Many people didn’t realize that Boston University School of Theology was the oldest component of the university—it had been founded to train clergy. Even more didn’t know that it was a United Methodist seminary. Terah had driven back to Boston, alone. Wounds from Wendy still bleeding, he poured himself into his studies. Graduated with high honors, but without ordination. He was going to work on a doctorate. His faculty advisors all saw the potential. He’d never been an actual minister, and now he was chaplain. Life had a sense of irony.
He’d never ceased being a spiritual person. His experience with Danielle had convinced him that sex was a spiritual practice. The tantras had taught that before the Bible had even been written. He explored what it meant to be spiritual, but he’d lost faith in institutionalized religion. Technically he was a pagan. A heathen. That didn’t make him any less a seeker. Living with no possessions, in fact, didn’t bother him. He did miss reading, though.
Moby’s literary was quickly exhausted, and supply parties were instructed to look for anything of substance in the little free libraries in towns. Reading a biography of Leonard Cohen he was struck by the statement that the singer held a Bible in one hand and a photograph of a naked woman in the other. Nobody condemned him—he was an artist. Any professor who tried that would’ve been put up on charges of harassment. Fired. For being human. Even in the humanities.
Terah had grown used to seeing Lindsey make the rounds. She was one of the guys. Knowing himself, he wondered how the other men coped. He didn’t hear confession, but they’d talk to him and he wouldn’t repeat anything. It didn’t help that despite her uncouth behavior, Lindsey was naturally charming. Lissome and luminescent, she was like the aurora that had never reappeared. This community couldn’t work, however, if any man tipped the balance.
Vince’s portrait, he’d learned, had been the first real threat. The original seven almost split over it. They’d come to an uneasy agreement that since nothing had happened, it would have to become part of the communal history. Cicero had articulated the rules after that.
Everyone found Cicero entertaining. For a guy who knew the classics, he’d become a secret novelist back when he was teaching. Rewrote the myths under a pseudonym. He had a great sense of humor. Dickinsheet was silent when his body was found.
Not having a police force, and no real leader, little could be done. It was perhaps—probable even—natural causes. Facedown in the stream that’d begun to flow with the slow warming of March, it was well known that the ground was slick and rocky. In the middle of the night middle aged men would make their way to the outhouse, but Terah had come to know that in the days before Lindsey arrived they could pee in the creek, as long as it was downstream of the mill. Had he simply decided to risk a shortcut and slipped? It was unthinkable that he had any enemies. Nobody was qualified to judge cause of death. It could’ve been a heart attack. That he’d been urinating in the creek seemed obvious. His zipper was down and his penis was out.
The gathering that night had much to discuss, and no songs to sing. Dead bodies were always trouble. The ground was rocky and still partially frozen, so burial didn’t seem possible. They couldn’t have him being found, because even if the authorities ignored Dickinsheet, they couldn’t ignore a corpse. Having been a classicist, Cicero would’ve preferred cremation, and they could manage that. There’d be bones in the morning, though. As chaplain, Terah had to come up with a funeral service.
“Dickinsheet had a cemetery,” Moby said. “We’ve all seen it, across the stream and down-water a bit. I suppose it was hallowed ground?” He looked at Terah.
“I suppose so. There’s no way of telling now, but a cemetery’s a cemetery.”
“Spoken like a clergyman,” Hagrid gruffed. “It’s not like anyone’s going to come looking for him. We can put his bones in his house until the ground softens.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Claresta put in. “We can’t just throw his body on the fire now that it’s burnin’. We gotta build one of those, whaddya call ‘em?”
“Biers,” Moby said. “It’ll take a lot of wood, and in bigger pieces than we cut them.”
“Sounds like tomorrow’s community effort,” Queequeg declared. He’d taken charge of laying out the body. Nature’s final salute had left him with an erection, and Queequeg had asked Moby if he’d ever read what morticians did about that. They all felt embarrassed leaving it where Claresta would see it. They’d improvised a tent inside his house. “I can figure out the bier.”
Beethoven spoke up. “I’ve been thinking of some ways to improvise instruments. Won’t be professional, but I could come up with some accompaniment by tomorrow night.”
Queequeg had played music before his firm had ended up on the wrong side of a lawsuit. He and Beethoven had been discussing this on and off for months.
Terah took it all in, but had his doubts. Lindsey’s presence made the death suspect. Yes, it could have been urination that had a man’s penis out—that was the disturbing part of all of this—but there could have been another reason. That reason might’ve had to do with violating the laws that Cicero himself helped to articulate. Had he attacked Lindsey all she’d have to had done was cry out. Nine men would’ve come running.
It could’ve been as simple as slipping on damp rocks. As quotidian as a heart attack. Or, as Terah tried to pull together some funereal thoughts, it might have been more insidious.
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