The cruel beauty of winter settled like frozen ashes on the ruined church. There was something obscene about seeing faith exposed in such a naked state—once warmly felt and capable of erecting soaring cathedrals now reduced to failing to pay the mortgage on a relatively modest chapel in a small town until some squatter’s fire claimed it. The half-hearted efforts of the weary Stanton Station fire-fighting volunteers left it smoldering on Epiphany.
Terah Economy kept far from the scene, knowing it wouldn’t be difficult to trace the conflagration’s origin. He’d never burn down a church intentionally. His former career had been precariously canted in that direction, like a tallship in a typhoon. Being homeless in Stanton Station was easier than it had been in New York City. The handouts could be better in Midtown, and even for educated derelicts like himself the homeless shelters seemed less appealing than an appliance box over a subway vent on Broadway. The cops occasionally had to clear him out. Just doing their jobs. Jobs. That was the problem.
The very concept of a job—something useful to contribute—didn’t account for people with his background.
Right now the immediate problem was where to spend his sleeping hours in Stanton Station. Ironically the town had no transportation station of any kind. When Terah had set out on his long hike here, threadbare backpack over threadbare army surplus coat, he vaguely had in mind Newark Penn Station. In former days when he had to wait in the grand, marble foyer for a train to DC or Boston he’d watch the police removing the homeless onto the February streets after allowing them a night in out of the cold. Although he felt sorry for them, there was nothing Terah could do. He’d started walking west because the memory of that stately foyer appealed to his sense of place. Little did he anticipate that he’d be living in an abandoned sanctuary.
He hadn’t been here long enough for the Stationers to know him. To begin to call him names like “Crazy Joe,” or “Indian Mike.” His own graceful ineptitude led to the fire. He’d only been a Boy Scout long enough to learn to build a fire, but not long enough to learn proper banking techniques. He’d reached that stage of life when you seem to forget how to sleep, at least at proper hours. And as much as he liked the Station, he knew he’d have to move on west into Pennsylvania before anyone realized he’d been here. Stanton felt like a tidy little town with craftsman houses and well-kept lawns. They were still mowing with machines that looked and sounded like upside-down helicopters when he’d drifted in, unseen, back in September. Quasi-nocturnal, he’d taken care of his homeless business between 2 a.m. and evening twilight. He’d made it until late December before he needed small fires to keep warm.
By cutting his own hair and rummaging through the cast-off clothes at the Salvation Army donation box, he’d managed to look respectable enough to be seen in daylight, in small doses. He washed off in the sandstone font—this had been an environmentally friendly Episcopal Church that had a couple of rain barrels left behind. Painted by, he presumed, the kids of the congregation they had cartoon characters, one even had a name—a cat called “Hey Diddle-Diddle”—all over them. Somehow All Saints seem to have abandoned the cause, though, because the church was clearly empty. Water, both holy and secular, had been shut off at the main. Candles by the thousands had been left in a storage cupboard, and just a couple could melt down frozen water even in January’s stifling chill.
Terah had discovered that the southeast Sunday School room down in the basement was the easiest to heat. Although its southern windows were grimy, enough sun came through even in December to warm it up during the day. Since it was the smallest room it required the least effort to insulate with abandoned Bibles and prayer books. Paper, he knew, could be used for layers when a body had little of its own fat. It stood to reason that making a brick wall of books would insulate the place. The additional six inches off each wall also made the room one square foot less spacious, and thereby requiring less energy to heat. He even imagined plastering those artificial walls of books and dropping the ceiling. A tomb-like comfort accompanied the thought.
There was the messy business of sanitation, of course. He knew about the piscina and its name suggested an alternative, natural function. The more serious problem of excrement had to be handled more delicately. You didn’t want it over your head, and the plumbing no longer worked. There were plenty of Bibles with their Oxford-devised thin paper, so toilet paper wasn’t a problem, but solid waste management took some thinking. Brownian motion, he knew, would take care of odors over the long term and locals would grow suspicious if he used the incense he’d found. Somalian frankincense or Ethiopian myrrh mixed with yesterday’s processed pizza scraps would waft on the breeze in unwelcome ways. The charcoal, however, tinged a bit with sodium nitrate—it had always reminded Terah of gunpowder in the sacristy—had natural filtering qualities. Thank God for well-stocked high church ecclesiastical closets! One briquette embossed with a crusader’s cross safely stopped the smell of judiciously spaced piles in the basement rooms.
If he’d believed in good luck, Terah would’ve considered this a solid example. Episcopalians had money to burn, he knew, but he’d never dreamed he’d find such a well appointed facility in an abandoned church. He could stay in All Saints, Stanton Station a good, long time before he’d have to move on. But that January night. It’d been so damned cold. His insulated Sunday School room couldn’t prevent the shivering, even under layers of brocaded chasubles left hanging in all their sacerdotal glory from Advent’s purple through Pentecost’s red—the limited range of the church spectrum. Brocade was heavy but feeling the chill so desperately, he thought he could chance a small fire, a source of heat in his own sleeping room. Open flames led, though, to a fire more literal than Pentecostal, and now Terah knew he’d have to cross into Pennsylvania. Probably a good thing, he mused, since it wouldn’t take forever for someone to discover the body he’d left in Somerset Hills.
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