The Book of Joby (14 page)

Benjamin rolled his eyes and looked embarrassed.

Father Crombie looked at the cup, then blinked at Joby. “Do you know what the Grail was, Joby?”

“Arthur had a magic cup that could do things and cure people,” Joby answered. “Nothing bad could get near it.” He gathered up his courage and added, “If that’s it, I thought . . . maybe . . . Could we use it to fight the devil?”

Father Crombie’s kindly smile widened, but he looked almost sad as well.

“Joby, there are so many, many things we should discuss, but Benjamin’s parents must be waiting, and there are places I must be soon as well. Would
you two consider coming back to see me later this week perhaps, when we all have more time?”

“We could come next Saturday,” Benjamin suggested. “Couldn’t we, Joby?”

Joby nodded.

“For now then,” the priest said, “may I just add a little advice of my own to what this Father Morgan gave you?”

“Sure,” Joby said.

“Thank you. . . . First of all, I’m not certain it’s helpful to be as careful as Father Morgan seems to have suggested. To thwart the devil we must be good, certainly, Joby, but not
too
good.” He smiled. “The best way I know to fight the devil is to love God with all your heart, and love life as deeply as you can, for
life
is what
God
loves.” He smiled affectionately. “I can tell that you are already very good at loving life, but that may become much more difficult if you give yourself no permission to fail at all, Joby. We must all fail a little now and then. If Father Morgan did not make that clear, I’m sure he meant to.

“Secondly, I would recommend laughing at the devil whenever possible,” Crombie added. “It is said the devil cannot stand to be laughed at.”

“But what if he sends people to fight you?” Benjamin asked. “You can’t just laugh then, can you?”

“Defeat your enemies with kindness,” Father Crombie replied. “Hate
feeds
hate; only love slays it. That is why God wants us to be great lovers, not great punishers. It is punishment enough to be a servant of the devil, justice enough to be the
delightful
people we are.” He grinned.

Struggling to choose between Merlin’s advice and Father Crombie’s, Joby asked, “Did Geezez fight the devil the way you’re saying?”

“Yes, He did,” Father Crombie replied.

“But didn’t He lose?” Joby asked.

Father Crombie looked confused, then sighed, “Oh yes: the
price of failure. . . .
Come, boys. Let’s go see that crucifix before you leave.”

They followed him out to the altar and turned to gaze up at the terrible sculpture.

“In a way, what Father Morgan said was true,” Father Crombie explained. “That
is
the price of failure, I suppose; but not
His,
Joby.
Ours.
We would hardly hang a statue of God’s failure right here in His own house, would we?” Father Crombie smiled. “So why do you suppose this awful image is here?”

“I don’t know,” Joby said, glad that someone was finally going to tell him.

“Have you ever heard how God brought His Son back to life after He’d been dead for three days?” Father Crombie asked.

Joby gaped, and shook his head. “Is it true?”

“
I
believe it.” Father Crombie nodded. He pointed to the kingly statue high above the crucifix. “That one up there is of God’s Son after He had risen from death.”

“That’s
Geezez
up there too?” Joby asked in surprise.

“I told you,” Benjamin muttered.

“But . . . Father Morgan said it was just a dead bishop!” Joby exclaimed.

“
Did
he!” Father Crombie said in obvious amazement.

Joby was more confused than ever. Surely Merlin would not have lied. Had Father Morgan not been Merlin? Why had he winked then, when he said he was just a priest?

“But . . . if Geezez didn’t stay dead, why don’t you get rid of that one then?” Joby asked, pointing to the crucifix. “Why not just keep the good statue?”

“We keep them both, Joby, because neither has any meaning without the other. You probably don’t understand what it’s like to be hopeless. I hope you never do. But there are people who lose everything they ever wanted, even the power to hope for it. They long for another chance, but they think it’s just too late. Well, can you think of any time when it’s more too late than after someone’s dead?”

Joby shook his head.

“Yet
that
is precisely when God helped His Son,” Father Crombie said. “You see? God waited until anyone could see it was far too late to help His Son at all. Then God helped Him anyway.
That
is hope, even for the hopeless.” Father Crombie nodded at the crucifix. “That’s why we keep this horrible statue hanging there, Joby. God’s Son
lived
for everyone, but He
died
so the hopeless would know it’s
never
too late for God to help them. You may be glad to know that yourself someday.”

Joby could barely manage his swirling thoughts. Only moments before, his mission had finally seemed clear. Now everything was mixed up again.

“So you see, Joby, the devil lost that fight—not Jesus.”

“Hey, Mom! Dad!” Benjamin called, seeing his parents in one of the big doorways at the back of the church. “We’re almost done!”

Benjamin’s parents waved to Father Crombie, who smiled and waved back before turning to Joby again. “The important thing is this, Joby: what God
and
His enemy both want is your
heart.
It’s your heart that’s most important, not the rules, whatever Father Morgan might have said.”

Sitting quietly beside Benjamin as they drove home, Joby could not get
Father Crombie’s last words out of his mind:
It’s your
heart
that’s most important.
Father Crombie’s advice seemed the same as Arthur’s, but Father Morgan’s seemed a lot like Merlin’s. How could Merlin and Arthur disagree? All the way home, Joby’s head hurt from trying to untangle it, and strangely, so did his heart.

“It
was
a bishop, you know-it-all little prig!” Lucifer shouted, dashing the bowl of water from his desk. “
You’re
the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

In fact, the bishop in question had been a particular favorite of Lucifer’s, with whom—or
on
whom, more precisely—he still dined occasionally. “God’s risen Son, indeed!” Lucifer muttered in disgust. That moribund lump of funerary sculpture was to the Creator’s risen Son what the pretentious bishop who’d posed for it was to God! But
wise
Father Crombie knew so much better!

Sadly, anything Lucifer could have done to prevent the meeting might have tipped his hand too badly; and he was wise enough to know that the entire war mustn’t be jeopardized even for such an important battle. He’d been stunned when Joby’s father had allowed the boy to go. He had thought
that
variable sown up securely, but no;
love
had intervened! God seemed to have built an endless series of these absurd gags into the universe, and right now Lucifer was less amused than ever!

Someone in Joby’s family, or Benjamin’s, could have died, of course. That certainly would have forestalled their little expedition to see Father Crombie. But Lucifer didn’t have the boy’s measure well enough yet to know which way such a jolt would launch him. Father Crombie, on the other hand, could have had a heart attack without much impact on Joby at all, but that was too much to ask of the cosmos on its own, and, irksomely, the decrepit old meddler was too well protected for Lucifer to have arranged it himself. More angels hovered day and night around that old nuisance than Dante himself could have invented names for. There were back doors, however, even through defenses like Crombie’s, and a whole week was
plenty
of time.

“We’ll see how you
love life
in some God-forsaken little outpost far, far away from your beloved seminary,” Lucifer snarled. “Laugh at the devil then, Crombie!”

“Ugh!” Laura exclaimed softly, lifting her bare knee from the poor crushed snail very carefully, lest the dead leaves crackle and give her away. Fourth-grade boys kept secrets about as neatly as they kept their rooms, and no one had thought to look behind them for spies as they’d raced out to this wide clearing among the trees for their
top secret trials.
Once she found out what it was that
boys
could do so much better than girls, she meant to prove
she
could do it better than any of them.

Sweeping the long auburn hair out of her eyes, Laura crouched forward to see more clearly through the clump of foliage in which she was hidden. The boys had stopped roughhousing to listen as Joby gave some kind of speech she couldn’t quite hear. Then they all threw their arms up with a loud whoop and holler. Laura’s face scrunched in consternation. She couldn’t tell what was happening. She’d have to get closer.

Before Laura could even look around for some better hiding place, she was alarmed to see Joby running across the meadow directly toward her. Had they seen her? She crouched down even farther as Joby trotted right up to her hiding place, but instead of calling her out and making her leave, he just draped a red bandanna across the thin screen of branches between them, and sprinted back to rejoin the others across the field. There was hardly time to sort relief from confusion before all the boys were charging toward the scarf! Making herself as small as she could, she watched in growing panic as the hollering pack raced toward her, Joby and Benjamin in front with Bobby Lehan just ahead of Duane at the rear. At the last minute, Benjamin pulled ahead of Joby and crashed into the thicket, making Laura cower and scrunch her eyes shut, but Ben still didn’t notice her. He just grabbed the scarf amidst much hooting and groaning from the other boys, as Joby slapped him cheerfully on the back. Then they hung the scarf on the bush once more, and everyone trotted away to do it again.

Running?
Laura thought, indignant with relief.
That’s
all it took to be a
knight?
She
could run! A
lot
faster than
Duane Westerlund
! Scooting quickly back behind a safer bush as they prepared to launch their second race, she watched in less and less impressed silence as Joby won the next race, and Kyle Evans the third.

When they’d finished racing, they all went back to the field’s far end where Joby handed his watch to Peter Blackwell, pushed the red bandanna into his back pocket, and lit out for a large pine tree at the edge of the clearing. After waving his arms at Peter, he jumped to grab the lowest branch and dangled for a moment, struggling to kick his legs up around the thick arm of the tree. Then he was aloft, shimmying higher, hoisting himself from branch to branch, up and up until it made Laura nervous to watch. Even the boys had grown quiet by the time he reached the very top, which swayed frighteningly as he tied the bandanna to a small branch there. Then he came down, seeming almost to free-fall from one handhold to the next before jumping easily to the ground.

Peter called out something that brought noisy shouts of approval from the other boys, but, to her mounting frustration, Laura still couldn’t tell what he’d said. The shouting increased as Benjamin walked to the tree and climbed quickly up to touch the bandanna before descending almost as recklessly as Joby had. Another unintelligible announcement from Peter Blackwell brought a second round of excited shouts.

As other boys took their largely more timid turns at climbing to touch the bandanna, Laura realized how she could get closer. Very near them, a large oak tree hung well out over the clearing. From up inside it she’d be able to see and hear everything. The problem was how to get there without being noticed. This difficulty was soon resolved, however, when Joby tied the red bandanna to his arm, and ran from the field while the others just stood listening to Peter count quite loudly. Laura still wasn’t sure what they were doing when, with a wild shout, everyone charged into the trees after Joby.

Since they’d left their shirts in a pile right beneath her oak tree, Laura was sure they’d come back, and when they did, she’d be hidden practically straight above them. Climbing trees wasn’t something she’d ever done really, but it hadn’t looked too hard.

After listening to make sure they were really gone, she crawled from hiding, ran to the oak tree, and grabbed an easily reachable branch. A moment later, having skinned one knee a little on the tree’s rough bark, she was up.