When We Were Saints (7 page)

He gazed out at the trees. They looked somber and still in the dull morning light. Ever since his experience, he'd had a different feeling toward trees, as though they were people, or at least living spirits. When he'd driven his grandmother to town the day before, he had seen men working on the side of the road, sawing branches and limbs off an old oak tree, and Archie had wanted to cry out for them to stop. He'd felt the pain of the saw as if they were cutting into his own limbs. He'd felt a sudden grief he didn't understand, as though his grandfather's death had happened just that morning and not months earlier. He'd felt the pain most severely in his stomach, in the now familiar spot just above his belly button.

He felt the same spasm of grief every time his grandmother set down a plate of food. Until that morning he had never said anything about it to her but each day it got harder and harder to face each meal and eat it. He would look down at a chicken breast and see the whole chicken, live and blinking at him. He'd see the pig, and the cow, and the lamb, all of them alive, and he couldn't bear to eat. When Archie was twelve his grandfather had taken him hunting, and he'd been proud to bring home his first buck, and his grandfather had been proud of him, too. A few months later he took over for his grandmother the job of selecting a chicken for dinner and wringing its neck. He had seen those as steps on the way to manhood; now the idea of hunting deer and killing chickens was physically painful to him, and he knew he couldn't do it anymore.

Clare broke into his thoughts. "Tell me what you know, Archibald. Tell me why you stare at those trees as though you're seeing Jesus Christ himself standing before you."

"I'm afraid if I tell, it will never happen again—the thing that happened, and I think—no, I
know
—I want it to happen again more than anything else I've ever wanted." He was surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. He didn't talk that way. That wasn't him. He felt his heart beating faster. He knew he would say more to this strange girl.

Clare jumped down off the boulder with a grunt. Archie followed, landing hard, too.

"Yes, Archibald, I know. You're not the only one it's happened to." Clare grabbed his arms. "You've been given a gift, to see the world as it really is," she said, her stare and the sound of her voice intense. "You have heard the call. How will you answer?"

His eyes widened. "Has it happened to you? Have you felt the whole earth suddenly come alive? The trees and the grass, everything moved to the beat of my heart; we all had the same heartbeat, we were all one live being. Even the cows chewed their cud to the rhythm of my heartbeat. I didn't even have a body anymore, and the trees were spectacular—I can't even tell you. It's like they spoke, and they had this power and energy, and, I don't know, there was this love energy between us. It's wrong to worship trees. That's like that druid cult, worshiping trees and plants and things. But I can't help myself. I want it to happen again."

Clare shook his arms and smiled. "Yes! It can happen again. It will happen again. The Bible says God is in all things. It's not wrong to worship what's holy, and if God is in all things, then the trees are holy. You're worshiping God in them, not the trees. Everything is holy."

Archie took a step closer to Clare, excited to at last have someone with whom he could share his story. "Yes! I—I know that. I felt it. I felt that holiness."

"Archibald, it's happened to me, too. Many, many things have happened to me." She let go of Archie's arms. "See, we're meant to be together. I think that long ago most people had this kind of experience. I think it was natural. But see, now we live inside all day long and we don't know nature anymore. We don't know ourselves anymore. I think once upon a time we were all holy and we knew it, and we recognized it in one another"

"Yeah, maybe back with Adam and Eve," Archie said.

"But I believe we can know it again. I believe we can be holy again. We just have to break down the barriers we've built between the natural world and us. We have to break down the barriers between God and us."

"
Just?
"

"I know, it's not easy, but there are plenty of others who have done it. Jesus, for one, and the Buddha and Muhammad and the saints and probably others. Us, Archibald! We two are going to find the way to God. We will find a way to live so that every moment is like that moment you had up here with the trees. Every moment will be holy and we will be holy and we will see holiness in all things."

Archie stared wide-eyed at Clare. Her words, her energy, excited him. She knew what had happened to him up there on the mountain. She understood. It had happened to her.

Clare lifted her arms up to the sky. "We will live like Jesus. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within. We will go in search of that kingdom within. We will be pilgrims in search of God and God's pure love and holiness. We will be united with the universe. We will be saints!"

"How? How can we do this?" Archie asked, caught up in the spell of her words. He felt sure that she would know. She had the answers.

Clare lowered her arms and took Archie's hands in hers and said, "Saint Francis de Sales said, 'Sanctity does not consist in being odd, but it does consist in being rare.' You are rare, Archibald. Do you understand this? You are rare. We must live in God, not in the world, if we are to be saints."

Archie was eager to understand. "What does that mean? I don't get it. I live in the world because here's where I was born. Of course I live in the world. You say not to live in the world but in God. How? What does it mean to do that?"

"Being of the world is living in sin, Archibald. Doing sinful things and participating in a life that isn't dedicated one hundred percent to God. That's not us. We're different, you and I. We're rare. God has called us. God has chosen us.
You
have been chosen, Archibald. You can't turn your back on God's call."

Archie nodded. He knew that what he had experienced up there on the mountain was rare. He was sure it had never happened to Armory. The thought of Armory brought back the memory of their last day together down in the basement with the still, and Archie lowered his head and said, "You're the only one who believes that my granddaddy meant what he said, that I'm a saint. Even if I did have that experience, how can I believe? You don't know me—the stupid things I've done."

Clare blinked at him and touched his face, then dropped her hand by her side. "I don't need to know what you've done. That's what's on the outside. I try to look inside; you see better that way. Archibald Lee Caswell, you have been chosen."

Archie put his hand to his face where Clare had touched him and wondered,
Is Clare right? Have I really been chosen?
Maybe God had spoken through his grandfather on his deathbed. Maybe it was God who had called him a saint. Looking at Clare's beaming face, hearing her words, he felt anything was possible. His grandmother was always talking about people in the Bible who had led sinful lives, and then God touched them and they became holy people, saints even. Was he one of them? He looked at Clare. "But how are we supposed to live like Jesus? You mean exactly like Jesus, wearing sandals and toga things and preaching and wandering around and living in the desert?"

Clare sat down on the ground, pulling Archie down with her, The two of them sat cross-legged facing each other leaning in toward each other: "I mean we give away all our possessions. We cannot serve two gods, and possessions are like gods."

"Wow!" Archie said, straightening up, shocked at the idea. "You're willing to give away your bike and stuff?"

Clare looked down and ran her hand over the grass between them. "I'm willing to give up everything for God." She looked up. "Aren't you?"

Archie thought about his bike, Giant's XTC NRS 1. It was
Mountain Biking Magazine's
Bike of the Year and his all-time dream machine. It was the first time in his life that he felt he got the exact thing he wanted, not some cheap copy, not some used-up, make-do-for-now thing but the real deal—the same bike that Armory had. If his grandmother would let him, he would sleep with his bike—he loved it so much. Then there was his computer: He didn't have the same love for it as for his bike—it wasn't beautiful to him the way the bike was; it didn't thrill him just to lay his eyes on it the way his bike did—but it did keep him from feeling isolated. He did his schooling on it, and he got information on it, like the computer art programs he had discovered.

Archie thought about his art and then asked, "Drawing isn't considered a possession, is it? I love art. I've got to draw. I couldn't give that up. Believe me, my granddaddy tried that one already. Giving up the computer would be really tough, okay, but giving up drawing and biking—my mountain bike—that would be like giving up my life."

Clare took one of Archie's hands in hers and shook it. "But don't you see? Those are the first things you need to let go of then. We have to get rid of all the things that block us, that keep us from seeing God."

Archie pulled his hand away. "'Seeing God'?"

"Isn't that what's happened to you up here already? Maybe you didn't see an old man with a long white beard, but you did see God. Why else were you worshiping the trees? You want that experience again, don't you?" Clare scooted closer to Archie, and she spoke with whispered urgency. "What if we could feel that way, have that holy feeling all the time? All the time, Archibald, not just once. Don't you want that?"

Archie had watched Clare talking to him. He thought she was beautiful. She looked at him with such eagerness and earnestness that Archie couldn't resist her. She looked as if she was already seeing God before her as if she could see God in him. He said, "I wonder what it would be like to have that feeling all the time? I wonder if it's even possible?"

Clare leaned forward and grabbed Archie's shoulders. Archie braced himself with his hands on the ground to keep from being pulled into Clare's lap. Still, their noses almost touched. "Yes! It's possible," she said, "and I know the way."

C
LARE EXPLAINED HER
vision to Archie. They would give away all their possessions, and they would begin to pray without ceasing. "I read it in a book," she said. "It's called
The Way of a Pilgrim.
Only we will be saying a different prayer from the one in the book. We're going to say it three thousand times, to start, every day. And it's best to say it outside for now. We must be present to the real world around us, not the artificial world of buildings and houses."

Archie felt overwhelmed by her proposal and listened to her in stunned silence. He loved the way she looked at him, as though he was someone special and wonderful, and he loved her certainty about everything. He wanted that. He wanted to feel sure about something in his life. With Armory gone and his grandfather dead, nothing felt sure anymore.

Clare said to him, "We will pray these words,
Be still and know that I am God,
and each time we say the prayer we will think about its meaning. It's important to consider what it means each time—three thousand times every day."

"Okay," Archie said, shocked to hear himself agreeing with her. Was he crazy? Was she?

"And we will dress simply without adornment, like monks, and we will eat simply—rice and beans and vegetables with nothing added, and no meat."

Archie rubbed his stomach. "That one shouldn't be too hard."

Clare stood up and dusted off her hands. "That's enough to start, I guess. Once we've done all that, I'll tell you the next stage."

Archie stood up, too. "'The next stage'? There are stages?"

"Of course." Clare pulled the rubber band out of her hair and redid her ponytail. She missed some of the hair and it hung down around her small face, framing it. Archie wanted to fix her hair for her not because he thought he could do a better job but because he wanted to touch her hair. He had a strong desire to feel in his hands the strands, warmed by the sun that had come out while they were speaking. He reached out to touch her hair then decided the touch might be sinful, and he let his hand drop to his side.

They started back down the mountain with Clare in the lead and Archie trotting behind, listening to her plans. They were to call each other every day and report on their progress. They were to pick one outfit that they would always wear and give away the rest of their clothes. They would not watch television or listen to the radio. They would read only the Bible or other holy books of wisdom. They would get together and do their prayers every weekend until school let out, and then they would meet every day.

While Archie listened to all of this, a line from a song ran over and over in his mind: "It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine." Then he thought of all his CDs, all the great music he would have to give away if he actually followed Clare's plan, and he didn't feel fine at all.

When they reached the bottom of the mountain and Archie saw his house, he remembered with dread the promise he had made to his grandmother and asked Clare if she would come in and meet her.

"Oh yes, I need to tell her something. Thanks for reminding me," Clare said, leaving Archie to wonder what she could have to say to a woman she'd never met, and hoping that his grandmother wouldn't be rude to her.

Clare headed toward the house as though it were her home, striding ahead of Archie and walking through the door without hesitating or waiting for him to lead her inside. Archie scrambled to keep up and reached the foyer just behind Clare.

Clare took a look around, glancing left at the living room and right at the kitchen. She ran into the living room and said, "Look at all these beautiful flowers and all these plants!"

The plants stood on the coffee table, and the side tables, and in the two window seats, and lined up along the mantelpiece. Clare leaned over and smelled the Easter lilies that sat on the coffee table. "These smell wonderful. If I close my eyes, it's a warm sunny day out and the birds are singing and there's a waterfall in the distance."