The Vanishing Gary Brown (booksvooks TXT) 📖

As Virgil dropped his tools outside the doors to the supply room, Blessing scrambled down from her father’s shoulders and ran to her mother.

“Did you finish the fence?” Sky asked as she set down the clothesbasket and tied her long blond hair into a ponytail.

“Yep. Every inch.”

“And I suppose Fallon was his usual mix of effervescent personality and irresistible charm?”

Virgil nodded. “If the man ever broke a smile, I swear he’d shatter into a million pieces.”

Sky wrapped her arms around her husband. “Be careful around him, okay? Don’t ask me why, but I don’t trust him. Not at all.”

“I know what you mean,” Virgil replied. “We were out there since sunrise, and the only time he spoke to me was when I spoke to him first. That’s plain strange.” Virgil shrugged. “Maybe it’s just me. Prophet doesn’t seem to have a problem with him, so I guess he’s all right.”

“Now that you mention Prophet, has he seemed a little different to you recently?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that for the last two weeks, other than leading us in prayer at supper, he hasn’t so much as left his room.”

“So?”

“That doesn’t strike you as a little odd?”

Virgil shrugged. “What Prophet does with his time is up to him, Sky. He doesn’t owe us an explanation.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’m probably just overreacting.”

“You have a habit of doing that, you know,” Virgil teased.

“Very funny,” Sky replied.

26

AS THE BREWING storm grumbled a last-minute warning, fierce raindrops hammered down around them, each droplet drumming off the ground harder and louder than the last. Virgil and Sky watched as the others ran to the adjoining buildings for shelter while Fallon walked through the field behind them, taking one slow step after the next, as though the rain would not dare to be bold enough to soak him to the skin. Or perhaps, Virgil thought, the idea of having to expend energy to run for cover from the now torrential downpour was an utterly foreign concept to him.

Set a half mile in from the main road, the Brethren compound was comprised of six large buildings spread over several acres. Three served as sleeping quarters for the eight families, although they could easily have accommodated eighty. The fourth building was used to house supplies, farming implements, and general-purpose tools. It had been decided by Fallon, and agreed to by all, that the fifth building would be for Prophet’s exclusive use; a token of thanks for his guidance and leadership. The last and largest of the buildings, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, many of which still suffered broken panes of glass, was named Communion Hall. It was here that they would gather with their families for breakfast in the morning and dinner in the evening. Pack lunches were prepared at breakfast to ensure a more productive day. Daily work assignments were given out after breakfast along with the lunches: a simple fare of fruit, raw vegetables, a sandwich, and a bottle of water. Breakfast was served promptly at six o’clock in the morning and dinner at eight in the evening, with thirty minutes of prayer following each meal. Restoring the buildings and cleaning up the property was proving to be a long and arduous task. Virgil had often thought that the decrepit buildings should simply have been torn down and rebuilt. Instead, he and the others endured the drafty windows and boarded up doors, preferring to look upon their new home as a work in progress, knowing whatever they needed to do to make it livable they would, because they would do it together, unlike the outside world, where nothing was done for the good of the many but only selfishly to benefit the few. Amid amber wisps of trampled grass and wildflowers, a broken artery of crumbled asphalt connected the buildings. It too would eventually be repaired. They could put up with cracked roads, broken windowpanes, and boarded up doors for the time being. They had discovered the true value of the land was not in the buildings, but in the earth upon which they stood. The soil had proven to be a fertile tract, perfect for growing vegetables. Selling part of their harvest in town at the farmers’ market, they used their profits to pay for whatever supplies were needed, including purchasing the building materials required to make repairs to the property. Yard goods and farming implements were acquired from a nearby Quaker community who understood their need for self-reliance and offered them whatever they required in exchange for their crops. With a little instruction from the Quakers, some women came to realize a previously undiscovered talent for knitting and sewing and would spend days each week perfecting their skills by making simple clothes, quilts, and bed covers. Their abundant crop yields also bought them lumber from the local mill. When the fields were not being worked, the men turned planks of wood, studs, doweling and nails into bunk beds, window and door frames, banquet tables, chairs, furniture, shelves, and storage cabinets. Lacking electricity, kerosene lamps were mounted on walls and placed on tables in the common room of each building. The responsibility for the lighting of the lamps at dusk and the extinguishing of their flames in the evening was a duty assigned on a rotating basis. This week that duty fell to Virgil.

Sky had taken Blessing inside to bathe and change her as Virgil made his rounds between the buildings, lighting each lamp as he went, setting their wicks to a warm, radiant glow. Soon, each building was aglow in the orange-yellow cast of welcoming lamplight.

His task completed, Virgil left Communion Hall and walked back to his building. The waning chroma of the harvest moon painted the wet asphalt a glimmering topaz. The day had been long and hard, and Virgil was thinking only of spending the rest of the evening with his wife and daughter. Walking past the building that served as Prophet’s