Christine was a raindrop once, looking straight down between the other rushing drops to the ground, squared off in cornfields below. She sparkled, and stretched, and dove, and sunlight broke around her.
When she shattered on a drooping leaf and crept along its edge there was no fear in her.
While the rain lasted she sat in the branches, knees bent, leaning against the bole behind her. The rain battered the leaves on all sides and everything else was still, except the undaunted voices of the birds. Sometimes for a little while she whistled back to them.
These were the woods near her old home, where Don had died. She knew them now. She wasn't far from the place where it happened. She didn't like to go back there, but today it didn't trouble her; it was a good day. Nothing could be very wrong.
There was a stone in the ground, where there shouldn't be, right on the spot where she had always supposed it must have happened. DONALD MCGILLIVRAY, it said. REST IN PEACE. She smiled sadly. That was why he had died, so he could go to be with the Lord again. Poor Donny. Who could say what was best? The Lord works in mysterious ways; if he had to die, it was for the greater good, and not for her to question. Christine picked a violet before she walked away.
God will provide. That's why a Christian has nothing to fear. The friars had understood, who never sought out their next meal; a friar knew God would care for him, or knew he could find nothing unless God wanted him to, so he said his Catholic rosary and prayed over the sick and walked from town to town with his bristling beard and tricorner hat without fear, and Christine went running with the girls to offer him his supper.
Maybe prophets were the same. There was the story about Elijah where he stayed with a good man one night so the good man's cow died, and then something nice happened to the sinful man, about his wall not falling down. And if the good man's cow had lived, his wife would have died instead, and if the wall had fallen it would have uncovered a little black pot of gold for the sinner. So God is keeping score, and the moral of the story is that you don't know what was going to happen anyway, like Elijah.
"The important thing," said Christine, "is loving God and trying to do His will, no matter how bad anything around you is, even if sometimes He lets it get so bad you can't bear to hear the story after a thousand years, because nothing in life is as bad as Hell after life, and nothing in life is better than Heaven. The important thing is to tow the line long enough to get there.
"It's like Job. Job was a righteous man, and even when everything was taken away from him one by one with all his children and his wife and his house, he was righteous, and so he lived for hundreds of years and got a better wife and more kids and was happy again."
"And that's why Donny died, because he was righteous, and that way he can go right to Heaven and he'll never sin again."
"And all we can do is live and die. God does the rest. He always did. Christine walked in the corn and let the rain run over her and drip from her fingers. The sun was shining out of sight above the clouds and God's grace shone out of sight above the sun. Birds sang in the rain and for a little while she sang along. Ahead of her was a little silo, and past that was a little town, with steeples. The smell of rain was perfect. Delicate strokes of breeze moved in her hair.
This was the glory that God created, and all Creation was to glorify Him in its perfection. In all the world was no want or thirst or need or pain, under the merciful keen eye of God.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed: dear God let all I love sleep in peace tonight, and give me the strength I will need to carry the children tomorrow, and may old Mr. Walters recover as quickly as may be and she felt a little better, and slept knowing He would provide.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed: dear God let Andrea do well on her tests, and let the rains go easy on the crops, and help the Walterses to find the money for the surgery, and help Mr. Walters to recover as quickly as may be and she slept more easily, knowing her prayers had been heard.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed: dear God let me be prettier when I'm older, and help us all to live in peace, and to house the poor, and to grow wise and already she was a little wiser, and she slept in the arms of God and knew no fear.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed: dear God let Mr. Walters recover and let my heart be like the open sea, and help me to be just and fall never into sin, and help me to heal this earth of every hurt, yes, Lord, and may all my kindest most cherished desires be granted, and let all in earth and heaven be blessed.
It is in Jesus' name I pray.
On the other side of the bed the ground fell away in a rocky slope with pine trees. The sky was moonlit blue, but she saw no moon, only stars too numerous and crowded to connect. She stood and prayed.
The face of God was in the heavens, listening, and all that she prayed for was hers at once. The stars made their slow turn against the dark. The ocean surf sighed and the sun went around, with the moon and the stars and Donny and the face of God, and she stood alone on the Earth at the center, and saw herself reflected there.
While she watched she lost the distinction of one thing from another, and at last she could no longer find all the faces or the stars: she was lonely, the wind over the water.
Christine, Dreaming