Saints in Limbo

About the Book - Excerpt - Reader's Guide

Prologue

It was the kind of day when even the lost believed. When possibilities were larger than reason, when potential was grander than circumstance, when the long, dark days of doubt were suddenly cast off and laid to rest. Brushed away with a smile and a certainty. And in this moment, from this place, you knew the real magic could happen.

It was exactly this kind of day at the edge of a town in a southern place called Echo, Florida. Lying safely on the state's northern border, Echo was first brethren more to its Alabama cousin than to the Gulf Coast. The land rolled by in rural peace and contentment, not given over to the moods of saltwater tides and open horizons but to the soft singing of wind in the pines, of roosters calling in the early morning light, of small cornfields and freshwater fishing holes.

The firstborn leaves of March had sprouted into the tiniest sea of baby green. The world was breathing in and out, moving everything in its path slightly, and on due course, with a gentle, four-edges-of-the-earth kiss. The birds had filled the trees, rumbling from their winter's sleep, and here they were now, glorious and in full song. Squirrels scampered, quick and unseen, beneath banks of dried loblolly pine needles, then ran up the trees so fast they left nothing but a trail of falling bark.

Down at the edge of the powdery dirt road was Mullet Creek, running quietly, steadily throwing off stars of light from its surface. You could hear the airborne fish breaking the bonds of water, then falling with a plop back into the chilly green of the creek.

Within all the living things—the dirt, the water, the cloudless sky, the pine trees long and whispering—was the expectation of something coming. Something full of light and wonder.

When the expectation had stretched as far as it could, had built a crescendo into a feverish pitch, a peculiar wind appeared. Only a tiny thing at first, but even then something special, something delicious and unique. A whirl began to take shape, collecting dirt from the dry bed of the middle of the road and spreading it upward into a spiraling funnel of substance. For a moment it appeared to be an errant breeze that caught the dirt and gave it a twirl, a bit of a dance, before it would settle itself to the nothing it once was. But the dance didn't settle. Instead, it climbed higher and higher, pulling a stream of sandy soil, twisting it to and fro, as if something was shaping it with a manner of something in mind.

At first, there was only the wind, the dust, the dirt, but then, shifting in and out of visible, were two well-worn and traveled boots.

The dirt traveled higher, faster, revealing two trousered legs and then a waist, a chest, two arms with hands, until finally a head and, on that head, a hat well lived in. The image presented a man who had been around, a traveler or a storyteller.

For a time the man and the whirlwind were one and the same. Man and whirlwind. Whirlwind and man. But after a long moment, but still only a moment, the man stepped straight out of that wind, and without the least bit of tussle, he planted his boots on solid ground. And in this exact manner, on this kind of a day, the man was born feetfirst onto the earth.

He adjusted himself, pulling the clothes about his body, arranging the pants, the shirt, the jacket just so. He was a million miles roamed and completely at home. King to the subjects who might demand, but simple statesman to the orphan clan.

He removed the hat and ran one hand through his thick white hair and surveyed the territory before him. Then, after careful and appropriate consideration, he replaced the hat and pulled a watch from the left pocket of his pants. He opened the cover and music began to play. Music so sweet, so hypnotic, so full, it exuded a scent with each note and left it hanging there in the air. "Right on time," he declared aloud and then launched himself forward in a southern direction on the road that had given him life.

He traveled only a rock's throw toward the creek, and there just before the edge of the trees that made up a plot considered the woods, he paused and contemplated a house. Just a small white house of little consequence. A small shelter from the storms of life. There was an old mailbox by the road on which a yellow vine crawled and encircled its wooden post. Green bushes bloomed with early white gardenias on both sides of a little porch where there was a swing. In the swing sat a small hen of a woman.

The man drew closer, almost but not quite visible, as he watched her from the north side of the pine tree woods.

The woman stood slowly and went to the porch railing, leaned out as far as she could, and peered down the road. Suddenly she stepped back two steps and wrapped her arms about herself. She pursed her lips, pulled them up to one side, listening to that spring breeze singing through the pine needles and thinking.

Then she spoke to her husband, dead now a year. It was an odd, comforting habit she'd taken up. It kept her lonely voice from rusting.

"Did you feel that? That shift in the air? Well, what can I tell you, Joe? It changed. It was one way, then it was another." She paused, looked out toward the tree line. "And somebody's out there standing just beyond the trees." She called out, "Who goes there?" and waited a moment for a reply. There was no answer, but that didn't move her. She was certain that she was right. That someone was watching, waiting just beyond her line of sight.

The woman called again with a more forceful voice. "'Who goes there?' I said."

With that, the man stepped from the edgy shadow of the trees. A chill ran up her back. Perhaps it was a sense of things being torn out of their place, of the future being snapped up and set on another course. She didn't know, but the chill was there, and her heart beat a little faster. The woman cupped her hand above her eyes, squinting into the distance. She was summing up and deciding. She didn't recognize the man, and she was alone—no husband to offer his quick opinion—so she turned and moved into the house as fast as her old legs could carry her. Then she turned back and looked out to see what the man would do. He was still standing in the road, not thirty feet away.

He walked toward the house, and she saw that there was a rhythm to his walk as if he were riding the earth, as if the earth were a creature that moved and breathed beneath him. She decided then and there that he was something like a man but he wasn't a man. She clutched her arms tighter about her.

He stopped at the mailbox and surveyed the strange web of strings that ran from it to the railing, and at the multiple-colored threads that stretched out from the porch and ended without explanation at various points in the yard, lying next to flowers and bushes and bird feeders. He looked up at the woman and cocked his head to one side as she slowly reached up to latch the screen door. The man walked to the edge of the porch, to the bottom of the steps, and then, without a word or an invitation, he forcefully walked up those steps, one, two, three, four—if you could call it walking—and then he was there, right there, before the door. They stared at each other through the screen, unblinking and unmoving.

"Velma True," the man said matter-of-factly with no uncertainty in his voice, no question in his countenance.

Velma contemplated the man and his hat. She looked at his boots and studied those for a time. Then she looked past him, up and over his shoulder, to the green leaves and thought about the kind of day it was. About how all the dark edges of the world had seemed to bust right off this morning. Then she considered the man differently, as if he were a part of the day and not something separate from it. As if the day itself brought the man to her. It was a strange thought, but it was the one that caused her to reply, "Yes, that's exactly who I am," as she reached out, unlatched the screen, and opened the door.

The man removed his hat with a smile, and for better or worse, he stepped inside.

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