TCD1

During Temple services the Prophet of the Church of Green Dome, Jashen Shybear, declared he was setting aside the discipline of the Church, in a single case, so that Gabriel Shybear could marry Kimberly Zinter. With a loud outcry of righteous indignation the Apostle Klaus Hansen stood up and left the sanctuary, taking half the White Wing with him.

In short order Klaus Hansen declared himself the Prophet of the Reformed Green Dome Church. It went without saying that forbidding interracial marriage was one of the reforms, but there were many others. Listing them made up the bulk of Hansen’s sermon on the Sunday following just days after the disastrous split in the Church.

Hansen said the curse of God lay upon all those who played cards. All who engaged in dancing were in danger of God’s holy judgment. Those who even permitted themselves to listen to race music would face the very fires of hell. He told his flock to let not one single drop of Demon Rum pass their lips. To prove they were indwelt of the Holy Spirit, he encouraged the faithful to roll in the sawdust on the floor of the barn out on River Road, near the bridge, that was their new ‘temple’. That was just as well, as there were not enough benches for everyone to sit.

The beautiful white Temple looking down on them from the highest point in town seemed to mock them by simply continuing to exist. Many got up to leave during the service, but what was most alarming of all to the new prophet, the plate came back largely empty of cash.

The former Deacon Paul Bergin, now Apostle, went door-to-door to the homes of White Wingers passing out hastily-mimeographed tracts promised eternal damnation to backsliders who were tempted to stay or to return to the mother church.

Many of the white parishioners weighed the peril to their eternal souls if they remained in schism. Most found the barn situation to be intolerably pathetic. The pressure mounted on Hansen to approach the Prophet of the mother Church and negotiate a healing of the breach.

Paul and Klaus approached the Temple office door, but it was opened by Gabriel an instant before they could knock.

“How did you do that, son?” asked a startled Klaus.

“The Prophet foresaw that you were about to knock.”

Inside the office Paul and Klaus saw only Gabriel, Dory, and Kim, and it was soon apparent the men knew only one of them by name, which was Kim. Quelle surprise that the former Apostle and Deacon never troubled to get to know anyone in the Red Wing of the Church. “Speaking of the Prophet, I came here to talk to him.”

“She’s right there,” said Dory, pointing at Robyn.

“I just see three kids who broke into the Temple office and are running loose. Where’s Jashen?”

“He’s in a better place,” Gabriel said.

“He’s dead?”

“No,” said Kim, “but he blamed himself for the schism and stepped down.”

“He was absolutely right to blame himself but if he left you in charge he must have been wholly demented in the end, because it says in the scriptures, ‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over men. They must remain silent.'”

“You’re going to have to show me a little respect, Mister Hansen, as I am indeed the Prophet of the Church of Green Dome, notwithstanding whatever Paul wrote in the First Century about womenfolk.”

Kim reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a leather-bound green book. “I know you’ve seen this before, Mr. Hansen. It’s Mark Lange’s handwritten copy of the Book of Green Dome. He called it the Printer’s Manuscript. The first few sheets on the inside cover are an official Church document.”

She laid the book on her desk and flipped it open. The first entry on the inside cover said PASTOR MARK LANGE, PROPHET, SEP 1, 1866, followed by Lange’s signature, and this in turn was followed by a mark of an individual unknown, in Hebrew script. Kim said, “We believe the Lord Yeshua himself made this initial.”

This entry was followed by the First Decree, which read, THE PROPHET OF THE CMURCH SHALL CHOOSE, FROM THE WING OF THE CHURCH OF WHICH HE IS NOT A PART, ONE WHO SHALL HOLD THE OFFICE OF APOSTLE. It was dated SEP. 1, 1866, signed and initialed by Prophet Lange.

This was followed by the Second Decree, which read, IN THE EVENT OF THE DEATH OR RESIGNATION OF THE PROPHET, THE APOSTLE SHALL VACATE THE OFFICE OF APOSTLE AND ATTAIN TO THE OFFICE OF PROPHET, dated and certified Sep. 1, 1866. The next entry, in the same handwriting, read, CHIEF WANICA, APOSTLE, SEP. 1, 1866, followed by a ragged ‘W’ and again by Lange’s initials.

Kim said, ‘We hold the first day of September to be the day of the founding of the Church of Green Dome, seventy-six years ago.’

The next entry in the Printer’s Manuscript read, again in the same handwriting, APOSTLE WANICA, DECEASED, NATURAL CAUSES, FEB. 27, 1906, followed by Lange’s initials.

The entry after that was JASHEN SHYBEAR, APOSTLE, FEB. 28, 1906. This was certified by the signature of Jashen and by Lange’s initials.

The next entry was written in a different hand. It said, PROPHET MARK LANGE, DECEASED, SINKING OF REINA RE-GENTA, MAR. 6, 1917, and this was initialed by Jashen and dated March 7, which reflected the delay in receiving the news. A diagonal line was drawn through the remaining blank space to the bottom of the inside cover and this, too, was initialed by Jashen.

On the facing page, the first line read, APOSTLE JASHEN SHYBEAR, PROPHET, MAR. 7, 1917 and this was signed and initialed by Jashen. The next line read, KLAUS HANSEN, APOSTLE, OCT 9, 1931 and this was signed by Hanson and initialed by Jashen.

Kim rotated the book to show Hanson the entry. She said, “Until I read this I wasn’t even aware the Church had gone nearly fifteen years without an Apostle. I suppose Jashen found the choice to be such a difficult one he was willing to risk breaking the clear order of succession with his own death.”

Klaus said, “At the time you were too young to know or care about Church politics. The White Wing threatened to walk over his failure to appoint an Apostle, so we forced Jashen’s hand. And we made him create the office of Deacon to prevent it from happening again.”

“I see. That explains the next line.” Jashen wrote the text of the Third Decree, dated the same day as the appointment of Hansen. It stated, THE PROPHET SHALL APPOINT, FROM ALTERNATING WINGS OF THE CHURCH, A DEACON TO SERVE THE SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL NEEDS OF THE WHOLE CHURCH. IN THE EVENT OF THE DEATH OR RES- IGNATION OF THE APOSTLE, THE DEACON SHALL ATTAIN TO THE OFFICE OF APOSTLE. And Jashen had signed and initialed this.

The next line read PAUL BERGIN, DEACON, Oct. 9, 1931. This was signed by Paul, and initialed by Jashen. Kim asked, “Does everything appear to be in order, gentlemen?” Paul nodded agreement, and Klaus said it appeared to be so.

Kim then indicated the next line, which none of the men had ever seen. ANY OFFICE OF THE CHURCH SHALL NOT BE TERMINATED EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF THE DEATH OR RESIGNATION OF THE OFFICEHOLDER. Signed by Jashen and dated January 10, 1943.

Kim said, “Jashen told us he never had to think about it before, but that the Fourth Decree became necessary following the events of Wednesday the 5th of January, when you went out from us. But let us go on.”

The next line read APOSTLE KLAUS HANSEN, RESIGNED, JAN. 10, 1943, signed by Jashen Hansen objected to this. “I never resigned!”

“I was there in that barn you call your temple,’ said Kim. “I’m White Wing, remember? You introduced yourself as the Prophet of the Reformed Church of Green Dome. When I reported that to the actual Prophet he took that to be your official resignation. How did he put it, Dory?”

Dory replied, “Father said, ‘No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.’ In fine, if you’re an officer in the Reformed Green Dome Church you can’t be an officer in the mother Green Dome Church.”

Kim nodded, and said, “That led to the next line.”

It read KIMBERLY SHYBEAR, APOSTLE, JAN. 10, 1943. Kim had signed it, and Jashen had initialed after. “The upshot, Mr. Hansen, is that in the eyes of Prophet Jashen Shybear you quit, and he chose me to replace you.”

Kim proceeded to the next line, which read DEACON PAUL BERGIN, RESIGNED, JAN. 10, 1943. This was also signed by Jashen.

Kim asked, rhetorically, “Do we need to go over the same argument for the resignation of the Deacon as it was for the Apostle? No? Then let us go on.”

The next line read, GABRIEL SHYBEAR, DEACON, JAN. 10, 1943, signed by Gabriel and initialed by Jashen.

Kim said, “All perfectly legal, of course. Jashen’s decree said the Deacon shall be of alternating race. As you can see, that Sunday was quite the busy day, but now we’re in the homestretch.’ And she advanced to the next item written on the page.

It read PROPHET JASHEN SHYBEAR, RESIGNED, JAN. 10, 1943 and it carried his signature. That seemed to grab the attention of Bergin and Hansen.

Kim said, “Now you can see how I closed out his rather eventful page.”

Kim flipped the page over and showed everyone the first entry. APOSTLE KIMBERLY SHYBEAR, PROPHET, JAN. 10, 1943. And this was signed and initialed by Kim, exercising her apostolic authority under the Second Decree established by Prophet Jashen.

Underneath that was the final entry in the manuscript, which read DORIEL SHYBEAR, APOSTLE, JAN. 10, 1943. This was signed by Kim and initialed by Gabriel.

She said, ‘And all this to show we are not just three kids playing in the Temple office, but actual officers of the Church. So now that I have established my credentials as the Prophet of the Church, what have you and Mr. Bergin come to say?”

Klaus said, “We pray for the reunion of the Church. Were the Golden Gift to alternate in possession between members of the Red and White Wings, even as the office of Deacon, presently does, that would go a long way towards sealing the breach.”

Kim said, “That is easily enough done.” She took up a the pen to write in the leaves of the Green Book, THE SACRED RELIC SHALL REMAIN IN THE POSSESSION OF THE DEACON OF THE CHURCH, WHO SHALL BE MINISTER OF THE LAST RITE. And she dated it January 18, 1943.

“Good,” said Hansen. “But here is our second, and most important demand: God’s sacred law of cousin marriage should be enshrined as the Fifth Decree.”

“Again, “said Kim with a gentle smile, “that is easily done.” She inked the following into the manuscript: MARRIAGE IN THE CHURCH OF GREEN DOME SHALL BE SOLELY BETWEEN PERSONS WITH THE SAME GRANDPARENTS OR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, ON PAIN OF EXCOMMUNICATION. She dated it January 18, 1943 and signed it.

Hansen said, “Good. When do you announce the end of your engagement to Gabriel?” “Never,” Kim replied. “The decrees of the Church don’t work ex post facto.”

“The decree governs marriage. You haven’t married him yet.”

“Ah, but there you are wrong.” She showed him her wedding ring, and Gabriel flashed hez own. She didn’t mention they had been wed in Heaven, and they’d been married for a year already, because it would just confuse him. “Yeshua himself said if a woman puts aside her husband to marry another she commits adultery against him. That’s one of the Lord’s nonnegotiables. I wonder why you look so surprised, Mr. Hansen. You must not have been paying attention when I signed my entries in the Green Book as Kimberly Shybear rather than Kimberly Zinter.”

Hansen dealt with this news in his usual way, by storming noisily out, followed by Bergin.

The Zinter house on U Street turned into a ransacked mess. A hooded invader held Gabriel at knife point while two others searched through it, but they didn’t find what they were looking for. Gabriel was grateful his wife had seen this all coming and made herself scarce.

She had already laid out the broad outline of how it would go. “This attack is important to Michael’s plans,” Kim had told him. “You should just let things happen.”

After Gabriel’s attackers had searched the house che was taken into Kim’s backyard and hung by small ropes wrapped around hez arms from a basketball hoop. Despite hez great height, Gabriel’s feet, tied together around the ankles, dangled a few inches over the concrete of the patio.

“Cut his shirt off so he’s not wasting my time.”

Gabriel recognized the voice as belonging to that of Johnny Sunkel. When hez shirt fell away in strips another voice said, “Look at that, he’s got little titties!” Gabriel knew that voice too. It was Larry Porter.

“Where’s the Golden Gift, Gabe?”

“It’s in the Temple.”

There was a whistle and a crack. Gabriel grunted. It took about a second to fully disconnect from the sudden slash of astonishing pain.

“Of course it’s in the Temple. But we just came from there and turned that place upside down too. So where in the Temple is it, exactly?”

“I don’t know, Johnny. When I need it for the Last Rites, Kim just gives it to me.”

The whip struck again and this time the skin on Gabriel’s back split open with a cloud of red mist.

“Bullshit! And you don’t know my name!”

Gabriel should have screamed with that blow, but he was silent, so Johnny hit him again, harder. On the backstroke the whip caught one of the other boys and that kid did scream, although it merely hit the back of his leg and he was wearing blue jeans. When the boy cursed Johnny out, Gabriel recognized his voice as belonging to Scott Hill- ing. Scott said, “You Red Wingers don’t get to marry our white girls, Gabriel. That was the arrangement going way back.”

“Your white girls, Scotty? Sure. When was the last time you got laid?”

That earned Gabriel another stroke. Instead of screaming he just laughed because the whip came back and bit Johnny across the chest and it was his own turn to scream.

“You ain’t staying hitched to that Zinter gal,” Larry growled.

“After I pass out make sure you fellows keep going until I bleed to death. Then hide my body, because I’m in this club, see. We look out for each other. If they find out you did this to me they’ll pick over your feet for two or three days with a sledgehammer, blowtorch and knives like they were leftover turkey.”

“This is gonna pinch some.”

Johnny hurled his whip at Gabriel’s back again, two more times, whistle and snap. The boys kept waiting for Gabriel to scream, but instead they started to see a white layer of fat underneath the bloody split skin on hez back. Scott and Larry turned away and started puking.

Gabriel knew it was time to make his move. With hez right hand che reached into the space-time pocket that always tracked with him and came back out of it holding the Golden Gift. Che extended the shaft long enough to cut the rope binding hez left hand. Then che switched the Macro to his free hand and cut hemself down from the basketball hoop.

Johnny swung the whip right at hez face but Gabriel let it fly into the Macro while it fully deployed as a shield. The black dome simply ate the whip, leaving little more than a riding crop for Johnny to swing. Then Gabriel cut hez legs free. All three of the boys ran away, but Gabriel was in no condition to run after any of them.

The neighbors had heard and seen the whipping and called it in, so the boys who attacked Gabriel only just made it away in time before depu- ties arrived.

At the little hospital that served Headwater, Sheriff Roddy Walker asked if Gabriel saw who it was that messed up him up.

“I don’t know, sir. They wore black hoods over their faces. And they also messed up my house and they told me they messed up the Temple.”

“Did they tell you why they were doing it?”

“They said didn’t appreciate me marrying one of ‘their’ white girls, sir.”

“How do you feel, Gabriel?”

“Not any better than the last time it happened, sir.”

“The last time? You’ve been flogged before?”

Gabriel nodded, and stared at Doctor Wahkan.

“It’s a Kuwapi thing, Sheriff Walker. They camp out on the plains overnight and have at each other to see how much they can stand.”

“Ah, so it’s like the Vision Quest?”

Gabriel nodded again, but Dr. Wahkan, who was called Plenty Practice by the white, just rolled his eyes.

Five Kuwapi youths paid a visit after the sheriff left. River Rawdon gestured at Gabriel, who was lying on his stomach in a hospital gown with his back was all bandaged up. “What the hell is this?” “Keystone Cops, with a whip.”

“Who?”

Gabriel wasn’t sure he wanted to spill it. Che knew what would follow next and had given the three white boys fair warning, but Michael and Yeshua mightn’t like it. River ran a hand up the back of Gabriel’s hairless bare thigh affectionately but Gabriel warned him off. “I’m spoken for now, Riv.”

“Tell us who did this to you, Gabe. You know the rules. We gotta keep this from happening again. Frankly, I’m astonished it happened at all. Our deterrence seems to be fading from last time. It looks like somebody needs a freshener.”

“It was three Bunners,” Gabriel said. “Johnny Sunkel, Larry Porter, and Scotty Hilling. I told ’em they better finish me off, otherwise Thanksgiving would come way early this year.”

Rawdon unsheathed his ceremonial blade and held it up, smiling. Plains Indians knew something about torture. “Gobble gobble.”

Three days later Klaus Hansen came to the same hospital. Certainly it was not to visit Gabriel, who had been released the same day he checked in, but instead he came to see Gabriel’s attackers. Doctor Wahkan was still muttering about the “animals” who had slowly turned all six of their feet into just so much ruined hamburger, requiring a clean amputation of each one.

Every time the three boys were visited after their operations, first by their parents, then by the sheriff, and later by Klaus, they took to sobbing miserably. It was not so much from the pain they were still suffering but from the memory of the pain they had already suffered. They had gone through two days and a night in hell as their tormentors worked in shifts, just like Gabriel told them would happen.

Unlike themselves, who had been hooded and disguised when they flogged Gabriel, yet were somehow rapidly identified by hem, the ones who re- taliated on behalf of Gabriel wore no hoods at all. While they went about their bloody business they even openly called each other by their real names. Yet even now their victims refused to identify them at all, other than to say they were “Indians”.

“Where’s the Golden Gift?”

“Gabriel had it the whole time.”

“You searched him, strung him up like a pig, and horsewhipped him, but Gabriel had it on him the entire time? So where did he have it hidden, Johnny, in his asshole?”

“I don’t know!”

“Did you mention he ought to forget all about the Zinter girl, or did that slip your mind too?”

“I did tell him,” Larry whined, “but I don’t think he listened to me! What’s the world coming to when you can’t even get a little respect?”

Klaus Hansen, the Prophet of the Reformed Green Dome Church and the spiritual leader of the Bunners, said in disgust, “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! Well, I guess it is true what they say, if you want some- thing done right, you got to do it yourself.

Klaus Hansen and Paul Bergin returned to the Temple, but not, as it turned out, with their tail between their legs.

“I agreed to see you fellows again,” Kim said to them, "but if you act like a couple of high school students and storm out again when you don’t get your own way, it will be the last time we ever meet.” And Kim was perfectly able to follow through on that threat. Seeing the future, she could simply avoid going anywhere they went.

“It is you, rather, who have one slim chance to reunite the Church,” Hansen said with his trademark insufferable arrogance. “Paul and I must get our old jobs back, or the reunion will never come to be. That point is my nonnegotiable.”

Kim sighed and turned to her husband. “Will you, Gabriel, resign the office of Deacon?”

“I will not.”

Hansen shrugged, said, “You can’t push a rope” and he prepared once more to leave the office with Bergin, muttering a string of curses that completely obscured what Dory quietly said.

Kim asked Dory to repeat harself.

“I said, I will resign as Apostle of the Church.”

Kim opened the Printer’s Manuscript of the Green Book once more and penned the following entry: APOSTLE DORIEL SHYBEAR, RESIGNED, JAN. 20, 1943. Dory signed it, and Kim entered her initials. “It’s done,” Kim said. “The office of Apostle is vacant. Will you, Klaus Hansen, take har place, or is Paul not getting Deacon still a non-negotiable sticking point?”

Klaus turned to Paul and said, “A temporary setback, Paul, nothing more. It will be remedied soon enough.” Paul nodded. Then Klaus faced Kim once more. “Very well, Mrs. Shybear, make the appropriate entry.”

She wrote KLAUS HANSEN, APOSTLE, JAN. 20, 1943 and turned the book for his inspection and signature. When he was done, Kim applied her initials.

Looking at all the recently entries she said, “I just had a sudden image of someone in 2043 reading this page and wondering what it must have been like, this whole sudden flurry and tangle.”

Hansen said, “The Reformed Church of Green Dome is gathering this morning to meet down at our own temple. Will you meet with them, Prophet Shybear, and affirm that our schism has reached an end?”

“I will.”

“And I would have them meet the new Deacon. One of our parishoners passed away. I would have the Deacon perform the Last Rites.”

Dory was incredulous. “The Last Rites in that barn?”

“It would do much to bring healing between the Red and White Wings of the Church,” Bergin put in.

“I refuse to go,” Doriel said.

“Can it not wait a week until Gabriel can perform the Last Rites properly in the actual Temple?” asked Kim.

“It has already been two weeks,” replied Hansen, “and the corpse is beginning to grow. . . unpresentable.”

Kim nodded her head. “We should do it, Gabe.”

“I have to retrieve the Golden Gift,” Gabriel said, “and I would not have Paul know where I keep it, as he is no longer an officer of the Church.”

Paul said, “This is not a problem. I can drive the Prophet to our temple, and Apostle Hansen can bring you along in his own truck to fetch the Relic and meet us there.” To this Kim and Gabriel agreed, and they shared a farewell kiss before they parted, knowing that it was indeed farewell.

As Hansen drove Gabriel off the mountain he said, “The sight of you kissing that girl was disgusting. You’re not only not cousins, you’re not even the same species!”

“Sir,” replied Gabriel, “the Bible and the Book of Green Dome acknowledge only ethnicities. Wwe read only of peoples and kindreds and tongues, not Whites and Blacks and Red Men. Races are artificial things. Take the aborigines in Australia? They have Caucasian and Mongoloid genes, but they are as dark as Negroids. Even Lord Yeshua is a lovely coffee-with-cream brown.”

Hansen grew angry and pulled the truck over to the side of the road. “Get out. I can’t stand to be anywhere near a blasphemer, let alone one that entices our women to become race-traitors.”

“I still need to get the Golden Gift,” Gabriel objected. “What about the Last Rites?”

“Fuck the Last Rites. Get out.” Gabriel did has he was commanded, and Klaus Hansen peeled out in the snow, leaving Gabriel stranded on the side of the road halfway down the mountain. Che decided to hoof it back up to the Temple where Dory was waiting.

A short distance northwest of Green Dome was a place where the borders of three states came together in a little fenced-off lot. When Hansen arrived he saw that only Paul Bergin’s truck was parked there, and only Bergin could be seen standing in the little corral. A bloody lump of dead and naked womanflesh lay at his feet. Paul stood there staring at Kim’s body, not quite believing that he actually did it. He kept repeating to himself, “I’m going to hell!”

“Shut up, Paul,” Hansen told him when he drew near. “You’d only go to hell if you didn’t do it. Is that the knife?”

Paul nodded, the murder weapon nearly forgotten, but still grasped in his gloved hand.

“Throw it right now,” Hansen ordered. “Anywhere, but throw it as far as you can.”

Paul hurled the blade on the snowy wastelands lying to the west, somewhere in Wyoming. The blade flashed once in the morning sunlight and disappeared from view.

“Now help me lift her on this.” There was a short post and a little sign about chest high that marked the exact place where the three states came together. The sign was canted at a forty-five degree angle. They draped Kim’s body across the sign, letting her head and arms bend backwards and her legs droop down.

After that, Hansen circled the area a few times to make sure Paul hadn’t dropped anything. Good. Even the spot with bloody snow was clear.

“Walk with me to my truck.” Hansen dropped the tailgate. In the bed of the truck were two sets of coats, clothing and boots laid out beside a cardboard box. Hansen took off the boots he was wearing and threw them in the box, along with his blood-stained coat, shirt and trousers. In the cold of January he quickly put on new outer garments, then sat on the tailgate to put on new boots.

“Throw your gloves in the box, Paul. Then do exactly what you just saw me do.”

“How are you going to get rid of the box?”

“Trust me, I’ll have it done in such a way that nothing, absolutely nothing will remain to tie this back to us, as long as you don’t forget to dispose of the set that knife came from when you get back home. Cheer up, Paul, we just saved the Church, you and I. Shy Bear couldn’t see it, but if that girl had children it would have meant the end of both the White Wing and the Red Wing. There wouldn’t be anymore wings, just an unholy hodge-podge growing like a cancer until it ate everything.”