TCI

I0

During Wednesday Temple 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 disas- trous 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.

I1

“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. I2

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 AL- TERNATING 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.”

I3

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.”

I4

“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. And don’t look so surprised, Mr. Hansen. I know you were 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. They sulked for two days, then returned, but not, as it turned out, with their tail between their legs.

“I agreed to see you fellows again,” Kim said when Hansen and Bergin came to the Temple once more, “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.” Then he 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 I5

reading this page and wondering what it must have been like, this whole sudden flurry and tangle.” And that image was no idle daydream.

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.”

I6

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, some- where 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.”

Huge swaths of the high plains still lay under snow that first fell in November of ’42, but it was a dry cold and the roads were clear. From the air Headwater looked like an abstract map drawn in I7

fine black ink on paper bleached an unearthly white. The victim was found by a man in his eighties named Tashunka. He was older than the town of Headwater, a mere boy of the People when the Golden Gift came to Wanica in that final hunt. The biggest animal he ever killed was a coyote baited with a rabbit he caught in another trap. Tashunka almost didn’t see the girl. Her body was dangling at a roadside attraction that had always bored him. On a map somewhere one line terminated on another. Three states came together at this place, but even when there was no snow Tashunka had never seen any lines.

What caught his eye was not so much that the dead girl was naked but how her head and arms drooped back, and how her feet didn’t touch the ground, as though she were nailed to an invisible cross. So he backed up his truck and parked in the little tri-state corral. There were two other set of tire tracks in the snow and two sets of footprints which became a tangled net near the body. Tashunka tried to be careful in his approach to leave the site clean for the sheriff.

He could see no movement of the girl’s chest and no condensation from her mouth. The dead girl was too pale to be one of the People. Of a certainty she had part of the White Wing of the Church of Green Dome. Her ponytail gave that away. And Tashunka wept with frustration that he could not do the simple kindness of closing her frozen eyes staring out upon eternity. Tashunka recognized the dead girl at last: Kimberly Zinter. He wept more deeply, knowing why she was murdered and guessing who the killer must be. Of a certainty the unhappy union of the Red Wing and White Wing of the Church was finished. He retraced his steps to the truck.

An hour later Tashunka returned with Sheriff Roddy Walker to the little fenced-off area nigh to the road. The tri-state marker was a wooden beam embedded in the ground, one foot square with a sloping top, and Kimberly’s back rested on this, held fast by frozen blood. The sheriff told deputy Bill to start snapping pictures while deputy Bob followed Roddy around with a notepad and took down a running commentary.

“I need to steal your sole with my camera, Chief,” Bill said, “so lay it out there.” Tashunka smiled and lifted one leg as best he could. Bill got a photo of the bottom of both the old Indian’s boots to make sure they could differentiate his footprints from that of the perps. Then Tashunka was left behind as Bill methodically photographed his way to the girl’s body. Roddy and Bob followed in his wake. Old Tashunka watched from the road.

When the sheriff and his deputies completely surveyed and documented the murder scene they all pitched in, lifted Kimberly free of the survey marker, and laid her gently on a foldaway stretcher that sheriff Walker had brought with him. Tashunka was surprised to hear the sheriff shout an oath. Roddy has read the plaque that Kim’s body was covering and realized they were at the exact place some surveyor decided the corners of two states ran flush against the border of a third. At a stroke that made the case Federal.

Then they walked the body out of there, pausing a moment for Tashunka to get another close look at it. “This was Kimberly Zinter,” he told them, and he put his fingers on her face just long enough to melt the eyelids so he could close them. “I’ve seen her at Temple.” I8

The sheriff dug around in the glove box of his truck and came back with a manila folder containing a photo, which he compared to the dead girl’s blood-streaked face. “The gentleman is right, boys. This was the local girl the FBI was looking for. One of the two, anyway.”

He noted how the girl wore a headdress that was similar to one that some of the Kuwapi townspeople often wore. It was a lattice of beads adorning two sharp white horns.

After the deputies carefully loaded the body of the girl in the canopy of the department’s green 1940 Dodge half-ton truck, Bob said, “So this wasn’t gonna be our case from the gitgo, even if she wasn’t lying dead spread out over three states. What do we do now, sheriff?”

“We’re going to do our job ’til somebody says different, Bob. Go back to the marker and start walking around it in a spiral that grows four feet wider on every turn. Try and find something that could be the murder weapon. Looks to me like that would probably be a knife.”

Tashunka said, “I remember when you were just a boy, sheriff, and I remember when you left us. None of your men are Greendomites. You might not be up on Church politics and they can’t help you. I don’t know who did this terrible thing to the girl but I can tell you why.”

But inactivity had cooled the sweat under Roddy’s coat and he shivered in the face of a stiff wind from the frozen plains. “This is not the place, Tashunka,” he said, “This body must go to our little hospital. But if you meet me at the station in an hour I will listen to you.”

After that Sheriff Roddy drove deputy Bill and the body around the large hill near the crime scene which was named Green Dome. It was almost five thousand feet above sea level, but only eight hundred feet above the town of Headwater, and it was never green at all in January.

“I just can’t win, Bill,” Roddy lamented. “Half the male population of Headwater between 18 and 45 is off killing Japs and Krauts and Eye- talians. Things were getting real quiet around here. Then the FBI sets up shop and stay all summer. Now I got my first homicide.”

They passed the stretch of national grasslands where the Bureau parked their trailer but there were no lights on, no smoke from a wood stove. Bill said, “The FBI was here last summer but now people are saying they saw some G-men back in town, staking out the bus station and ask- ing people of they’ve seen our victim and another girl named Sofie Krause. Those girls were in federal custody somewhere for half of last year, but apparently they’ve escaped and made the FBI look … hell, they are incompetent.”

“But they wouldn’t kill the girl for doing that, if your thoughts are trending on those lines, Bill.” Roddy drove around the northern slopes of Green Dome and Headwater came into view, the biggest town for a hundred miles around. The population was down to a thousand, now, owing to the war.

Bill asked, “What do you want me to do after we give the body to Dr. Wahkan?” “Develop the I9

film and file it,’ Roddy told his deputy. “Then get back to the scene and help Bob look for the murder weapon. I didn’t see prints leading away from the marker so I figure the perpetrator either tossed it away or kept it. To know what he chose would be a good thing for me to know.”

The town’s sole doctor was known as Wahkan to the People, but the whites called him Plenty Practice. No one had ever died under his knife, but even a local legend such as Doctor Wahkan could not call back the dead. “Kim Zinter,” he said when he saw the bloody corpse. “Heartbreaking.” Dr. Wahkan donned a pair of rubber gloves. “I have never carried out this protocol for you, Sheriff, and for your father I have only done so five times. I last saw this girl last spring. And I also saw the other girl, the one named Sofie Krause. They both had the same symptoms.”

“Symptoms?”

Dr. Wahkan pulled Kim’s headdress away, but the two white horns remained in place. Holding out the jewelry, he said, “I know you’ve seen this before.”

Roddy nodded. “It’s a Kuwapi thing.”

Wahkan reached down to grabbed one on the horns on Kimberly’s head and he shook it, which caused her whole head to shake as well. “They wear the jewelry to cover up the fact that these horns are real.”

“I’ll be damned,” Roddy said. “I never guessed!”

Dr, Wahkan lifted Kim’s hair away so the sheriff could see how the skin of her scalp lay where the horns emerged from her skull. “We call this the Change,” the doctor told him. “Naturally both girls were alarmed when it started to happen to them, but they were actually quite safe. The Change is known among the Kuwapi people. It spreads by sexual contact, but some are born with it. I told Kim and Sofie it had been present among some members of the Red Wing for a human lifetime and more, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Then I tried to explain it to their mothers, but they insisted on a second opinion. Now Headwater is infested with outsiders.”

“Headwater is a good place, Doctor, but my hand is forced simply by where the killer chose to leave the body. Kim was draped across three states. I must report the crime to the very outsiders who have made things not so good here over the last few months, and I’m not best pleased. So help me learn who did this to her, and why. I never knew the horns were real until you showed me just now, so I don’t think anyone else suspected, and I can’t believe she was killed just for wearing Red Wing jewelry.”