Elias Pryor's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Elias Pryor wanted every family in Death Valley inside his church, but he had no church. He stood on a bare stretch of dirt where the town met the desert. In his hands he held a leather ledger, its cover soft and dark from years of handling. Blank pages waited inside for names he could not yet write. "One flock," he said to the wind. "Every soul." A wide smile sat on his face, the same smile he gave strangers before they spoke. He had knocked on doors for a week. He had left gifts on porches. He carried a heavy candelabra now, its arms thick with old wax drips, and he set it in the dirt like a marker. Still no one came. Families waved and shut their doors. A preacher with no building was a man shouting at sand. The town needed a reason to gather. Elias found his reason in a single tree. It stood alone past the last house, a twisted Joshua tree with a gnarled trunk and a crown of spiked leaves. Its shade fell wide across the ground. Elias walked around it three times. He pictured benches beneath the branches. He pictured children in the shade and mothers fanning their faces. Here was a roof the sun itself had made. He worked through the hottest hours. He cleared stones and dragged them into rows for seats. He hung the wax-heavy candelabra from a low branch so it could be lit at dusk. Then he opened the ledger against the trunk and wrote across the first page: All Welcome Beneath the Tree. Sundown Tonight. He carried that word from door to door. He said the tree, not the church. He said shade and light and a place to sit. Something in the plainness of it turned the locks. One old man nodded. Then a family. Then more. At sundown they came. Elias lit each candle on the hanging arms, and warm light spread over the gnarled branches. Twenty faces looked up at him. He opened the ledger and welcomed each newcomer as one of us. One by one they gave their names, and he wrote every one in his careful hand. The empty pages began to fill. He had his gathering place, and he had his flock's first names. He was closing the ledger when a child screamed near the roots. Elias turned. From a burrow at the base of the tree crept a gaunt gray rabbit. Its fur hung in torn strips. Its eyes glowed red in the candlelight, and its mouth opened on rows of small sharp teeth. The families pulled back as one. The thing hissed and did not run. It watched Elias, as if the tree already belonged to it. His new flock stood frozen, and their fear was louder than any welcome he could give.