Golgotha

Argol

Roman Ferrar didn't care too much about how ridiculous he might look standing there without anyone talking to him. At a glance, he appeared to be listening to whatever his wife, Maya, and her best friend, Yumi, were talking about. If anyone there on the church lawn watched him for more than a few seconds, they would see that he wasn't paying attention to them, let alone making any effort to join their conversation.

"Well, no, that's not what I think," Roman heard the new pastor saying behind him (his last name, Franklin or Frank maybe). "I don't know. Maybe someone made it grow like that." The pastor was talking to Dianne far enough behind Roman that they wouldn't suspect he was listening to them, but he was close enough to hear just about everything they were saying. "I'm sorry, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before." The new pastor was having a hard time believing what Dianne was telling him about the Argol tree. "Sure, but there must be trees that grow with their roots above ground. I'm pretty sure I saw something like that on the internet."

Before Dianne's redemption began, Maya nudged Roman when she saw the new pastor pulling into the parking lot in a green Honda Civic. The pastor took forever to get out of his car, and when he did, he just stood there at the edge of the parking lot until well after the redemption began.

"It... it doesn't matter how it grew," Dianne said behind Roman, with heavy breaths breaking up her sentences. "The Argol tree is a miracle. It is a sign of God's divine power and a symbol of His Atonement."

Roman glanced behind him. Dianne was fiddling with the cross on her necklace; her skin was pale and filmy, with streaks of sweat peeking through her blouse. After what she had been through, she should be on her way home. There was no reason why she should have to endure this overlong meet-n'-greet.

Right from the start, when the girls knelt in front of Dianne, she sat so rigidly in the wicker chair, with her off-white blouse and long jean skirt bent at nearly perfect right angles. There was a reined-in discomfort all over her face; gradually, she lost her grip on it, appearing more and more distressed as the redemption went on.

It happened all the time. The anointed would experience some kind of pain. Dedric always brought his RV, just in case someone needed to lay down on their way back home, or in the off chance (it actually had never happened before) that someone might need to go to the hospital.

Dianne appeared to be holding her own. Almost everyone had already left, but the new pastor was being so insistent, questioning just about everything she told him, which he could've asked at a later, more appropriate time. There was no reason why he should be giving his opinion about things he knew nothing about.

Roman saw the three girls making their way towards him, their white dresses gleaming in the sunlight but hardly giving off the angelic impression they were meant to convey. Scuffs of dirt and grass near the hem of their dresses, their hair tussled to varying degrees of messiness, as if they'd been out in the hot sun running around for hours. Amelia was on the right, about a head taller than Ira, Esther on her left, a few inches shorter than Ira. Seeing them like that only accentuated his daughter's worn, sickly complexion.

Roman never got used to what the redemptions did to Ira. While the symptoms of her cancer were gone, strangely, frighteningly, it was like she contracted some other disease. The first redemptions, which were more than three years ago, gave her a few gray streaks of hair, which Ira really liked, and so did everyone else. She was actually more beautiful. She had her own unique look, which made her feel special, and when they were at church, words like "angelic, chosen, a divine inspiration" were thrown around all the time.

It was maybe seven or eight months after her hair changed that Ira began to look like an adult woman in a preteen body. She was still beautiful, Roman and Maya telling her so whenever they could, and the members of the church did the same for the most part, but the changes didn't stop there. It wasn't as if she kept looking older, even though the creases in her face might make someone think so; it was more like all the strength and liveliness of her youth were being torn away from her countenance.

The girls weren't walking towards Roman anymore. Ira and Esther were looking back at Amelia, who was saying something, then the other girls (Roman couldn't see their faces) must've responded. Amelia said something else, and then she walked away from them towards the Argol tree. Ira and Esther watched her for a moment, then turned back around and again walked towards him.

When they reached him, Ira held up a necklace and said, "Look at what Esther gave me."

Roman took the necklace, and already knowing the answer, he asked, "Where did you get this, Esther?"

"My mom. She let me give them to Ira and Amelia." Esther said something else, and Ira asked her something in reply, but Roman wasn't listening because he was so distracted by Ira's appearance. The same tired eyes, the slightly taut expression, but her posture should be better. She shouldn't be so hunched over.

"Do you like it, Dad?" asked Ira.

Roman held up the necklace's pendant and asked Esther, "Is this made from the Argol tree?"

"I think so."

The necklace was the same kind of hippy trinket Esther's mom wore all the time. Roman didn't think it would look good on Ira, it was too garish, but that didn't matter. Esther gave it to her, so she was going to wear it all the time. Not that the necklace wasn't beautiful; the wood was cut so intricately, embedded in a circular silver clasp; it was strange really, the wood appearing to be one solid piece, which couldn't be the case because the grain of the wood spiraled in two different directions.

Esther was wearing a matching necklace, cut differently but just as peculiar. It was in the shape of an arrow, the woodgrain slanting upwards, while the stems of the arrow curled downwards, the woodgrain running seamlessly from the arrow. Roman thought maybe it complemented the pendant Esther gave Ira; it actually wasn't an arrow, but rather, the two of them together made what might be some kind of abstract flower.

"Did your mom make these?" he asked.

"No," said Esther.

"Do you know who made them?"

"No."

Roman had to fight the urge to tell her that if she didn't know who made them, then there was a good chance it was her mom. He knew better than to say anything about her mom. It would almost inevitably lead to some kind of uncomfortable, drama-filled something or other, which never ended well.

"You should ask your mom who made them," he said.

"Mine is so gorgeous," Ira said, sounding like Maya. "I mean, look at the details, and the wood is so smooth."

"No, that isn't the wood," said Roman, handing the necklace back to her. "They put a finish on it to protect the wood."

Ira rubbed her thumb over the pendant. "I felt something when Esther gave it to me."

"Really?"

"I mean, I still felt kind of sick after the redemption was over. The cancer was gone, but I don't know, I didn't feel good. When she gave me the necklace, I felt better."

"Were you feeling weak?"

"Maybe a little bit, but I feel better now."

"Are you sure?"

"I feel fine, Dad."

"So what, you don't feel weak anymore?"

"No, I do, but I feel good."

"I don't understand."

"It's like, I don't know."

"Do you feel sick?"

"No, I'm fine. It's like, you know, if you run really fast, you're tired when you stop running, but you still wanna keep running."

"That's kind of like what happened to me," said Esther. "When I had the flu last year, my mom made me wear this bracelet." She held up her wrist to show them the bracelet, which was just like the necklaces, made up of intricately carved wooden beads and coin-like silver discs. Roman tried to find some kind of unifying motif between them: flower, stem, seeds maybe. "I was still sick, but I felt so much better."