Stained Glass - In the Beginning

Flickr Photo by GregPC

At first she had doubted. Despite the strength of her own convictions – her revulsion – she could not imagine herself doing what she must do. So she sat at the kitchen table, alone, her hands folded in front of her. Albert would be in the church with the others. “I’m sick of this, Margaret,” he’d protested. “We’ll be the laughingstock of the town if you go on this way.”

People wouldn’t be laughing once she got up her nerve, though. They’d be scurrying around like the rats they were, looking for a ditch to dive into. She smiled grimly at the notion. “Forgive me, God,” she muttered, bobbing her head in the direction God might have been, out the kitchen window. Sunlight slanted in from the southeast. Pure unadulterated light, the way God had created it on the First Day, not tainted light, paid for by whores and tinged by Satin himself.

That’s what bolstered her in that decisive moment, the pure light pouring in over their kitchen window sill. Surely it carried a message from God. A sign. And it occurred to her, as she tilted toward action, that signs abounded. All nature was a sign, but only a few could decipher God’s commandments, which blossomed inside you more like feelings than anything else once you were chosen.

Albert called her stubborn, even stupid. But that was only because he was such a weak man. He’d been with her at the start, now he’d fled back to the herd. So be it. With him life had become a series of choices, based on which was the least damaging to his career. She had become an embarrassment to ‘a man in his position’ – a liability on the social ledger. Once it became clear she would not budge, Albert’s calculus led to the inevitable conclusion that it would be best to publicly break with his wife rather than side with her against the entire congregation of St. Saviour’s. Thus, his decision had been rendered.

She despised him even more than the rest.

A mischievous smile flickered then faded. It would be his gun! The will of God, the fire and brimstone she was about to unleash on this frontier Sodom and Gomorrah, would belch from the muzzle of the double barreled shotgun, which he kept leaned up against the back wall of the hall closet. Albert had never shot anything in his entire life, not even a duck, but he kept his gun at the ready because, as he put it, ‘a man in my position becomes a target, not just for penny-anti thieves, but for kidnappers and cold-blooded killers.’

Margaret sighed, and thrust herself away from the table. The congregation would be settling in now and soon the dedication service would begin. Time yet remained – enough to carry out her plan, or give it up deliberately, but not enough to dawdle. “God give me strength,” she whispered, heading toward the hall. The sibilance of her own voice startled her, and she wondered if her words remained trapped in the house like frightened birds. She had expected to feel the Spirit moving within her, not this weariness of soul, as if the atoms and molecules of her being had suddenly entered a stronger field of gravity where she could barely lug her carcass over the polished floorboards.

“Show your courage, woman,” she growled. God might test, but would never abandon a true believer. For the moment Satan’s power prevailed, but only because God permitted it. And sure enough, as she shuffled toward the closet the excess gravity relinquished its hold, and a renewed sense of conviction flowed into her, a current so clean and strong it burned off any lingering vapors of doubt or despair. Quietly, as if she were there to take her coat off its hanger, she opened the closet door, shoved the garments aside and grasped Albert’s gun. She had never hefted it before and was taken aback by the weight of the thing. Margaret laughed out loud, because now she was concerned with how she – a respectable woman – would look marching down Main Street toting a loaded shotgun. Should she rest it on her shoulder, like a soldier on parade? Grasp it like a hunter stalking his kill through the underbrush? In the end, she decided to hold it like you would a broom or a mop, grasped firmly at its point of equilibrium, the barrel pointed slightly down, the stock angled up behind her.

Satisfied that this was the least alarming pose, and the one most likely to get her to the church without incident, she closed the closet door dutifully, and walked solemnly to the vestibule and out onto the front porch. Heading to St. Saviour’s it would have been best to stick to the boardwalk, close to the shop fronts, where she would be less obvious. But the Spirit impelled Margaret out into the middle of the street. She walked neither quickly nor slowly, but at a steady, determined pace. The town seemed strangely deserted, and she concluded that most of its citizens were either in St. Saviour’s celebrating the opaque abomination; or in the saloons, engaged in a more common form of debauchery. A fly buzzed annoyingly about her hair. The hot sun pressed against her cheek.

Margaret marched on, spurred by the muffled sound of voices, tuning up for the first hymn of the dedication service...

Out of the night where hope had died,
to tomb once sealed, now gaping wide,
the Magdalene made haste, to mourn
and bring her spices through the dawn...

How dare they! The music and chorus drifting up main street enraged her, almost forcing Margaret to break stride and run, run right up to the church and through the front doors, down the aisle to point the gun not where she had intended, but at the man who had chosen this hymn to defile. How dare he! But she clamped down the urge with her iron will. God had not asked that of her, nor would he bless bloodshed. Calmed, she felt the Spirit return like a tide rolling in and out with her inflating lungs. Margaret sighed, content now with what she must do...

“Hey lady!”

A rough looking character, whom she recognized but did not know, summoned from the boardwalk in front of the Barkerville Hotel. His grizzled beard framed a weathered face. He wore a broad brimmed hat that shaded his eyes, a rumpled jacket and work pants, cinched in at the waist with a thick leather belt.

“Where you going with that gun?”

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” she said. “And I’ll attend to mine.”

“Might make it my business, if I see someone walking down Main Street on a Sunday morning with what looks to be a loaded shotgun. Specially when she appears to be a woman of some standing in the community. You’re Mrs. Hewitt, aren’t you?”

Margaret ignored him, trudging on as if he weren’t there. He sauntered along the boardwalk in her peripheral vision, annoying as the flies and mosquitoes that would never leave you alone until you took a swat at them.

“You sure you want to do whatever it is you’re planning on doing. I’m assuming you’re not out duck hunting right here in town, ‘cause that would be illegal and a woman of your stature would never do anything illegal, would she?”

“I’m doing something that must be done, sir, and I only wish you would go back to your own business let me go about mine. No-one is going to get hurt, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“Name’s Hatch,” he said. “Peter Hatch.”

He continued to walk with her at a distance, stepping off the end of the boardwalk as she passed by the front of St. Saviour’s and around the side. The singing from within surged into another verse, accompanied by the feeble organ, which was another thing that needed replacing someday. Another thing! Margaret’s spirit convulsed at the thought...

Jesus is risen! Mary cries,
Lift up your hearts and dry your eyes,
Jesus is risen – come and see –
and goes before to Galilee.

She positioned herself about ten yards from the window, feet planted firmly apart, gun snugged up to her shoulder, like she’d seen in several photos. She imagined all eyes in St. Saviour’s raised at that precise moment toward the obverse side of the false glass. It depicted Mary Magdalene, head bowed in sorrow, eyes closed as if she were concentrating on an interior grief so vast it eluded beginnings and endings, all notions of height and depth.  Mary embraced the cross at the feet of Jesus. Only he knew the true magnitude of suffering, compassion and forgiveness; Mary gave herself up to him, wholly.

“Liar!” Margaret shouted.

“You sure you want to do this, Lady. A lot of folks are going to be mighty mad if you do. You’ll be up before Judge Begbie for sure, I can tell you that.”

Confused, she glanced at him, looking away from the window and the bead of the gun. He regarded her with kindly eyes. If he’d wanted, Peter Hatch could easily have stepped forward and taken the gun. She would not have resisted. She almost wished he would. But he was there to observe only. Margaret could see that now. He was witness to what she was about to do, or not do...

All glory be to God above,
for Mary's apostolic love,
all praise to God whom we adore
for ever and for evermore. Amen.

Quickly! Margaret took aim again and squeezed the trigger. It would not budge. She tried again, desperately. “It won’t shoot,” she complained. “It refuses...”

“Got to release the safety, ma’am. The little lever there above the trigger. Push it forward with your thumb.”

“Thank you Mr. Hatch,” Margaret said embarrassed. Then in a calm and dignified manner, more suited to the occasion, she raised the gun, took aim and squeezed again. The recoil threw her right shoulder back. In the same instant the image of Mary Magdalene and Christ exploded into a thousand glittering fragments, leaving a gaping hole where a moment before there had been coloured light.