LIFTING HIS HEAD INTO THE RAIN

Cort did not want to go back toward the church, not with so many people there. He wasn't ready yet to deal with the scene he'd caused his first time there standing in front of them all. He had enough on his plate at the moment. Maximus offered to accompany him home, but Cort wanted to be alone for a while, so the General headed back to the church.

Cort was still a mile out when it began to drizzle, then rain lightly. That didn't make him pick up his pace at all. In fact, he slowed it even more, remembering now the desert and the dust, enjoying the feeling of the wetness on his face and shoulders. He was cutting through the wooded areas still, avoiding the roads, and finding a small clearing with several large rocks in it, climbed up on the largest rock and simply sat, lifting his face to the rain.

He was Reverend Cortland Wells. There was a great relief in knowing now the surety of that despite all the memories that accompanied the revelation. He was feeling somewhat calmer after his talk with Maximus and the quiet rain on his body increased that for him. That last day at the mission did want to replay itself over and over in his mind, but it wasn't quite the flaming fire that had nearly consumed him in the church. He hated every minute of all that had happened at the mission, was horrified by the barbarous senselessness of it, and still had no idea of what had happened to him after the rifle butt had slammed into his head. The General, though, had forged some connection with him that restored to him, at least to some degree, his ability to stand in the midst of it.

Alistair had told him he would remember when he could bear to remember. At the pulpit, in that blast of first remembrance, he wasn't at all sure he could bear it, why he'd finally let himself remember. The 91st Psalm...that was the trigger of it all. "A thousand may fall at your side," he repeated aloud. It had been like that. Everyone dying around him. The day had been so normal, so peaceful, the laughter of the children earlier in the yard where they kicked the old leather ball around and played games, the adults quietly going about their duties. So entirely normal. Then the tornado of destruction, man-made destruction
and death, had swept through, and it was gone. All of it...gone. He knew it would take him some time to work through this, but lifting his head into the rain was a beginning somehow.