A/N1: In my Chapter Eleven preview of coming attractions, I underestimated how much would be involved in the Boston backstory. So, Chuck and Nehi's journey to the railroad camp will not occur until Chapter 13. Some crucial backstory now - I've been setting this up since Chapter One.

Take a breath, it's a little complicated. But some things that have puzzled you should now come into focus. More has been going on than meets the eye.

Heaven and Hell

Book Two:

The Hells Are Everywhere

CHAPTER TWELVE:

Correspondences, Visions

Thursday, October 1, 1885
Idaho Falls

In our doctrine of...Correspondences, we shall treat of both these symbolical and typical resemblances, and of the astonishing things which occur, I will not say, in the living body only, but throughout nature, and which correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things, that one would swear that the physical world was purely symbolical of the spiritual world...

- Emanuel Swedenborg, Animal Kingdom

One would say, that, as soon as men had the first hint that every sensible object,—animal, rock, river, air,—nay, space and time, subsists not for itself, nor finally to a material end, but as a picture-language, to tell another story of beings and duties, other science would be put by, and a science of such grand presage would absorb all faculties; that each man would ask of all objects, what they mean: Why does the horizon hold me fast, with my joy and grief, in this center? Why hear I the same sense from countless differing voices, and read one never quite expressed fact in endless picture-language?

-Emerson, Swedenborg; or, the Mystic

Chuck sat in the armchair in his room.

He could hear Mrs. Fitzsimmons chatting away busily to Ellie and Molly, preparing their room.

As Chuck anticipated, his landlady was overjoyed, not just to have someone to let the empty room, but to have Chuck's sister and...Molly. It was clear Mrs. Fitzsimmons was not entirely sure what to make of the little girl, who she belonged to or how, but she seemed reconciled to waiting for an answer. Molly was excited and was chatting away with Mrs. Fitzsimmons, talking about her long train trip and all the things she had seen.

Chuck leaned forward in the chair, his forearms on his thighs. He realized that he had carried Boston with him to Idaho Falls - and so it was not that surprising that even more of Boston followed. His sister, Morgan, Molly.

Jill.

It had all started in the smallest way. Chuck was in a park, reading. He was ahead in his studies, the spring day was fresh and green, and so he had taken a book to a park, planning to eat his lunch and to while away an hour or so in pleasure reading.

The book was George MacDonald's Phantastes. It was one of Chuck favorite books and had been since his father read it to him as a boy. He had read it many times since, always discovering new wonders in it. A book, not for children, MacDonald said, but for the child-like.

Chuck had an apple and a piece of cheese and a few pieces of bread on a napkin on his lap.

Chuck was reading the first sentences when he looked up and saw a small girl, probably five-years old or so, staring at him, at his book, and at his meager lunch.

It was unclear which interested her most. Chuck smiled at her.

"Hello, young lady." He looked around but saw no parent, no other person at all in the small park. "Are you lost?"

The girl shook her head and her dark hair swung from side to side. It was clean, as was the greying frock she wore.

"Are you here with someone?"

Another shake of her head - and her eyes were on his food.

"Are you hungry."

This time, a nod. Decisive.

Chuck took his pen knife from his pocket and cut the cheese in half. He closed his book and moved one half the cheese onto its cover, along with half the bread. Then he cut the apple in two and put one half on the cover with the cheese and bread.

Chuck patted the empty half of the bench he was on. The little girl climbed up and sat down, adjusting her grey frock carefully, as if she were a queen about to dine. Chuck suppressed a smile and moved his napkin into the little girl's lap.

"Not exactly a loaves and fishes miracle, little Miss, but still, we can make my little go far." The girl looked at him, unsure of his meaning but sure of his intent. She smiled hugely. Then she picked up her half of the apple and bit into it with appetite.

Chuck sat the MacDonald on his lap and ate his half of lunch. In a few minutes, both had finished. The little girl smiled again and wiped her face with the napkin. "My name's Molly. What's yours?"

"Chuck."

She laughed. "That's a funny name."

"What are you doing alone in the park, Molly?"

Molly's eyes became guarded. "I have to come and stay here in the afternoons. My mom is working - and I can't be underfoot."

"Oh, so she knows where you are?"

Molly nodded. "She will be here to get me soon. But I was really hungry, Mister Chuck. Thank you."

"My pleasure. I was hungry too, and having such a pretty and delightful companion made my meal seem grand."

Again, the little girl understood the intent if not the meaning. She beamed.

"What you reading?"

"It's a beautiful book, a book about fairies. Would you like me to read to you until your mother comes?"

She nodded and scooted a little closer to him on the bench.

Chuck opened the book.

He read: I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind that accompanies the return of consciousness.

He wasn't sure that Molly would understand it all, but he knew he hadn't when his father read it to him - and that had made the book seem all the more, not all the less, magical. He read on.

Molly closed her eyes and listened closely.

Chuck had gotten through most of the first chapter when a woman spoke. "Molly, are you troubling this gentleman?"

Molly's eyes opened. Chuck closed the book.

Standing in front of them was a small, dark-haired woman. She was pretty, with small, even features; her hair was long and straight. She wore gold glasses with round lenses. Her clothes were neat but worn, often repaired, the colors were faded.

"No, ma'am, she has been no trouble. I shared my lunch and my book with her. A feast of food and a feast of words. She's been a fine companion. A bonny companion, as the author of this book might say."

He held it out to the woman. Uncertain, she took it from him and glanced at it. She opened it and read for a moment. She returned it to Chuck.

"That was kind of you, sir."

"His name is Chuck, Momma."

"That was kind of you, Chuck," the woman said, a smile playing about her face. "Now, come, Molly, we need to get home. I'm done, and we should start dinner."

The two walked away. Molly looked back and waved before they turned the corner and were out of view. Chuck waved back.

That scene replayed itself several times over the next few weeks.

Chuck and Molly had gotten fairly deep into Phantastes, and Molly had become more talkative, more inquisitive, asking about words she did not understand or about scenes that confused her. Chuck took his time with his answers, enjoying her questions and finding himself encouraged by how often his answers seemed to help her, satisfy her.

Sometimes he would bring an orange or a pear instead of an apple - but there was always bread and cheese and MacDonald.

Molly's mother eventually shared her name: Jill Roberts. There was no mention of Molly's father, by Molly or her mother. After several times finding Molly with Chuck, Jill sat down and joined them, asking Chuck to go on reading while she held Molly in her lap.

That happened several times before Jill, hesitantly, invited Chuck to have dinner with them.

This had all been happening at a time when Chuck was growing dissatisfied with Divinity School. He felt that, despite the best intentions of many of his teachers, Christianity, indeed religion itself, had become a mere theory to him, words, empty of human significance, reduced to markers in debating contests.

He had long been devoted to the book of James - and its demand that faith be lived was on his mind constantly: But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Chuck was not entirely sure what he believed, not exactly, but he knew that he wanted to do good to others, not just talk about it and be talked to about it. Helping others did not have to wait on his studies or on the solution of his theological perplexities. He feared to be the man James spoke of, the man who sees his face in a glass - beholds his own deformity - and who then goes on, forgetting what he saw.

As a result, Chuck had started to spend time in the poorest of Boston neighborhoods. He had little money to help, but he was strong and fit. He helped as he could. Sometimes it was manual labor, sometimes it was teaching a person to read.

That was how he discovered the little park. It was an out-of-the-way green bridge between 'respectable' and 'disrespectable' areas of the city.

His work was beginning to compromise his studies. As the tension between helping and Harvard grew, Chuck increasingly chose to help, chose against Harvard.

By the time Jill invited him to dinner, he had more or less decided to abandon his studies.

It took him a few dinners with Jill and Molly to finally put it all together.

Jill was a prostitute. He figured it out but then she confessed it all to him one evening when Chuck stayed later than usual, and Molly had gone to bed. Since Jill had Molly, she saw customers during the afternoons, not at night.

For a while, she had Molly in a day school, but the price went up beyond what Jill could pay. The current system of using the park - and then of using Chuck - to watch Molly could not last, and Jill knew it. She expected her confession to be the end of Chuck's involvement in her and her daughter's life.

It wasn't. Chuck kept coming to the park and he began to work with Jill in the evenings, helping her finish the schooling she had missed, schooling that might translate into other employment.

Jill wanted out of the life she was in; she wanted Molly far from it.

Chuck never explained all of this to Ellie. She worried about him enough. He talked about the woman and the little girl, but only in general terms, and not often. Ellie regarded them as just another of Chuck's charity cases.

But they had become more. Almost a family. Chuck came to hold a place in Molly's affections, almost a father's place. And he slowly realized he was coming to hold a place in Jill's, almost a husband's place. Jill told Chuck early on, after her confession, that she had no idea who among her past customers was Molly's father. She had told the little girl that her father had to move away and that had, since Molly had never known him, placated her. Chuck's appearance seemed to help with that too.

Chuck finally stopped going to classes altogether. He worked at any job he could find, dividing his pay between Ellie and Jill. Jill was able to stop seeing as many customers. Eventually, she found a job as a type-setter at a Boston magazine, and she was able to quit her customers altogether. All except one. A new customer who refused to allow Jill to send him on to someone else. They met at a hidden location, not at Jill's.

Jill would not tell Chuck who he was, but when she showed up after meeting him badly bruised, Chuck followed her the next time.

Her customer was Daniel Shaw.

It had taken effort to figure it out. Daniel demanded that Jill see him in a seedy hotel. She came in the back door and went right up to the room. Daniel was there ahead of her and left afterward. They were never seen together. He paid for the room by post, the key mailed to him, and under an alias. He had done a masterful job of hiding what he was doing. It turned out to be important that he do so, because he was, at the same time, spending the rest of his time with the first families of Boston, money, and power. The south slope of Beacon Hill. Daniel was supposed to be in Boston studying, but he was doing very little of that.

Chuck tried to get Jill to let him confront Daniel, but she refused. She was terrified of him.

He knew where she and Molly lived. And, Jill would say, he will leave soon. But Shaw had not left and eventually Chuck had convinced Jill to break it off. She had gotten the apothecary job, and it was going to change everything for her and for Molly. She wrote to Daniel to tell him that she was done. Chuck found her beaten to death in her apartment the next day. Somehow, there had been no witnesses. No one had seen or heard anything.

Chuck took his suspicions to a man on the Boston police force he knew. The man did some discreet checking. Shaw could not have done it, the man claimed. Shaw had been at a Beacon Hill party the entire afternoon. Many had seen him there. The fact that he left town just a few days after Jill's death did not make Chuck's friend suspicious. The policeman was not about to challenge the sort of people who claimed Shaw was with them.

But Chuck knew it was Shaw. Knew it. He had seen it when he last saw Shaw, after Jill was dead and before Shaw left town. Shaw had been walking along a Boston street and Chuck, looking at him, saw him, the demon that he was.

Ever since Chuck had fever as a boy, he had been having visions.

He told no one about them. They were not prophetic - they did not foretell the future. But they were glimpses, glimpses into the inward meaning of outward and visible things, penetration beyond the physical and into the metaphysical. They happened irregularly and could not be predicted. Sometimes what they revealed was good, angelic, not demonic. He could not always tell if he was having one and if it was merely his imagination, the result of being addled or agitated by stress or worry or sickness.

He had one of the visions, he was sure, when he saw the Numbers Gang, and another, he thought, when he saw Justus' dark choir outside Devon's office. They visions came and went on their own schedule.

He had one in Boston when he looked at Shaw and knew Shaw for what he was. Evil. Still, visions weren't evidence - no court would take them into consideration. He'd end up in The Boston Lunatic Asylum. But he could not forget what he saw; he could not shake it; he could not forgive Shaw. Oblivious to almost everything else, he tried to find a way to follow Shaw west.

It was the visions that lead Chuck to Swedenborg - and to Heaven and Hell.

Or it was the visions and the help of Emerson's essay on Swedenborg.

Chuck was not sure that Swedenborg's mystical visions of correspondence quite explained his own visions, but it was similar. It made them make sense to him. Chuck could see the correspondences between earth and Heaven, between earth and Hell. Earth as Heaven and Hell. Sometimes - Chuck could see the correspondences. Sometimes.

Yes, it had started after his fever but no one knew.

Ellie noticed the signs of it. She called it 'staring off into space' and she teased him about 'fits of abstraction'. But he never told her what he saw or how he understood it. All these years it had been his secret and his alone. No one knew. He was not sure he would ever tell anyone. He hadn't ever told Morgan, even.

Swedenborg made him feel less alone.

Chuck had chased Shaw to Idaho Falls on the strength of a vision. It was a vision he took to prove Shaw had killed Jill. But it was proof only to Chuck. Other than that, he had only circumstantial evidence, and precious little of it.

"Chuck?"

He sat up. Ellie was standing in his doorway. She looked refreshed. She had on a different dress.

"Yes?"

"Molly's already asleep on the cot. She's had a big day. She wouldn't let me take her marble. She says she needs a leather pouch like the boy…" She was trying to remember the boy's name.

"Anthony," Chuck offered.

"Like Anthony has. And more marbles. I told her you were better at losing marbles than finding them, but that you might rustle some up for her." She smirked. "How'd you like that, 'rustle up'? I'm speaking the lingo already."

Chuck shook his head, smiling at his sister, taken aback, as always by her brains and her beauty. "So, Ellie, how are you here?"

"I sold the house."

"You what?"

"There was a man. He came by a couple of days after you left. I guess there are plans to build a hospital - right there, where our house and some of the neighbors' houses are.

"I thought it was a scam, or that they would offer us some piddling amount. But no, top dollar. We have money now, Chuck; half of it is yours. It's to be transferred to the bank here.

"We needed - I needed - to let go of the house. Too many memories. Thank God we had it, but I hope you won't be angry with me."

Chuck shook his head. "I left it. No, I'm not angry. Sad, as I know you are, but...it was time."

Relief showed on his sister's face. "I plan to take my half and buy a small house, see if I can find some work. It's beautiful here - and I've had enough of dirt and smoke and crowds. Is Lou's a decent place?"

"Yes, it is. But you might want to talk to the Mayor's wife, Diane Beckman. She has a finger in every pie in Idaho Falls. She can tell you who might hire you."

"So what's been going on with you here, Chuck? Tell me. Tell me about Sarah."

Ellie walked into the room and sat down on the bed. Chuck started at the beginning, with the hold-up, and, except for the visions and his real reason for coming to Idaho Falls, his dark knowledge of Shaw, he told Ellie about the past month. It started with Sarah.

It ended with Sarah. Carina, Casey, the townsfolk, and the murder of Miss Reynolds, were in sandwiched in the middle.

When he finished, Ellie was chewing on her bottom lip. "Well, you have always had a genius for getting yourself into predicaments, Chuck. So, you believe Sarah is the blonde rider?"

Chuck stood up and retrieved the black hat hanging in his closet. He put it in Ellie's hands and pointed out the long blonde hairs in it. "When she came to see me, I could only see her face and hair - at first. That's because she was dressed in black."

"So she rides around in black part of the time, and gets drug through town by that clown Shaw the rest of the time? Are you sure this is the woman you want, Chuck?"

He colored. "Yes, Ellie, I am. But I can't have her. I've looked at it every way I can, from under and above; I can't see how to get her out of this." Unless I can kill Shaw.

Ellie sighed. "At least we have some time. You're not alone. I'm here now. Morgan's here. We'll figure this out. Though I admit, it sounds more like you need an army than a sister, a little girl, and a Morgan."

"I'm glad for what I have. I'm glad you're here. And, who knows? Maybe we can hope for some divine intervention…"

Ellie grinned. "That's your department, Harvard. Though I'm unsure about the effectiveness of prayer from a Divinity School dropout." She laughed, then yawned. "I'm beat; I'm going to bed."

Ellie stood up. She leaned down and kissed the top of Chuck's head. "Keep the faith, Chuck. Remember, David slew Goliath."

She left. Chuck shut his door behind her.

Yes, but David at least knew how to use a slingshot.

That thought made Chuck restless, so he grabbed his cowboy hat and headed out of the house. He went to The Bar None. Chuck had expected Morgan to come to Mrs. Fitzsimmons' after he got his room at The Bar None.

Chuck stepped through the swinging doors. The saloon was not in weekend form, despite the special event of the train's arrival. It wasn't close to empty but it was not full. Chuck saw Morgan sitting at the bar. He was talking to Zondra Rizzo. She seemed to be comforting him.

"Hey, Morgan. What happened? I thought you'd come to Mrs. Fitzsimmons and spend some time?"

Morgan looked at Chuck. "Hey, Chuck, I intended to but things took a turn here…"

Behind Morgan, Zondra smiled, shaking her head. "Tell him, Morgan."

"Well, Chuck, you didn't mention that the upstairs rooms are divided into...working rooms and renting rooms…"

It was true: Chuck hadn't thought to mention it.

Morgan went on. "So, I came in and went right up the stairs, thinking I would take a look, see what the rooms were like. I opened the door…" He paused.

"And he saw...the business end of Anna Wu, in the midst of business...," Zondra explained, pushing down the corners of her mouth, fighting a smile.

Morgan turned bright red. "Um, yeah, what she said. I wasn't prepared for it, Chuck, it shook me up. Luckily, Miss Rizzo here found me a Sasparilla - or three. My nerves are steadier now." He took another swig of the fizzy, golden liquid.

"I'm sorry, little buddy. I should have told you. Warned you. Do you think you will ever fully recover?"

Morgan made an earnest, thoughtful face. "Don't know. It was sort of like a vision. There's a lot to see...out... in the West."

Chuck flinched but hid it. "That there is, Morgan, that there is."

Outside, it started to rain.

A/N2: Railroad camp visit in Chapter 13.

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