The Deluge, page 96
You shake your head. “Do you have any idea, Rev—do you have any fucking idea what… what happened to me when—”
“Keeper, I’m so sorry. You once told me you didn’t know how God could forgive you for the things you’ve done, and honestly, that’s how I feel. I’ll ask His forgiveness every day, but I will never deserve it.”
The heat of the day has mercifully receded, though you’re sweating again all the same.
“I believed in what they were doing, and this here, what’s happening now, this is the evidence. This is what I feared. Men have so brazenly and stupidly spoiled Creation that the harvest of this madness—well, look around the country today: We’re finally reaping what we’ve sown. All these disciples of the so-called Pastor have are bastardized versions of faith that allow them their selfish cruelty.” He finally looks at you, his sad brown eyes searching out your own. “I know they’ve reached out to you again through Mr. Tawrny. And I can say truthfully, Keeper, I played no part in this. I do not know what they want with you. Do you?”
You feel naked that he knows this.
“No.”
“What I’m asking is that you decline their offer. Whatever it is.”
“Why? Thought you was down with their cause, Rev?”
“At one time I was. I believe in the mission of men like John Brown and Jesus Christ. Sometimes what is illegal can still be just. But ever since Allen died—they’re a different group now, being run by different people, and it seems to me they’ve lost their way. Whatever is going on now… I’m afraid for you, Keeper.”
You lick between the gaps in your teeth, and pain swells in your gums. An alder’s leaves sway in the twilight breeze, and over the field, red-tailed hawks circle a spot of corn where a dead-critter feast certainly lies.
“Before Allen died, he shared some information with me. These militias—like the one you went to see—now doing unspeakable things with no one stopping them? It turns out the Love administration was funneling them arms and resources and creating liaisons with law enforcement. They were using these folks, Keeper, to try to get at them. They had a program back in the seventies that they used to infiltrate groups like the original Weather Underground, but that didn’t work out too well.” He let out a small laugh. His eyes twinkled. “Legend has it the undercovers kept sympathizing with the radicals. So this time, with the new Weathermen, they looked to folks who wouldn’t be as sympathetic. They knew we were based in the Midwest and the Southeast, and they thought they could use the League to reconnoiter and surveil and get information that law enforcement couldn’t find on its own. At least not legally.”
“Use. That’s the word I would think on, Rev. A lot of using going on.”
Andrade’s smile fades.
“And I’m sorry. I’ll be sorry forever. But what I’m also telling you is that these folks you visited up at the compound, they know about your ties, and they certainly suspect me, although not for any of the right reasons. Because I put some solar panels on the church roof with an FBF grant and raised money for people in the border concentration camps.” He chuffed a laugh. “Heck, even if I’d never met Allen, the militias would still suspect me. That’s the foul irony.”
You stand.
“Far as I’m concerned, Rev, you ain’t nothing more than another peddler. Another user.” You proceed down a couple steps before turning back. “Whatever you do, don’t fuck this up for me, Rev. I never needed a gig worse in my life. Whatever your concerns, do me a favor and keep ’em to your fucking self. Stay away from me and my family. You’re a predator, man. Just like I thought.”
You spit in the grass, an ugly green splat of phlegm, and set off down the church driveway without looking back.
* * *
The glass doors of the Kroger have been pried apart, a mattress stuffed in the gap to keep them open, its coils bursting through casing. Whatever chaos visited your former employer, the madness has passed. The parking lot is empty, scattered trash and salvaged food items smeared over the asphalt: trammeled microwave dinners, exploded boxes of cereal trailing crumbs, a rotisserie chicken gripped apart by fingers. You step through the sliding doors and make your way past the produce into the heart of the store, picked entirely clean, and it makes you think of ants going to work. Bare shelves gleam under fluorescent light. What’s incredible is you just walked by the day before. All this has happened today, the place stripped bare in a bottomless panic. The chaos reminds you of working search and rescue in Missouri. You piled the dead animals together, tossing drowned dogs, cats, varmints, and getting teams to move the big ones. Horses, cows, and pigs had all washed down from nearby farms, all of them bursting with water and decaying in the sun, an eye-watering smell. Then you think of that old Mexican man in St. Louis, floating on his back. Dead people have fake faces. They look stuffed, taxidermied.
You find a canvas bag someone dropped and fill it with whatever doesn’t look too dirty: a frozen chicken tikka masala now mushy, a small bottle of olive oil, an instant noodles punctured, partially spilled, but salvageable. You hear people at the back of the store and clutch your bag close, wishing for Kelly’s gun, but then you’re upon them and their eyes are as frightened as you’ve ever seen. A young couple, the guy maybe all of five feet tall, the woman half a foot shorter. They’re pushing a shopping cart with a car seat stuffed inside, a baby buckled into that, filling up the edges around the seat with supplies. Your eyes fall to the items, familiar to you from after Toby was born: formula, diapers, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, tearless shampoo, Band-Aids, hydrogen peroxide, and an electric breast pump no doubt looted from the back pharmacy.
“Just doing some shopping,” you tell them because they look so scared of you. “Carry on.”
You turn to go the other way, but the guy calls out, “Hey, man.” And those two words are so full of grief and fear you almost don’t want to turn around. The buzz of the fluorescent lights is dizzying and loud. “If you see any of that earache medicine, will you give a shout? You know what I mean? The pink stuff.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Will do, kid.”
But you move through the aisles quickly because outside dark lakes of night have set in, and you don’t want to be here if the power goes out. What was revealed to you years ago when you were picking through the ashen wreckage of the megafire or the soggy detritus of the floods was the simplicity with which everything unravels. How one second you’re living your life, and the next, if you don’t run, you’ll be rotting, waiting for some other poor sucker to find you and haul you out in a plastic bag. Now everyone was getting a glimpse of what you long knew: the fragility of all those things that seem so permanent and steadfast. How very simple it is for everything and everyone to go away.
* * *
On the twelfth, you get a text from Tawrny on the burner to let you know things are good to go. In two days, you’ll meet a woman at the Commodore Perry Service Plaza on the Ohio Turnpike, 8 a.m. sharp. This presents a problem because you and Raquel no longer have a functioning car.
“You could always thumb it.” Pierre hoovers up dip juice from his lip. “Pretty soon that’ll be the standard mode of transport.”
Still, when you tell Raquel you need to hitch up to Toledo, she’s rightfully suspicious.
“I don’t understand what the job is. You’re being all murky about it.”
“No, for real, I’m not. They told me more scrapping. There’s tin sheets coming off all these farm buildings up there, and they sell for about two bucks apiece.”
“Who’s they?”
“Casey and some of them.” But this phrase is familiar to her from all your lying, all your drinking and drugging. “I’m clean. Plus, if I had any intention of getting high, I could do it without hitching a hundred and fifteen miles.”
This actually does seem to satisfy her. The next day you go see Tawrny.
“I need to know what this is,” you demand.
“If I knew, Keeper, I’d tell you. Honest. From the way it sounds, by you doing your time and keeping quiet they know they can trust you, and that’s why they wanted you so bad.”
He’s at least shaved since you last saw him, but his shirt is filthy, pit stains leaching into white fabric.
“Then I need to know how much.”
“Ah.” He holds up an index finger. “A good piece of knowledge to settle for.” And he slides a scrap of paper across the table to you. It’s got an account number and a password. “It’s only got fifty bucks in there now, but as soon as they pick you up, it’ll get another nine thousand or so.”
“Or so?”
“Yeah, to stay under IRS eyes if it comes to that. Then they’ll load another nine grand a month until it hits fifty K.”
You look from the scrap of paper to Tawrny’s rheumy eyes. “No shit?”
“No shit. You gotta complete the jay-oh-bee of course, but that shouldn’t be no problem, whatever it is.”
This number fills your mind so completely, it is such total and utter salvation, that it blots out every other question or concern. The things you can do with fifty thousand dollars. The safety and security you can provide for Raquel and Toby. Hearing aids and an apartment, cereal and beds to sleep in, asthma inhalers and clothes without holes. Suddenly, you are overwhelmed, so grateful to this man you might cry. You swallow to keep the lump down.
“You know, T, you really always have looked out for me. I don’t want you to think I ain’t realized that.”
Tawrny nods, his eyes far away and utterly forlorn.
“Well,” he says. “I’m close to nursing-home ready. Maybe you’ll come see me from time to time.”
* * *
Coming home to the Walmart, you’re thinking about how you should find a paper map, so you can bushwhack your way up county highways. Just as you’re walking into the parking lot, you spot a bright orange Dodge pickup. You know only one guy who drives that color RAM 1500 because you were with him when he bought it used, paid way too much, and proceeded to sink the cost of another used truck into fixing it up. Casey Wheeler hops out, hitching up his jeans with no belt, baseball cap protecting his bald spot from the setting sun, wearing his shirt that says WORLD’S OKAYEST FISHERMAN, and you call his name. When he spots you, he starts hustling your way. You’re happy to see him. You two haven’t talked much in the last few months, but he’s a good friend, and you’re feeling light. The thought of that fifty K is making you feel good about everything.
“Wheeler!” you cry over the noise of the fans.
You’re expecting your grin returned, but as he runs over, you see his face is dark and afraid. He’s breathing heavy when he reaches you. “Keeper.” He sucks wind. “You gotta get out of here, man!”
“Huh?”
“You gotta leave. You need to take Rocky and Toby and get out.”
“Get out of where?”
“Outta the ’mart. Outta town. Just go.”
“Man, what are you talking about? You on something?”
“Just go.”
“Go where?”
“Wherever. Just don’t be here.”
“Casey, we ain’t even got a car. We got nowhere to go to. You need to tell me what’s going on.”
He looks away, the slanted sun lighting his face, and there are lines from a pillow, as if he’s just gotten out of bed. “I should’ve told you a while back, I just didn’t think Underwood was serious.”
Your stomach falls at the mention of this name. You’re suddenly aware of how little water you’ve had to drink that day. And it’s been so hot. “Told me what?”
“They’re coming down here. They’ve had this list for a while. I thought it was all bullshit, just a bunch of guys talking tough, but—I dunno, Dick’s always had it out for you.”
You can’t process everything he’s saying. “What list?”
“ ’Cause of Rocky. They don’t like that. They got a list of people. He showed it to me once. It’s like… if they ever get a chance to, you know—take care of folks.”
“Casey, what in the fuck does that mean? ‘Take care of’?”
Casey lifts his hat and scratches at the fuzz on his scalp. He went from running full-bore to now twisting his heel in the dirt like a shy kid who won’t cop to eating all the ice cream. Meanwhile, blood thunders in your temples.
“Just. Why’d you have to take up with that preacher, Keeper? You realize he’s a communist, right? That’s mostly what they’re pissed about. That’s who they wanted from the beginning.”
How much these rednecks know of what Andrade told you, hell, it doesn’t even matter. It was all crashing together one way or the other. You think of all the guns you saw in that shed at the compound. All the target practice. All the kids just shooting and waiting and itching.
“I didn’t think they were serious,” Casey pleads.
“Jesus Christ.” You can’t breathe. You feel like you’ve caught Toby’s asthma. “When are they coming?”
“That’s the thing. That’s kind of why I’m here.” He removes the cap again, scratches, replaces it. You snatch him by the collar, rage flooding.
“Motherfucker, quit dawdling your traitor fucking mouth and spit it out! When are they coming?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Dick called me. Asked where you was staying at. I said I didn’t know. But he asked about the Walmart. I said I didn’t think that’s where you were, but…”
You don’t wait for him to finish. You let go of his shirt and sprint through the roar of the fans.
* * *
Toby and Raquel are terrified. You tear the bags out of Raquel’s hands when she tries to pack, and you’re screaming at her that there’s no time, you have to leave right now, and Pierre comes over to try to calm you down, so you ask him for his gun, but he won’t give it to you. Raquel exchanges a look with Casey, who’s sheepishly followed you into the store. You sign to Toby, Take one toy, and he chooses a made-up dinosaur from the latest Jurassic Park xpere. He actually seems more in tune with the gravity of the situation than Raquel, who’s stomping her foot and refusing to leave, demanding answers that will simply take too long. Finally, you grab her by her cheeks and shake her head. You hiss into her face.
“They’re coming for us.”
She has no idea who you’re talking about, but the fear becomes a live current in her eyes, and this gets her moving. You grab one bag into which Toby has helpfully piled a few of his clothes and you lead them by the hand out of the Walmart. Outside, you pile into Casey’s old truck, all four of you stuffed into the bench seat, and you’re terrified of how fucking orange this thing is. You could spot it from space.
“Where are we going?” asks Casey.
“I don’t know, man, just get the fuck outta here, just drive.”
And he takes a left out of the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot.
“Keeper, what’s going on?” Raquel pleads.
Toby stares at his dinosaur, like he’s trying not to watch the lips of the adults.
“You’re scaring him,” says Raquel.
“You gotta tell me what the plan is here, buddy,” says Casey.
“You’re scaring me,” Raquel moans.
You’ve always hated coincidence. It feels wrong to you, not like God has a plan but like the devil has found the crack into which he can seep and saturate. Just when the Rev had warned you about them.
“Are they going after Andrade?” you ask Casey.
“What?” cries Raquel. “Who? Why?”
“If I had to guess,” says Casey.
Several notions flit through your head. You ask for Casey’s phone, but he’s never met Andrade and you don’t know the number. The Rev’s schedule is clockwork, though, so you know he’ll be at the church tonight. You search for the church’s number on the Web and dial. No answer. You try again with the same result. There are no good alternatives. “Pull up over here.” Casey does as he’s told. You grab him by his shoulder and look him in the eye. “Take Raquel and Toby. Go to the diner by the gas station on Route 16. You know the one?” He nods. “Stay there. If I don’t show up or call in an hour, you leave, okay? You take them anywhere but here.”
Raquel hits the roof. “What are you talking about?! Keeper, what the hell’s going on?”
“What are you gonna do?” Casey asks.
Toby is whimpering. Because he can’t hear his own crying, his moans are so very loud.
“I gotta warn him.”
“Who?” Raquel demands.
“Reverend Andrade. Casey’ll catch you up. I can’t just let him sit there.”
You pop the door handle and climb over Toby before she can object anymore. You pat him lightly on his cheek. “Be good for Mommy and Uncle Case. I’ll see you in a bit.” Then you fall, spilling out of the car and scraping your hand on the gravel. Getting to your feet, you motion for them to go as you break into a jog down a deserted street, trash like tumbleweeds, past abandoned homes disintegrating into nature.
* * *
You approach the Church of Christ from the field to the east, where a year and a half ago the reverend took you on a walk through the snow. By the time you get there, dark has fallen and you are soaked with sweat from your run across town. The outdoor floodlights that illuminate the church’s sign and steeple are dark, but the stained glass glows from within. You can also see the black SUVs turned sideways, acting as a roadblock to the parking entrance. Three more vehicles in the lot: two trucks and the reverend and Ginna’s minivan. You stand rooted in place. Of course they’re already there. You should turn and run. You know this, and yet you step forward, wishing you’d punched Pierre in the throat and taken his gun.
You see a man sitting behind the wheel of one of the trucks, the glow of his phone illuminating the interior. He’s wearing a balaclava, so only his eyes are visible. You turn into the woods to approach the church from behind. You don’t have a plan. You don’t know what you’re doing or why. You know you should take your family and run, but it’s the reverend. You’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t try.
