China Lake (6 page)

I saw it coming and shouted, ‘‘No!’’ But momentum had us. I tucked my head beneath my arms. We crashed through the window and out onto the sidewalk.

Glass spanked the concrete. I fell, still in my tuck, landing on Curt Smollek, feeling bones and flesh and bits of glass striking me. After a stunned moment I heard wails and scuffling feet. I rolled carefully to one side and saw people inside the church rushing to the broken window. Around me shards glittered on the sidewalk. Smollek was kneeling on all fours, his white T-shirt speckled with blood. The intruder was wobbling across the street, trailing a moan behind him. Chunks of glass protruded from his back and arms, but he seemed heedless. Paxton was on his feet. He grabbed Smollek’s sleeve and dragged him up.

A dozen small cuts stung my hands and scalp. But I had been last through the glass, wearing long sleeves, and that had protected me. Delicately I stood up, careful not to touch the ground, feeling dazed and lucky.

The intruder’s scream rose again, a long, foul curse. Suddenly headlights illuminated him. Brakes screeched and a heavy truck hit him, swept him under its wheels. His screaming stopped.

The truck skewed to a halt, tires smoking, farm produce spilling from its bed. I ran into the street. The truck driver jumped down from the cab. He dropped to the asphalt and stared under the front axle, crying, ‘‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’’

I ran to his side. ‘‘Can you back the truck off of him?’’

His jowly face was desperate. ‘‘He’s caught. . . .’’

Crouching next to him, I called 911 on my cell phone. The driver said, ‘‘He ran right out in front of me.’’ I laid a hand on his back, told him the paramedics and a fire crew were on the way. He was shuddering.

I said, ‘‘We have to see if we can help him.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ he said, but didn’t move. ‘‘Christ, right out in front of me. I couldn’t stop.’’

I looked around. The congregation was spilling out the church door. Smollek was sitting on the curb, head in his hands. Paxton, apparently untouched by shattered glass, was squatting on his haunches in front of the truck, peering underneath it.

I said, ‘‘Can you reach him?’’

He looked at me. The white light from the headlights cast him in sharp relief. Without speaking he stood, brushed off his hands, and sauntered toward the crowd. His pace said,
Not my problem anymore
.

Dread wadded in my stomach, but I lay down and shimmied forward until my head was under the chassis. I smelled exhaust and grease, felt the heat of the engine, looked at the dark curve of the wheel. The man’s legs, broken and limp, protruded from the wheel well, and his arm dangled, a Rolex shining on his motionless wrist. I couldn’t see the rest of him.

I said, ‘‘Can you hear me?’’

No response. Queasily I inched ahead. Stretching my arm, I clasped his fingers. ‘‘If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.’’ Nothing. I said, ‘‘Help’s coming,’’ and, knowing I could do nothing more, pushed myself out from under the truck.

The driver was glassy-eyed on the ground, staring at that dangling arm. The air stank of burned rubber. I climbed into the cab and switched off the engine, grabbed reflective red hazard triangles from behind the driver’s seat, and hopped out, jogging up the street to set them out. The Remnant milled near the church. Not one of them had stepped forward to help. A pasty finger pointed at me, and I heard, ‘‘Her fault.’’ Louder: ‘‘She brought this on.’’

They were standing on the sidewalk, crowding up to the curb but not stepping off, as if it were the edge of a cliff. They were saying the accident was a sign . . . a punishment or a warning. My foot hit something slick—a broken pumpkin. That was what had spilled from the truck, and that was what was holding them back. Their shoulders were hunching away from the orange gourds as though they were severed heads.

Then Peter Wyoming’s voice rang out. ‘‘It’s a taunt. We’re being mocked. Well, I got an answer to that!’’

He stepped off the curb and jammed a cowboy boot down on a pumpkin, squashing it. A second later the choir soloist hoisted her red robe and did the same. Then the twirlers, who ran into the street and laid into a pumpkin with their batons like hunters clubbing a harp seal. Then everyone.

Oh, no. I jogged back to the truck. The driver was kneeling by the wheels, saying, ‘‘Hang on, buddy, help’s coming, hang on,’’ a rosary of slender hope, chanted in fear and guilt. From behind me came scuffling, grunts, the wet crack of produce splitting open. A pumpkin flew and smashed against the wooden slats of the truck. I tugged on the driver’s arm, urging him up. He stood, saw the Remnant smashing his cargo, mouthed,
What . . . ?
Someone pointed at the truck and called, ‘‘Look— more!’’ A dozen people charged the vehicle, climbing into the bed and flinging pumpkins overboard.

‘‘Get in the cab.’’ I pushed him toward the door. He stared at the front axle, and I said, ‘‘I’ll stay with him.’’

He gripped the door handle, felt the truck rocking, and stopped. Peter Wyoming was standing in the middle of the road, arms akimbo, face alight, looking at the anarchy as if it were beauty revealed.

He tilted his head back and bellowed, ‘‘Getting biblical!’’

The driver said, ‘‘No, we’ll both stay.’’

‘‘Thank you.’’

From the distance, at last, came a siren. The blue and red lights of a fire engine strobed the night, flashing off buildings, asphalt, faces. Headlights backlit the Remnant into flat black silhouettes. I waved my arms, but the engine halted, motor growling, the crew doubtless confused by the scene.

For an awful moment I thought the Remnant was going to mob the fire truck. But Peter Wyoming spread his arms, in the classic gesture of the Good Shepherd welcoming his flock, and said, ‘‘Come on, people.’’ They followed him back to the sidewalk, hopping down from the produce truck and clearing the road unhurriedly, slapping high-fives and pumping fists in the air.

The fire engine drove forward and the crew jumped out, wary and full of questions. The truck driver directed them toward the trapped man, and then we backed off as they set to work. The Remnant again massed on the curb, singing, ‘‘Takin’ back the streets for a thousand years . . .’’

Except for one figure, dressed in white, who stood staring at me. Tabitha. The lights of the fire truck spun across her. Red, blue, red, a shocking spin of color. I walked toward her.

‘‘What’s going on here?’’ I said. ‘‘What in the name of God is this all about?’’

The strobing lights painted her face into a kaleidoscope of fear and ferocity. ‘‘You haven’t been listening. ’’

I jerked my thumb toward the produce truck. ‘‘That man may be dead. So you tell me, what happened inside this church?’’ She merely stared at me. I approached, breathing hard. ‘‘Why did you run away?’’

‘‘You don’t get it,’’ she said.

‘‘Try me. Nothing you say right now could possibly surprise me.’’

Her voice, emanating from that voluptuous mouth, sounded flat and disembodied. ‘‘Turn away from the deceiver and open your eyes, Evan. Something’s coming that you can’t stop.’’

Behind me radios were squawking, the fire crew shouting for equipment. Churchgoers were pushing past me, declaiming about blood and iniquity. Tabitha’s lips parted. She was hanging on a decision whether to say something else. A scarlet choir robe swirled in front of her, lurid under the flashing lights.

She said, ‘‘You can’t keep him. He’s not yours.’’

Then the crowd swallowed her, took her from my sight.

When I arrived home I sat in the car, trying to shake loose from the evening’s ugliness. I didn’t want Luke to see me upset. But I kept hearing the crack of shattering glass, kept seeing Tabitha’s high-voltage eyes, kept feeling the injured man’s hand when I clasped it. It felt like gristle. I climbed out of the Explorer, slammed the door, and started walking up the street.

The fire crew had disentangled the man from the truck’s undercarriage and lifted him onto a stretcher. Delicately, like a smashed chandelier they were trying to salvage. I didn’t know whether he had survived the trip to the hospital.

I had no clue who he was, why he had invaded the service, whom he had been screaming at. I gave a statement to the Santa Barbara police at the scene, telling them what I had seen and that I thought the man was sick, physically ill. I also told them that I thought the Remnant was sick, infected with a pathogenic faith. They looked at the broken window and pumpkin-slick street, and shrugged, unsure how to log my comment. Cops wanted facts, not creepy metaphysics.

I pushed through the gate and followed the path under the live oaks back to my cottage. Before going inside I held my hands out, checking that they were steady, and urged a pleasant expression onto my face.

The living room was empty. The house was quiet except for the television, the local news on with the volume low, talking about a gray whale that had beached itself and died. I didn’t hear Luke or the babysitter. I called her name, noticing that I didn’t see her backpack or books anywhere. Calling again, getting no reply, I headed to the dark doorway of Luke’s bedroom. When I nudged the door fully open, light fell on a man next to Luke’s bed.

‘‘Almighty Christ,’’ I said.

‘‘Quiet, you’ll wake him.’’

‘‘Jesse, don’t scare me like that.’’

He turned and gave me a strange look, not expecting his presence in my house to scare me. He said, ‘‘I paid the sitter and sent her home. What’s wrong?’’

‘‘What are you doing?’’

‘‘Just checking on him.’’

Luke lay with his pajama top bunched under his chin and his arms stretched over his head. I wrangled his quilt up to his chest and propped his teddy bear beside him. It had Brian’s squadron patch sewn on its chest. Strike Fighter Squadron 151, the Vigilantes.

Jesse followed me out of the bedroom, closing the door noiselessly before saying, ‘‘Tell me.’’

I was on tiptoe in the kitchen, reaching for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, the whiskey I saved for intense occasions. ‘‘You were right. Tabitha wants Luke.’’

He was looking at the green corduroy shirt I had on, now grimy with road dirt, and at my hands, freckled with cuts. Wanting me to explain the rest. I poured two fingers. Drank, felt the JD hit my throat, leaned my elbows on the kitchen counter and rested my forehead against the glass in my hands.

‘‘She’s jumped on the bus. It’s on fire, tires blown out, heading for a cliff, and she’s honking the horn, thinking she’s saved.’’ I straightened. ‘‘I had the Remnant all wrong. They aren’t ordinary fundamentalists; they’re fanatical end-timers.’’

I started to tell him about it. He wheeled into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and got me to set down the whiskey and wash out the cuts. While I talked, he found antiseptic and Band-Aids and stuck them on my hands with brisk male nonchalance.

He said, ‘‘Do you want to talk to a family law attorney? We have a guy at the firm who’s a pit bull on custody issues.’’

‘‘No point. Brian has custody stitched up; she can’t just come and take him. Until she hits us with a summons, I don’t need a lawyer.’’

‘‘What are you going to do?’’

‘‘Hold tight and get Luke up to Brian’s next week, like I planned.’’

He looked at the photos of Brian on the fridge. ‘‘Yeah, I’m sure Captain America will deal with it.’’

His voice had an edge, but I let the remark go because we were both worn out. He had worked late, I knew—he was still in his court clothes, with his cuffs rolled up, red tie loosened at his neck. When he spoke again his smoky voice sounded old.

‘‘Tell me Wyoming’s a scam artist, Ev. That he doesn’t believe the bullshit he says, he just wants their money.’’

‘‘No. I don’t think so.’’ I finished my whiskey.

‘‘You think it’s more than hyperbole, this First Church of the Assault Rifle stuff.’’

‘‘He’s pumping them up to take on the Antichrist. Priming them for public violence. He’s the one who goaded them to attack the farm truck.’’

Again I smelled burned rubber and saw the injured man’s limp arm. . . . Why had he burst screaming into the church? What, I couldn’t help thinking, had the Remnant done to him? I said, ‘‘I have a bad feeling that Pastor Pete has big plans.’’

Dead air hung between us until he asked, ‘‘Is this a Heaven’s Gate scenario?’’

Mass suicide. I exhaled. ‘‘They don’t talk about going to another realm—they talk about a Green Beret Messiah storming to earth and leading them into battle.’’

‘‘Waco.’’

‘‘Don’t even say that word.’’

He held my gaze. Not offering platitudes, not saying,
It’ll be okay.
I poured another drink.

He said, ‘‘How are you going to tell Luke?’’

I hadn’t foreseen that he would become so attached to my nephew. But that was Jesse, the blindsider—he was a shaman of cynicism with adults, but had a sure touch with kids. Direct and encouraging, he put them at ease, listened to them, got them to listen to him. He had taught Luke to swim, taught him to love the water as he did himself, having been a world-class swimmer. I looked at him, at those blue eyes, at the long hair and earring that proclaimed his pirate streak. He was uncommonly handsome, and five years my junior, but his face did not look young. His eyes were as clear as ice and free from illusion.

I brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He squeezed my fingers, stroked his palm up my arm.

‘‘Ouch,’’ he said. Both of us started, and he looked at the heel of his hand, where a drop of blood was rising. Glass fragments from my sleeve. I said, ‘‘I’d better shower.’’

Ten minutes later I was in my bedroom, buttoning a clean blouse, when he called out, ‘‘You’re on the news.’’ When I came back around the corner he was sitting on the sofa, stretching to reach the TV remote. He turned up the volume and I heard my voice scolding Peter Wyoming with Bible quotations. It was a report about Claudine’s funeral. After the evening’s melee, that run-in seemed petty.