by Peter Foley
Throughout the day, the two repairmen stay busy in this room, giving new life to various smashed, bent and poorly used things. The older of the two men works at repairing a bass guitar for the band. Its red body lies in front of him with its scratch-plate open and a soldering iron at its belly. A young man opposite is trying his damnedest to straighten out a pair of eyeglasses.
“You finished that broom yet, kid?” says the elder.
“Does this look like a broom to you?” snaps the younger.
“When your sister comes in here looking for her broom, I’m going to tell her it’s your ass she needs to whoop.”
“She got no chance of whooping my ass, not without these glasses I’m fixing for her!”
“She don’t need no glasses to see your ugly ass! Anyway, how’d she break her glasses and her broom at the same time? What was she doing? Playing Quidditch?”
“Maybe? All I know is when she broke ’em she was apoplectic.”
“Apo-what? Boy, you been spending too much time with that Fee-saurus.”
“What’s a Fee-saurus? Is that like a stegosaurus – but older?”
“Now, look here and listen, you young lil–”
“Hey, fellas,” Drew says, walking in. The older man greets him.
“Hey. Drew, is it? Not a problem, man. Come on in and save me from having to talk to this fool all day.” The man strokes his trimmed gray chin.
“Yeah, I’m Drew. You Ollie?” Drew asks.
“Yeah, that’s me. And I see a watch in your hand. I guess it’s in need of fixin’?”
“Yeah, it got wet in the hurricane,” Drew says, looking down at his waterlogged Polex.
“Not a problem. I should get to it later today. Unless I gotta fix a broom in a hurry.” Ollie smiles at the young man working opposite.
“Thanks, Ollie. I appreciate it,” Drew says.
“Oh?” Ollie says.
“Yeah?”
“You know, we don’t charge money around here but on this occasion I would like to trade with you. You know, there’s one thing you can do for me in return for fixin’ this watch of yours.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The one thing you can do for me, well, I guess it’s two things actually, relax and be at peace. Can you try both of those things for me?”
“I think I can do that. I will.” Drew smiles, nods and waves goodbye, but he stops himself and turns back. “Nice Hofner you got there by the way.” He gestures to the instrument in front of Ollie.
“Yeah, it sure is.” Ollie smiles.
“What’s up with it?”
“This guitar? I can tell you about this bass guitar. You know, this thing here is like you. It’s known for its quirks, but all it needs is a little care and attention once in a while an’ it’ll be just fine.”
With a smile and a nod, Drew returns to the laundry room and settles into punching and beating stains out of wet cloth. As he works, the movie reel of his life plays in high emotional resolution; flashes of Charlie’s beating rush in, interspersed with other memories of tour buses, stages, hotels and airplane flights, marking them all with the same dreadful feeling he felt when Father called his name last night.
Maybe I should cut my hair, after all, Drew considers.
The evening enters the narrow phase of day when people’s time becomes their own. Evenings used to mean high stress for Drew, because evenings meant Show Time, but no longer. After his working day is done, Drew heads to his sleeping quarters with a damp, formerly blood-stained, white towel slung over his shoulder. On the way to his room he waves hello to Barbara, who’s sitting at a table with a deep game of patience in front of her, then he says hi to Karis, who’s sketching a charcoal portrait of Father.
Every bedroom door is open. As he walks past each room he sees people enjoying their leisure time with carefree smiles and a sense of old-world Sunday freedom. Some children play pat-a-cake and skip and laugh in the corridor. Loud yells come from one room, where Florence has gathered four other girls with the intention of forming the first ever dance group in the history of Salvation. “…Five, six, seven, eight and step!” Drew stops to encourage and congratulate. After a quick chat he waves good day to the girls and heads to the sewing room to borrow a pair of scissors from Darlene.
40
Soft hands, hard words
Drew’s makeshift barbershop is almost complete. He has a towel big enough to wrap around his shoulders, he has scissors sharp enough for the task and he’s in possession of some hard earned leisure time, but his barbershop lacks a barber.
“Hazel! Come here! Come cut my hair.” He grabs her by the wrist and hurries her to his room. “You saw what they said last night. The buggers want to cut my hair, so I’ll do the work for them.” He smiles. “You can tell me about your day while you cut.”
“My day? Where do I begin? I spent much of it teaching children about the Holocaust,” she says with a grimace.
“Oh. How did that go?”
“Not well. Has your day been any better?”
“I spent the day punching blood out of towels.”
“Fabulous!”
They laugh in mild madness. Hazel perches on Drew’s bed and sits him on the floor.
“What makes you think I can cut hair?” she says. “I did used to cut my ex-boyfriend’s, once a month-ish for him, but that was a long time ago. He had fairer hair, thinner than yours. Yours is nice. You’re sure about this?”
“Go for it.”
The snip-snap of scissors chime playfully above Drew’s head as Hazel cuts here and there in rough measures.
“Okay, turn and look at me, I need to check the sides… Drew. Drew?” She slaps him playfully on the side of the head.
“Oh, finished?” He turns to face her, wiping lose hair from the back of his neck. “You needn’t have rushed.”
“No, I’m not finished. I need to see if the sides are even.” She casts her eyes from ear to ear with his hair between her fingertips. Her attention is caught by his olive eyes. She casually places a hand over her mouth.
“Drew,” she whispers. The utterance causes no stir in Drew, not a flicker. As he gazes empty-eyed over her shoulder she says his name again, this time louder.
“Don’t cover your mouth,” Drew says. “It’s rude.”
“Sorry… I was just thinking… the band sounds great tonight, don’t they? I can hear them down the corridor.”
“Yeah. They always sound great.”
“But right now, they sound really good, don’t they?”
Drew looks at the corridor and nods in more-or-less approval. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Drew,” she says with an earnest voice, “there’s no band tonight. It’s their night off.”
“Ah…”
“Drew… can you hear me?”
Drew grumbles and, in between biting his bottom lip, says, “I used to be a DJ…”
“Oh Drew, you’re deaf…”
“I’d describe it as very hard of hearing.”
“Have you seen a doctor?” she says, exaggerating the movement of her mouth.
“You don’t need to pantomime for my benefit. I’ve gotten this far, so speak normally, as long as I can see your lips move we’re good. But, yeah, I did see a doctor. When it first happened I drank myself into a pretty bad state. I don’t remember much about it but I woke up in a hospital in Berlin. I’d lost my phone, my wallet and my passport. The tour couldn’t find me so they went to the next show without me – to do what I don’t know, I was the talent! Anyway, imagine that, waking up in a hospital with a blank memory and you can hardly hear a word anyone says. And it’s not as if I speak German.
“So, they brought in a translator for me, and through her I asked the doctor about my hearing. He sent me to the audiology department and they put me through the usual tests, you know, where they tell you what frequencies you can and can’t hear. It was kind of a waste of time, I already knew very well what I couldn’t hear. They said there was nothing the
y could do, I’d need more tests. I can’t hear much, I know that. All I have are memories of sound really and I’m scared. I’m scared of forgetting the voices of the people I love.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Life’s just hard sometimes.”
“I know that. Look where we are and look who we’re with!” Hazel gestures about the room.
“These people aren’t all that bad, you know? There’s some nice people in here.”
“Maybe, but I’ll never understand why they follow that Pastor. They must all be crazy to believe the things he says.” Hazel looks over Drew’s eyes to his hair.
“I don’t think they all believe him. They just follow him because they have nothing else. Believing and following are two different things, you don’t need one to have the other.” Drew shrugs.
“Either way, they’re all nuts for following that guy,” she says, ruffling one side of his head.
“I don’t blame them really.”
“Of course you do.” Hazel brushes one of his shoulders. “The things he says are insane, the things he does are insane. I mean, who is this guy? I can’t believe a single person would listen to him.”
With a tilt of his head and a narrowing of his eyes, Drew successfully rewinds time. “I remember when I was small, when I was about six or seven, I was fighting with my older brother in the yard and we went rolling around on the grass; we rolled one way and then another, then, all of a sudden, bang! I smashed my head on a manhole cover. It hurt like hell. I remember crying and crying and I had this massive headache and I felt nauseous. After a visit to the hospital, I spent the rest of the day on the couch in my mum’s arms, and when I was curled up by her side I didn’t have a care in the whole world because she was there. I don’t remember any pain and I felt safe. Like, nothing could get to me through her.
“Don’t you miss that sense of protection? I think as we get older, we forget about the time when we had someone we could trust like that. What if there was someone who could take away all the stress, all the pain and shelter you from it all? Let’s be honest, life’s too hard and we’re all just left to fend for ourselves. We could all do with a little help. I’d happily let someone else take the steering wheel for a while, but there aren’t exactly many people willing to take the job on. So if there’s somebody willing to take care of all the hassle, who cares if he’s a little nuts?”
“That’s bullshit. That’s called dependence and you give all that up, remember? When you were a teenager. That’s a natural process, it’s called growing up and independence is the whole point of being a responsible adult. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.”
“I don’t know,” he concedes.
“I do know. There’s nothing wrong with having faith or being part of a church or looking to someone or something for strength, but that’s not what’s going on here. It could well be that some of these people came to the Pastor genuinely searching for something positive, but at some point he bullshitted them and they went along with it. They let him pervert their ideas, they let that happen. They might say they don’t believe him or even agree with him, but that’s no excuse for enabling a mental case. They’ve let this Pastor have power over them. They either all want a free ride or they don’t understand the world – or maybe worse – maybe they actually agree with him.
“And those people that do agree with him, don’t get me started. Those people want simple rules that are easy to follow so they can get a little pat on the head from Daddy, but that’s not what life’s about. Life’s about living and growing on your own terms. His message is ‘give me complete devotion and I will look after you’. In that way he makes life easy for them. Easy, that’s the appeal, but it’s all false. He exploits people’s vulnerabilities,” she says, dusting hair from the towel around Drew’s shoulders.
“Easy?” Drew says, seizing on that one word and clamping the towel around his chest, “Why does life have to be hard? And what good does independence and responsibility bring you, really? All people want in life is happiness and that shouldn’t be so hard to find, it should be built in. A simple purpose should be all that we need, and we should get it. Instead, life demands so much from us, we get pushed and pulled at all angles.
“We have the media scaring the pants off us every day then we get sent out into the rat race, then we start to believe that we need things; a bigger car, a bigger house, technology, likes. The world will let you have everything you can’t afford, but that’s not happiness. What happens when you’re working two or three jobs and you’re still not able to pay the rent and you haven’t seen your family in months? Life stretches people to breaking point and then it keeps stretching. Why are basic things like happiness the hardest to obtain? Has it been that way for every generation or did we just fuck it up?”
“It depends on your point of view,” Hazel says. “For some, life is hard and for some it’s not, but ultimately it’s all in your mind. Some people don’t know what to do with the freedom, the choice and the general uncertainty of life. Some people need simple rules so they feel like it all makes sense, whereas others don’t shy away from the challenge and the decisions. While some people use life to express themselves, others need a patriarch; someone to follow, someone to please, someone to tell them they’re special, someone to make it simple, someone to act like a buffer between them and real life. That’s what this shelter is, it’s a buffer between these people and reality.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Drew asks. “I can see the appeal. What if life could be easy? I’m in my thirties and it’s not getting easier. What if you could let somebody else bother with the taxes, the checks, the work, the worries, the decisions, the crime, the survival, the future, the fuck-ups, the wasted time.”
“Listen to you, you sound like one of them,” Hazel says. “You’re better than this, you can do better than hide behind someone else. Life is about the decisions you make, not the ones you let someone else make for you.” Hazel eyes Drew sideways. Finding no return in his expression, she continues, “Drew, life can be whatever you want it to be, it can be bliss or it can be hell, it can be simple or it can be complicated or both, that’s your choice, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how much time you’ve got left, and it doesn’t matter how many fuck-ups you’ve made, or how much time you’ve wasted, because right now is the only moment you have. It’s all you’ve got.” She takes his hand. “Right now, where are you, Drew? I need to know because right now I need you here with me.”
As Drew readies his answer, the loudspeakers crack into life.
“Would the following people immediately report to the Sermon Hall. All members of the Planning Committee, plus Bethany, Aiden, his family and Drew Samuel. That is all.”
“Drew, Father – shit, I mean, the Pastor just called for you over the PA. He wants you and the Planning Committee to go to the Sermon Hall right now. It can’t be good. We need to get out of this place.”
Emerging from deep contemplation, Drew says, “Life’s all about decisions? How about this one?” Drew leans towards Hazel. She leans towards him. They draw together as if pulled by an invisible thread. The bloom of soft lips and the delicate excitement of a new kiss fills their hearts. Hazel’s emotions stir.
“I’m scared of this place, Drew. I’m worried we might be trapped here forever.”
Drew pulls her close. “Don’t worry. Here’s what we do; I’ll go to this meeting, you go and find Courtney and get the keys. We’ll meet afterwards and we’ll get out of here. Let’s play along until we meet again. Let’s just be safe…”
41
Town meeting
“You must all be prepared,” the Pastor says into a loosely gripped microphone, “because a Father who truly loves you prepares for all things. So, please understand, we must all be ready for such an occasion.” His high seat has become a permanent fixture inside the Sermon Hall. Nurse Chamberlin, who seldom leaves his side, clutches a pen and a notepad. The two instruments
give her a secretarial air and an expression of application. The Pastor continues to talk to the invited few.
“One day we may have the United States military banging on our door, with their top rank begging to get in to take shelter from the hurricane. What we have here in Salvation is a desirable space, make no doubt about that. There will be a handful of survivors out there who will come scavenging. They will seek higher ground and they will find us. They will come to take what we have. The people that will come here will look to harm us, they are peddlers of hate.” After a pause he looks around the room. “Does anybody have any contribution to make on that point?”
Aiden, a slender man with a wisp of blond hair under piercing blue eyes, stands. “Dad, in 2003 to 2006 the United States sent me to Iraq to fight a war I didn’t know anything about. Since I joined the Temple, you have saved my life so many times. Now, I’m living a life with you, I’m living on your time. If people come and try to take what we have, I will fight. I would die for you right now, Dad. I’m willing to face the front line with you. Thank you.”
A small belated applause smatters the walls of the almost-empty room. Nurse Chamberlin jots a note on a new page of her old notebook.
“It’s no great mumble,” the Pastor says, “one must plan for one’s own death. We must have a plan, because we do not want to leave things to chance. To die without a plan would be a mistake you can’t take back. We’re born crying, but we should die in celebration. Bethany, what do you say?”
Bethany is a rather large woman who possesses the approximate agility of a boulder and the voice of a twelve-year-old boy. “Well, Dad, ever since I’ve been here all I’ve seen is the beauty of Salvation. You all are my family and I feel that my life is fulfilled, and if death comes it’s no big deal to me ’coz I’ve already lived my life just being here with the family and I’d fight for that.”
After a fragmented clap of hands, a small child, Aiden’s daughter, rises to her feet.
