Jake's Wake

by Cody Goodfellow, John Skipp

  In other news—and a stunning reversal of centuries-old doctrine—the Catholic Church issued a digital papal bull closing the limbo loophole, retroactively consigning untold millions of pagan babies to the fires of hell.

  This, combined with their admission that life on other planets did not contradict biblical infallibility—since extraterrestrials would be “God’s children, too”—begged the question: what else did the pope suddenly know that he wasn’t letting the rest of the world in on?

  And in New Zealand, global warming had finally given comfort to bereaved humanity, or at least some closure, as a melting glacier off Baffin Island disgorged the frigid remains of a Kiwi survey plane and its crew, given up for lost in 1964. Loved ones and descendents gathered on a chartered ship to watch as the wreckage thawed in the summer sun, then tumbled into the sea.

  Signs and portents. But mostly smoke and mirrors. For gloomy true believers and faithless curmudgeons alike, the real indicators never appeared as mainstream news. They were tiny details, stuck between the cracks of consensus reality: hidden in sacred texts and environmental reports, research dug from the Fortean Times, or the rantings of little-known small-town cable access prophets.

  For most people, the only news that mattered was the substance of life that impacted them directly: money, jobs, friends, and loved ones. The world was too big, too unwieldy to fathom. The question was, “How are you today?”

  On a desert road in the Southern California night, a white sedan passed a billboard asking WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

  The frightened people inside asked themselves the same question. It was a personal question, which they kept to themselves.

  The desert, as always, was full of secrets.

  But the storm was blowing in.

  Chapter Two

  Esther’s house—formerly the Weston-Partridge Free School and Homestead—sat alone on ten acres surrounded by no one. It looked like a single-level ranch-style house that had been blowtorched by hippie witchcraft until it was pliable, then awkwardly stretched to twice its normal length.

  Esther’s parents had built it in 1971, shortly after their groundbreaking scholastic treatise, Know Your Self, Grow Your Self, hit the best-seller charts. This had allowed them the luxury of giving up on fighting the system from within, pioneering radical alternatives instead.

  Clearly, the architect they conspired with had some radical alternative theories on quality, as well, because the place not only looked wrong, it was wired wrong. It was plumbed wrong. They had endless fucking problems all the time, only some of which were ever truly fixed.

  The result was, the house had patches on its patches, one quick save after another, like a perpetually leaky vessel that somehow managed to stay afloat.

  But they were cheerful people, her parents. Eternally optimistic, even when they were fighting: with the house, with disease, with her, with each other, with the county or the culture at large. They were mellow, stoned, passionate, rigorously well-meaning take-it-as-it-comes sort of people.

  And they had always made her crazy.

  In their heyday—which neatly paralleled her developmental years—the Weston-Partridge Free School and Homestead had been vibrant with the songs and laughter of children, the exchange of information, the cultivation of exciting young lives. Rarely more than two dozen kids at a time, and once as few as six, all given the kind of attention that rich parents paid thousands for, at private academies.

  And it was all very sweet, but of course it died, as the eighties brought an end to hippie homeschooling, and the Reagan years brought corporate bottom-line hardball back into vogue. The kids stopped coming, the books went out of print, her father passed away. And then her mom, not far behind.

  But the land and the house were paid for. And they’d left a generous trust. At least their lawyer wasn’t stoned.

  Relics of those days still remained in the yard—a derelict wooden carousel, a rusted-out slide, some monkey bars—a playground ghost town where she once played, then dreamed of bringing back to life with her own children—

  The paint had faded and begun to peel. The grass had gone brown. The old oak tree that everyone used to climb on had been struck by lightning and driven insane, its longest half-severed limb still stretched out twenty feet alongside the stone fence that bordered the property.

  The rambling front of the house was entirely dark, but halfway down, the fitfully flickering light from the hallway glimmered through narrow ceiling-level windows. And around at the back, there was the shy, yellow glow of a porch light. A beautiful stained glass window set into the front door.

  And dark curtains, concealing the picture-window walls of the living room.

  Behind them, a fire was burning too hot.

  While secrets and worse fluttered between the shadows and the flame.

  Eddie Echevarria knelt before the roaring fireplace, wiping the sweat and dark bangs from his forehead, warming himself from the chill outside and watching the raw primal power of dancing energy in its purest state.

  Eddie was in awe of flame. Not in some twisted, pyro way, but with the kind of love and fascination that the cavemen must have felt when they learned that they could make that sort of magic with their own two hands.

  Fire was magic, and the fireplace was an altar, where a handful of properly stacked chunks of dead wood, some good kindling, and a couple balls of newspaper could transmute single-handedly into proof of a living God.

  To watch shapes transform in that red-yellow dance, sheering away into sharp charcoal outlines of themselves that radiated both heat and light—disintegrating into something both hotter and higher than themselves—was more than un pocito like watching human beings rise above themselves under stressful situations.

  And dear God, they were under some stress tonight.

  Eddie was thirty-six, just slightly younger than Esther. He had devotedly cared for the family, and for Esther, for nearly eighteen years—five times longer than her marriage—and he had no intention of quitting. Especially now.

  He turned to look at her pinned in the stark kitchen light, leaning over the counter that linked it with the living room where he knelt, thinking thoughts high above his station and half expecting to wake up to something worse.

  She was chopping something—cheese, from the sound of the knife on the wooded cutting board—with metronomic precision.

  She looked, as always, beautiful and frail: too skinny for her own good, if the truth be told. She had pale, regal features and fine ash-blonde hair that cascaded in lush ringlets when set free; but tied back now in elegant fashion, it lent her an air of poise she could almost hide behind.

  Her black dress was designed for mourning, with spaghetti straps slung just low enough to set off her slender neck and accentuate her modest cleavage. Needing to feel both beautiful and powerful to night, she had asked him to help pick out the dress.

  Not a problem, as far as Eddie was concerned. But it also revealed how tight her shoulders were, how stiffly she carried herself as she tried to hang on.

  And the drinking helped only up to a point, which was closing in fast.

  Something clearly had to be done.

  “Esther,” he said, just loud enough to be heard without startling her.

  “What?”

  “Come look.”

  She looked up and smiled thinly. “It’s beautiful. Now could you help me…?”

  “No, no. Uno momento.”

  Her voice wound high and taut. “Eddie.”

  “Please. Put the knife down and come here.”

  Then he winked at her, lightly slapped his fingertips on his thighs, and said the word she liked to hear. “Querida.”

  Esther paused, knife quivering in her white-knuckled hand.

  She found herself stuck—as was so often the case, these days—in this horrible moment of hesitation, between what she thought she ought to be doing, and what she knew she ought to do.

  It was the old head-versus-heart argument she’d al
ways had, only now it was shared, and so alien, precisely because it was how it should be. She lived in her head, as usual.

  And Eddie, God bless him, was the heart.

  Esther had been slicing sharp cheddar cheese into neat, symmetrical cracker-sized slabs. She already had far more than was needed—lord knew hunger was the furthest thing from her mind—but the process was somewhere between Zen and fixation. Something she could do right now. Something with actual results.

  Meanwhile, her mind was racing, not meditative at all. More like the restless wind outside, disturbing everything while settling on nothing…

  But her mind finally found a safe harbor, and came to rest on Eddie, solid and kind.

  Just looking at her, with only love in his eyes.

  It was embarrassing to be seen that clearly, that knowingly, and not feel judged. Embarrassing to be caught freaking out. But also unspeakably heartening.

  Because the fact was that he really cared. Really cared. Even with all her faults, her stupid decisions and horrible mood swings and many, many weaknesses.

  He cared enough to help her through. To hold her close. To back her moves.

  He cared enough to make her feel like a beautiful woman, and more…a beautiful person.

  And there he was, smiling as if to say that she had already won.

  If only that were true…

  Esther looked down at the knife in her trembling hand, then looked at the veins in her paper-thin wrists. Cheese, shmeese. She could slice through those things in an instant, and all of this would be done.

  Instead, she put down the knife. Grabbed her scotch. Swigged hard. And exited the kitchen, stage left.

  Eddie looked up at her and smiled as she came to kneel beside him, sipped, set down her glass. He was strong and compact, and he hugged her well, looking so handsome in his dress shirt and jacket. As if he had been hired to work this event. Which, in a sense, he had.

  She sighed, jittery, settled into his embrace. Closed her eyes, then found herself staring into the fire.

  “Oh, Eddie,” she almost moaned. “You know they’re going to be here soon…”

  “Shhhh…” he said, and turned her face toward his, tender. His steady green-flecked brown eyes fed her a steady flow of trust. She sensed how hard he was trying to be strong.

  But she was scared, and he was scared for her, and there was no getting around that fact.

  So when he kissed her, warm and full, it did almost everything a kiss should do.

  The shadows shifted behind them, as the rude glare of headlights shone through the stained glass door. They could hear a car pull up, and they nervously patted themselves down, and wiped away lipstick traces. It was showtime.

  “Just tell me it’s gonna be all right,” Esther said.

  “It’s gonna be all right, okay?”

  She nodded, and he kissed her softly.

  “I swear.”

  She trembled, and they nodded to each other as he stood, then helped her up, smiling as he stooped to pick up her glass and take his place at the bar.

  Leaving Esther these precious last moments.

  To rally herself, before the flood.

  Chapter Three

  The tidy little white sedan pulled timidly into the dirt parking lot, as if afraid to stop here on a night like this. It eased to a halt beside Esther’s SUV, but did not cut the engine. Gospel music played softly inside, as if to dispel the gloom. The headlights glared, kicking long shadows through the yard.

  Emmy Patton sat at the far corner of the passenger seat, nearly pressed against the door. She avoided her gaze in the rearview mirror. She had no use for makeup. She was not proud—and frankly, pretty enough to get along without it—but she knew her face right now looked like a paper bag full of rain.

  She’d held it in all day, through the endless police interview, the harassing calls from the IRS, and then the service. It fell to her to organize and preside over the outpouring of grief as Jake’s congregation of the airwaves said good-bye.

  It had seemed selfish to break down when so many lost souls needed guidance to make it through the day without getting roaring drunk and fighting in the chapel. It had seemed wrong, too, to cry in front of those people.

  But she was only twenty-two, and this level of tragedy was new to her. She was a sheltered small-town girl from a nice Southern Baptist family, a straight “A” student with a major in business, and how she had wound up dealing with all this madness was almost beyond her imagining.

  So if she cried now, who couldn’t understand? Jesus did, certainly. But as for the rest, she felt judged for her feelings. As if it were wrong to believe so strongly, in someone or something.

  And that didn’t help, not at all.

  So she sat there, traumatized, frozen in place, not even crying: just staring out through the windshield at the house, with fear brimming in her eyes.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  Mathias turned sideways in the driver’s seat, pointedly averting his hangdog eyes, popping his knuckles and steepling his fine pianist’s fingers on the steering wheel. He was a thin, gangly young man, slightly younger than her, also clean-cut, sheltered, and incredibly nervous.

  Emmy said nothing, and neither did he. She knew he meant well, but she sure couldn’t feel it.

  She felt a bit of calm as she fixed her gaze on the stained glass window in the front door. It was beautiful, churchlike, beguiling, the pure liquid colors animated by the glow of dancing firelight, while the music bled from one syrupy proclamation of chaste Christian love into another.

  It struck her funny, in a way she’d never let herself laugh at, how easily most of these born-again ballads would become standard semipornographic pop songs if you just changed Jesus to a girl’s name. Like Rhonda.

  Or Emmy, she added, chastening herself.

  The fact was, everybody had weakness and wounds to overcome. That was just God’s truth. The essence of sin was a falling-short of the glory of God, and all humankind was guilty.

  But was it not a very special sort of sin to transpose your base sexual feelings onto the love of the Lord?

  She didn’t know the answer—was deeply struggling with how to ask the question—but she knew it was sinful to sit in judgment on the music on the radio. And promptly apologized, in her heart.

  “Emmy,” Mathias said, a little louder this time. “You know, we can just turn around.” He shifted the car into reverse, let off the brake just a little.

  The jerky motion shook her out of her reverie. She turned to him sharply.

  “No!”

  He stepped on the brake, shrunk back as if stung. She shook her head, and he put it back into park.

  “The church is my responsibility now. You have to understand that. You have to respect my…my responsibility.” Her voice went up half an octave at the end.

  “I know. It’s just that…”

  “It’s not just what we want, Mathias. You know that.”

  “I know, but…” You’ve done enough for him today, she knew he wanted to add, and it made her want to scream. Her hand reached for the volume knob, ready to turn it up and cover the sound.

  Then she caught herself. Took the proverbial deep breath. And shot him the very best smile she could gather, uniting them around what mattered.

  “We have to do what’s right by the Lord,” she said.

  Mathias nodded in defeat, and turned the key.

  The engine cut off, along with the music. The headlights shut off, plunging the yard into deeper darkness. The ticking of the engine was like jumping beans in a coffee can. Aside from the wind, it was the only sound.

  They exited the car and started walking toward the door, Emmy pacing ahead with her lips pursed and eyes locked on the glimmering stained glass. She could feel Mathias behind her, with his arms half out, as if she might faint and need catching.

  Indeed, she did feel faint, felt the world turn unreal. The wind soughed and whistled through the eaves of the lon
g, low house, bone-gray oak leaves swishing around her feet and the clankity, old-fashioned playground equipment.

  She had a terrible, visceral sense, just then, of a deeper shadow in the dark. As if something unseen were swooping over them, watchful and malign.

  Then the front door opened, and a woman in black appeared, genial and smiling.

  “Hello. You must be Emmy.”

  “Mrs. Connaway.”

  “Call me Esther. Thank you so much for coming.”

  Mathias and Emmy entered stiffly. Esther closed the door, ushered them toward a small couch.

  The living room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished, with pale yellow walls and age-stained lamp shades that muzzled the light. Uneasy shadows from the fireplace danced on the walls.

  A handsome Latino in a guayabera shirt was tending the fire. He turned and smiled at them. Emmy nodded in his direction, then looked at Mathias. Adrift in his own anxiety, he quickly picked up on her unasked question. Who in the world is that?

  “Please have a seat,” Esther said. “Can we get you something to drink?”

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Emmy said. Her eyes bounced around the unfamiliar room in search of an anchor.

  That’s when she noticed the pictures on the mantel above the fireplace.

  “I’d like a ginger ale?” Mathias said, but she barely heard him. Her focus was locked on one picture in particular.

  A framed wedding portrait.

  Of Esther.

  And Jake.

  Dear God, Esther thought, as the tears welled up in the young girl’s eyes. She felt it welling up inside herself, flinched against it…

  …and then the sobbing began, Emmy balling up on the couch and wailing. Her young companion awkwardly tried to comfort her, but clearly did not know how.

  Esther cast a help me glance at Eddie, then rapidly yanked it back.

  The fire roared and leapt out of its bed, as if the wind gusting down the chimney had turned to kerosene.

  Eddie sprang into action. “Okay! Ginger ale for you. Ms. Esther?”