“No. When can I see him?”
“I don’t know. Liz’ll be handling all that.”
“I have to talk to her.”
Like you don’t have to talk to me?
“Pop — ”
The connection dropped.
He dropped her! So he could call Liz!
Geena came into the living room. “How’d it go?”
“Not real good.”
“Tell me, did you think it would go good?”
“No. It never does.”
“But see, that’s the thing.” Geena sat on the arm of the chair. She looked down. “You have to get it vibrating in your head, before it happens in reality.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Geena nodded.
“Well then,” Rocky said, “why don’t you vibrate me some tequila? You have any?”
Geena shook her head.
Rocky got up. “Then I’ll go get some.”
“Want me to come with?” Geena said.
“No thanks. Too much positive thinking makes me grouchy.”
Rocky took the stairs down to the parking area. She looked at the cracks in the asphalt. Everything was crumbling in LA these days. Infrastructure becoming obsolete. Life running down. She was caught in a vortex, and —
Boyd was leaning against her car, smiling.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
She stopped, as if hitting an electric fence.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“We kind of left things up in the air.” He pushed off from the car and took a step toward her.
“Just stay where you are,” Rocky said. “We didn’t leave anything up in the air.”
“We have to talk this out.”
“You smashed my car window and burned my clothes.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “I was drunk, okay? You know how I get.”
“Yeah, I know exactly how you get.”
He put his hands out and took another step. “I was mad, okay?”
“Stop, Boyd.”
“Let’s go get a drink and talk about it.”
“A drink? That’s the whole thing that got us into trouble.”
“We can drink together, we can make love together, we can work out anything.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
“So?”
“Come here,” he said, gesturing.
“Boyd, please, just go.”
He put his arms down. “You don’t really want me to.”
“I really do.”
“You can’t,” he said.
“Why can’t I?”
“Because you need me,” he said.
Rocky shook her head.
“Don’t treat me like this,” he said.
“Treat you?”
“I’m not about to be dumped by you. Your prospects aren’t real good, if you know what I mean.”
Rocky was not surprised by the epithet that blasted out of her mouth.
Boyd’s face darkened. “You shouldn’t have called me that.”
“Go away,” she said. “Now.”
“You should not have said that to me.”
“Stay away from me, or I’ll get a restraining order.”
“That ain’t gonna help you, babe.”
“Or worse.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You like to play tough, but you’re not. Don’t even try. I’ll be around.”
He pointed his stupid finger at her. For a second, she thought he’d make a move. But one thing he wasn’t was dumb. In broad daylight, in an apartment complex parking lot. He wouldn’t do it that way.
No, he’d wait for his moment.
“We’ll be in touch,” he said and walked away whistling.
10:45 a.m.
Later, after wet-haired hugs and smiles, Liz made desperate eyes at Mac, a look he interpreted as, Take me away from here!
So he did. She took his arm and he walked her to the far end of the parking lot, running a little interference on the way.
She needs to get home, Mrs. Axelrod.
Thanks for the offer of the meatloaf, Mrs. Mayhew.
Yes, I’ ll let you know how she’s doing.
All the way to the car, Liz clung to him. Then she turned and gave him a hug, thanking him. She held on.
Then she pulled back and looked at him. “What if I’m bad?” she said.
“What?” Mac said. He gave her a disarming chuckle. “You’re not bad.”
“What if I am? What will happen to me?”
“No, listen, you’re in Christ. You are a new creation.”
“What if I’m not?”
“But you are. That’s what the Bible says. It’s a promise.”
She almost said something more but then turned and got into her car.
She’s going to need you. She’s going to need all the help she can get. Think you can manage that without messing up, Bud?
As Liz drove away, Mac felt, well, scared. That was it. Like he was responsible for her now. The way they used to say in China or someplace, that if you save a life, you have to take care of ’em for the rest of your days.
A guy who grows up on the streets of Oakland isn’t supposed to be scared of anything. But then you join the Marines at nineteen and before you can say John Wayne you’re being shipped off to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia! What kind of place is that? You arrive in Khobar, and your feet have barely touched sand when you hear an air-raid siren. You start running around with your buds, looking for shelter, and then you’re told, “Dudes, that’s the Muslim call to prayer.”
Yes, what kind of place is it when you’re told you can’t show the palms of your hands or the soles of your feet to native Saudis? Or you can’t wear white underwear because they believe Paradise is white? How would they know the color of your underwear anyway?
You can’t give the “okay” sign with your fingers or point or talk to Saudi men about the women in their family.
It must be what it’s like on Mercury. Sand everywhere, heat like you’ve never experienced. Drinking water all the time. Your “chocolate chip” uniform scratchy and heavy and hot. Not to mention your chemical suit and gas mask.
And when a shamal, a sandstorm, blows, fuggetaboutit. How can anybody live here?
You want to fight, but it’s all about waiting. You clean latrines and take barrels of human waste to a pit, where you get to pour in diesel fuel and mix it all up, then light it on fire.
Funny, but the recruiter never told you about that particular aspect of military life.
Oh, and there’s drilling. Every day, drilling and training and singing out the metronomic cadence:
If I die in a combat zone
Box me up and ship me home!
Pin my medals on my chest,
Tell my mom I done my best!
And then. Finally. It comes.
G-Day, the ground offensive to liberate Kuwait.
And it was that day in Saudi Arabia when Mac knew fear. It tasted like a mouthful of nails. In his guts, just below the stomach, all the wires got tangled and crackly, shooting sparks into his groin and down his legs.
No, the Oakland streets were never like that.
On the morning of February 24, they got ready to cross from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. Mac was part of the team that sent out the MICLIC, line charges for clearing the minefields. After they exploded the mines, plow tanks followed, clearing a path for the Army’s Tiger Brigade and the Marine Second Division.
Mac’s division.
Traversing two hundred yards of hell.
Still, the Marines advanced, right into the teeth of mortar and rifle. Where was the air support? Twenty minutes of pure bloodletting passed before the Cobra helicopters arrived and started spraying the hills with machine-gun fire.
The advance got easier after that.
Up to the first of the bunkers. What they found blew Mac away. Iraqi soldiers, his first sigh
t of them, huddling in the dirt and refusing to come out. The elite guard of Saddam Hussein? No. Dirty, wide-eyed men curled up and frightened as babies in a thunderstorm. Mac learned later the Iraqi soldiers had been taught that U.S. Marines all had to kill one of their own family in order to join up.
No wonder they were scared.
Mac looked on them with a mixture of scorn and pity. One of the soldiers couldn’t have been more than fifteen. A couple were over fifty. The proud Iraqi army.
The kid was crying and wouldn’t move. When they started tying his hands, his eyes opened in primal fear and he screamed, “I love you! I love you!” in fractured English, over and over again.
For a moment Mac wondered if he was in a nightmare, if this was all a crazy, cosmic joke being played by an evil god. What were they all doing here? What were human beings like this fighting over?
Was it worth it for a kid like this to throw his life away for some dictator who was lower than scum? Who would kill you for a wrong thought or careless word?
Mac heard his name being called. He was standing on the edge of the bunker.
Before he could take a step, the explosion came, and his world snapped to black.
He woke up screaming in a hospital. His head was on fire. Someone quickly administered a sedative and put him back under. The next time he came to, he was on a plane.
That was the last he saw of the Middle East.
For the next three years, trying to get help from the VA, Mac realized he was unfit for most work. Officially, he had a penetrating craniocerebral injury. What it meant was hot metal in the brain. They didn’t get it all out. What he got was pain that flared randomly. What wasn’t random was what followed the pain — rage. Until, in a perverse twist, his rages started to precede the pain. When that happened, Mac would find himself lashing out at the first thing in his path: man, machine, or animal.
He thought several times of killing himself.
For some reason, he never did. He wondered about that, why he hadn’t gone through with it. Then he met Athena, and Aurora had come along. For a short time there, a blessed window, he’d lost those thoughts.
But the window slammed shut and the jobs dried up. Because of his own choices, bad ones. Lots of bad ones. But none as bad as the night he went into that liquor store with a gun in his jacket.
The night everything shattered, like glass under a boot.
11:20 a.m.
As soon as Liz came through the door, she had the feeling she wasn’t alone. There was somebody in the house. She had to stop a moment and really listen. It took a full minute to assure herself that she was the only one there. She was attuned to sound and could tell when people were in her vicinity.
It was that skill she developed as a kid. From getting picked on a lot. Like that time after school when three of them were hiding behind a tractor, armed with dirt clods. She knew the bullies were there without seeing them. She ran away fast. Only one clod got her, on the leg.
Just to make sure she was really alone, Liz checked the house. The rooms were empty. The sound of the ticking Elvis clock was the only thing she heard.
No. Somebody was here.
“Shut up,” she said out loud. Talking to herself. You’ve got to get over this. It’s like you’re paranoid or something.
Stress. That’s what it is.
She went to the pantry and reached back behind the flour and pancake mix for the hidden bottle of Jim Beam. Arty went all pure with the Christian thing. Didn’t want any alcohol in the house and stopped drinking when they went out.
Well, her act of defiance was back there behind Aunt Jemima, and now she really needed it. She poured herself a jolt in a regular drinking glass and knocked it back neat. The way she’d seen the men in the bars of Jackson do it.
The way the NASCAR, gun-show, Confederate-flag-wearing Mississippians did it. The way the proto-punks did it at the club W. C. Don’s, which stood for “We Can’t Decide on a Name” and where the local rock scene, such as it was, pretty much became a bunch of drunk kids at three a.m.
Knocked it back the way the Rankin County boys did it, to display their redneck bona fides to the uppity set in Jackson proper.
Liz could beat them all. She had and she would again.
The drink warmed her throat, then her nose. She poured herself another, brought the glass to the living room and set it on a table. She sat and let the warmth take over. Now it was just a waiting game.
She would have to pick the right time. Decide when to go get the stones. Then figure how to get out of town without suspicion. Without a lot of questions being asked.
She heard a car pull up in front. She went to the window and peeked out. Who was it? From the passenger side emerged that old woman with a cane from church. Coming around to help her was a man almost as old, in a rumpled brown suit and red tie.
Church people.
She practically ran into the kitchen and hid the booze. She opened the drawer that held some restaurant mints, unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth. She did not want anyone to think the church’s newest convert was a drunk or something.
They knocked at the door. Liz pushed her hair back over her ears and went to open it.
“Praise the Lord this day,” the old woman said.
What was her name? Axelrod. That was it. She was wearing a hat with a lacy brim, the same dull yellow color as her dress.
“You ran out before I had a chance to talk to you,” Mrs. Axelrod said. “Mr. Dean and I would love to come in and visit awhile. Is this a good — ”
“Actually,” Liz said, “I was about to — ”
“That’s just fine, dear.” And the woman breezed right in. The man behind her seemed to understand Liz’s consternation. He smiled sheepishly but didn’t make any apology as he stepped inside.
Now what? Liz couldn’t very well be rude. She had just been baptized and raised to new life, so they said. All right, she told herself. Endure for a little while. There’s a great reward waiting at the end. And not one of those heavenly things people keep hoping for. Her reward was in the here and now — cold, hard merchandise, worth a couple of million, at least.
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Axelrod said.
Liz brought herself back to the moment. “Oh. Yes.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a bit shaken.”
“I — ”
“Don’t think anything of it. You’ve been through tremendous lows and highs in a matter of hours. May I sit?”
Before Liz could say a word, the woman sat.
“I, um, suppose I should offer you something,” Liz said.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Mrs. Axelrod said. “We won’t be here long.”
“Nothing for me,” Mr. Dean said.
Liz smiled and sat opposite Mrs. Axelrod. The man stood behind the old woman. Like a queen’s attendant.
“I wanted to tell you what a joy it was to see you baptized today,” the queen said.
“Thank you,” Liz said. Keep the voice quiet and reverent. Just agree with everything and then they’ ll go home.
“You know,” Mrs. Axelrod said, “my late husband, Elmer, and I founded the church. We had a vision for God’s work here in the west end of the San Fernando Valley. When we first came to Los Angeles, we attended the Church of the Open Door.”
“Oh?” Liz said, trying to sound interested.
“Dr. McGee was pastor then. Oh, what a lovely man. You must listen to Thru the Bible on the radio. You must begin your education now.”
“Oh?”
“Bible study and prayer, you see, especially as you are new in the faith. It’s a vulnerable time. I remember when I received the Lord . . .”
No.
“. . . It was in a little country church in Texas . . .”
No, please, no. The old man was smiling and nodding, like he’d heard this a hundred times before and loved it each time. Liz breathed in and out steadily, waiting for the drone to die out.
“. . .
came forward at the invitation . . .”
Liz watched the swing of Elvis’s legs on the clock on the wall. Liz thought he’d conk out before Mrs. Axelrod finished.
“. . . not a bed of roses after that, by any means.”
Four minutes.
Five minutes.
Elvis swayed. Mr. Dean nodded. Liz listened.
Finally, mercifully, Mrs. Axelrod seemed to be finishing. She said, “The point is that sin is real, and Satan walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
How did we get to Satan?
“But we, your church family, are here for you to lean on in good times and bad. We will pray for you and with you.”
No, anything but that!
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Axelrod.”
“Our prayer warrior,” Mr. Dean said. “When she prays, she gets results. Storming the throne room.”
What did that mean?
“You can go to bed every night, knowing God will be watching over you,” Mrs. Axelrod said. “Every little moment.”
Now that was a curse if there ever was one.
Without warning, Mrs. Edie Axelrod reached for the glass of Jim Beam that Liz had left on the table. And smelled it.
“Ah, my dear,” she said.
Idiot! Me and her!
“Alcohol will kill your soul,” Mrs. Axelrod said. Liz tried to make herself seem attentive, but all she wanted was to get this chattering church lady off her case.
This was the price of her deception, she knew. She had to make like the good little convert.
“I know that you’ve come from a very different place,” Mrs. Axel-rod said. “But now that you are a new creation, it is time to put away the old and take on the new.”
And turn into you? Liz nodded.
“You see, my brother died of alcoholism,” Mrs. A shook her head sadly. “Oh, he was such a handsome young man. You would have thought so. We called him the pride of Sandusky. He was valedictorian of his high school class and . . .”
Please, oh please, stop.
“. . . off to the University of Michigan, and he got in with a fraternity and that’s where he started to drink. I remember a time . . .”
Am I capable of killing her?
“. . . called our father from Chicago, from a hospital, and we had to go pick him up . . .”
Yes. I am capable of killing. Oh, yes.
“. . . did not accept the Lord as his Savior and died that winter. That, my dear, is all alcohol will bring you. Now you have the power of God inside you . . .”
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