The Wolf

by Alex Grecian

  A low murmur rolled through the crowd, and Heinrich held his hand up for silence.

  “Yes, it is the same man Lou-Ellen told us about, the one who travels with a great black beast. And …” He held up his hand again. “And he is working with the black woman.”

  “Purity First,” a boy in the front row said.

  “We are the true minority,” Heinrich said, his voice rising as he settled into the familiar sermon. “We are beset on every side by our enemies, who outnumber us and try to force us to conform to their standards. And yet we built this civilization from the ground up. We created language and math and science. We tamed the beasts and seeded the fields. Could they have accomplished all that we have? I say to you they could not! They outnumber us ten to one, but they lack the intelligence and the ambition, the talent and the skill. No, the black, the Jew, the Mexican, they take the food from our table! And what do they give us in return?”

  “Nothing!”

  “And yet they are envious of us. They hate us.”

  “Hate!”

  “They attack us on every front. But we fight back,” Heinrich said. “They have sent their man in gray to confuse us, to obstruct us, but we will not bow to his agenda.”

  “Tell us what to do, Deacon,” Donnie Mueller said.

  “I’ll kill him,” Stanley Mayhew said. Stanley was a giant of a man with a heavy unibrow over dark dead eyes, and while many nodded in agreement, those closest to him in the back row inched away to the farthest edges of their chairs.

  “Thank you, Stanley,” Heinrich said. “The man in gray will return here tomorrow afternoon. He will expect us to resist, but he doesn’t know what we are capable of. And when he comes, we will be ready for him.”

  “We will be ready!”

  “We will push back,” Heinrich said, “against him and against all those who would corrupt our way of life.”

  “We will push back!”

  Heinrich shook his fist at the tiny windows up near the ceiling of the big room. “Purity First!”

  “Purity First!”

  He stretched out his arms and waited for his followers to settle down again. “This is what we have waited for. Go and prepare yourselves for tomorrow.”

  “Purity First!”

  They stood and folded their metal chairs, returned them to the rack at the back of the room, threw away their coffee cups, and exited in small clusters, whispering to one another, their faces shining with excitement and pleasure.

  Heinrich called to one of the men as he passed. “Donnie, would you stay for a minute?”

  “Of course, Deacon.”

  “I have a special job for you.”

  June 1992

  Amy Romita was sixteen and had suffered from severe acne for three years when she came to one of Reverend Rudy’s Sunday sermons. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her voice broke as she explained to the enraptured congregation how ostracized she felt, how friendless she was, and how much she longed to be rid of her affliction. People in the front pews reached out to her, touched her, reassured her. They swayed back and forth and prayed out loud for Amy to be released from her burden. Rudy closed his eyes and felt the room hum with electricity. He put his hands on her face and then rubbed them down the length of her back and felt the familiar jolt of power that always flowed when the lightning was working through him. Amy fell unconscious on the sanctuary steps and had to be carried to a front pew, where she woke up an hour later, confused about where she was and what was happening around her. Three weeks later, her skin clear and beautiful, Amy met Reverend Rudy at the Econo Lodge in Phillipsburg and expressed her gratitude to him with great enthusiasm.

  Donnie Mueller was nearly catatonic when his sister Kim wheeled him into the reverend’s office on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. His eyes were closed behind enormous sunglasses, and a pillow was duct-taped over his head to keep out ambient noise. Donnie’s shoulders were hunched and his limbs were stiff and atrophied. He was unable to attend a sermon, unable to leave the house except under the most extreme circumstances because of migraines. Kim explained that any sound or light caused her brother crippling pain. Rudy smiled and nodded and brushed his hands against Donnie’s temples. Afterward his sister wheeled Donnie back out, helped him into her car, folded the wheelchair, and put it away in the trunk. She forgot to take it back out when they got home because Donnie limped up the path to the front door by himself and crawled into bed on his own. He attended a Purity First tent service the following Sunday, and Heinrich put him right up front so everyone there could see him grinning and clapping his hands in time to the music.

  Now Amy and Donnie volunteered for the church, and this Sunday they were working the room, going up and down the aisles while Liz Wimberly and her choir girls, all in red robes, got the crowd on its feet. The musicians played behind Liz, and supplicants lined up in front of the pulpit, and Reverend Rudy prepared for his sermon, and Amy and Donnie searched the congregation for volunteers.

  Rudy and Jacob had spent a great deal of time debating the pros and cons of healing various ailments and disfigurements. Amputees looked good, of course, but although Rudy was often able to cure them of phantom limb syndrome, aching stumps, and other difficulties, they didn’t grow their limbs back. At least, not quickly enough to dazzle a restless congregation on a Sunday afternoon. Limps, sore throats, chronic fatigue, allergies … these were all either too minor to impress or too hard for Rudy and his assistants to verify. He didn’t want any fakers. They would undermine everything he was trying to build. And he didn’t want the congregation getting bored, either. Jacob had always told him, “Good theater puts butts in the seats and money in the collection baskets.”

  So Amy and Donnie were looking for people who clearly needed help, people who might provide the drama Reverend Rudy required. And they thought they had struck pay dirt with two new parishioners. One was Gary Gilbert, a truck driver who had gone through the window of his eighteen-wheeler the previous summer. He had suffered a concussion and broken eleven bones, including both his arms and a leg. The bones had healed, but he had lost nearly seventy pounds and his vision came and went. He had not been able to hold down any solid foods and he carried a bag with him in case he couldn’t get to a restroom before vomiting. The other prospect was Lou-Ellen Quinlan, a former underwear model. When she was twenty-three years old, Lou-Ellen had been hit by a car while crossing against a light at Forty-Fifth and Broadway in New York. She had flown several feet through the air before slamming face-first into a fire hydrant. Her neck had broken in three places, minute particles of bone chipping off and ricocheting about under her skin like glass, tearing up the soft flesh of her throat and embedding in her lungs. She had undergone eighteen hours of surgery and her doctors had been optimistic about her prospects, but she had never woken up from anesthesia. She was now thirty-one and had spent all of her remaining twenties and the start of her thirties lying on a twin bed in the basement of her parents’ home in Plainville, Kansas. She had a physical therapist who visited three times a week to exercise her arms and legs and rub her down. Her mother gave her sponge baths and whispered encouraging words in her ear, waiting patiently for Lou-Ellen to open her eyes.

  Gary Gilbert was sitting at the back of the church on the aisle, ready to leave at a moment’s notice if his stomach began to act up. He was listening to Reverend Rudy’s sermon, but his eyes weren’t working well and he didn’t see Amy approach him. He jumped when she leaned close and whispered in his ear, but stood and followed when she took his hand and led him to the front row by the pulpit.

  Lou-Ellen Quinlan was in a wheelchair next to the door to the narthex. Her mother, Marybeth, smiled at Donnie when he touched her elbow and she nodded when he beckoned to her. Donnie waited while she wiped her daughter’s chin and tucked a blanket in around Lou-Ellen’s scrawny legs, then led the way down the side aisle and motioned for Marybeth to sit next to Gary. Gary scooted over for her, and Donnie moved into her place behind Lou-Ellen’s chair, ready to ro
ll her forward when the time came. Amy stood beside him and reached out with her pinkie finger to touch his hand. A flicker of a smile twitched across Donnie’s lips.

  “And finally,” Reverend Rudy said, his voice rolling across the sea of upturned faces before him, “you know who you are! And you know that you cannot keep yourself secret from Him! You know in your heart if you are a wolf or a butcher, a lamb or a gardener! You know if you are worthy and you know if He has chosen you! And, my people, if He has chosen you, then you are among the pure! And you will be welcomed at the last! Purity First! Purity First!”

  The congregation took up the chant. “PURITY FIRST! PURITY FIRST!” Nearly every person there had descended from someone in Germany or Poland or Ireland or Sweden. There was a first-generation Scottish American and there was a woman who claimed her ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower. One man had come to Kansas from Austria when he was a boy and still remembered the mountains. Their voices rose, drowning out the reverend, who had stepped away from the microphone.

  Another volunteer named Judy rushed forward with a towel for him, and he mopped his brow. That was the signal for Donnie and Amy to get moving. Donnie wheeled Lou-Ellen’s chair forward so that Amy could help Gary out of the pew and into a second wheelchair. They trundled across in front of the waist-high railing, a short procession of four, while the congregation watched and hummed and nodded in time to Liz and her girls, who were softly harmonizing, scatting a little, just keeping a rhythm. Two large men came forward and lifted Lou-Ellen’s chair up the three steps to the sanctuary. They turned her around so the crowd could see her, set her down in front of Reverend Rudy, and locked her wheels. Donnie leaned in and whispered in the reverend’s ear.

  “Comatose,” he said. “Name’s Lou-Ellen Quinlan. Pedestrian hit-and-run. Her mother’s in the front row.”

  Donnie went back down the steps and stood off to the side next to Amy, while Gary’s wheelchair was lifted up the steps and rolled up behind Lou-Ellen. Under the hot lights, beads of sweat stood out on Gary’s forehead and he clutched his barf bag tight. He was grateful for the use of the chair because otherwise he thought he might pass out.

  Reverend Rudy tossed his towel to one of the beefy men and knelt by Lou-Ellen’s chair. Liz held up her hand and the choir stopped singing. A hush fell over the congregation, and the people in the front moved forward, straining to hear as the reverend cocked his head, apparently listening to Lou-Ellen. Rudy murmured something in her ear and listened again to the silent girl. Then he raised his fists in the air and tilted his face toward the ceiling, where scorched timbers surrounded fresh wood, marking the spot where the church had been marred by that long-ago storm.

  “This girl suffers!”

  “She suffers,” the congregation repeated.

  “Our sister Lou-Ellen has lost the way!”

  “Mmm. She’s lost.”

  “She’s lost inside herself and can’t find the way out!”

  “Find the way. Find the way.”

  “She hurts and needs our help!”

  “Help her, Reverend Rudy.”

  “But if she is pure, if she has that purity that comes from the blood, I can help her!”

  “Lay your hands on her, Reverend Rudy.”

  “Let the lightning work through me!”

  “Let it flow.”

  “Let it flow!”

  “Let it flow!”

  “I say …”

  “Let it flow!”

  Liz raised her hands in an echo of Rudy’s gesture, the sleeves of her shiny red robe swinging wildly, and the choir started up again, louder this time, the tempo faster. The crowd picked up the cue and started clapping in time. Rudy was still as a statue, on his knees, his hands in the air. Whether he was surrendering or anticipating victory over Lou-Ellen’s coma was unclear. In one smooth movement, he turned and lowered his hands to the girl’s head. He held them there, then ran them down her neck, over her torso, lingering for only a moment on her emaciated breasts, down her abdomen and into her lap, then back up again. To the congregation it looked like he had stuck his finger in a light socket. He trembled and shook, but his hands moved with a sure purpose. At last he fell back, and one of the beefy men caught him under his arms. The man picked Rudy up and stood him on his feet and held him there while he got his balance and recovered. The people in the front row could hear his ragged breathing over the sound of their own hands clapping.

  An old woman screamed “Her eyes are open!” and fainted.

  Someone else took up the cry. “She’s awake!” And more people shouted and fell about, excited to see Lou-Ellen’s pretty blue eyes.

  Marybeth rushed to her daughter’s side, stumbling on her way up the steps. Those men in the front pew who were not trembling and speaking in tongues could see Lou-Ellen’s lips moving as she spoke to her mother for the first time in eight years.

  Bert Holstrom waved at Marybeth to get her attention. “What did she say? What’s she saying, Mama?”

  “She said …” Marybeth looked at Bert, then raised her tear-filled eyes to the rafters. “She asked me what hit her.”

  And Marybeth started to laugh.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  When he saw the blue and red lights, Travis almost pulled over. He frowned at the rearview mirror and tried to see through the windshield of the car behind him, but the setting sun reflected bare branches overhead against the opaque safety glass and the driver was invisible, save for a dark human shape with an ungainly hat stuck atop it.

  He checked his speed. Fifty-five miles an hour. Well within the speed limit, not far below it. He was reasonably certain his brake lights worked. He had not rolled through any stop signs.

  He shrugged and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Jeep leapt forward and the squad car behind him fell back.

  Around a bend, Travis shifted gears and pulled off the road, rammed the Jeep into a copse of brush and young trees. A flock of starlings burst from the thicket, beating their wings perilously close to the windshield before taking to the air. The birds were far out over a field by the time the silver patrol car whizzed by. It sped away into the distance without slowing as it passed the poorly hidden Jeep. Travis couldn’t be sure whether the driver had seen him. He waited, surveying the road. A drop of rain hit his windshield and rolled slowly down. He watched it merge with other drops, growing larger and heavier. After a moment he pulled out his phone and typed starlings into the Internet app.

  “Ah,” he said. “A murmuration.” He looked out across the field at the faraway formation of fluttering brown specs. “You are called a murmuration.”

  Satisfied, he shut down his browser and pulled up his contacts. The squad car had not reappeared, so Travis backed out of the thicket and executed a U-turn. As he headed back the way he’d come, toward Paradise Flats, he punched up Skottie’s number and listened for the first ring.

  “But why a murmuration?”

  2

  “What?” Skottie held the phone away from her face and looked at the screen. She put it back up to her ear. “A what?”

  “Skottie?”

  She was getting used to the husky whisper of Travis’s voice and didn’t have to strain to hear him. “Yeah,” she said. “This is Skottie.”

  “Did your phone just ring?”

  “Yeah. Twice.”

  “Mine did not.”

  “Travis? Why did you call?”

  “I have some bad news for us both.”

  “Does it involve a murmuration?”

  “Ah, you heard me,” Travis said. “I was talking to myself, but did you know a flock of starlings is called a murmuration?”

  “Yeah, and a bunch of crows is called a murder, and hippos are a bloat. I have a ten-year-old kid. I get to hear a lot of this stuff. Did you know toads can live forty years in captivity?”

  “Toads?”

  “Travis, what did you want? What’s the bad news?”

  “I believe the sheriff is having me fol
lowed.”

  “I think he had me followed, too, when I left his office. That white-power deputy of his showed up right on my tail. He beat an ambulance to a fire.”

  “A fire? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Skottie said. “I’m fine. And Bear’s fine, too. I forgot to tell you earlier. Somebody burned a tractor on a frontage road out by the highway. There was someone in the tractor.”

  “And one of Goodman’s deputies was there?”

  “Had to be nearby. So either he was already in the vicinity or he followed me there.”

  “Now I understand what the sheriff was talking about,” Travis said. “Goodman mentioned another body had been found. He seemed genuinely mystified, though, not like he had anything to do with it.”

  “Doesn’t let the deputy off the hook.”

  “The one following me attempted to pull me over.”

  “You didn’t stop?”

  “Why would I stop? I ran through the possibilities in my head and none of them favored me.”

  “You’re supposed to stop,” Skottie said.

  “I evaded whoever was driving the squad car, but as soon as they catch up to me again, things might become unpleasant. I have a difficult thing to ask of you, and I understand if you would rather not do me any more favors right now. I have imposed on you more than I wished to.”

  “You want me to hang on to Bear tonight?”

  “Would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “If I go there now, I may be leading these people to your home.”

  “I said sure. He ate his steak and he’s having a nap. Maddy’s in love with him.”

  “Bear likes children.”

  “As long as he doesn’t like to eat them.”

  “Oh, my lord, no.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “I see. I will wait until morning to get him. Perhaps by then this situation will have resolved itself.”

  “Resolved itself? How?”

  “We are being chased all over the board and people are dying. I think something must be done to drive our villain from the shadows.”