One of the white apostles wheeled him down. It was the Gran’pa Walton look-alike I had seen walk up the hill to the cathedral.
“Now wai-i-it a minute,” Billy cried, like the Isley Brothers do in “Shout.” “Have we ever met?”
“No, sir,” the old man said. “I can’t rightly say I’ve had the pleasure.”
“And what’s your name?”
“It’s Stoner, sir. Eliot Stoner.”
“Is that the name I called you by? Is that the name I called you by?”
“Well, yes sir, it is.”
“Now how did I know that? How did I know that?” Reverend Billy said, like he didn’t know how he knew. “I swear to you, that name just came to me. It just came to me. Out of the air. No, no. Not out of the air. It came from Je-e-esus.”
“Yes, Lord,” McGarrity cried. “Yes, Lord.”
Then the reverend asked Mr. Stoner if he believed in the power to heal. Which Stoner did. Billy closed his eyes with coital intensity and laid his hands on the plastic Stoner hip. After which he commanded Stoner to rise and walk. Which of course Stoner did. With no more effort than he had displayed on his way in.
There was great jubilation. McGarrity was almost overcome, close to tears at bearing witness to the miracle.
Several more healings followed.
Then there were savings. McGarrity got saved. He rushed to the front. He told the Lord he was a sinner. He gave himself to Jesus. He was reborn. Tears of joy streamed down his face.
He looked sincere. He looked like he’d been saved lots of times before.
I got saved too. To stay close. I fell to my knees, waved my hands in the air, and in general behaved like Groucho Marx in blackface. Nobody questioned my sincerity.
At last it was over.
I followed McGarrity through the throng as we exited. He made straight for the parking lot. I knew I was going to lose him as soon as he got in his car. It didn’t matter. Once I knew what he drove, which was a blue Seville, and the license plate, I could find him again.
When I got back to the motel, Cynthia wasn’t there.
There was a note in a sealed motel envelope. I tore it open. It said:
Dear Friend,
… right now, your tax dollars are providing America’s schoolchildren with some of the dirtiest, filthiest and perverted books and films on sex education you can imagine! … Let me share with you some shocking, downright disgusting facts. For example, did you know your tax dollars are teaching school-age children to:
French kiss and masturbate
enjoy the roles of being a homosexual or lesbian?
draw the sex organs of men and women and the act of intercourse …
Dr. William A. Block’s Do It Yourself Illustrated Human Sexuality Book for Kids … depicts a nude “Sex family” … including gutter terms for sexual organs and the sex act.
I wish I had more time to share with you all the horrible things American children are being taught about sex in the classroom. …
P.S. Originally I had planned to enclose a sampling of the crude street language and drawings used in Dr. Block’s sex book. … However, they are so disgustingly graphic that I decided not to send them unless requested to do so. If you want to see what your schoolchildren are being exposed to, just enclose a self-addressed envelope along with your donation.
Taxpayers Against Sex Education
A Project of Christian Family Renewal, Inc.
38.
An Archangel
I CALLED HOME EARLY on Saturday. Wayne wanted to know when I would be back. Glenda wanted to know if I was being good. I said I’d heard that song before, and it was too old.
“I’m not allowed to ask questions when I haven’t seen you for a week?”
“Hey, I’ve called you three times since I left.”
“You said you liked Southern sluts. I’ve heard you say that.”
“That’s because I never met one. I grew up in Brooklyn. I saw them in the movies.”
“I want to refurnish the living room.”
“There’s a battle of good and evil,” I said, “and in Faith, good has triumphed. Even the pornography is religious.”
“I thought they didn’t have pornography there.”
“It’s a matter of degree. Before they invented miniskirts, men used to get hot over ankles.”
“I don’t want to fight with you. We’ve done so much of that. I’m happy we’re back together.”
“So what do you want to do with the living room?” I said.
“Some good oak pieces, I think. Maybe we can go antiquing when you get back.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I want you involved. It’s your home too.”
“You know what my dream home is? A Holiday Inn room. Good showers. Small closets so you can’t accumulate too much. And somebody else cleans. Maybe with a twenty-four-hour library and saloon next door.”
“Somebody else does clean,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but in a motel I don’t feel like I’m supposed to help.”
“Under that veneer of being hip, you’re really a bit of a sexist,” she said.
“You don’t know what sexism is until you live in Faith. The first commandment is: Thou shalt obey your husband. The second is: Thou’s husband is always right. The third is: Shut up and obey your husband. I wish to hell you’d enjoy me.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but is that any fun?”
“Do you love me?”
“Do I love you? What else would I come back to a condo for? Is Wayne doing well in school? The first weeks are critical. If the teachers think he’s brilliant in the first two weeks, they think it’s their fault if he hits a slump in midseason. You gotta get ahead of the game.”
“Will you be home soon?”
“Sure. Maybe. Will you get a new tape?”
I staked out the supermarket. The Seville arrived in midafternoon. The driver was a washed-out woman in her mid-thirties. When she came back out, I followed her.
McGarrity’s house was up in Hearth and Home Hills. It had a lawn and rosebushes out front. Two four-year-old pines were planted alongside the driveway. A white picket fence surrounded the backyard. His new name was on the mailbox. It was Rolf McDonald.
I went back to the motel. Rolf McDonald’s phone was listed.
The woman answered.
“Mrs. McDonald?” I said.
“No,” she said. “You want to speak to Mr. McDonald?”
“Isn’t this Mrs. Anne McDonald?” I asked.
“Isn’t no Mrs. McDonald,” she said. “Mr. McDonald, he’s a widower.”
I apologized for calling the wrong number. I figured her for a house-keeper. They weren’t living together. Not in Faith. I was going to take him either late at night or early in the morning. Somewhere between sleeping and waking, not in dreams but close to them, where you can see into your own mind, where the demons play.
I went back to Casper Rauberger’s store. He sold uniforms for sports, for gas stations, for choirs. I bought a choir robe. White with lots of gold trim.
The phone rang. It was Cynthia. She spoke low and anxious.
“I got to talk to you,” she said, sniffling.
“Sure.”
“I can only talk for a second. They’re coming back. When are you leaving?”
“I don’t know; maybe tomorrow,” I said.
“Will you take me with you?”
“Look, Cyn … ”
“Darn, darn, they’re coming back. Listen, we always go to dinner Saturday night … ”
“My God Will Provide?”
“Yes. At seven o’clock. Same time every Saturday. Now there’s an alley out back. Would you be there, honey? Please? Pretty please, with sugar and honey and sweet things on top,” she said. Then she hung up.
I swam in the motel pool. Then went over the McGarrity file. There was still time to kill. I went to The Word newsstand and bookstore. They di
dn’t have the New York Times. Or the Washington Post. Or anything else I cared to read. I took a walk.
Down the bug-ridden bridle path. It was still hot and thick. I longed for even a rumor of autumn. I thought about Cynthia Lynn. Got thick in my cock. I touched myself and felt the weight. What a fun toy. What a pleasure. What a delight. What a great way to get close and communicative. What was it about it that so terrified the residents of Faith?
I got to an open area, where the sun shone down. I unzipped and stroked it erect so the sun could see. I closed my eyes and the brightness left sunspots on my lids. I made up pictures from them, like people are supposed to do with clouds. Great penis blimps sailing over Reverend Billy’s Christian Community. The residents screaming in terror. They scramble for their fallout shelters.
T. K. Jones, Deputy Under Secretary for Strategic Nuclear Forces, is there to organize things. “Dig a hole. Cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt on top. It’s the dirt that does it. … Everyone’s going to make it if there’s enough shovels to go around,” he says.
They dive in. And discover women are waiting there. With functioning vaginas.
All die of hysteria. I alone march out and tear down the attorney general, who is the third corner of a pedestal on which the President is standing. The blimps ejaculate, in new condom colors. From everywhere there is applause. From women, union leaders, blacks, from the literate, from fiction writers who can be clear once again about what is nonfiction.
I tucked myself back in, with the humble realization that if the future of the country were in my hands, we’d be as bad off as we were with Reagan. I needed for things to be over with. I was getting strange.
I got to the alley promptly at seven. My gun in my holster, my piece back in my pants. There was no one there. The Dumpster was aromatic. Seven-ten. No one there. Dumpster still aromatic.
Seven-twenty. I heard her voice calling my name in a stage whisper. But I didn’t see her. “Over here,” she called. I looked around and saw her face sticking out of a window.
“I’m in the ladies’ room,” she said. I looked in. She was. “Please, I got to go with you.”
“Look, you’re seventeen, you haven’t finished high school, what the hell am I going to do with you? I have a family. I can’t bring you home.” Even as I said it, I realized I could put her in Joey’s apartment.
“Somebody saw me going away from church. Last night. Natcherly, they just had to tell my pappy. I want so much to be somewhere where nobody pays no never mind to nobody else’s business. I want you to see what he done to me.”
She stood up on the toilet seat so her hips were about where her face had been. She turned her back to me, lifted her long skirt, then dropped her white cotton panties. Lovely buns. Round, firm, tender. With great red lash marks across them. Mostly weals, but some broken skin, crusty with dried blood and scabs. Older scars were beneath them. I could also see wisps of pubic hair. Very blond.
“OK, put your clothes back,” I said. “I’m probably leaving tomorrow. In the morning.”
“My folks go to church at seven. I can pretend to be sick. I make myself feverish and then I vomit. I’ve done it before.”
“Can’t I just give you money for a Greyhound ticket?”
“You still don’t get it, do you? They watch the bus station.”
“Cyn … ”
“If I don’t get out of here real soon, bad things are going to start happening, as sure as Reverend Billy is a millionaire.”
“All right. But I want to be out of here early.”
“I’ll be there by seven-fifteen. Seven-thirty at the latest. Bye, honey. I got to go, before they gets upset. Thanks, honey.”
“I don’t believe I just agreed to that,” I said to an empty ladies’ room.
Around eleven, I drove by the house of Ralph/Rolf McGarrity/McDonald. It was an early-to-bed town. Only three houses had their lights on. His was one of them. I drove on. An hour later I drove by again. Only two houses had lights on. The other one was far in the distance.
I parked in front of the house. I checked my .357 snub. Then I put on my white choral robe with gold trim. It was just too silly. I was sure any reasonable person would be smitten with hysterics when they saw me. Then I remembered I was in Faith.
I got casually out of the car and strolled up to the front door. I was shocked. It was locked.
But the kitchen door was open.
The living room was ordinary. Overpoweringly ordinary. Wall-to-wall carpeting, a couch, two armchairs, a coffee table, Reverend Billy and Ronald Reagan on one wall, Jesus Christ on the other. McGarrity sat in one of the armchairs, a standing lamp with a cream and russet shade throwing light from over his shoulder onto the Bible. Reverend Billy’s blessed and personally autographed, commemorative, limited-edition, calfskin-bound, genuine-parchment-style-paper, twenty-color-plate, one-hundred-dollar-tax-deductible-contribution Bible.
I set my voice deep and hollow and intoned, “Ralph McGarrity.”
He looked up. Startled. Frightened. But he didn’t say “Who are you?” or “What do you want?” or “What are you doing in my house?” He said, “It’s Rolf, with an o.” Then he stuttered over “McDonald.”
“It’s Ralph,” I said. Authoritatively. “And it’s McGarrity, not McDonald.”
“No, no. It’s Rolf McDonald. My friends sometimes call me Mack.”
I raised my white-draped arms on high. Nobody laughed. “Do you believe in the Lord?” I shouted.
“Yes,” he said.
“Is Jesus Christ your personal savior?” I cried.
“He is, he is. I gave my soul to the Lord. I took Jesus into my heart. Jesus Christ is my savior.”
I stalked toward him. I stood over him. I glared down in his face. “Do you lie to your Lord and tell him that your name is not your name?” That flustered him. He probably did. Religion is strange. But he got his pension checks in his real name. He could lie to his neighbors. He could lie to his friends. But he could not lie to the City of New York Civil Service Pension Fund! “You think God doesn’t see!” I grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him out of the chair. “Get down on your knees,” I yelled in his face, then shoved him down to the floor. “Pray!”
He did. He began to mutter, “ ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want … ’ ”
I put my hand on his head and took hold of his hair. “I want the truth now. I can see into your heart. I can see into your mind. Nothing is hidden from me.”
“Who are you?” he asked at last.
“I am the Sword of the Archangel Michael. I am the avenging angel. I am the messenger. I am the blood of the lamb!”
“I am a sinner,” he said. “I am a sinner.”
“You are a murderer. There is blood on your hands.”
“I’ve come to Jesus,” he said. “I’ve been cleansed of my sins. I have. I have. I have,” he chanted like a child.
“Flames! Do you see the flames?” I moaned, waving my floppy sleeves. “Hellfire. Hellfire and damnation. Do you want to burn in hell?”
“No. No. I want to go to a better place. I’m going to go to the better place. I gave myself to Jesus.”
“Not enough,” I said. “Take it from the Archangel Michael—it doesn’t cut it, Ralph. What we need here is some earthly atonement.”
“What? What? I tithe. I pray. I don’t drink anymore. Not much anymore.”
“The flames,” I roared, fluttering the sleeves for effect. The robe was great. “Three dead in Brooklyn. What about them, Ralph?”
“That was in my previous life. My sinful life. Before I was born again. It doesn’t count.”
I thrust out my finger and pointed at him, a living portrait of accusation. “Bullshit,” I cried. “That’s bullshit in the eyes of the Lord. And the Lord don’t love bullshit. The Lord wants full confession. And he wants it in writing.”
It didn’t take much more. McGarrity had not become McDonald and buried himself in Faith because he was h
iding from the law. He was hiding from himself. He was trying to shut the inner eye that persisted in seeing visions of fire. The story poured out. With a lot of excuses. And self-pity. He had more expenses than he could handle. But it wasn’t the gambling or the drinking that did him in; it was because his wife chose to get sick at the wrong time. Otherwise he could have paid his gambling debts.
“Tell it, brother!” I cried. And other things of that sort.
Then along came this guinea, called himself Mr. Fix. Mr. Fix knew someone who could help McGarrity with his troubles.
It was a real job. A consulting position with a New York company that was doing a lot of building in the South and Southwest. “Fire codes in New York, and fire prevention—we were much in advance of down South. This company wanted to build better, safer, more fireproof buildings. That’s the job I took. Saving lives, that’s what it was about.”
“The Sun Group?”
“You know everything,” he gasped.
“Yes, but you must confess it, you must cleanse your soul.”
He dealt with Mr. Gunderson himself. A very sincere and dedicated man. Committed to building a better America. In the days of real dollars, when gold was thirty-five dollars an ounce, the salary was enormous for a part-time assignment—ten thousand dollars.
Before he even got his first check, he was visited by Mr. DeStefano, a vice-president of Empire Administration. McGarrity was the arson investigator assigned to a fire that destroyed an Empire Administration building. Mr. DeStefano was very gracious and very pleased to meet him. After all, McGarrity was about to become an employee of one of Empire’s sister companies, the Sun Group. Mr. DeStefano was certain that McGarrity’s report would show that the fire in his building was an accident.
When DeStefano walked out the door, the collectors walked in. To remind McGarrity of his gambling debts.
McGarrity had become a captive arson investigator. An employee of the people who were burning New York. “No one was ever hurt. That first building. It was practically empty. Falling down. Useless. If it weren’t for government overregulation, they could have torn it down like it should have been torn down. When the government regulates things, everything gets screwed up. Now who knows better how to run a business, the businessman whose business it is or some paper-pushing bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., who’s never worked in the real world a day in his life?”
You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries) Page 33
