The Apostle

by J. A. Kerley

  “A famous piece of music by a man named George Gershwin. It’s called Rhapsody in Blue.”

  “It’s weird,” the girl demanded. “Turn it off.”

  “You should try it out. It’s very alive. It’s some of the most alive music I know.”

  “That’s stupid. Music’s not alive.”

  “We’ll compromise,” Nautilus said. “I’ll turn it down.”

  The girl huffed and crossed her arms and so they continued for ten minutes, Celeste Owsley shooting cryptic – angry? – looks at the back of Nautilus’s head. When the Owsleys departed, Nautilus turned off the music and got in his Volvo. He was reversing when he saw the girl approaching the car. “Yes, Rebecca?” he’d asked, rolling down the window.

  “That stuff?” she asked, pretending to stifle a yawn. “That music. What was it called again?”

  He’d relayed title and composer and she’d turned and walked away, tapping at her cell phone.

  Fourth day in the job and fired, Nautilus thought, pulling into both the present and the Owsley home’s driveway. Carson would get a kick out of that. But when the door opened, it wasn’t an angry Celeste Owsley on the threshold, it was an anxious one.

  “Richard had to fly to Key West on business. He might be working in Central Florida for a while. He needs me, I mean us, there. What I need … if you can, is to come along and continue your services. For Richard, too. He’ll be needing a driver. It might be for several weeks.”

  She tried a smile, but it wavered. Not fear, Nautilus noted, thirty years of reading faces in play, it’s something else. Anxiety, yes, and … excitement?

  “Where in Florida, may I ask.”

  “In Osceola County. You’ll stay in the finest available lodging, Mr Nautilus.”

  Nautilus liked his own bed. His refrigerator. His music. Plus there was a brown ale fermenting in his closet.

  “To be honest, Miz Owsley, it’s not really my kind of—”

  “Richard said you’ll be considered to be working ten hours a day, Mr Nautilus.”

  Nautilus paused in mid-refusal, and drove home to Art Blakey’s “A Night in Tunisia”, the wild drumming paralleling his heart: two hundred smackers a day! There was only one catch to Owsley’s request: Nautilus had to be ready to leave in ninety minutes. But he didn’t have to drive, at least.

  A private plane was flying them to Florida.

  21

  “Get this fucking thing off my head!” Darlene Hammond screamed.

  Frisco Dredd watched the woman yank at the black hood cinched beneath her chin. She’d been awake for ten minutes, coming out from under the chloroform after being semi-conscious through the night.

  When she’d climbed into the van she’d been all dazzle eyes and non-stop questions like “Where’s Sissy?” and “How much money is she giving out?” and Dredd knew she had taken some filthy drug in her dressing room.

  Dredd knew drugs. Satan had fed them to him for years.

  When he’d pulled behind a strip mall she’d gotten jittery, “Sissy Carol Sparks is really giving away money?” turning to “LET ME OUT!”

  She’d escaped, opening the door and jumping to the pavement, but he grabbed her and put the wet rag over her face and held her until she was just a limp shape in his arms. The heat had come over him – searing and vile, ancient snakes escaping from a locked basket – and he’d almost pulled into the woods to lose himself in her flesh, but the wires around his animal tightened and the lust turned to pain, letting him take her to the place of atonement.

  “Are you there, you hillbilly bastard?” Darlene yelled, head snapping one way, then the other. She stumbled into one of the support posts in the old warehouse, then spun and ran into the wall. Like Teresa, she patted her hands along the bricks until coming to a boarded-over window.

  “HELP!” Hammond screamed, fist pounding the plywood. “HELP ME!”

  Frisco Dredd stared from two dozen feet distant, just inside the tight cone of yellowed light from a single bulb strung from a crossbeam in the old dirt-floored barn, its two windows freshly boarded with plywood, the rickety door loose on rusted hinges. The barn, a relic of a farm fallow for decades, was isolated in an empty field, far from prying eyes and listening ears. The nearest dwelling was three hundred feet away and posed no threat.

  “YOU FILTHY FUCK!” Hammond screamed. “LET ME GO!”

  Dredd held a bulging canvas sack in his arms. It clicked as he lowered it to the concrete floor. Dredd stared at the woman, the pointy, bouncing breasts, the long legs that had clutched legions of innocent men in their grip, draining their fluids and stealing their souls. The snakes began to writhe through his loins, his animal starting to awaken, to swell against the wires.

  “Jezebel,” he whispered, the pain rising. “Whore.”

  Hammond spun. “I HEAR YOU! TALK TO ME, YOU PERVERTED BASTARD.”

  Frisco Dredd fell to his knees and prayed, feeling his animal dwindle, its pain lost beneath an energy greater than any earthly power. It quivered through his body and dropped his jaw in awe. Jesus was taking his place inside Dredd. Spittle frothed down Dredd’s chin and he fought to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head.

  “Then the LORD rained upon Sodom,” he whispered, tearing open his shirt. “And upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven …”

  Dredd stood unsteadily, opened the sack and reached inside. “For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer …” His hand returned clutching a smooth stone the size of a baseball. “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet,” he said. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT?”

  Dredd threw the stone. It whizzed over Darlene’s shoulder and hit the wall. BAM. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him …” Dredd plucked another stone from the bag and put his whole body into the throw.

  The rock slammed a shoulder blade. Hammond screamed and twisted away, one hand grabbing at her broken bone, the other trying furiously to peel the bag from her head. Dredd reached down, came up with a stone in each hand. “If there be found among you one that hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them … Then shalt thou stone them with stones till they die …” The first stone slammed the woman’s side and she screamed wildly, waving her hands against blows she couldn’t hope to fend. The second stone hit her upper back, knocking her into the wall. She spun, crouched, screaming NO NO NO as Dredd grabbed two more rocks. “For he is the servant of God,” Dredd hissed. “An avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer …”

  The first stone struck Hammond in the mouth and knocked her backwards into the wall and she fell to hands and knees, spitting blood and teeth into the bag covering her head. The second struck behind an ear and she collapsed to the floor, her body twitching as her brain began to misfire.

  Frisco Dredd kept reaching into the bag.

  22

  The plane that came for Nautilus and the Owsleys was a Beech King 350 turboprop with a haloed golden crown on the fuselage encircled by the words Crown of Glory. It seemed a typical business-style plane save for bibles in the seat-back pouches. Nautilus hoped it wasn’t a comment on the pilot’s skills.

  “You said we’re going to Lakeland, Mrs Owsley,” Nautilus asked, strapping in. Lakeland was in Central Florida.

  “That’s where the airport is,” she said, holding a pocket mirror and picking at her hair. “We’re staying fifteen minutes away, by Hallelujah Jubilee, the Christian park. There’s an ark and everything.”

  Nautilus had driven past Hallelujah Jubilee a couple times, hard to miss with the huge cross at the entrance. “I’ve always wanted to see the place,” he lied, then figured it might be interesting. Nautilus turned in his seat, Rebecca hunkered down in the last row, chewing gum and tapping a
t her phone. “How about you, Rebecca? You going to check out the park?”

  The kid cracked her bubblegum and went back to ticking on the phone. Seconds after the plane had set down, Nautilus saw Richard Owsley crossing the tarmac, hand waving, white teeth flashing like landing lights. He directed them toward a waiting limo, workers transferring luggage. Nautilus watched Owsley close the door on the limousine, then walk his way, pulling a set of keys from his pocket.

  “A black Hummer’s in the front row of the lot. My family and I have a suite at the Radisson. The people at Hallelujah Jubilee secured you lodging at their Jacob’s Ladder motel, the most comfortable of their choices.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Nautilus said, thinking of living from a suitcase and again repeating his mantra: two hundred dollars a day.

  Nautilus found the motel a half-mile short of the looming cross designating the Hallelujah Jubilee entrance, two hundred feet of burnished steel glowing in the day’s hard sun. His lodging resembled most semi-upscale motels, brick and glass surrounded by an asphalt parking lot. Only instead of Holiday Inn or Marriott, the sign proclaimed Jacob’s Ladder. He recalled the original ladder as a dream the biblical patriarch Jacob had of a stairway to heaven. This Jacob’s Ladder went up four stories. Nautilus shook his head at dwindled expectations and went to check in.

  “We’ve been expecting you, Mr Nautilus,” the teen male clerk said. Nautilus turned to see his luggage whisked away by a young bellhop dressed like it was Vegas in the 1950s.

  “There’s a message for you, sir,” the clerk said, handing over a folded note.

  Nautilus followed his suitcases upstairs. The room was suite-style, a small living room and TV viewing area, a short hall holding closet and refrigerator on one side, bathroom on the other, with the bedroom area in the rear. He was pleased to see a sliding door that led out to a balcony. When the bellhop had departed, Nautilus opened the note.

  Please call me was the message. “Tawnya” was the sender. Nautilus dialed, heard a voice that split the difference between chirpy and sultry. “I’m Tawnya, Mr Nautilus, with Hallelujah Jubilee. I’m making sure everyone in Pastor Owsley’s party has a wonderful time. I wanted you to know you can tour the park anytime and I’ll be your personal guide. Everyone should see Hallelujah Jubilee.”

  Nautilus thought a moment. This might be his sole chance to see what lay in the shadow of the huge cross.

  “Now a good time?” Nautilus asked.

  “It’s always a perfect time at Hallelujah Jubilee,” Tawnya gushed.

  The entrance to the park was a four-minute drive. Instructed to park in the VIP lot beside the office, he passed the rank-and-file lot, acres of shining vehicles. Next was the bus lot, at least two dozen of them, some emblazoned with the names of churches from as far afield as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

  Nautilus pulled into a VIP slot and had one foot from the vehicle when he heard his name and looked up to see a twentyish woman in a blue skirt and white blouse striding his way and waving. She was slender and shapely, full breasted, long legged. Though the day was already warm, the young woman wore full-length sleeves, buttoned at the cuffs.

  “Tawnya?” he guessed.

  “I’m so pleased you could visit, Mr Nautilus,” she purred, the voice husky. Her bright smile dazzled, her coiled blonde curls bounced on her shoulders.

  “Last name?”

  “We go by first names, sir. Are you with Reverend Owsley’s ministry?”

  “I suppose so,” Nautilus said, following the woman through the entrance, a wide opening in a rock wall meant to resemble biblical-era construction. There were a half-dozen ticket booths along the corridor; Nautilus noted that an adult single-day pass was forty-seven bucks. Youths and children got in for twenty-five. But if you were lucky enough to be under age four, you could take it all in for free.

  Tawnya took Nautilus to the side as visitors streamed past, taking a photo with her phone and sending it somewhere.

  “I’ll be right back, Mr Nautilus. Three minutes.”

  Tawnya entered a door and was back in two fifty-eight to hand Nautilus a clip-on square of laminated paper with his photo.

  “What’s this?”

  “A special pass to the park, Mr Nautilus. It’s good for your entire stay.”

  Nautilus stared at the laminated card. “What’s the big J mean?”

  “You’ve been designated a Joshua-level visitor, the highest. Everyone with Pastor Owsley is Joshua level. Everything is free, so you can take your meals here, enjoy the sights, anything.” Tawnya’s smile seemed to reach an even greater height of buoyancy as she bounced the golden curls. “Ready for the tour, Mr Nautilus?”

  Nautilus turned to see a bearded young man in a rough-woven gray robe holding a shepherd’s crook as a crowd of visitors took snapshots. This was getting weird.

  “Let’s hop and bop, Tawnya.”

  The pair climbed into a golf cart with a Hallelujah Jubilee logo, Tawnya moving expertly through milling visitors strung with cameras – “Excuse me, coming through … bless you!” – passing through another clay-resembling wall into a large opening surrounded by mangers fronted with counters and signs touting food and drink in pseudo-Hebraic lettering.

  “The food court, Mr Nautilus.”

  Nautilus deciphered the goofy typeface. “Pizza, burgers, pasta, oriental … you’ve got the bases covered.”

  “These are fast-food choices. Over there are two sit-down restaurants where you can have the full dining experience. One seats two hundred guests at a time, the other seats over four hundred. Plus there are five coffee and snack shops throughout the park.”

  “How many guests visit annually?”

  Tawnya didn’t seem to hear and buzzed Nautilus through a miniature Holy Land, the streets cobbled, the walls of stone and clay. Throngs of awed visitors clicked cameras and phones as folks knelt to pray. There were dozens of actors in period costume: a young man riding a burro, the Magi, a Joseph and pregnant Mary, a muscled youth Nautilus took to be Samson, the hair phase. The actors were a big draw for photo ops, probably not a bad gig if you could deal with people hanging off you all day long.

  They passed a vast bowl half sunk in the ground, above it a rubberized fabric stretched tight by ship-weight cables. At the far end was a broad stage and lighting system.

  “An amphitheater,” Nautilus said.

  “It seats twelve hundred guests. We have three plays daily, ending with the Passion nightly at seven. Tickets sell out in advance, but I can get you comps.”

  “Is there normally a charge?”

  “Twelve-fifty for adults. But that’s for the Passion. The other plays are five dollars.”

  Tawnya reached for the steering wheel and Nautilus shot a glance toward her long-sleeved arms, a theory forming in his mind. The streets entwined and led different directions, and then they were past and into a grove of compact and silvery leafed trees.

  “Olive trees?” Nautilus said.

  A hair-bouncing nod. “Olive trees grow particularly well in the Florida climate. At the peak of ripeness the fruit is pressed into oil. It’s available for sale and most people find it perfect for anointing. It’s very blessed since it comes from the heart of Hallelujah Jubilee.”

  As he had several times before, Nautilus had the impression of hearing words read from a script. The cart continued for several hundred feet, stopping before an artificially constructed hillside, a mound rising fifty feet above the flat terrain where a massive wooden boat was nestled into the ground, over two hundred feet of steep wooden hull with a single-story structure on the deck high above. Nautilus saw a door in the side of the hull and a beaten path leading from the door into the fenced pasture beyond, the grass as green as a golf course in spring. A throng of visitors ringed the attraction, gawking and taking photos.

  “The Ark,” Tawnya said needlessly. “There’s a daily parade of animals from inside. It’s like being there when it really happened. People get so overcom
e with the Spirit that they faint.”

  Nautilus looked out into the pasture and blinked in disbelief. “Uh, there’s an elephant in the field.”

  “That’s Ezekiel. We have three elephants. Look past the trees over there … that’s one of the donkeys, I can’t tell who. Everyone loves it when the animals come two-by-two from the Ark. Twenty-one species, including elephants, camels, donkeys, zebras, horses, dogs and cats. The parade is the first attraction of the morning, at nine, the costumed handlers bringing the flock from the Ark to the ground of Ararat.”

  Nautilus pictured being shut inside the ark with a horde of stinking, braying, spitting beasts and figured he knew why it was the first attraction of the day. He looked a half-mile into the distance, surprised to see a tall and slender building, five stories at least, looking like a mine tipple from eastern Kentucky or West Virginia. It was as tall as the cross.

  “That strange skinny building … is it one of yours?”

  “It’s on the property, but it’s not part of the park experience yet. The administrators are always developing new attractions and I know it’s going to be something really exciting one day.”

  If the distant building was on the property, Nautilus realized, the park had to be over a mile in each direction.

  “Who owns the park, Tawnya?”

  “Reverend Schrum started it to give families a place to visit where their values were respected. It’s a non-profit organization, an educational institution. Any fees are for the upkeep, which is ongoing and always a challenge, given the amount of attractions.”

  Rote recitation again. Tawnya continued her packaged soliloquy as they passed various replicated sites: “… a representation of the Wailing Wall … the Church of the Annunciation … the Mount of Temptation … the Garden of Eden …”

  She returned Nautilus to the entrance and handed him her business card. “Anything you need, Mr Nautilus, call me. I’m here to make your stay as perfect as it can be.”

  His fingers seemed to bobble the card and it flapped to the ground. The lithe young woman reached to the concrete, pulling her sleeve two inches higher. Nautilus smiled to himself, his suspicions confirmed, the girl’s wrist encircled by a tattoo of barbed-wire. It explained long sleeves on a hot day: Tattoos were not an image the park endorsed.