Love Her Madly

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  I said, “Fair? I am about to fax you a copy of a gag order. The agent delivering the original is probably walking up your driveway. This conversation never happened.”

  He said, “Oh, wow. Sweet. Cool—”

  I didn’t let him get to awesome. I told him to get a pencil so he could write down my fax number.

  * * *

  The New United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming had an address which happened to be a box office in San Yglesia, Texas.

  Called up my map.

  San Yglesia was a backwater on the Rio Grande. It was twenty-five miles south of Laredo. I’d practically been in their backyard.

  La Missión de María en Cielo de la Ascención was built fifty years before La Mission San Antonio de Valero, more popularly known as the Alamo. But the Pamaya Indians living in what became San Yglesia preferred their own ways to what the Spanish priests were inflicting upon them, so before the mission was consecrated the Pamayas built a dam just upriver, and the first big storm that came along covered the priests’ and their own huge labors with a lake.

  A couple of centuries later, ten years ago, the family that owned the land decided to drain the lake and watched, shocked, as the Mission ascended toward the heavens just as its namesake had. They sold off what they thought was a crumbling pile of adobe and the fifty boggy acres surrounding it to Raymond Tiner. Tiner’s offer was contingent on a report of the engineers he’d hired. The engineers came to find what he’d suspected, that the water had in fact preserved the mission; the lumpy mass was one-half loose muck that could be scraped off. The building underneath was sound. The engineers were awed by the fluke of nature—they didn’t know about the rebellious and clever Pamayas.

  Tiner spent his family’s fortune making the building habitable, the land arable. There were several articles in a Texas newspaper about the holy man who resurrected a mission. A local priest wanted to reconsecrate it, but Tiner got a court order preventing him, on the premise that the mission hadn’t been consecrated in the first place. The Pamayas knew what they were about in more ways than one.

  Within a few years forty people lived in the mission, supporting themselves as the old original Shakers had: They were a capitalist venture using profits from their handiwork to maintain a farm, livestock, two sets of living quarters (one for men and one for women), a communal kitchen and dining hall, an infirmary, a pharmacy, and a hall for worship. They became entirely self-sufficient in very short order.

  I called Joe. He knew by the tone of my voice to put off a squabble. He went to his files. The New Shakers living in San Yglesia were still there. Unarmed and peaceful.

  He said, “They built a wall around the complex. Don’t like to be disturbed. Very industrious folk who leave their neighbors alone. And unarmed, so we leave them alone. You’re not joining up, are ya, honey?”

  “No. They’re celibate.”

  “I know. Hence the industry.”

  I didn’t fill in what wasn’t in his reports. That the complex the New Shakers lived in was a mission. Because if I shared what I now knew, the mission would be stormed. Rona Leigh had to live if a fair trial instead of the one she had were to determine her guilt or innocence and then render an appropriate sentence. Fair having nothing to do with whether or not she was a martyr, the daughter of God, Sister of Jesus. Rona Leigh dead would make her more a saint and martyr than she was already fast becoming. Tiner and his Shakers dead meant we’d have a lot of work cut out for us trying to find answers that they alone had. What we needed to do was go in there, grab Rona Leigh, get out with no loss of life to any of the conspirators, or to us—and then arrest everyone.

  All we had to do was to gain the target. When least expected, when the guard was down, send in a minimal force, grab her, and get out. If my director felt we could get in and out he’d at least consider it. Not Joe. He wouldn’t.

  “Poppy, I appreciate that you suffer from insomnia, but couldn’t this have waited till morning?”

  I breathed softly into the phone. “I just needed to talk to you. To hear your voice.” Then I told him I was sorry I’d hung up on him before. “I meant to say goodbye, but I panicked that I’d miss buying the last Time on the newsstand.”

  He said, “I wish you were here.”

  I said, “Me too,” a lie.

  I waited till morning to call my director. I asked what exactly his plan was once we knew the whereabouts of Rona Leigh. “With me here and you there, I want to be aware of what’s happening.”

  “Plan?” He was agitated. “Poppy, either there’s a quick surrender or there’s a bloodbath. We’re talking about people who sprang and are now harboring a convicted ax murderer. The same people who tried to kill a few Texas Rangers by dropping concrete blocks on them from an overpass. Who could easily have killed you while they were at it. We obviously aren’t pussyfooting around on this one.”

  “A lot of people will think you’re crucifying Christ.”

  “Fuck ’em. If we’re lucky, we can do it fast and quietly before any cameras arrive. But if the cameras find us, people will get to see us warn Rona Leigh and her buddies to come quietly. They’ll see it on the news after whatever happens happens.”

  “And if she was kidnapped? If she had no part in the escape? What if she didn’t commit murder?”

  “Here’s what you and I are committed to doing: Protect the innocent, not the guilty. She has been convicted of murder, and the people who got her out of the Gatesville prison are plenty guilty. And you’re the one behind my crime lab. You say it’s not possible for someone of her physique to do what she was convicted of. All right, then. If she agrees to come peacefully, I will guarantee her a reprieve so her case can be reopened. I’ll have my man, or maybe your man, Joe Barnow himself, wield a trusty bullhorn as soon as we find her. If she’s being held against her will, if she’s been brainwashed—whatever—we’ll have scoped the place so we’ll know that. Hopefully, we’ll be successful at getting her, or get her kidnappers, if that’s the case, to surrender her and themselves as well.”

  “A bloodbath is the last resort, then.”

  “Of course, Poppy. Listen, we’re all freaked out by this, but no one has gone off the deep end. Where the hell is she, Mars?”

  “Sir, what about the Rangers?”

  “They’ll be in on this. They weren’t in on Waco. They’ll be in on this.”

  “What if the Rangers decide they’d like to replay the Alamo, only win?”

  “Because I will convince the Rangers and I will convince the ATF that a quick strike will do the trick.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’m working on it. My job, remember?”

  “And what if the Rangers locate her first?”

  “Then Scraggs will call the shots. That’s the arrangement. They won’t be first, though. We will.”

  I reached Joe. We held the same conversation. His version included his complete trust in me. He said, “I’m not going to humor you. Soon as we know where she is, the place gets surrounded by your guys and us, and the Rangers if she’s in Texas, where you’ve convinced us she is. We give them three minutes to come out. If they don’t, we fire tear gas. A ton of it. Also smoke bombs, so even if they have masks, they can’t see. We don’t cajole them, we don’t beg them, and most of all we don’t do anything that gives the press time to get there.”

  “All right, Joe. So if they don’t come out and you’re forced to start firing even though they’re blind as bats, how many killed on our side are you estimating?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. I don’t need it.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “The answer is, None. Armed or unarmed, we’re trying something new.”

  “What?”

  “A gas. It makes you woozy. Not quite blotto. Then it dissipates immediately without affecting anything more than twenty yards away. It’s fast. Absorbed through the skin. Those who are affected come right around. Couple minutes. With handcuffs on, is the idea. The onl
y downside is that if you’re woozy, anything you’ve just eaten you’ll probably throw up. Hope someone comes up with vomit-repellent clothes real soon. I remember when I was a rookie patrolman a few lives back. First job was scooping up drunks out of alleys. You were always covered with vomit.”

  “Joe, this is a joke, right?”

  “No, it’s not. No different from the rationale behind tear gas. We’ll just have to make sure they’re refocused before we arrest them and read them their rights. I mean, they’ll have broken the law. When you refuse to obey a police officer’s command, the officer must interpret that as a threat. The immediate action an officer takes when finding himself in a life-threatening action is crucial in terms of the officer remaining alive. We’re going to try this plan and then see what happens as far as legal action is concerned, which is what you’re thinking, I know. But—high risk, high gain.”

  “Joe, you’re talking complete bullshit. You’re going to gas them?”

  “We took the same risk with stun guns, if you think about it. Figured that would be unconstitutional for sure. Wasn’t. This’ll just be another test case.”

  “But what if they have explosive devices lying around. You can trip a switch even if you’re woozy.”

  “Naturally we’ll scope the place first.”

  “The Sister of Christ will spot you and warn them.”

  No comment.

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic this time. I’m just trying to—”

  “Since when did you go from defending what’s right to kidding around? Since when did you stop trusting me?”

  “I trust you. But I’m worried. What if they’ve strapped explosives to themselves?”

  “Another chance we have to take.”

  “The apostles all died for Jesus. That’s not sarcasm either. I’m trying to make a point, to make you see—”

  “Sweetheart, she ain’t Jesus. Or his sister either. Period.”

  “Joe, is there any way to get someone inside?”

  “Inside of what?”

  “I mean, once we know where inside is? Talk to them. Talk to her. Get a guarantee for a new trial in writing. Offer to—”

  “I don’t have to tell you the penalty for escaping from prison. In Texas, it’s probably torture.”

  “If she’s innocent—even if she’s not innocent and just suffered an inequitable trial—then she had the right to escape from prison seeing as how she was in the process of being executed. Well, not the right, but—”

  “Damned straight, not the right.”

  “Maybe a human right. I wasn’t talking legal rights.”

  I’d tired him out. He raised his voice. “Poppy, we’ve got a convicted killer on the loose who is influencing a lot of people. This is a new kind of deal. The situation is escalating. We want her alive so that we don’t create a martyr. You want her alive because you think she might be a victim. The idea behind the plan is to keep her alive. What the hell is your problem?”

  I told him I had a headache. I did.

  * * *

  Scoping the mission wouldn’t take long.

  I made a reservation on a flight to San Antonio. I’d have a two-hour layover before the next flight to Laredo went out. I ordered another ticket under another name for that one.

  I’d stopped at a bookstore and bought a couple of books on the Shakers. I learned that the Shakers were not only industrious, they were also pathologically hospitable. Because their creed instructed them to be so, and for practical reasons too, since they couldn’t depend on offspring to promulgate their faith. They pretty much welcomed lost souls to their door by feeding them, giving them a place to sleep, and allowing them to see what the Shakers were about. Historically, the first thing they did of note was to set up a soup kitchen in the middle of Dublin during the famine. They saved more Irish lives than emigration did.

  So basically, they offered people a productive life of industry and goodwill instead of sex. They simply felt children weren’t the only thing a person could produce.

  In the United States, they invented the flat broom and the washing machine; they created the first national seed catalogs, illustrating the little packets of seeds with the end product; they came up with treatments for illnesses and diseases that were later copied by the orthodox medical profession. And they experimented with drugs. They made salicylic acid, dried it out, and turned the powder into little concentrated tablets, which they’d discovered was an antidote to minor pain. Today, drug companies do the same thing. The Shakers were taking aspirin a hundred years before the rest of us.

  They were capitalists who started out seeing if gardeners would buy seed from them, and when they made a fortune doing that, they moved along until they were mass-producing their trim, clean furniture. With that, they became totally independent—what they didn’t grow or make they were able to buy. Business managers far ahead of their time.

  When your sexual energy is suppressed, it doesn’t just go away. It’s displaced, as my shrink friend has assured me. And that explained the extraordinary ingenuity and wit of the Shakers. Too bad for them there weren’t any more of them left on earth except one very old lady. I didn’t consider Raymond Tiner’s band of followers Shakers. According to the little old lady, they didn’t count. They were misled, that was for sure. But they were topnotch capitalists all the same. Got a little sloppy, though—forgot to pull their product from the shopping channel.

  I threw the books in the trash can at the San Antonio airport.

  * * *

  I’d never seen the Alamo but I’d certainly seen pictures. That’s how I was imagining Tiner’s mission, and that’s exactly what it looked like.

  I stood in the shade under the spreading branches of a live oak that had to be a hundred years old. It was on a little rise that had not been affected by the Pamayan flood. The mission itself might have been built by Disney; it was perfectly square-cornered, its outer layer of new adobe smooth and burnished in the sun. It was surrounded by an adobe wall twelve feet high, which meant no one could see into the grounds unless they chose to climb the hill to the live oak. A dirt drive maybe a half-mile long made its way from the town of San Yglesia to the mission.

  On the other side of the mission, the snaking line of vegetation was the same as what I’d seen outside my window at La Posada. The Rio Grande was just a few yards from the rear wall behind the mission.

  Two men were sinking thin metal posts every few feet along the top of the wall. The men were dressed alike. In the bright Texas sun, they wore white shirts, black pants, and gray vests. Black hats, too, exactly like the photographs of the Shakers in the books I’d read. I guessed they were getting ready to string barbed wire.

  A car came down the road. There was a gate in the wall, and it opened for the car. Two men just inside the gate were also in Shaker clothes. The man who got out of the car was not. I’d say it was Vernon Lacker.

  I walked down the backside of the hill the way I’d come up and went to the pickup I’d rented. The road from Laredo skirted the hill. I’d parked the pickup just off the road. I got in and drove into San Yglesia. The town was a sleepy, dusty little place. The only part of the mission visible from the town was the bell tower looming over the walls. The wood houses facing the street were dilapidated. The biggest one had a sign: SAN YGLESIA HOTEL. I guessed there might be a vacancy.

  I got my stuff and went in. A young woman behind the desk was reading Vanity Fair. She looked up at me and did a bit of a double-take. I said, “I’d like to check in and stay for the night.”

  “Would you now?”

  “Yes.”

  She got out some papers and spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with a pen. When she did and I’d checked in, I said, “Is there a way to get to the mission other than from the street out front?”

  “You mean the temple?”

  “The temple?”

  “It ain’t a mission, because a priest ain’t been in it. Fact is, they call it a temple, so we do too. Planning
to join, right?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Honey, get a divorce instead. You want to walk out on a bad man, fine, but don’t think you’ll be any happier with those folks. Some guy kicks you around, you end up with a limp, ’course you leave. But those people, they work like dogs and they don’t ever come out. They believe in separation of the sexes. Don’t exactly throw parties. You’re too young and good-lookin’ to be buried, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Best you just go on upstairs and freshen up. When you come down I’ll have a nice little sandwich for you out on the porch. You can watch the wind blow the dirt and have a think about what you’re doin’. I’ll throw in a bottle of Lone Star, on the house.” She handed me a big iron key. “It’s the only one I got at the moment, so make sure you give it back when you check out. Gal who works here tomorrow won’t think to ask.”

  I said “Okay,” took the key, and thanked her. “If it turns out I want to stay a couple of days, will you have a vacancy?”

  She laughed. “You can throw that worry away. Been on the road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listenin’ to the radio?”

  “No. It rattles.”

  “You ain’t heard the latest on Rona Leigh, then?”

  I felt a little lurch in my stomach. “No.”

  “’Nother tape come in. Got it right here in the VCR. Saved it for my friend. Care to see it?”

  I did.

  She gestured for me to come around the desk. She had a little TV on a shelf under the counter. She played the tape for me. Rona Leigh’s voice was much stronger. The feeding tube was gone. She quoted from the parable of the Prodigal Son. Then she recited one of her own about the inevitability of goodness never being able to hide long. Then she said that even though she had not been willing to die for the murder of Melody and James, she would accept dying for Jesus, if that’s what it took to pass along His Holy Word. “Just as I accept the thorns of Jesus’ crown which represent his own bitter suffering, I also do not forget the crown’s green leaves, symbolizing the hope I nurture for the reward awaiting me. After the darkness of the winter of my present life, I will at last enter the happiness of the eternal spring of heaven which blessed God grants me in his precious mercy.”