The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Betty seemed mesmerized by this friendly stranger. The two of them began a walking tour around the farm, with Betty discussing plans and possibilities, while the others got back to work.

  Rodney and Ben finished demolition of the old roof and removed the final planks, shingles and nails, while Emma and Daniel struggled to scrape off mold, bleached walls and floors, and shoveled and swept debris.

  When Lilly and Betty returned, they chatted like the best of friends. Lilly seemed to know exactly where to insinuate herself so that she wouldn’t offend or startle Betty. At the same time, Betty kept probing to understand who this magnificent stranger really was. Lilly introduced her to the story of her transformation in a slow helix of information, climbing gradually toward her stark and startling claim, that she had died and gone to heaven, only to return to the Earth to help build the new Kingdom. After over two hours of gaining Betty’s trust, Lilly finally revealed this extraordinary claim.

  Betty stood still, her mouth open half an inch, her cheeks slightly flushed. Gradually she engaged her voice, when she could find it. “This is just the sort of thing my grandmother used to talk about, from her little Pentecostal church by the river.” Betty gestured vaguely toward the south. “It all fits, like she said, the Dictator thrown down and the King coming back from Heaven to rule on the Earth.” Her breathy voice carried the awe she was feeling at the convergence of her grandmother’s stories with recent events.

  “The children,” she said suddenly. “She used to tell us that children would be taken up to be with Jesus, if we died, or when he came back, and that we would stay with him forever. Is that what’s happening? Is that where the children are?”

  Rodney and Ben had stopped working in order to catch every word. Instead of the sparks Rodney had feared, Lilly seemed to have won Betty over. Neither of the men had paid enough attention in Sunday school, or had the sort of grandmother Betty described, leaving her reminisce sounding religious and strange to them.

  Then Betty said, “I wish I was still a child. Just think what I missed.” With that, she broke into tears—cathartic, inconsolable tears.

  To Rodney, it felt as if Lilly had pushed hard on just the right nerve, much the way a deep massage reaches tight places and frees them up. Betty’s crusty old heart seemed to break free, launched by this combination of early childhood stories and the magnetic wonder of Lilly’s subtle infiltration.

  Emma heard the crying and came out of the house to investigate. She stopped next to Rodney and stared, not knowing Betty and not knowing how out of character was this emotional display. She looked at Rodney for an understanding of what had happened.

  Rodney whispered. “It looks like Lilly has a convert.”

  The workday ended uncertainly, Lilly comforting Betty and Betty apologizing to her work crew for her loss of emotional restraint. She showed no real regret, however, about what had just happened. Her embarrassment in front of her workers faded against the heart-flushing awakening she had begun.

  Rodney said goodbye to Betty, assured that she was fine and curious that Lilly intended to stay with her. He tipped his hat to both of them, getting in the van after Emma, Daniel and his friends.

  “I never thought I’d see the day when Betty melted under religious pressure like that,” he said, as he backed around in an arch and then swung down the driveway to the road.

  Though she had no more religious loyalty than Rodney, Emma gently challenged his attitude. “Whatever is happening to her, it seems to be real, and she seems at peace beneath all those tears.”

  Rodney just raised his eyebrows and shook his head slightly, still feeling that it all happened too fast. But he didn’t get to stay with that thought long. As they neared the gravel road to Chester Butler’s place, they noticed a string of vehicles parked all the way up to the bridge and beyond.

  Rodney stopped at the intersection and looked at Emma. “I should probably see what this is about,” he said.

  He looked in the back of the van, where Daniel and Chip were taking turns punching each other in the leg, as Socks watched with his head cocked at a curious angle. Rodney said, “Would you be willing to take the kids home and come back and get me in about an hour? I’ll meet you out here.”

  Emma nodded and Rodney got out of the van. Emma shifted over to the driver’s seat. Before pulling away she said, “Be careful, Rodney.”

  He smiled back at her, as if to say, “Careful? When have I ever been anything but careful?” He leaned in the window and gave her a reassuring kiss. All three passengers in the back stopped to watch this and then returned to their sport.

  Seeing Chester’s house so amply filled with visitors shocked Rodney as much as Betty’s emotional deluge. The old hermit had shot at innumerable people for venturing onto his land, over the past two decades. Now he seemed to be hosting a party, or maybe something more likely, such as a revolt.

  Rodney walked the two hundred yards to Chester’s driveway, recognizing many of the cars and trucks parked along the road. The combination of people represented by the vehicles answered his concern about the nature of this gathering. It appeared that Chester had gathered the key conspirators from the area, including the most cantankerous of the anti-government survivors. Rodney could sense a concentration of insurrection sentiment compacted into this most unlikely of places. Chester had always been a loner, never a leader, or even a convener.

  Rodney approached the porch to find a pair of men with automatic rifles posted there. They both lowered their weapons and relaxed, when they recognized Rodney. Hans Bauer and his brother Samuel stood guard outside the gathering. Their presence didn’t surprise Rodney. He counted the Bauer brothers among the enigmatic people he met in the resistance, who seemed to thrive on the insurrection, as if they were made for it.

  Pushing through the front door, Rodney entered a packed crowd, filling Chester’s entryway, dining room and living room. Rodney wedged into the pack of people by the door and pulled his hat brim down a little, not particularly interested in being recognized. His instincts warned him that he would not like the direction this meeting was headed.

  When he settled in, he could hear a man, whose voice he didn’t think he recognized, speaking from the other end of the living room, where Rodney couldn’t see him. Rodney strained and pushed a little, to try to get a glimpse around the stair railing and over the tight crowd. The effort proved fruitless, but he stopped trying when he heard what the speaker was saying.

  “What we have here is a power vacuum, a nation without leadership and maybe even a people without a nation, so what we need to consider is what we plan to do to fill that vacuum, ‘cause, as everybody knows, nature and dictators hate a vacuum and will surely fill it, if we don’t. All this to say, that we are proposing that you organize in this area, to appoint representatives to go to Pittsburgh, for the formation of a new government, this June. You’re gonna have to act fast, if you’re not organized already. But this is urgent, it’s time we set things in order again.”

  A muddle of voices followed, half a dozen people trying to respond simultaneously. Meanwhile, Rodney tried to remember what he had heard about the status of various eastern cities. Major sections of all coastal cities lay under water, from the ocean level rise, and New York and Washington D.C. had been completely destroyed, from a combination of the northeastern asteroid strike and heavy fighting during the war. He assumed Pittsburgh had managed to avoid destruction by earthquake and war, and now represented the best preserved city in the East, if not the whole continent.

  Rodney recognized Will Snyder’s voice calling people to order, “One question at a time. One question at a time,” he said. “Okay, Chester, it’s your house you ask the first question.”

  Chester cleared his throat loudly. “Ahem, well, I thought we was gathered here to plan resistance to this new set of freaks that’s trying to take over right now. Waitin’ ‘til June to go off somewhere and blow a bunch o’ hot air, ain’t gonna liberate us from these aliens.”

>   A large proportion of the crowd responded in support of Chester’s statement. Whoever organized this meeting in this location underestimated Chester’s connections. He had gathered his fellow anarchistic survivalists, who weren’t nearly as interested in forming a new American government as they were in fighting invaders. It would take a great deal of political skill to get these folks on board with any thoughtful civilian effort.

  “Okay, okay, we hear your concerns,” Will Snyder was saying, again trying to settle the crowd.

  That unfamiliar voice rose up again, a strong orator’s voice that Rodney began to think he might recognize. “I understand your interest in keeping this country out of the hands of foreigners and strangers, no matter where they claim they come from, or where they actually come from,” the man said. “To this point, however, we have found no evidence of violence or of any effort to impose any kind of strict rule over any part of this country by these aliens.” He pronounced that last word with a hint of skepticism.

  He continued. “But, whatever their agenda is, we need to get the foundation laid for our own agenda. We need to grab hold of our country once again, so that it’s ruled by its own people, the way it was meant to be,” he concluded. Now Rodney was certain he recognized that voice from radio and television, from before the Dictator solidified his power over North America.

  Will was trying to silence another verbal uprising and trying to facilitate more questions or statements. Presumably, he was looking for someone who might be more sympathetic. To Rodney’s surprise, he heard a very familiar voice next.

  “I hear what Chester is saying and know lots of you are real concerned about these strangers,” said Pete’s clear, high voice. Rodney picked out the top of Pete’s head in the crowd, by the direction of his voice.

  “And I hear what the Congressman is saying about the need for political organization,” Pete said. “There’s no reason we can’t have both. But the tradition of this country is that the political comes first and then the government directs military action. Otherwise we just get a military dictatorship.”

  Will had succeeded in finding a more amenable voice, but that didn’t change the makeup of the crowd. This time the furor rose to a higher pitch and it started to look as if a brawl might break out.

  By now, several of the people around him had recognized Rodney, and they began to prod him to speak up. Perhaps rightly, they perceived him as the sort of person who could appeal to both the hardcore resisters and the ambitious politicians. Finally, someone nearby yelled out. “Hey, Captain Stippleman is here. Let’s hear what he has to say.” The man, a former sergeant that served under Rodney in the resistance, waved and pointed to where Rodney stood. Again, numerous voices around him urged him to speak.

  Never a willing public speaker, Rodney hesitated. Then he heard Pete over the din. “Rodney, are you here? Rodney, where are you? Speak up man.”

  Even the booming voice of the former Congressman joined the campaign, saying, “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Rodney gave in, letting himself be ushered to the bottom step of the staircase that stood at the center of the gathering. He stepped up and, from there, he could see the former Congressman from Nebraska, whose voice he had recognized, looking considerably older than the last time he had appeared on TV. Rodney also saw Will Snyder and caught Pete’s eye. Voices from all over the room called his name and others shushed the ones calling out.

  Taking a deep breath, Rodney launched into a speech that he had not prepared. “Alright, alright, I’m late to this meeting ‘cause I wasn’t invited,” he said, getting a few chuckles.

  His instinct was to give the sort of motivational talk he gave to his troops before a battle, the only successful speeches he had ever made.

  “We do have a totally new situation, as far as I can tell. And clearly we need to figure out what to do with this new situation. But I’m pretty well convinced that the same old solutions are unlikely to be the best response. I suspect that we have about a hundred differing opinions in this room about the strangers who’ve shown up among us, the last few months, and about whatever is going on over in Jerusalem.” A phalanx of voices rose, forming a stern murmur, at that point.

  “I’ve never been in favor of shooting first and asking questions later,” Rodney said, raising his voice over the growing din. “And I’ve never liked going into a fight when I have no idea who the enemy is.” Again, voices rose and it was clear that much of the crowd was with Rodney. “I know it’s hard for a soldier to let go and turn things over to the politicians, when we’ve seen things get so thoroughly screwed up by politicians.” All around him approving voices replied. “But, from what I’ve seen, I can’t think of a better time for talking. We need information, we need to establish just what’s happening, and we need to figure out what we do in response.” Growing discontent crackled around the edges of the gathering now, as Chester’s friends began to understand Rodney’s perspective.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s not time yet for shooting or bombing. It’s time to gather intelligence and form a strategy.”

  The discontent grew.

  “Then,” Rodney said at high volume, “then, we will take up arms to fight off anyone who is oppressing us, anyone who is doing harm to us and to our families and to our nation. But only then.”

  It was the closest thing to a political speech he had ever made. The house erupted in applause, though a considerable minority raised their fists and shouted protest. Rodney could see Pete smiling at him and clapping. Rodney stepped down from the stair, feeling self-conscious.

  As the noise began to abate, Rodney could hear the Congressman’s voice boom enthusiastically. “I sure hope you can talk that man into representing you in Pittsburgh this summer.”

  Rodney took a deep breath. He had done it, stepped right into it. He could feel his dream of a simple, peaceful life slipping away in the current of that meeting, and of the brand new world around him.

  The remainder of that meeting blurred in Rodney’s memory, as he struggled internally with the entire proposition of active political involvement. His internalized resume included soldier and carpenter, and nothing about politics. Additionally, he was growing some small loyalty to the Jerusalem people, and he couldn’t feel settled about purposefully opposing them, given what he had seen and what he was beginning to believe about them.

  The back patting and handshakes, meeting Congressman Hagen, the knowing look from Pete, and talking with Will Snyder—one of the most active anti-government organizers during the war—all of that slid past unremarkably. Soon, the hour was over and Rodney pulled himself away from his well-wishers and into the remaining daylight.

  He absorbed the fresh evening air, free from the confines of the crowded house, his brain still buzzing. Emma stood by the van, near the treacherous bridge. She didn’t look impatient, but she quickly sensed something strange about Rodney.

  Rodney looked at Emma, enjoying the very sight of her, the same way he was enjoying the clear air.

  “What happened?” Emma asked, unwilling to wait any longer.

  “Not the kind of meeting I expected to see at Chester’s house,” Rodney said. He gestured for Emma to go ahead and drive them home.

  “Is that good?”

  “Good for Pete, and for Congressman Hagen and Will Snyder,” Rodney said thoughtfully.

  He proceeded to describe everything, from the Bauer brothers guarding the door, through to his temptation to escape a rapid political draft.

  Emma drove and listened, and then asked a single question, when he finished. “Do you want to go to Pittsburgh?”

  That simple question didn’t imply that Emma had missed the complexity of the situation, nor the ambivalence with which Rodney wrestled. Rather, her simple question served to prompt him to push past the divergent voices, to the ones inside him that would guide him to the right decision. She emphasized the word “you” in her question, and Rodney accepted her assistance in muffling the external mo
tivations.

  After half a minute, Rodney nodded. “Yeah, I want to be in on this.”

  “Good,” Emma said. “I’m glad.”

  And that was it. Rodney’s decision and Emma’s endorsement were established on a ten-minute car ride.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Having served as the de facto sheriff in town, for most of two years of chaotic upheaval, and having won the support of almost everyone he fought beside and fought for, Rodney stood in a better political position than anyone in the area, that is, if he had any political ambitions at all. Pete had tried to find Rodney the morning of that meeting, after hearing from Will Snyder that Congressman Hagen would be there, and also knowing that Chester’s friends would likely be in the minority, if Pete had his way. That Rodney had stumbled across the meeting, kept Pete laughing for days. “There is a God,” he said, in the midst of his reverie.

  Daniel liked the idea of Rodney venturing into politics. He had secretly collected stories and impressions of Rodney’s legend, as told by his neighbors. But he expressed his excitement in typical teenage fashion, teaching Chip to salute Rodney like a Nazi loyalist, lacking any sense of taboo around the dictator of a previous century.

  Over the following weeks, Rodney attended several meetings, all drawing a large representation of area residents. His selection as delegate to the congress in Pittsburgh passed easily, along with Will Snyder, Sara Teller and Pete. Via email communication with Congressman Hagen, and other organizers, their region—which included about forty percent of what used to be known as Iowa—won the right to send a delegation of four. Determining nation-wide representation would have required many months, given the patchwork of inhabited territory that remained from the old United States. But the organizers trusted a network of the Jerusalem loyalists to assist in the initial calculations. As a result, numerous skeptics broke from the process over aid from the “aliens.”