The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “So I says, ‘yes,’ and the little guy just sort of puts everything back just right.” Warren laughed and cried now, at the same time.

  Still fighting to get the words out, he continued. “And Connie screams like she seen a ghost or something and I stand right up and feel my face and Connie’s crying now and just blubbering and reaching for my face. So I grab her and hug her and she holds my face and I bend down and grab that little kid and hug him. And he’s laughing, though he seemed real serious before. And the girls with him, both bigger than him, are clapping and they start this song again in a language I didn’t recognize.” Panting and laughing, Warren finally concluded. “We were like some kinda drunken party there on the sidewalk by Elm Street.”

  Rodney and Warren hugged and laughed and Rodney touched Warren’s face. He remembered what it looked like not long after the injury, half the jaw missing, his face swollen all out of shape, his eye squeezed shut in that swollen cheek. What a mess it was; and not even half better after several surgeries. And now, here it was perfect.

  The two men separated, a bit embarrassed by their uninhibited celebration, but deliriously happy all the same. Rodney told Warren the story of his fingers being restored, and Daniel’s injured hand fixed, and they laughed together some more.

  This event signaled a serious change for Warren, who had been a resistor from the start of the Dictator’s reign, and beyond. He had maintained skepticism toward the immortals right up to the point of his healing, but all reservations vanished at that point. Even the most cynical person would have difficulty seeing nefarious motivations in such generous touches from the Jerusalem people, and Warren, with Connie in his ear, could never be thoroughly cynical.

  The two war veterans bid each other farewell and restarted their vehicles. Rodney had yet another chasm to cross now to get back to practical business. When this thought formed in his head, however, he began to laugh hysterically. After all, the business he had to attend to now involved a bull named Ferdinand, who needed some lady friends.

  When he arrived at Stolberg’s farm, Rodney had to wipe his eyes, drink some water and sober up, in order to make a respectable presentation to folks he hardly knew.

  Like many of the resisters, Bob Stolberg, and his late wife Marlene, had migrated in and out of counter-cultural communities before the Dictator’s reign. Bob, once a campus radical on the West Coast, gravitated to organic farming after he met a pretty farm girl who was seeking adventure in California. Later, when the earthquakes and rising oceans devastated so much of that state, Bob counted himself doubly lucky to have followed his love half way across the country, to Iowa.

  Marlene died during a local firefight between government forces and resisters, the closest open combat to Somerville itself. In a tragic irony, Marlene and Bob had always been pacifists and Marlene died from a “friendly” bullet, fired by local rebels that hid briefly in the Stolberg’s barn. It only took one directionless piece of hot copper and lead to end Marlene’s life. The extent to which Bob’s life ended then, remained something for Rodney to discover. The pieces of this story that Rodney knew sobered him more, as he approached Bob’s front door.

  Before he put a foot on the step, Rodney heard a voice from the barn.

  “Hey, who’s that? What you want?”

  Rodney stopped and turned to his left. He saw Bob emerge from the shadow of the big white barn. Over fifty-years-old, Bob’s hair had nearly disappeared from the top of his head, since he was not interested in using one of the modern remedies for baldness. He still wore the ponytail that had been his trademark in that part of rural Iowa, but now it was more gray than black. Bob’s Native American heritage showed in the color of his face, as well as his hair. Without spending much time out in the sun, he maintained a bronze complexion, and his dark eyes harkened to tribes in the old Southwest, whose names school children learned, but whose languages and customs had faded away.

  Bob and Rodney had never met formally. They had seen each other, and knew gossip about each other, but held little more in common. The peacenik from California had no particular affinity for the famous warrior.

  “Rodney Stippleman,” Rodney said.

  “Yeah, I recognize you now,” Bob said, wiping his hands on a rag as he approached.

  On close examination, Bob looked old and tired to Rodney, his face lined with sadness and worry, his demeanor weary and worn down. The two men shook hands.

  “What can I do for you?” Bob asked, slipping into dairyman mode. He controlled a huge portion of the local dairy market and had made the most of it, without alienating anyone by price gouging.

  “Well, we have a unique problem out at my farm, on the east side of town,” Rodney said.

  Bob nodded, squinting in interest.

  “We had a bull come wandering into our yard, looking for someone to scratch his head,” said Rodney.

  Bob smiled, the first sign of life Rodney had seen from him. “You don’t say. A tame bull, in good shape?”

  “As far as I can tell,” Rodney said. “I don’t pretend to be an expert, but my uncle raised beef cattle in Nebraska, and I’d say our visitor is a pretty good specimen. My fiancé thinks he’s from a dairy herd.”

  “Is that right?” Bob said, clearly intrigued. “You have any idea where he came from?”

  “No idea at all,” said Rodney. “I thought you might know of who would have a prize dairy bull around here, maybe east of town.”

  Bob scratched the considerable stubble on his chin, his inheritance from the German side of his family. “No, I wouldn’t say I could guess where he come from over there. I mostly know organic farms and don’t know of any organic dairy over that way.”

  “Well, we can’t keep him. We’re not set for livestock and this guy’s gonna get lonely over at my place, I’m thinkin’,” said Rodney.

  “So you wanta sell him to me?” Bob asked.

  Actually, Rodney hadn’t even considered a sale, but he knew Bob was doing well financially. “Oh, I don’t expect any cash for him,” Rodney said. “But maybe we could trade some dairy delivery for a time.”

  Bob nodded. The barter economy of this wild and unincorporated period suited him well. “That sounds like something we could work out.” How about you come in for something cold to drink and we talk about it.” Bob gestured toward his front porch.

  Rodney smiled and nodded. “Sounds good.” He followed Bob up the concrete front steps to the door of his tidy white house with black trim.

  In the dim kitchen, over glasses of whole milk and homemade cookies, the two men negotiated a trade and became friends, against all expectations. Politics aside, Rodney and Bob turned out to see things on a very similar plane, and spoke honestly about what they saw. The peaceful kingdom into which Rodney felt himself being drawn, made the two all the more amenable to each other.

  As they shook hands and promised to keep in touch, and not just about milk and picking up the bull, Rodney sought to make a bit more of a personal connection. “You close to your neighbors out here, Bob,” he asked, wondering if the old widower was lonely.

  “Ain’t many of ‘em left these days, y’ know,” Bob said. “But some of them strange folk that go to Jerusalem moved into the old Erickson farm over the hill, there. They’re pretty interesting. Don’t think I can figure ‘em out, but I like some of ‘em, especially this one fine looking woman with long black hair.” He seemed almost in a dream state when he spoke of her. “Been thinking I should see about getting’ to know her a little bit, maybe.”

  Rodney chuckled at the transformation in Bob when he described his new neighbor. They said their goodbyes and Rodney drove off, wondering whether the immortals could have any kind of serious relationship with ordinary folks. It didn’t seem possible, but neither did most of what he had seen and heard about the immortals so far.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Just four days before he was to leave for the congress in Pittsburgh, Rodney learned that he would be flying out of Des Moines, with t
he other area delegates. Enough runway space had been cleared, and traffic control established at the bedraggled airport, so that jets could reliably land and takeoff. The change of plans stirred up Rodney’s, already brittle, nerves over the whole trip.

  To keep his mind off the uncharted territory ahead, Rodney found lots of work that he could do with his hands. The barn had begun to look like a going concern, instead of a potential deathtrap, and he began to search for someone to level the driveway and lay on a layer of asphalt.

  As June approached, days did become a bit warmer, but still gentle and pleasant. Rain continued to visit several nights a week and Iowa never looked more lush and verdant than that year.

  Steve had been hired to teach at the high school. He made plans to move back into town when Rodney took off for the congress. The months on the farm had tanned his skin and returned some of his weight, especially with the dairy deliveries that began after Ferdinand’s move to Bob Stolberg’s place. Steve had enjoyed visiting the farm, but had no desire to live outside of town long-term.

  Like so many people in those days, Steve felt harassed by loneliness. This arose from the loss of his wife and son, of course, but also from an insidious silence about which few people spoke. Many of the internal voices that people had grown used to had disappeared when the new Kingdom embraced the globe. Most of the resisters who remained in the Earth simply thought of it as a deeper loneliness, explaining it in terms of external circumstances.

  Emma and Rodney had addressed that void by connecting with each other, a connection they would celebrate through their wedding at the end of June. Steve knew he had to find similar solace and expected better prospects in town than out on the farm. Rodney’s great luck at meeting Emma did not make Steve jealous, but it did inspire him to find his own soul mate among the remnants of the human race that had gathered in Somerville.

  As his mother suspected, Daniel had found a girlfriend in town, a new arrival, named Tina Parker, a twiggish girl, with dark olive skin, black dreadlocks and very large, dark eyes. Emma met Tina by accident, in town one day. She noticed her son going into Randi’s computer store with a lithe young woman. She considered keeping her distance, but gave in to the urge to meet Daniel’s new friend.

  “Hello,” Emma said, as she entered the store and Randi looked up from her computer screen.

  Daniel and Tina were looking at some equipment, with the intention that Tina would replace Tina’s current mobile device. Daniel’s head snapped around at the sound of his mother’s voice and his face turned instantly red. Tina kept talking to him about the hardware options she was considering, not noticing the new object of his attention, until he spoke.

  “Mom?” he said, with an adolescent squeak in his voice.

  Tina looked at Daniel, noted his bright red face and then turned to greet Emma. The two women connected immediately. Emma’s confident openness won Tina and Tina’s spritely wit and passion captured Emma.

  After the initial flurry of talking over each other, making introductions and apologies, Emma said to Daniel, “How long were you going to keep this young lady a secret from me?” Her tone was more teasing than scolding.

  Randi laughed in the background, keeping her head down, in an effort to stay clear of the awkward encounter.

  “I just wanted to wait for the right time,” Daniel said.

  Tina smiled at Emma and raised her thin eyebrows high. She wore long gold earrings in her free-swinging earlobes and a headband to hold her dreadlocks back off her ears. Emma knew right away why her son was attracted to this beauty. But some part of her grew curious why this girl, who seemed a year or two older than Daniel, was interested in him.

  “So how did you two meet?” Emma asked Tina.

  Tina looked at Daniel who signaled her to feel free. She said, “I was arguing with a girlfriend in front of Jay’s store, a couple of months ago, when Daniel pulled up on his scooter. He heard us and instantly took my side in the argument.”

  “What were you arguing about?” Emma asked lightly.

  “The Jerusalem people,” Tina said. “Daniel calls them ‘the immortals,’ and we both think they’re good and doing good things for the world. But my friend was all suspicious and negative.”

  This intrigued Emma, who had heard Daniel argue with Rodney dozens of times, taking the suspicious side in their good-natured dialogs. Rather than conclude that Daniel had merely posed as a Jerusalem supporter to win the favor of this beautiful girl, Emma assumed that Daniel’s arguments with Rodney were simply intellectual explorations and mental exercises, as she had often suspected.

  “He told you about his hand, of course.” Emma asked.

  Tina nodded and took Daniel’s hand in hers. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it. I wish I could have seen that. My mother was healed of a fever, from an infection, by a man we met—one of them—but it wasn’t as dramatic as what Daniel described.”

  They spoke for a few minutes more, about family, about Tina’s hometown in Ohio and about the farm. Daniel glowed a bit when he saw how much his mother and Tina liked each other. Any fear that he harbored about their meeting vanished. By the end, Emma extracted a promise from Daniel, in front of Tina, that he would bring her home for supper soon. They parted with hugs all around and Emma winked at Randi before she opened the door to return to her shopping.

  Tina had dinner at the farm the night before Rodney’s trip. She arrived on the back of Daniel’s scooter, a backpack full of her mother’s homemade cornbread over one shoulder and a helmet over her dreadlocks. She swung her long, brown legs off the back of the scooter and waved to Steve and Rodney on the porch. With supper ready, the men had come outside to await the arrival of the much-anticipated guest. Emma joined them a moment after she heard Rodney and Steve saying “hello.”

  Rodney enjoyed meeting Tina and felt happy for Daniel, though he had only begun to develop a father’s protective investment in the young man’s success. The conversation echoed past him, however, as he struggled not to think about the journey ahead of him and the important task he had agreed to join.

  Just before dark, they drove Tina home, Rodney and Emma in the front of the van, Daniel and Tina in back with Chip, trying vainly to engage him in a human conversation. Rodney and Emma said goodbye to Tina at the van and Daniel walked her to the door. Rodney managed to distract Emma so she missed whether the teens exchanged a goodnight kiss, though the real question in her mind was what kind of goodnight kiss it would be. She punched Rodney in the shoulder when she realized what he had done.

  “You men are always conspiring together,” she said.

  That night as Emma and Rodney held each other in bed, they talked late into the night, about the trip, what to expect and how it would be for them to be apart for the first time since they had met. Rodney fell asleep with this conversation in his head and spent much of the night dreaming of losing track of where he had left Emma, then Emma was Anna, Daniel was Davey and Steve was lost, as well. He woke in the morning, emotionally as tired as when he went to bed.

  Steve said goodbye in the morning, packing most of his belongings into his car and heading to town. Emma and Daniel made the drive with Rodney up to the Des Moines airport, which greeted them with a large cargo jet nose down in a nearby field, still left from a crash that happened over a year ago. Rodney and Daniel thought it was a funny advertisement for an airport. Emma did not appreciate the humor of it.

  Jay and Jenny drove together with their spouses, Sara and Pete, to meet Rodney at the airport. Will Snyder was already in Pittsburgh, selected as one of the pre-congress organizers. After long hugs and goodbye kisses, the delegates boarded a medium-sized jet on the runway, using the stairs, as in previous generations of commercial flight.

  During the flight, the three delegates spoke of their task and ideas they had prepared for the formation of a new government. But Rodney remained glued to the window, trying to see what he could of the country from the air. A flight attendant, about Rodney’s age, noticed his fascination
with the signs of war and disaster on the ground and she stopped to comment.

  “Flying over makes it all seem as long ago as it is far away. I’m sure driving through would be an entirely different thing,” she said, thoughtfully.

  The congress had been planned for Pittsburgh because that city had won a sort of disaster lottery. It had slipped past much of the large-scale destruction that wasted most of the larger cities in the country, from the earthquakes that destroyed L. A. and Chicago, to the bombing of New York City and Washington D. C., to the sinking of Miami and New Orleans, and the burning of numerous cities, including Atlanta and Minneapolis. Pittsburgh had survived two pandemics, an asteroid strike in Ohio and the second American Revolution, by a complex grid of factors that, in the end, amounted to chance. Yet it could not avoid the loss of the majority of its citizens by disease, imprisonment, war and execution, and then evacuation from the Earth entirely, at the end of the age.

  Representatives of an estimated twenty million North Americans, including a small remnant of Canadians, gathered in the sparsely populated, but fully functional city in Western Pennsylvania on a summer day. In all, nearly one thousand representatives had been elected or appointed, and most of them arrived before the opening of the congress.

  Given the late Dictator’s penchant for fanfare and ceremony, this gathering opted for a plainer and practical approach. They met in the Civic Center, built less than ten years before the war, which easily accommodated the nearly two thousand people involved in this historic event.

  Pete, Rodney and Sara found Will when they arrived by taxi at the Civic Center. That the flight had been uneventful and taxi service was running to downtown, made Rodney feel optimistic about the prospect of the country restoring its infrastructure. That the war had destroyed the light rail line from the airport to downtown did nothing to dampen his optimism.