The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  When they pulled up the driveway, Rodney stopped just a few yards from the road. He suddenly realized that the county road past their house had been paved, and here he found that his driveway had been paved, as well. The smooth, black asphalt stopped him. He sat, open-mouthed, looking at the beautiful driveway and then looking at Emma for an explanation.

  Emma explained. “A man named Walter came by and asked if we wanted it paved. He said he worked for the new government and was instructed to repave every piece of asphalt he could find, public or private.”

  Rodney raised one eyebrow. “I wonder what he meant by ‘new government?’ This was an immortal?” Rodney asked.

  “Yes, and he said that he worked with another man named Claudius. I knew I wouldn’t forget that name.”

  As Rodney finally drove up the driveway, Daniel remembered a remarkable discovery he had made. “Oh, when Tina and I were riding my scooter from the house into town, one of those immortals passed us, running on foot. Tina told me later that her mom had met a couple of those people who get around on foot just for fun, running at ridiculous speeds, just ‘cause they can.”

  Rodney laughed. “I wonder if Steve knows any of those folks. That sounds like something he would do.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Emma said. “I hope you don’t mind. I invited Steve and a friend over for dinner, to welcome you back, and Tina and her mother, as well.” She sounded apologetic. “It started as just Steve and kinda blossomed from there. Is that alright?”

  Rodney turned off the van and looked at Emma with a smile. “It’s fine. I’d love to see all of them. You and I can catch up later,” he said in an insinuating tone.

  Daniel cleared his throat as he got out of the back of the van, “Hey there’s a minor present. At least wait for me to get out of earshot.”

  Rodney and Emma laughed. Once inside, Rodney cleaned up and then lay down for a nap before guests started arriving, once he saw that Emma had the food under control. She was preparing a totally vegetarian meal, having discovered that more and more people were converting and that the supply of meat was dwindling.

  Emma called up the stairs when Steve arrived. Fortunately, Rodney was already awake, shaving. When he came downstairs to the foyer, he met Steve and his new friend, Marney, a slim, younger woman with medium brown hair, frosty blue eyes and a remnant of freckles on the bridge of her nose. She taught at the high school and had met Steve there. By coincidence, Marney was the daughter of one of Steve’s professors in graduate school, though he had not met her back when he was in school.

  Not long after, Tina arrived with her mother. Emma had met her mother already and came out to greet her, as Rodney met her for the first time.

  Tina made the introductions. “Rodney, this is my mother Hela, Mom this is Daniel’s stepfather, Rodney.”

  Hela shook Rodney’s hand and then hugged Emma. She was a tall and slender woman, with gray-streaked wavy, black hair, fine North African features like Tina, and slightly darker skin. She spoke softly but looked squarely in Rodney’s eyes, communicating a confident calm with her eyes and words.

  Supper started ten minutes later, after Rodney and Daniel led a tour around the farm, complete with stories of fantastic visitors of all sorts. Rodney marveled at the garden, lush and flowered, with the colors of several different vegetables peeking here and there; green beans, tomatoes and corn among them.

  All of the vegetables at the table came from Emma’s garden. Rodney beamed with pride at his farm wife. She blushed at his praise and gave him a look that reminded him that they still had a wedding ahead of them. Steve picked up on their exchange and pulled the issue out into the open.

  “So the next big thing is the wedding, right?” he said, as Rodney passed him cooked carrots.

  Hela perked up at the mention of the wedding.

  Rodney answered. “Yep, we’re on for June 28.” He looked at Emma for confirmation.

  She nodded, trying to stay focused on the meal.

  Rodney sensed her tension and tried to offer a reprieve. “It’s gonna be real simple, with me being off at the congress and so little time to get stuff together.”

  Steve took this as his cue to begin to unwrap a surprise he had been working on in town. “Well, you know, there’re lots of people in town looking forward to something to celebrate, and it didn’t take much to get ‘em to pitch in and help,” he said, leaving his audience longing for more.

  Rodney stopped dishing. Emma stopped passing food.

  “You’ve been up to something?” Rodney asked, a note of caution in his voice.

  Steve laughed and kept carelessly piling food on his plate. Emma noticed a smile on Daniel’s face.

  “You’ve both been up to something,” Emma said to her son.

  Daniel and Tina giggled. Hela nudged Tina with a question on her face.

  Steve took responsibility. “It was my idea to rope Daniel in, so don’t get mad at him if we overstepped our boundaries.”

  “What have you done?” Rodney asked.

  “Let’s just say, you two just need to show up, and know that everything is taken care of,” Steve said.

  “Everything?” Emma asked.

  “Well, all the stuff you didn’t do already. I talked to Jay and Jenny and they filled me in on your arrangements, and I checked in with Phil, the preacher, to see what he knew.”

  Rodney and Emma both stared in surprise, trying to imagine what Steve had done.

  “I’m telling you now, instead of waiting to spring the surprise, ‘cause I want to make sure I haven’t done too much. There’s still time to tone things down.”

  This apologetic tone only demanded more intense scrutiny and a new level of urgency in Rodney and Emma’s questions. But, as Steve described what he had arranged, it sounded more and more like the best wedding gift they could imagine. He mentioned cleaning up the church, arranging for tables and chairs, ordering food with Daniel’s insider help, hiring a band, with Jay and Jenny’s help, and leaving only the intimate details of the wedding service itself to the couple and the preacher.

  Marney, who had helped with much of it, looked at Emma, sitting across from her, trying to discern the meaning of her shocked silence. When the tears started flowing, Marney said, “Is it okay? Are those happy tears?”

  Emma smiled and nodded.

  Hela looked at Tina. “You knew about all this?”

  Tina grinned and nodded.

  “Wow, that’s kinda scary that you could keep such a thing a secret,” Hela said, impressed at her daughter’s maturity.

  Steve had taken his role as best man to a stunning level and Rodney was all smiles.

  “Hey, nobody’s eating. I didn’t mean to wreck the meal,” Steve said, deflecting the attention. As soon as he found out he didn’t need to apologize, he didn’t want any more focus on what he had done.

  Rodney caught the look of sheer admiration on Marney’s face just before she returned to dishing and eating. She piqued Rodney’s curiosity.

  “So, Marney, where are you from?” he asked.

  She smiled at Rodney, glad to answer questions. “Well, originally I’m from the Western Suburbs of Chicago, where I was born and raised, until my Dad got a job at Kent State University, in Ohio. I did high school there and then went to Northwestern, back in Illinois, for my college. I liked it there, so I stayed after school, until the earthquake hit and so much of the area was wiped out. And just when we saw the first signs of recovery, we had to run from the Dictator. I went with some friends up to Northern Minnesota, near the Canadian border. And that’s where I was when the war ended. Then I headed down here for a warmer climate.”

  Steve laughed. “Wouldn’t have believed Iowa would fit that description back when we were kids.”

  “I know,” Marney chimed back. “But Northern Minnesota is pretty far up there and, well, you know about the way the climate has changed.”

  Daniel piped in. “You suppose the whole globe is just getting warmer? Or do you think it’
s different in different parts?” He didn’t direct the question to anyone in particular.

  Hela spoke up. “Well, I have relatives in Tunisia and they say it’s raining there almost every day, just enough to make the desert bloom all the time. So it’s not warmer, but it’s wetter and that’s good for them.”

  Rodney stayed in interview mode, not distracted by Daniel’s meteorological curiosity. “You must have grown up here in North America,” he said to Hela. “But you have relatives still in North Africa?”

  She nodded, swallowing a bite of food. “Yes, my parents came to this country after democracy opened things up in Tunisia. But my aunts and uncles stayed there. I was born in New Orleans.”

  Daniel picked up the meteorological discussion again. “So it’s raining in Tunisia and the desert is growing plants and we have warmer weather here and we also have no big storms. When was the last time you heard about a tornado or hurricane? I checked the Internet, and weather is getting so boring, that people are dropping it from their news sites.”

  Emma teased. “There goes your hopes for a career as a weatherman.”

  Daniel rolled his eyes and looked at Rodney for some help. “I’m serious. I think this means that the Jerusalem people are actually fixing the weather, making things safer and better for people, I mean more pleasant.”

  “Well, maybe the question is whether it’s the people, or if it’s the King that’s doing it,” Rodney said. “I think if you ask them, they would say it’s the King.”

  Daniel nodded and dug back into his supper.

  Tina asked, “Do you always have these kind of conversations at your table?”

  Daniel mumbled. “Yes,” through a mouthful of carrots.

  Rodney chuckled, “But not usually with our mouths full.”

  The evening provided a low key, and interesting, welcome home for Rodney. It was good to be home.

  In the days immediately following his return, Rodney attended to the carpentry business and wedding preparations. He cornered Steve and extracted more details regarding what to expect at the wedding, requesting only the smallest adjustments and thanking his Best Man for the surprise.

  With the exception of a few brief phone calls with Will, and one email from the President, Rodney was able to set aside politics in the run-up to the wedding. He paid special attention to Emma’s mood, pregnant and stressed about a wedding, at the same time. But her stress level didn’t compare to what Rodney had seen from women in the past, and they both found space to look forward to the wedding, with very little worry to taint their anticipation.

  People from all over Somerville looked forward to the wedding. That Rodney held a place of esteem for most residents, and affection for many, contributed to the interest. However, the prospect of a community-wide social event generated most of the energy for the wedding, which explained the growing scale of preparations, surging well past what Steve had expected.

  Not until the day of the wedding, did Steve realize the extent to which his idea of boosting the size and festivity of the event had gained a momentum of its own. Only then did he discover that their mortal neighbors and friends were not the only ones looking forward to a chance to celebrate.

  The Baptist church had been one of the biggest in town before the war. With the pews removed and chairs packed into the sanctuary, it looked as if they would seat about four hundred; ten times as many as Rodney and Emma had initially expected. On that sunny, June afternoon, however, a crowd of nearly two hundred people stood outside of the church building and over five hundred squeezed into the standing-room-only sanctuary.

  In the dressing room for the groom’s men, Daniel opened the door a narrow crack and whistled. “Man, that’s a lot of people. It’s jam packed.”

  By this point, all of the windows had been cranked wide open and the screens removed, allowing for an opening through which people outside could see the ceremony. A few of the attendees who could not get into the church went instead into the huge white tent constructed on the vacant lot next to the church, where the parsonage had once stood. Now it looked like a well-trimmed, little park and a rented party tent dominated the center of that park.

  When Steve saw how beautifully that lot had been restored, as well as the size of the tent and other provision for the reception, he started to suspect that some of the immortals had lent a hand. He had not thought of contacting them for help, in part, assuming such a human affair would not interest them. But he didn’t account for their intense love of celebrations and their innate support for marriage.

  When the time arrived, Phil knocked on the dressing room door and called Rodney into the sanctuary. The two men took the traditional place in front of the congregation for groom and officiate. Rodney blushed when he saw the huge crowd packed into the sanctuary and then realized that many more strained for a peek in the doors and windows. His shock escalated when he noticed the number of immortals that stood around the edges of the room. They apparently felt compelled to leave the seats for the mortals, but no such compulsion about making sure all of the neighbors got a place inside.

  As the music began, from a full electric organ and a miniature orchestra on the stage behind Rodney, a cheer went up from the people outside, which ignited a cheer inside, as well. Again, Rodney blushed. He kept telling himself to relax, that the excitement wasn’t really about him. Even standing there, waiting for Emma to begin the processional, he remembered a comment he had heard from many people in the last several months. They had spoken of a craving to be with people, of loneliness, even an absence of familiar internal voices. He thought of that urge and attributed to it this overwhelming turnout.

  With the traditional processional music playing, Emma started down the aisle, accompanied by Jenny and Sara. A hush settled on the crowd. Then, when the music paused for a moment, Rodney heard the first stirring of what grew to a roaring ovation, as his bride arrived next to him. The preacher, Phil, was laughing tearfully.

  Rodney and Emma both swayed under the influence of the intoxicating air. They each struggled to stay on their feet, fighting back tears and holding both hands between them to steady each other.

  The crowd quieted again, with an excited anticipation, waiting to hear what Phil would say. He stopped laughing, smiled at the crowd and at Emma and Rodney and began the service.

  “Isn’t this magnificent!” he said. Applause broke out, with shouts of agreement.

  Emma and Rodney looked at each other with wild questions in their eyes. Rodney was shaking his head at the thought that Steve had inflated their quiet little wedding to this.

  Phil continued. “What joy, to celebrate the love of two people together with so much of the community. What a happy occasion to gather with friends and with strangers who will soon be friends. There is no greater declaration two humans can make than to declare their love for each other, held up in the embrace of their whole community, and looking to a future of fruitfulness and blessing. This is an optimistic declaration; this is a confident statement of commitment and of hope.”

  Behind Rodney, stood Steve, behind him Pete and then Daniel. Tina had spread flowers down the aisle, as, what Daniel called, a “senior flower girl,” and she stood behind Jenny who stood behind Sara, who stood behind Emma. Jenny sobbed audibly, smiling and sniffling between sobs. Others joined in chorus with her, mostly women, but men as well, overcome with the emotion of the event.

  The natural high of it all blotted many of the details from Rodney’s memory immediately after it happened. There were songs and readings and numerous spontaneous demonstrations of joy and congratulations. In one of his sillier moments, he expected to turn around and see the crowd doing the wave, as they used to do at sporting events when he was a kid. But the funniest thing he remembered was the sight of Pete crying his eyes out. Never could he have imagined his good friend in such emotional shambles at anybody’s wedding.

  Rodney remembered being deeply inspired by what Phil said just before the vows, but after the service he could
n’t remember a word of it. He was glad he would see the video later. When they finally repeated their traditional vows to each other, the place erupted into shouts, cheers, applause and spontaneous song, as the couple kissed and cried and laughed together.

  When the noise died down enough for Phil to boom his superhuman voice over it, he gave instructions regarding the reception. The wedding party paced lightly down the aisle, as the crowd grew excited at the prospect of a more open and roomy place to celebrate. The immortals along the walls facilitated the crowd’s departure from the building by simply passing through the walls, freeing up the aisles for the mortals. Daniel nearly tripped and fell flat on his face when he saw their disappearing act, Tina saving him from tasting the carpet.

  The party spread across the church’s yard, into the street and all around the tent next to the church. Neighbors brought their own chairs when the chairs provided were all filled. Ambitious partiers created a space for dancing in the street and the band Steve hired played familiar tunes that Rodney and Emma liked.

  The happy couple danced for two songs and then took their place at the head table, under the tent. The food that Steve had arranged would feed everyone in the tent, but auxiliary sources emerged, via the hands of both mortals and immortals, all around the formal reception space.

  Rodney stared for a while as two of the immortals, whom he didn’t recognize, as they joked and enjoyed punch and lunch, courtesy of the invisible hand of the party-starved community. He had wondered more than once whether the immortals would eat and drink. That party answered this unspoken question. Eventually, Phil joined them at the head table and did justice to the creative fare that Steve had arranged. As Steve predicted, no one complained about the absence of meat served under the tent and there was little evidence of meat consumed by the ad hoc partiers outside either.