by Jax Miller
“As we finish here today, I ask for a special prayer for the safe return of our sister in Christ. Our daughter, Rebekah. Go in peace.” Virgil makes the sign of the cross with the edge of his hand. “And may the Lord bless you and protect you all.” A uniform “Amen” fills the room. Virgil waits for a member to walk to the camera and give the nod, the nod that indicates that the podcast has ended, the filming is over.
An occasional clearing of the throat echoes from the corner. The noise of an infant crying from the back pulsates through the church.
“Let us prepare for our second sermon. Let us show our true colors to the Lord.” The flock of worshipers reaches under their seats as Virgil disappears into the back. In his office behind the altar, he locks the door behind him. His long, rectangular office is eggshell white with a large poster of his face hanging over his mahogany desk. In it he grins, a set of pearly dentures from thick, ham-ish lips. A farmer’s tan he acquired as a child out in the soybean fields seems to have permanently stained his skin. His mousy brown hair with impressively not one gray strand borders a pale tan line on his forehead from straw hats worn in the summer sun. The windowsill behind his desk holds several versions of the Crucifixion: some gold, some wood. Reverend Virgil Paul begins to masturbate.
It’s the power trip he gets from a growing audience that submits to him. The thought of being chosen by God himself to be such a faithful servant so high in the ranks of Christianity. Virgil tries to stay quiet so no one can hear. He thinks of the young and blossoming Michelle Campbell who lives next to him on the compound, at the very end of the street.
He opens a wardrobe and takes out a makeshift whip made of an old belt now hot-glued with thumbtacks. As he nears his climax, he wraps the belt around his thigh and pulls, the sharp points making him bleed onto the floor. The closer he gets, the harder he pulls until he finally finishes. This mortification of the flesh is his punishment for sin, his penance and atonement. He recites: “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
He removes his coat, rebuckles his pants, and grabs a long purple robe from the wardrobe, the color signifying royalty. He steps into it, weak from the climax but ready as ever to save as many souls as he can, to prepare them for the Day of Freedom.
He remembers back to a time when he thought he knew so much about God. Virgil supposes many think that upon leaving seminary. And that was before Gabriel, the archangel and messenger of God, came to him in a dream and told him to recruit in preparation for the Day of Freedom. For God told him the exact minute of the day when Christ will return. And now he looks forward to the arrival of FreedomInJesus, Freedom Oliver. A sense of gratification rushes over him, that God allowed his reach to stretch across the country and all the way to Oregon. Time to carry out God’s work, and God’s work through him was amazing. Part of Virgil’s mission was to send out volunteers to stand at the supermarkets, gather the people, make the masses grow. Aim for the runaways, the drunkards, the whores. People like this had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. What better people, then, to lead to Christ and to this very church.
But the recruiting had to stop; Gabriel the archangel even said so in one of his dreams. It was attracting too much attention from the townspeople. Besides, he couldn’t just have his congregation come and go as they pleased, lacking that kind of discipline. But for the Pauls, Virgil had to put an end to the recruits out in public. And aside from the Paul family, no one was allowed out.
When he returns to the pulpit, the people have transformed. They all wear white robes. “For it says in Revelation chapter six, verse eleven,” he shouts to the group. They continue together, “ ‘…and white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.’ ”
Twenty-four deacons, including Goshen sheriff Don Mannix, sit in the front rows and continue reciting scripture with gold foil crowns on their heads: “Revelation chapter four, verse four: ‘And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.’ ”
Virgil continues: “Let us pray.” The congregation goes to their knees. From the back, a man with a loud voice yells. He speaks in tongues, a language no man can understand. Halalas and tikabobs pour from his mouth and the people pray. They listen. They agree.
In the front, a woman who claims the gift to translate tongues. She yells, “The Lord speaks this message to those who shall inherit the kingdom of God: The Rapture is upon us. We are the chosen ones, the fruits of the vine.” The people utter their amens and praise-the-Lords. Two more members go to the aisle, where their bodies thrash and jerk on the ground. Praises follow as the woman continues: “The storms this week: they destroyed houses, homes of the people of the world, wicked people. It was God’s way of showing He is coming back soon.” Virgil shouts an amen, fist in the air. “And we were spared, because of all we’ve done for the Lord. But God warns us that we are on the brink of losing our seats in heaven.” The man shouting in tongues ceases with the babbling.
“This is not the last of it!” Virgil shouts, eliciting cheers from the people. “Another storm is on its way, says the Lord. For He told me in a dream: a bigger storm, a more catastrophic storm, is on its way, a storm that none of us are yet prepared for.”
—
The sermon is three hours in. Behind the row of deacons, in the second row, are two dozen visibly pregnant women who try to hide their squirms of impatience. Behind them sits Carol Paul, a tall woman with short, curly black hair and hands that no soap could wash the lemon scent from. In fact, calluses on her hands were tinged yellow from hours of making homemade lemonade day in and day out. The tie of her blue headscarf chafes under her chin from the sweat. The fluttering up and down of paper fans offers no respite from the foul-smelling sweat of people who are allowed to bathe only once every two weeks. But Carol, the obedient wife that she is, must be doing only one of three things: singing hymns, praying, or smiling. She has to urinate but continues to hold it. Leaving in the middle of one of her husband’s sermons, well…she should know better than to show such disrespect toward Virgil.
She feels the air on the sweat of her lap as five-year-old Magdalene wakes from her nap. She rubs her eyes and stares off as her father continues with his sermon. Carol adjusts the blue headscarf on her daughter’s head and fixes her light brown pigtails. “Did Rebekah make it to church today?” Magdalene asks as she rests her tired head on Carol’s shoulder.
“Not today, sweetie.” Carol lifts her hands in praise.
Magdalene does the same, waving her arms back and forth over her head. “She’s in big, big trouble. Right, Mommy?” Carol looks down and smiles to Magdalene, peels the matted pieces of hair from her face.
Carol and Magdalene join the other parishioners in speaking in tongues as the row of expectant mothers slide their robes over to expose their bellies, tight and stretched, skin full of limbs and fluids and living tissue that swim in utter darkness. The reverend places his hands on the bellies as he walks past them, muttering blessings to the unborn in a language only God’s chosen can understand. He anoints them, using oil to leave signs of the cross with his thumb, using the hand he just jerked off with. Some of the women convulse with praise; others faint. God has a way through Virgil, that’s for sure. Michelle Campbell, one of the expectant mothers at fifteen, jumps to her feet.
“Look, Mommy.” Magdalene pulls on her mother’s robe and points to Michelle. In a loud whisper: “Sister Michelle went pee-pee in her pants!”
“A miracle is upon us,” Virgil yells. The songs of praise become louder and louder until Magdalene has to cover her ears. Virgil instructs Carol to run back to the house and get what’s needed to perform the birth. “A gift from God is on its way!” S
he grabs Magdalene’s hand and races out of the church.
Carol and Magdalene’s matching black loafers skid against the dirt road, their feet covered in dust. Carol squeezes her daughter’s hand and hurries farther from the church, the sounds of praise becoming syrupy vapors in the day’s humidity behind them. The lanes are lined with small white bungalows-turned-apartments, one-bedroom homes that sleep half a dozen, easily. At the end of the road, farthest from the compound’s entrance, is the Paul house, an old double-story country house one would imagine being the topic of the Southern Living magazine dream. A copper rooster of a weather vane glows still in the autumn’s anomalous heat wave.
The house smells of lemons and baked Dutch apple pie. “Do you remember where Mommy’s doctor’s bag is?” Magdalene’s pigtails bounce in the sunlight. “Go on, I’ll be right back.” Carol runs down the hall and slams the bathroom door behind her, shimmying out of her underwear before she’s halfway to the toilet, about to burst. She grunts with relief, a moment to herself so she can breathe; moments alone are few and far between. She hears Magdalene drag the doctor’s bag down the hall before she knocks on the bathroom door. Carol pulls her clothes back together, damp with perspiration and tarnished with dirt. She opens the door and looks down to Magdalene, who smiles with pride on bringing the bag half her weight to her mother. She expects her mother’s gratitude, but she doesn’t get it. “Go wait outside, I’ll be out in just a minute.” A look of disappointment sweeps over Magdalene’s face; her head hangs low. She drags her feet out to the porch.
Carol places the doctor’s bag on the bathroom sink and unzips it. She traces a stethoscope with the tips of her fingers, remembers a time when she was at the top of her class at the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. She remembers the sin associated: the clubs when the bass of bands like INXS and the Smiths would move her. The boys she’d steal cigarettes from and make out with back in her dorm room. The marijuana she and her sister used to smoke behind their parents’ backs. But that was nearly thirty years ago, many moons into the past. That was before she found God, who saved her from her evil ways. Before she found Virgil.
Carol looks in the mirror; she looks at an entirely different person. The crow’s-feet plant themselves unkindly around her eyes these days. She thinks about how Virgil was right all those years ago, though she didn’t see it right away: that doctors don’t heal; only God has such power.
At the bottom of her doctor’s bag is a faded, half-ripped sheet of lined paper.
Dear Carol,
I’ve only imagined that you still think of me, of your family, though we’ve had no contact in nearly three years. But I am alone these days, I’ve lost you to a man who only loves himself, a man who uses God as a tactic for evil. I just wish you could see this the way I saw it. And who can be expected to live with such loneliness? There’s been so much that’s happened, so much I wish I could tell you. But you’re not here. And who knows if you’ll be there to get this letter, to go to my funeral. I just miss my sister. I miss my best friend. Tell Ma and Pa that I love them, and that I’ll always be with them.
Always,
Clare
Carol doesn’t notice a tear that makes a streak on her cheeks through the dust she collected outside. She remembers when she first received the letter half a decade ago, when she could smell her twin sister’s perfume on it. And while the smell disappeared only weeks later, Carol sniffs the note in a hope that she can detect a residual trace. But she doesn’t. She never does.
“Mommy, come on,” Magdalene yells from the porch through the screen door, breaking Carol from her trance. “Sister Michelle is still sitting in her own pee!”
Carol shoves the letter back to the bottom of her bag and zips it up. Under her breath, she says, “You’re not with Ma and Pa. You’re in hell with the rest of the suicides.” She looks once more into the mirror and continues to speak to her dead twin sister; fury stirs within. “You’re burning for eternity in a lake of fire, weeping and gnashing your teeth.”
—
At the top of the altar is a sky-blue plastic kid’s pool etched with cheaply designed tortoises and dolphins; underneath it, a large, opaque tarp. Michelle Campbell climbs into the pool, aided by Virgil. Everyone else is on their knees, arms stretched out and following Virgil in a way that reminds Carol of sunflowers following the sun; the people follow Virgil. The people follow the light. As Carol approaches the altar, Magdalene sits back in the pew; the reverend gets on his knees to help Michelle onto her back in the kiddie pool. He bounces back to his feet. “If you are between the ages of ten and twenty, please come forward.” His bellows make people assume his lungs are made of iron.
Michelle becomes exposed; Carol immediately recognizes that the baby’s crowning. Blood-tinged amniotic fluid flows from Michelle and into the pool, around Carol’s knees. The teenagers cover their mouths with disgust as Virgil continues to preach. “To the youth: this is the result of Eve’s sin.” Virgil’s nose, up as he shouts. “And this agony shall be yours if you lust for one another. And when one part of your body makes you sin, you’re better to cut it off and throw it away. Better your right hand than your entire body go to hell!”
My name is Freedom and I’m getting the hell out of Painter. Shift’s over. Act normal. I’ll make a false call to the police station because I know Mattley’s on duty tonight. I’ll instruct him to go to my house and mail out my letters, in the event of something happening to me before I reach Kentucky. Time to go. I have to go find the daughter I’ve never known.
A heaviness drags behind me as I go to clock out of work on this cold, rainy night. Everything’s new in perspective. The things people say from here on out tonight will be meaningless, won’t mean a thing when I’m burning miles across the country. The place is packed, but I look around with the knowledge that I’ll never see it again. I’ll never see Oregon again, thank Christ. Walking out, I feel like a prisoner on that fearful final journey from a cell to the lethal-injection chambers. Somehow, I get a bad feeling about Kentucky. And then I see the Viper boys. Fucking great. It scares me to death, the possibilities of what’s happened to my daughter.
“Freedom,” they all yell out to me. Stay away from me. Don’t ruin my last motherfucking walk, pricks. I ignore them, but it doesn’t matter. The fattest of them, the one who left a cigar burn on my shoulder the other night, knocks chairs over on his way to me.
“Whatta you want?” I ask, not that I give a flying fuck. And then it happens, of course, because why should my last walk be my one plan of perfection? He takes his fat fingers and grabs my snatch through my ripped jeans, full force. And suddenly, the world turns red, the blood boiling behind my eyes. All I hear is Carrie from behind scream for me to get off the guy. But I can’t. I can’t control the rage. I see the broken bottle of Corona in my hand, covered in blood. It’s only after that that I realize what I’ve done. I look around. I’m surrounded by hardened criminals and bikers who back away in fear. And now I calm down and see I am feared.
I look down at the Viper; half his nose is sliced off. “You ruined my walk,” I scream at him, not that he’ll know what the hell I’m talking about. No one will. He whimpers like a baby. Pathetic. I look to Carrie and then over to Passion, who stands on the foot of her stool at the back of the bar. Not even Carrie knows what to say. Silence on top of something by David Bowie. I drop the bottle. It thuds to the ground. I have to go. I have to get out of here. I have to move. But then I hear sirens. “That was quick.” I wipe the blood from my face and walk away. I look into Carrie’s eyes. “I’m sorry.” But really I’m not sorry for cutting that scumbag’s face off. It’s a future apology for when I don’t show up to work tomorrow, or ever again. Who wouldn’t do the same? I head for the rear exit, back down that same dark hall that smells of crack rocks and antibiotic piss. And I can feel the flashback, I can. Those hanging lamps of interrogational purgatory beckon me back to the ’90s. Not now, not fucking now.
I run through the
hall. I run to escape the flashbacks of my incarceration in New York. And now I see the police lights at the end of the hall, like a light at the end of the tunnel, something akin to the dying dream of a fugitive. On the walls around me lights flash red and blue, and still I run toward them to escape that hallway. The dark hall starts to close in around me and there’s a figure at the end. I run faster to it. And I make it. I’ve run into the arms of Officer Mattley. I crack.
He catches me as I sob and fall to my knees on the dirt near the icebox. The rain surrounds us and Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” bleeds from the pub to where we are. Between the tears and the rain, I feel the stickiness of the blood run away from my face. Mattley holds me tight in his arms, his mouth in my ear. He tells me everything is going to be OK. If only I can believe him. Still, I grab the front of his shirt and wipe the blood and tears all over his uniform.
“Take me home,” I cry. “Just take me home.”
“Freedom, what’d you do?” he asks as he holds me like the child that I feel like. I can’t control the tears.
I show him the bloodied bottle. “Arrest me tomorrow. But tonight, just take me home. Take me home once more.”
“You know I have to bring you in,” he says and sighs.
“Tomorrow, I promise.” I stay still, cradled in his arms. “Just one last time, take me home. There’s one thing I have to do.” I think about my suicide jar. Maybe that plan is better. I’ll tell him I have to run into my apartment for just a minute. I’ll take the pills. I’ll let him arrest me and take me down to the station. I’ll tell him everything I’ve always wanted to tell him. And then I can die. I can die close to Officer Mattley.
