Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

by Joanne Proulx

  I grabbed the envelope off the floor and sprinted back to the hall. My hand shook as I pulled one of the tickets out and held it up so she could see it.

  “The White Stripes. Come. With me. Please.” I pressed the ticket into her hand and curled her fingers around it. And I was so close then, I could reach up and push her hair back from her beautiful, destroyed face. “Please.” I could lean right up against her. “Please.”

  She closed her eyes. I settled myself into her and her into the wall. I pressed my lips to hers. She turned away, so I kissed her neck, her cheeks, her hair. I took her head in my hands and licked tears from her eyelashes while her breath rushed hot across my skin. Finally, she kissed me back. Slowly at first, just a slide of wet lips on mine, but when she wrapped her arms around my neck and opened her mouth, God, I devoured her. I ground my hips into hers, I pulled up her skirt, I ran my hands up her thighs, over her ass, while a thousand I love yous poured from my mouth.

  Faith was fumbling with the button on my jeans when the phone rang. Shrill and insistent, it choked the hall. She tightened up. Her hands fell away. I tried to ignore the phone, tried to keep going, but when the ringing stopped, a sharp click cracked the air and a weepy voice fluttered from my father’s new answering machine.

  “Luke? If you’re there, can you pick up? Please pick up.”

  Everything—my hands, my lips, my brain—everything but my breathing stopped. My testosterone-charged panting was accompanied by sobs snuffling out of the machine. Faith was perfectly still against me.

  “Luke? Please pick up. I thought you could come over and maybe we could—”

  That “maybe we could” sprung me loose. God, I freaked at what might be coming next. I leapt up the hall, crashed into the table. With a muted thud, the receiver bounced on the carpet, dangling from its springy cord. The voice disappeared from the hall. I snatched up the phone and hunched over the table.

  “Hello?” I tried to sound normal, but I didn’t. Most of me was still with the girl up the hall—my fingers were still between her legs, my heart still pounded against hers—as Astelle whispered in my ear.

  “Luke, can you come over?” She’d stopped crying, but I could tell she was fighting to speak. “My mom’s gone. To work. But she found my backpack. She took everything. Luke? Are you there?”

  A hard, stifled “Yes” was all I could manage.

  “I’m locked in. And I’m sick. I’m really sick, Luke. I need you. To come over here.” Her voice rose. “Can you bring me something? Anything? Okay? Please? Okay?”

  “I thought you were in the hospital.” I tried to keep my voice low and steady, but it echoed through the silent house.

  “No. No. Can you come?”

  I said what I had to to get her to hang up.

  I set the phone down gently, squared it up on the hall table, before I turned around. Faith was still there. I wasn’t sure she would be. Her skirt was hanging neatly in place and her eyes were hard. Lying mute on the floor between us, a crumpled envelope and two concert tickets.

  When she slammed out the door, I followed. I followed her right to the car. I thought she’d just get in and drive away, but she spun round, her hair, her teeth, her eyes flashing in the sun.

  “Can you tell me one thing, Luke?” She was quivering mad. “I want to know what I ever did to you.”

  I put my hands on my hips and hung my head. The button of my jeans was still undone. I closed my eyes. After Astelle and Fang and a couple of deadly lists and a road full of frogs, the answer to her question seemed stupid and weak even to me, but I said it anyway. “You called me Stan.”

  Faith waited until I got up the nerve to look at her before asking, “When?”

  “At the dance.” The gym, dark and crowded and full of Meg’s sweet voice. “When we were dancing.” Her lips moving up my neck, leaving a trail of wet kisses behind. I’d pulled my hips back so she wouldn’t feel my hard-on. And then her mouth was against my ear and everything else—the gym, the crowd, the music— disappeared.

  As I stood there on my front lawn, I tried to keep my voice factual, emotionless, so I could finish, but the anger that had abandoned me at the rock came back to turn my sentence mean. “You kissed me and you said, ‘I love dancing with you, Stan.’”

  Faith looked away then, but only for a second. “Listen, Luke, I know you’re not Stan. I’ve always known that. But that night I was drunk and I made a mistake. Probably because I was happy and I felt good. Like I did when I was with him. And I’d felt like that before when I was with you. You know that? I’d felt so happy.” The breeze rushing across my front lawn shook her skirt. “But that doesn’t matter now. I’m not happy now.” She yanked the car door open, was halfway in before she stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. “You were right about one thing. I don’t have a clue who you are.”

  My face burned at that. My heart burned at that.

  “Just some fucking loser, right?” She gave me a tight smile and slid behind the wheel. When she slammed the door, a wedge of white cotton dangled from the door onto the wet pavement and an engine roared to life.

  She ran right over the bucket. Dirty, soapy dead-frog water splattered her skirt and trailed the Sunbird down the driveway, down the street, out of my life.

  I WAS VERY POPULAR for the remainder of the afternoon. The phone just wouldn’t quit. First my parents from Paris. They were having a great time, bien sûr, were on their way to the Loire Valley and might not be able to call for another couple days, so if I was there would I please pick up. I did. They didn’t seem to notice I could barely speak, didn’t seem to hear me gag when they asked if I’d found their little gift in the freezer. Then Astelle called back, sounding truly, desperately sick. Every time the phone rang, I prayed it would be Faith, feared it would be Fang—bawling, rope in hand—but it never was; it was Astelle, always Astelle. Finally, I decided it would be easier to just do what she wanted than to go slowly insane at my place.

  So I grabbed my board and headed out, but to be honest, I was a bit of a mess. I was a mess when I went into Burton’s and picked up one of my unclaimed Trazon prescriptions and I was a mess when I came out. It definitely wasn’t a good time to run into Slater. I wasn’t exactly feeling sociable, and when he started bitching about his free One Drum shirt being the wrong size, well, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to smash my fist into his fucking face. I heard the bone in his nose pop, felt it crack, slip sideways. Still, he was lucky—seriously, he had horseshoes up his ass that day, man—because I was so fucked up it would have been nothing to beat him to death with my skateboard right there on Water Street.

  Instead, after one punch, I dropped my arms and let the kid who’d tried to kill me back in third grade do it again. He didn’t disappoint. He hit me over and over again. He knocked me to the ground and kicked me in the ribs and banged my head against the sidewalk a couple times, while the SUPPORT OUR TROOPS banner strung across Burton’s fluttered overhead and Astelle’s faded face smiled from the front window. Dwight had his hands around my neck, he was already squeezing, by the time a few concerned customers finally came rushing out of the pharmacy and dragged him off me. Everyone started pressing in, trying to get a look at my injuries, but I pushed them away and jumped on my board and took off, fast.

  So I wasn’t just a mess, I was a fucking bloody mess when I got to my new girlfriend’s house. I decided to shove the pills through the mail slot and split, hoping she’d take the whole bottle at once and never call me again, because, let’s face it, her timing was pretty fucking bad. I think I was bawling by this point, there was probably a lot of blood and snot and tears all over my face, and I was staggering along that empty street past blank brick walls and mute birds and dying trees when, like a bolt of cool lightning, another death flash hit.

  I dropped to my knees and disappeared into a burst of light, of life, of joy, a single breath, a lone heartbeat, one pure and fearless note. Then suddenly the life was over. The note was gone. And the silen
ce left behind was overwhelming. Infinite. I searched for some kind of echo, for a residue of sweetness or strength or grace, but there was nothing. Nothing. Nothing but me.

  I lifted my head then and screamed, a terrified, horrified scream.

  I guess the only person who heard me was Pastor Ted. He’s the one who found me, crying and bleeding and screaming to God. He’s the one who helped me to my feet, who led me up the stairs, who guided me into his windowless church.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When I stepped into the church that day, propped up on the Pastor’s arm, I thought I was stepping through a couple of sloppily painted, standard-issue doors, the kind they sell at Home Depot. I didn’t know those doors were actually some sort of portal into a narrow, parallel universe where rules are carved into tablets of stone and ideas haven’t changed for a couple thousand years. Had I known, I would have worn a toga.

  Instead, I was sporting a tattered T-shirt, courtesy of Dwight Slater, and while I might not have realized I’d just left the Technicolor world behind, I did know one thing: I wanted my life to change. Which was lucky, because hey! Pastor Ted wanted exactly the same thing. In fact, while I’d been fucking things up over the previous seven months, he’d just been waiting for me to show up so he could realign my life. His strategy for change was fairly major, too. I’m not talking a bit of tweaking here and there, a couple heart-to-hearts and I’d be on my way, walking in the light. No, Pastor Ted was thinking mega-overhaul—mind, body, soul—deliverance, repentance, immersion. The whole shebang.

  He started out slow, though. He settled us into the front pew and I think he was probably following standard preacher guidelines for dealing with breakdowns here, because he left an optimal amount of space between us—a comfortable but compassionate couple of feet. I knew he was there, but I could pretend he wasn’t. Welding my fingers to the smooth wooden seat and planting my feet on the floor, I tried to get a grip. But no matter which way I turned, I kept running into this Gandy’s Rock wall of despair. And every time I hit that wall, a desperate, choking cry got knocked out of me.

  A teenage boy bawling into the silence of an empty church—now that’s a pretty horrific sound, right up there with the moans of a freshly castrated hyena. Thankfully, it’s fairly hard to sustain that kind of anguish, and the noisy drama wrapped up pretty quick.

  Afterwards, I tried to clear some of the mess off my face with what was left of my shirt, but I must have been doing a fairly poor, shaky job of it, because Pastor Ted, who’d been sitting motionless beside me, finally sprang into action. He slid from the bench to squat in front of the pew, and I have to say, at that moment, he looked very calm, very concerned, with a soft but in-charge sort of smile stuck between his weak jaw and his watery eyes. He was probably about forty, forty-five, but he was dressed younger, in a pair of loose jeans and a Red Wings sweater.

  “We need to get you cleaned up.” When he spoke, his voice filled the church like Sunday. He made his way soundlessly to one side of the pulpit and slid through a half-opened door leading into what looked like some sort of office. A minute later he reappeared, damp towel in hand. The cool cloth felt good against my face, and even though my nose was thick and painful and my right eye was all swollen, I could tell that up front I’d sustained no serious injuries. However, when I swiped at the back of my neck, the towel came away red.

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  I swiveled round and the Pastor started poking through my hair, which was as warm and sticky as my neck.

  “You’ve got a good-sized cut back here,” he said. “May I?” He held out a hand and motioned for the towel. The ends of his fingers were bright with blood.

  Resting a knee on the pew, he moved in tight so he was crouching over me and pressed the cloth firmly against the back of my head. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore his closeness, the way his crotch was, like, two inches from my right arm.

  When he moved away, a warm trickle of blood slid down my neck.

  “Looks like you’ll need stitches. Here, hold this.” I reached for the towel. “Press hard, now. I’ll be right back—see if I can’t find someone to patch you up.” And before I could get up the energy to tell him not to bother, I’d be fine, he’d disappeared again.

  I stretched out along the pew, closed my eyes to shut out the burn of the overhead lights and took a deep breath. There was a mustiness in the air, a hint of damp cellar, a whiff of stale sweat left behind by a rowdy congregation. It didn’t bother me. I let go of the towel pillowed under my head, and my arm drifted off the bench to float weightless in midair. It was probably the hysterical bawling that had wiped me out, or the fight, or maybe I was just slipping into coma. Either way, thoughts of Faith and Fang and Astelle and how I’d just been slain outside by a single note seemed distant, muted by the church’s shadowy stillness and the Pastor’s lingering calm. And after all those months flying solo, it was a bit of a relief to be with someone who knew about my premonitions and wasn’t completely freaked. No, the Pastor wasn’t freaked. He was ready to take charge. Better yet, he came complete with God-given answers.

  My lips curled into a dumb sort of smile, and I barely even registered the clatter of a receiver leaving its cradle or the rattle of buttons tapping out a number. But, rolling from the office, the Pastor’s voice was strong as ever.

  “Hello, Michael?” A short pause, followed by a dramaticsounding, “He’s here.” I rolled my head to the side. In the gap left by the half-closed door, I could see a telephone cord stretching from a wedge of cluttered desk. “Yes … finally. He’s come. I’m bringing him right over.” Another pause. “Yes, judging by the looks of him, I’d say he’s ready.”

  And that was it. No need to explain who “he” was. No mention of the gash in my head. I swung my legs off the bench and sat up slowly, the last breath of stale air caught in my throat.

  THE PASTOR strode toward an old silver K-Car parked at the side of the church. I shuffled along behind, head spinning, feet kicking up dust. Ted was good enough to hand me a fresh towel before opening the back door and instructing me to lie down. I climbed in and tried to stretch out, but the seat was too short and my head got all cranked up against the door. Given the position, I had this weird high-level view of my surroundings as we left the lot. No horizon, no foundations. Just naked treetops and peaked roofs and a band of darkening sky wrapping around the car, pressing against the window.

  Pretty much right away I started feeling sick and confused and disoriented, and the armrest was cutting into my neck, and I was trying not to think, but it was hard, harder than it had been in the church. I dragged my eyes inside the car, found the glow-in-thedark Jesus dangling from the rearview, but he was bobbing and weaving on me, bobbing and weaving. So I fixed on the steady, domed light in the center of the roof and told myself to hold on, just hold on. I told myself Pastor Ted was going to help me, over and over again I told myself that, because, lying in the back seat with my head pounding and my heart bleeding and that strange slice of sky ripping by, I believed he was all I had left.

  THE K-CAR’S INTERIOR LIGHT turned out to be a fairly shitty compass, and when we slowed to a crawl, swung into a driveway and slid along a redbrick wall, I was totally lost. We might have still been in Stokum. We could have been in Rolland. Shit, we could have been in Kansas. I had no clue, which I guess is what happens when you zone out and put your trust in the hands of the man behind the wheel. You can end up anywhere.

  When I pushed myself up, my brain gave a mighty black throb, but still, I recognized the luxurious lawn and the cold in-ground pool behind the big house right away. I have to admit, I was kind of surprised that the Pastor had come to the Kites for help. First off, Kite was a Kalbro man, and as far as I knew the plant was still on a three-years-without-injury streak, so I didn’t think he’d be the guy to patch me up. Secondly, I didn’t think the Pastor would be too keen on a man who spent his evenings cruising our city’s parks for same-sex action. What I figured was maybe Ted had said scr
ew the head wound, screw the medical attention, and kicked into some two-for-one fags-and-freaks salvation mode.

  I followed the Pastor up the driveway, but I was moving pretty slow. My gut was shaking and I was kind of having trouble swinging one leg past the other. Besides, I was in no big hurry to meet up with Fang’s partner in crime, wasn’t sure I was going to be cool in the face of that. I shouldn’t have worried, though, because the Pastor threw me a curve by turning left and heading directly for the big place beside the Kites’, the one without a Century 21 sign planted out front.

  Now seriously, this shouldn’t have been all that surprising, seeing how all the driveways on Water Street run along the sides of the houses, making it hard to tell which strip of asphalt belongs to which house. But, looking back, I see that’s what the kid tagging Ted up the driveway was like. Head injury aside, hanging a left never would have occurred to him. He wasn’t very good at turning around and taking in what was on the other side. With him it was always Astelle is evil/Faith is golden. Fang is a fuckup/Stan is God. I’m empty/you’re full. There was nothing in between, no happy medium, no shades of gray. In that way, the kid in the bloody T was a lot like the guy he was following across the well-tended lawn of the Kites’ next-door neighbors.

  Ted and I climbed the steps onto a swank front porch, a semicircle jobbie with lots of sturdy-looking white pillars. I did my best to remain upright while the Pastor rang the bell. It only took a second for the polished brass doorknob to turn, and surprise, surprise, if it wasn’t the handsome Dr. Cramp opening the shiny black door. He ushered us into this big foyer, where a red carpet staircase swept down to a black and white floor. It looked like real marble, but still, what really hit me was how warm the place was and how my head was swimming in the heat. As I bent to take my shoes off, my stomach lurched, my vision tunneled. Somewhere above me, the Pastor boomed robust greetings and explanations, leaving little room for the doctor’s understated replies.