Cramp must have finally looked over and been alarmed by the way I was wobbling or something, because he suddenly moved in and helped me up out of my crouch. He guided me through his beautiful house and I remember trying to stay away from the walls so I wouldn’t get blood on them. We ended up in a big bright kitchen, where a wall of windows overlooked a landscaped backyard. The doctor’s wife, his beautiful wife, was there, smiling worriedly from behind a chair, the only one pulled away from a long wooden table that ran the length of the room.
Laura was wearing this plain white top, her honey hair was long and loose, and despite the big belly she looked pure and sweet and clean, and I knew what I looked like—the bloody shirt, the broken face, the matted hair—weaving my way across her shiny kitchen. So even though she and her Concerned Homophobes campaign had unknowingly contributed to the rancidness of my day, the rancidness of my buddy’s life, it was me giving her the apologetic smile as I settled into the chair she offered.
Dr. Cramp put his bag on the table and Laura squeezed my shoulder gently before stepping aside to make space for her husband. She started talking quietly with Pastor Ted, but I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, couldn’t hear them at all once Dr. Cramp tipped my head forward, parted the sticky hair and started firing off questions. I kept my voice low and my answers brief. A fight. I hit my head on the sidewalk. How many times? Two, maybe three, maybe five. And was I still taking the Trazon? When I said no, a look of surprise flickered across his face and his eyes slid over my shoulder.
I was uneasy about the Pastor and Laura, especially Laura, standing right there behind me. I didn’t want them to know about the fight, about what had happened, which was stupid really, because I think religious zealots are usually pretty happy if their converts have taken a good shit kicking prior to conversion, because hey, it just makes their job that much easier.
The doctor flashed a light in my eyes, took a look at the cut lip, the swollen knuckles on my right hand, and I have to admit that even with the unwanted audience I was relieved that someone with a medical degree was checking me out. My shirt was completely stuck to my back by this time and I was feeling brutal—dizzy, sick to my stomach, my thoughts slow and sticky as flies in Vaseline.
“You have a mild concussion.” Dr. Cramp put his flashlight back into his bag. I struggled to keep him in focus, but he was bobbing around, sporting a grin that looked too wide, too excited, given the way I was feeling. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about.” He pushed his sandy hair, which he wore a little long, off his forehead and gave my shoulder a quick shake. “You’re in good hands. You’ll need a few stitches, and we’ll have to keep an eye on you for a while afterwards, okay? Laura will prep the cut, right, Laura?”
I pictured a nodding head, long blonde hair fluttering, somewhere behind me. A smile as bright as the sun.
Ted and the doctor left me alone with Laura then. I watched her take a large silver bowl from a cupboard, place it under the tap and turn on the water. In the last of the daylight flooding through the windows, she became a wavering silhouette, smudged at the edges by the steam rising from the sink. She only turned real again when she walked toward me holding the bowl carefully in front of her. Setting it on the table, she dipped in a crisp cloth and started gently wiping my swollen lips and dabbing around my eye. The water felt good, warm and good, and when Laura came close I could smell clean sheets or spring flowers or something that fresh. But then the smell became the choke of flowers at Stan’s funeral, my face buried in a girl’s long dark hair, a field of grass swaying around two terrified boys, and my stomach tightened and I had to fight back the sting of bile that climbed my throat.
Laura just kept sponging my face and wringing out the cloth until the water turned from pink to red and I thought I was going to bawl.
“Okay, now,” she said with a gentle smile. “We’ll get you out of that shirt.”
I bent forward, put my arms up, and she wrestled my shirt over my head, discarded it in the sink, while I shivered in her bright kitchen, feeling cold and dirty and sick. Returning with fresh water, she began cleaning around the cut on my head, moving the cloth in small, hot circles through my hair, onto my neck, over my shoulder blades, down onto the flesh above my jeans. I rounded my back and held my head in my hands, and I started searching for one thing, one good thing I could tell her about me, about my life, one thing that might stop me from crying. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a pathetic-sounding “Thank you” before the tears started to roll.
She put her cloth down and for a few long, still seconds she laid her palms, her fingers, on my back. And when she came around front her eyes were lit with such passion, such knowing grace, she knelt in front of me and took my hands in hers and told me everything was going to be fine, God would see to it, everything would be okay, she understood, she’d been where I was, she’d been that low before Pastor Ted had saved her, and he would save me too. I wanted to say yes, yes, but instead I pushed her away and vomited in her beautiful kitchen, puking foul brown puke into a bowl of tainted water.
I thought she’d make a run for it then, press herself against a far wall or flee the room to avoid being contaminated, but she stayed close, put her hand right on my shoulder as I retched over that bowl.
“That’s right,” she said quietly. “You let it out. That’s right, Luke. Let all the bad stuff out.”
TWENTY-NINE
“So, you’re feeling better?” Dr. Cramp asked.
I watched the reflection of the beaten-up kid nod tentatively from the far end of the kitchen table. Night had fallen. The windows had turned black. The landscaped yard had disappeared. As had Laura.
After the puke-a-thon, Dr. Cramp had stitched me up and lent me a clean shirt—a mustard-colored polo kind of deal—that his wife had helped me into. It was big in the shoulders and ugly as corn-covered shit, but when Laura had straightened the collar and told me I looked great in it, well, there was no arguing with that. Then they’d settled me into a leather-clad den/recovery room with strict orders not to fall asleep. Laura had kept coming in to check on me, and this one time she’d sat down on the edge of the couch, and with her so close, with her big belly barely brushing my side, I’d managed to come up with a couple brilliant questions about the fetus. Was it her first? (it was) followed closely by the superoriginal, When is it, ah, like, due? She rolled her eyes and laughed before telling me the baby was a week late already, but she didn’t mind, she loved being pregnant.
At some point she offered to call my parents for me, so they wouldn’t be worried, but I told her not to bother. The folks were in Paris—yeah, Paris, France—celebrating my mom’s birthday. I tried to sound casual, like flying to exotic destinations was something we did all the time, so maybe she’d think I was more than just some loser kid who’d dropped by to spew body fluids all over her house. It kind of worked, too, because her eyes got all big and impressed and she gushed about how she’d always dreamed of going to Europe.
By the time I made it back to the kitchen, the clock on the microwave read a cool 9:26. I twisted the time around, personalized it into two and a half hours left for Fang to make good on my premonition. So far his suicidal song hadn’t hit the airwaves, and with the good doctor on one side of me and the Pastor on the other I could feel my tension around all things Fang easing and my thoughts stretching toward a new and better day.
“Your head feeling all right?” Dr. Cramp asked.
“Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for patching me up.”
“My pleasure.” He pushed away from the table. “Laura made some soup. Do you feel up to that?”
I watched as he served up dinner. He had broad shoulders, strong pipes, no gut at all. He looked athletic, like a tennis player maybe, or a serious pickup b-ball player, although he was too short to play under the basket. It was pretty easy to see how a babe like Laura would go for a guy like him.
And the bowl of soup he set in front of me
definitely hadn’t come from a can. It was hearty-looking stuff, lots of veggies floating in a thick brown broth. The first spoonful was hot and delicious, and I was suddenly starved, couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten. Being careful of the mangled lip, I dug in, but stopped when the Pastor laid his Frisbee-sized hands on the table, took a few deep breaths and started into this long, rambling prayer.
Despite my jumping the gun on the big soup blessing, the mood in the kitchen was fairly relaxed as we ate, the chitchat mundane—no, I wasn’t really a Red Wings fan and yeah, the folks were in Paris, and school? it was okay. When I casually asked where the missus was hiding, the doctor said she was upstairs resting.
I was only halfway done my meal when the Pastor wiped his mouth on his napkin and nailed me with a real direct, real unwavering kind of look. “So, Luke, I want you to know how happy we are that you finally decided to come to see us. As you know, we’ve been worried about you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I gave him a weak smile and kept eating.
“And I imagine you didn’t come to my church today looking only for medical attention, did you?” My spoon stopped midflight.
I thought about telling him I hadn’t come looking for anything, that it was a total fluke I’d crashed right in front of New Life in Christ. And in a way it was. I mean, the only reason I’d even been in the vicinity was to drop a “present” off for a “friend.” But there was a part of me that didn’t quite believe it. Maybe it was the death premonitions finally taking their toll, or one too many blows against the sidewalk, but as I sat there with a chunky spoonful of soup hovering between me and Ted’s question, a part of me believed I was probably where I was supposed to be. That the ride I’d stepped onto seven months earlier had been rolling toward that moment of emptiness in front of the church sure as a runaway train on a clear stretch of track. That it was more than just coincidence I’d been delivered into the Pastor’s hands like some package of damaged goods.
I set my spoon neatly beside my bowl, raised my eyes to his and said yeah, I was looking for more than just help with the head wound. My weak acknowledgment set Ted free, and he got pretty enthusiastic telling me how, ever since Stan’s death, they’d been waiting for me, praying for me, and how God had told him my premonitions were ongoing and that when the time was right I would come to him for help.
For a million uneasy reasons, this news had me squirming on my hard wooden chair. “Look,” I said, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about. But if you want to know why I’m here, what I need …” I stopped and took a deep breath. I tried smiling, so they’d see I wasn’t worried, but the smile was totally forced and probably came off all psycho despite my best efforts. “I tried to handle things by myself. I tried to just … just … live with it, you know?” My voice was embarrassing, quivering with emotion and shit, but I made myself keep going. “For a while I thought I was doing okay, I thought I was sort of getting it. But then my life got so messed up, so messed up …” I picked up my spoon and rolled it between my fingers. The handle, etched with narrow, parallel lines, was surprisingly cool. I glanced at Ted. “I need the premonitions to stop. You told me you could help me. But can you make them stop?”
“Yes.” The Pastor’s voice was thick with confidence. “Yes, I can.”
Both Ted and the doctor beamed at me then, and I admit I sat up a little straighter, started listening a little harder. Unfortunately, the Pastor jumped right into a pile of crap I didn’t want to hear.
“Now Luke,” he said, leaning close, getting bigger, “there are some people who are very open to spiritual processes. Obviously, you’re one of them.” Pressing a mitt to his chest, he did a pretty shitty impression of humble. “As am I.”
“Laura, too.” It was Dr. Cramp piping in here, plugging his wife.
“Yes. Laura is an extremely gifted member of our church. A crucial member. As you could be.” He offered that up like some promising, sugary treat. When I didn’t bite, he carried on, totally unfazed. “Laura’s talent is for discerning spirits, as opposed to your gift of prophecy. Which is the reason we’re here, isn’t it? You have a gift, Luke. A powerful spiritual gift.”
I’d heard it before. From the dwarf. This time, like then, I wasn’t exactly charmed by the news. The Pastor didn’t seem to notice.
“You have a gift, but you’ve made some bad choices—failing to accept Christ into your life, for one—which have left you vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable?”
“To Satan’s influence. Listen, Luke, I know for a nonbeliever such as yourself what I’m saying may sound strange. But considering what’s been happening in your life, I think it’s very important that you hear me out, all right?”
My eyes swung for the clock. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. We’d only been in the kitchen, like, twenty minutes and the guy was talking Satan. I lowered my eyes and, avoiding the bowl of luke- warm soup, concentrated on the smooth tabletop. Oak. Walnut. Maple. Shit, I didn’t know.
I was thinking about leaving, about just standing up and heading out. But when I imagined stepping back into my life, all I could see was a parade of people living and dying on me. The impossibility of Faith. Fang dangling from a rope. Astelle at the head of a million more mistakes. I didn’t want to admit that coming to Ted for help was turning into just one more fuckup to add to an already impressive list. I had to believe I was there for a reason, that I was safe where I was, that I’d be okay, that if I made it to midnight Fang would be okay. I reminded myself that Ted knew about the premonitions. Inexplicably, im-fucking-possibly, he knew about them all. He’d told me he had answers. He had solutions. Maybe even a happy ending.
The Pastor cleared his throat. “Was Stan a boy you admired?”
Jesus Christ. From Satan to Stan in ten seconds flat. I gave Ted a sideways look, one I’d learned from Fang, and nodded.
“And why was that? What did you admire about him?”
I shifted around a bit, shrugged my shoulders a few times, hoping to dodge the question. But the Pastor folded his arms over his chest and kind of stretched out in his chair, all ready to wait me out till fucking Sunday if he had to.
So I gave it a shot. “I don’t know. I guess I admired pretty much everything about Stan. He was cool, funny, smart. He was just a good guy, you know? He wasn’t afraid of being good.”
The Pastor jackknifed forward, leaning in so close his soupy breath pressed at my face. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Being good?”
I pulled back. I turned away. I couldn’t even hold on to the sideways thing.
Still, I’m pretty sure Ted sensed he’d hit a nerve, and he kept coming at me. “You know, Luke, Stan was the boy he was because he had Christ in his life. And do you know who guided Stan to Christ?” He stabbed a finger into his chest. “I did. I was Stan’s pastor. I helped him become the boy you so admired. I can do the same for you. I can give you what he had, and more. And I can make the premonitions stop.” He paused, letting the drama grow in the silence of the kitchen. “Now, I’ll ask you again. Considering what’s been going on in your life, don’t you think it’s important for you to hear what I have to say?”
I wanted what the Pastor was offering up, I wanted it so bad. I wanted to be brave enough and good enough and normal enough to reach out and grab what he was dangling in front of me. I wanted to be like Stan. So I lifted my head and, avoiding the scared-looking kid plastered onto the pane of glass at the other end of the table, I told Ted I was listening.
He’d been sitting stiffly, but he settled back in his chair when he heard the news, looking all relaxed and happy, like he’d just gotten the world’s best hand job or something, instead of the nod from me.
“You know, Luke,” he began, totally in the groove now, “even as we sit here, there is a war being waged. A war of good and evil. As it stands, having failed to accept Christ’s protection, Satan has been able to hijack your spiritual gift. Right now you’re on his team, so to speak. You’re on t
he wrong side of the fight. That’s why your premonitions, all your premonitions, relate to death. Without Christ as your savior, there can be no wisdom, no light, in your visions.”
The whole time Ted was spewing, I could feel the anger flickering, churning, growing bigger, getting hotter, turning my hands to fists under the table. Why was he doing this? He looked sane. Why couldn’t he say something sane? Was this the shit he’d sold Stan? I couldn’t believe it was. I glanced at Cramp, who hadn’t said dick, thinking he’d be all bug-eyed from trying to choke down what Ted was serving up, but he was nodding along, lapping it all up.
“Listen,” I said when Ted finally stopped for air, “can we just talk about making the premonitions stop?”
The Pastor carried on like I hadn’t even spoken. He blabbed about the three stages of salvation—repentance, baptism, a strict diet of Godliness. And his voice got really loud when he started explaining how, first, he’d have to say a special prayer to deliver me from the evil residing within me.
“Deliver me from evil? Isn’t that, like, Our-Father-who-art-inheaven’s job?” It was a stupid joke, meant to lighten the crazy-heavy mood in the kitchen, but neither of my dinner pals even cracked a smile.
“We are God’s foot soldiers,” the Pastor said firmly. “It is our duty as Christians to lead you to the Lord. Without deliverance and healing, the Gospel is just good advice, not good news.”
Now, if someone had forced me to predict what we were going to talk about when we’d sat down at that table twenty-six minutes earlier, I would have guessed that God would come up a couple times. I wasn’t that out of it. I mean, I was suffering from a wicked case of otherworldliness and there was a preacher dude present. I’d have guessed that Ted would tell me his views on what The Man had been hoping to achieve by pouring death down my throat, by filling me with the music of a half-dozen dying souls. And maybe if I’d admitted that, yeah, those songs had felt holy, like they had been touched by God, that’s all it would take.
Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet Page 26
