Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  “Yes.” Molly felt increasingly uneasy at the direction this was taking.

  “Did you do that when you interviewed Samuel Mordecai—tape-record everything?”

  “Yes.”

  Thelma Bassett leaned forward. “Here’s the thing. I want to prepare myself for when I talk to him. You must think this is a pipe dream, but I know it’s going to happen. I want to make the most of it when my chance comes because it may be the only chance.” A red flush darkened her cheeks. “I need to know what to say to him, how to sway him, how to get him to let those kids come home. I know that what the negotiators are doing doesn’t work. I’m afraid they’re fixing to attack the compound. I have a feeling about this. If I hear his voice and get to know him some ahead of time, it might help me to say the right thing.” Her eyes demanded a response from Molly.

  “Mrs. Bassett, I would love to help you, but if you’re thinking about my tapes, that’s impossible.”

  Thelma Bassett sat back as if stung. “Why?”

  “Because they don’t belong to me; they belong to the magazine.” Molly wasn’t actually sure that was true. She must have read the contract when she signed it, but she couldn’t remember what the deal was. “Anyway, there’s nothing in those tapes that will help you.” She didn’t say that there was another reason: she couldn’t bear to have anyone else listen to them. Her interview with Samuel Mordecai had been a low point in her career, an embarrassment—definitely not something she wanted to share with anyone. And what she heard in those tapes would just scare this poor mother out of her wits. No, this was a bad idea. “It would be a waste of your time.”

  “You’re afraid it will upset me,” Thelma said, reading Molly’s mind. “I appreciate that, but I already know he’s a madman. Even madmen have some areas where you can get through to them. See, I have this feeling … Oh, it sounds crazy and big-talking, but I think I’m the one who can do this. I really do.” Her eyes locked on to Molly’s. “Please help me.”

  Molly felt the appeal down to her toes. The woman was in the grip of a cause and it was catching. Shit. “Well, I …”

  “Does he talk about his mother on this tape?”

  Molly tried to remember. “Some, but not much, I think. His mother didn’t raise him. His grandmother did.”

  “I know. Molly, I’ve got this feeling. I taped that talk he did on the radio the first day and I’ve listened to it again and again. One of the things he keeps coming back to is how bad mothers are today, how no one should have children because the corruption of society has made mothering impossible. I want to hear what he said to you about those things: I think this is what I should talk to him about.”

  “This really isn’t my decision,” Molly said, hoping Thelma Bassett would just go away. “The tapes are not my property. I could talk to my boss tomorrow and—”

  “There’s no time. I need to be ready. Please. Please do this for me, for the kids. Listen with me so you can tell me what he looked like, what he was doing when he said certain things. I wouldn’t pester you like this, except I can’t find anyone else who’s talked to him.”

  Molly found herself desperately searching for a way out of this. It would be like letting someone go through your garbage.

  Thelma continued: “If you absolutely need to check with your boss, call him now. It’s an emergency situation—we’ve only got five more days. Tell him there might just be some little thing that could help, could make a difference for our children. Please.”

  She was relentless, and shameless—exactly the way Molly would be in her circumstances. Molly sat looking at the tapes. She stood up. “I’ll see if I can get him. But I don’t know …” She walked to her desk phone, punched 21 for Richard’s office, and hoped he wasn’t there. But he picked up the phone himself on the first ring.

  “Richard, Thelma Bassett is here in my office. She feels she may get a chance to talk with Mordecai and she wants to listen to the tapes of the interview I did with him. I told her the tapes belong to the magazine and that—”

  “My God, Molly, I saw her on television. She’s wonderful. Get to know her. Give her anything she wants.”

  “But what about the confidentiality of—”

  “Molly, if she wants to hear them, let her.”

  “Right,” Molly said, putting the phone down. “Okay,” she said to Thelma, who was literally sitting on the edge of her chair. “I think there’s about an hour and a half of tape here. Do you have time now?”

  “I’ll make time. Thank you.” Thelma’s hands were pressed together as if in prayer.

  Molly slipped the first tape into the player. But she didn’t start it. “I want to explain something, Thelma. This is the worst interview I ever did. It’s not really an interview. He just talks on and on, and for some reason I was unable to stop him and get it back on track.… Well, you’ll see.”

  She pushed the “play” button. The tape started with the usual static and thumps of setting up. Her own voice came on, too loud. She adjusted the volume, grimacing, as she did every time she heard her recorded voice.

  On the tape she was asking about talking to some of the other cult members, especially some of the women. Before she had gotten the question out, however, Samuel Mordecai’s twangy drawl took over: “Our women keep very busy here at Jezreel, you can probably see that walking through the grounds. Time spent in idle conversation is time not given over to praising the Lord or getting His work done. This is not—”

  “Just a few minutes is all it would take. Maybe your wife would—”

  “I told you,” he said in a louder voice, “they are busy. You said you wanted to interview me. Here I am.”

  “What are they busy doing, Mr. Mordecai?”

  “The life-affirming jobs, Miz Cates, what women are best at. They provide our food and they clean our home and they work in the garden and they also work on our construction project you saw coming in. And they train for defense, just like the men. And they study the Bible with me many hours every day—that is the most important thing we all do here at Jezreel—studying the word of God and preparing ourselves.”

  “Defense? How do they—”

  “That is something we won’t discuss today. Let me just say we are armed and able to defend ourselves fully against any attack from outside forces.”

  “Outside forces? Who would want to—”

  “Don’t be naive, Miz Cates. You know very well that agents and forces of our corrupt monster central government have been spying on us for years, looking for any excuse to attack us, just like they did to those folks in Waco. All I’m going to say about defense is that we are ready for anything. We are more ready than they were in Waco. And, like I said, even our women do their fair share. They are occupied and I speak for them.”

  “What about the children?” Molly’s voice persisted. “You didn’t mention—”

  “There are no children here.”

  “But many of the women here are young, of—”

  “Abstinence! Haven’t you ever heard of abstinence, Miz Cates? Chastity. Why bring children into the world when the world is about to end? ‘And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days.’ Matthew 24:19, Miz Cates.” Mordecai laughed, and hearing it now, Molly cringed. “A child born today would not even learn to walk and talk before the end. Earth’s probation is being terminated, and we will witness it all. Our period of troubles and tribulation is ending.

  “Time is rushing to its end. Just listen and you can hear it. It don’t sound like the flapping of angel wings, oh no. You can hear it in the squawky sounds of television and movies and rock videos, in the whir of monster computers running the world’s business. You can hear it every time a credit card goes through one of them charge machines—ka-chunk—every time a bar code gets read by one of them machines they got in grocery stores—zit, zit. It’s all around us, zooming around our heads, through our heads—radio waves and microwaves, Fuzzbusters and cellular phones, modems, satellite transmissio
ns bouncing around, electrical wires everywhere, making foreign masses grow in our bodies, electronic spying devices, telephone bugs. Can’t you hear it in the air? All that speed and so-called progress is the sound of time rushing to its final conclusion. I call it ‘rapidation,’ Miz Cates, rapidation. Just like Daniel prophesied twenty-five hundred years ago, ‘Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.’ He was talking about our day. Have you noticed how everything gets faster every year? New computer chips calculate faster than the eye can see, airplanes break the sound barrier. It’s the speeding up of time, and it was prophesied as a signpost to the end.”

  His voice had been building in volume and now it rose to a fierce crescendo: “All this rapidation, this running to and fro, is revving up the Apocalypse.”

  Underneath the relentless flow of words on the tape were the faint, yippy sounds of Molly trying to get a question in, but his mad words boiled over hers.

  “And now we know it’s really at hand, real soon, next year, in the spring. Next spring is when it will all finish, all the rushing madness, Miz Cates. It is coming to pass, just as it was prophesied by Ezekiel and Daniel and John. It’s all written in Scripture, predicted over two thousand years ago—the earthquakes, the lawlessness and violence in the streets, the eruptions, the famines, the wars and rumors of wars, the reign of the Beast, who lives here among us. The great battle of Armageddon is coming, the Millennium, and the Judgment Day. Just read the newspaper, Miz Cates. It’s all coming and we here at Jezreel are the key. It cannot happen without us. That is why I let you come in here. That is why I am talking to you. I want you to write that in your magazine. It is your job to tell it to the world. We here at Jezreel are the human agents who will spark it off.”

  At last Molly’s voice broke through, almost yelling. “My job is to tell the truth as I see it and I need to talk with some of your members, a few women, some children, and—”

  “Miz Cates, open your ears and hear. I told you our women are occupied and we don’t have children here. Even if we didn’t know about the end approaching, we wouldn’t have children here because there are no mothers left. You must see that. They are just women, not mothers. They give birth to children and, without a thought for that child, that baby boy, they leave him, desert him, abandon him in deep waters, leave him for the hungry beast to devour. They don’t care. They leave to go whoring at bars. They leave to work checking groceries at the supermarket. They leave to program computers, to service the Beast whose mark is bar codes and computer chips. You see this as well as me.”

  Here the noises of Molly trying to interrupt with a question were drowned out by Samuel Mordecai’s voice rising to a commanding shout. “Sit down and listen. Woman, you came to hear me tell what we believe. I’m telling you. Now sit down and listen to it, the way I want to tell it, so you can write it as it should be.”

  Molly, hearing this on tape, felt her skin prickle as though she were covered with fire ants. She pushed the “pause” button, feeling shaky and flushed. “Thelma, this is hard for me to listen to. I feel the need to explain something here. I am not accustomed to taking orders. Actually, I can’t remember a single time other than what you’re hearing here where I did anything I was told to do. But something happened when I was out there at Jezreel, something extremely upsetting to me. There is this … quality about Samuel Mordecai, and you should know this if you are going to talk to him. He has this … well … I really am at a loss for words here. He has something—some force—that caused me to sit down and shut up, even though sitting down and shutting up is something I haven’t done since the third grade and even then I didn’t do it very well. Maybe it was fear—I was afraid—but usually fear makes me more aggressive. …” Molly knew her words weren’t conveying the insane energy and repressed violence of the man. “Anyway, I never let this sort of thing happen before.”

  “I think I understand it a little,” Thelma said softly. “I think something like what you’re describing happens to those negotiators, too, when they’re talking to him on the phone. When they describe to us, the parents, what they’ve been trying to do, they have a hard time explaining why they never seem to be able to say what they planned to say. They get cowed, sort of scared into being quiet, even when they’ve planned to control the conversation. Molly, help me figure out how to prevent that from happening when I talk to him. Let’s hear the rest.”

  Molly turned the player back on. Samuel Mordecai’s voice rambled on, unimpeded now by questions or interruptions: “We are adrift, we so-called modern men, in a river of corruption, with no life jacket, no anchor, just like I was adrift, floating helpless, no identity, abandoned by all but the cloak of the Beast enfolding me. We have no mother to take care of us, because the mother is out whoring to the false God which has risen up from the mind of man and lives embodied in the computer, that false God disguised as progress, which promises ease and wealth, but delivers chaos and—”

  Thelma held a hand up. “Stop it there. Can you stop it there and replay it?”

  Molly hit the “stop” button. “How far back shall I go?”

  “Go back to before where he talks about how there are no more mothers.”

  Molly hit the reverse button. “… We have no mother to take care of us, because the mother is out whoring to the false god …”

  Molly hit the “pause” button. Thelma was leaning forward raptly. “What are you thinking?” Molly asked.

  “Well, that’s like what he said on his KLTX talk, but he goes farther here. He sure doesn’t think much of mothers. Did you know he was adopted?”

  “You mean by his grandmother?”

  “No. By his mother, Evelyn Grimes. Then after she adopted him, she ran off and left him with her mother, his grandmother.”

  Molly was surprised. “Whaaat? I never heard or read anywhere that he was adopted. Where did you hear that?”

  “His grandmother told me. She called me this morning.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. She saw me on television and had a vision that God wanted her to call me and tell me something she’d never told anyone before. She said Donnie—that’s his real name, you know, Donnie Ray Grimes—was not really her flesh-and-blood grandson. Her daughter adopted him and then ran off and she had to take him over. She also wanted to tell me she’d been praying for me and Kim every morning and that she was so sorry she just wanted to crawl into a hole.”

  “Really? She said her daughter adopted him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if it’s true. It hasn’t appeared in any of the news coverage about him.”

  “Well, Miz Huff—that’s the grandmother—says her daughter kept it secret. Even her friends thought she gave birth to him. So they just never talked about it. But the feeling I got was Miz Huff wants to disown him. She was in an explaining sort of mode—said she tried to do right with him, but she didn’t have much money or time or support. You know, the same thing all parents seem to say at some point: I did the best I could at the time.”

  Molly smiled. “Yeah. Seems to me I’ve said that once or twice myself.”

  “Here’s this idea I’m working on. He’s real angry at mothers because his mother abandoned him—two mothers abandoned him, really. And Miz Huff doesn’t sound like much of a mom to me. So Mordecai thinks he can just steal these kids and use them for whatever it is he’s got in mind because no one really cares.” Thelma’s hands rose from where they’d been resting in her lap and pressed against her chest as if she needed to hold something in. “So what if I could show him that there are mothers who love their children? What if I could show him that I am a mother who loves her child so much she will risk everything for that child? What if I walked in and offered myself, to replace Kim as a hostage? What do you think of that idea, Molly?”

  Molly thought it sounded like insanity. “The negotiators would never let you do that. One of their cardinal rules is no exchanging of hostages.”

  Thelma’s face mottled. �
��You don’t strike me as someone who is interested in rules. I’m interested only in getting my daughter out of there alive. I don’t give a fuck what their rules are.”

  Molly, feeling chastised, nodded. “You’re right that children being abandoned by their mothers is a theme with Mordecai. It makes more sense if he was adopted—this imagery about being set adrift, like Moses. It must feel like that to be put up for adoption.”

  “Yes. I think so. Will you play the rest of it?” Thelma pointed at the tape player.

  They sat in silence for an hour listening to the rest of Samuel Mordecai’s fiery sermon about corruption and prophecies that had been fulfilled.

  When it was finally over, Molly let out one shaky breath of relief and rewound the tape.

  “What was he doing during this?” Thelma asked. “From the sound, he moves around all the time.”

  “Yes. He paces the room the whole time he’s talking. Lots of energy. He gestures a lot.” Molly used her index finger to stab the air. “Like that, and he tugs at his crotch and runs his fingers through his hair. He’s always on the move, twitchy in the extreme. Posing like a rooster, or a rock musician. And he rarely pauses for breath, so getting a word in, even if you aren’t scared and cowed like I was, is impossible. The only way is to talk right on top of his words. It’s almost impossible to talk to him.”

  Thelma was taking it all in, nodding. “I’ve seen it with the negotiators.” Her watch emitted a little beep and she glanced down at it. “Oh, damn. I need to run. I wouldn’t go, but it’s TV—Channel 33, which he watches.” She rose to her feet. “Molly, may I ask you a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “You see now what I’m after. Would you go talk to Miz Huff for me? Ask her how I might reason with her grandson? I’d go but I have to be here. I want him to see me everywhere, on TV, in his dreams, hear me on the radio. I want him to know he can’t get away from me.”

  “I was planning to talk to her anyway. I’d be glad to ask her that. Give me the phone number and address and I’ll go tomorrow.”