A Pagan's Nightmare

by Ray Blackston

  Someone behind him honked, and out of sheer panic Lanny swerved across three lanes. In minutes he was on 1-75, aiming his SUV for Florida. His plan evolved quickly—he changed his mind and took Highway 81 to 1-20, wanting to make a stop in Augusta, since Miranda’s sister, Carla, lived there. And if he could not find Miranda in Augusta, he would continue on to Cocoa Beach, to her parents’ house.

  Now doing ninety miles per hour on 1-20 east, Lanny tried his best to be optimistic. Perhaps Augusta and the Sunshine State are immune to the religiosity.

  At a minimum, he hoped to find a few more yellow M&M’s.

  On Thursday Larry came walking into my office in blue argyle socks, loafers dangling from his fingertips. He walked over to my window and, as was his habit, gazed down at Atlanta in non-stop commute. We had yet to greet each other. I just watched him watching the traffic and wondered why he was carrying his shoes.

  “Agent Orange loves it?” Larry asked, still mesmerized by the freeways. “Tell me you love my story.”

  I pushed away from my desk but remained seated. “The religious right is gonna shoot you.”

  “Nah, they’re gonna love me.”

  “You mean there’s some sort of conversion in this story?”

  Larry turned from watching the traffic, and his face went blank. “Conversion? You mean like when someone switches from debauchery to chastity? Nah, I don’t really deal with that issue, Ned.”

  I shoved a stack of manuscripts aside and motioned for Larry to sit in my guest chair. “You’re not gonna make me ask why you’re carrying your loafers in your hand?”

  Larry glanced at the shoes dangling from his left thumb and forefinger, as if he’d forgotten he was holding them. “These loafers?”

  “Those loafers.”

  “Just bought ‘em yesterday. Italian shoes. You’ve probably never heard of the brand.”

  “Probably not. So why—”

  “Why am I not wearing them? Because they’re tight and my feet hurt. Italian shoe designers must have skinny feet.”

  “Why don’t you just take them back?”

  Larry rolled his eyes. “Image, Ned. I need the right shoes, regardless if they fit.”

  “Didn’t they feel tight when you tried them on?”

  Larry dropped the shoes to the floor and came over and tapped his index finger hard on my stack of papers. “The manuscript, Ned. Are multiple offers on the way?”

  From my briefcase I pulled out Larry’s first three chapters and pointed to the title page. “In the story, you’re Lanny Hooch, right?”

  Larry tugged the sock on his right foot and smiled. “That’s correctomundo.”

  “And I’m… I’m DJ Ned Neutral?”

  “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” He switched to his left sock. “My therapist says my childhood affects my writings, but I won’t bore you with what happened. Can you sell this?”

  “Possibly. But the religious right. . . Well, I’m not sure if they’re ready to laugh at themselves.” A tangent flashed into my head, and I tried to steer our chat in a new direction. “You don’t have much experience with theology, do ya?”

  Larry shook his head as nonchalantly as if he were refusing an offer of gum. “Nah. Very little.”

  “I see.” Another flashing tangent; they were coming too fast to keep up. “And didn’t you tell me last week that you recently had a date with a young woman named Miranda?”

  Larry toed my carpet, shifted in his chair. “A minor coincidence.”

  I held the first chapter aloft and spoke in a raised and incredulous voice. “You wrote about a woman you’ve just gone out with into your—”

  “Twice.”

  “You wrote her into the book twice?”

  “No, we’ve been out twice. Once to dinner and once to a movie.”

  I eyed him closely, knowing how rarely Larry dated. “Dinner and a movie on the same day?”

  Larry shifted again, ran a hand through his hair. “Yes.”

  “Then that’s once, Larry. One solitary date. And you—”

  “Okay then… once. But what do you think so far? Can you sell this?”

  “Maybe. But I gotta read it all first. Did you also write your dog into the story?”

  Larry winced, even recoiled in his chair. “Dillen? No way. I’d never embarrass my dog like that. Labradors don’t like being in stories.”

  I kept thumbing the manuscript, as if this would hide my excitement about its potential. Surely the secular crowd would embrace it, although my wife, Angie—the devout Baptist who managed to drag me to church once a month—would likely object. I had not sold a project in eight weeks, however, and this one at least held the possibility of a paycheck. Plus, there was that intangible quality, the sheer gall Larry possessed to write this thing while living in the Bible Belt.

  I tapped the title page. “You’re sure about this title?”

  Larry leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “It’s perfecto. Absolute Southern-fried perfection.”

  “A Pagan’s Nightmare is your idea of perfection?”

  “It’s da bomb, Ned. Now just go sell it.”

  “I’m gonna need to read more.”

  He got up and left with a simple little wave. And again, down the hall, that laugh—that zany, out-of-kilter laugh. “Been to Mickey D’s yet, Ned?”

  All my clients were boring compared to Larry.

  When I launched my literary agency in 1991 with a second mortgage on our home, my wife insisted that I not represent any projects that might embarrass her in her church, where she co-led a women’s ministry called C-Squared. It had something to do with spiritual growth, but I never asked for details.

  On this night, at half past ten, she lay in bed with Larry’s first five chapters on her lap, two pillows behind her head, and a glass of ginger ale on the nightstand. Angie was a youthful forty-four—she would say the same of me—and I’ll admit that she looked hot in her lavender nightgown. But tonight was a Thursday and, well, Thursdays were not one of her preordained nights. On Thursdays she read and fell asleep, mostly because she worked until eight at her office, editing articles for a Baptist journal and an online webzine.

  An hour earlier I’d brought home Chinese takeout, and we’d shared sweet ‘n sour chicken over steamed rice. Mid-meal she’d asked why I sounded so enthusiastic about work.

  I swallowed quickly and gushed, “My friend and client, Larry, has an interesting idea that I may pitch to some film people.”

  “May I read a few pages?”

  She asked so nicely, even cleaned up after we’d finished our meal. This was unusual, as Thursdays were one of my nights for clean-up duty. I tried to stave off her curiosity. “Honey, it has a bit of a comic tone, and I know you prefer heart-tugging dramas.”

  It was the way she ran her fingernail across my back that convinced me to let her read. Well, that and the nightgown that she usually wore only on Tuesdays.

  So I handed her forty pages and jumped into the shower. I was thinking that—if I may mock the ad world here—Thursday was the new Tuesday.

  When I emerged from the steam of the bathroom in my red robe, Angie was slapping pages down on the bed in rapid succession. She picked up the title page and, without taking her eyes off the paper, said, “Ned, I’m not sure what Larry means by this title… and I’m about to start chapter three and have yet to find one redeeming quality. Not one.”

  “Um, I need to floss my teeth.”

  She was finishing that chapter when I came out of the bathroom with a mouthful of mint-flavored Listerine. I sloshed it for five more seconds, went back into the bathroom to spit and rinse, then stood in the doorway in my best are-you-ready-for-me pose. I even fluffed my chest hair.

  I had been standing there for nearly a full minute when Angie glanced up from the page. “It’s Thursday, Ned.”

  And she began chapter four.

  4

  THE PLAQUE ON HIS OFFICE DOOR READ: “In appreciation for fifteen yea
rs of leading us to the big time. The staff at Fence-Straddler AM Radio thanks DJ Ned Neutral for helping to bring America together.”

  Sporting his favorite yellow Hawaiian shirt, Ned sat down in his booth and checked the weather monitor. He saw that Hurricane Gretchen continued to track toward Tampa and Orlando, though she was still some three hundred miles out in the Gulf. He wondered how he would conduct his show without his producer, who had strangely left in the middle of Monday’s broadcast. So had the station’s secretary, a former rock ‘n’ roll groupie who wore lots of black. Ned passed their absences off as a summer virus, perhaps food poisoning. He’d tried to call them both but could only get answering machines.

  Ten minutes before his show began, Ned made a pot of coffee—the first time he had made the coffee himself in months. He took his mug and two packets of Splenda into his broadcast booth and decided he would do his show without a producer. A veteran of the airwaves, he could handle this alone.

  DJ Ned was truly neutral, having voted for Reagan, then Dukakis, then Bush Sr., then Clinton for a second term, then Dubya, then Kerry. A caller had suggested that Ned change his handle to DJ Ned Flip-Flop, but he had gotten used to Neutral.

  When the clock struck 11:00 a.m., Ned was aghast to see that all five lights on his phone were dim. He sipped his coffee and wondered if he was in for a slow day. Then, just as he was tearing open his second packet of Splenda, three of the five lights lit at once.

  Ned set his mug on his desk and pressed line 1. “Morning, caller. Welcome to Fence-Straddler AM.”

  “Ned, Bill.”

  “Bill, Ned.”

  “Hi, Ned.”

  “Hello, Bill.”

  “Ned, I’m a factual, to-the-point, meat ‘n potatoes, formal-on-Sundays kind of guy.”

  “You don’t say…”

  “And I have the hurricane solution…. We nuke ‘em.”

  “Nuke the hurricanes?”

  “That’s right. We all know there are nuclear warheads in underground silos all over the country. Rumors abound that seven of them are buried behind condos in Ft. Lauderdale, and we all know that God helps those who help themselves.”

  Ned paused. “Haven’t heard either of those rumors, Bill.”

  “Well, back to my point. We nuke ‘em. It’s the only way.”

  “Just shoot a warhead right into the storm….”

  “That’s right. God wants us to maximize the benefit of our technology.”

  “But what if the hurricane eats the warhead, just sucks it down below the eye-wall, and the missile explodes a mile under the sea instead of above the surface?”

  A pause on the line. “Hadn’t thought of that, Ned.”

  “We must consider all possibilities, Bill.”

  “Well, I have my official Prophetic Decoder calculator handy. Can you give me a sec?”

  “Why not? It’s just valuable airtime.” Ned paused, then whistled the first line of the Mission Impossible theme song. “Got your calculations yet, Bill?”

  “How wide is the eye? And what is the speed of the hurricane?”

  “Let’s say the eye is forty miles wide, and the winds are 160 miles per hour… a Category 5.”

  Ned could hear calculator buttons being pushed in rapid succession. “Just one more sec, Ned.”

  Ned tapped his fingers on his desk. “No rush at all, Bill. Shall I put on some background music, perhaps some Sinatra?”

  “The missing variable is the temperature of the Atlantic.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I can estimate. Here, I almost have the prophetic calculation. If the warhead were to plunge beneath the surface before detonation occurred, and the eye was forty miles wide and the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were 160 miles per hour, then the result would be—”

  “Bill?”

  “Yes?”

  “The result would be that the little tropical fishies would somersault all the way to the Mediterranean. Next caller… please!”

  Ned pressed line 2. “Who’s my second caller?”

  “Ned, this is Estella, from Tampa. I just left a breakfast meeting of Presbyterians for a Safer Coastline.”

  DJ Ned frowned into his mic. “That would be, um… the PFSC?”

  “That’s right. And at our meeting we were discussing these awful hurricanes and how the richest and godliest country on earth should be able to find a solution. So we’re forming a lobby group to encourage Boeing to manufacture huge fans, like giant propellers, to be built along the coast, from Tampa down to Miami and all the way up to St. Augustine. These fans, hundreds of them, could be turned on all at once to blow the hurricanes back out to sea.”

  Ned rubbed his beard, gripped his microphone. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not at all. And for aesthetic purposes, the fans could be painted in beachy colors, say a pastel peach, like the new line of cookware at Bed, Bath and the Eternal Beyond.”

  The Eternal Beyond? Ned rolled his eyes. “Estella?”

  “Yes?”

  “That is without doubt the dumbest idea I’ve heard in my fifteen years of hosting this program. No, wait, it ranks second only to Bill’s.”

  “Regardless of your opinion, Ned, the PFSC must put pressure on Boeing.”

  “And how might you go about that, Estella?”

  “We’ll boycott.”

  “Who’ll boycott? You and your cohorts?”

  “The fortunate ones. Now, what about helping us lobby for those fans?”

  Now in the early stages of panic, Ned wiped the sweat from his forehead and wondered just how sick his coworkers really were. He was good friends with his producer—they had boated together on many a sunny weekend—though he held no particular affection for his gothic-dressing secretary. Still, Ned knew that even she had loved ones. “Fans, Estella?”

  A long pause was all Estella could manage at first. Then, “The PFSC must do all we can to protect Florida from nature.”

  “Sorry, but I think you’re just plain looney.” DJ Ned cut Estella off as a weather update scrolled across his monitor. He immediately thought of his listeners. “Listen up, folks. Hurricane Gretchen has made a turn eastward, which is bad news for us. Its forward motion is now twelve miles per hour, with maximum sustained winds at one-thirty. Yes, you heard right, one-hundred thirty mile-per-hour winds.”

  To Ned’s dismay, zealot winds seemed even stronger than tropical winds, and his palms were now sweatier than his forehead. He grabbed a paper towel from his desk drawer and dabbed himself. Yet he could not dab fast enough, so persistent was his sweat.

  Finally he tossed the soaked paper towel into his wastebasket, took a deep breath, and addressed his audience. “Crackhead, if you and your trailer-park buddies are still around and haven’t been accosted by Estella and her minions, you should be making plans to evacuate the trailer park within forty-eight hours. That goes for anyone in low-lying areas.”

  While a commercial played, Ned stood at his desk and scratched his head. I thought PFSC stood for Pink Floyd Song Connoisseur.

  Lanny sped down a hazy interstate toward Augusta, Georgia. The time was 5:50 p.m., and the windshield of his sage green Xterra was by now coated with smashed moths and unfortunate flies. Lanny had tried Miranda’s cell phone and her sister’s home number a dozen times each, all to no avail.

  “Just stay calm,” he muttered to himself. “No one has spotted you yet, and there is surely some explanation for all this.”

  He whipped off of the interstate at the next exit, made a left, and pulled into the neighborhood and then the driveway of Miranda’s sister, Carla. Carla’s red Toyota Camry sat in plain sight, and mail protruded from the metal mailbox on the front porch. He knocked but found no one home. He ran around back but found it vacant.

  Like a movie trailer on fast forward, Lanny saw his day pass before his eyes—the BP station and the golden crosses, the billboard and the school, the strange greeting from Detour Airlines, the radio broadcasting his name. And now his girlfr
iend missing. Maybe even her sister as well.

  He felt safest in his truck, so he climbed in and backed out of the driveway. Which way? Where to now?

  His mind scrambled to make sense of it all. He did not remember merging back onto the interstate, but minutes later he found himself circling Augusta, going nowhere and avoiding human contact. He drove with his chin on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at other vehicles or even glance at a billboard.

  By 6:30 p.m., the temperature had not dropped a degree, and Lanny was on his third loop around Augusta. He drove in the slow lane, and soon he reached for his cell and hit speed dial for the thirty-fifth time.

  Miranda still did not answer.

  He tried his golf and poker buddies again.

  0 for 5.

  Lanny’s nature was to avoid trouble, and he wondered if trouble was running ahead of him toward Florida, if whole legions of zealots sought his capture. Perhaps he should spend the night in his truck. He slowed his speed to fifty miles per hour and pulled down both sun visors. He refused to turn on his radio.

  He kept circling Augusta, thinking of Miranda and their fourth date, when they had walked barefoot on a golf course at sunset, hand-in-hand and hinting about the future. Peaceful green fairways were where Lanny had always found solace, his space to think.

  Perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly, or perhaps he was deep in romantic reflection, or perhaps he saw the opportunity to live out a lifelong dream, but when Lanny saw a green sign that read HOME OF THE MASTERS, he took exit 199 off the interstate and onto Washington Road.

  Maybe if I explain my plight, they’ll let me hide here. Plus, if Georgian zealots are pursuing me in order to claim some big reward, this will be the last place they’ll look

  A second green sign directed him to turn south. Excited just to be near Augusta National, he drove another mile until the right side of the road took on the look of a manicured fortress—green, private, and pristine. In the distance a majestic driveway sat behind a whitewashed guard house. Lanny sat idling in the road, ogling at the even more majestic clubhouse that sat at the end of Magnolia Lane.