by J. T. Warren
“Do you think he was?”
“I don’t know, I just need to find him.”
“What was the last thing you said to him?”
Anthony had been punching that Jesus freak and screaming, What did you do to my daughter? What the fuck did you do to my Delaney? “I freaked out.”
Toller raised his eyebrows and Chubby Cop turned toward Anthony. His name was, if tags were to be trusted, Craig Fineman. If Anthony suddenly jumped up, Fineman would probably put two in his chest before he realized what he had done. That might not be a bad way to go, if he could get Tyler to leave first.
“I overreacted.”
“You hit him?” Toller asked.
“No, God no.”
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for your swollen knuckles. Punching walls? Frustration, perhaps?” Toller had a crewcut of short white hair; perhaps he had kids, even grandkids.
Yet, Anthony’s dead daughter lay only a few feet away and Toller was being a prick. “No, I hit someone, this guy …”
… walked in with his arm around my son and I freaked out. He’s a dangerous guy, trust me. He came to my house Saturday and he told me my daughter was pretty and now she’s dead and his eyes were wrong, uneven or something, don’t you see what I’m saying—that Jesus worshipper STOLE MY SON!
“This guy what?” Toller was waiting.
“I know where he is.”
Fineman backed up a step, expecting a trap, perhaps. Toller leaned in, unafraid. “Oh?”
He told them as calmly as he could about the two nameless Jesus Empowerment guys who had come to his door on Saturday, how bizarre they had been. He explained how the one guy had insisted that Anthony would need the pamphlet, almost as though he knew something was going to happen. He explained the way the other one, the short stocky one, had looked, how something seemed off about him, the loose hairs, the wrinkled suit. He didn’t tell them about the eyes, maybe because he couldn’t see Toller’s eyes and Fineman’s were squinty like those of a hog, but mostly because, though he hated to admit it, he was starting to sound hysterical.
“Never heard of them,” Toller said. Fineman shook his head. “You say you have a flier from them?”
“At my house.”
“Perhaps we should go get it.”
“Why would they take him? What do they want with my son?”
“They probably didn’t take him, Mr. Williams. But we should check it out. Though I’m sure it’s some type of non-threatening entity. Bunch of disenfranchised Catholics. Probably find them in a basement eating donut holes and drinking instant coffee.” Toller laughed. Anthony wanted to see his eyes so badly that he almost asked Toller to remove them and then he stopped himself. He had done more than enough to appear crazy for one night.
“And if they don’t have him?”
“You have a picture of your son? We’ll Amber Alert it right now. Someone will spot him. Have him back to you in an hour, maybe sooner.”
Anthony fished out a school photo of Brendan from his wallet and handed it over. Toller appraised it for a moment, said nothing, handed it to Fineman. A few minutes later, Tyler was driving his father back home while Toller and Fineman followed in their cruiser.
“You didn’t see anything?” Anthony asked his son.
“No, Dad. I left with Paul. I didn’t see anything.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just driving around. Clearing my head.”
“That my beer on your breath?”
“Sorry.”
“Fuck it.”
When they arrived at the house, Stephanie stood on the porch, waving her cell phone. Anthony hadn’t even turned his on. Something had happened. Chloe overdosed. The ambulance was on the way.
Anthony jumped out of the car before the car came to a complete stop and Anthony fell to his knees. He wouldn’t notice the torn holes in the pants until later after his knees stopped bleeding. He almost tackled Stephanie on the porch.
“It’s Brendan,” she said, eyes heavy. “He’s back.”
“What? Where?”
Anthony pushed past her into the house and, sure enough, there was his youngest son standing in the doorway to the kitchen, glass of milk in hand. He raised it as if in a toast. “Hi, Dad.”
Rage, pure and red-hot, flared through him so immediately that he could have torn his son’s head clean off and kept beating the corpse until it was tenderized, but a wave of relief washed away the rage and he went to his son, took him his arms, and hugged him as if the boy had returned from the dead. In a way, he had. Milk spilled over Anthony’s back and splattered on the floor.
“Where were you?” he asked after he broke the hug.
“I’m okay.” Brendan stared at the half-empty glass as if the milk had disappeared magically.
“But where were you?”
His son stared him dead-on. “I was in the woods. I ran away. I’m sorry.” The boy’s eyes watered and Anthony couldn’t stop himself from hugging him again and even more fiercely. It was okay, he told him over and over. Brendan had gotten scared at his father’s freak out, simple explanation with no harm done. It was okay. Everything was going to be okay. Anthony felt a crazed laugh threatening in his throat: how many times had he heard or said that everything was going to be okay?
“Cancel the Amber Alert,” Toller said from the front door. “Kid wasn’t nabbed. Everything’s A-Okay.”
If Shakespeare was right and all that is past is prologue, then everything was not going to be okay, not even close.
* * *
Sometime later when the boys were in their rooms, maybe sleeping but probably not, and Stephanie had collapsed next to Chloe in his bedroom, Anthony found the flier from the Jesus freaks. It was on the kitchen table where it had been since Saturday.
Jesus Wants you to be Empowered.
Ha. The picture of Jesus on the cross did little to inspire empowerment. How could crucifixion bring empowerment? Had Jesus wondered the same thing when the thick nails went through his wrists and feet? Had he even felt the thorns piercing his scalp? Had he believed in empowerment at that moment? Hadn’t he rebelled against God at that last instant? He asked why God had forsaken him. That wasn’t empowerment; that was abandonment.
The First Church of Jesus Christ the Abandoned.
Were the well-dressed worshippers in the inside picture real parishioners or actors? Maybe they had been taken from other pictures online and assembled and the Bibles had been skillfully cut and pasted into their hands. It was easier to believe that than to accept this diversified congregation of people who believed that the crucified Jesus really had experienced empowerment and wanted to pass that feeling on to others.
No matter the pain from which you suffer, the difficulties against which you struggle, Jesus wants to help. At The First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, we seek the fulfillment of God’s will through an honest acceptance of our faults and a faithful inquiry into the magical workings of Jesus.
The wording was clever, persuasive. Had he been the editor charged with proofing this document he would have applauded the rhetoric. He ought to find out who had written it and offer him or her some work writing copy for college textbooks. With such persuasive skill at work, they might actually sell a few books. Anthony would have only objected to the pained Jesus-on-the-cross picture. Wouldn’t it be better to have a redeemed, empowered Jesus, perhaps floating over his worshippers with an angelic glow about him?
“Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Listen to Jesus and let Him empower you.
Anthony knew something now of burdens. He could write his own biblical book—The Gospel of Misery. For then Anthony beheld the mighty power of Misery, an angel of pain, as it fell upon him and crushed his soul, whittled away his will to live. Then he knew the mighty power that was and is and ever shall be Misery and it punished him with impunity. Anthony knew he should have repented but it was too late. In the late hour of t
he day, Anthony beheld the dead, or the soon to die, and wept for he had doubted the power.
It probably wouldn’t catch on in churches, but he bet the people would understand it, accept it, even. They would know it because they lived it. No one lived as The Empowered; everyone, however, knew life as a victim of Misery. Jesus promised rest, but could He actually deliver?
Chloe had been resting for weeks, nearly a month, and now she would keep resting, maybe forever. Is that the rest Jesus offered? When Chloe slept, she was not free from the demons prying at her mind. Even when heavily drugged, her eyes still twitched and rolled beneath their lids. When she woke, she never spoke of what happened behind closed eyelids, and Anthony was glad for that. He didn’t need any more nastiness crowding his mind. He had enough to last a lifetime.
He wasn’t going to sleep tonight. He would find no rest. He went to the garage and stood in the dark for several minutes as his eyes adjusted before he flicked on the light. He had hoped to see something. When the eyes were adjusting to sudden darkness or vice versa, sometimes the unusual appeared. It was like catching a glimpse of another world, just for a second. He didn’t see anything and that seemed more cruel than it probably should have been. He only wanted reassurance. He wanted to know his daughter was okay; wherever she was, he needed to know she was safe.
Chloe’s red Subaru was in the second spot where it had been since that trip on Route 84 that tipped it over. He had driven it only a few times, sort of as an experiment, and found it too difficult to use. There was nothing wrong with it mechanically speaking. The tow truck driver had even marveled how the car suffered such little damage. The repair shop fixed a few dents and gave the car a tune-up and assured him it would run almost like new. And it had.
His baby had died (eye socket gushing blood) and the fucking car had survived with a few dents. In fact, the strange knocking sound the car sometimes made on left turns had vanished. Anthony buried one child but the car in which that baby died kept living. That was Gospel again: for Anthony marveled then at the awesomeness of Misery’s works. “The irony and the cruelty,” Anthony cried.
The few times he drove the car, he couldn’t handle it. The first trip to the local grocery store had ended badly on the side of the road. During the drive, the red-and-purple stain in the passenger seat (gushing blood) had grown bigger and bigger until it soaked the entire seat. Anthony vomited his breakfast into a ditch. The next few rides brought nausea as well but he hadn’t vomited. Instead, he cried so hard he had to pull over because he couldn’t see the road. It wasn’t the seat those times; it was the baby’s crying. It filled the car, its wail echoing throughout and even drowning out the radio music blaring from the speakers.
But the baby hadn’t been crying. He had been too blue—almost purple—and couldn’t make a sound. He hadn’t uttered a single noise from the moment they found him in the crib until the paramedics eased him out of Chloe’s grasp. When the first paramedic, a woman with her brown hair in a bun, took the baby and wrapped it in a cloth, the baby had cried, a single, desperate note that hung in the air and then vanished on the wind. Chloe hadn’t heard it and Anthony made no mention of it. The paramedic glanced at him and then turned away. Anthony imagined that cry, must have.
The crying in the car was that single sound over and over, dragged out, exaggerated and amplified. It pounded and reverberated. Anthony screamed against it, sobbing, and almost crashed into an elderly lady stopped at a Yield sign. Anthony pulled over and cried near somebody’s bushes. He eventually called Tyler and had him come drive the car home while Anthony drove his son’s. Tyler told him to see Dr. Carroll. Anthony didn’t want the kind of relief Dr. Carroll and his prescription pad offered. There was no crying in Tyler’s car—that was relief enough.
He wasn’t going to get back into that car, hopefully ever again. It was his car he had come down here to see, visit with. It sat on two flat tires in the first car port. The windshield was completely destroyed, the crumbled pieces of glass still on the front seats and in the foot wells. The front bumper and hood was crumpled in where the car had hit a tree. The engine had given up upon impact, the mechanic said. The car was totaled, of course. But Anthony refused to let it be demolished. He paid to have it brought back here. The tow truck driver, different one from the Route 84 scene, at least—didn’t ask any questions, though his face said he was mystified as all shit. Good, let him be confused. Tyler asked about the car. “My daughter died in it,” was all Anthony said and that was all it took. No more questions.
He walked around the back of the car. The back end was unscathed. Even his bumper stickers—NEVER BELIEVE IN GENERALIZATIONS; EVERYBODY DOES BETTER WHEN EVERYBODY DOES BETTER—remained. They hadn’t even really started to peel. Delaney had taken a bowling ball to the face going sixty miles per hour and the glue on the bumper stickers hadn’t given up an ounce of strength. She hated those bumper stickers, especially, READING: EDITORS DO IT FOR MONEY.
He knelt before the bumper. An array of scrapes and minor dents where paint had started peeling speckled it; the bumper was the bruised face of one of those ultimate fighters after a match. He caressed those bumper stickers that Delaney had ridiculed. She was mortified, or at least pretended to be, to have to use his car. He was going to give her this car soon, but he knew he’d have to peel off the damn stickers. They’re just so … uhg, she said more than a few times when he pried her about what was so bad about his bumper graffiti.
The top corner of READING: EDITORS DO IT FOR MONEY was hanging loosely and Anthony grabbed it with his thumb and middle finger. He yanked on it but the tiny piece slipped from his grip. If he had taken these things off sooner, had given her the car all freshly cleaned, tuned-up, and smelling sweet, maybe things would have turned out differently. That was ridiculous, of course. How could the simple removal of stickers so substantially alter the events of the universe? They couldn’t. But what about the butterfly effect thing? Tiny wings in one place create a hurricane millions of miles away. Removing a few stupid bumper stickers could have delayed Delaney just long enough on her way to pick up her friend after stopping at Starbucks for a Tall Skinny Latte (it had been found in the car); she might have knelt before the bumper as he was doing now, even run her finger across the clean bumper and smiled, knowing how badly Dad wanted her to be happy. Instead, she took no note of the stickers coming out of the coffee shop, hopped in the car, and sped off to her death.
He grabbed the corner and tried again. The sticker wouldn’t budge. It might as well be painted on. He changed hands, changed back again, braced his free hand against the bumper for leverage, and pulled and pulled but it kept slipping and he had to keep starting over. He cursed, punched the bumper, and cursed again at the pain flaring in his knuckles. He sat back, breathing deeply, fighting off the tears.
He might have stayed that way all night, but the memory of those horrible infant cries in the other car got him moving.
He hadn’t let Delaney take Chloe’s car because he didn’t want her to be able to drive too fast. What would happen if she heard the baby crying when she was driving eighty miles per hour? She might lose control of the vehicle and plow into a tree or something.
He chuckled; he sounded like a lunatic.
The driver’s door had suffered a rippling dent (the insurance agent had used that term), so the plastic was warped in and out in a rolling ocean wave. The glass in this door had shattered as well. That had happened when the force of the bowling ball crushed her face against the headrest and then knocked what remained of her head into the driver’s window. She had died instantly, or so people told him. There was enough blood across the front seats to suggest that at least her heart kept pumping for a little while even after she lost her face.
The door opened with a metallic screech. Pebbles of breakaway glass littered the front seats, the gear shifter and the foot wells. He didn’t even consider wiping off the seat before he sat behind the wheel, which had been removed because it had collapsed onto Delaney’s l
ap, effectively shattering her pelvis. The airbag had deployed, the insurance agent told him, but only after she hit the tree.
The newspaper article from the day after her accident lay on the passenger seat. He had placed it there without thinking much about it, except that he had to get it out of the house but couldn’t throw it in the trash. TEEN DIES IN HORRIFIC HIGHWAY INCIDENT. A picture of the car mashed against the tree with a smaller inset picture of a state trooper holding the bowling ball overlapping in the corner was set in the middle of the page with the text running around it. He hadn’t read the article and didn’t intent to. He knew all he needed to know—his daughter was dead. He hadn’t written her obituary, either, for the same reason—it wouldn’t bring her back. The funeral home pieced one together; it read like an excerpt from a scholarly article. Delaney would have hated it.
The faintest aroma of vanilla and peaches, Delaney’s body lotion, drifted around the heavy stink of blood and sweat. One of her hair clips lay in the passenger foot well. He picked it up and admired it like he might some ancient artifact from a mysterious time past.
He caressed the keys, a metal DW insignia hung from the key ring along with a pink rabbit’s foot. And the irony gets thicker, still. He inserted the key in the ignition and turned. No response, of course. He tried the radio but the battery was dead, probably even gone. He didn’t know what the rescue workers and the police had done to the car. He didn’t ask. Had she been listening to her pop music on K104? Had she even been singing along, swaying her shoulders, tapping the beat on the steering wheel, when the ball met her face? Had she at least been smiling? Please God he hoped for that much. Let her have died while happy. That wasn’t much consolation, but it was better than the alternative. He couldn’t think of her seeing the ball for even a fraction of a second and mustering a panicked, horrified scream before dying. That wasn’t fair.
And Anthony discovered, lo and behold, that God was not fair, for he had sent his angel Misery down to reap from him all that God had bestowed. The reaping was mighty and wrathful. Anthony stood before the emptiness of the world and wept because God is great.
