The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  Sparky, at this command, would rise to his feet, look Danica in the eye without flinching, without fear, tell her his full name, that he was doing very well, and thank her for asking. He would then follow this with a slight bow before asking her politely but assertively how her day was going.

  That’s what I want him to do, but he’s been too conditioned to do otherwise. No eye contact. Mumble. Slumped shoulders. The blush isn’t something the wife or I ever demanded of him—as blushes either happen or they don’t—but we’ve always been pleased to see them when they do. The anxious poking of the paper? A nice touch we never would have thought of.

  It seems the kid’s branching out on his own, expanding his repertoire, but I don’t want that this time. What I want is for Sparky to surprise somebody. Danica, specifically, these goons standing beside us, me.

  And so, unexpectedly overcome with the baffling desire to protect my son, I do something I’ve never done in the history of his life: I stand up and shield him. This one time I will defend him.

  I puff up my chest as much as possible, put as much BOOM in my voice as I can manage, and roar the following, indignant and strong:

  “MISS, HIS NAME IS MICHAEL JASPER HORVATH, AND HE IS THE ANTICHRIST!”

  Danica arches her eyebrow again. “Good for him,” she says and returns to her feral typing.

  Maybe something about the boy. Maybe something about me.

  8

  An hour after Sparky was born, the wife was in the postpartum unit, laughing. She was no longer in pain; Fred T.C. Hoover Jr. was nowhere in sight; her vagina was hidden; and though her left breast was visible, it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal because—Oh, look at the baby!

  Maybe it was the endorphins coursing through her and being overwhelmed by feelings of pride, relief, and joy, but Penny seemed to think this was a great time to say some really dumb shit. Such as: “This was good. I’m glad those kids got to see this. I think they learned something about love and beauty today. Praise the Lord.”

  Some of the girls from the class were still in the room, having been given permission to ooh and goo over Sparky. Because of the inevitability of more nudity from my wife, none of the boys were.

  Apparently, the Sex Ed ringleaders had decided that gazing at a goopy, baby-spitting vagina was one thing, seeing some bazoombas something else. So they had shoved all the boys back on the bus, where they remained with one of the male teachers, ready to go.

  From what I overheard, they were playing a game most high school boys play when they are on a bus waiting to go someplace else: Grabass.

  For my part, I was over in the corner, not playing Grabass (Grabassing yourself isn’t much of a game). I had just gotten off the phone with the old man, who, after cursing the conjunctivitis that had kept him from being present for Sparky’s birth, had wildly and stutteringly explained how proud he was of me; how absolutely thrilled he was that this, the moment he’d been waiting his whole life for—the only reason he could figure for my existence in the first place—had finally happened.

  As you might imagine, I was still in a state of shock at finally being a recipient of my father’s approval and was mulling the implications as I watched a televised college football halftime show featuring the Rock’em Sock’em Marchonaires. Looking back now, I would have to say they didn’t really rock or sock much of anything—they sounded like all marching bands do (nerdy)—yet their music was still soothing to me somehow.

  Nobody from the baby side of the room was paying me much mind. Between nurses coming and going and the wife’s parents stopping by to ooh and goo along with the high school girls, I had been shunted to the side, and I was fine with that.

  Until: “Frank, are you ever going to come over here and see your son?”

  Pulling my attention away from a cathartic rendition of the Flintstones theme song, I saw that everybody had left the room but Penny, me, and the tiny human we’d made. The wife’s eyes and smile were still fixed on Sparky, but her flat, cool voice was addressing me.

  “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’ve been avoiding us,” she said.

  “Us” already? Taking sides against Daddy this soon?

  I rose to my feet and reluctantly approached the bed.

  “I guess I got lost in the shuffle. Your parents, the nurses, those girls—a lot of people, Pen.”

  “Uh-huh, huge crowd.”

  “Besides, honey,” I said. “I didn’t want to interfere with the vital mother-baby bonding window that experts say occurs during the first minutes after birth and is crucial to their emotional development.”

  “I know, and that was totally the right thing to do, Frank. I’m sure Reverend Phipps would approve of how you’ve handled everything so far.”

  Ho boy, and here we go.

  Reverend Phipps had been holding a revival at Little Hat Pentecostal the past week, with the theme being the importance of a father’s relationship to a son. This was something the wife had thought to be especially prophetic, seeing how we were about to have one, hence her mandate that I attend every single goddamned meeting.

  “Michael? You want to see your daddy?” Penny said to the baby, kissing his forehead. “Now that he’s decided to grace us with his presence? Now that I managed to shame him into doing it? Now that he finally wants to be a part of his son’s life?”

  “Pen, he’s been alive for all of two hours—”

  “Or would you like to make him wait like he’s made us wait?”

  To be clear, I never once hit my wife, despite there being a number of times I imagined doing extensive damage to her person. The method tantalizing to me at that moment involved gently removing the baby from her arms and then, while she lay there helplessly, tipping her bed out of the fourth story window and into oncoming traffic below.

  I’m aware Christ speaks of murder done in fantasy as the same thing as committing the deed in reality, but that’s easy for him to say, he never got married.

  Rather than risk the judgment of God by reveling in images of my wife’s defenestrated demise, I was, as usual, the bigger person. Mastering my pride, I bit my tongue, held out my arms, and behaved as though Penny had never stopped with the baby talk.

  “Hand him over, love of my life,” I said.

  Penny smirked and held out my newborn son to me. Even then something didn’t look quite right about him, but I chalked that up to the Ugly Baby Stage.

  “Whatever, Frank,” the wife said. “Try not to be a klutz—”

  “WICKED! EVIL!”

  I turned around.

  Careening through the doorway, holding up a large wooden cross attached to a chain wrapped around his wrist was none other than Reverend Phipps.

  “Uh, hey, Rev,” I said, preparing myself for more stomach-churning fussery over Penny and the baby. But given the mad look in his eyes and the sweat pouring down his face, I got the distinct impression Phipps was not visiting to congratulate us on bringing forth another child of God into this world, nor did it seem he was about to remind me of my great responsibility as a father. Actually, he looked like an aquaphobe about to go down on the Titanic.

  The wife, understandably, took the baby and covered herself up.

  Still wobbling, trembling, Reverend Phipps staggered forward, cast googlie eyes at me, at Penny, and at our newborn son. Groaning, he then thrust out the cross and screamed, “T-THE S-SON OF PERDITION...RISES!”

  PART SEVEN

  Frankie, Frankie you need to call me back right away. The most wonderful, incredible thing has happened! Everything has changed! Everything! My life will never be the same and . . .

  1

  Of the two of us, I was the skeptical one. Despite my lifelong association with Christianity in general and Pentecostalism in particular, I was of the opinion the strange episode that had occurred in the postpartum unit the day of my son’s birth had
been one of an exceptionally dubious nature.

  I was pretty sure Reverend Phipps had lost his mind or, at the very least, gotten the wrong room.

  The wife, as wives do, thought differently.

  The following is the first talk we had about the incident, a month later, as we washed dishes together after suffering through an inedible green bean casserole (my unholy work) for dinner.

  The wife was scrubbing the dishes, and I was in charge of taking the scrubbed dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. Sparky—not yet known as Sparky, but just as Michael, was in our room, asleep in his crib.

  The stage set, off we go:

  First, me, with a salad bowl in my hands: “Phipps was drunk, Penny. Got into some expired communion grape juice or something. It’s probably not the first time.”

  I bent over and nimbly put the salad bowl into the dishwasher.

  “Reverend Phipps doesn’t drink. He never drinks,” the wife said, handing me a scrubbed plate.

  “Okay, he finally lost his marbles then.” (Plate in the dishwasher.)

  “He’s not crazy, either.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Frank. A woman knows when something is off about a man.” (Scrub scrub scrub.)

  “Right, tell that to Eva Braun sometime.”

  “There are always idiotic exceptions, dear,” the wife said. “Please don’t make me one of them.”

  “So you don’t think Phipps is even a skosh out of his mind?” I countered.

  “I didn’t see any evidence to that effect.”

  “You mean to tell me that barging into a hospital room and waving a cross around, screaming like a maniac, and scaring the shit out of two new parents for no good reason doesn’t qualify?”

  Allow me to point out that as I said the above, I was using the scrubbed plate as a prop, poking it in the air to emphasize such words as “shit” and “for no good reason.” In response, the wife took the plate away from me.

  “Watch your mouth,” she said. “We don’t talk like that anymore.” Penny now held the plate she had taken as far away from my hands as she could, regarding me—as she so often did—with disdain. This left me with no other choice but to disregard her—as I so often had to—yank the dish out of her hands and put it where it belonged in the dishwasher. I was done with that dish. I was not, however, done talking. Nor was I done poking the air, though I decided to use something she could not so easily take away: my finger.

  “This (poke) coming from the reason the birth (poke) video (poke) can’t be watched with the sound (poke) on.”

  The wife, incensed at this devastating truth, began scrubbing the casserole dish.

  “That’s (scrub) different. You try (scrub) passing something the size (scrub) of a watermelon through an opening the size (scrub) of a lime and see how clean (scrub) your language stays.”

  “Honey, I’m not saying what you did was wrong. I’m only saying it’s not wrong for me either. It’s my allowance, if you remember.”

  The casserole dish was ready to go in the dishwasher but the wife was too busy rolling her eyes to hand it to me.

  “And all I’m saying is we need to pray about what Reverend Phipps told us, watch our baby closely, and not just dismiss this out of hand,” she said.

  Hand me the casserole dish please, I thought, getting antsy. There’s a certain amount of fretfulness that develops if, when one is in charge of putting dishes in the dishwasher, there is too much delay in dishes being handed to them. I was not immune to this feeling and it found its way into my speech. Hence, what followed:

  “Pray about what? There’s nothing to pray about. Reverend Phipps went shitballs! It’s been coming on for years! Believe me, I know!”

  “I said watch your mouth!”

  The wife thrust the casserole dish into my hands—hard—but I felt an immense amount of relief nonetheless. I even let out a small, satisfied sigh before turning back to lay further into her.

  “You gotta give me a reason then, babe. A reason why I should take any of what he said seriously. Someone accusing a kid of being, you know, that, is precisely the sort of thing a person should dismiss out of hand.”

  I turned to put the casserole dish into the dishwasher, but get this, didn’t. I instead placed it on the counter with the hope that not putting the dish in the dishwasher would have the same effect on Penny that not getting the dish after it had been scrubbed had had on me. I then followed this with a mutinous grin. Give me a reason, that grin said, and I’ll put your precious casserole dish in the dishwasher.

  “A reason?” she said. “You mean something other than the fact that Reverend Phipps has vanished?”

  The wife had stopped washing dishes altogether and was letting the faucet run—something that, I should add, drives me up the wall.

  “Like I said, he was drunk and wandered off. I’m sure he’ll turn up here sooner or later.”

  “You are such a moron sometimes, Frank. He’s been missing for over a month. Nobody can find him,” the wife said, flapping her hands in my face, flouting what should have been my inviolate husbandly authority while, at the same time, emphasizing that Reverend Phipps was missing and nobody could find him. Meanwhile, the fucking faucet was still going.

  “He’s probably in rehab and the elders of the church are keeping it under wraps until he gets himself sorted out,” I said, staring at the running water, oh so close to madness.

  “While the police and the FBI are scouring the countryside for him? While Mrs. Phipps is ripping her hair out and eating the bedspreads all the ding-dong day?”

  “Pride is a funny thing, Hen-Pen. And some people will go to any length to protect their institutions. Like I said, he’ll be found.”

  “He’s not going to be found, Frank. He’s been silenced.”

  Right then, the wife turned the faucet off, as if to say, Just like I silenced this faucet, so has Reverend Phipps been silenced. Lame. And she was just going to have to turn it back on as there were more dishes to be scrubbed.

  “Well, you could hardly blame them,” I said. “But just who do you think this sinister silencing someone would be?”

  I tried to get us back on track by putting the casserole dish that had been on the counter in the dishwasher, but the wife still didn’t turn the faucet back on. I found the effect of this similar to when she wouldn’t hand me dishes: agonizing.

  “Who do you think would silence a pastor?” Penny said. “The Devil’s minions.”

  “Minions? Oh, for crying out loud. There are no minions out there, Penny. Nobody has minions anymore.”

  “Satan has his followers just like Christ has his. It’s no different. And in this situation, with what Reverend Phipps told us, they would want him rubbed out. So we must be vigilant.”

  On “vigilant” the wife turned the faucet back on. Again, lame.

  “Penny, you can’t honestly believe our son is the—”

  “I’m not saying he is. I’m not saying anything one way or another. But I’m also not going to stupidly disregard the word of a man of God. A man of God who has healed people.”

  “Allegedly healed people.”

  The wife groaned and stopped her scrubbing again. It occurred to me I should consider giving in some here or we were never going to get this done.

  “You are so cynical it makes me sick to my soul!” she said. “This is your pastor you’re throwing under the bus! Your kidnapped and probably murdered pastor! You’ve known him your whole life! He baptized you; he taught you truths from the scripture since you were yea high! And this is how you talk about him?”

  On the bright side we had gotten back on track, as Penny, finished screaming at me, handed me a plate. Maybe no compromise would be necessary.

  “Pen, if he had predicted something else, or predicted nothing, just expressed concern over the welfare of our s
on and his future, then, yes, I wouldn’t be throwing him under the bus. But this, sweetheart, this is nuts.”

  Turning this latest plate over in my hands, I realized the wife had not scrubbed it nearly as well as was needed and that if I put it in the dishwasher it would have to be rewashed after the cycle finished. I hate it when dishes have to be rewashed.

  “It’s not nuts, Frank. It was foretold eons ago in the Bible. The end will come and there will be an Antichrist. It has to happen at some point. Why not now?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, I’m not seeing how Reverend Phipps would be privy to the specifics of that prophecy, and I’m not seeing how we would be the ones to have that kind of kid. I mean, how could we? Did a bunch of naked old people roofie your chocolate pudding one night and toss you into the sack with Lucifer?”

  “Oh, gimme a break, Frank. Satan is an evil spirit,” the wife said, now waving a butter dish around, my clever Rosemary’s Baby reference sailing comfortably over her head. “He has no body. He does not have the capacity to create. The Antichrist will come from human parents and Satan will corrupt his mind.”

  “And how do you know all that?” I said, deftly snatching the butter dish out of Penny’s hand in mid-wave. Into the dishwasher it went. Take that, wife.

  “Duh, Reverend Phipps! I pay attention in church, unlike some people.”

  “The same Reverend Phipps probably in a rubber room right now, anointing the doorframes with his urine?”

  “Reverend Phipps was an underrated man of God. A healer who never got his due.”

  “Underrated, please. I’ve been going to his church for a lot longer than you and I never saw anything miraculous. Do I need to bring up my mother? Trust me, Phipps is no healer.”

  “Oh, is that so?” the wife said. “Did you just block Aaron Coker from your memory, then? Reverend Phipps healed him right in front of us.”

  “Aaron Coker had a sore big toe. That’s hardly the lame to walk and the blind to see.”