Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  And Walter crushed shut his eyes, wondering if his wife might not still be with him had she been barren. Yet, had she been, and thereby unable to bear him sons, would he have loved her all the same? When nights felt this long, he knew he would have.

  Death made war on all things.

  For a time he considered casting everything, letters and manuscripts alike, into the fireplace. Let them burn, let these dreadful secrets turn to smoke while he washed his hands clean of the whole affair.

  But in cowardice there was no honor, whose code had determined his life before he was even born.

  For honor, too, was forged in iron.

  III

  CHILDREN OF AN ILL-CHOSEN GOD

  Ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so powerful, that religion is thought to consist, not so much in respecting the writings of the Holy Ghost, as in defending human commentaries.

  — Baruch Spinoza

  Chapter 22

  Saying goodbye to St. Louis hadn’t been nearly as difficult as Paul anticipated. Immersed in the whirlwind of preparations for sudden departure, he found it easy to overlook all that this town had meant to him. His best airshift times yet, his largest audiences, his favorite co-workers. The flowering of his confidence and skills.

  For every high, a low, however. All had been circumvented by the worst days of his life. Human nature was often merciful, allowing memories of the best of times and the forgetting of the pain; nostalgia was the greatest polish of all. But not this time, not for him. He’d gone too far.

  After narrowly pulling back from allowing — or directing — a taste of mortality to go ripping into Craig Sheppard, Paul had sprinted home to consult Donny Dawson’s itinerary. Hours and many phone calls later, that evening he had managed to catch the man at his entourage’s hotel in Kansas City. They would be there two days before hopping west to Topeka on Friday. If Paul was serious about joining him, why didn’t he spend the next couple of days wrapping up whatever matters needed attention in St. Louis, then catch up with them in Topeka? On, say, Saturday?

  It sounded perfect. The way things were degenerating on the home front, he could no longer trust himself. Not that he was foolish enough to believe he could run from the wild talent that had taken him over; it would always be there, following as surely as a shadow. But at least he could run from the circumstances that brought out the worst in him, and run to something that might set him on a higher level of understanding. Whoever or whatever, wherever in the cosmos, had seen fit to dump this on him had shown less-than-perfect wisdom by withholding the owner’s manual.

  Sanctuary, ready and waiting. All that remained was to sever the ties to the past, a life he still lived but could no longer lead.

  He called KGRM and quietly resigned to David Blane, who didn’t push, who didn’t even sound surprised. A simple matter, really, without fanfare. Normally, when someone left, it was cause for as much of the KGRM staff as could attend to make a pilgrimage to Tappers or Blueberry Hill and send the departee into his future with a hangover worthy of the occasion. But there would be none of that this time, at Paul’s request — the less said the better, just forget I was ever born.

  He sold his furniture and the appliances he wouldn’t need in Oklahoma City. Gathered the rest of his belongings into garment bags and suitcases and boxes. Instructed the post office to hold his mail until notification as to where to forward it. He closed out his bank account and canceled his apartment lease, forfeiting the remainder of September’s rent and his damage deposit. He called St. Francis Medical Center, told them his temporary leave of absence from the volunteer program was to become permanent.

  On and on they fell, the dominoes representing life as he knew it.

  Oddly enough, the one that caused the most regret was getting rid of Calvin and Hobbes. Gerbils, silly pets anyway, but he’d grown attached, wanted them to have a good home. In the dead of night, when Captain Quaalude rode the airwaves, Paul let himself into the station, quietly leaving the gerbils — plus aquarium, food, and extra cedar-shaving bedding — beneath Sherry Thomason’s reception desk. A note explained this bequest, and so she wouldn’t worry too much about his frame of mind, that his sense of humor was as warped as ever, he told her it was the next best thing to a do-it-yourself chinchilla ranch.

  He got phone calls from most of the station staff, all of whom expressed degrees of perplexity over this sudden departure, these even stranger plans for his immediate future. But all wished him well. Early Friday afternoon, Peter Hargrove toted over a case of ale and the two of them got quietly hammered together, one last time. Paul expected lectures, mind games, pleas to reconsider, and he got all of them, though in neither the quantity nor the vehemence for which he had braced. And when Peter left, he and Paul hugged fiercely — first time they had ever done so, never like this, as if they were sad brothers separated by a war. Wicked Uncle Pete wasn’t such a badass after all.

  Conspicuous by her absence, though, was Lorraine. She never called, never dropped by, and probably this was for the best. Better to leave her behind to her own life and his past, recalling as their last encounter that plaintive reaffirmation of friendship, when he had known what lay ahead and she had not. It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he could live with it. It was, at least, dignified.

  Saturday, finally, the fourteenth, and Paul had managed a remarkably effective amputation from St. Louis, he and this city of gateways no longer a part of each other. He left for Topeka at nine o’clock, a faint cool in the September morning air. Virginal foretaste of autumn, the season of change and turning. The season for seeking shelter.

  The city fell behind him and I-70 unrolled westward, and KGRM played his farewell from St. Louis. Pink Floyd, eerie and brooding, bidding him welcome, welcome to the machine.

  “I’ll leave it up to you, Paul. Would you prefer to sit back and observe for a while? Or would you like to jump right in your first night?”

  So far as Paul could tell, Donny wasn’t leaning one way or the other, was barely concealing his excitement at having him there in the first place. With all due modesty, this was understandable. Wasn’t every day Donny got to team up with someone of equivalent talent, and guide it toward the fulfillment of its potential. He had made Paul’s status apparent from the very beginning. There was to be no Mister Dawson between them, ever, as was the case with so many of the employees. It was to be Donny, always, first-name basis flowing both ways.

  “I’ve already seen how the revival runs,” Paul said. “I’d just as soon start earning my keep right off the bat.”

  Donny smiled, nodded his approval, patted him companionably on the shoulder.

  Two hours remained before showtime, and the civic center buzzed with the same sort of activity that preceded all the concerts Paul had attended. The technical crew checking and double-checking cords, cables, connections. The synth player stepping through various organ and brass and string patches in the Korg’s memory bank. The pianist limbering up his fingers with scales and arpeggios. The piano’s pickup mike was run through a digital delay, doubling the signal and detuning it fractionally so that it could sound like an old-time, honky-tonk upright. The vocal soloist was onstage doing a soundcheck for her own satisfaction. Laurel Pryce, Donny said her name was, stepping out from the choir for the featured spot ever since Amanda had gone to El Salvador. Paul remembered her performance from St. Louis, had to acknowledge he would remember anyone who looked like her. Behind her, the ARM OF THE APOSTLE banner was being hung across the purple backdrop, until it draped just so. The last of the folding chairs were being eyeballed and straightened into precise rows, lacking only their audience.

  All for the man in white, and the salvation he brought to anyone who would but take his hand. And mine too, now, and just how did it happen this fast? As Paul and Donny sat in the middle of the auditorium, he tried to picture all these seats filled. A heady rush, nothing at all like the apprehension of a radio booth. Here you saw their eyes. Their needs.

  �
��We need to have some subtlety in the way you work the crowd tonight. Or more specifically, the people I’ll be calling out.” Donny gave a smile Paul had seen a hundred times before. “Because, unless I’m way off base, you really would rather remain in the background. Am I right on that?”

  Nodding, “Pretty much. I never really was the type to step into spotlights.”

  “That’s a very Christian attitude.” Donny grinned. “You are a rare one. And I count myself blessed for that, I hope you know. How about we head up to the stage for a minute?”

  Donny led the way down one of the main aisles, then veered around stage left at floor level to disappear behind the entire vast platform. A few more folding chairs had been set up back here, grouped around a small TV monitor.

  “This is where Ricky and Robby — they’re two of my ushers — spend the first part of the rally. They’ll pitch in for other things as needed, especially if we’re running short someplace else, but when it comes time for the healings and the blessings, that’s when they come out front.”

  “So you want me to stay back here with them?”

  “I think that would be easiest. Then, when you hear that we’ll be starting to minister to the people, you come on out around to the front.” Donny took the lead again, up the tiered steps, along the stage to center back. “You’ll need to keep somewhere along here, and watch the crowd so you can tell where each one is coming from. I’d like you to be there to greet them by the time they reach the top of the stairs, and you can bring them on over to center stage. Comfort them, reassure them. A lot of them may be nervous, even frightened. I wouldn’t know what to tell you any more specifically than that, because each one is going to be a bit different from the last. But I think that you know the one thing to do in each case … don’t you?”

  Paul nodded. He stood beneath lights and ceiling girders, dwarfed by the enormity of this place. Yet feeling that he’d never had greater purpose. He knew exactly what to do. Looking out over the regiments of empty seats, so much potential out there for pain and desperation, loss and searching. So much expectation…

  Bless me, Donny, for I am here.

  Midshow, exhaustion competing with heightened anticipation.

  The drive from St. Louis to Topeka had taken six and a half hours, and upon arrival, there had been the matter of chasing down the Dawson entourage. Paul had managed little sleep the night before, tossing and turning with the frightened excitement of new beginnings. Night had been eternal, while morning had come too soon.

  He could sleep now, now, of all the inopportune times. Wrung out in his folding chair and best suit, the crush of noise from the stage and beyond a most peculiar lullaby. The music and Donny’s voice of thunder and the exultant throng he commanded, all became a whirlpool of singular magic, womblike as it enveloped. The purple background rippled, subtly hypnotic, and Paul’s chin played tag with his chest. Head drifting down, down, a stolen moment, then snapping up again, no problem, just resting my eyes.

  At least he wasn’t alone, no need to fear sleeping through his cue. Ricky and Robby, an odd pair. They spoke little, which seemed in keeping with their burly size, yet the phrase strong silent types didn’t comfortably fit this line of work. They looked too refined, with that immaculately cropped hair and those tailored suits, and in all honesty, the only thing to distinguish one from the other was that Ricky had a moustache.

  Will I look just like them after a year of this? It was a concern.

  How strange to think that a mere four nights ago these two had been escorting him offstage. Briskly, firmly, no time wasted. He had made their boss look bad. Odd situation. Sprout five o’clock shadows on these two and stick them in jeans and muscle shirts, and they would make a fine pair of tavern bouncers.

  Come to think of it, now that he had time to really take in his environment and new co-workers, a lot of Donny’s staff looked like these two. Ricky and Robby were just the blow-up versions, the rest scaled down, scurrying about with their offering buckets and their questionnaires. Well-groomed, well-dressed, cheerful and unobtrusive smiles, eyes wide and happy. And vacuous? No, now that was cruel. The men wore, for the most part, dark suits. The women wore longish skirts and blouses whose buttons would never see more than the top one unfastened for public display.

  One big happy conservative family.

  There were a couple exceptions. Laurel Pryce, for one. Female vocal soloist. Paul had roused to attention during her songs, watching attentively on the small backstage closed-circuit monitor. Tall, her blonde hair set off by a blue dress, no shortage of athletic sensuality here.

  Then there was Gabe Matthews. He alone seemed to possess much sense of business instinct. Opportunities seized and opponents mastered, kind of startling until you got used to it. But in this ocean of calm complacency, Gabe was a refreshing change of pace.

  All of which led to the inevitable sense of doubt: What am I doing here? I don’t know these people. I haven’t belonged to a church since I was a kid. I don’t even know that I believe the same things they do, all the fundamentalist dogma.

  Now wasn’t the time for this, and he tried to usher it from his head. First-time jitters, he’d just undertaken a major life change and had barely stopped to breathe. He was forgetting the first time he’d taken the air in a professional capacity — college amateur radio didn’t count — at a small Indianapolis station. So nervous he’d first had to void his stomach into the toilet.

  What was he doing here? Trying to make a difference, the safest way he knew to go about it, and the internal pep talk could not have come at a better time…

  “BECAUSE I’VE GOT THE FEELING — AND I’VE GOT IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY — THAT DOCTOR JESUS IS GOING TO BE DOING SOME HEALING HERE TONIGHT, AMEN!”

  Donny’s voice rolled over the crowd and invoked its roar of approval. Paul was standing automatically, stretching muscles from the hours spent seated and confined, then following Ricky and Robby. This was it, his moment to shine. Shine, while keeping that light to himself, between him and Donny and the lucky souls who would never know precisely what had touched them. Now was the time to deny himself and live for others, to put love for strangers to the test.

  He felt the external Paul Handler withdraw, shrinking willingly, even gratefully, from the glare of stage lights and the waving arms. He swam away on a hot molten sea of light, leaving behind the elemental core that functioned not on rationality but on intuition and feelings and empathy. It was this Paul who smiled confidently at Donny, so much larger-than-life in his white suit and theatrical sweat. It was this Paul who took his place of duty near the back center of the stage, who waited until Donny plucked a name from midair as if planted by some celestial cue card, and then Paul went striding across the stage to help the first callout. An elderly woman who had to be guided by a friend because she could not see well enough on her own, oh those cataracts…

  Paul took her by one sticklike arm, her thin flesh loose and pale and wrinkled as parchment, and he was concentrating, staring for a moment into the milky translucence of her eyes. The empathy was there in abundance and she had become an open book. Her terror of failure as clear as a sour smell. This was the Supreme Court of healing she was dealing with, her avenue of last resort, for she was more than apprehensive about having the cataracts removed by surgery, she was dead-set against, because what did doctors know anyway, the butchers?

  Like a slate wiped free of chalk, Paul felt no taint of the anger he’d hoped to leave behind in St. Louis. A state of purity had been reached, the price a severance from the past, but well worth it, he could accede this in all honesty. He could flow from himself to the old woman without her even catching on — blindsiding her, as it were — for all he was to her was hired help, certainly not the man with the touch of Heaven in his fingertips. He could let it run full circuit back into himself without so much as a thank-you expected in return…

  Because gratitude wasn’t a part of the bargain.

  By the time he got her safely de
livered to Donny and those blessed hands, the woman’s emotions were in such a peak of rapture that she collapsed at his touch, into the waiting arms of Ricky and Robby, and the veil had been lifted from her eyes.

  Glory, glory.

  A subterfuge? Perhaps. Little white lies, intended for the benefit of those who need not worry, who need only rejoice in restoration. Cheering crowd and hot lights and thunderstorm of music aside, Paul knew that he was surely doing what was right and good and proper.

  So bring on the next, and the next. And keep them coming.

  Chapter 23

  Topeka on a late Saturday night, Gabe’s hotel room lit only by the glow of the television. Mood lighting with a touch of the unearthly, this seemed appropriate. The late late show, plotless and pointless, so far as Gabe could tell. He paid no attention. He’d been unable to find CNN, had left it on this channel in mild despair.

  He was shirtless, propped up on the still-made bed against its pillows, toying with the razor blade around his neck. Tap the keen edge, gently now, appreciate its power. He traced one finger along his collarbones. Running out of fresh skin to cut there, the little vertical scars lined parallel, end to end on both bones, like the hash marks of some ancient army veteran.

  The moment was ripe for a cut, just a little one to get him through the night, but sometimes discretion was the better part of honor. Leave it alone, company was coming, very important company. It would not be good form to open the door while still bleeding.

  Gabe let the blade dangle against his chest, and instead went for another totem, resting on the nightstand. The truest link to his parents he owned.

  A rearview mirror, early 1960s Ford vintage, glass smashed into a thousand fragments but miraculously still in the frame. He’d been only four when it got this way, and didn’t recall the day at all, knew of it only by secondhand stories and a yellowed clipping from the newspaper of some small Michigan town. They said his father had been holding this in his cold hand, when the wreckage was cleared away. Dad, trying to beat the train at an intersection without barricades, Mom probably scolding him in that moment. Gabe thought he remembered her frequent criticisms of Dad’s driving. But what did he know, really? Could four-year-old orphans trust the accuracy of their memories? Those fragile glimpses into a life that was less substantial than a dream, snippets, probably one for every fragment of mirror glass.