The Acolyte (26 page)

Amira was there when I opened the apartment door. I drew the girl aside while Mom fawned over the budgie in its cage.

“It’s my mother,” I told her. “She’s been given the Cure. You know the Cure?” When Amira shook her head, I explained: “If you said or did anything that made people think you were dangerous, they”—drawing a line down the centre of my head with a finger—“and then they”—fingers clawed, I removed an invisible chunk—“and you weren’t a threat anymore.”

Amira said, “Is she sick?”

“No, no. She’s very nice. I want to keep everyone under one roof. Does that make sense?”

“I like her hair. A cloud of snow.”

When the time for introductions arrived I was amused by their postures: hands clasped behind backs, eyes cast down at their shoes—or bunny slippers, as was the case. Like a pair of young girls on a playdate organized by their parents.

“Mom, this is Amira. Amira, Mom.”

Amira said: “Pleased to meet you.”

Mom said: “Oh yes, and you.”

Mom’s body vibrated: so much time had passed since she’d been in a child’s company.

“I like your hair, missus . . .”

“Murtag,” I said.

“. . . Murtag,” said Amira. “A big puffy snowcloud.”

“Oh.” Mom touched her hair. “Thank you so much. I like your teeth. So white and straight. Must take good care of them. They look like . . .”

She trailed off, unable to finish her thought. The awkward moment was interrupted by the peacock making its popping-acorn noises. As we went to the bathroom to check on it, Mom touched Amira’s shoulder gingerly.

“Like beautiful little seashells, yes? Your teeth.”

Amira had emptied the tub and filled it with fresh water. A tin of kidney beans sat on the toilet tank. Amira doled a spoonful onto the bird’s styrofoam raft.

“You made this?” Mom asked Amira.

The girl nodded. “Its leg is broken,” she said. “It can float until it gets better.”

“How very clever.”

The phone rang. I left them in the bathroom to answer it.

Dead silence on the line. No, not quite: faraway breathing, snuffling almost, kind of like the other end was within the proximity of a sleeping baby.

“Murtag?”

It was Garvey. He sobbed softly, as an infant might.

“Come over, Murtag, would you?” A hitching breath. “Only a little while.”

The Land of Milk and Honey

A van was parked outside Garvey’s apartment. Powder blue paintjob, windows blocked out with masking tape. Painted on the side was a mural of the Immaculate Mother cradling a newborn babe. Garvey lived in a three-storey walk-up above a Levite Ave bakery: Golden Rays of Sun. He enjoyed waking to the smell of baking bread. The bakery was shut down; a vandal had spray painted the sign to read Golden Rays of
Sin
, a defacement deeply lacking in wit.

I let myself in. The door was unlocked. Garvey sat on a sofa littered with Hallelujah Energy Boost bottles. The coffee table was spread with electronics: a calculator and a stopwatch and a digital cooking thermometer. Junk now, Garvey having disassembled them to their component wires and diodes. He was presently dismantling his wristwatch with a screwdriver.

Garvey glanced at the TV, tuned to static—that being all any TV could pick up anymore.

“You know,” he said vacantly, “I’m pretty sure there’s something to all that.”

“To what, Garvey?”

“A pattern to the static. Watch long enough, you see shapes moving in there.”

Soon he’d be glimpsing Jesus’ face in the TV snow, same as loons claimed to see it in their grilled cheese sandwiches or the oil stain on their garage floor. He took a swallow from the nearest HEB bottle, arranged a few stray wires into a runic pattern on the table and said, “You and Doe weren’t around. So it fell to us.”

“What fell?”

“Duty.”

He fussed with his wristwatch but the screwdriver head didn’t match the screw slots so he stabbed the tool into the soft wood of the coffee table, left it quivering and went to the window. It overlooked the city’s southern rim. The view stretched to the southernmost limits and the Damascus Towers.

“That’s where they’re holed up,” said Garvey. “The heathens who’ve made a mess of our lives. That’s their . . . nest.”

“How do you figure?”

“The Quints sussed it out.”

“So you’re going to . . .”

He didn’t answer. It smashed together in my head. The van I’d noticed down on the street. How much explosive was packed inside of it? Garvey had martyrdom on his mind.

“We’re Followers, Garvey. We . . . we don’t do those sorts of things.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes the tactics of your enemies are the only ones that work against them.”

“It’s suicide, man. A sin.”

“I considered that,” he admitted. “And this morning, when the Quints showed up with the van and opened the doors, those sacks of fertilizer stacked to the roof . . . it went through my head. But somebody’s got to. Us or them.”

I followed him into the bedroom. A kid’s room: evangelical singers were tacked on the walls. The southern wall was plastered with half-naked men; I recognized them as being ripped from the Summer Fling issue of those Sears and Roebuck catalogues he’d been tasked with bagging up as evidence—evidence that never did find its way to the lockup, I suddenly recalled.

A tuxedo was laid out on the bedspread.

“I was supposed to be married in it,” Garvey said of the monkey suit. “Cost a pretty penny.”

He drew a beach towel off a box on the dresser. An aquarium. Something was coiled round the rock. I drew closer. It was a rattlesnake.

Garvey said, “It’s a hognose. My papa’s before he died. Almost as old as me, this tough old pig.”

“Poisonous, yeah?”

“His venom sacks were cut out years ago. Not to say he won’t bite you—just won’t kill you if he does.”

“He got a name?”

“Duke.”

“You don’t still . . . ?”

“Handle him? That’s not part of my beliefs anymore.” He pocketed his hands to hide the puncture scars. “Besides, without the poison it’s not a true test of faith.”

Duke uncoiled from the rock, tail making a sound like a baby’s rattle. Its face was accordioned in as though someone had used a tiny hammer to render it snub-nosed.

“What does he eat?”

Garvey said: “Used to be mice, but the pet shop’s gone. He’ll happily enough eat eggs. Quail if I can find them, but he’ll put away a chicken egg.”

The phone rang. I trailed him into the kitchen and heard his side of a short conversation with someone—one of the Quints, maybe.

Garvey said: “Yes . . . half an hour, okay . . . all glory to God.”

He hung up and vanished into the bedroom. The door shut. Ten minutes later he came out in the tuxedo.

He said: “How do I look?”

“Your bowtie’s on crooked.”

He allowed me to unkink his tie and centre it below his chin.

Garvey holstered his revolver. “You’ll take good care of Duke?”

“I will.”

I trailed him down the stairwell. “Don’t do this, Garvey. Don’t be such a fucking . . . Follower.”

He turned. His face was clouded with dull rage. He opened the apartment door and stomped out, down the stairs to the street. I watched him. He got in the van, which accelerated down the block, hit the corner and slued round the bend.

Sometime later the air went as shimmery as a clean stretch of tarmac on a summer’s day. Hot wind buffeted my face. When the second Damascus Tower began to fall I turned away.

Big Decisions

I drove home. Duke the rattlesnake lay curled in its aquarium on the passenger seat.

I entered the apartment foyer. Doc Newbarr must have stopped by; a brown bottle had been left in my mailbox. I opened the apartment door to find my mother and Amira on the floor playing Scrabble. They sat cross-legged, hunched over their tile racks. I set Duke’s aquarium beside Frog’s tank. We peered at the snake with a mixture of disgust and perplexity.

“Gross,” said Amira.

“Maybe he thinks you’re gross,” I said. “Not everything can be cute and cuddly. But it’s true. Finding something to love in a snake is an uphill slog.”

The phone rang. I picked up on the tenth ring and just listened.

“Jonah.”

I said: “Swift.”

“Surprised?”

“Not really. They say when all’s said and done the cockroaches will be the last things left,” I told him. “How did you know they were going to bomb the Towers?”

“A gypsy peered into her crystal ball and forewarned of a big bang in my future.”

“The Quints won’t quit til you’re all pushing daisies.”

“Let me worry about those hombres,” he said. “The gypsy also said you visited Murphy. She foretold Murphy would cough up his secret.”

“I paid for it, same as you, I’m sure.”

“Did it shock you?”

“Time was it would’ve. Now, not so much.”

“Do you really think the Quints are after me, Jonah? What
am
I, in end tally? An irritant. A thorn in the Republic’s side. The Quints—Quads?—wish me dead and I’ve no doubt they’ll have my head before long but tell me: who is the most valuable commodity in this city?”

It took a while to twig.

“Murphy and the Immaculate Mother’s bastard kid.”

“Correct.”

“So . . . the Quints are blowing the city apart just to steal The One Child?”

Swift said: “A man may blow up an entire mountain under the belief there’s a diamond inside.”

“But The One Child is a . . .” What had Murphy called him? Forty pounds of useless. “Not the miracle we thought he was.”

“So long as only a few know that, the illusion is maintained.”

“So why not just take him?” I said. “Take him and leave.”

“I suspect your Prophet saw his son as a bargaining chip so stashed him away. A day will come where the Quints rip the location out of him by force—but they’ve got me to deal with first.”

“And you—what do you want out of this?”

Swift said, “Only an audience with your Prophet.”

“Why?”

A click, followed by the dial tone.

“Who was that?” Mom asked me.

“Telephone solicitor selling pocket devotionals.”

Night fell. Amira and my mother bundled away to the bedroom. I sat by the window. When those first blue waves of dawn began to wash over the horizon I took up pen and paper and fired off a note to them.

I have to go. Will not be gone long—today, back tomorrow night. If I am not back by then, call my friend, Mr. Newbarr; his number is below. He will wait with you until I return. I will be back. I promise.

I taped it to Frog’s aquarium where they would find it when they awoke.

Kidnapping

At street level you could hardly see the dawn. What I first mistook for early morning mist yet to burn off was dust. A grey sheen of it hung in the air like overlapping silk curtains.

The prowl car was coated in dust, too. I emptied the washer reservoir to clear the windshield. When I pulled away dust blew off the hood and roof and trunk, a gauzy rooster tail fanning out my wake.

I stopped at a Puritan’s Pantry. Deserted, everything covered in ash. I arced a flashlight over aisles littered with junk food, sticky with soda pop. Corn chips crunched under my boots and the sound made me think of that tractor trailer, all those tiny avian bones. I stuffed a grocery sack full of beef jerky and Angel Cloud powdered donuts and bottled water.