Authors: Robin Wasserman
“You guess wrong.”
They herded Milo downstairs. The volunteers tending to the children were mostly church ladies he didn’t know but who, he could tell from their freshly pressed blouses and starched hair, were from the “right” part of town. Definitely the type to snitch on him to Milo’s mother. This wasn’t because they took her as an equal – perish the thought – but because any adult was to be trusted over a teenager from the west side, especially one descended from the town drunk. None of them was a likely candidate to watch out for his brother.
Then he spotted the one person who might be right for the job.
“Grace!” he called. She handed off the infant she was holding to an older woman and carefully threaded her way through the children. “You volunteering here?” he asked, surprised, and not just because with her twin braids and delicate features she didn’t look much older than her charges.
She offered him a sour smile. “Suffer the little children, right?”
“They certainly seem to suffer you,” Jule said as a toddler wandered up to Grace’s leg and gifted her knee with a kiss. It almost seemed like Grace was tempted to kick the child away, but instead she patted him on the head and gently disentangled herself.
“I see you found your brother,” she said.
“I know you,” Milo said.
“And I know you. Your brother went to a lot of trouble to find you – and now he’s dumping you here?”
Milo grinned. “That’s what I said!”
Daniel shook his head. “You’re perfect for each other. Enjoy.”
“I got some new comics,” Milo told her. “We stole them.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Borrowed them.”
“Whatever. Wanna see?”
“Desperately,” Grace said in a flat voice. “Make my day.”
Daniel dared another glance at Jule, though this time at her face. She looked like she wanted to adopt Grace for her own.
“Your parents make it back?” Daniel asked the girl. “You’re not still alone in the house, are you?”
“Now, why would I give out that kind of sensitive information to a stranger?”
“If you’re staying there by yourself —”
“It’s taken care of,” she said.
Daniel shrugged, reminding himself it was her business, not his. You developed a knack for that, living in a town this size. “Just don’t let him out of here until I get back, okay?”
Grace took hold of Milo’s shoulder. “Nothing happens to this kid on my watch.”
She was smiling when she said it, in a tone that suggested a lighthearted joke, or tried to, but there was nothing light about the girl, and nothing warm about the smile. Whether in spite or because of it, Daniel decided to believe her.
Ellie hovered in the doorway of the deacon’s office, cursing herself for thinking that she knew better than he did. It was Jule Prevette. Something about the girl made her lose perspective. It had been a year, and Ellie was no closer to convincing her to come to the Lord than she’d been that first day at the trailer park. But she couldn’t let go. Even now, when she had so many more important things to do.
“We can’t hesitate,” the deacon was saying, hands waving expansively as they did when he had particularly warmed to his topic. “Don’t tell me there aren’t changes you’ve been wanting to make around here, Mouse.”
“I told you not to call me that.” The mayor rose to his feet.
“The Lord knows you by all your names, Mouse. You can’t hide from Him, and you can’t hide from this moment.” The deacon stood, too, slapping his hands flat on his broad desk, and as he did, he caught sight of Ellie in the doorway. He beckoned her inside. “Here she is, sir, the main attraction.”
Ellie allowed herself to be introduced to the mayor and inspected like a show pony, smiling and shaking hands as she tried not to consider the phrase
main attraction.
It all too easily called to mind the circus that passed through town every other summer with its carnival freaks in tow, the bearded lady and the strong man and the mermaid. Fakes, all of them, but content enough to sit on their stools and bear Oleander’s curious gaze. That was how the town looked at her now. Even her mother stared when she thought Ellie wasn’t paying attention.
No one was more surprised by Ellie’s newfound divinity than the woman who had borne her.
All children were filthy little beasts. That’s what Charlotte King believed, and that’s what she taught her girls, from the moment they were old enough to speak (and to smear pudding on the walls and spaghetti on the floor and snot on their mother’s face, among other unforgivable transgressions). Be clean, stay clean, never associate with anyone who shows signs of not being clean – that was the prime directive. Homeschooled and raised on a steady diet of chores, Sunday services, and Christian pop, the King girls were allowed three hours of supervised television a week. Their mother selected the shows. They could read any book they chose, as long as it came from their mother’s library. They dressed first in clothes their mother picked out for them, and later in clothes she carefully vetted, occasionally bringing out the measuring tape when a hemline crept close to a knee. At age fourteen, each daughter slipped on a purity ring, to signify her promise to God that she would keep her body and soul clean. Henry King, who’d wanted sons and didn’t understand daughters, suffered this with the same mixture of bemusement and impatience with which he endured all of his wife’s decisions. But he occasionally took his youngest on illicit movie dates and, when his wife was out, let her poke around online, “our little secret.” He couldn’t disguise his pride when she developed a rebellious streak of her own.
Ellie could still remember how she’d felt, fourteen and lawless, capable of anything but getting caught, so proud of her shoplifted mascara and the PG-13 DVDs tucked beneath her mattress. She’d felt invincible, and if her mother hadn’t opened her eyes to her sin, she didn’t know where she’d be now.
Probably dead.
Now word had gotten around: Ellie King, handpicked by the Lord to watch over His house. Ellie King, unscathed by the storm. Ellie King, who had stared unafraid into the eye of the tornado, and been spared. They really believed it – she could feel that in the weight of their stares – and so it must be true.
There were pleasantries exchanged and nothing of substance discussed and, after the mayor thanked her for her service to the town, the deacon maneuvered him out the door with a final, meaningful look whose meaning Ellie couldn’t penetrate. Then they were alone. They sat together on the couch. They always did. He said it made things less business-like between them, and after all, their business wasn’t business, but the work of the Lord. She knew it was vain, but she couldn’t help it: she liked feeling special.
You’re no one special,
said the voice that was partly in her head but partly not.
You’re no one.
No
one
but
a
filthy
whore.
In the days since the storm, she had given up hoping that anyone else would hear the voice, but she still watched the deacon carefully, silently begging him to react. Because the voice wasn’t just in her head, it was in her
ears.
Which meant either it was a hallucination, of the kind no sane person should have, or it was real. A voice that spoke only to her, the way she had always dreamed that His voice would speak only to her, but the things it said…
The voice was not, could not be, of the Lord.
He
can
smell
it
on
you,
the voice said as the deacon rested his hand on hers and told her he was proud of her.
You
can’t clean a filthy soul,
the voice said as the deacon told her how, together, they would clean up the town; how they would seize this moment to bring not just God’s word but God’s law to at least one small corner of a lawless world; how desperate people needed a leader to tell them what to do, and she would be that leader “with me by your side, of course – we’re in this together now.”
You
want
him
to
shove
it
in
you,
the voice said as the deacon suggested that perhaps they should order in a pizza to discuss their plans in more detail, or perhaps, if she liked, they should pray on their future, and the future of the town.
You
want
to
get
on
your
knees.
And
show
him
what
you’re good for.
Because
that’s all you’re good for.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie managed as the bile rose up her throat. “I have to —” She flew off the couch and somehow made it to the small sink by the custodian’s closet before the gush of hot vomit forced itself out of her. She bent over the sink, gasping, the rich, sour stench making her sick all over again, and then someone was pulling her hair away from her face and rubbing her back and the deacon was saying that he would take care of her and it would be all right.
You
want
to
ruin
him
with
your
garbage
soul
like
you
ruin
everything
you
touch.
Because
you’re a disease.
And
there
is
no
cure.
She heaved again, but there was nothing left to come out.
“Remember, men, you’re the future of this town. All those little kids who look up to you? All those fans who cheer you every Friday night? All those girls who drop their panties after the game? You think that’s because they care about football? You think football matters?” The coach paused to give the team space to hoot and stomp. They didn’t disappoint. “Damn right, football matters,” he continued as the noise died down. “But it’s not all that matters. Your
families
matter. Your
town
matters. And at a time like this, they’re looking to you to show them the way. So go get ’em!”
The speech was out of character for Coach Hart, who favored monosyllabic grunting over soaring rhetoric. West supposed it was possible that communal crisis had awakened the man’s poetic side. But it seemed more likely that, as often happened around homecoming time, he’d overdosed on a marathon of inspirational sports movies and decided to fulfill his cinematically ordained duty as a molder of men. As the team charged out of the gymnasium and into the dark, broken streets of Oleander, flashlights deployed and testosterone surging, West couldn’t help wondering what the coach believed they would find as they entered the breach. What challenge it was they – the future of midwestern civilization – were so uniquely qualified to face. He’d spent the previous night’s patrol picking up litter and helping a woman nearly his mother’s age and obviously stoned out of her head search for her dead sister’s cat. (Which, the woman remembered about an hour into the search, was dead, too.) That night, he’d been on his own. Tonight he was paired up with Baz and one of his linebacker lackeys, and it was clear from their swagger that they had a different kind of evening in mind.
The improvised neighborhood watch had been Baz’s idea. His father was a cop, and the tiny department had eagerly embraced the opportunity to spread the crap work around. So the Bulldogs became the Watchdogs, equipped with heavy flashlights they swung like police batons, deputized to scout the streets and keep the peace. Baz had even tacked one of the department’s spare badges to his jersey.
He’d claimed prime territory for their night’s beat: the north end of Main. It had been left nearly untouched by the storms, and so instead of ferrying stray branches out of the road, they would have little to do but protect the scatter of stores from looters who seemed unlikely to appear. West had to admit, it was a relief to stroll down the intact street, past Hot Buns (the coffee shop/gym), past the junk shop and the health clinic, the old-fashioned barbershop and the vintage-everything store Rags to Riches, and pretend Oleander was exactly like it used to be. To escape, for at least a few hours, the heaps of rubble, the flattened fields, the overturned trucks, the uprooted stumps, the still-gaping wounds of the homes and landmarks that used to be. Worse than the ruins were the people who wandered among them, even at night, dazed and confused and, in some invisible and incurable way, wounded. They said they were searching – but had no answer when you asked them
Searching
for
what?
Two nights before, West had found a man he dimly recognized from his dentist’s office slumped against a crushed Honda on the side of Third Street. West had tried to help him up and walk him home – and gotten a punch in the jaw for his trouble. For all he knew, the guy was still there.
It was inescapable, even at home, where the Thomases had taken up permanent residence in their neighbors’ guest room. The storm had skirted the West property and flattened the Thomas farm that lay a couple of acres due east. Their house was rubble, their crops uprooted, their cattle lifted by the wind and scattered across Route 72. And so they haunted their borrowed home, drifting from room to room with the expression of people so lost they couldn’t even muster the desire to be found.