“Who?”
“That guy.” She points in the direction of the grave where the man left the flowers. “I mean it was hop out, say a prayer and go. Kind of a drive-by, you know? I wonder when you get to that point, when it becomes that easy?”
“You sound envious.”
Natalie tried to smile. She is. That’s the whole point.
“Scopes told me about Anne Coyne,” Maureen continues. “Why didn’t you tell her about Selena’s mother asking you for help?”
A maintenance truck rattles by, a rocket of shovels and picks and rakes. Tools of the trade. Watching it go. Natalie takes a last draw on the cigarette and tosses it onto her still vacant plot where it smolders damply. A minor sin, she figures, littering on your own grave. “Ask my mother and sister,” she says.
“Oh, I see.” Maureen’s tone suggests she at least wants to, and she’s decent enough to let it drop. “Scopes saw Ralston last night. He’s pretty uptight about all this, which is at least something. He says Coyne timed this to damage his reputation.”
“His reputation,” Natalie snorts.
“Can you believe it? Like the asshole has one worth protecting. But it does look like she did this to get back at him. Apparently she tried repeatedly over the years to get in touch with him. He wouldn’t let her visit, wouldn’t talk with her, wouldn’t even reply to her letters. He handed over a stack to Scopes.”
“Hell hath no fury,” Natalie says, repeating the words Scopes offered last night. Somehow, they don’t ring true to her now. She wonders why.
“Exactly.”
“She never struck me as the type somehow. Not to turn on him like this.”
Maureen laughs. “Piss on any woman long enough and she’ll become the type.”
“I guess,” Natalie stares down the hill. The old lady, still on her knees, has stopped jabbing at the earth. As Natalie watches, she removes her gloves and inexplicably plunges her bare hands into the freshly tilled dirt, which she begins kneading like bread. The wet soil sifts through her fingers in small clumps. Apparently satisfied with its consistency, she opens up a hole, gently sets the plant down inside it, and carefully pushes the disrupted earth back into place. When she’s done, she raises a blackened finger to her mouth, sucks away the dirt, swallows and then, with a kiss, presses the pink-white finger back down onto the ground.
“Did she just do what I think she did?” Maureen asks, voice betraying disgust.
Natalie barely hears her. She looks around at the rolling grass and suddenly feels trapped. The sensation overwhelms her. Her arms and legs can move, it’s not like being tied down, but it’s like she can’t breathe, as if the air itself has grown too heavy to suck inside her body, as if the ground is slowly starting to absorb her and all she has to breathe is dirt. All she can think of is getting out, of escaping to somewhere other than here, a place less cloyingly certain of her future.
“I have to go,” she says, standing.
Maureen peers up at her, surprised. “Why? Where?”
The old lady peers around self-consciously, and for just a second her eyes and Natalie’s seem to meet. Startled, Natalie turns away, and then it hits her: the woman’s age is an illusion fostered by her gaunt appearance. In reality, she is neither young nor old, but somewhere in between, the vaguely middle age Aunt Katie was when Natalie knew her.
This is how she would expect to find Katie mourning at Father’s grave, had he died. A faithful woman licking burial dirt from her fingers and sealing her visit with a tender kiss.
“To find out when she stopped loving him,” Natalie answers.
On her way down the hill, she concentrates on the still-unsettled sky. It’s a mottled gray now, the color of tombstones if they were allowed here. Natalie can almost imagine lettering etched into the granite clouds, someone’s epitaph, perhaps her own. The thought almost makes her laugh.
Like the clouds give a damn.
* * *
Sara grabs Selena by the shoulders and shakes her. “Stop it!” she shouts into the
girl’s face. “Stop this screaming!”
But Selena can’t stop. It’s like she’s under some kind of spell. She goes right on screaming. and when Peter pushes Sara away and holds the cup up to her lips and says. “Here, honey, drink some of this,” it just makes her scream louder. “Please! No! Take it away, take it away!”
“What’s wrong?” asks a sleepy voice from behind her.
“Why is she doing that? What happened?” asks another.
“Nothing’s wrong.” Sara shouts. “A child ‘s nightmare. that’s all.” She turns on Peter: “I thought you were going to keep her out!”
“She has to wake up to drink.” he says. He cradles the back of Selena’s head in his hand and pushes the cup close. “Honey, please, you’ll feel better.”
“Stop her,” one of the sleepy voices says. “She’s scaring me.”
A strange sensation comes over Selena, like she knows what’s about to happen. She watches in fascination as her hand lashes out and slaps the cup from Peter’s fingers. Green liquid spirals outward. and the cup bounces off Sara’s thigh and clunks down onto the floor. where it just noticeably teeters back and forth, finding its balance.
“You little brat!” Sara shouts.
Something about the cup’s tiny movements breaks the spell. Selena stops screaming and collapses into Peter’s arms. “No more,” she sobs. “Please don’t make me drink any more of that. It makes me feel funny—my head hurts real bad. I just want to be awake with you. Don’t make me go to sleep again, please.”
“Bullshit!” Sara picks up the cup and fills it from the thermos on the bureau. Then she holds it out to Peter and says. “Here.”
He waves her off. “Wait.”
“I said here!” The cold fury in Sara’s voice terrifies Selena. She huddles deeper into Peter’s embrace, and he hugs her closer.
“It’s time for everyone to wake up anyway,” he says. “They’ve all had a long rest, too long even.”
“Not her,” Sara hisses. “She’s disruptive. We don’t need that right now. I want her to sleep.”
“She’s frightened.”
“All the more reason.”
“I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to be alone,” Selena wails.
“Damn it, Peter,” Sara says with obvious disgust, “we’re the adults here, remember?’ She’s just a child. Now I’m ordering you, give this to her.”
“I won’t force her,” Peter says firmly.
“Are you defying me?” This time it’s shock Selena detects in Sara’s voice.
“No. I’m just telling you we don’t have to do this,” Peter responds with sudden sharpness. “If Selena wants to stay awake with the rest of us, then let’s allow her to do that. You won’t cause any more trouble, will you, Selena?”
“No,” she whimpers, shaking her head.
“Promise?”
She promises.
“That’s my girl.”
The room is silent for a moment. Selena peers out from under Peter’s chin so that she can see Sara and immediately wishes she hadn’t. The hatred on the woman’s face paralyzes her. “Fine,” Sara spits. “But don’t think I won’t tell Tethys about this. And if anything goes wrong because of her, because of what you’ve done, it’s on your head and your soul. Not mine, not anyone else’s, yours. Got that?” Without waiting for a reply, she storms from the room.
In the shocked silence that follows, Peter caresses Selena’s shoulders and whispers singsong reassurances in her ear. “It’s OK, little one. Don’t worry, you’re with me. I’ll take care of you.”
It was brave, what he did, standing up to Sara that way. Still trembling, Selena snuggles against his neck. He has a warm smell. “I want to go home,” she tells him.
With the gentlest of touches, he tips up her chin and gives her a smile as beautiful and calming as any she has ever seen. “Soon,” he promises, “soon.”
12
Triumph of a Les
ser God
The process of explaining—some might say exploiting—the sorry fate that befell Ellsworth Ralston’s followers began almost immediately after their deaths. The bloody standoff became the subject of intense public inquiry, and within six months at least a dozen serious books appeared on the subject. Most focused on the events leading up to the tragedy; in their efforts to find fault some pointed their fingers at the government, others at Ralston. Only one decided to forego the blame game and made a serious attempt to understand the group on its own terms, and while it wasn’t until much later that Natalie sat down and read the available literature, that particular book, Triumph of a Lesser God, was to become her favorite.
It was written by a local, a man named Mel Stott, who at the time was an obscure professor of psychology at the university where Natalie is now studying film. They have spoken a couple of times, although—and this seems odd to her now—never in any real depth, never the sort of probing exchange you might expect them to have had. It’s not like they weren’t interested, more like they knew what they needed to about each other and there was nothing really left to say. At least a few months have passed since the last time she ran into Stott on campus. While his obscurity has remained largely intact over the years, age and illness have forced him to cut back on his workload, to the point that he now serves mostly in an emeritus capacity and works almost entirely from home.
That’s where Natalie finds him. On her way out of the cemetery, she calls him from her cell phone and requests an audience, which he readily grants. He was wondering if she might call, he tells her. The authorities have already paid him a visit; he knows all about what happened. Which, of course. is what the police think, too.
Fifteen minutes later Natalie pulls up outside an English-style cottage near the university. The man who greets her at the door is more stooped than she remembers, and the tremors that Parkinson’s has given his hands and neck are more pronounced. But he still has the breezily precise manner of a bright man who has spent his life teaching and writing and loved every moment of it. With supreme enthusiasm, Stott leads her into a room that is lined with books and crowded with plush chairs overflowing with pillows and throws. The learned aroma of black tea fills the air, and a battered piano leans against the far wall next to where a pair of dulcimers are mounted.
Somehow Natalie doesn’t find all this heartening. It’s a warm and wonderful yet irretrievably out-of-touch little place. What can she expect to find here other than a serious case of the cozies?
“Can I get you something?” Stott asks, waving her toward an elaborately cushioned couch.
“No, thanks,” she says, not wanting to get trapped into staying.
He seems disappointed. “I’m going to pour myself some tea,” he says. “Are you sure you won’t have some?”
There are some ultra-civilized people for whom social niceties are indispensable even under the direst of situations. Stott is clearly one of these.
“Okay,” Natalie acquiesces.
“Which kind?”
“Any kind.”
“Sugar? Milk?”
“Neither.”
He grins despite the edge in her voice and disappears down a hallway. Sitting on the mantle over the brick fireplace is a collection of photographs, and the largest, handsomely framed in brushed silver, attracts Natalie’s eye. It’s a portrait of on older woman with a Mona Lisa smile.
“Is that your wife?” Natalie asks when Stott returns. He nods pleasantly, handing her a cup. “She’s beautiful,” Natalie adds.
“Was,” Stott replies. “She died last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Wasn’t your fault.”
The light-heartedness of his response surprises her. She stammers for a reply. “I wasn’t—”
He pats her shoulder. “I miss her sense of humor.” He takes a sip of his tea but doesn’t move to sit down.
“On the phone, you said the police stopped by?” Natalie asks.
“The FBI. First thing this morning.”
“Agent Scopes?”
He nods. “You’ve met her, too, I gather?”
“Yes. They have it all worked out, don’t they, why she did it? The woman scorned and all that.”
“That’s right,” Stott says. He takes another sip. studying her. “You don’t agree?”
Natalie lifts the teacup to her face, enjoying the bitter aroma, and wonders whether there are leaves at the bottom for her to read. “I don’t know, I don’t know why I wouldn’t. It’s just that it doesn’t seem like Aunt Katie. I can’t really explain lt. But when I knew her, she loved him, I mean really loved him—worshipped him. Like a god, like you said in your book. But also like a man. It was a very real love. And very, I don’t know, durable. Apparently she’s been writing letters to him for years, trying to get in touch with him. So why does that suddenly stop? What makes her suddenly decide she no longer loves him but hates him instead?”
Stott inhales, shrugs. “What indeed?” he sighs. “I haven’t exactly been following her activities all these years.”
“I know.” She sips at her tea. What would she see in the dregs at the bottom of the cup anyway? She can’t read tea leaves. “I just thought maybe you could help me understand how something like that works, how it happens.”
He studies her for a second before responding. He has watchful eyes, Natalie notices. Neither warm nor cold, just patiently observant, the eyes of a professor waiting for a student to finish. “Come with me,” he says, motioning for her to follow as he shuffles out of the room. “Let me show you what I shared with the police.”
They pass slowly through a narrow storage area and into a much smaller room. This one is also lined with books, but here they share space on the shelves and the desk with a computer. a television, a VCR, a couple of phones, a fax machine.
Stott lowers his body into the chair behind the computer and motions for Natalie to take the only other seat. He flicks on the television and taps play on the VCR. Waves of static give way to an image, and as it does, Natalie barely suppresses a cry. Staring out at her, looking just as she did thirteen years ago, is a frightened and seriously pissed-off Aunt Katie.
“The FBI made this tape after she came out of the compound,” Stott explains. “I got a hold of a copy a few years back, don’t ask me how. Never could get a publisher interested in another book on the subject. We tapped it out the first time around, I guess, and the world moved on. It’s not as though there haven’t been fresher tragedies to sate the public’s hunger for such things.”
He falls quiet and turns up the volume. Aunt Katie is speaking defiantly toward a point somewhere near the camera, her eyes fierce, her voice full of rage. ‘‘I’ve told you that before and I’m not answering it again,” she says. “What are you people, stupid?”
“Just humor us, please,” a weary-sounding male voice asks.
“I just know,” she says, exasperated. “That’s what faith is, believing in something you can’t prove is there. That’s why they call it faith.”
“So the world’s going to go up in flames, except for you, is that right?”
“Those who listen to Father will be saved, that’s right.”
“Saved from the flames.”
“Saved from the end time.”
“But not necessarily the flames?”
“The flames don’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because the rains will come and life will return to its roots and everything will be as it should be again.”
“After the flames?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s stick with the fire, Anne. How does the fire start?”
Her eyes flash. “My name is Katie,” she snarls.
“Katie, then. Who sets the fire?”
She seems to have to think about this. “It won’t be us, if that’s what you mean. We didn’t start this.”
“Let’s not get into that again.”
“No.” She hesitates.
“Are you going to let me go now?”
“Why is it so important that you go back there?”
“To be with him!”
“To die with him?”
“They’re my family. I want to be with my family. Why is that so difficult for you to understand? Let me go!”
“We can’t, Katie, not yet.”
“You promised!” She is not begging—her tone is insistent, demanding. She still believes she is in control, that her situation can be redeemed somehow.
“Not until you tell us what he’s planning in there. What is he going to do? Tell us and we’ll let you go.”
Stott’s unsteady hand lifts the remote and the screen goes black.
“They lied, of course,” Stott tells her. “They had no intention of sending her back. Shortly thereafter they launched the raid and, well, you know the rest.”
Natalie stares at the blank screen. Yes, she says, she knows the rest.
“Did Ralston ever say anything about what was supposed to happen once the world was consumed in this great conflagration of his?” Stott asks.
“I was a child, remember? The adults never talked about the end time with us. They just told us we would be safe. Everything would go back to where it belonged, and we would be fine, everything would be fine.”
Don’t upset the children, Father used to say. It makes her laugh just to think of it.
“Is that how they put it, that everything would go back to where it belonged?”
“Pretty much.”
“Fascinating,” Stott says, as if she has confirmed something for him. “One of the great frustrations of writing about Ralston was that he was not terribly forthcoming as a prophet. To his disciples he was, I’m sure, but this wasn’t one of those groups that advertised its creed on the internet. The assumption we all made at the time was that Ralston subscribed to a prosaic end-of-the-worldism, a strictly garden-variety apocalypse in which the world burns, the evil suffer and the good are saved. You can’t get much more conventional than that—it is, after all, the Book of Revelations in a nutshell. I don’t think it ever occurred to any of us—at least it didn’t to me, until now—that maybe there was more to it than that.”
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