“How God asked Abraham to prove his devotion by sacrificing his son, a burnt offering, like what’s still burning today?”
“God’s kind of an asshole, huh?”
“It can seem that way, son, but it’s only because we are not smart enough to understand his plans. Brigham Young said, ‘There are sins that can be atoned for by an offering upon an altar, as in ancient days; and there are sins that the blood of a lamb, of a calf, of turtle doves cannot remit, but they must be atoned for by the blood of the man.’”
Hyrum scrunched up his face. “The fuck’s a turtle dove? That a turtle that can fly or a dove that looks like a turtle?”
“Hyrum…”
“Uh-huh. Okay, I got it, focus—that’s what my Cucamonga teachers say. Okay. But Abraham, he didn’t do it, did he? He pussed out.”
“No. God stayed his hand.”
“Because God changed his mind?”
“I guess so. I guess God saw that they were willing, that their love was true, and that was enough.”
Hyrum formulated his next thought slowly and carefully, as if his life depended on the wording. “If God is perfect and he changes his mind, doesn’t that mean he’s not perfect?” Ah, that old chestnut. Bronson had spent years struggling with that paradox himself. He was ready.
“No, because God’s mind is so large it can contain a thing and its opposite and not be untrue.”
“…”
“God’s mind, not my mind.”
They fell silent again until Hyrum asked, “How do you know when God’s had enough?”
Bronson did not have an answer to that quite so ready. “I don’t know, son. We have to be willing. And give up hope. Are you willing?” Bronson walked behind his son and stood still, both of them facing the fires glowing in the distance.
“Maybe that will happen again,” Hyrum said. “Maybe God has had enough. Maybe He’s gonna change his stupid mind again.”
“Maybe He has.”
“I don’t like God.”
“That’s okay, I don’t like him much right now either, but we do have to love him, as you love yourself, for you will be a god, too.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s the sense beyond sense. It will get clearer if you give up hope, son. Are you willing?”
“My eyes are closed, Dad. That’s what you want, right? I’m tired of talking like this. It makes my head hurt.”
Bronson raised his gun and held it less than an inch from the back of his son’s skull.
“Yes, Hyrum, I understand. And I love you.” Bronson had to choke back a sob. “Do you forgive me?”
“Forgive you for what?”
Quickly, smoothly, in one motion, Hyrum reached into his bag, pulled something out, spun around, and held it out to his father. For a moment, Bronson thought he was offering him another piece of chocolate, a piece of chocolate for his life, and the childish, pathetic hopefulness of that tore at Bronson’s heart. But as he looked more closely, and the shape became clearer in the firelight, he saw that his son had pulled a gun on him. They stood there, a couple feet apart, father and son with guns trained on each other in the so-called Mexican standoff position that Bronson had enacted countless times in a previous life. A staple of Hollywood. Another archetype, another tired old story pushing through.
“Forgive you for what?” the boy asked again, his tone now assertive, aggressive.
“What I need to do,” Bronson answered.
“What about for what you’ve done? What about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“To the family.”
“You mean—my family. It’s my family.”
“So?”
“Do not judge me, boy.”
“You’re judging me.”
“You’ve got Satan in you, Fred. You said, ‘Die, Lamanite!’”
“What? Who’s Fred?! What’s wrong with you, Dad?”
Bronson was half hoping the boy would shoot him, keep him from doing what he had to do.
“Dad, there’s something wrong with you. Maybe you need help.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. Give me the gun, Hyrum.”
“No. You give me yours.”
“No. I won’t do that. You’ll have to kill me to get it.”
“I will if I have to.”
Bronson laughed at the balls on this kid. He was so fucking proud of him, and maybe even a little scared of him as well.
“You have to. I want you to.”
“No. Please, let’s stop.”
“We can’t stop this. Only God can stop this.”
“Bullshit. Why?”
“You’ll have to shoot me to stop me.”
“I will.”
“Go ahead, then, boy.”
Bronson took a step forward.
“Stay back, Dad.”
“No, I feel like walking. Shoot your fucking father.”
“I don’t want to shoot you.”
“Shoot me, please!”
“No!”
“Then give me the fucking gun!”
“No!”
Bronson made a sudden move at the gun in Hyrum’s hand. Hyrum backpedaled. Bronson backhanded him across the face and grabbed for his gun. Hyrum stepped backward into a lunge and aimed.
Hyrum squeezed the trigger, the gun recoiled in his hand, and he shot his father in the chest. He could smell the spent powder. Hyrum looked into Bronson’s eyes.
“Why, Dad? Why did you make me do that?” He moaned, then retched, doubled over, and threw up again. From his knees, he looked over and waited for his father to drop back down to the dust from where he’d come.
But nothing happened. Bronson didn’t even flinch. He stood straight. He was breathing easily. Hyrum could see no blood.
“I thought so. I thought you could do it,” Bronson said. “I thought you could kill me.” He nodded slowly, like a lawyer who had gathered all the evidence he needed. “But I can’t die, son, don’t you know that? Shoot me again.”
Hyrum stood up, spitting vomit. Bronson walked toward him, reaching for the gun. Hyrum stepped back again, screamed, and squeezed the trigger again, almost point blank. Bronson took the hit above his heart, his left shoulder jerking back, but still he did not go down. He squared up to Hyrum, dropping both hands to his sides, and said, “I’m a monster. I am man exalted. Where man is, God once was. Where God is now, man will be. I am God.” Hyrum’s entire body was trembling now—this was no woman intruder or snake or bigger kid, this was his father. The gun was shaking in his hand.
Bronson was a superhero and a monster, a god of the past and a man of the future, unkillable. Hyrum, tasting real panic for the first time in his life, bit his lip and pulled the trigger over and over. Bronson kept taking the hits and jerking back only to shrug it off and continue forward, as if in a nightmare. As Bronson advanced, Hyrum retreated step by step, as if they were synchronized, partnering in a dance, and the boy fired into his father’s body till the gun did nothing but click. Hyrum stared at the impotent weapon in his hand, powerless against the mythical power of the father.
“Is that all?” Bronson asked. Hyrum checked the chamber. It was now empty. Bronson reached out slowly and put his hand on the boy’s gun. Hyrum released the metal easily. He stared at the omnipotent father, looked him up and down for any sign of mortality or weakness. All he could see was a little dried blood on his cheek from where a glass shard had cut him during the standoff with the cops earlier. Hyrum’s mouth dropped open. He shook his head from side to side in disbelief. His knees were still rubbery.
“But I shot you,” he moaned.
“Blanks,” Bronson said, holding the gun up proudly. “Like the Carthage Greys. I loaded blanks before I gave it to you this morning.”
Hyrum was astonished. “But I shot you, I saw you jerk back when the bullets hit, I saw them hit.”
“I’m a stuntman, son. That’s how a pro sells a hit.”
Hyrum fell to his knees, head bent i
n shame, and faced away from Bronson, weighed down and confused at the knowledge that he could kill his own father.
“I’m sorry,” Hyrum whispered.
“I know, son. If only sorry was enough. I didn’t want any more blood on your hands, you understand?” Bronson explained, “You’ve got enough to atone for as it is.”
Bronson now trained his own gun on the back of Hyrum’s head and willed his entire consciousness into his trigger finger, gently placing it against the frame in a safety position.
“I love you, son,” he said. “You know that?”
The boy did not answer.
If only love was enough, Bronson thought, and stared unblinking at the back of his boy’s head, the thick red hair, and on his neck, the treasured desert shark’s-tooth necklace. Bronson’s gun felt heavy in his hand, pressed down as if by an invisble hand; he curled his finger to the trigger, but the trigger itself seemed sentient and unwilling, locked, like it had a thousand pounds of force pushing back against him. But this boy, his rough stone rolling, was a stone-cold killer. Always had been. Yes, he’d shown mercy for those animals today, that was encouraging, but he’d shown no mercy to that poor Lamanite. What if it were a hate crime, a religious crime, the worst type of murder? What if it were that unholy? The boy would need a radical absolution. He wouldn’t get that in America out there. They’d blame the murder on video games, blame it on race, his parents, his religion, exonerate him, free him of responsibility. They’d take him and put him in juvie, special schools, get him therapy, psychoanalyze him, put him on drugs, get him in the system, cut his balls off, and he’d live to die a natural death, unsaved, unforgiven, damned.
My boy, my beautiful violent boy—damned? That was the worst thing a father could do to a son. Worse than neglect. Worse than absence. Worse than death. And Bronson didn’t have time. They would be coming soon enough for him. He wasn’t going to be taken alive so they could psychoanalyze him, too. Call him a fanatic with mental health issues. Father issues. Mother issues. Fuck that. Sex issues.
Bronson extended his finger off the trigger and placed it alongside the body of the gun again. He repeated this motion back and forth a few times. He was stalling, waiting, feeling for a sign that the bloody God of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and Joseph Smith had had enough suffering for today, to call an end to this endless repetition of an ancient crime. His shoulder ached. He longed to put down the gun. He longed for ongoing revelation. Was he a Lamanite, and a righteous restorer of God’s original intent, or one of those fools who puts on a uniform to reenact Civil War battles? He felt so weak, surely that was God staying his hand. Maybe he had done enough to pass this test of faith. He had walked, like Abraham, right up to the edge of the abyss with a willing, hurting heart. Maybe that was enough.
His jittering mind randomly flashed to his grandmother Delilah, a woman he’d never met, but who was the prime mover of why he stood where he did today. For some reason, he gave her Mary’s face when he thought of her now, and that was disconcerting. He thought he heard rustling nearby, the sound of hooves or snakes, the devil. He suspected he might be hallucinating under pressure and fatigue. He turned to look in the direction of the sound but saw and heard nothing. He was alone with his son. To center himself, he whispered fragments of a Brigham Young sermon, bending his index finger one last time from the frame to the trigger. “‘It is true that the blood of the Son of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, yet men can commit sins which it can never remit … There are sins that…’”* He choked. It didn’t make sense. Could there really be no forgiveness? Nothing made sense. He couldn’t say another word, his or anyone else’s, be they man, angel, prophet, or devil. He was powerless.
But then his finger twitched, the trigger seeming to give way a little: a sign, the sign that soon it would be over. His duty would be done. He would … bury the boy, and then, wretched child-killer that he was, he would take his own life. Blood atonement. Let it be. He would be remembered as a polygamist and pedophile, a child murderer, rapist, incestophile, and a cop killer. A mythic pariah. An evil thing. They would get the story wrong. They would talk about him in the same breath as Bundy, Manson, Koresh, and Jones. He didn’t give a fuck. He never wanted to be known. He didn’t care if they got him all wrong. They’d gotten Joseph Smith all wrong, too. He whispered, “No man knows my history.” He knew what he really was, and so did his God. He would be reunited with Jackie and they would make love and the offspring of their celestial lovemaking would be more souls to be incarnated into more men and women on their way to becoming more gods. But first this sin, this ancient sin, through this sin to redemption. Let it bleed. He winced and began to pull with the final, horrible effort.
He heard the fatal shot ring out and his heart broke.
45.
BRONSON FELL FACE-FIRST to the dirt, moaning at Hyrum’s feet, his voice muffled. “Oh, Lord, my God,” he said, then rolled onto his back peacefully, like he was contemplating the stars. He smiled up at Hyrum, saying softly, “He stopped me, Pilgrim. Fire devouring fire. Fire.” Bronson Powers then looked back to the sky with the expression of a man seeing a familiar face in a crowd, exhaled, and died.
Hyrum saw the blood oozing from Bronson’s shirt, his chest blown wide open from a bullet, his red heart pumping out, atoning, into the brown-black desert. Hyrum opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. There was nothing left inside him. He looked behind his dead father in the dirt, and saw his mother, Mary, standing, swaying at the edge of the firelight a few yards away, the smoking gun in her steady right hand. She was crying. She dropped the weapon to the desert floor. Hyrum ran stumbling to his mother. He went to hold her, and to be held by her.
AN EXALTED MAN
In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey
Don’t you know that I’m lovin’ you
In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby
Don’t you know that I’ll always be true
Oh, won’t you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won’t you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand
—IRON BUTTERFLY, “IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA”
ABOUT THREE WEEKS LATER, Malouf left a message on Maya’s phone—“A great man, my friend Karl Rove, once said, ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’* You can come back to the office now. Seven p.m. tomorrow.”
The next day, Maya entered the Praetorian parking structure for the first time in nearly a month. As she waited at the entrance for the gate to rise, she spotted Randy Milman, whom she hadn’t seen since the Cash-n-ator joyride, exiting in a brand-new Porsche Cayenne. She’d never noticed him at the office before, or even in this building. His windows were tinted almost as dark as a movie star’s, but she felt sure that she caught his eye momentarily as he slowed, and that he appeared to mouth “cunt” right at her. This did not bode well.
A little shaken, she circled down the levels and parked in the spot reserved for Abbadessa, took a few deep centering breaths, and then made the familiar walk into Malouf’s office a little after 7 p.m. She’d seen no one else on her way in.
Malouf was alone, the only one in the entire Praetorian office. “There she is. Wharton, sit down, but first…” He rose and walked toward her, smiling and opening his arms as if for a hug. Maya did not want to be touched by him. He saw the disgust on her face, and said, “Oh no, not a hug, not in this day and age, I’m gonna pat you down.”
She held her hands away from her sides and he ran his long, bony fingers around her waist, kneading across her shoulders and down her arms. He kneeled before her and ran his hands up her thighs to her crotch, and down the jeans-clad crack of her ass to see if she was wearing a wire or recording de
vice.
“Someone’s been working out. Keto? Pilates? That’s the best—strength and flexibility. Phone, please.” She handed him her phone.
“I’ll hold on to it till the end of the meeting, if you don’t mind. Now turn around, please.” She blushed with anger at the humiliation and violation. She flushed some more when she thought he might see her scarlet as weakness. “Okay, all good,” he said. “My apologies, now sit, please.” Maya sat down. He went behind his desk again and sat as well, knitting those nine fingers together. “Missed you at the funerals. Beautiful funerals,” he said.
“I wasn’t invited.”
“So many funerals. I made great speeches. People are saying I should run for office.”
Maya raised her eyebrows, scrunched up her mouth, and nodded sarcastically, her telltale cheeks still red and hot. She wanted to tell him that men that look and “feel” like him, like a cheesy, gross, nine-fingered Hammer villain, don’t get elected, but she didn’t want to be mean. And he knew that already. His painful knowledge of his own handicaps made him smart, and dangerous.
She was very careful of when to engage him; she didn’t want to get trapped. Malouf’s version of reality was a mendacious hall of mirrors, spun harder than a web; you would have to argue the meaning of basic words first before you could ever share common ground—“depends on the meaning of what is is.” A soul-sucking, litigious eternity. It wasn’t her natural habitat. She’d get lost in the swampy weeds where fine-print, escape-clause men like him live. So she let him ramble on, with his crocodile tears and alligator empathy.
At home in that swamp, he dove back in. “You really made a mess of things. You’re lucky you work for me, because I cleaned it up. That’s what I do. You ever see Pulp Fiction? I’m like Mr. Wolf, the Cleaner. Harvey Keitel?” Maya still didn’t feel the need to respond to this bullshit yet—the outlaw macho world according to Tarantino, Coppola, Scorsese, and Mamet for these guys, always.
“First of all, you’re fired.” That came as a relief. She was going to quit anyway. Maya exhaled. “Don’t act surprised—I told you this would happen. You’re lucky there will be no charges brought against you. Janet Bergram will also lose her state job. Good riddance. She did a stupid thing. Talentless paper pushers. Those who can’t do, work for the government. But—Deuce Powers is going to Harvard next year, a year early. Thumbs-up to that brainiac. By the way, the BurgerTown franchise he unionized is closing—I know, it’s a shame they couldn’t make enough money in that location. And ICE is looking into this Jaime Rodriguez for trying to scam worker’s comp. He’s a bad hombre.”
Truly Like Lightning Page 40