The Shelter

by Peter Foley

  One man, carried by his enthusiasm, stands up and cuts across the Pastor’s words. “Yes, Father, ’coz you know that–” But before he can proceed further the Pastor rears up at him with instant and explosive rage.

  “When are you goin’ to think, young man? If we all interrupted and sounded off like you, where would we be? Now think! Keep your seat!” The tension lacing the Pastor’s voice is the kind that usually comes before violence. The loose-lipped man sits down. The Pastor gathers venom with reflection.

  “You’re all outrageous! Here I am busting my ass, you all better be humble. And don’t think I didn’t hear you all complainin’ about the food yesterday and this morning – well, I’ll give you meat, don’t you goddamn worry, and I don’t want to hear anymore goddamn complaining or interjections.” After a pause, his temperature cools and he speak softly, almost apologetically.

  “I am very emotionally disturbed. I got a lot on my mind. I stand before you with a lot on my mind – day and night, you know I get no sleep, not even for a second. None of you know about the outside forces that are working against us – the dark forces that I keep at bay. There are threats of trouble from the outside that you don’t even hear about because I take care of them, but if I was to ever lose focus for one hour, just one hour, we’d all be history. That’s how serious this is. I have to take special injections of vitamins in high doses to maintain my strength so I can fight for our people, such is the constant threat. It’s a heavy weight of pressure on my shoulders. How quickly you would melt if you were put under the same pressure. Even in this place I have to be careful about my food. And I look inside your souls and I can see some of you just ain’t right, and it causes me worry.” Leaning heavily on the lectern he takes a breath.

  “Have I not always said that if you keep the right attitude, pick the right spirit and the right vibrations you won’t have to worry, ’coz I’ll stir the pot and there’ll be food for everybody, there’ll be work for everybody and there’ll be a purpose. But we have a dark element in our midst. Not everyone is loyal. I hear talk of betraying Father and of attempts to leave this sacred place…”

  The crowd boos and hisses in lively revelry.

  Hazel restlessly toys with her fingers and looks at Drew. “He means us!”

  Drew’s distracted, still looking for Tom.

  “And for those dumb-ass fools who are not paying attention, there’s a hurricane destroying the country on the other side of these walls, outside this splendid isolation, outside this drape of concrete, and you can’t feel a thing because of my walls, my door and my lock, but that hurricane is out there, and it’s going to be out there until I’m happy that the false Gods of this world are no more!

  “That’s why I have the Planning Committee beside me. You will recognize them from their blue gowns. The Blue Gowns have been entrusted by me to make sure we are all on the same page. You hear a bad thing, you write it up, make a report and let them know, understand?” The crowd nods. A group of people rise and stand by the Pastor’s side, each one of them is dressed in a brilliant blue flowing, glossy gown. The Pastor glares back at the people.

  “One thing you have all done is underestimate me. I made plans for treachery long ago ’coz I knew I couldn’t trust nothing, and I knew that you can’t put all your eggs in the one basket – so, honey, I put my eggs in many places. You figure that out, if you want to. Some of you have no idea what Father is talking about, you can’t even follow him, you can’t even smell where he’s at yet, much less follow him. You really haven’t got next to it, but I’ve got all kinds of things in store. I’ve got some big plans. And you stupid piss-ants and reptiles and lower than primates can scheme all you want, but if you think you can just walk out the front door, you’ve got a lot to learn, sister!” His whole body tenses like a muscle, he flashes sharp white teeth and fleshy pink gums. The crowd stirs in excitement. The Pastor lets the moment pass, then resumes in a softer tone.

  “Why would a person even want to go outside and return to the old life? To that society which rendered all human effort and human pain cheap and meaningless? I wonder if maybe I’ve been too nice? Maybe I’ve been too lean on some of you? See, I look at my faults analytically. I look at my past, and if I’d have hated a little more I would have had a little less trouble with you people. Sure, you got love, what are those words? – ‘Hate is my enemy, I gotta fight it day and night.’ What’s the other line? ‘Love is the only weapon?’ Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love! Kennedy died talking about something he couldn’t even understand! He was shot down! Bullshit! Love is the only weapon with which I got to fight? – I got a lot of weapons to fight! And I will fight! I will fight!”

  He passes into delirium, his eyes bulge with the pressure of madness. Instead of applause the crowd makes a strange new noise, it’s a kind of constant open-mouthed wailing, a hollow oscillation in the throat made discordant by a flickering tongue, it might be the sound of adrenaline being released into warm blood. For Hazel, the ululation appears to be a call to arms.

  To Drew’s eyes, the Pastor’s punching of the air, his rhythmic delivery and posturing is that of a rock star, and it clearly must make him a magnet of some kind, attracting all sorts of people, both good and bad, and making them fans and followers. People love a showman, Drew muses. He looks around the room at this collection of people as they hang on the Pastor’s words and make his pleasure their own.

  The Pastor resumes. “You who don’t clap. I’m watching you, I got eagle eyes, I’m watching you. Listen, brother, I’m asking you in the back, why aren’t you clapping? I’m talking to you.”

  Drew feels ninety-nine percent sure the finger is being pointed at him. The whole scene is alien, he feels outside his body.

  “Now you stand by me! People wanted to nail yo ass to the cross for something you’d done, which I wouldn’t dream of doing, and I covered and cared for you, and I overcame the problem, and you have Gods before me? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Yoooooooou…” the Pastor says with his eyes wide. “You’re out there, you can hear me. For those wanting to leave, I have one message for you: it’s about time your ass paid a visit to the Blue-eyed Monster!” The Pastor’s screaming peaks and distorts the loudspeakers. The voice of the crowd flattens to a low muttering “Ooooooo.”

  “That’s right. That’s all I need to say about that.” He sweeps away the mood with a gesture.

  Hazel looks at Drew in astonishment.

  “Some show,” Drew says.

  “He won’t let us go,” Hazel says. “Did you hear him? We have to get out of here! He won’t let us leave! We need to get the keys and we have to get out of here!”

  Drew places a hand on her arm and notices her goosebumps. “Look, if worse comes to worst, we’ll just lay low until the hurricane passes. In the meantime, I’ll speak to Courtney about getting the keys from the cook, so when the hurricane’s over we’ll just walk out of here. It’s going to be fine, okay?”

  The cheering abates, the crowd leaves, the grotesque show is over, Elvis has left the building. Hazel, still sitting in the Sermon Hall beside Drew, looks into the distance, as if viewing something unfathomable. Drew rubs his forehead. They both run the math of their situation and exchange deep sighs. Without something comforting to say, they can’t so much as look at each other.

  Karis leaves the Sermon Hall singing a slow melody through Salvation’s corridors. The walls hold her cold refrain and add a reverberating flourish. Her words rise and fall like waves.

  “I feel like we’ve stowed away on Noah’s Ark,” Drew says, eventually, “and if we piss Noah off he’s going to feed us to the tigers.”

  “Don’t make jokes! I don’t understand why you aren’t more concerned. This whole situation seems to wash over you.” Hazel looks at Drew like one might an irksome child.

  Drew sighs. “I’ve had such a shit time recently, nothing seems to matter anymore. A week ago I was in Berlin and I was convinced that I’d gone
mad. Long story short, and after one thing had led to another, I lost my passport. I was taken to the British Embassy by some hospital staff. I lobbied and pleaded all night for an emergency passport. They finally gave me one, on account of me needing it to get to the show the next day; the next show was in Budapest. This passport was six pages long and it had a special gold cover. It was beautiful, and I knew it would fit perfectly in my collection of tour treasures and anecdotes. Long ago, I gave up on photographs, in favor of real-life artifacts.

  “My collection of personal memorabilia is intended to be enjoyed only during my retirement, like a memory aid. I keep everything in a box; every AAA pass and every tour itinerary, along with any newspapers or objects I find on tour goes in the box. I keep all those memories stowed away under my bed as a personal time capsule, to be opened only when I’m old and happy. But I’m not sure I’ll make it to old age and happiness, time has a habit of making a fool out of me. So, anyway, that’s where the golden passport is, in a box of memories, but it’s not a happy memory. I remember sitting alone in the embassy, leafing through its pages when, as natural as a stroke, I started to cry. What’s the fucking point? I thought.”

  At this moment, the surging, swooping, din inside Drew’s ears returns and distracts him from his words.

  31

  Nice to meat you

  Drew has walked a groove in Salvation’s floor. He’s been stopping anyone he finds and asking them, cheerily at first, if they’ve seen Tom. Many claimed they didn’t know anybody named Tom, which made Drew grit his teeth. Tom wasn’t known by any of the elderly women at the laundry either. Earlier, the “fuckers at the storeroom” just shrugged and the medical bay wouldn’t let him in. The musicians were friendly and offered apologies but the writing club, the classroom, the gymnasium and the housekeepers all looked at him like he was crazy. By the time Drew found Judy, he was tense and looking for an argument.

  “Judy!”

  At the sight of Drew, Judy’s face becomes tight around the eyes and she instantly develops a twitch at her elbows, which makes them pivot slightly around a fixed point in space. At the same time the fingernails of both her hands touch and twist as if they’re trying to separate an invisible thread.

  “Are you okay?” asks Drew. Already noticing Judy’s reluctance, he doesn’t wait for her answer. “Maybe you could help me, I’m looking for a young man named Thomas Cake… Tom? He was with us last night, in the Sermon Hall, when we had that drink with the Pastor.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Her voice is a whisper. “You need to stop looking for him, Drew, people are talking.”

  “About what?”

  She puts down her invisible thread and puts one hand to her throat and the other over her mouth, as if she were trying to hide her words. “About you, people are starting to say that you’re a troublemaker. It doesn’t do to cause trouble. I can’t say any more.” She fidgets and motions a step away.

  “Tell me what you know about the Pastor, Judy,” Drew says.

  “I can’t. You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I didn’t have much choice in the end. Why did you come here? You don’t seem to be so happy with these people.”

  “I have to be here,” she mumbles, “before the hurricane, I tried to leave, but they forced me to come back. The Pastor’s not how he appears on TV, or in the news, especially when people want to leave the Temple. He had people call my home and threaten me and my family. I’m sorry, I don’t want any more trouble, I can’t say any more.” Judy steps quickly away into the Common Room and perches among a group of ladies, in what appears to be a knitting club.

  After one more check of the sleeping quarters, Drew returns to the Common Room to sit with Hazel, but he’s unable to stop thinking about what Judy said, and what she wouldn’t say. The speaker on the wall whines. The stilted voice of the Pastor follows, his speech is oddly muted and lacks the dynamism of his earlier live performance:

  “Hello everybody. This is a reminder; do not forget to report any strange or suspicious behavior. In other business, we have assigned work duties to you all. Through work we will make Salvation a mighty empire. You must report to the desk in the Common Room after lunch to be assigned your role. I have other good news. Today I have authorized the kitchen to open up our meat supplies. You will not be disappointed. That is all.”

  A hungry crowd quickly gathers around the kitchen serving hatch.

  “My lor’,” says a woman at the head of the line. She presses a brown food tray to her chest and stares at the meat.

  “Please be! How much can I have?” she asks Sid, wiping her mouth.

  “We have plenty, but let’s be responsible and think of the other diners, everyone is hungry today, everybody wants some meat.” Sid takes a wide serving spoon and sinks it deep into the cooked meat. Hitting the bottom of the large silver dish with a clink, he serves a portion of meat on the woman’s plate as a hungry line backs up behind her. Finally, she carries away her red-stacked white plate on her brown tray, displaying it to the crowd with a pantomime lick of her lips. The impatient line mutters, bobble and tighten their mouths in a mix of anticipation and frustration over the wait.

  “Don’t worry, I have more cooking in the kitchen,” Sid says, to ease the crowd’s latent ire. Next in line is Easter and her baby, both swaddled in red gowns.

  “Hey! Here’s my little lady and my big strong man!” Sid blooms over Easter and baby Quincy. He smiles and holds the child’s little hands and lifts the tiny palms, so it looks like baby Quincy’s celebrating a victory. Sid’s weather-beaten cheeks crease with a large smile and his eyes shine. He rests a gentle hand on Easter’s shoulder and leans towards her for a kiss.

  Sid and Easter met two years ago, after Sid’s release from prison. He was behind bars after a burglary went wrong, but before Judge Mayweather sent him from the courthouse to the jailhouse he was a tree cutter. The exertions of his former life made climbing and cutting trees difficult. Years earlier he was a military man. He was posted to Iraq where, one fateful day, a roadside bomb hit his convoy. The blast took out the convoy’s lead vehicle and flipped its rear into the air. Sid hit the brakes, but it wasn’t enough, he went headlong into the leader’s Humvee. His back and neck were hurt and the episode earned him a medical discharge. He was unable to walk for three months.

  Years later, back at home, Sid started a yard clearing business, but the only real money to be made was in clearing trees from neighborhood yards. The work aggravated his old injuries and put him in almost constant pain. Unfortunately, the long, physical work of tree cutting paid not much more than the cost of his pain medication. Sid was in pain and desperate.

  He hatched a plan which required the use of his pruning knife. He picked a house from a nice neighborhood he had cut trees in a week prior. The plan was to gain access to a house and rob anything expensive inside, with nobody home during the day he could be quickly in and out without problems. But Mrs. Mertelman surprised him in the guest bedroom of his first house. Panicking, he hit her twice around the head in an attempt to knock her out, but the blows weren’t doing the job. Her dog outside barked and Mrs. Mertelman was screaming. Sid and Mrs. Mertelman experienced the consequences of pure fright, and Sid, suffering from the poor judgment that comes with that condition, stabbed Mrs. Mertelman once in the abdomen. He spent seven years for attempted murder. He got a job in the prison kitchens.

  The Common Room is full of diners. They hustle and bustle to seats with full plates, dragging out chairs and clanking their cutlery.

  “Well, I’ll be! Uhmmm Ummmm,” cries Charlie, as he tastes the fleshy, salty, pink meat.

  “Tastes like pork!” he yells to the last people in the line. “Sweet and tender.”

  There’s no better way to say this: Charlie is a gangbanger, and he has a gangbanger’s posture, a gangbanger’s bad reputation, and a gangbanger’s street-level intelligence. Since he met the Pastor, Charlie’s been mending his ways, but despite this none consider him a fine you
ng man, even though his days of jacking cars and running drugs have been over for an entire year. His weakness is his ego. The Pastor has provided a firm hand that’s kept him focused, but once in a while the vortex of Charlie’s mind gets hijacked by an intermittent signal broadcast from his past and it brings out his competitive side. Looking over to his fellow diners, he can see the pile of meat on other people’s plates and he can see their serving looks bigger than his own and he feels short-changed. If meat were symbolic of one’s value, Charlie considers himself poorly appraised.

  “What kind is it?” asks Drew, watching the juices run down the chins of gnashing and gnawing faces. Full mouths leer back at him.

  “Someone said pork, but it’s not. I think it’s more like chicken,” Hazel says.

  “Oh…” Drew prods at his broiled meat with a fork.

  “You’re not eating yours?” Hazel says.

  “Nah… first rule of the road. Well, second actually. Never eat the mystery meat.” He slides his plate towards her. “Maybe I’ll get some more rice, peas and carrots, there’s loads left.” He glances towards a tray of rice and vegetables sitting untouched under a hot lamp beside the glistening meat.

  “So, what’s the first rule?” asks Hazel.

  “Of what?”

  “The road,” she says, mid-chew.

  “Oh, yeah, rule one of the road: never poo in the bus toilet; the plumbing can’t handle it,” Drew responds nonchalantly.

  “I knew I’d regret asking…” Her face muscles are overpowered by a smile. With a glance at Drew, she laughs. He laughs too.

  As people eat, eight people in blue gowns sit at a table at the far end of the dining area and hand out work duties. Courtney is first in that particular line. She’s been assigned to the housekeeping crew by Oscar, who now wears the powerful powder blue.