by Davis Bunn
–|| TWENTY ||–
Langston, Delaware, was a mill town. A forest of smokestacks lined the road, with high-tension wires for branches and billowing smoke for leaves. There was white smoke and black smoke and gray and brown and even one foul-smelling chemical factory with spumes of angry yellow. Molly covered her mouth with her handkerchief as they passed that one. The car’s air conditioner couldn’t begin to filter out the stench.
The church was in the border country between low-slung houses and the nearest factories. The exterior was red-brick dyed a dull gray by the soot. As they pulled up and stopped, they were surprised to see Clarke Owen wave and walk toward them. Buddy got out of the car, and Clarke called over, “How was your drive?”
“Fine.” Buddy went around the car to meet him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m your advance team. Hello, Molly. How are you today?”
“Just fine, Clarke. It’s nice to see you.”
Buddy demanded, “My what?”
“Somebody needs to travel ahead, make sure everything is up and running. Which reminds me. Three quick things.” Clarke reached into his jacket pocket and came up with a palm-size mobile phone. “You need to carry this. The number is taped to the back, in case you want to tell somebody how to reach you. Be sure and remember to switch it off before you stand at a podium.”
Molly stopped him from objecting by stretching out her hand and saying, “I’ll take that.”
“Number two. There’s been a change tonight. We’ve been moved to a high-school auditorium. Seems there are more people wanting to hear you than the church could handle.” He pulled papers from his inner pocket. “This is a contact number and address. This map shows both the auditorium and your hotel. Figured you’d like to stop by and freshen up after your talk here.”
Before Buddy could form his objections, Molly said, “It looks like you’ve thought of everything, Clarke.”
The assistant pastor gave a proud smile. “Trying, Molly. Trying hard.”
“Clarke, I—”
Molly rounded on him and gave Buddy the same hard look she had used on her two sons. She said quietly, “Don’t.”
Buddy gathered himself. Molly rarely used that tone with him, but when she did, he knew to watch out. He clamped down on all he had to say.
Clarke glanced from one face to the other, then looked beyond them and waved over two people. “This is the couple responsible for the meeting here, Harvey and Gloria Rand.”
The man was short and as florid-faced as his tie. “Saw you over in Wilmington the other night.”
“We don’t have a Bible Fellowship here in Langston,” his wife interjected, showing more teeth than Buddy thought one mouth could hold.
“We like to get over there for the dinners,” the man said. “Work business around those monthly meetings. Sure glad we didn’t miss that one.”
“It was positively thrilling,” his wife agreed.
“We asked to hold the meeting here today because it’s close to the factories. You’re catching a lot of these folks between shifts.” He waved an arm in the direction of the crowd that was streaming toward the church entrance. “You’ve got all kinds here, from secretaries to machine operators to vice presidents.”
“The mayor said he’d try to make it,” his wife added. “He goes to our church. I called him personally.”
“Gloria has plastered notices all over town. She even tried to glue one on my forehead when I sat still too long.” His grin turned a little nervous. “Are you gonna put on the same kind of show we saw in Wilmington?”
Buddy started to react to the nerves and the pressure with a sharp retort, something like, it wasn’t a show. But again Molly’s quiet voice was there first. “He most certainly is.”
“Great, just great. Say, I don’t believe we’ve met. Harvey Rand.”
“I’m Molly Korda, Buddy’s wife.”
“Sure am glad you folks could make it today. Well, let’s get on inside.”
Buddy felt Molly’s pressure on his arm and hung back. That look was back in her eyes. “Don’t fight this, Buddy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. All these people helping and making a big fuss over you. It’s perfectly natural. And you need Clarke. What would have happened if you had gotten to Dover tonight and didn’t know about the change of location?”
As if on cue, Clarke drifted back. “I almost forgot the third thing. Agatha Richards was supposed to tell you herself, but she couldn’t work up the nerve. She is footing the bill.”
Buddy felt like he was running just to stay up with the man. “What bill?”
“All of them.” A merry smile slipped into view. “Every last one.” He patted Buddy’s arm. “I’m not going to hang around, much as I would like. I’ve got to get over to Dover and make sure things are set up for tonight.”
It was the noisiest crowd by far.
Halfway through the talk Buddy stood at the podium, feeling utterly empty of any sensation whatsoever. He waited through the shouting and the clapping and the talking and the weeping. He listened to one person after another call out an affirmation of what he had come to say. He watched the hands waving and listened to all the amens. Yet he could not have felt more isolated from the experience if he had been standing across the road.
And yet, despite his sense of disconnection, he also felt a rightness. He could not explain why, but he did. So he remained content to stand there and wait them out, because he certainly couldn’t complete his message with all this noise.
As he waited, he observed. He saw the tiredness of day-in, day-out hard work etched into most of the features. He saw the scars and even some tattoos, evidence of life before Jesus. He saw the patched clothes and the tough, seamed faces. He saw stains beneath most eyes, as though the factory smoke had engraved shadows into their features. And he found himself feeling for them.
This was strange as well, for Buddy had nothing whatsoever in common with them. He had always had difficulty communicating with people like this. Even inside the bank, he had found it hard to talk things out, as though he was trying to translate his thoughts into a language he did not really know. The people would sit there, numbed by the strangeness and the feeling that things were out of their control.
Buddy had often recognized the helplessness in their faces as they sat there on the other side of his desk. Try as he might to make them understand he was on their side, he never really felt as though he was getting through. Yet they kept coming back to him and sending their neighbors. They came to him with their debts and their mortgages and their questions, and after every such meeting, he would sit back drained and feeling like he had failed once more.
When they were ready to look his way again, Buddy raised his arms and asked for quiet. Many chose not to return to their seats, but they did become silent. “I have more to say to you, and I ask that you pay very close attention.” He was talking to them as he would if he was trying to explain a second lien. “This is going to sound complicated, but it’s only because you don’t know the words. I imagine if you took me into your place of work and tried to tell me about one of your machines, I’d be lost in fifteen seconds. You’d say things like flange and CNC panel, and I’d want to turn and run away.”
“Me too, boss,” called a deep voice from the back. “Me too.”
He smiled with the laughter. “All right. You’ve heard me say there is a difficult time coming. And now I need to tell you the second part of the message. The part about how to prepare. Mind you, I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what the message was. And I’m asking you to go home and pray about this. Pray hard. Then go and do what you feel called to do.”
Then it hit him. Hard.
Perhaps because it was so unexpected, the power almost overwhelmed him. Suddenly he was not looking out over a group of strangers with whom he had nothing in common. He was with them. And they were family. And in their quietly intent f
aces he saw a need, a desperate appeal, an appeal to which his heart reached out in love and mercy, a feeling so mighty it felt as though a fist had clenched his throat shut.
Their lives were threatened by so many things beyond their control. And here he had come, to tell them of dreams and portents that threatened calamity. Buddy felt his entire being humming with an urgency to prepare against the coming storm. Not for himself. For everyone.
He did not know how long he stood there. They stood or sat and watched him, and they did not seem to be concerned about the silence. Buddy wondered if they could feel the vibrating energy, the sense of standing and hearing the clarion trumpet of heaven. He cleared the tightness from his throat and forced himself to speak. “The message is this: Take every cent you can spare. Go to a stockbroker you can trust.”
He took great comfort from the calmness in his voice. To his own ears it sounded as if someone else was doing the speaking. “Is there a stockbroker in the audience?”
“Right here, sir.” A man stood and waved. “I’m a broker.”
“Are you a Christian?”
“I am.” No hesitancy, no doubt. “Praise God, I am.”
“Do you accept the message of today?”
“I’ve been feeling it in my bones for months.”
Buddy nodded and pointed at the broker. “Here is one person you can work with. I’m not telling you to do it with this particular gentleman. What I am saying is that, if you feel led by my message, you need to work with someone who will accept your instructions and not talk you out of what you feel called to do. Because what I’m here to tell you would be considered very risky by a lot of people. As a matter of fact, some brokers would refuse to work with you at all. They would say that people who deal in options need to have a lot of extra capital. In other words, they need to be rich enough to be able to lose it all. Which you are not.”
Buddy looked at the broker, waiting for him to object. But the man met his eye and nodded. Once.
Buddy turned back to the audience and went on, “There is a certain kind of stock transaction called a put option. It means you are predicting that the price of the stock will fall. It also means that you put as little as five percent down on the purchase. It is tremendously risky. But the gains are potentially very great.
“The intention here is to take whatever you can scrape together and make enough to see you and your families through the coming famine. The message is this: Take all you can and invest in put options. The options should be for shares in any of the nation’s top twenty banks. The options should come due in three to five months.
“But you are not to wait five months. In exactly thirty-four days, you are to sell them all. No matter what the market may be doing, no matter what your broker may tell you. Sell them all.
“Half of all profit from your investment in put options should be given to your church,” he concluded. “These funds are intended to help see the church family through this crisis. A group from the elders and deacons must be chosen to oversee the fund for as long as the famine lasts.”
When he finished his talk, Buddy looked out over the crowded hall. The silence lasted a long time. Whether it was because the people were frightened by his announcement, or because they were caught up in the same quivering energy that he was feeling, Buddy could not tell. Finally the broker rose to his feet once more and proclaimed, “I feel the rightness of what my brother is saying.”
“So do I,” said a woman’s voice from the back. “Right as rain.”
Buddy could sense the audience’s sudden restlessness, felt the power fading away, knew it was time to end this and move away. “Let us close with a moment of prayer.”
–|| TWENTY–ONE ||–
Molly drove all the way to Dover, Delaware, granting Buddy space and silence and an occasional comforting touch. Buddy sat in the passenger seat, watching the countryside and the busy road and the sunlight flickering down through the trees. Thinking was too much of an effort. Little flashes of thought or memory came and went but did not catch hold, like bubbles rising to the surface of water.
When she saw the exit sign, she asked, “Is it the first or second exit we’re supposed to take?”
Buddy pulled the papers from his pocket and checked the map. “First.”
She made the turn and asked, “How do you feel?”
“Fine. Drained, but fine.”
“Will you be all right for another talk tonight?”
“I think so.” What had happened in that church flashed clearly before his eyes. “It really felt right back there.”
“It’s nice to hear you talk like that. I want you to feel confident about what you are doing.” She stopped at the intersection. “Which way?”
“Right, and then right again at the first light. The hotel should be on our left.”
She checked both ways and pulled into the right lane. “You are God’s messenger. You need to grow in confidence in your work and your message.”
Buddy felt a trace of the same resonance he had sensed while up at the podium. Grow into it.
“You spoke with such authority up there. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your wife.”
“I know you’re not. I felt it too.”
“It’s time you accepted the importance of what you’re doing and give yourself to it. Fully and without reservation.”
Buddy waited until she had made the turn and pulled into the hotel’s front parking area to say, “I’m glad you’re here with me, Molly. So very glad.”
There was a message waiting for him to call Alex. He used the mobile phone for the first time as Molly checked them in. The little buttons were unfamiliar and left his fingers seeming too big and clumsy. When Alex answered, Buddy turned his back to the hotel lobby as he raised the phone to his ear. He felt very foolish. “I got your message.”
“The bank called. Some guy by the name of Thaddeus Dorsett. One of those real smarmy voices, fake as white margarine.” Alex snorted. “Sounded like somebody you’d like to shoot on sight.”
“No, Alex.”
“How about we just watch him trip on the rug as he enters the room. Bring him down a few notches.”
“That is not a worthy thought.”
“Well, he said it was urgent. Real urgent. Gave me his home phone, asked you to call as soon as you could.” Alex read off the number, then asked, “Did Clarke tell you about the change of venue for tonight?”
“Yes. Alex, what is this about Agatha paying our bills?”
“Hang on a sec.” The phone was laid down, and Buddy heard the sound of a door being closed. Alex picked up the phone and said, “Okay, now we can talk. It was her idea, Buddy. She came up with it all on her own.”
Molly chose that moment to walk over and say, “The bill’s already been taken care of. Do you want to go on to the room?”
Buddy nodded and followed her through the lobby as he said into the phone, “I can’t accept this.” Then he had to hit the brakes hard, for Molly turned and gave him a warning look.
“I told her you probably wouldn’t like it. She didn’t put up the fuss you’d have expected. More like a real wistful hoping.”
Molly asked him, “Is that Alex? Are you talking about Agatha?”
He nodded. Alex continued, “She really wants to do this, Buddy. She said that she’d only be giving the money to God in some other way, that you have a divine message, and that she wants to do as much as she can to help out. A lot of stuff like that. I didn’t have the heart to say no. I could have argued with her if she had gotten on her high horse, but not when she is like this. Sounded like she was pleading with me.”
Molly told him, the warning still in her eyes, “Remember what we talked about in front of the church this afternoon? Let people help you, Buddy.”
“It’s fine, Alex.”
Alex said, “It is?”
Molly continued, “You’re not a banker here. You’re not signing papers for other people’s time and money. The only debts you
have are with God, and those you’ll never be able to repay, so you don’t need to try.”
He could not resist the desire. Buddy reached over with his free hand and hugged Molly close. He didn’t care how silly he looked walking through the hotel lobby talking on the phone and hugging his wife. He said, “Alex, please thank her for me the very best you can.”
“Thad, this is Buddy Korda.”
“Where are you?” The voice was tight, clipped.
“We’ve just checked into our hotel.”
“We?”
“My wife and I. I’m on my vacation, as you may recall.”
“No, you’re not. I know all about your little escapades. So does the home office.”
Molly’s antennae must have been up and working, because she turned from her unpacking to walk over and stand by his chair. Buddy glanced her way as he said to the phone, “I see.”
“No, that’s your problem, Korda. You don’t see at all. This is not some stunt you’re going to be able to walk away from and forget. It has seriously damaged your career.”
Buddy could see the manager’s face there before him, the yellow eyes, the feral snarl unveiled. “My career?”
“What’s left of it. If you want to have any job at all, you’ll pack up and head straight home. Do not pass go, do not collect your two hundred dollars for the little talk you won’t be giving tonight.” The tone hardened to a surly growl. “Not if you want to have a job tomorrow.”
Buddy felt the voice battering him, or at least trying to. Which was a surprise, because he positively loathed confrontation. Yet in this confrontation, which threatened the position he had given his life to, he was able to hold to his calm. “I see.”
“You’d better. That is, if you’re the least bit interested in holding on to your pension.” A pause, and when Buddy said nothing, Thad continued, “That’s right, Korda. There’s more than just your own little job at stake here. Think about what you’re doing to your family. And your own future security.”
Buddy found himself searching for some sign of panic. His own lack of internal reaction was as bizarre as this conversation. “Well, thank you for calling, Thad.”