The Summoning

by Bentley Little

  After breakfast, she accompanied her parents to the market. :

  There was only one other car in the parking lot this morning, an old green Torino, and her father pulled next to it, parking so close that she and her mother could not open their doors all the way and had a difficult time get ring out of the car. She maneuvered her way between the two vehicles and walked up the curb to the store sidewalk.

  Her father grabbed a shopping cart, and she hell the door to the market as her parents went inside.

  She noticed the difference immediately.

  The market had changed.

  She had always enjoyed coming here; had always foundi the atmosphere to be pleasant and friendly; had always l liked Mr. and Mrs. Grimes, the owners of the store. Butt today something was wrong. The atmosphere was different the air filled with an unfocused hostility that sheI sensed the second she walked through the door. She fel unpleasantly uncomfortable, and she desperately wanted to walk back outside into the cool fresh air.

  She watched her parents walk down the first aisle toward the produce section at the far end. They obviously felt nothing out of the ordinary, sensed nothing wrong, but her muscles grew tense as she watched them, her uneasiness and anxiety increasing. She noticed for the first time that Mr. and Mrs. Grimes were nowhere in sight.

  Ordinarily, the checkout stand was never left unattended.

  There were a series of burnt-out lights above the meat counter that cast an entire section of the market into semidarkness. Her parents walked into the shadow.

  "Hey thereI"

  She jumped at the sound of Mr. Grimes's voice and turned quickly around to see him standing directly behind her, smiling. There was nothing false about his smile, nothing sinister, but the fact that he had been able to sneak up on her like that, without her being able to hear him, scared her.

  "How are you and your folks today?"

  "Fine," Sue said, forcing herself to smile at him.

  The negativity in the air had not diminished, the atmosphere within the market remained unchanged, but she knew that the impressions she was receiving had nothing to do with a cup hugirngsi or tse meg, were entirely unrelated to the supernatural.

  " She suddenly wished her grandmother were here. Her parents had turned the corner, and Sue moved across the front of the store to the next aisle, looking toward the far end. They were not there, and she con ting ued on to the next row.

  Mrs. Grimes rushed toward her from between the stacks of canned foods.

  Sue stepped back, feeling as though she'd been physically pushed. This was where the hostility was coming from, the source of the negativity within the market. She could feel it rolling off the woman in nearly palpable waves.

  Mrs. Grimes moved past her, frowning, saying nothing. Sue walked quickly down the vacated aisle and found her parents in the produce section, stocking up on cabbage for the restaurant. Her mother looked up at her, annoyed. "Why are you just standing around? Help us. Get a gallon of milk."

  Her mother had a list for the house, her father for the restaurant, and they alked through the market, picking up everything they needed for both before heading back to the checkout stand. Again, the register was unattended, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes nowhere to be seen.

  Her father began taking items from the cart and placing them on the unmoving black rubber conveyor belt. "Wait," her mother said. "We forgot to get cereal for John."

  "Cereal?" her father said.

  "He doesn't want rice every day."

  "You're going to spoil that boy," he said, but he followed her back down the first aisle to the breakfast foods.

  Mr. and Mrs. Grimes emerged from the shadowed meat department, both of them moving behind the register. "All ready to go?" Mr. Grimes asked.

  "Almost," Sue said. "My parents are just getting some cereal."

  Mrs. Grimes cleared her throat loudly, melodramatically, and nudged her husband. Mr. Grimes looked embarrassed and pushed her arm down, but he faced Sue. He smiled, tried to make his voice casual. "How come your morn and dad're always talkin' Chinese. he asked. She blinked. "Because they're Chinese." "But they're in America now."

  Her cheeks were hot, and she could feel herself becoming defensive.

  "What does that mean? They're in America so they should be speaking American? What is American? What language is native to this country?

  Navajo? Hopi?"

  He laughed. "You got me there." He looked at his wife and rubbed his chin. She could hear the rough skin of his fingers scraping against the stubble. "No, I just mean that, well, since they're in an English-speaking country they probably oughta be speaking English."

  "They do," Sue said, her face growing warmer. "When they need to. But Cantonese is their native language, and when they have personal conversations it's easier for them to speak Cantonese." She shifted her weight uncomfortably. "It's like if you and your wife moved to China. You'd speak Chinese when you had to, to get along in society, but when you were home alone you'd speak English. It's your native language, it's easier for you. There'd be no reason for you to speak Chinese in private, would there?" She motioned toward her parents.

  "Same thing."

  He nodded thoughtfully, still rubbing his chin. "I see your point."

  Next to him, his wife leaned forward, thin lips pursed. "Well, I'll be honest with you. I don't like it. I mean, your parents are good folks and all, don't get me wrong. But sometimes .. . well, sometimes I can't tell what they're talking about when they talk like that. I can't help thinking that they're talking about me."

  "Right now," Sue said drily, "they're talking about corn flakes."

  Mrs. Grimes frowned. "You know what I mean. I have nothing against your parents, but what if there were some of them who weren't so nice, who weren't such good people?" '" "Some of who?" '-' .... " ' She colored. '"You know, foreign.." people from othel countries. I mean, how would we know what they weft talking about?"

  Mr. Grimes turned toward his wife. "I think her point Edna, is that some conversations are private. Some thing'. you don't need to know about."

  Her parents returned with a box of Rice Krispies, ant both Mr. and Mrs. Grimes smiled pleasantly at them, she totaling the purchases on the register, he bagging the grocery ceries. "Come again," Mrs. Grimes said as they left.

  Sue had often wondered what it was that had prompte, her parents to settle in Rio Verde. After moving to the United States from Hong Kong, they had lived for a years in Chinatown in New York--where she was born before heading west when she was two. But what had made them decide on Arizona? And why had they decided to live in this town instead of Phoenix or Tucson or Flagst or Prescott?

  She had never Come out and asked her parents why they were here. Partly because she did not want to mention to them that she was not completely happy here, partly because she suspected that her father had been suckered into buying land in Rio Verde.

  But as they walked out to the car, as the oppressive ne that had hung over her since she'd stepped into the market lifted, she found herself wondering if there were oth reasons they had come here. Had it been laht sic, fate? had her grandmother's Di Lo Ling Gum steered the here?

  She pushed these ideas out of her mind. Her father unlocked her mother's door, then popped open the back of the station wagon, and he and Sue loaded the groceries. Her father closed the hatch, then went around to the driver's door. "We'll stop by the restaurant first," he said.

  "I need to go to the newspaper office," Sue told him. "All right Actually, I think I'd rather walk. I can use the exercise.

  And you won't have to go out of your way."

  "Are you ashamed of us?" her mother said from inside the car.

  "No."

  "Then why won't you come with us?"

  Sue sighed. "Fine," She opened the back door of the station wagon.

  "If you want to walk, walk," her father said. "It is not a problem."

  "I don't want to cause an argument."

  "Go," he told her.

  She
smiled at him. "Thank you."

  Sue moved out of the way, and as the station wagon backed up, she expected to hear the sound of her parent arguing, but even her mother must not have considered this a big deal since both parents waved and smiled through the windows as the car pulled out of the parking lot.

  Sue looked around. She was standing alone now by the green Torino, facing the smoked glass of the market door, and she turned away and hurried across the cracked and broken asphalt of the parking lot, wanting to get as fast away from there as possible.

  She began walking toward the newspaper office, but! instead of heading down the highway, she found herself turning onto Jefferson, then onto Copperhead. She did not know why she was going this way--it was longer and slower and led through the crummier part of townEbut her feet were leading and her head was following, her directions running on instinct.

  She turned left onto Arrow. And there was the black church.

  She stopped. There was something about the way the buildings fit together that she didn't like, that set her on edge. It was nothing specific, nothing she could put a finger on, more of a general feeling--a sense that the architectural aesthetics of the union were wrong.

  Although it was daytime, the street was deserted. A scrap of paper blew across the asphalt, drifdng from the construction site to the empty feed and grain store, making everything seem like part of a ghost town.

  Ghost. '

  That was it exactly. There was an air of unreality about this street, the sense here of something supernatural.

  She wanted to go back the way she had come, but a fog seemed to have settled over her brain, and her feet took her forward instead, toward the church. There was the sound of pounding, hammering, sawing, the noises of construction unnaturally loud on the otherwise silent street.

  Sue looked up, saw men at the top of the church roof, on a makeshift scaffold at its side. The men looked gaunt and haggard and far too white for laborers used to toiling in the sun. Two of them had taken off their shirts, despite the cold, and across the broad back of one she could see red welts that looked as though they were made by lashes from a whip.

  She forced herself to walk faster.

  On the steps of the church she saw Pastor Wheeler. He stared at her as she hurried by, and she shivered, chilled. There was something predatory in the pastor's gaze, some thing that didn't sit well with her, and she quickened her pace. Although she did not really know Wheeler, she knew she didn't like him. The few times she'd met him, he'd seemed sneaky and somehow sleazy, like a car salesman or a child molester, and that first impression only stayed. now.

  "Miss?" the pastor said.

  Sue didn't want to stop, wanted to run, wanted to pretend as though she hadn't heard the call, but she turned. "Yes?"

  A slow grin spread over the pastor's face. "Chink," he said softly.

  "Fucking chink."

  She backed up a step, swallowing.

  Wheeler's grin grew wider. "Fucking slant-eyed heathen slut. Why are you walking by my church'"

  She shook her head. "I--"

  He walked down the steps toward her. "I'll teach you a lesson, you cock-teasing bitch."

  She ran. The slight numbness that had seemed to come over her when she'd stepped onto the street lifted, and she was free to act, free to move. She ran like hell.

  She heard the pastor behind her. She did not know if he was following, but he was definitely shouting at her, though the sound of her breathing mercifully muffled his cries into an indistinguishable drone.

  She turned left at the corner, and though her legs and lungs were hurting and it was getting hard to breathe, she did not stop or slow down, and she continued running until she reached the highway.

  Rich didn't want to go to the picnic, but Corrie had to attend, and he and Anna had been formally invited. It was a legitimate news event, he reasoned, and he would have been obligated to go and take a few photos for the paper anyway. Rather than argue with Corrie, he agreed to make it a family outing.

  They argued anyway, on the way over. They were driving toward the park, he and Corrie traveling in silence, Anna in the backseat singing to herself, when Corrie said, out of the blue, "People here say 'man-aisc." ":

  He glanced at her, puzzled. "What?"

  "They say 'man-aisc." Either they have reading problems or speech problems. It's 'may-o-naise," not 'manaise." How do you get 'man' out of 'mayo'? Tell me that. Is this the kind of thing that you want your daughter to grow up emulating?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about our daughter's future."

  "What does colloquial speech have to do with Anna?" "Everything.

  Children are products not just of genetic. but of their environment.

  I think she's growing up in the wrong environment."

  "I bet Pastor Wheeler says 'man-aisc' too."

  She stared at him, face muscles tightening. "What's that supposed to mean?" ,.

  He shook his head. "Nothing."

  "No one's forcing you to go to this picnic, you know.

  If you don't want to spend time with your wife and daughter..."

  "Jesus. Just shut up for a while."

  Corrie did not respond. Anna's singing had stopped, and the silence in the car seemed unbearable. Rich reached over and pushed a cassette into the tape player.

  Allman Brothers. Corrie hated the Allman Brothers, but she didn't say anything, simply sat staring straight out the windshield, arms folded over her breasts.

  They drove to the picnic without speaking.

  The park was crowded, much more crowded than he would have expected, and he had a difficult time finding a parking place. He finally found a spot a block away on the opposite side of the street, and they walked back.

  Lines had already formed in front of the barbecue grills, and there were people everywhere. Wheeler's church was not one of the major denominations and Rich would not have expected this many people to show up for a fund raiser, but then again not everyone here was from

  Wheeler's congregation. Most of them were probably people who had read about the picnic in the paper and had come out of curiosity, or because nothing else was happening in town this weekend. Still, the turnout was impressive.

  The picnic did seem to be well planned and put together, he had to admit that. A large banner proclaiming this the "First Annual Rio Verde Picnic and Church Social" was strung between the park's two dusty oaks, and all of the benches and picnic tables were festooned with yellow crepe paper. There were booths and cordoned-off areas for organized games, and plenty of name-tagged church members were on hand to direct newcomers to the appropriate section of the park. The air smelled of burning charcoal, beer, relish, insect repellent, and suntan lotion. Rich glanced up again at the banner. He was a little leery of the fact that this was being called Pdo Verde's church social rather than the Church of the Holy Trinity social, but the banner's grammatical error and its implications didn't seem to be troubling anyone else, so he let it ride.

  Taking Anna's hand, Corrie started off across the dried grass toward the barbecues, without giving him so much as a backward glance. He considered remaining where he was, or even going back to the car--just to give Corrie a little sore---but he didn't want to drag Anna into this, so he followed his wife and daughter through the crowd.

  The day was hot. There was very little shade in the park, and what shade there was had been usurped by church families who'd staked out the benches underneath the occasional trees. He glanced around as the three of them headed toward the food, smiling, nodding, waving, saying a few quick "'hi's, but though he saw several acquaintances, he saw no friends. Most of the people here were strangers to him.

  Ahead, behind the middle barbecue, in a white apron and comical chef's hat, spatula in hand, stood Pastor Wheeler. The preacher was grinning hugely, joking wit the men and women who waited in line, paper plates in hand, but there was something about his manner, aboul the way he talked to the people in front of the ba
rbecu( that seemed forced, false, and slightly patronizing. It was unnerving to see such unapologetic glad-handing, ant Rich felt even more ill at ease when Wheeler noticed Corrie and turned some of that guile on her. ' He did not follow Corrie and Anna around the barbecue but remained where he was. Anna, he noticed seemed wary of the pastor. She didn't blanch or pull back when he smiled and patted her head, but she wasn't a friendly or forthcoming as she usually was, and he could tell from her posture that she was afraid of the man. Apparently, she had inherited his own good sense find instinctive ability to judge character.

  The strange thing was that Corrie, too, seemed somewhat frightened. Her beaming smile and friendly tone of voice betrayed no such reservations, but her body language told another story. She stood stiffly, awkwardly; even her usually expansive hand gestures appeared reserved.

  Rich watched Wheeler for a few moments, making no effort to move any closer. The pastor was of medium height and medium build, but carried himself as though he were something more, something special. There was about him an indefinable air of sleaziness and opportunism common to all salesmen. Rich watched him clap hands on backs, overreact to jokes. Try as he might, Rich failed to understand how people could find such a man charismatic.

  And how people could believe that such a man knew The Truth was totally beyond his comprehension.

  Rich caught Corrie's eye, motioned to her that he was going to look around, but she simply looked away. She'd seen him, he knew, though she wouldn't acknowledge it. He started off through the crowd toward the booths at the edge of the playground. He wondered if he should have brought his notebook, but then decided that any factual material about the picnic he might need he could get from Corde. He'd go back to the car a little later, get out his camera, and take a few crowd shots. Maybe a small kid eating a big slice of watermelon. Or a dog playing Frisbee. Something cute and heartwarming.

  To the side of the first booth--a ring toss game--was a table covered with red crepe paper. From the front edge of the table hung a sign on which was printed a single word, "Raffle," and a price, "$5." He walked around the line of people in front of the table to where the ticket sellers sat and looked down at one of the raffle tickets.