“Um, if he’s… and he’s…” the kid pointed to me and Michael in turn, “then… who… what are you?” He looked almost afraid of Emily’s answer.
“I’m his daughter.” She pointed at me with her beer bottle. “But otherwise, I’m just a waitress from Texas who’s been known to consort with the wrong crowd.” She finished off with a swig of her beer. “And seriously, Dad, PBR? I’m sure they have import beers, even in this redneck shithole.”
“Just keepin’ it real, baby girl. Just keepin’ it real.” I watched the kid for trouble signs, but he just sat there, processing.
After a minute, the kid reached out, drained his beer, and waved over the waitress. When she got to the booth, he said, “Four Gentleman Jack, two ice cubes. And another round of PBRs.” All of a sudden, the kid was a trained professional. He might be okay, after all.
When she brought the drinks back, he slid a highball glass in front of each of us and raised his in a salute. “To saving the world.” He tossed back his drink and chased it with a beer.
Chapter 30
“So, what do I do?” he asked. “Do I have to fight a horde of unbelievers? Do I have to martyr myself for my beliefs? Do I have to sacrifice my eldest son? Because I don’t have any kids, but I could have some if I need to.”
I reached across the table and put my hand on his shoulder. “Okay, kid, calm down. We’re not fighting any hordes, at least I hope not. And nobody’s martyring anybody or sacrificing anybody for any beliefs. At least, not that we know of. Let’s just take a step back and recap. How much do you know about what got me and Eve kicked out of the Garden?”
“Well, I know that Eve was tempted by the serpent Satan, and that she was weak and succumbed to the temptation of the serpent, and that because of the weakness of Eve, all mankind has suffered… what’s so funny?”
Even Michael was having a hard time stifling his laughter, and Michael didn’t really have a sense of humor. I was laughing too hard, so I just motioned for Emily to explain it to the kid.
“You see, it wasn’t quite like that, and since we all know Eve, hearing her described as weak is just, well, it’s pretty funny,” Em started.
“Yeah, and you don’t want to let her hear that version of events. Because she’s packing,” I finished.
“Well, that’s what happened! It says so right here in the…” After a second the kid realized that since he was sitting with what historians refer to as source material, he might want to think a bit before he told me what had happened. “This is going to take some getting used to,” he finished lamely.
“Yeah, it’s like that at first. Just imagine how fucked up it is to find out he’s your dad.” I knew Em was trying to commiserate, but I wasn’t sure I liked the method.
“Okay, so it was like this. Eve made a Choice to take the fruit and bring it to me. And all through history, there have been choices. Some have been big, like deciding to invade Poland, like writing the Magna Carta, like pulling the sword out of the stone. Some have been small, like deciding to put the top down on the limo in Dallas, like picking the right horse for Paul Revere to ride, like deciding to go see a play at Ford’s Theatre. Those are small choices, with big consequences. But every once in a while, there comes along a capital “c” Choice, the kind of choice that you know will alter the course of humanity for a long time to come. That’s the kind of Choice we’re talking about, like when Eve took the fruit from Lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Just go with it. Like taking the fruit from Lucky, like Abel letting Cain kill him, like the Carpenter going with the soldiers in the garden at Gethsemane. The kind of Choice that you know will impact people for a long, long time after you make it. That’s what we’re coming up on right now, another Choice. The first one in probably a few hundred years, if not longer. And you’re the guy.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’m the guy’? What guy?” His voice had gotten a little high-pitched and thready, so I knew he understood what I meant. I decided that it would be a stupid time to start sugar-coating anything, so I just went right back to the sledgehammer.
“You’re the one who has to Choose.”
“What am I Choosing?” His eyes had gotten big, and he looked a little like a rabbit staring at a .22 rifle.
“We don’t know yet. We just know you’re the one who has to Choose. And the rest of the world will have to live with your Choice.”
“Sidney…” Michael moved in to try and soothe the frightened kid. “We know this is a lot to take in all at once, but you are very important to us, and to the world. We need you, Sidney. Will you come with us? Will you make the Choice?” The angel’s words carried weight, and I could tell by the look on the kid’s face that he knew if he said yes, he was committing to something a lot bigger than standing on a street corner singing psalms and trying to teach the Lord’s Prayer to a couple of drunks.
He sat there for a long moment, and I was glad to see him taking some time with the idea. Taking on the fate of the world wasn’t something that should be done lightly, even if you were a little drunk.
After a couple of minutes, he sat up, finished off his beer, and looked me in the eye. “I’m in. Whatever it is my Lord has planned for me, I will do to the best of my ability. I will serve Him however He requires.”
Yup, true believers are a pain in the ass.
I waved over the waitress for the check, and Em went to the bathroom while I settled up. We figured we’d head back to the motel for the night and head out in the morning. Michael hadn’t yet deigned to share with us our next destination, telling me “all things in time” in that tone that made me want to punch him in the face again. I restrained myself in light of our new addition and his potentially sensitive views on violence.
Besides, I didn’t want the angel bleeding all over the back seat of Emily’s Civic.
Chapter 31
As we headed out onto Broadway, the streets were starting to fill. It was about ten o’clock, and all the bars had their acts going. We meandered through the throngs of humanity with Sidney passing out religious tracts like a Las Vegas porn slapper until we got almost all the way back to the car. I had just started to think we had made it through one whole city without anything stupid happening when Emily’s cell phone rang. She looked down at it with a puzzled look.
“Yeah, Mom? What’s up? Oh, no.” I might have only been able to hear one side of the conversation, but it didn’t sound like I was going to like the outcome. “All right, we’re almost at the car. We’ll be there as quick as we can. What? Yeah. We found him. What? What about my tone? Nothing, all right. Geez, we’ll be there in a few minutes.” She blushed a little as she hung up the phone and looked at it as if it knew something it had no right to know.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Em snapped back to the present and looked up at me. “Oh. Um, well, we need to go.”
“We’re on our way. Is there someplace in particular other than the hotel that we need to go to? And is there something that I should probably know about that you’re trying not to tell me?”
“Well, it seems like there’s a bit of trouble at a biker bar just outside of town.”
“Really? And who exactly is involved in this trouble, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Eve. And Cain. And by extension, I guess, my mom.” The first two surprised me not at all, and the third didn’t really surprise me, but the quickening of my pulse when she said Myra was in trouble came as a bit of a surprise.
“Well, let’s get a move on. Why don’t you try a little explaining as we roll?” We got into the car, and she gave me the address. I punched it into Myra’s GPS and saw that it would take us about fifteen minutes to get there.
“Well, nothing’s happened yet. Exactly. But Mom seems to think there’s a good chance that a big fight is about to break out, and that Eve and Cain might be in the middle of it.”
“In the middle of it or the cause of it?” I asked.
“She didn’t say, b
ut I guess we could figure, based on past experience, that it’s probably the latter.”
“Excuse me?” Sidney piped up from the back seat where he and Michael had been listening.
“Yeah, Sid. What is it?” I asked.
“Um, Sidney. Please. I really don’t like to be called Sid.”
“Build a bridge,” I told him.
“Excuse me?”
“Build a bridge. It’s what we use to get over it. Now, what do you want?”
“Um, did you say Cain? As in…?”
I thought he was really starting to get an idea of exactly what was going on. “Yeah, Cain. As in my firstborn son. As in the founder of fratricide. As in really, really old and oughta know better than to get into bar fights with rednecks when you’re hopelessly outnumbered and there are people around who aren’t immortal. But his mother is a bad influence sometimes, so it’s not all his fault.”
“Um, his mother?” The kid was starting to look a little green. I couldn’t tell if he was getting carsick after drinking or if the enormity of the situation was finally sinking in.
I guess it’s all well and good to sit in a bar and talk to a guy who says he’s Adam, but when you start throwing the rest of the Fig Leaf Brigade into the mix, it can be a little much for most normal folks. Even normal folks with faces like pincushions and arms like comic books.
“Yeah. His mother. Remember Eve, the weak one who took the apple? She’s not such the wilting flower your little novel there makes her out to be, and she has a bad habit of starting fights in bars.”
“Now in her defense, Dad, she didn’t start the thing in New Orleans,” Emily chimed in.
“Okay, I’ll give you that one. But still, she has a history of starting fights that goes all the way back to Troy.”
“Troy?”
“Yeah, you remember Troy, right? Paris, Menelaus, big horse? Ring any bells?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with Eve?” Emily still looked confused.
“There wasn’t a Helen. Eve was Helen. She was married to Menelaus, got bored, and ran off with Paris. Menelaus got pissed, called his brother Agamemnon, and they besieged Troy for a decade or so. Eventually, that whole thing with the horse happened, and Troy was pretty well screwed. By that time, Eve was wandering around Egypt, hanging with one of the Ramseses, I forget which one,” I explained.
“Oh.” Emily was quiet for a few minutes, but then piped up with, “There’s her truck.”
Sure enough, that shitty old Ford was parked in front of what had to be the seediest-looking bar within a hundred miles. Eve really knew how to pick ‘em. About two dozen bikes stood out front, mostly Harleys with the occasional Triumph or Indian mixed in. No BMWs or Ducatis here, and definitely no crotch-rockets. Those were big, growling machines made to eat up the road and announce their coming from a mile or more away. A couple of muscle cars were parked here and there, and a good dozen trucks with rifles in the gun racks were scattered around the parking lot. Depending on how many people Eve had managed to piss off, this could be challenging.
“Em, I want you and Junior to stay here. Keep the engine running, and if we come out in a hurry, get us out of here pronto.” I pulled into the lot and parked with the nose of the Civic pointed toward the road.
“No dice, Pop. I’m going in there with you.” She jumped out of the car as soon as I put it in park.
“No way, kid. This could get ugly—”
“And if it does, you’re gonna need every pair of hands you can get. I’ve been in a few ugly bar fights in my day, and I know how to handle myself. I’ll make sure to get out of the way if things get too out of hand, but I’m coming with you.” I knew the look in her eye; I’d seen it in Myra’s eyes when she announced that she was coming with us on this little journey.
I figured there was no sense trying to persuade her, so I just said, “You still got your backup?”
“Yup.”
“All right. Here’s the plan. Junior, you stay close to the door with the keys in your hand. Keep your head down and get your ass in the driver’s seat if we make a run for it. Michael, you stay on my left side, and if we need that big fiery toothpick of yours, don’t waste any time making it appear.”
“Why am I to be on your left, Adam?” I had to give the angel credit; he didn’t protest, just went for the tactical questions.
“I’m right-handed, so I wanna make sure to keep that side clear if I need to do anything.” I reached into the trunk of the car, slid Cain’s pistol into the back of my jeans, and pulled on a long-sleeved shirt to hide the gun. I really hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but it wouldn’t be the first time if it came to that.
I looked around at my posse: a twenty-something waitress, a tattooed and pierced street preacher, and an archangel getting ready to storm a biker bar in Tennessee with the oldest man on the planet. This had to be the most fucked-up rescue effort in history.
Chapter 32
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the smoky gloom, even though it was night outside. It was exactly what I expected a biker bar in Tennessee to look like—dim, dirty, some battered tables and chairs scattered around with an oak bar dominating one wall.
A jukebox was the most prominent feature along one of the shorter walls, and Johnny Cash was singing “Delia’s Gone” when we walked in. Some of the tables had been shoved aside at some point to make a rough dance floor in front of the jukebox. Through an opening into the back half of the building, I could see what looked like four pool tables with games going.
A few huge, dangerous-looking men at the bar muttered amongst themselves and shot dirty looks around the room, so I assumed they were the bunch Eve had offended. I scanned the room for a second before I found our bunch of miscreants.
We made our way over to a corner table where Cain, Eve, and Myra were keeping an eye on the rest of the bar. You know a group of people is expecting trouble when three of them are sitting at a round table, and they all have their backs to a wall.
“Hey, kids, what’s up?” I asked as I pulled up a chair. I sat at Cain’s left elbow, with my chair turned around so I was leaning on the back of the chair. That put my back to the bar, but with a Miller Light NASCAR mirror on the wall, I could see anything coming at me before it got close enough to do damage.
“Hey, Pop. How’s life?” Cain and I bumped fists, and after the waitress took our drink orders—tequila shots and beers all around, the only way to go into potential combat—he leaned over and said in a low voice, “The big bald guy came on to Mom when she was picking songs at the jukebox. She was a little, um, enthusiastic in her rebuff.”
I put my head in my hands. “What did she do?”
Eve piped up, “Nothing! Well, not much, anyway. I slapped his face a little, and that was no big deal. He laughed, and his buddies laughed at him, and I laughed, and it was all good.”
“Then, why the panicked phone call?” I asked Myra.
“I wasn’t panicked. I was simply… concerned. But it wasn’t over yet.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
Eve said, “He kinda didn’t take the hint. And then, he kinda grabbed me. And I might have kneed him in the balls a little.”
I groaned a bit, then looked over at Cain. “And you had to get involved at this point, right?”
“Well, when he got to his feet, he was pretty pissed. His buddies were really giving him shit, and he looked like he was gonna take a swing at Mom, so I might have stepped in.” He at least looked chagrined about the whole mess. I loved how my family used the phrase “I might have” every time they admitted to doing something amazingly stupid. It didn’t make whatever they did any less stupid, just tried valiantly to insert doubt into the situation as to who did the stupid thing in the first place.
“At this point, you’ve decked the behemoth, Cain has defended your virtue, and all is right with the world. So, would you mind telling me why in the seven hells you’re still here?” I was getting a little irritated, but I real
ly wasn’t looking forward to getting punched.
“My songs aren’t through yet.” I looked at her incredulously, and she calmly went on. “I paid three bucks for six songs on the jukebox, and they aren’t done yet. I told Myra to give you a call and tell you to meet us here for a couple of drinks. I can’t imagine those idiots are going to cause me any more trouble tonight.” That might have been the most ludicrously contrary thing I’d heard in a couple of centuries. And it was one-hundred-percent pure Eve.
“So, you just wanted us to come over and have a little drinky-poo while your songs played out on the jukebox, and if a bar fight happened to break out, all the better?” I added a side of snide to go with my irritated, but the two went hand in hand pretty often in my experience.
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