China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  They were standing on the sidewalk, crowding up to the curb but not stepping off, as if it were the edge of a cliff. They were saying the accident was a sign . . . a punishment or a warning. My foot hit something slick—a broken pumpkin. That was what had spilled from the truck, and that was what was holding them back. Their shoulders were hunching away from the orange gourds as though they were severed heads.

  Then Peter Wyoming’s voice rang out. ‘‘It’s a taunt. We’re being mocked. Well, I got an answer to that!’’

  He stepped off the curb and jammed a cowboy boot down on a pumpkin, squashing it. A second later the choir soloist hoisted her red robe and did the same. Then the twirlers, who ran into the street and laid into a pumpkin with their batons like hunters clubbing a harp seal. Then everyone.

  Oh, no. I jogged back to the truck. The driver was kneeling by the wheels, saying, ‘‘Hang on, buddy, help’s coming, hang on,’’ a rosary of slender hope, chanted in fear and guilt. From behind me came scuffling, grunts, the wet crack of produce splitting open. A pumpkin flew and smashed against the wooden slats of the truck. I tugged on the driver’s arm, urging him up. He stood, saw the Remnant smashing his cargo, mouthed, What . . . ? Someone pointed at the truck and called, ‘‘Look— more!’’ A dozen people charged the vehicle, climbing into the bed and flinging pumpkins overboard.

  ‘‘Get in the cab.’’ I pushed him toward the door. He stared at the front axle, and I said, ‘‘I’ll stay with him.’’

  He gripped the door handle, felt the truck rocking, and stopped. Peter Wyoming was standing in the middle of the road, arms akimbo, face alight, looking at the anarchy as if it were beauty revealed.

  He tilted his head back and bellowed, ‘‘Getting biblical!’’

  The driver said, ‘‘No, we’ll both stay.’’

  ‘‘Thank you.’’

  From the distance, at last, came a siren. The blue and red lights of a fire engine strobed the night, flashing off buildings, asphalt, faces. Headlights backlit the Remnant into flat black silhouettes. I waved my arms, but the engine halted, motor growling, the crew doubtless confused by the scene.

  For an awful moment I thought the Remnant was going to mob the fire truck. But Peter Wyoming spread his arms, in the classic gesture of the Good Shepherd welcoming his flock, and said, ‘‘Come on, people.’’ They followed him back to the sidewalk, hopping down from the produce truck and clearing the road unhurriedly, slapping high-fives and pumping fists in the air.

  The fire engine drove forward and the crew jumped out, wary and full of questions. The truck driver directed them toward the trapped man, and then we backed off as they set to work. The Remnant again massed on the curb, singing, ‘‘Takin’ back the streets for a thousand years . . .’’

  Except for one figure, dressed in white, who stood staring at me. Tabitha. The lights of the fire truck spun across her. Red, blue, red, a shocking spin of color. I walked toward her.

  ‘‘What’s going on here?’’ I said. ‘‘What in the name of God is this all about?’’

  The strobing lights painted her face into a kaleidoscope of fear and ferocity. ‘‘You haven’t been listening. ’’

  I jerked my thumb toward the produce truck. ‘‘That man may be dead. So you tell me, what happened inside this church?’’ She merely stared at me. I approached, breathing hard. ‘‘Why did you run away?’’

  ‘‘You don’t get it,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Try me. Nothing you say right now could possibly surprise me.’’

  Her voice, emanating from that voluptuous mouth, sounded flat and disembodied. ‘‘Turn away from the deceiver and open your eyes, Evan. Something’s coming that you can’t stop.’’

  Behind me radios were squawking, the fire crew shouting for equipment. Churchgoers were pushing past me, declaiming about blood and iniquity. Tabitha’s lips parted. She was hanging on a decision whether to say something else. A scarlet choir robe swirled in front of her, lurid under the flashing lights.

  She said, ‘‘You can’t keep him. He’s not yours.’’

  Then the crowd swallowed her, took her from my sight.

  3

  When I arrived home I sat in the car, trying to shake loose from the evening’s ugliness. I didn’t want Luke to see me upset. But I kept hearing the crack of shattering glass, kept seeing Tabitha’s high-voltage eyes, kept feeling the injured man’s hand when I clasped it. It felt like gristle. I climbed out of the Explorer, slammed the door, and started walking up the street.

  The fire crew had disentangled the man from the truck’s undercarriage and lifted him onto a stretcher. Delicately, like a smashed chandelier they were trying to salvage. I didn’t know whether he had survived the trip to the hospital.

  I had no clue who he was, why he had invaded the service, whom he had been screaming at. I gave a statement to the Santa Barbara police at the scene, telling them what I had seen and that I thought the man was sick, physically ill. I also told them that I thought the Remnant was sick, infected with a pathogenic faith. They looked at the broken window and pumpkin-slick street, and shrugged, unsure how to log my comment. Cops wanted facts, not creepy metaphysics.

  I pushed through the gate and followed the path under the live oaks back to my cottage. Before going inside I held my hands out, checking that they were steady, and urged a pleasant expression onto my face.

  The living room was empty. The house was quiet except for the television, the local news on with the volume low, talking about a gray whale that had beached itself and died. I didn’t hear Luke or the babysitter. I called her name, noticing that I didn’t see her backpack or books anywhere. Calling again, getting no reply, I headed to the dark doorway of Luke’s bedroom. When I nudged the door fully open, light fell on a man next to Luke’s bed.

  ‘‘Almighty Christ,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Quiet, you’ll wake him.’’

  ‘‘Jesse, don’t scare me like that.’’

  He turned and gave me a strange look, not expecting his presence in my house to scare me. He said, ‘‘I paid the sitter and sent her home. What’s wrong?’’

  ‘‘What are you doing?’’

  ‘‘Just checking on him.’’

  Luke lay with his pajama top bunched under his chin and his arms stretched over his head. I wrangled his quilt up to his chest and propped his teddy bear beside him. It had Brian’s squadron patch sewn on its chest. Strike Fighter Squadron 151, the Vigilantes.

  Jesse followed me out of the bedroom, closing the door noiselessly before saying, ‘‘Tell me.’’

  I was on tiptoe in the kitchen, reaching for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, the whiskey I saved for intense occasions. ‘‘You were right. Tabitha wants Luke.’’

  He was looking at the green corduroy shirt I had on, now grimy with road dirt, and at my hands, freckled with cuts. Wanting me to explain the rest. I poured two fingers. Drank, felt the JD hit my throat, leaned my elbows on the kitchen counter and rested my forehead against the glass in my hands.

  ‘‘She’s jumped on the bus. It’s on fire, tires blown out, heading for a cliff, and she’s honking the horn, thinking she’s saved.’’ I straightened. ‘‘I had the Remnant all wrong. They aren’t ordinary fundamentalists; they’re fanatical end-timers.’’

  I started to tell him about it. He wheeled into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and got me to set down the whiskey and wash out the cuts. While I talked, he found antiseptic and Band-Aids and stuck them on my hands with brisk male nonchalance.

  He said, ‘‘Do you want to talk to a family law attorney? We have a guy at the firm who’s a pit bull on custody issues.’’

  ‘‘No point. Brian has custody stitched up; she can’t just come and take him. Until she hits us with a summons, I don’t need a lawyer.’’

  ‘‘What are you going to do?’’

  ‘‘Hold tight and get Luke up to Brian’s next week, like I planned.’’

  He looked at the photos of Brian on the fridge. ‘‘Yeah, I’m
sure Captain America will deal with it.’’

  His voice had an edge, but I let the remark go because we were both worn out. He had worked late, I knew—he was still in his court clothes, with his cuffs rolled up, red tie loosened at his neck. When he spoke again his smoky voice sounded old.

  ‘‘Tell me Wyoming’s a scam artist, Ev. That he doesn’t believe the bullshit he says, he just wants their money.’’

  ‘‘No. I don’t think so.’’ I finished my whiskey.

  ‘‘You think it’s more than hyperbole, this First Church of the Assault Rifle stuff.’’

  ‘‘He’s pumping them up to take on the Antichrist. Priming them for public violence. He’s the one who goaded them to attack the farm truck.’’

  Again I smelled burned rubber and saw the injured man’s limp arm. . . . Why had he burst screaming into the church? What, I couldn’t help thinking, had the Remnant done to him? I said, ‘‘I have a bad feeling that Pastor Pete has big plans.’’

  Dead air hung between us until he asked, ‘‘Is this a Heaven’s Gate scenario?’’

  Mass suicide. I exhaled. ‘‘They don’t talk about going to another realm—they talk about a Green Beret Messiah storming to earth and leading them into battle.’’

  ‘‘Waco.’’

  ‘‘Don’t even say that word.’’

  He held my gaze. Not offering platitudes, not saying, It’ll be okay. I poured another drink.

  He said, ‘‘How are you going to tell Luke?’’

  I hadn’t foreseen that he would become so attached to my nephew. But that was Jesse, the blindsider—he was a shaman of cynicism with adults, but had a sure touch with kids. Direct and encouraging, he put them at ease, listened to them, got them to listen to him. He had taught Luke to swim, taught him to love the water as he did himself, having been a world-class swimmer. I looked at him, at those blue eyes, at the long hair and earring that proclaimed his pirate streak. He was uncommonly handsome, and five years my junior, but his face did not look young. His eyes were as clear as ice and free from illusion.

  I brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He squeezed my fingers, stroked his palm up my arm.

  ‘‘Ouch,’’ he said. Both of us started, and he looked at the heel of his hand, where a drop of blood was rising. Glass fragments from my sleeve. I said, ‘‘I’d better shower.’’

  Ten minutes later I was in my bedroom, buttoning a clean blouse, when he called out, ‘‘You’re on the news.’’ When I came back around the corner he was sitting on the sofa, stretching to reach the TV remote. He turned up the volume and I heard my voice scolding Peter Wyoming with Bible quotations. It was a report about Claudine’s funeral. After the evening’s melee, that run-in seemed petty.

  He said, ‘‘Way to go, Delaney.’’

  He reached up, found my hand, and pulled me down to him. Vining his arms around me, he kissed me. Again, and again. I closed my eyes and leaned against him. This was in the top ten, the best about him—this passion for me when he knew I was doing right. It went beyond seduction, beyond romance, to the bedrock. I clung to him, nourishing myself with the moment.

  When I first met him, before his accident, I had presumed him one of those all-Americans who would soar through life on good looks, brains, and athletic prowess, blessed and untouchable. I didn’t really know him. It took disaster for me to learn about his grit, and relentlessness, and his ungodly ability to touch me in exactly the right way. I kissed him again, letting my hands slide up his arms and around his back. He had a swimmer’s physique, shoulders and arms like carved oak, strong from doing double duty these past few years. They were a shelter, and I curled against him.

  He said, ‘‘Wish I could stay.’’

  ‘‘I know.’’

  He wouldn’t spend the night. He had an early court date the next morning; he didn’t live nearby, didn’t have fresh clothes or the pain medication he needed. His broken back meant that things took time. The package didn’t include spontaneity. Nevertheless he snaked his fingers into my hair, tilted my head back, and kissed me at the base of the throat. I felt his breath whisker my chest where my shirt gapped in the front. Then his teeth, teasing loose the top button, and his lips, brushing my skin.

  And behind me, a small voice. ‘‘I’m thirsty.’’

  I jumped, and Jesse’s head snapped up. Luke was standing in the doorway, eyes fighting the light.

  I lingered, but knew he wouldn’t return to bed empty-handed, and got up to pour him a glass of milk. When I returned with it, he was tucked next to Jesse on the sofa. He drank the milk sleepily. After he finished it I took his hand and said, ‘‘Back to bed,’’ but he pushed his face against Jesse’s chest, ignoring me.

  Jesse said, ‘‘Come on, I’ll give you a ride.’’ Levering onto the wheelchair, he patted his knee. ‘‘Hop on, little dude.’’ Luke clambered onto his lap.

  Not long after tucking Luke in, he headed home. I walked him out to his car, which had a big engine and hand controls, bent to kiss him good night, and watched him maneuver in. A coolness had descended on the night, and as he drove away I stood by myself on the sidewalk, sore hands rubbing my arms. A chill breeze whispered across my shoulders.

  Autumn: I was too tired to resist the imagery. Change was about to hit me, and I feared that it would strip off my facade, leaving the bare branches of my life exposed. Things had been going well—I had cash in the bank, and a novel that was going to be featured in the city’s upcoming book festival. I even had a man who loved me. Yet once Luke left, I knew what I would see: the cobbled-together, freelance quality of my existence. I had a job scrabbling for legal piece-work. I had a lover who drove away at night. I had a room in the house that would soon be empty.

  I walked back through the gate. Near the house I stopped to pick up toys Luke had left outside. Star Wars action figures—Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, names I knew better than those of the Apostles—they were part of the arcana of childhood I had recently learned about. Like knowing that, of the objects a little boy will stick up his nose, chopsticks look worse than M&M’s but are easier to extract.

  I tilted my head back. The stars were a wet blur in the sky. It was a kid’s trick: Let the tears run back into the tear ducts. I’m not crying, no, ma’am. Just looking for airplanes, Aunt Evvie.

  ‘‘Damn,’’ I said, and walked back inside with my eyes streaming.

  In the morning I said nothing to Luke about Tabitha, not wanting to unsettle him before school. He roused slowly, sparking up only when he saw his hair in the mirror. I heard, ‘‘Oh, man, it’s all scribbled.’’ It was a semiregular crisis. Brushing failed, and I had to dunk his head under the tap. Out the door late, we were still a block from school when the bell rang. He broke into a sprint, mouth set, backpack bouncing, and ran through the gate.

  I spent the morning researching cases for an appellate brief I had been hired to write, chasing precedents until the Westlaw search engine told me I had cornered the big ones. Several times I tried to reach my brother, without success. I also phoned Cottage Hospital to ask about the church intruder’s condition. They gave me no information, not even the man’s name. That made me think his chances were poor.

  Feeling itchy, I drove downtown to the Santa Barbara Public Library. I wanted to reconnoiter the Remnant, to scout Tabitha’s new . . . What were they, soul mates? Puppeteers? When she came at me, I wanted to know whom I was facing.

  The library was an airy Spanish-style building across the street from the courthouse. Outside it, a banner advertised the Santa Barbara Book Festival, a thought that cheered me. But, scrolling through News-Press back issues on microfiche, I found little cheery information about the Remnant.

  The church, I learned, was just five years old. Before then Peter Wyoming had run a carpet-cleaning business. Hearing the call to the ministry, he sold Spruce Steam-Clean, started booing nonfundamentalist views in public, and attracted followers—including a wife. A weddings notice announced, Peter Wyoming Weds Chenille Krystall. It was
quite a name, and, from the photo, she was quite a bride, stout and triumphant in a virgin-white Stetson. It was the choir soloist, she of the cool dabbing cloth and the shit-kicker cowboy boots. Other recent stories covered Remnant protests at the funerals of a Hindu coed who had been thrown from a horse, and a gay man murdered during the summer. The list of their protests read like a litany: Resent, the End Is Near. It wasn’t much for me to go on.

  Leaving the library, I crossed the street to look in on Gaul v. Beowulf’s Books at the courthouse. Skip Hinkel, Priscilla Gaul’s attorney, was pacing the courtroom, questioning a man from the California Department of Fish and Game. Asking, ‘‘What microbes does a ferret’s mouth harbor?’’ ‘‘What’s the PSI its jaws can administer?’’ Saying, ‘‘The ferrets involved in this case came from a Vancouver animal shelter—are Canadian ferrets especially ferocious?’’ Jesse was leaning his forehead on his hands, looking as if he’d had a long day already.

  On the way home I spun the radio dial, hoping for the Dixie Chicks, but all I heard were reports about the beached gray whale. One station was mourning the beast’s death, another discussing the logistics of removing it from the pricy shoreline property where it was decaying. They had a deejay at the beach. He sounded as if he were covering the Hindenburg explosion.

  ‘‘It’s an incredible sight,’’ he reported. ‘‘Have you seen it, Corky?’’

  ‘‘No, Adam, but I’m planning to come down right after I go off the air.’’

  Santa Barbara sometimes thought it was Monaco, but at times like this I knew I lived in the sticks.

  At home I ate a tuna sandwich and tried another stream of inquiry, logging on to the Remnant’s Web site. Its home page was eye shrapnel: spinning crosses, throbbing flames, multiple exclamation points. Beast-Watch! !! Ho of the Month!!! October’s honoree was a U.S. senator.

  One topic snagged my eye: Big Brother is watching! !!

  Government computers, it warned, were recording all e-mail and phone conversations. Satellites were monitoring people’s movements via anticounterfeiting strips in twenty-dollar bills. The purpose: to identify Christians, and, eventually, to track and capture them. The Remnant faithful should avoid phones, instant messaging, and the mail. Talking face-to-face was safest, and discretion was vital. Federal agents were adept at penetration. Confide only in a few other trusted church members. That way, even if part of the Remnant was compromised, it would not destroy the whole. No one could wipe them out.