The Reluctant Prophet

by Nancy Rue

  I felt movement at my shoulder and looked down to see Geneveve bobbing her head. At last someone was talking about her daddy.

  Chief stepped back, and Hank turned to us, her motley, soggy congregation. She had spoken several sentences before I realized she was using not her own words but our Lord’s.

  “Oh, my friends, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted, yes?”

  There were amens I had no urge to time. I said one myself.

  “Blessed are the meek—Geneveve and Desmond—for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—such as Allison, and the merciful—Chief and Willie and Janie and Bud. Blessed are the pure in heart like our Edwin. For they will see God.”

  “Amen,” we said again. “Amen.” Only Chief remained silent, as if he’d used all the words he had. Desmond mumbled something, which clearly wasn’t amen, but for once didn’t include ghetto vocabulary. The word Grandaddy was tangled in there somewhere. As for Geneveve, the earth seemed to give way beneath her. She collapsed into the mud piled beside the grave and sobbed until my own heart broke.

  “Chief,” Hank said, “maybe you should—”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  I knelt beside her, saturated soil seeping through my pants, and dispensed with the plastic bag from Old Navy I’d been using as an umbrella for the two of us. The relentless rain plastered my hair to my skull.

  Only when I put my arm around Geneveve and tried to stand her up did I realize that half of her sobs were words. There was no frenzied rocking now, no paralyzing shock. She was weeping from her gut, speaking her pain, as any grief-stricken daughter would.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I need help.”

  “I’ll get you some help,” I said. “Come on, let’s get out of this rain.”

  “No, Miss Angel. I need you.”

  She looked up at me, really looked at me, and for the first time since I’d scraped her out of West King Street, she seemed truly human. I wasn’t surprised to feel the Nudge.

  Hank crouched beside us and held a yellow umbrella over us. Both Geneveve and I were beyond rescue from being soaked to the skin, but the gesture was like a bath and a warm blanket.

  “The sacrament of burial is never complete without comfort food,” Hank said.

  I nodded. “We can go to my place.”

  “I’ll ride with you, Mr. Chief,” I heard Desmond say. “You and me can pick us up a six-pack.”

  I didn’t hear Chief’s response, but Desmond wound up in the van with me, muttering about how these people did not know how to party.

  A sentiment shared by Hank when she opened my pantry, scowled, and reported that she was going to the grocery store. Evidently my idea of comfort food and hers were worlds apart.

  The nurses from Resurrection didn’t join us, though Willie asked Hank and Chief before she took off if she could call them to do funerals in the future. While Hank was at the market, I left Chief in charge of Desmond and ran a bath for Geneveve and a shower for myself. She headed for the bed still wrapped in a towel.

  “I’m too tired, Miss Angel,” she said. “But I know it’s gon’ be all right now.”

  Her faith in that juiced the anxiety down to my fingertips, but I said, “Okay, Geneveve.”

  In sweats and a wet ponytail, I went downstairs to see how Chief and Desmond were faring. I expected to see the kid tied to a kitchen chair being advised of his rights. Wait, it was the police who did that. Chief was a lawyer. I grunted to myself. Desmond would undoubtedly need one someday. Soon.

  But I found them on the couch in the living room, each holding a soda can as if they were indeed sharing a six pack, feet propped on the steamer trunk I used as a coffee table. Desmond’s were almost as big as Chief’s.

  “I’m glad y’all made yourselves at home,” I said.

  Chief started to pull his from the trunk but I shook my head at him. Desmond, of course, slouched in deeper and crossed his ankles.

  “We just doin’ a little male bonding, Big Al,” he said. “We don’t really need nothing right now, thanks.”

  “Who said I was offering anything?” I said. “You pretty much help yourself anyway.”

  “Oh yeah, huh?” Here came the grin. “You think that Hankenstein lady gonna get some more Oreos? We out.”

  “You so did not just say that to me.”

  Desmond looked at Chief. “I told you she got it in for me.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Chief said.

  His voice, his face—both remained unmoved. He would handle this kid so much better than I could, he and Hank. I’d seen Chief’s whispered, heads-touching conversation with her by the door before she left. It had the intimate look of people who finished each other’s sentences and had whole discussions across rooms without uttering a word. I could always detect it in couples, even though I’d never experienced it myself.

  “A person could starve hisself waitin’ on women,” Desmond was saying to Chief. “I’ma hit the kitchen. You want anything? Light beer?”

  “I don’t have any beer,” I said.

  “Chips? Wings? We got some of them hot wings in the freezer.”

  “I’m good,” Chief said.

  “Okay, just thought I’d ask.”

  Desmond untangled his legs and strutted across the room to the beat of some inner, slightly off drum.

  “He reminds me of a Q-tip,” Chief said as he watched Desmond disappear into my kitchen.

  “He reminds me of possible suicide. Who knew promising to take care of his mother was going to mean dealing with the next John Dillinger?”

  I brushed off the cushion Desmond had just vacated and dropped onto it. As I tucked one foot under me, I caught Chief observing.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’ve actually been thinking about that.”

  “Thinking like a lawyer?”

  “No. Just thinking. You’ll know when I’m thinking like a lawyer.”

  “So …”

  “You made a promise to a man who’s now dead. It’s all very noble to think you have to keep it, but there’s really nothing holding you to it.”

  “Yeah there is.”

  “You mean Geneveve.”

  “I mean God.”

  His blankness became blanker.

  “So,” I said. “I take it you don’t—you’re not—”

  Sheesh, how could I say this without sounding like India?

  “I don’t believe a thing that came out of that minister’s mouth today, if that’s where you’re going,” Chief said.

  “What about what Hank said?”

  “Let’s just say she and I have agreed to disagree.”

  Part of me wanted to ask how that worked in a relationship. The other part was glad he changed the subject.

  “You live here alone?”

  “Just me and the cockroaches. It’s the curse of an old house in Florida.”

  “Nice place. Did you buy it like this, or did you do all this restoration?”

  “Neither. I inherited it.”

  “Grandparents?”

  “Parents.”

  Faint surprise finally stirred his face. “They must have died young.”

  “They did. Are you this good in the courtroom?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m answering all these questions like I’m under oath. How do you do that?” I grunted. “I usually tell people to mind their own business after about two.”

  He spread his big palms. “I got nothing up my sleeves. Just interested. Am I prying?”

  “No. Besides, you could look it up on the Internet and find out more than you really wanted to know.
My mother and father were murdered.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the statement or the cavalier way I delivered it that widened his eyes. It had been a while since I’d had to reveal that family tragedy to anyone, because most people in St. A. had lived through the horror of it themselves. I’d forgotten how it could affect somebody who hadn’t.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Chief said.

  “It’s fine. It was a long time ago—1998.”

  “Both of them—at the same time?”

  “Yeah. Car bomb.”

  “Car bomb? Here?”

  “Right in the driveway of their home in Grand Haven.”

  “Did you ever find out who did it?”

  I nodded and untucked my legs and tucked them in again. Sweat was forming behind my knees. This was the only part of the story I’d ever had trouble talking about, even right after it happened.

  “It was a guy who was employed by their corporation—Chamberlain Enterprises—for twenty-nine years and six months. He was about to retire and receive his pension and—whataya know, he was ‘terminated.’ So he left a note and planted a bomb and ‘terminated’ my parents. Then he killed himself.”

  Chief was slowly shaking his head. “I am so sorry.”

  “Well, thank you. Like I said, it was twelve years ago, and yeah, I mean, it shook me up, but the strange thing is, I felt almost as sorry for the guy as I did for them. That probably doesn’t make any sense to you. It doesn’t to most people.”

  “I’m usually not most people,” he said.

  His voice was husky. It almost made me blurt out what I thought on the rare occasion when this subject came up: “They were cold, heartless people, and they brought it on themselves.” It also made me want to explain my attitude.

  “Murder’s always wrong,” I said. “The guy could’ve sued CE or used his severance package to start a new life—whatever. But the thing is, the way my parents died was like that.” I snapped my fingers. “The coroner said they never even felt it. But they’d made that man suffer, and for no reason except that it would improve their profit margin.”

  “That a shock for you, finding that out?”

  I shook my head. “It only confirmed what I’d known about them since I was about twelve years old.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking—”

  “No—go ahead.”

  “How did you deal with that?”

  “There wasn’t much to deal with. They’d cut me out of the will when I was eighteen and out of their lives two weeks before they were killed. I was thirty.”

  “So the house …”

  “They left this house to my nanny, and she later left it to me. Nice irony, huh?”

  Chief turned his head a mere fraction of an inch. “Is it?” he said.

  “Man, you are good.” I stretched out my legs and picked up his empty soda can. “I might even answer that, if I knew. Another drink?”

  Once again I split into halves—one hoping he’d push it just a little further, the other ready to kiss Hank’s feet when she breezed in with enough food for three funeral receptions. That was the half that catapulted me to the kitchen.

  “Observe, Al,” Hank said as she unloaded pita bread, hummus, imported olives, and a half-pound of prosciutto onto the counter. “This is food. What you have in your refrigerator is—I don’t know what it is—it’s inedible.” She turned to Desmond, who was sniffing from the den doorway. “Hey, Desi, how are you at chopping?”

  “You are so not going to give him a knife!” I said.

  “It’s all good,” Desmond said for about the five hundredth time in the forty-eight hours I’d known him. “I am strickly nonviolent.” He smiled half of his smile. “I got other ways.”

  Ya think?

  But I watched as he turned down Hank’s offer to let him slice and made a fruitless survey of the snack drawer, giving up too easily when Chief denied his fifth request to let him take his Road King for a spin. The bright-eyed edge was gone from his routine, and I realized the kid was exhausted by his own charm.

  “You can go veg in front of the TV if you want,” I said. “I’ll bring you a plate.”

  “No, Big Al, it’s—”

  “I know it’s all good. I just thought you might want to kick back.”

  He delivered a cheerful reply that on the radio would have been one long bleep. I was pretty sure he had just used his favorite curse as a coordinating conjunction.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  We all turned to Chief as if he’d called us to attention. The eagle eyes were honed in on Desmond.

  “Let’s lighten up on the language,” he said.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “Enough with the swearing.”

  Neither Chief’s tone nor his face was anymore commanding than usual, but an order had been given. If I were a twelve-year-old kid, I’d be saluting at this point. Desmond clearly didn’t have that reflex. He took a begrudging step backward, eyes never leaving Chief’s, and it dawned on me that he was waiting for Chief’s next move.

  When Chief didn’t deliver whatever it was he expected, Desmond applied the smile and offered a palm-down fist. Unlike me, Chief knew what to do with that, and Desmond turned toward the den.

  “I’ma chill,” he said.

  “Good idea,” I said.

  I made sure the den door was closed, and even then I beckoned Hank and Chief into the dining room and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “I can’t do what you just did.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Hank said. “You’re not a six-foot-three male with eyes like the business end of a .357 Magnum.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I’ve got to have help with this, or I’m going to end up doing what everybody else has obviously done with that kid. And his mother.”

  Chief hitched his shoulders. “Like I told you, you don’t have to.”

  “And like I told you, yes I do.”

  “What do you need?” Hank said.

  “Will you just stay with him for about an hour? Maybe less. I think I know where I can get some support.”

  “You’ve got it.” Hank leaned against Chief. “He’ll help me. As long as I feed him, he’s putty in my hands.”

  “Okay. Good. Thanks,” I said. And then I just stood there.

  “Was there something else?” Hank said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just—pray for me.”

  Hank nodded. Chief didn’t.

  I didn’t have time to sort that out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The rain had given up and gone away, so I rode my bike to the church. India pulled in at the same time I did, and to say that her mascara-laden eyes popped from her head was an understatement.

  “I didn’t think Bonner was serious when he told us you’d done this,” she said before she got all the way out of her Miata.

  “He was,” I said. “But do you dig the jacket? I thought of you when I bought it.”

  She ignored my leather and stared at my Harley. “Do I even want to know what possessed you to do such a thing?”

  “You probably do,” I said. “I bought it because God told me to.”

  Before that night I would have enjoyed watching her try to keep her eyes from completely dropping out onto the church parking lot. But I didn’t say it for shock value. If I was going to go through with what I’d come for, I couldn’t cut any corners getting there.

  “Let’s go inside before you pass out,” I said.

  “Oh I’m fine. I just want to see what Mary Alice does when she sees you on that thing.”

  Mary Alice had already seen, which was obvious when we walked into the bride’s lounge and she and Frank were still bending the blinds to peer through the window. Bonner greeted me from t
he couch with, “You had to bring it, didn’t you?”

  “I’m not hiding it,” I said. “Matter of fact I’m not hiding anything.”

  The Harley, the coffee, the pound cake were abandoned as if I’d just announced I was pregnant. Mary Alice was already checking her chins as she sank onto the couch next to Bonner. “All right,” India said. “What is going on with you, girl?”

  “This is going to sound strange to you, I know—”

  “Is it stranger than you buying a motorcycle?” Mary Alice said.

  “Forget the Harley,” India said. “I’m talking about what you just said to me outside—about God telling you to buy it.”

  Frank audibly gasped. Bonner dropped his elbows to his knees and covered his face with both hands. Mary Alice couldn’t even find her chins.

  “Please, y’all,” I said. “Just let me tell you what’s happened in the last four days, and then I think you’ll get it. Please?”

  “I already get that your icing has slipped off your cupcakes,” India said. She dropped herself into the chair.

  “You wanted me to take some leadership. I’m offering it.”

  Bonner pulled his hands from his face. “Let her go for it.”

  “Just let me tell you what’s happened,” I said, “and then you can tell me what we need to do—because I know you’ll know.”

  Frank motioned for me to sit so that he could, but I shook my head. This had to be done standing up. I started the story from the day in church, seventeen days ago, when I’d first felt the Nudge, and I stopped at the graveside where Geneveve looked up from the mire and begged me to help her.

  “Garry gave this pathetic little homily about Lazarus and the rich man that I thought was—well, never mind—the point is, we can be the Rich Man and give Lazarus some help before he dies.”

  “That’s a salvation story, Miss Allison.” Frank’s voice had a patronizing tone I’d never heard before.

  “Fine. But just because we don’t have to do anything about our salvation, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing important for us to do.” The words had a slippery quality as they slid out. They kept sliding. “We have so much. Our faith is solid. This is our chance to use it to make a difference for somebody besides just us.”