Motorcycles, Sushi & One Strange Book

by Nancy N. Rue

  “Grandpa!”

  Weezie stirred. I hurried out into the hall with the phone and started for the kitchen. My mother’s voice screeched me to a halt.

  “Just get as far away from there as you can on foot. Take your phone with you, of course, and then wait for my call. Are you getting this, Jessie?”

  “No!” I said.

  “What is so hard about it? Sneak out–you know how to do that–”

  “Lou has an–”

  “Do what I say! Get out of there or he is going to ruin your life just like he did mine. You have no idea.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  My voice sounded like a piece of wood. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “All right–I’m going to repeat this because I know you didn’t get half of it. You run–get to a safe place–and I will call you and you’ll tell me where you are. I’ll notify your grandfather and he’ll bring you home.”

  “Are you out of the hospital?”

  “Jessie–can you focus for five seconds? Just do it. Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I hear you.”

  She hung up. I dropped the phone and shook. And then I ran to the kitchen window and looked out. Where was Lou? What was taking him so long? My mother had gone completely off the deep end and I needed him. I couldn’t do this by myself–

  The phone rang and for a wild second I couldn’t think where it was. When I finally remembered I’d dropped it in the hallway, I was afraid to answer it. Except that when I looked, the screen said ROCKY.

  I fumbled for it, talking almost before I turned it on. “Oh my gosh, I’m so glad it’s you!”

  “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said.

  I could almost see his grin. I sank to the floor with the phone.

  “Red?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “My mother just called,” I said. “She wants me to run away. She says Lou’s going to ruin my life. I’m scared she’s going to–”

  “Where’s Lou?”

  “He’s taking some people home.”

  “Okay–I’m coming over.”

  “Your bike will wake Weezie up.”

  “Meet me on the beach.”

  “I can’t leave her–”

  “If she wakes up and sees you like this, she’ll freak out.”

  “Okay–the beach,” I said. “Hurry.”

  “I’m only five minutes away.”

  Still shaking, I put the phone down and peeked into the bedroom. Weezie was so far under the covers I could hardly tell she was there except for the breathing. Still, I was afraid to go in and look for shoes.

  Just go. Just go to Rocky and it’ll be all right.

  I told myself that, over and over, as I tore barefoot down the road past the condos and onto the sand. I’d never gone down there in total darkness before, and it felt like a strange place. Everything, in fact, felt different than it ever had before.

  My feet hit the wood and I ran faster, bumping into the railings on both sides as I tore blindly forward, gathering splinters in the soles of my feet. I couldn’t see the beach yet, but I could hear it talking to me and I flung myself toward it.

  Until I missed the turn in the walkway and smacked straight into the railing and over the top of it. Before I knew it I was headed straight down on the other side, and my face hit something sharp and pointy. One of its points went into my cheek.

  I yanked it out and rolled over on my back in the sand and the underbrush. Above me the sky was almost starless. Its blackness came down on me like a suffocating blanket and I couldn’t fight it back. Not until I heard the Harley growling its way down the beach.

  I screamed Rocky’s name and tore across the dunes. He was just pulling the Sportster to a stop at the base of the steps when I stumbled out of the brush, still screaming for him. He met me before I could fall down again and held onto me.

  “Dude, is somebody chasing you?” he said.

  “I think I am.” I pulled back from him. “This is a bad idea–I’m too freaked out. I need to go back.”

  “Yeah, as soon as you chill. Come here–sit on the bike.”

  I could do that. He led me to the Harley, and I climbed on and leaned back on the sissy bar. He got on too, backward, facing me. I saw his eyes flicker fear.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Here.”

  He pulled the bandana off his head and pressed it against my cheek. It hurt, but I didn’t care. I was safe now.

  “So what’s with your mom?” he said.

  “She wants me to run away so my grandfather can come get me. She says Lou’s going to ruin my life.”

  “And we already get that she doesn’t really know anything about your dad, right?”

  “Right.”

  With every word my heart was slowing down a little more.

  “I just gotta ask this,” Rocky said. “You’re not doing it, right?”

  “Running away? Are you serious? No!”

  He nodded at me. And then he closed his eyes and turned around on the bike. With his hands on the handlebars he let his head hang forward.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just give me a minute,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “This is called being so relieved you aren’t leaving I might cry like a little girl.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I didn’t know exactly what to do. And then I leaned forward and rested my good cheek against his back.

  “We can go now,” I said.

  “No, Jess. You aren’t going anywhere.”

  We both startled up like rabbits as a flashlight shone in our faces. Behind it I could see Lou’s face.

  Only it couldn’t have been Lou’s face–because it was very, very angry.

  CHAPTER NINTEEN

  Lou snapped off the light when he got to us at the bottom of the steps, but I could still see the blotches of red on his face and his neck, the bulging vein in his forehead, and the grind in his teeth that made his jaw hard and square.

  But it was his eyes that scared me the most. They didn’t spit sparks like my mother’s did when she was mad, or frost the scene the way I’d seen my angry grandfather’s do. They bored right into me, yes, but all around them were deep creases of disappointment. I didn’t know what to say to that.

  When I didn’t speak, the eyes went to Rocky.

  “Dang it, man,” he said. “What were you thinking?” He put up his hand. “You know what–I can’t even talk about this right now, Rocky. That’s how–”

  I pulled the bandana from my cheek. “He didn’t do anything!” I said. “He just–”

  Lou put his hands on the back of my head and pulled me toward him. Even in the dark I could see all the color drain from his face.

  “What happened?”

  He wasn’t using the low, quiet voice. This one was hard and full of something I couldn’t even name.

  “Jess–answer me–what happened?”

  “I fell,” I said.

  He pulled my face even closer–and then he examined my arms and my legs, where gashes and scratches that hadn’t even started to hurt made me look like someone had beaten me with a palmetto bush.

  “Get off the bike, Jess,” he said.

  “I didn’t–”

  “I said get off.”

  I would have killed right then for the sit-down voice. I swung my leg over and yelped when pain fired through it– which drove Lou’s voice down, into some dangerous place.

  “Go home, Rocky,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”

  “It’s not her fault, Lou. I made her come down here–”

  “Are you trying to make this worse?”

  “You just need to listen to her–”

  “What am I going to listen to?” Lou turned his sheet-white face to me. “Weezie tells me you talked to your mother, your mother told you to run away, then you called Rocky for help. I find you with no cell phone, you’ve been
on a bike I told you never to ride on, no shoes, no proper clothing, banged up and bleeding–”

  “Okay, fine!” I said. “I’m a ditz-queen-airhead-moron who’s never gonna change no matter what step you’re on so you might as well send me back to my mother where I belong because she’s crazy too–just like me!”

  I couldn’t look at either one of them then. I went for the steps, and I ignored Lou calling my name. I took them two at a time, no matter how much the pain shot up my legs and the blood poured down my face, and got myself to the house. The whole time I knew Lou was right behind me, but he didn’t say a word.

  Even when we got inside, he just said, “Let’s go in the bathroom and get you cleaned up.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.

  “I don’t think you should talk to me right now,” he said. “And I’m not so sure I should talk to you either.”

  I wouldn’t let him touch me. I cleaned all my cuts myself and bandaged them up. Nothing hurt as much as the brokenheart pain in my chest.

  Lou fixed my usual Sleepytime tea, which I didn’t drink. He turned on the geezer rock I tried not to listen to and sat on the edge of the coffee table until I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up the next morning, he wasn’t there.

  Neither was Weezie. There was just a note that said he was taking her home. The only thing that kept me off the hamster wheel was that he’d left me there by myself, that he knew I wasn’t going to run. And then I remembered the alarm–the alarm he had stopped setting.

  I was afraid to check it, but I had to.

  It was turned off.

  I went into the bedroom and dropped onto the bed and then yelled, “Ouch!” because everything on my body hurt. It was no big deal that Lou hadn’t set the alarm when he left. He knew I didn’t have anyplace to go anyway. I was cut off from Chelsea and Marcus. I couldn’t trust my mother. Rocky probably hated me now because I’d gotten him in trouble with Lou, who he loved more than anybody on the planet. And I knew down in the pit of myself that Lou wasn’t going to want me anymore– not after I went off on him like that.

  Something came to me that Rocky said to me once. If you blow, you got nothin’.

  I now had nothin’.

  I pulled the pillow out from under my head and started to put it over my face, but I felt something under me.

  It was RL. A stupid leather book that–

  That understood me.

  I sat up and opened it and searched the page with desperate eyes until some words rose up to meet me.

  Yeshua and his followers went by boat to the county of the Gerasenes, just across from Galilee.

  I wanted to go with him.

  He was barely out of the boat when a seriously crazy man from the town was screaming at him. This guy was really, sadly sick in his mind. We’re talking more than one demon. He wouldn’t wear clothes. He was totally naked. He wouldn’t stay in his house, hadn’t for a long time. He lived in the cemetery where they had him chained like an animal.

  My hands were suddenly clammy.

  He threw himself down on the ground in front of Yeshua and screamed. Yeshua, of course, ordered the thing in him that was tearing his soul apart to come out. But the guy just shrieked, “Why are you messing with my head? You’re Yeshua. I know you’re the Holy One, but why do you have to pick on me?”

  “He’s trying to help you,” I said. “Can’t you see that?”

  It didn’t seem to be working. The man was having one seizure after another, so violent his chains and shackles were breaking. His sickness–his demon–just seemed to be driving him further and further into insanity.

  I felt sick.

  Yeshua said, “What is your name?”

  “Jess,” I whispered.

  “Mob,” the crazed man said, because there was a whole mob of demons terrorizing him. There was a lot going on with him. Yeshua looked deep into the man, and the demons pleaded with him not to order them to come out.

  Well, of course they’d say that. They knew they were safe as long as they were tucked in there, and this guy didn’t know how to get them out himself. The whole thing was so clear to me, I could almost feel the chains on his wrists, taste the nasty dry mouth of fear.

  Close by there was a herd of pigs that some pig herders were allowing to feed. The psycho-demons begged Yeshua to order them into the pigs so they would have someplace to go. So Yeshua did. Those pigs went ballistic, worse than the guy himself. They were so insane they panicked and jumped off a cliff into the water and drowned.

  My heart was pounding.

  The pig herders’ hearts were pounding too. They took off running into town where they told everybody what had happened. You know people–they had to come out and see for themselves. And what they found was Yeshua and the crazy guy. He was sitting there at Yeshua’s feet, fully clothed and talking like the sane person he now was, making total sense. It was one of those scenes that makes you want to kneel down and pray, you know?

  I did know.

  They, naturally, all wanted to know how it had gone down, so the people who’d been there at the time told the story of Yeshua ordering the demons into the pigs, and the pigs going out of their minds and committing suicide.

  Good. I sat up straight. Maybe now they’d all believe Yeshua and stop dissing him all the time.

  It wasn’t long before a bunch of people from the Gerasene area formed a delegation and went to Yeshua and asked him to get out of town.

  “No!” I said. “Were they crazy?”

  They’d seen too much that they didn’t understand, and believing it was going to mean major changes in their mind-sets and their way of doing and being, and it scared them spitless. You can understand that, I’m sure.

  I couldn’t even answer.

  So Yeshua got back in the boat to leave. The man who’d been saved from his insanity asked if he could go with, but Yeshua said, “What I want you to do is go home and tell everybody what God did in and for you.”

  What God did? Did I miss something? I skimmed back several paragraphs. No–it said Yeshua ordered the demons into the pigs. How did God get in there? It hadn’t said anything about God before, had it?

  Look again.

  I looked at the page, but there were no words that read “Look again.” The chill zipped up my spine.

  “Look where?” I whispered.

  The part where I talk about loving your enemies.

  It didn’t say that on the page either. I heard it like a whisper, my voice but not my voice.

  Look again.

  My fingers shook like little plover wings as I turned back the pages and found the spot.

  “‘Love your enemies,’” I read out loud. I ran my finger down the page. No God there. Oh–wait: “I promise that if you live this way you won’t be sorry. This is the way God loves you, so you have to love this way too.”

  I stared, hard, but the words stayed.

  “You weren’t there before,” I said. “I know you weren’t.”

  No answer. I flipped back to the crazy-man story. It still said, “Go and tell everyone what God did for you and in you.”

  “This is about God?” I whispered. “Yeshua is God?”

  I was still staring at RL when Lou appeared in the bedroom doorway. I hadn’t even heard him drive up or come in the front door.

  “You ready to talk?” he said. His voice was Lou again. His eyes were sad.

  “Yes,” I said. “Why did you give your Harley the name Levi?”

  His eyebrows went up. He nodded his head toward the hallway. “Come on out here,” he said.

  I hugged RL against my chest and followed him to the deck. He pulled two chairs up to the railing so we could sit with our feet on it. I didn’t let go of the book as I sank into mine. My heart pounded against it.

  “So–” he said. “You want to know why I named him Levi.”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned his head back and looked up. “It’s the name of a guy in the Bible.”

&nb
sp; “What guy?”

  “He was kind of a sleazeball, actually–”

  “A tax collector?” I said.

  Lou turned to me, eyebrows sprung. “Yeah, he was. Jesus called him to be a follower and he–”

  “Jesus?”

  “Right. Jesus Christ.”

  “And Jesus is God.”

  “Right–God who came to be with us.” He tilted his head at me. “Where’s all this coming from, Jess?”

  I hugged RL harder and closed my eyes. A thing wrapped itself around me–like a warm blanket–no, like a pair of arms–no, better than that–like a peace. I just didn’t know it at first, because I had never felt it before. Never in my life.

  “You okay?” Lou said.

  I sat up and looked right into his eyes-like-mine. “You can be as mad at me as you want and never feel the same about me again, but if Yeshua is God–I think I’m going to get rid of my demons.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lou pulled his feet off the railing and peeled his back from the chair so he could twist to face me. “Why would you think I don’t feel the same about you?”

  “You got so mad at me,” I said. “You never get that mad. And then I blew and–”

  I stopped because he had his hand up.

  “First of all, I was the one who blew. I think I told you once the only way you could drive me over the edge was to get hurt.”

  “I didn’t get hurt on the bike.”

  “I know that now. I should have listened to you, and I’m sorry, Jess. I’m more sorry than I can even tell you.”

  He swallowed and pulled his hand across his eyes.

  “And you don’t say you’re sorry unless you mean it,” I said.

  He lifted his hand like a visor. “That’s right.”

  “I should have waited for you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left Weezie here by herself. I didn’t think she’d wake up, but I shouldn’t have gone anyway. I know you love her more than anybody in the entire world.”

  “I do love her, yes.”

  “And it’s okay that you guys have this daddy-daughter thing that I can’t be part of. I can live with that.”

  Lou let a long breath come out of his mouth, so long I thought it would never end. When it did, he said, “I loved Weezie the minute I saw her, but not because of anything she did. I didn’t even know her.”