Ravens

by George Dawes Green

  “I would like that very much.”

  It was plain that fishing was Lonsdale’s passion in life. He told Shaw he didn’t do finance full-time anymore. “A few clients, just to keep my hand in,” he said, imperially.

  At the man’s great stone desk, three factotums awaited. Banker, Accountant, Lawyer. They all wore shimmery suits, and looked you in the eye when they shook your hand, and imagined they were big movers and shakers. But Henry Lonsdale in his tennis shoes and chinos outclassed them easily. While they chattered amongst themselves, he flopped into his chair behind the desk and took up the twelve-page memo of understanding, and leafed through it — and then when he was ready, he simply launched. It was a joy to witness. The way he just shredded the thing. Slicing out one phrase and transplanting another, X-ing out extraneous dross, peppering the poor fools with questions and complaints, brooking no dissent and contemptuous of any hesitation. What a show! Shaw, transfixed, said not a word but once or twice he laughed out loud. And only after the thing seemed to have been settled to everyone’s satisfaction did he dare to inquire:

  “Oh, Henry. By the way. Do you think I could have some cash?”

  Smiles all around. Lonsdale finally saying, “Cash?”

  Shaw nodded. “I could use a little bit of cash.”

  “Shaw. It’ll all be cash.”

  “It will?”

  “The whole shebang. What we’re talking about is getting you out of cash the moment it lands — and into securities, into long-term investments, so you can start earning some return on your capital—”

  “But I want to start giving it away.”

  “So I understand,” said Mr. Lonsdale. “But you know, we’ll need to set up a foundation —”

  “I don’t want a foundation. There isn’t time.”

  “There isn’t? Why not?”

  “Because the world is coming to an end.”

  How gravely and stupidly they took in his words. The Banker, the Accountant, the Lawyer: they all had the mien of grieving cattle. Shaw broke into a wide grin. “Look at you guys!”

  Still the grave faces.

  “I’m kid-ding.”

  And then, one by one, they began to chuckle.

  “No rush at all,” he assured them. “And hey, can I tell you something? You know how I said on that TV show that I’m giving it all away? Well. Slight correction. Not all of it.”

  More laughter, which grew quickly into barks and wheezes of relief. Understandably, thought Shaw: the thought of me giving away my fortune must have seemed an insult to their very natures. Shaw waited patiently for the laughter to fade. Then he said: “But I really could use a bit of spending money.”

  “Of course,” said Lonsdale. “We’ll keep a few million liquid. Will that do you?”

  “Great.”

  “Say, five million? Enough for now?”

  “Perfect. And when will all this come in?”

  Lonsdale turned to the Banker. “Dave?”

  “I’m expecting it to land by Tuesday. If we get everything signed today.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” said Shaw. “That’s sooner than I thought. That’s just great. Thank you all very much.”

  Said Henry Lonsdale, “Tell you what. When it does hit? Let’s celebrate with a little redfishing.”

  Tara was in her room, listening to Trevor the spooky ex-soldier organize the world. He’d set up his card-table office right outside her window, and all day he’d been out there snapping commands: planning the kitchen, laying out the camp, negotiating with the cops and with the neighbors. Tomorrow the pilgrims would have to move, but for tonight he’d made a deal with the neighbors, and they could stay.

  He was good at all this stuff, a natural vizier. She hated him. The sound of his voice grated on her. But where else could she go? Mom was in the kitchen and Shaw in the living room, and the pilgrims had the house surrounded, and if she went outside for an instant they’d mob her.

  So she stayed there. She tried to read: she couldn’t. She tried to watch Before Night Falls, the movie where JCD Jr. was so stunning as Bon Bon the transvestite — but his profile brought up thoughts of Shaw. She killed it. She tried listening to music on headphones but they made her feel too isolated, too vulnerable.

  She went online. She looked through the hundreds of new comments on her MySpace page.

  Tara I think you’re beautiful and I would like to be just like you. I think Shaw McBride is a dream. You’re not lucky, you’re blessed.

  Another wrote:

  You’re a sign to all of us that the Lord is ‘with us’ and watching over us.

  Another wrote:

  i watch u on the video when u win the lotery, and I love u and want u to be my wife.

  She scrolled through them. She didn’t answer.

  On her photo album was the CRUNK POSSE!, that shot of her and Clio and Cindy and Jennera when they were so drunk and stoned at Rafters. Someone had written: GAWD YU GIRLZ IZ SMOKKIN!!

  Wasn’t that the night she had kissed James? And thought she wanted to marry him? There was a pic of the two of them at the Arcade Fire concert: he looked like a kid. God. They both looked like kids. And this photograph was taken six months ago?

  She stayed away from pictures of Nell.

  Shaw came to visit. He knocked politely. She murmured, “Yeah,” and he came and sat in the camp chair and asked her, “So what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “This great adventure.”

  She looked away from him.

  He said, “Romeo thinks you’re not scared of him.”

  “I am.”

  “If he goes off, he’ll go off like a banshee. You don’t want to test him.”

  “OK.”

  “There was a guy once back in Ohio who made the mistake of insulting us. We just ruined his head. We tore him to bits, and he didn’t even know who was doing it. He thought we were his friends. Romeo took him for a walk one time, so the poor guy could talk about his problems. They went up on the railroad bridge. You know what happened up there?”

  She shook her head.

  He smiled. “I don’t either. But next day they found the guy’s body down on the rocks. With his brains smashed out. Suicide. Do not ever test Romeo’s love for me.”

  She kept her eyes low, but she knew he was staring at her.

  He said, “I know how scary this is for you. But it’s also so fucking exciting. We’re going to bring beauty to this world. Beauty like you’ve never dreamed of.”

  “Yes.”

  He said, “Look at me.”

  She met his gaze. “It will be worth the struggle,” he said. “I swear to you.”

  Romeo took a right off 17 onto Belle Point Road, then a left at Indian Mound Road. He cruised past Uncle Shelby’s. The snap snap whip whip of sprinklers, and there was Shelby himself in the driveway, vacuuming the Escalade.

  Romeo thought, I bet I could work up some hate for this guy.

  Not just on account of the Nazi landscaping but also because he’s vacuuming his car on a Saturday afternoon. Wasting a Saturday afternoon on such cinch-up-your-anus bullshit.

  If I got to know him, I’m sure I could come to detest him. Then if I had to I could kill him.

  He drove down to the end of Seahorse Drive, turned around and came back. Pulled into the driveway. In his pocket he still had the leaflet that Tess had given him, from her Church of Jesus Triumphant, and as he emerged from the car he took it out and handed it to Shelby. “Hi, there. You got the word on Jesus?”

  This only peeved the man.

  “Son, I’m a deacon at Faith Renewal. I don’t need this.”

  Offering it back. Romeo thought the visit was going well. The guy was a puffed-up jackass, and that stirred a small resentment in Romeo’s heart. He just needed to give this a little juice. Maybe if he got a look inside the house?

  “Sir, you wouldn’t have anything I could drink, would you? Glass of lemonade?”

  “I think we’re out of lemo
nade,” said Shelby. His look said, Enough. Go away now.

  “Not even powdered or something? How about water?”

  Thinking, you’re a Christian, Shelby: you can’t deny a poor passerby a drink of water.

  “All right. Hold on.”

  He meant for Romeo to wait outside. But Romeo followed him right into the garage. Skateboards hung on hooks near the back door, with badminton rackets, lacrosse rackets, skis. Said Romeo, “You guys are so sporty.”

  As Shelby opened the kitchen door, a golden retriever commenced a low woofing. Shelby called, “MacKenzie! Come hold Lucky. We’ve got a visitor.”

  A little girl, radiant and ringletted, came and grabbed the dog by the collar.

  Romeo followed Shelby into the kitchen. What a paradise! Earth-tone tiles and seashell lighting and Old Testament magnets on the refrigerator door. “Hey Dad,” came a boy’s voice from the great room, “you should see the approach Sergio just hit. Oh man, he nailed it. With a three-iron. Six yards from the hole.”

  “Darn,” said Shelby. “How’s Phil doing?”

  “Phil’s out of it.”

  “Darn.”

  The little girl was staring at Romeo.

  Her father told her, “MacKenzie, would you please give this man a glass of water?”

  Romeo said, “MacKenzie. That’s a beautiful name.” He took the glass from her and drank. The lovely cascading void.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He gave her back the glass. She rinsed it and placed it in the dishwasher, and sponged the countertop. When she was done, everything was immaculate, just as it had been. You’ve got quite the system here, thought Romeo.

  He said, “MacKenzie, do you like Mew Mew Power?”

  She smiled and her eyes grew round. She said, “I love Mew Mew Power.”

  He said, “I have a niece who loves Mew Mew Power.”

  She asked him, “You see the magnets?” She meant the magnets on the refrigerator. “They’re from the Bible.”

  “That’s beautiful,” said Romeo.

  She pointed to a Nativity. “That’s from the Gospel of Matthew.”

  “Really? What about that one?”

  “That’s Acts of the Apostles.”

  He smiled. “This here is a house of true holiness. You know how I know that?”

  MacKenzie guessed, “The magnets?”

  “Well yes, but more than that, your generosity.” He truly meant this. It had been a mistake to come here. He felt no hatred for these people at all. He hoped Shelby would invite him to stay for supper.

  But Shelby said nothing. They all stared at him.

  “All right,” said Romeo. “Well, thank you for the water. Goodbye, MacKenzie. Goodbye, sir.”

  Shelby told his daughter, “Honey, hold Lucky, I don’t want her getting out.”

  Romeo got back in the Tercel, and returned to his circling of hell.

  Shaw and the Boatwrights went to St. Simon’s Island for the Jackpot Party, arriving at 7:00 p.m. It was still light out, but the place was already packed to the rafters. Hoo-aws. Bear hugs. To get through the crowd Shaw had to give everyone a shake or a tap. Some guy hung an elbow over his neck and introduced himself as Skeet and asked what he was drinking. Shaw said shyly, Johnnie Walker Red? Rocks? Then a girl with a tightly strung midriff murmured into his ear how much she liked what he’d said on TV. She murmured more than that, but there was an old-timey band playing, harmonica and fiddles and banjos, and he couldn’t hear. Her lips brushed his cheek as she spoke, though, and her message came through.

  Henceforth all the world would be coming to him like this? On a platter?

  The scotch was placed in his hand. He pulled out his wallet but Skeet said, “No, I’ll get this. You get my mortgage.”

  When Shaw laughed, everyone around him also laughed.

  Also he found that wherever he looked, girls would lower their eyes bashfully, pretending they hadn’t been staring at him.

  Skeet was a tax preparer three months of the year and a beach bum the rest. He advised Shaw to steer clear of sharps and grifters. He said, “Success is a peak — soon’s as you get up there you start sliding down. Anyway, that’s what I did.”

  Shaw laughed and they high-fived.

  Then he worked his way through the crowd to the Boatwrights’ table. There was supposed to be a no-media, no-pictures rule, but flashes kept going off. Oh, let them, he thought. Are we hiding something? No, we’re as open as church doors on Sunday. He asked Patsy for a dance. She was already pretty drunk, so to absorb her clumsiness he took something off his own moves. He twirled and jitterbugged and rock-a-bye-babied her, and made her look almost graceful, and she seemed to enjoy herself, and locked eyes with him as they spun.

  But he saw Mitch glaring at the floor with his bug eyes.

  So while the musicians tuned up for another song, Shaw went over to sit by him. Saying into his ear, “I’m not getting it on with your wife, OK, Mitch? I just want everyone to survive. Remember in a week I’ll be gone and you’ll still be the richest man you know. You don’t have to love me, but make ’em think you do. OK?”

  Then he bought a round for everyone in the bar.

  Romeo, following Shaw’s orders, left the car on Redwood Street, and went on foot from there to the Boatwrights’. A pig-rig was blocking Oriole Road, which made him nervous. But he walked right past it, and they didn’t try to stop him. They were just there to keep vehicles out — there were already too many SUVs and RVs and TV trucks.

  At the Boatwrights’, he found twenty people, whites, blacks, and Latinos, sitting in a circle under a big oak, singing songs of praise. Their smiles were unwithholding. One pointed to a cooler full of soft drinks, and Romeo nodded thanks and took a Stewart’s Root Beer, and listened to the music while he steadied himself. Then he went up to the front door.

  Waiting for him was a taut, drawn-looking guy in tie-dye pants.

  “You Trevor?” said Romeo.

  The guy made a small acknowledgment — a circumscribed tilt of the head. “Romeo? Shaw said you were coming. I’m supposed to help get you settled.”

  They went into the house, to Jase’s room, where Shaw was staying. Trevor pointed to one of the two beds and said, “Take that. We’ll find somewhere else for the kid.” Then he left Romeo alone.

  As soon as his footsteps faded, Romeo slipped across the hall to Tara’s bedroom.

  It had the fragrance of a small-town college girl. Humbly sweet and fresh but with a faint pull of sexuality. He wondered if Shaw had been in here yet. Had he tried to seduce her? Well, he would. This was just the kind of girl he went for: skinny and feisty and nice-haunches-no-tits and loves her grandmother.

  On her bookcase was a Stephen King and an Edgar Allan Poe and The Uncanny, by Andrew Klavan. So she liked terror? Though she also had Wind in the Willows and The Borrowers and The Bell Jar, and a glowing Jesus and a cross-eyed rhinoceros. And an Edward Scissorhands bobblehead doll.

  From outside came the praise-singing: “Even when the flood starts rising, Even when the storm comes, I am washed by the water.”

  He sat before her laptop. Turned it over, opened the mini-PCI slot, installed his keylogger card and transmitter. It took him two minutes. Then he went to the master bedroom and impregnated Patsy’s laptop the same way. The system was rigged so that Shaw’s computer would hijack the transmissions and email them directly to Romeo.

  Then he went out to the carport and found Trevor. “Hey, listen,” he said. “Thank you, but I just can’t take that kid’s bed.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem. He can sleep on the couch.”

  “Tell you the truth, I’m kind of freaked out by the singing. But tell Shaw to call me, OK?”

  He went down the driveway while the folks were singing “El-Shaddai.” He got to his car and fed Drive Fast & Shut Your Eyes into the CD player, and drew another slow circle around the city.

  He went by Hazel Ramsey’s house. Shaw said that Hazel was Patsy’s friend — that’s why
she was on Romeo’s circuit. But her house was dark. Of course it was. Any friend of Patsy’s would be at the Jackpot Party.

  He went by Enoch Emery’s office. Enoch was a ‘Point of Interest’ because his business had been mentioned a few times on Mitch’s website. But the office was closed, naturally. It was Saturday night. Enoch would be at the Party.

  The neon signs along Rt. 341 made Romeo feel lonely as hell. So did the sodium-arc streetlights on MLK Boulevard, and so did the hoarse songbird when he stopped for a red light at J Street. Then on Rt. 17 he saw a line of claret taillights, waiting to turn onto the St. Simon’s Island causeway. Saturday night! Everyone was going to the island, everyone but Romeo. He got gas at El Cheapo, and drove on. He wanted to scream. He wanted to batter his fists against the windshield. Driving around and around trying to figure out how he could ever kill these people. How did anyone ever scrape up that much insanity?

  Shaw danced with old Nell, buckdancing and high-stepping. The two of them brayed out “Rocky Top” like a pair of broken-hearted hounds, and anyone could see they were madly in love.

  Shaw had another Red-and-rocks. Then he danced with Cousin Vanessa.

  He didn’t ask Tara to dance. That would have been too loaded — everybody was watching him as it was.

  He had another Red-and-rocks.

  There was a new girl. Over by the fireplace. Tall, strong-boned, tragic, gazing at him with fierce interest. She wore a strange ornament: a spiral snake that wound through her cheek, and he knew who she was from her MySpace pics.

  He made his way over to her. “Hello, Clio.”

  She gave him a sidelong squint. “The guy on TV?”

  “Uh-huh. How’d I do with that?”

  “Want the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were kinda cheesy.”

  “Aw. You didn’t see the light of Jesus radiating out of me?”

  “I saw a cheesy poser-ass on drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What kind you got?”

  “What kind do you like?”