Diablo pushed harder on the gas pedal, hoping to open the throttle another micrometer, anything to accelerate, anything to get the holy fuck away from that windy monstrosity. When he next glanced at his speedometer the needle was bouncing back and forth across the gauge, maxed out and indicating that he and everyone around him were barreling down the highway at well over a hundred miles per hour. Soon afterward the tornado veered off the road and dissipated over some trees. Traffic gradually slowed, some people pulled over and got out of their cars, and within ten minutes the road was mostly empty again. Diablo kept on driving. It was all he had going for him, the way he figured it. The accidents of the day had conspired to trade the middle finger of his left hand for a pickup truck with three-quarters of a tank of gas and half a bag of corn chips. It was a start, and it seemed like it would lead him somewhere.
No sooner had he reasoned this out than the truck was rocked by an unseen collision. Diablo yelled “Jee-zus christ!” in the ensuing melee of braking, screeching, and the rear window shattering, and this was as it should be. After all, an eight-foot crucifix had just dropped out of the sky and into his flatbed, managing to shatter his rear window in the process. Once he had the truck pulled over, Diablo jumped out to investigate, still thinking he’d hit a deer or vice versa. He was, for the third time that day, dumfounded, finding instead a bronzed, life-sized, crucified Christ gazing placidly up at him from the flatbed as if it were a loyal pet.
Growing accustomed to the profoundly improbable, Diablo set about arranging the crucifix securely. Most pickups are designed to hold the standard cut of plywood, a four-by-eight sheet, in their bed, and so the crucifix, four feet wide and eight feet tall, was a perfectly snug fit. After regarding the curiosity, Diablo got back in the cab, pausing to inspect both of his hands. He would not have been surprised if his missing finger had mysteriously shifted to his right hand, or even, given recent events, if it had miraculously regenerated itself. The situation seemed stable, though, and the bleeding had even stopped. He sighed, and after accelerating back up to fifth gear, Diablo tucked his left hand under his thigh to soothe its throbbing, shook his head at the bizarre events of the day, and drove away from Normal, confident that God was with him.
22 THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER, the oblivious Dave Wildhack was impatiently ignoring Father J. J. Speed’s homily. Sermons frustrated Dave since they required everyone to sit down, thereby suspending his continuing survey of the rear ends of the women in his parish. Furthermore, a squad of headaches was also kicking in the doors of his skull like overzealous gangbusters. He winced as he massaged his neck, and the gangbusters opened fire with a crack of thunder outside, blinding his closed eyelids with flares of spectacularly bright light. Dave looked up to stretch his neck, opened his eyes, and noted with a moment’s curiosity that the hanging lights were all vaguely rotating.
If the oblivious Dave Wildhack ever paid any attention at all to his life, he might have noticed that he was apt to develop such headaches just prior to thunderstorms. If only he had realized this, he might have perceived the peculiarity of the atmosphere, and guessed by the severity of his headache that an uncommonly strong storm was developing outside. But Dave perceived his headaches in precisely the same way as he understood every other difficulty in his life, that is, as random misfortune and arbitrary adversity. Consequently, the barometric pressure was free to plummet to its exceptional depth that morning, unheeded by anyone at Palm Sunday Mass.
If there had been a dog in attendance, surely it would have been whining frantically, running in circles, barking, bristling, and generally raising the alarm. But there was no dog, only people, and people reside much more comfortably in their imagination than they do in the actual physical world. Indeed, these days, the physical world itself is usually nothing more than a material manifestation of the human imagination, built to suit the human scale and to provide the illusion of control over existential chaos.
Although Bridget Snapdragon did not share this intolerance for chaos, she certainly held no prejudice against residing in the imagination. Not at all. Bridget Snapdragon merely found the socially sanctioned imagination to be a shallow, unexciting alternative to the depths of unpremeditated reverie. Today, her imagination wandered into wonder at something she had recently read about quantum mechanics. It was the notion of nonlocality, the preposterous principle that seems to imply that space does not exist, or that there is some hyperspatial dimension whereby two particles need not share the same region of space to be interconnected. Experiments demonstrating this—whereby measurements taken of particles that were once united show that the observation of a particle at one location can have an instantaneous effect on the state of a distant particle—seemed to disrupt every assumption of a material universe confronting human consciousness from without. Acausal nonlocal quantum mechanical interrelatedness is what they called it. Acausal nonlocal quantum mechanical interrelatedness. She liked that phrase; it had a certain rhythm to it.
Regarding acausal nonlocal quantum mechanical interrelatedness, the explanation that most fascinated her was the idea that the two particles are not separate at all, but are simply two different versions of a single particle, like two camera angles of the same event. Furthermore, given that every particle in the universe was united before the Big Bang, the conclusion seemed to be that every particle in the universe is simply a different version of the same single particle. An atom, consequently, is nothing more than a dimensional protrusion, a localized expression of the same underlying event, and Bridget Snapdragon was beginning to muse that perhaps this subquantum event could be called God when Father J. J. Speed interrupted her daydream.
“Woman!” Father J. J. Speed thundered the conclusion of his sermon, unctuous oratory dripping off his tongue like quicksilver as he competed with the storm outside. “Woman is the fairest of all creatures.” Father J. J. Speed was chasing his rant, hot on the trail of the Holy Spirit, and no burrs of hesitation would tangle his climax. “The tender curves of Mother Eve are irresistible, as beautiful as the Earth itself, yet as seductive as the forbidden fruit. Mothers and daughters, lead us not into temptation. Your modesty means the salvation of your fathers and your sons. Lead them not into the thicket of lust. Lead them not into the jungles of lechery. For as Jesus the Lord has spoken, ‘Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ Sisters, save your brothers from this mortal sin . . . ”
Bridget furrowed her brow, disliking and dismissing Father J. J. Speed’s logic. What the heck was he talking about, standing up there stumping for prudery? And at the dawn of spring, no less! She imagined herself shouting back at the pulpit: Adam and Eve were naked, you doofus! Modesty only emerged after the fall! Nature has no privates. The naked truth is this: Modesty is the devil’s handiwork. She grinned in smug satisfaction with herself.
“ . . . And as we go forth into our lives this week,” Father J. J. Speed concluded, pleased that even the storm outside had become suddenly still for his finale, “let us remember that the salvation of others,” he bowed his head, “lies in our own modesty.” After an extended dramatic moment he gestured with his open palms for the congregation to rise. “Let us pray.”
The rustle of everyone standing was defeated by a resounding rumble of thunder bowling across the ceiling, followed by a rattling veil of hail sweeping across the roof. The oblivious Dave Wildhack paid no attention, silently rejoicing instead as a couple hundred female haunches burst once again into his view. Bridget Snapdragon imagined herself continuing to assert that the salvation of others lies in our immodesty, and demonstrating her point by streaking nine months pregnant through the church. As for Father J. J. Speed, he kept his head bowed, working a grin out of his face. It was a good sermon, and these left him with an oratorical high that temporarily relieved the burden of his own hypocrisy. Plus, it was cool that the storm’s thunder seemed to echo of the irrefutable truth of his words. Straightening his face and looking up at last, he
began to lead the congregation in their monotonous recitation of the Nicene Creed. “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”
A split second after the completion of the first affirmation and before they could draw in a breath to continue, every open door in the church simultaneously slammed shut. This was a consequence of the exceptionally low barometric pressure that had been developing in the atmosphere around the church, and it gave everyone a considerable start. It relieved nobody when what sounded like every toilet in the building simultaneously flushing gave way to a tremendous gurgle throughout the building’s plumbing system. As everyone looked around at each other bewildered, the reverberating echoes of this commotion gave way to an abrupt stillness in the atmosphere. The only sounds were the creaking of the hanging lights, now circling more emphatically, immediately followed by a swell of murmurs and whispers, and also, thanks to the microphone mounted on Father J. J. Speed’s cassock, an amplified “What in the hell?” He was as unsettled as everyone, and after a few more moments, he addressed the congregation deliberately, if irresolutely. “I think, folks, perhaps, um, we should, ah, proceed downstairs?”
Scarcely had he spoken these words than a noise like every bee on the planet swarming filled the collective aural cavity. People began to jostle one another nervously in the pews, and the noise quickly rumbled into what sounded like the roar of a gigantic waterfall bursting its dam at last, bellowing like a billion revolutionaries storming the Pentagon. Everyone froze, looking up, mouths uniformly agape. Everyone, that is, except for Bridget Snapdragon. She was lowering herself unobserved onto the pew, clutching her enormous belly. She called out to Dave, who didn’t hear her, but did happen to look her way by chance a few moments later. He leapt immediately to her side, and seconds later, the roof of the church was ripped from its flying buttresses.
23 AS FAR AS the cosmos is concerned, planet Earth is very literally in the middle of nowhere. As a result, there is nothing necessarily up about north. In other words, given the absence of any permanently stable point of reference in the infinite void of space, it is impossible to assert with any certainty that north is upside down, right side up, sideways, diagonal, or any other particular direction in the three-dimensional 360-degree infinity of space. It is only a convenience of a culture bred from colonialism that allows us to generally assume that north is up and south is down.
Be that as it may, if we can close our minds for a moment and assume there is something inherently right side up about north, it then becomes possible to pretend there is also a top and a bottom to our entire solar system, an assumption that itself permits the existence of the consistently meaningful rotational directions of clockwise and counterclockwise. Armed with this expansive delusion, it at last becomes possible to point out that, with the notable exception of Venus, every planet in our solar system rotates counterclockwise on its axis.
Now, this celestial pattern is no trivial fact. As a direct result of the so-called counterclockwise rotation of the Earth, 99 percent of the tornadoes on the so-called top of the Earth rotate counterclockwise when viewed from above. However, the F4 tornado that struck Normal, Illinois, that fateful April Fool’s Day was of the I percent that rotate clockwise. What this means is anyone’s guess, but for years afterward Georgeann Judge would tell Dave Wildhack—by then no longer oblivious—that it was a Venusian tornado.
24 IT WAS NO apparition when the congregation witnessed Jesus Christ turn several holy cartwheels down the center aisle of the church before ascending into the windstorm above. As one does not ordinarily expect gymnastics from crucified prophets, the lack of a revelatory aura made it not the least bit less astounding. However miraculous that spectacle might have been, there was scarcely a moment to appreciate it before all hands were shielding first their eyes and then their heads entirely. A cone, extending a half mile up and occasionally revealing the midday sun at its far end, enveloped the entire terrified church far too much like the tunnel rumored to greet us at death. Brilliant flashes of lightning zigzagged between howling walls of bilious debris, and somewhere a civil defense siren began to whimper.
Bridget shielded neither her eyes nor her head, although Dave, his confusion having given way to his instinct of paternal responsibility, was doing his best to protect both himself and her. Bridget was inhaling, drawing in an infinitely deep breath like a child looking up from an asphalt faceplant. Her eyes were wide and her pupils dilated, gazing up, absorbing and reflecting the entire circumstance, and still she inhaled. Her rib cage expanded to its full capacity, her heart gorged itself on ionized oxygen, her incipient daughter caught a buzz off the superoxygenated blood pumping through the umbilical hookah, and still she inhaled. Her water broke, and still she inhaled. When the atmosphere finally found its way out of Bridget’s lungs, her wail pierced the roar of the tornado like a referee’s whistle in a soccer riot. It was such a blast of tribulation, in fact, that half the already panicked congregation instinctively turned to see what in the name of God was happening now.
What they saw was not Bridget Snapdragon in the throes of childbirth, for she was lying down obscured by the pews. Instead, half the congregation was greeted with the sudden sight of Georgeann Judge’s husky and entirely naked body. Georgeann noticed this herself at about the same instant as everyone else, but her reaction was one of incredulity rather than mortification. She needn’t have worried, for within seconds an identical fate was greeting everyone around her, seams splitting as easily as perforated tissue paper, wedgies ripping underwear clean off, buttons busting out, bracelets, watches, necklaces, everything except for the occasional sock was stripped like feathers from a chicken.
Father J. J. Speed’s cassock was the last article of clothing to join the congregation’s Sunday best in airborne frolic. Having seen everyone else’s clothing yanked so rudely off, he had time to lay a firm grasp on the inside of his smocky sleeves a moment after his chasuble soared off his shoulders and a moment before an unseen hand rent his cassock in two like an indignant Pharisee. He immediately found himself twirling one half of his furiously flapping vestments in each hand as they struggled to join the dancing apparel above. At about the same time as his boxers split off, Father J. J. Speed realized the futility and the foolishness of his tug-of-war with the heavens. Looking like a superhuman and sacrilegious Chippendale reject, he ceased his grapple and released the billowing fabric with a splendid flourish, sending it sailing into the melee above. The two halves of his cassock left all remnants of chastity with the nude dude below as they joined the spinning rave of raiment, gradually twisting and tangling into an orgy of torn panties and rumpled trousers before vaulting high into the wild blue yonder.
25 NATURE KNOWS NEITHER mercy nor malice. From organism to ecosystem, every level of order has its own reasoning, all of which exists indifferent to the dreams and nightmares of other levels. As we are indifferent to any suffering inflicted upon unwelcome microorganisms as our own bodies struggle toward homeostasis, so is the good Earth indifferent to the catastrophes and disasters inflicted upon its inhabitants as it sneezes and coughs. Simply stated, a tornado is an absolutely neutral fact.
This truth was not apparent to the whimpering and sobbing parishioners now huddled naked in each other’s arms, hiding beneath the pews from a wrath they could never have imagined. That everyone had taken shelter under the bolted-down benches was fortunate, for this particular tornado was so malevolent in its indifference that it had managed to locate Father J. J. Speed’s sixty-six thousand remaining toothpicks and sent them raining down on the parish like a volley of darts. The wind-whipped velocity permitted the toothpicks to puncture the surface of the pews, embedding themselves so comprehensively that every wooden surface in the church had become a virtual bed of nails.
Father J. J. Speed had taken solitary shelter under the altar, entirely naked but more concerned with shielding his chest from public view than his privates. The thing was, Father J. J. Speed had a barely noticeable at
tribute that he was nevertheless very self-conscious about. Directly between his nipples, a dessert bowl–sized depression dipped concave. Not having revealed himself naked to many people over the course of his life, he had grown to imagine that this feature was an elephantine deformity, and made every effort to ensure that no one would discover his terrible secret.
So there he squatted, shivering and habitually wishing he had a toothpick on which to gnaw when thousands of them came spraying out of the sky like an Egyptian plague, pelting and piercing every surface of the church. Despite the apparent fulfillment of his wish, he did not reach for one, and it would be over two decades before he would ever reach for one again. In his mind, the era of the toothpick ended at that moment, and a new dawn had arisen. His lifetime supply of toothpicks was gone, and he was still alive. It was a rebirth of sorts. He could move on at last, and he reached for his open Bible to lay a praise-the-Lord and promising hand upon it. He saw that it was open to Ezekiel, chapter one, and his astonished eyes happened to fall upon verse four:
And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north . . .
26 ACTUALLY, THE ONLY person in the church not undergoing her own profoundly personal rebirth experience was the daughter of Bridget Snapdragon, who was merely undergoing her first birth. Whether Bridget was assisted by the exceptionally low point of barometric pressure or the greatly amplified adrenaline gush occasioned by the tornado itself is a matter of some conjecture, but Bridget bore her daughter in less than five minutes. And though it was not apparent to the oblivious Dave Wildhack, her cries were not of agony but of ecstasy. Breathing like a bellows at a bonfire, Bridget experienced her contractions as waves of unbearable pleasure, so maddeningly rapturous that Bridget lost all sense of time, space, and the distinctions thereof.
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