“Did you know Ruth Ann well?” Sister Simone asked him.
T.J. resisted the urge to substitute her real name. Maybe, considering all the different sides she had, and her troubled past, maybe it was Ruth Ann he had known after all. “Yes and no,” he said.
“Yes and no?”
To clarify, T.J. summarized his week at Full Court and the meetings he’d had with LuAnn on the bridge. While he was doing so, it occurred to him that if that spillway overflowed, it would, in effect, have a flooding effect that would back water into the gorge. If so, jumping from the bridge might not kill you. And wasn’t that an observation made by one of the sheriff’s deputies in a newspaper article he’d read?
“You said LuAnn,” Simone observed, with a smile.
“I did?”
“Yes.” The counselor paused before she continued. “I feel we honor her better by calling her Ruth Ann, since it was the name she chose after she was baptized in the Spirit. It symbolized her surrender to the Lord.”
“Whatever,” said T.J. without enthusiasm. “I was just thinking that the only place I ever talked to her, the only place I even saw her, was on that footbridge.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”
T.J. lit a cigarette, but Simone said, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke that.”
“Yeah, me too. But it’s a free country, and we’re outdoors.”
When she spoke next, her tone of voice was terse: “Is there something I can do for you, C.J.?”
“It’s not C.J., it’s T.J.” Did this woman have a thing for changing people’s names?
“Very well, then, T.J. If there’s something I can do for you, please tell me what it is. I have another appointment later this afternoon and I’ll need some time to get ready for it.”
“Well, it might be that I came here to confess.”
“Confess?”
“Yeah, maybe so. You’re a counselor, right? Maybe the first thing is, I came so I could confess how I used Bumpy at basketball camp.”
“I would have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Sister Simone. Her facial expression was benign, but her eyes were impatient.
“Yeah, well, I used him. Just trust me on it. I pretended like I was helping him, but I was really trying to goose up my own status.”
“Whatever this means, it’s apparently something you’ve reconciled in your own heart. I’m sure the Lord will bless you for it.”
“Please don’t say that,” T.J. objected.
“What would you like me to say,” asked Sister Simone, “with so little information?” This was just a rhetorical question, obviously, because she moved quickly to the next one: “You said that was the first thing. Is there a second thing?”
“Yeah, there is.” T.J. was surprised how he didn’t feel nervous, even though he expected he would be. “I thought maybe you might like a chance to confess.”
“What did you say?”
“Confessing is good for us, right? I thought maybe you might have something you’d like to ’fess up about LuAnn’s suicide.”
“This is astonishing. Who do you think you’re speaking to?”
“There’s a chance this is nutso,” T.J. was willing to admit. He stepped on his cigarette to put it out.
“What on earth do you think you know about Ruth Ann’s death?” the counselor demanded. “Or her life, for that matter?”
“I know it probably sounds weird, but the more I think about it, the more I do know. I know she was pregnant, and I know who Brother Jackson was. Is. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was the father.”
“Do you have any information to that effect?”
“No.”
“I thought not. The other information you mention was in the newspapers. Even a casual reader would know it.”
“I did keep all the newspaper articles I could find, but I know a lot of other stuff too. I know about her dreams, especially the one about the pale horse running on the footbridge. I know the Bible passage it comes from. I even know she was going to ask you to interpret the dream.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her very well.” Sister Simone’s discomfort wasn’t revealed by her face, but for the first time she was engaging in some restless body language.
“Actually, I said yes and no, remember? Looking back, I’d say the two of us did a lot of communicating in a short time. She even told me a lot about you.”
“You are the most astonishing person.” She was picking at lint on her navy blue slacks. If there was any there, though, T.J. couldn’t see it.
“I’m not usually this way, because I’m too careful,” T.J. said. “But I think you could have prevented her death if you’d had the guts.”
“What did you say to me?”
“I think when she came to you with the dream about the pale horse, you didn’t have the guts to tell her to forget about it. You could have told her to kiss it off and go to sleep. Instead, she probably asked you something funky like wasn’t the devil’s child inside of her or something. So wasn’t the dream of death a sign from God?”
“How dare you presume about the nature of our conversations?!”
“How do I, that’s a good question. Anyway, you could have told her to go to bed, or go home and work things out with her parents, but what’s the kick in that? It’s like there wouldn’t be any Rapture. I think you people play the God game, where the things people do have to fit in with your rules, or else they don’t count.”
Sister Simone was on her feet. “You are the most presumptuous, impertinent person. I can only think that for some reason the Lord must want you to say these things.”
“All I know is, I want to say them. If I’m wrong, you can tell me, but I think she asked you if the dream was a sign of death that came from God. You probably didn’t tell her yes or no. You probably gave her something real lame, like, ‘Who can say, Ruth Ann? The Lord speaks to every one of us in a different way.’”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” declared Simone. It was evident she would have left immediately, but there were manila folders she had to stuff carefully into an overburdened shoulder bag. If she did it recklessly, the papers would fall out.
“Even if the Lord wants me to say it?” asked T.J. “I could be wrong, but I guess the Rapture kick was more important than LuAnn was. That’s how you used her.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m not listening anymore. I have to go.”
“That way you could do what you wanted for the purpose of the God game, but still pretend like LuAnn did everything on her own. You don’t have to take responsibility, you’re off the hook. If you think about it, it’s a little bit like me and the basketball camp.”
She was shouldering the bag. “If your impertinence wasn’t bad enough, now you want to draw some parallel between some common basketball camp and service to the Lord God and His kingdom.”
“Like I said, you can tell me if I’m wrong.”
Her back was turned. “I don’t intend to tell you anything,” she announced. Then she left, without looking back.
T.J. watched Sister Simone for the length of time it took her to disappear. It was surprising how little emotion he felt in the aftermath of this encounter. He had brought her face-to-face with a serious charge, yet he felt almost none of the stress associated with a confrontation.
He knew he was right, that his reconstruction of the God game scenario featuring LuAnn and Sister Simone was accurate. There was no way of proving it, of course, but some things you just knew. So where, then, was the thrill of victory? What about the rush of vindication?
He walked slowly to the bridge, clear to the center, where he rested his forearms on the rough railing. It was a splinter that had brought them together in the first place. He was sorry he hadn’t known LuAnn Flessner better, sorry she was dead, and sorry he hadn’t been able to attend her private funeral.
For all the sorrow, though, the mystery was what she meant to him in fact, or he to her.
He couldn’t really say that he enjoyed her. The truth was, he probably would have enjoyed the “old” LuAnn more, the girl who hadn’t been saved and sanctified.
T.J. looked down at the spot where she probably died, where the dry gorge reached its deepest point. All he could see were the rocks themselves, groups of sticks caught in the crevices between, and a few dirty, mangled soft drink cans. He hoped she died right away, without having to lie there suffering.
He thought he ought to be able to say what it was that linked their two lives however briefly. There had to be words for it. Down was death, up was Heaven, he thought to himself. South was Shaddai, north was Full Court, east was the way back home, and west, if he stood here long enough, would be the setting sun.
EPILOGUE
It took him two hours to put on the new alternator, or about twice as long as it should have. The bolts were rusty and the new alternator, which wasn’t new at all but a rebuilt one, had irregular brackets. Even so, he was finished before his mother got home from work.
She took off her coat, got seated at the kitchen table with the newspaper, and asked T.J. how he’d like some macaroni and cheese with cut-up hot dogs for supper.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he told her. “I want to take you out to the mall for a little while.”
“You must have the car running again.”
“Yeah, it’s fixed. All the skin that used to be on my knuckles should grow back real soon.”
“So why do you want to go to the mall? What’s out there?”
T.J. was leaning against the kitchen sink, peeling a banana. “I’m going to buy you a computer,” he said matter-of-factly.
His mother was in the process of hunting for the crossword. She looked up from her newspaper to say, “You’re going to buy me a computer? What kind?”
“A Mac Performa, of course. A Power Mac. You do want to work on Quicken, don’t you?”
“Did you win the lottery or something?”
He spoke as distinctly as he could with his mouth full. “Nope, no lottery. I want you to get your coat on.”
“I just took it off. If they’re paying you that much money at Hardee’s, maybe I should go to work there.”
“They aren’t paying me anything at Hardee’s. I quit.”
“When did you quit?”
“Last week. Get your coat on.”
“This really sounds crazy, T.J.”
“Crazy as it oughta be, that’s how I see it. Now put your coat on.”
They drove east toward Veterans Parkway. His mother was trying to use the small mirror on the visor to apply some lipstick. It wasn’t easy, because the ride was a rough one. “Why did you quit your job?” she asked him.
“So I can go out for basketball. Practice starts next week.”
“I’m glad, T.J.”
“I know you are. I guess I am too.”
“I’m glad,” she continued, “because you need more friends and more activities. It’s good for you.”
“That’s not why I’m doin’ it, though, Ma.” It would probably please her just as much, or maybe more, to hear that he was going to start writing for the school newspaper.
“Why are you doing it, then?”
“Because I think I can be a good player. In fact, I think I am a good player.”
“I guess you must be, or they wouldn’t have wanted you in that big-shot summer basketball camp.”
T.J. sighed before he answered. “We’ve been all over that before; there’s nothin’ else to say about it.” He was maneuvering into the exit lane that led to the mall parking lot. “I’ll miss the money, though.”
“You’ve still got the paper route. That should get you by.”
“But the paper route only pays sixty dollars a week.”
“I know how much it pays,” she reminded him. “If you keep your needs simple, that’s plenty of money.”
“My needs are real simple,” he declared. He found a parking spot close to JCPenney’s and shut off the engine. “It’s this car,” he added, while slapping the steering wheel for emphasis, “that has expensive tastes.”
Once in the mall, he took her to Kinko’s. His mother admitted to him she didn’t know Kinko’s sold computers, to which he answered, “They sell computers by the hour, Ma. I’m going to buy you a Mac for an hour, or maybe even two, if you get into the flow.”
She was nodding her head. “I get it now. We’re going to rent the Mac.”
“Buy, rent, whatever. Why don’t we take the one down there on the end, the Power PC in the 6100 series.”
They booted up the Quicken program. She found her way into a standard payout chart, but when she wanted to move from field to field, she struggled clumsily with the mouse to set the cursor.
“You can move from field to field with the tab key,” T.J. told her. “It’s a lot easier than messin’ around with the mouse. And it’s faster too.”
“That’s what they were trying to teach us in class.”
“Well, they were right. Just hit the tab key and it moves the cursor to the next field.”
She did as he advised, but then complained. “Now it’s in the debit column, which is what I don’t want.”
“Then tab it again.” He watched her fingers working the keyboard. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed how long her fingers were, especially for such a small person. Her nails were uneven, but they were clean. When the cursor moved swiftly to the column she wanted, she leaned back in her chair and beamed, a wide smile spreading across her face like a child who gets an A on a spelling test.
“You could move to the fields down on the next level this way?”
“Exactly. It’s that easy.”
“You are a good boy, T.J.,” she declared.
“Don’t I know it, Ma. Ain’t it the truth.”
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my editors at Simon & Schuster, David Gale and Michael Conathan, for their productive and prompt editorial suggestions, which helped make Blue Star Rapture a better book. I am also indebted to fellow author Nancy Brokaw, whose ongoing perceptions about this book and my other manuscripts are a consistent blessing.
About the Author
James W. Bennett’s uncompromising, challenging books for teens have earned him recognition as one of the nation’s leading—and most provocative—novelists for young adults. His fiction has been used in curricula at the middle school, high school, and community college levels.
His 1995 novel, The Squared Circle, was named the year’s finest by English Journal and the Voice of Youth Advocates.
Bennett has served as a guest author at Miami Book Fair International, as a featured speaker at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE, and as a writer in residence (a program he established) for secondary schools in Illinois. He has also been the director for the Blooming Grove Writers Conference.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by James W. Bennett
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8396-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Blue Star Rapture Page 11