Ben Soul

by Richard George

connections. She had naively married him expecting he’d make a living and gradually rise through the church ranks to a position of some power and income. Influence and affluence, those mattered to Vanna, but not, apparently, to Dickon, who had just taken his second non-descript country parish.

  When Vanna finished the filing, she began exploring the office. Even though she’d been over it before, several times, she was sure it held some secret she might use. Quigley had locked his desk, as usual, but Vanna took a paper clip, untwisted it, and opened the master drawer. The usual clutter of scribbled phone numbers, candy wrappers, and rapid transit tickets with just a few cents left on them greeted her. She started to shut the drawer in boredom when she noticed the side bottom drawer had opened just a little. Quigley had forgotten to lock it!

  Trembling with eagerness, she drew the drawer open. Pint whiskey bottles, mostly cheap bourbon, mostly empty, filled it. Vanna was about to close the drawer when she realized the front suggested it was much deeper than the whiskey bottles’ height suggested. She explored the drawer’s bottom with her fingers, pressing here and there, looking for a hidden spring, with no luck. Then she noticed a small, stained ribbon at the back of the drawer on the bottom. She looked around, and went to the front door and locked it. She turned the “Open” sign to “Closed” and pulled down the shade on the door.

  She went back to the drawer and lifted the whiskey bottles out, carefully duplicating their arrangement in the drawer as she stacked them on the floor. Then she tugged on the ribbon. The bottom of the drawer lifted up. In the cavity below the false bottom, Vanna saw four wads of currency (all large bills) and a black notebook. She took out the notebook and opened it. It was gibberish to her. Some sort of code, she supposed. She put it back, and then caressed the money. She wondered what Quigley was keeping it here for, instead of in a safe place, like a bank. Ill-gotten gains of some kind? She’d have to explore further. She glanced at the clock--almost four. Time to close up the office and go home to Dickon. He would have her dinner ready when she got home.

  She had just started putting the whiskey bottles back when the floor heaved like the sea in stormy agony. The file cabinets, unattached to the walls in defiance of OSHA rules, topped like shallow rooted trees in a forest. Wires snapped and sparked, and the sprinkler system deluged the room until the water main broke out in the street. The front door buckled at the hinges and fell, ripping the lock out of the frame.

  Vanna crouched under the file cabinet that had toppled onto Quigley’s desk. She looked over at her desk; had she been sitting in her chair, it would have flattened her. Quigley’s desk had held, though it was cracked. All the whiskey bottles had tumbled over, some cracking and chipping the others. Vanna stared down at an Old Crow label, still in shock. The crow leered at her unconcerned. It and the false drawer bottom were the only guards of the money and the notebook in the bottom.

  Without quite thinking anything through, Vanna tossed the Old Crow bottle on the heap of tumbled bottles, yanked the false bottom out of the drawer, and began stuffing the cash into her blouse. She took the black notebook, with its gibberish contents and stuffed it in too. A button on her blouse popped as she carefully crawled out from the cave made by the leaning cabinet and crawled to her desk. Her purse was on the floor, in the kneehole, and she carefully dragged it out. She transferred the padding in her blouse to her purse. Fortunately, she had brought her large purse today. It closed over the cash and the book. She pulled herself to her feet, the purse dragging at her arm with its weight, and stumbled on shaking legs to the door. She pushed it and it fell into the hall. She stepped over it and made her way down the unsteady stairs to the street. She smiled to think of Quigley Drye and his considerable girth on these quivering stairs. Then she hastened down. Mr. Drye had her number, if he needed to reach her.

  The City was chaotic. In the first three blocks, Vanna saw more building facades on the ground than she saw standing. The neighborhood had been mostly Victorian warehouses and small office buildings, primarily brick construction, and many had crumbled during the temblor. Vanna fastidiously ignored the questionable fluids flowing out from under several piles of bricks. She didn’t want to know what they were. She told her brain not to hear any moaning or cries for help; she was never sure, afterward, whether she just hadn’t heard any because there weren’t any to hear, or whether she just hadn’t heard.

  Between the Chaplain and the Hard Man

  Dickon Shayne and Deacon Ray Sincaine had been washing the church windows. They had begun outdoors, and were finishing up indoors when Dickon looked up and noticed the large wooden cross suspended from the chapel ceiling was swaying slightly. Before he could say anything, he felt the chapel floor roll under his feet. He braced himself against a pew and looked at Deacon Sincaine.

  “That was a big one,” the Deacon said. “Must have hit the City, too.” Deacon Sincaine’s moon face showed more excitement than worry. Dickon frowned.

  “I’d guess so,” he said. “I hope Vanna’s okay.” He eyed the suspended cross. Its swing was slowing.

  “She’s at work in the City?”

  “Yes.”

  “Reverend, when is she going to quit that job? It’s not right, a pastor’s wife, working way off in the City. She belongs here, helping you with the Lord’s work.” Dickon gritted his mental teeth against the whine in the Deacon’s voice. Dickon suspected the man had been born with that whine. It even came into play when Ray said something as simple as “Please pass the potatoes.”

  “She needs the chance to prove herself, she says.” Dickon spoke as patiently as he could. He’d had this discussion with Ray, and with other parishioners, before.

  “Doesn’t look good for the church, though,” Ray went on. “Looks like we’re too poor to pay you enough. Can’t you rein her in?”

  Dickon allowed a touch of asperity to tinge his tone. “She’s not a horse, Ray.” He bent over to gather the cloths they had used from the floor.

  “You young people do things in strange ways,” Ray observed, again, not for the first time. “In my time a woman did what her man told her to do.” Dickon diplomatically avoided pointing out that Ray Sincaine was the most henpecked husband in the county.

  Instead, he said, “I suppose things have changed. I figure she’ll get tired of commuting to the City, sooner or later. Shall we put the buckets and things away? I’d like to go call Vanna, make sure she’s okay. That was a pretty big shake.”

  “You go ahead, Reverend,” the Deacon said. I’ll clean up here. Make sure your wife’s okay.” Dickon left the church. Behind him he heard Deacon Sincaine gathering the buckets and squeegees.

  In the manse, Dickon tried for some time to get a dial tone without success. About three hours afterward, a heavy after-shock rumbled through. Dickon tried the telephone yet again, and got a dial tone. He dialed Vanna’s office number, and let it ring twenty times before he gave up. He at last commended Vanna to God, and went into the bedroom for a troubled sleep.

  Disembus

  “Amigos,” Noah said, “the fat one will be on a bus just behind us. This schedule runs every five minutes. When we get to Rotaruta Park, let’s get off. We can cut through the park to get a trolley going the other way.”

  “Clever idea, Noah,” Shu said. Beau grinned.

  “General Johnson once performed a similar maneuver to outwit that fierce beast, Sherman. Sadly, he went on to burn Atlanta and ravage Georgia to the sea at Savannah.”

  “Yes Beau. We’ve all heard about it. That’s where I got the idea.”

  “Do you think the fat man will burn the City?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Beau. Now get ready to get off.” Noah pulled the signal cord. The bus stopped at the park entrance. The three friends hurried off. They quickly disappeared behind a copse of rhododendrons. When Fu I’s bus passed the same stop, he was tapping his knee impatiently with his lacquered fingernails
and peering urgently ahead, willing his bus to catch up to the other bus. The bus took Fu I to the Zoo. He got off there and walked into the Zoo. He drew his pistol.

  The three friends caught a clanging trolley on the park’s far side. It took them back toward the City. They got off the trolley. Then they took a bus going at right angles to the trolley route. Then they changed trolleys and directions four more times before they felt safely out of Fu I’s sights. Their last trolley rolled toward the City center from the western hills. The trolley began to sway. It nearly toppled onto its side. The contact wheels on the lines overhead fell off. The trolley lost power. The motorman applied the brakes carefully to keep the vehicle upright. He could not keep it from slamming into a car. That car slammed into three others. This effectively stopped the downhill plunge of all the vehicles. The trolley shuddered again, but remained upright. Fallen bricks littered the sidewalks on one side of the street. The other side was littered with broken windows.

  “Must be some earthquake,” Noah said.

  “Or the Yankee artillery,” Beau said.

  Shu silently got up and started for the bus exit. He manually pushed the doors open and stepped to the street. Noah and Beau followed him. The herb the men had smoked was