Revelation

by Wilson, Carter;

  The small kitchen was a mess of pots, pans, and dirty wooden spoons. In the midst of the chaos, my father was putting the finishing touches on his signature beef stroganoff. I think it was the only real meal he knew how to make, and I was happy he made it on my last night. As much as I wanted to leave home, I was already missing him.

  I carried three plates of the stroganoff over and set them on a faded wooden table that had been in our kitchen since Nixon quit. Dad poured us water from the squeaky kitchen tap, throwing a handful of ice chips into each glass. He exhaled with fatigue as he sat down between Coyote and me. Outside the small window next to my right, moonlight bounced off alleyway metal garbage cans.

  As I turned to my plate of food, I suddenly realized what was coming next. Goddamnit, how could I not have been prepared for this?

  Sure enough, my father said, “Coyote, would you care to say a blessing?” I thought I saw a slight smirk on my dad’s face as he asked the question.

  Most of my friends would have panicked. Not Coyote. Coyote reached for our hands and lowered his head. He gave my fingers a surreptitious squeeze.

  “Da, quaesumus Dominus, ut in hora mortis nostrae Sacramentis refecti et culpis omnibus expiati, in sinum misericordiae tuae laeti suscipi mereamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.”

  Now my father’s grip tightened. Not much, but enough for the tension to flow though me. I looked up. No more smirk.

  “Bless, O Lord, us and your gifts,” Dad said. “Which from your bounty we are about to receive, and grant that, healthily nourished by them, we may render you due obedience, through Christ our Lord. Also, please show mercy and forgiveness on those who have not yet found salvation through your works and words. Amen.”

  We dropped our hands.

  “No need for Latin at this table, Coyote. We’re not that fancy here.” He dug into his meat with his knife. “Did you learn Latin in Catholic school?”

  No, Dad. Don’t open that door.

  “No. The small amount I know is self-taught.”

  “Are you a Christian?”

  “Not much of anything, I suppose,” Coyote responded. “My dad’s a Presbyterian.”

  Dad let out a grunt and a nod, both of which said that if you’re going to be a Presbyterian, you might as well be nothing. Dad was a Methodist.

  I wanted to ask someone to pass me something to distract them from the conversation, but the only food on the table was already in front of us.

  “And your mother?”

  “Dead.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” my father said. “You have any siblings?”

  Coyote took a bite and spent some time with it in his mouth. He swallowed, then said, “Nope. Only child.”

  “Harden’s not religious either,” Dad said. “Most kids aren’t, but I can’t claim I was a very religious person at your age.” He took a sip of his water. “There’s still time. Time enough, anyway.”

  Coyote gave me a pleading look. He was straining against his collar to ask my dad about his religious views, wanting to probe and pry and dissect. I shook my head, and he gave me a frustrated glare. All I wanted was for us to inhale our food and be done with the dinner. But now it felt like I was in a chemistry lab surrounded by beakers of chemicals that threaten to mix and explode at any moment.

  I thought we were home free. For the next ten minutes, the beakers remained upright and contained. Most of the conversation passed between Coyote and me, with my dad muttering a few words here and there but otherwise content to keep his gaze on his plate. I asked my dad who he thought was the favorite to win the Super Bowl, and he just shrugged and said, “Don’t really care as long as it isn’t the pigeons.” He meant the Eagles.

  Then, apropos of nothing, Coyote recounted how his father had taken him to Paris for Christmas, and how amazing the lights on the Champs-Elysées looked as a rain-snow mix fell heavily on the boulevard. They had stayed at the Ritz.

  This brought my dad’s gaze up to eye level.

  “What does your father do for a living, son?”

  “He manages a hedge fund out of West Virginia.”

  Dad gave a low mmm-hmmm and then put down his fork. “Seems he does pretty well for himself to be in the lawn care business.”

  Coyote seemed startled at first, and then said, “No, actually, a hedge fund is—”

  “It’s a joke, son. I know what hedge funds are.” He tapped the side of his head with one finger. “A small house doesn’t mean a small mind.”

  Coyote’s cheeks turned just the slightest shade of crimson, a color I’d never seen on him before. He’d been embarrassed, and even though the transgression was slight, I knew it pissed him off. Something dark came over him that moment, just as the darkness had come the moment he started questioning a couple of freshmen on the couch in our apartment.

  Coyote wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and put his elbows on the table.

  “Actually, Mr. Campbell, I was wondering if you could give some advice to Harden and me on this project we’re working on.”

  Oh, shit.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Talk about what?” Dad asked.

  Coyote turned to me. “We have an expert sitting right here, Harden. It would be irresponsible of us to not seek his counsel.”

  “What are you two talking about?”

  “Harden wrote a story for school called ‘Revelation.’ It’s the reason we’re going back early. It’s about religion, and he told me you might have an opinion on the subject.”

  “Goddamnit, Coyote, I told you not to bring it up.”

  Dad glared at me. “I won’t tell you again to not swear at my table, Harden.” Dad kept his attention on me as he spoke. “Now, tell me about this project of yours.”

  “C’mon, Harden.” Coyote’s voice had lost a bit of its malevolence, but not all. “You should be proud to share it with your father.”

  I don’t know why I was so nervous. Maybe it was because my dad’s vision of God was narrow and complete, and any deviation from his holy path was a quick and harsh tumble to hell. But it was just a stupid paper for lit class. At twenty years old, I still didn’t want to disappoint him, although you’d think I’d be used to it by now.

  I remained silent, not knowing what to say, and in that space of indecision was enough room for Coyote to pounce.

  “Why do you believe in Christ?” he asked my father.

  Dad cleared his throat and shot me a sideways glance. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business, son, but you can assume I arrived at a point in my life where I needed a spiritual change.”

  “Exactly. Many people do. It’s a human need to turn to something greater for guidance. You turned to Christ. Can I assume you grew up in a Christian household?”

  “You can,” Dad said. In one of the calmest faces I’d seen on him, he still looked like he wanted to kick the snot out of the punk across the table from him. I just impotently watched, just as I had when Coyote interrogated the hooker in the motel room.

  “Just like Harden,” Coyote continued. “So if Harden ever hit rock bottom, one can assume he would likely turn to Christ for spiritual guidance.”

  “I never said anything about hitting rock bottom. But yes, Christ is there for everyone.”

  “Not necessarily.” Coyote softened his tone, but to me it sounded less gentle than patronizing. “Christ is who you knew only because he was there in the background of your life. If you grew up Jewish, I doubt you would have turned to Christ. You would have likely delved deeper into Judaism.”

  “There’s only one true faith, son. If you need salvation, you can only do it through Jesus.”

  “There’s a few billion others in the world who would disagree with you.”

  “I can’t save them all.” My dad stood up and went to the freezer. He pulled out a pint of mocha almond fudge ice cream and took three bowls from the shelf. We all got a scoop, each with a week’s growth of ice whiskers.

>   “What’s this got to do with a school project?”

  “It’s not really a project,” I finally said. “Coyote wants to adapt the story I wrote and try it out as an . . . experiment.” I gave Coyote a look telling him I wasn’t sold on the idea.

  “An experiment about what?”

  “Starting a new religion,” Coyote said. “Not a sect. Not a cult. Not a branch of something else. Something entirely new.”

  “What in glory’s name are you talking about?”

  “Two thousand years ago, the mind-set of people was different. People believed in prophecies. People were expecting a messiah. They were superstitious. Their minds were ripe to accept a new belief system and Christianity flourished. What your son asks in his story is if that could happen in today’s society—where information is disseminated rapidly and cynicism has replaced superstition. Can you actually get people to believe in something new? To trust their souls to it?” Coyote leaned forward. “And most importantly, what kind of person would you need to be to get those people to follow you?”

  Dad turned to me, his spoon frozen in his hand, and the scoop of ice cream intended for his mouth fell back into his bowl.

  “That’s your project? Trying to start a new religion on campus?”

  I was about to answer, not knowing what exactly to say, but then I saw Dad’s face tighten and his forehead redden, at which point I knew whatever I said wouldn’t be heard.

  “This is why you want to leave your family and go back to school early, Harden?” He wasn’t shouting, but he didn’t have to. The bass of his voice shook my bones. “You think it’s cute to blaspheme, to challenge the true word of the Lord? What is wrong with you, Son? And I’m not asking that rhetorically. I really want to know where I’ve gone wrong with you.”

  There were so many answers to that question, but the one that came first to my mind had nothing to do with defending my story.

  “There’s nothing for me here, Dad.”

  In that moment I saw my father’s heart break, saw it straight through his heavy, sober eyes. I never wanted to tell him so much about my abuse as a child as I did in that moment, tell him it was the city of Owen that haunted me, not my dad’s house, but that truth would, very likely, leave him in a dark place from which he wouldn’t be able to return.

  He said nothing back to me, but he didn’t drop his cold stare for a few heavy breaths. Then, he collected himself enough to turn to Coyote, and said, “I think you’ll get laughed out of school.”

  Coyote either didn’t notice or care about the unraveling of the father-son relationship that just occurred. “Why? A liberal college campus is the perfect location to try something like this. Wyland is full of cerebral, disaffected teens experiencing life outside their homes for the first time. Who better to offer spiritual guidance?”

  “Why would they turn to you?”

  “Why not?” Coyote wasn’t slowing down. “When you needed spiritual help, why didn’t you turn to the religion founded by a man who sat under a tree until he discovered pure enlightenment?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not to four hundred million Buddhists. Or what about Islam? The New Testament was written by mortals and it’s treated as divine, but the Qur’an was handed down directly from God to Muhammed, or so the Muslims would tell you. Why wouldn’t you turn to that religion instead?”

  I felt the hairs on my arms dance with electricity. I could actually envision this turning violent.

  “Don’t blaspheme the Bible in my house ever again.”

  “Take it easy, Coyote,” I said.

  Coyote put his hands up and feigned surprised. “I’m not trying to insult you at all. I’m just saying that, from an objective standpoint, religions all look ridiculous. Look back to ancient Greece, when they had a god for everything. Doesn’t it seem like some kind of children’s story to have a god of fire, god of water, god of space?”

  “They weren’t real gods.”

  “Yet people believe without question that Jesus performed miracles and was resurrected from the dead. To someone not brought up in a Christian home, can’t you see how that might seem far-fetched?”

  “You are so lost, Coyote. I hope that Jesus finds you, because your soul is in peril.”

  “No, no, no.” Coyote was in his own world now, where only his ideas mattered. This wasn’t about emotion; this was strictly point-counterpoint, an intellectual battle to be won. “The point I’m making is that it’s innate in human nature to yearn for something bigger than one’s self. To believe in something after death, something to give hope to the hopeless. To believe there’s a greater purpose than what we can just see and feel in our time alive. It doesn’t really matter what outlet a person uses to get there as long as they get there, you see? It doesn’t matter what they believe in, so long as they simply believe.”

  “It does matter,” Dad said. “Because there are correct answers and incorrect ones, and choosing incorrectly has its consequences.”

  Coyote leaned just a little more over the table, and that slightest extra tilt of his body felt immensely threatening. “Do you really believe that the billions of people on this planet who don’t believe in Jesus are destined for hell?”

  Dad closed his eyes. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way; Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.”

  “Psalm thirty-seven,” Coyote said. “Endure pain in life so that you might find salvation.”

  He opened his eyes. “So you do know scripture.”

  “I know a lot of things.”

  “You just don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t believe a lot of things.”

  “That’s what faith is for.”

  Coyote gently shook his head. “Faith is the dregs left when all logic has been consumed.”

  Now Dad leaned forward and the two men locked in a stare.

  “Coyote, you are belittling what means the most in life to me. In my house. At my table, upon which I served you.”

  My father spoke with so much conviction it took me a moment to realize he just admitted Jesus meant more to him than I did.

  Coyote, for a moment, was quiet. I could see in his face a look I’d come to know well. He was at some edge in his mind, looking over into a forest that was both unknown and wild. This was when he made the decision to continue on his path or to turn around. Usually, almost always, he continued on. Coyote liked to run wild.

  But not this time.

  Coyote leaned back in his chair, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and held up both hands, palms forward. “You’re right, Mr. Harden, and I’m deeply sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  In the following silence, which stretched for a minute until Dad wordlessly left the table and went to go watch TV, I realized this was the start of something. The beginning of my own path, one that, for the moment, seemed to involve me following Coyote into his forest. This forest was darker and stranger than any I’d seen before, and I wasn’t sure where the other side of it was. I’d have to follow him in and follow him out, hoping he would protect me from whatever it was he was looking for in there.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .

  It was all confusing and more than a little frightening, but there was an excitement to it that I couldn’t just ignore. I wanted more, but feared it would end horribly. And doing so meant relying on the guidance of Coyote, who, I knew absolutely, was not the least bit sorry for anything he did. Not about what he did to my father. Not about what he did to anyone.

  In this excitement, what I failed to fully consider was it wasn’t Coyote’s protection I needed in that forest. I needed the forest’s protection from Coyote.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JULY 1990

  Harden and Emma sat on the dirt floor facing each other, legs crossed, heads bowed more from exhaustion than contemplation. Harden reached across and held Emma’s intact hand. He soa
ked in her warmth, though it reminded him how cold everything else around him was. She had been in his cell for at least a few hours now.

  “Tell me something,” she said. Her voice held the weary edge of someone drifting in and out of a fugue. “Anything. Just talk to me.”

  He wanted to talk to her. God, there was so much to say, but more than anything he just wanted to hear her voice. But since they placed her in his cell, Harden realized a truth.

  Harden looked up at her dirt- and sweat-stained face, her eyes blazing out against the filth. He slowly shook his head and slowly wrote in the dirt with his finger.

  They’re listening.

  He didn’t know how, but they had to be. They might not be watching; Harden didn’t know of any cameras small enough that he wouldn’t have already been able to find them. But somehow they were listening. There was no reason to put Emma into his cell except to listen to them. Coyote was a master at getting people to talk, to share things they normally wouldn’t, and then use all of their own deep truths against them. Harden was convinced Coyote was listening now to see what they would tell each other, to see how much they knew. And, perhaps, what they feared most.

  Harden swiped his palm along the floor, scattering the words back to dust. Emma traced fresh words with her fingers in the dirt.

  What should we do?

  Harden thought for a moment about the question. It was really the only valid question in their lives at the moment. What the hell were they going to do?

  He closed his eyes as he pictured Coyote, sitting in some room nearby, straining to hear their words. A thin smile, one of anticipation, would slowly start to creep across his lips, never really forming until he heard what he wanted to. Coyote wanted to control, to form, to shape. Harden had documented so many moments in the rising of the Church of the Revelation that he understood not only what Coyote was capable of, but how much more he wanted. Harden’s mistake was not realizing Coyote’s thirst would ever apply to those closest to him, but here, in this room of dirt and spiders, Harden now understood it was precisely those closest to him Coyote most wanted to control.

  Coyote thinks he understands everything, Harden thought. So the only hope of staying alive meant revealing to Coyote the things he didn’t know.