Mad Stacks: Story Collection Box Set

by Scott Nicholson

  “I offer all I have.” Mara bowed her head. She was risking the welfare of her people. She was blaspheming the bringer of winds. Women were born to serve and not to question the workings of gods or men. The blood and pain of women had always sustained the Earth, and would ever thus.

  Aeolus turned and headed toward the pulpit, his robe hem dragging in the blood. He paused on the lowest step. “Thank you,” he said.

  He looked tired, weighed by ageless burden, eroded by his sacred duty. A small tear hung like a jewel in the corner of his eye. Or perhaps it was only a reflection of the sun. He passed through the drapes, and moments later, the grid work shifted, and the wires grew taut or slackened, and the angels sighed and screamed their everlasting hymn.

  Mara knelt in the blood and waited for Ananke to give her a part in the choir, praying that she was worthy. Praying that all she had would be enough. Praying that her depth of talent, joy of sacrifice, and capacity for pain were as endless as the journey ahead.

  The End

  Missing Pieces Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  THE BANQUET TABLE

  By Scott Nicholson

  The yellow van marked “Last Supper Ministry” rocked in its backstreet parking spot as if a group of horny teenagers was playing “Twister” in the rear.

  But the occupants were neither youthful nor particularly libidinal, having last had sex around the time George Bush donned a flight suit and proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.” Not that either of them had accomplished much of anything between the sheets, but at least they hadn’t broken the bed in the process. Their honeymoon hadn’t been so kind to the furniture, but that was many melons, sticky buns, and ding dongs in the past.

  “Damned seats,” Jerry Hamm said. “This steering wheel gets closer every time. Who designed this thing, the Japanese?”

  “Made in America, honey,” said his wife Anne. “It’s a Chevy.”

  “God bless the U.S.A.,” Jerry said, wriggling his rump as the seat springs squealed in protest. Four hundred and fifty-two pounds of hard-earned, home-grown meat shifted, causing the van to rock a little as Jerry made himself as comfortable as he could while jammed behind the steering wheel. The van didn’t list too far to port though; Anne carried three hundred and seventy-two pounds herself, not counting the two pounds of sausage biscuits in her lap, so the load was nearly balanced.

  “Next stop is La Gourmand,” Anne said, looking at her list.

  “Thank the Lord,” Jerry said. “It’s been a thin haul today.”

  La Gourmand Bistro was one of the more fruitful stops, owned by a man who was a child when the Nazis rolled through Paris, and thus maintained a deep sympathy for those with empty stomachs.

  The back of the van held no seats. They had been removed to aid the couple in their ministry work. Several scarred ice chests provided cold storage to ward off the September heat. The ice chests were used for meats, dairy products, and the most perishable vegetables. The shelves held dry goods such as bread, a few dented cans of pork and beans, instant coffee, and a single bag of spaghetti—that cheap wop Antonio, Jerry had noted, I thought Italians were supposed to be drunk and jolly and set a full table—but mostly they contained empty space. In the recession, charity had trailed off, and no amount of Bible verses could squeeze blood from a stone or caviar from a turnip.

  Jerry started the van, and the muffler backfired as it sent black smoke roiling down the alley. Jerry touched the wooden cross that hung from the rearview mirror.

  “Please, O Lord, give us wheels so that we might serve your sacred purpose here on Earth,” Jerry said.

  “Amen,” Anne said, head tilted forward, three chins pressed against her bosom.

  The van had been acting up lately, and it had accumulated over two hundred thousand hard miles. In the start-and-stop traffic of Charlotte, the engine had been pushed to the limit. The tires were bald, one of the brake rotors made a grinding noise, and the van’s inspection sticker was two months out of date. But with high gas prices, the Ministry’s transportation budget was as stretched taut as Jerry’s red suspenders.

  Jerry eased the van onto the boulevard. A taxi gunned around him and nearly clipped the front fender. Jerry pounded on the horn, which bleated like a dying, electric lamb. “Goddamned Turk,” Jerry said.

  “He was white,” Anne said.

  “He didn’t drive like one,” Jerry said, accelerating with an unsteady lurch.

  “Careful, honey, we’ve got some glass back there.”

  Antonio, the swarthy Italian who owned a namesake restaurant, had donated a few jars of olives and pepperoncinis. Jerry wanted to throw them away because he thought salty, hot additives overpowered the natural flavor of the food, but Anne said variety was the spice of life, and that it kept people returning to the banquet table. They would lose the opportunity to lead more people to Christ if Last Supper Ministry’s clients took their business to rival soup kitchens that were operated by liberals or hunger-fighting agencies.

  Since Anne was the cook, and Jerry was the kitchen help and driver, he bowed to her on culinary matters even though his bow couldn’t extend more than a few degrees forward or he might fall and be unable to rise without a forklift.

  “Think we’ll have enough?” Jerry asked, glancing in the mirror and eyeing the stock. “We’re expecting forty or so guests tonight.”

  “The numbers in need continue to grow,” Anne said. “We face great trials, for sure.”

  Jerry reached over and squeezed her dimpled hand, testing its thickness. “The Lord provides,” Jerry said. “Have faith.”

  “Want a biscuit?”

  Jerry nodded and reached into her lap, pawing open the bag and fishing out a biscuit wrapped in a greasy napkin. He parted the paper with his thumb and bit into the snack. She watched his face.

  Despite the Saturday afternoon traffic, he smiled and momentarily closed his eyes.

  “You like it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “My compliments to the chef.”

  She beamed, looking almost cherubic. “New recipe,” she said. “I added a little more oregano.”

  “Don’t tell Antonio,” he said. “We’d put him out of business.”

  “Why pay for what you can get for free, right?” she said. “And we give our time.”

  “Charity begins at home.”

  “Even for the homeless?”

  They were both thinking of Wayne, the skinny schizophrenic who’d drifted down from Detroit during the cold weather. He slept in a cardboard box behind the bowling alley. He had dropped so far off the map that Social Services and the homeless shelters didn’t know he existed. Wayne babbled to himself in strange tongues known only to him and the demons in his ears, hostile eyes darting as he fidgeted and twitched in the meal line. He was a lost soul if ever there was one, but if Last Supper Ministry provided the occasional meal, then there was hope the lamb could be brought into the fold no matter how low his station.

  Didn’t Jesus say in the Book of Matthew, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?

  Jerry pulled the van up to the rear entrance of La Gourmand. The gear shift thunked when he rammed it into park, and Jerry wondered if the vehicle would start again. They’d put out a plea for help, mailing flyers to local churches, begging newspapers and radio stations to run public service announcements, and taking up love offerings at the banquet table each Sunday, but no one had come through with the new van they sought. Even the promise of blessings and a tax write-off had stirred little response.

  For now, they would have to wring the last mile out of the old Chevy. Jerry wrestled the seat belt free while cursing the legal requirement to wear one. He didn’t think a cop would actually write him a ticket, not while he was doing the Lord’s work, but Charlotte had not been the same since the Rev. Jim Bakker and The PTL Club had been driven out of the city like Lot from Sodom. Except, as far as Jerr
y knew, Jim Bakker hadn’t gotten drunk and slept with his own daughters the way Lot had. Jerry wasn’t sure of the message God meant to send in that instance, but it was in the Bible and therefore carried the truth. And now Charlotte was as heathen as New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, despite its location deep in the Bible Belt.

  In a way, that was okay with Jerry and Anne. It was good for business.

  “I’ll get it,” Jerry said, opening his door.

  “I want to give my blessings to that nice Pierre,” she said, though her hands were folded in her lap, and she showed no sign of moving. Her arrhythmia had flared up this morning, and the doctor had told her to cut down on the fat intake. He might as well have been explaining to a cow the importance of sanitary meatpacking facilities.

  “You rest up, honey. It will only take a second.”

  Jerry rolled to the pavement and balanced on the edge of his seat for a moment. The alley smelled of dishwater and fryer oil, and a Dumpster, overflowing with cardboard boxes, sported graffiti that surely included the mark of the devil. The gutter held shredded newspaper and a scattering of Budweiser cans. A UPS truck blocked the far end of the alley with its emergency flashers blinking. Anne opened her Bible while Jerry eased away from the van and headed to the service entrance of the French restaurant.

  He entered without knocking and waited in the cluttered foyer amid a sodden duffel bag of wet towels, crates of green beans, and a mop bucket full of filthy water. One of the busboys came out of the walk-in cooler and shot him a churlish glare. The little punks shuttled in and out of jobs so fast that Jerry never bothered to remember their names, but this one had lasted three weeks.

  “Fob’s here,” the boy called back to the kitchen where clattering pans and chatter echoed off the tiles.

  Jerry sniffed the air. Pierre used a lot of wine in his recipes, and Jerry figured the wrinkled, little Frenchman would soon be burning in hell for his tastes. But for now, he was serving the Lord, though he kept scrupulous records and made sure Jerry signed receipts each week.

  Pierre turned the corner and stood by the mop, and their gray stringy hair was similar. He had a black beret perched on his head and slanted to one side in studied insouciance.

  “Monsieur Hamm,” Pierre said as his wizened face broke into a yellow grin. He wiped his hands on his bloody apron before reaching out to shake. Jerry looked down at the proffered hand with its war map of veins. Food-service hygiene was notoriously lax, and that was why all restaurant bathrooms had signs reminding employees to wash. Jerry saw no reason to risk bacterial contamination and possibly expose the ministry’s clients to pathogens, so he stared past Pierre to the busy kitchen where two chefs juggled and stirred rows of frying pans.

  “Something smells good, mon ami,” Jerry said.

  “Oui,” Pierre replied. “Roast duck.”

  “What is ‘fob’?”

  The little Frenchman cocked an ear in a theatrical manner. “Eh?”

  The busboy hurried from the service entrance and hid behind the stainless-steel partition that marked off the dishwashing area. From the kitchen came Martin, a sous chef in a tie-dyed T-shirt that bore a picture of a skull and the words “Grateful Dead.” An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips.

  “Fob,” Martin said. His teeth flashed around the cigarette butt. “Fat old bastard.”

  Pierre flapped his hands. “I’ll get him, the scoundrel.”

  Jerry kept his face blank. He knew what they were thinking, what they all thought: hefty Jerry and his chunky wife skimmed off the top and stuffed their larder and gullets with giveaway food while clients went hungry. Such was the life of martyrs. False accusations were the coin in trade of unbelievers.

  “Never mind,” Jerry said, slapping his belly and letting loose with a jolly laugh that would have made Santa Claus proud. “My weight’s no secret and it’s no shame. It gives me control and makes me feel important.”

  To Pierre, he said, “I swear to the Lord I’ve never eaten so much as a nibble of your generous donations. It all goes to those in need.”

  Pierre nodded, indicating the rations set aside for the ministry. “Take it, my friend. I trust you.”

  Martin looked a little more skeptical but said nothing.

  “Well, I should get going,” Jerry said. “We set the banquet table at six sharp. Hungry mouths are waiting.”

  “Help him load,” Pierre said to Martin as he plucked the cigarette from the chef’s mouth. “Then you can have your smoke.”

  Martin grumbled under his breath but loaded the van while Jerry held the door open. Anne tried to turn in her seat but couldn’t manage it, and as Martin shoved aboard a rack of yeast rolls, she said to him, “Where do you go to church, young man?”

  “Down the block,” he said.

  Jerry did a mental tour of the area churches. There was a Unitarian church—though how they could call such a heathen altar a “church” was beyond him—and a little Episcopal church tucked away from the street near a graveyard. Either way, Martin’s soul was walking a tightrope over the flaming grill of hell.

  “Come down to the fellowship,” she said. “Sunrise Christian on Park Road. Free meals after every service.”

  “You get fries with that?” he asked.

  Jerry sniffed. He wasn’t sure what marijuana smelled like, but a sweet odor hung around the man’s unwashed flesh. He could use a cleansing, both inside and out, but the drive across town was twenty minutes. Martin’s salvation would be the work of another day.

  “Thanks, Martin,” Jerry said and slammed the van door shut.

  Martin fished a cigarette out of his jeans pocket and fired it to life. “Good luck with that God thing,” he said.

  “There’s no luck involved once you hit the biggest jackpot of all,” Jerry said.

  Despite its protesting engine, the van made it to the fellowship hall with fifteen minutes to spare. Since Jerry and Anne served the meals deli style, there was little preparation besides unwrapping fruit and tucking food in recycled plastic bags. While some of the clients ate standing up, others didn’t like the company of their own kind and scuttled for the door and their shabby tenements—or cardboard boxes or old refrigerators if they were truly destitute. If they grabbed dry goods and ran, there was scarcely a chance of delivering a well-placed verse or kind word. But perhaps familiarity and comfort might one day draw them through the doors and into the sanctuary where all the wonders and miracles of faith would become their nourishment.

  A Hispanic family with three kids took a few loaded plastic bags, and a man with a stubbly face, who looked like he might once have been a computer technician, snagged a few donuts and a bag of coffee. Jerry smiled and invited him for a warm cup, but the man shook his head. Jerry decided he had a bottle of wine tucked somewhere out in nearby city park. He’d be the target for another day when his head was clear and his system pure.

  Wayne came in after most of the crowd had gone. The pickings were slim, but even in lean times, the Lord always seemed to provide just enough to go around. The miracle of the loaves and fishes wasn’t confined to the Gospel.

  “Hello, Wayne,” Jerry said. “Just in time. We were about to close.”

  Wayne sniffed repeatedly, like a mouse testing the air for danger and cheese. His hair was dark and stringy, and he looked to be down to around a hundred and forty pounds. He could use a little meat on his bones, but other than that, he looked relatively healthy. Jerry knew the young men held on better than the women, but then in their twenties, the strain and ill treatment snowballed and was often compounded with substance abuse.

  Anne’s eyes were clouded with tears. Jerry’s heart fluttered. Hours of volunteer work, often performed for ungrateful and suspicious foreigners, offered only fleeting epiphanies. At times such as this, doubt fell away, and the Lord’s hand touched them and filled them with warmth.

  “We’ve got a few rolls left,” Anne said. She held out two, and they looked like Play-Doh in her palms.

  “The sar
dines,” Jerry said. “Did you bring them in?”

  Wayne loved the smelly, oily fish, and because his hands shook, Jerry always opened the cans for him. Wayne’s tongue would hang out in anticipation. It was the only food he would eat at the banquet table, otherwise preferring to skulk away with his stale and wilted treasures. Anne and Jerry had learned that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.

  “I didn’t know we had any sardines,” Anne said and wiped the table in preparation for the coming Sunday’s meal. After a fellowship service, the crowds were usually twice as large as usual.

  “The Nature Basket gave them to us. That little health-food store on Tryon.”

  “I thought they were vegetarian.”

  “Only because they haven’t had your sausage biscuits,” Jerry said. He’d never pretended there was any way to his heart except through his stomach, and though his love for the Lord was deep and abiding, he had room for his wife there, too.

  Wayne was staring at a manufactured oil painting of Calvary, with the three crosses silhouetted against a bloody, raging sky as if God’s anger and sorrow were brewing in a tempest that would trouble the human race until the Rapture.

  “We’ve got some sardines, Wayne,” Jerry said.

  Wayne’s head turned. Jerry smiled. The bread of life, food for the soul, nourishment everlasting. The Lord provided for those who sought.

  “Maybe he’s had enough for tonight,” Anne said. That was her way. Always planning for tomorrow’s banquet.

  Jerry understood her patience and the value of a little extra in the larder, but Wayne was getting closer to understanding. One more minute spent in the fellowship hall could make the difference between salvation and eternal damnation. If Jerry let the opportunity slide, and Wayne stepped outside and was run over by a bus, who would bear the guilt for that lost chance?

  “Fish,” Wayne said, mushing the sibilant like a sailor rolling on a three-day drunk.

  Jerry wondered if you had to know and comprehend the words to invite Jesus into your heart. He believed it was enough to simply say them. Or maybe words weren’t even necessary, and a sinner could just open the door with willingness.