He leaned forward tensely, trying to spot something, anything, and thought he saw, far ahead, a light.
A yellow light, too high up for a taillight—a reflector on a motorcycle, maybe. That was impossible, there was no way a motorcycle could be out in this. One of those lights on the top corners of a semi.
If that was what it was, he couldn’t see the other one, but the light was moving steadily in front of him, and he followed it, trying to keep pace.
The windshield wipers were icing up again. He rolled down the window, and in the process lost sight of the light. And the road, he thought frightenedly. No, there was the light, still high up, but closer, and it wasn’t a light, it was a whole cluster of them, round yellow bulbs in the shape of an arrow.
The arrow on top of a police car, he thought, telling you to change lanes. There must be some kind of accident up ahead. He strained forward, trying to make out flashing blue ambulance lights.
But the yellow arrow moved steadily ahead, and as he got closer, he saw that the arrow was pointed down at an angle. And that it was slowing. Mel slowed, too, focusing his whole attention on the road and on pumping his brakes to keep the car from skidding.
When he looked up again, the arrow had slowed nearly to a stop, and he could see it clearly. It was part of a lighted sign on the back of a truck. “Shooting Star” it said in a flowing script, and next to the arrow in neon pink, “Tickets.”
The truck came to a complete stop, its turn light blinking, and then started up again, and in its headlights he caught a glimpse of snow-spattered red. A stop sign.
And this was an exit. He had followed the truck off the highway onto an exit without even knowing it.
And now he was hopefully following it into a town, he thought, clicking on his right-turn signal and turning after the truck, but in the moment he had hesitated, he had lost it. And the blowing snow was worse here than on the highway.
There was the yellow arrow again. No, what he was seeing was a Burger King crown. He pulled in, scraping the snow-covered curb, and saw that he was wrong again. It was a motel sign. “King’s Rest,” with a crown of sulfur-yellow bulbs.
He parked the car and got out, slipping in the snow, and started for the office, which had, thank goodness, a “Vacancy” sign in the same neon pink as the “Tickets” sign.
A little blue Honda pulled up beside him and a short, plump woman got out of it, winding a bright purple muffler around her head. “Thank goodness you knew where you were going,” she said, pulling on a pair of turquoise mittens. “I couldn’t see a thing except your taillights.” She reached back into the Honda for a vivid green canvas bag. “Anybody who’d be on the roads in weather like this would have to be crazy, wouldn’t they?”
And if the blizzard hadn’t been sign enough, here was proof positive. “Yes,” he said, although she had already gone inside the motel office, “they would.”
He would check in, wait a few hours till the storm let up, and then start back. With luck he would be back home before Mrs. Bilderbeck got to the office tomorrow morning.
He went inside the office, where a balding man was handing the plump woman a room key and talking to someone on the phone.
“Another one,” he said when Mel opened the door. “Yeah.” He hung up the phone and pushed a registration form and a pen at Mel.
“Which way’d you come from?” he asked. “East,” Mel said.
The man shook his balding head. “You got here in the nick of time,” he said to both of them. “They just closed all the roads east of here.”
“And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat upon them.”
—Revelation 9:17
In the morning, Mel called Mrs. Bilderbeck. “I won’t be in today. I’ve been called out of town.”
“Out of town?” Mrs. Bilderbeck said, interested.
“Yes. On personal business. I’ll be gone most of the week.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, and Mel suddenly hoped that there was an emergency at the church, that Gus Uhank had had another stroke or Lottie Millar’s mother had died, so that he would have to go back.
“I told Juan you’d be in,” Mrs. Bilderbeck said. “He’s putting the sanctuary Christmas decorations away, and he wanted to know if you want to save the star for next year. And the pilot light went out again. The church was freezing when I got here this morning.”
“Was Juan able to get it relit?”
“Yes, but I think someone should look at it. What if it goes out on a Saturday night?”
“Call Jake Adams at A-1 Heating,” he said. Jake was a deacon.
“A-1 Heating,” she said slowly, as if she were writing it down. “What about the star? Are we going to use it again next year?”
Is there going to be a next year? Mel thought. “Whatever you think,” he said.
“And what about the ecumenical meeting?” she asked. “Will you be back in time for that?”
“Yes,” he said, afraid if he said “no,” she would ask more questions.
“Is there a number where I can reach you?”
“No. I’ll check in tomorrow.” He hung up quickly, and then sat there on the bed, trying to decide whether to call B.T. or not. He hadn’t done anything major in the fifteen years they’d been friends without telling him, but Mel knew what he’d say. They’d met on the ecumenical committee, when the Unitarian chairman had decided that, to be truly ecumenical, they needed a resident atheist and Darwinian biologist. And, Mel suspected, an African American.
It was the only good thing that had ever come out of the ecumenical committee. He and B.T. had started by complaining about the idiocies of the ecumenical committee, which seemed bent on proving that denominations couldn’t get along, progressed to playing chess and then to discussing religion and politics and disagreeing on both, and ended by becoming close friends.
I have to call him, Mel thought, it’s a betrayal of our friendship not to.
And tell him what? That he’d had a holy vision? That the Book of Revelation was coming literally true? It sounded crazy to Mel, let alone to B.T., who was a scientist, who didn’t believe in the First Coming, let alone the Second. But if it was true, how could he not call him?
He dialed B.T.’s area code and then put down the receiver and went to check out.
The roads east were still closed. “You shouldn’t have any trouble heading west, though,” the balding man said, handing Mel his credit card receipt. “The snow’s supposed to let up by noon.”
Mel hoped so. The interstate was snow-packed and unbelievably slick, and when Mel positioned himself behind a sand truck, a rock struck his windshield and made a ding.
At least there was hardly any traffic. There were only a few semis, and a navy blue pickup with a bumper sticker that said “In case of the Rapture, this car will be unoccupied.” There was no sign of the blue Honda or of the carnival. They had seen the light and were still at the King’s Rest, sitting in the restaurant, drinking coffee. Or headed south for the winter.
He passed a snow-obscured sign that read “For Weather Info Tune to AM 1410.”
He did. “…and in the last days Christ Himself will appear,” an evangelist, possibly the one from yesterday, or a different one—they all had the same accent, the same intonation—said. “The Book of Revelation tells us He will appear riding a white horse and leading a mighty army of the righteous against the Antichrist in that last great battle of Armageddon. And the unbelievers—the fornicators and the baby-murderers—will be flung into the bottomless pit.”
The ultimate “Wait till your father gets home” threat, Mel thought.
“And how do I know these things are coming?” the radio said. “I’ll tell you how. The Lord came to me in a dream, and He said, ‘These shall be the signs of my coming. There will be wars and rumors of wars.’ Iraq, my friends, that’s what he’s talking about. The sun’s face will be covered, and the godless will prosper. Look around you. Who do you see prospering? Abortion doctors and hom
osexuals and godless atheists. But when Christ comes, they will be punished. He told me so. The Lord spoke to me, just like he spoke to Moses, just like he spoke to Isaiah…”
He switched off the radio, but it didn’t do any good. Because this was what had been bothering him ever since he started out. How did he know his vision wasn’t just like some radio evangelist’s?
Because his is born out of hatred, bigotry, and revenge, Mel thought. God no more spoke to him than did the man in the moon.
And how do you know He spoke to you? Because it felt real? The voices telling the bomber to destroy the abortion clinic felt real, too. Emotion isn’t proof. Signs aren’t evidence. “Do you have any outside confirmation?” he could hear B.T. saying skeptically.
The sun came out, and the glare off the white road, the white fields, was worse than the snow had been. He almost didn’t see the truck off to the side. Its emergency flashers weren’t on, and at first he thought it had just slid off the road, but as he went past, he saw it was one of the carnival trucks with its hood up and steam coming out. A young man in a denim jacket was standing next to it, hooking his thumb for a ride.
I should stop, Mel thought, but he was already past, and picking up hitchhikers was dangerous. He had found that out when he’d preached a sermon on the Good Samaritan last year. “Let us not be like the Levite or the Pharisee who passes by the stranded motorist, the injured victim,” he had told his congregation. “Let us be like the Samaritan, who stopped and helped.”
It had seemed like a perfectly harmless sermon topic, and he had been totally unprepared for the uproar that ensued. “I cannot believe you told people to pick up hitchhikers!” Dan Crosby had raged. “If one of my daughters ends up raped, I’m holding you responsible.”
“What were you thinking of?” Mrs. Bilderbeck had said, hanging up after fending off Mabel Jenkins. “On CNN last week there was a story about somebody who stopped to help a couple who was out of gas, and they cut off his head.”
He had had to issue a retraction the next Sunday, saying that women had no business helping anyone (which had made Mamie Rollet mad, for feminist reasons) and that the best thing for everyone else to do was to alert the state patrol on their cell phones and let them take care of it, unless they knew the person, although somehow he couldn’t imagine the Good Samaritan with a cell phone.
There was a median crossing up ahead, but it was marked with a sign that read “Authorized Vehicles Only.” And if I get my head cut off, he thought, the congregation will have no sympathy at all.
But it was threatening to snow again, and the green interstate sign up ahead said “Wayside 28.” And the carnival had been his Good Samaritan last night.
“ ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me,’ ” he murmured, and turned into the median crossing and onto the eastbound side of the highway, and started back.
The truck was still there, though he couldn’t see the driver. Good, he thought, looking for a place to cross. Some other Samaritan picked him up. But when he pulled up behind the truck, the man got out of the truck’s cab and started over to the car, his hands jammed into his denim jacket. Mel began to feel sorry he’d stopped. The man had a ragged scar across his forehead, and his hair was lank and greasy.
He slouched over to the side of the car, and Mel saw that he was much younger than he’d looked at first. He’s just a kid, Mel thought.
Yeah, well, so was Billy the Kid, he reminded himself. And Andrew Cunanan.
Mel leaned across and pulled down the passenger window. “What’s the trouble?”
The kid leaned down to talk to him. “Died,” he said, and grinned.
“Do you need a lift into town?” he asked, and the kid immediately opened the car door, keeping his right hand in his jacket pocket. Where the gun is, Mel thought.
The kid slid in and shut the door, still using only one hand. When they find me robbed and murdered, they’ll be convinced I was involved in some kind of drug deal, Mel thought. He started the car.
“Man, it was cold out there,” the kid said, taking his right hand out of his pocket and rubbing his hands together. “I been waiting forever.”
Mel kicked the heater over to high, and the kid leaned forward and held his hands in front of the vent. There was a peace sign tattooed on the back of one of them and a fierce-looking lion on the other. Both looked like they’d been done by hand.
The kid rubbed his hands together, wincing, and Mel took another look. His hands were red with cold and between the tattoo lines there were ugly white splotches. The kid started rubbing them again.
“Don’t—” Mel said, putting out his hand unthinkingly to stop him. “That looks like frostbite. Don’t rub it. You’re supposed to…” he said, and then couldn’t remember. Put them in warm water? Wrap them up? “They’re supposed to warm up slowly,” he said finally.
“You mean like by warming ’em up in front of a heater?” the kid said, holding his hands in front of the vent again. He put up his hand and touched the ding in the windshield. “That’s gonna spread,” he said.
His hand looked even worse now that it was warming up. The sickly white splotches stood out starkly against the rest of his skin.
Mel took off his gloves, switching hands on the steering wheel and using his teeth to get the second one off. “Here,” he said, handing them to the kid. “These are insulated.”
The kid looked at him for a minute and then put them on.
“You should get your hands looked at,” Mel said. “I can take you to the emergency room when we get to town.”
“I’ll be okay,” the kid said. “You get used to being cold, working a carny.”
“What’s a carnival doing here in the middle of winter, anyway?” Mel asked.
“Best time,” the kid said. “Catches ’em by surprise. What’re you doin’ out here?”
He wondered what the kid would say if he told him. “I’m a minister,” he said instead.
“A preacher, huh?” he said. “You believe in the Second Coming?”
“The Second Coming?” Mel gasped, caught off guard.
“Yeah, we had a preacher come to the carny the other day telling us Jesus was coming back and was gonna punish everybody for hanging him on the cross, knock down the mountains, burn the whole planet up. You believe all that’s gonna happen?”
“No,” Mel said. “I don’t think Jesus is coming back to punish anybody.”
“The preacher said it was all right there in the Bible.”
“There are lots of things in the Bible. They don’t always turn out to mean what you thought they did.”
The kid nodded sagely. “Like the Siamese twins.”
“Siamese twins?” Mel said, unable to remember any Siamese twins in the Bible.
“Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying ‘See the Siamese Twins,’ and everybody pays a buck, thinking they’re gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it’s a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.”
“Not exactly,” Mel said. “The prophecies aren’t a scam to cheat people, they’re—”
“What about Roswell? The alien autopsy and all that. You think that’s a scam, too?”
Well, there was some outside confirmation for you. Mel was in a class with scam artists and UFO nuts.
“After what happened the first time, I don’t know if I’d wanta come back or not,” the kid said, and it took Mel a minute to realize he was talking about Christ. “If I did, I’d wear some kind of disguise or something.”
Like the last time, Mel thought, when He came disguised as a baby.
The kid was still preoccupied with the ding. “There’s stuff you could do to keep it from spreading for a little while,” he said, “but it’s still gonna spread. There ain’t nothing that can stop it.” He pointed out the window at a sign. “Wayside, exit 1 mile.”
Mel pulled off and into a Total station, apparently all there was to Wa
yside. The kid opened the door and started to take off the gloves.
“Keep them,” Mel said. “Do you want me to wait till you find out if they’ve got a tow truck?”
The kid shook his head. “I’ll call Pete.” He reached into the pocket of the denim jacket and handed Mel three orange cardboard tickets. They were marked “Admit One Free.”
“It’s a ticket to the show,” the kid said. “We got a triple Ferris wheel, three wheels one inside the other. And a great roller coaster. The Comet.”
Mel splayed the tickets apart. “There are three tickets here.”
“Bring your friends,” the kid said, slapped the car door, and ambled off toward the gas station.
Bring your friends.
Mel got back on the highway. It was getting dark. He hoped the next exit wasn’t as far, or as uninhabited, as this one.
Bring your friends. I should have told B.T., he thought, even though he would have said, Don’t go, you’re crazy, let me recommend a good psychiatrist.
“I still should have told him,” he said out loud, and was as certain of it as he had been of what he should do in that moment in the church. And now he had cut himself off from B.T. not only by hundreds of miles of closed highways and “icy and snow-packed conditions,” but by his deception, his failure to tell him.
The next exit didn’t even have a gas station, and the one after that nothing but a Dairy Queen. It was nearly eight by the time he got to Zion Center and a Holiday Inn.
He walked straight in, not even stopping to get his luggage out of the trunk, and across the lobby toward the phones.
“Hello!” The short, plump woman he’d seen the night before waylaid him. “Here we are again, orphans of the storm. Weren’t the roads awful?” she said cheerfully. “I almost went off in the ditch twice. My little Honda doesn’t have four-wheel drive, and—”
“Excuse me,” Mel interrupted her. “I have a phone call I have to make.”
“You can’t,” she said, still cheerfully. “The lines are down.”
A Lot Like Christmas Page 49