Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  We called a lakeside news conference for July 3. It might have been better to wait till after the Independence Day weekend, but all I could think of was getting it over with. We were keeping it a secret, even from my closest advisors, and I didn’t want to take a chance that something one of us said or did might spill the beans.

  So on Friday morning, Bradd wheeled the lectern with the official seal of the state of Alaska down the back yard slope to the water’s edge. Our living room was too small to accommodate many camera crews, and we used Lake Lola as a backdrop for news conferences when the weather was fine. While Bradd was setting things up, the first news trucks with satellite dishes on their roofs began to show up from Anchorage. Reporters asked him what the big announcement was all about, but he only smiled and shook his head.

  At 11:00 a.m., Bradd, Taiga, and I emerged from the house and walked hand in hand down to the lake. While I attempted to show my game face to the photographers, I think it was the most wretched stroll of my life. When we got to the lectern, I noticed that there was a lone fisherman in an aluminum skiff on the lake not far from shore. He was casting his line into the water again and again. I remember thinking, that old boy is going to photobomb my press conference, and I wondered why Bradd hadn’t chased him away.

  Ever since the unfortunate turkey slaughtering fiasco during my first year, I have been extra careful to pay attention to what is going on in the background of my interviews. At first I was annoyed by the fisherman, but then I thought, So what? At least he’s starting out his holiday weekend on a high note. Let him fish.

  As I composed myself at the lectern, I nodded greetings to the reporters, several of whom had once been fair and friendly toward me but who now had joined the ranks of the haters. I was just about to begin speaking when I heard the ploink of a fishing lure hitting the water behind me, and I wondered if anyone ever told this angler that Lake Lola was a dead lake. Years of toxic runoff from the Parks Highway and the miles of parking lots on its shore had poisoned the lake and killed off its population of rainbow trout and coho salmon. Algae blooms suffocated the rest. It was an unfortunate side effect of the rapid growth of our community that I worked diligently to correct.

  Then I heard a splash, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the fisherman reeling in a rainbow trout. Its iridescent scales flashed in the sunlight as it broke the surface of the water. It was at least twenty inches long, a real trophy. But as remarkable as the fish was, the real shocker came when the fisherman looked up at me. Moments before, he had been just some balding sportsman in an Old Navy sweatshirt. But now the man in the skiff was young and fit. He wore a resplendent white robe, almost too bright to look at, with a purple sash. He had a full beard and flowing chestnut locks. He was beautiful. He didn’t smile but gave me a stern, loving look, like a dad who must discipline a willful child. I could hear His gentle voice as though He was standing right next to me. “Didn’t I make you a fisher of men? Why do you forsake me, daughter, before my work is done? You must prepare your people for what is to come.”

  Well, as you can imagine, my mind was blown. Meanwhile, the TV cameras were rolling, and Bradd edged closer to the lectern and whispered, “Are you all right?”

  “That fisherman,” was all I could say.

  “What fisherman?”

  And wouldn’t you know it, when I looked again the fish and fisher, skiff and kicker, hook, line, and sinker were gone, vanished as though they’d never been.

  Bradd said, “We can postpone this.”

  Postpone what? My resignation? Too late for that. Resigning my office was clearly off the table now. Jesus had just seen to that. Postpone the press conference? Again, too late. Our back yard was teeming with reporters who were already put out because their governor had forced them to come in during the Independence Day weekend for an important announcement. And then she freezes up like a deer caught in the headlights?

  “No, I’m all right,” I told Bradd.

  “You sure?”

  “You betcha.” I folded my sheet of notes and handed it to him. “I have a different announcement, though.” I gave him a confident wink, and his face lit up with a surprised grin.

  “Give ’em hell, Vera.”

  I turned to the reporters before I had any idea of what I would say to them. All I knew at that moment was what the fisherman had told me, to prepare my people. I took a deep breath and began to speak, as curious as anyone to hear what I would say.

  Hi, Alaska. I appreciate this opportunity to speak directly to you without the media filter, the people I serve as your governor. People who know me know that serving her people, our beloved state of Alaska, besides my family and my faith in the God of our fathers, there’s nothing more important to me.

  Some of you with cynical hearts might ask then why did I leave Alaska to run for national office in the first place if Alaska means so much to me. Good question.

  Some in Juneau keep asking when am I coming back! Another good question.

  That last one got a laugh from the press corps.

  Let me take a crack at answering the first question. Did you know that men and women serving in our nation’s armed forces are not allowed to pray in public while wearing their uniforms? It’s a federal law. Can you believe a government would pass such a law to push God away? What kind of longterm survival strategy is that? Sorry, God, we don’t need You anymore. We’ll just handle national security on our own.

  That’s just one example. There are thousands of federal laws on the books that are sapping our beloved country of its moral strength, that are robbing our beloved country of its moral authority around the world. People of good conscience cannot allow that to stand, especially in these turbulent times.

  That’s why I left my home in Alaska for a shot at taking our country back, putting America at the top of the charts again, preparing the nation for whatever may befall her. It was a worthy cause, and I gave it everything I had, and just because we lost doesn’t mean we have to abandon our dream of a godly nation.

  Not at all. In fact, let’s redouble our efforts and our prayers and make Alaska a shining beacon of traditional values for the rest of the country to follow. We may be the smallest state in terms of population, but we can be the leader in restoring the union to the faith of its founders, who we celebrate tomorrow on Independence Day.

  As to the second question — hey, give me a break, will ya? It’s only been a month since the election; I need to catch my breath. Tell Juneau that I’ll be back in the office on Monday with new initiatives in hand. Tell ’em to quit worrying about me and to get their own wagons in gear. Recess is over. It’s time to knuckle down and move Alaska forward.

  I ended it there. Hands shot up all across the yard. The reporters wanted to know what new initiatives I’d be proposing on Monday, something I wanted to know myself. It seemed I had a busy weekend ahead of me, so I waved away their questions and hustled back to the house with Bradd and Taiga.

  Later, Bradd dubbed the encounter with the fisherman my “burning fish” moment. I doubt it’s in the same class as Moses’ vision, but it has served as a bright demarkation in my life. There’s my life before the fisherman and my life after. My governorship before and after. My dedication to God’s plan. My purpose for being alive.

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  Sidebar: A Taste of Wormwood

  TW1 1.0

  TRUMPETS FIGURED LARGE in the Bible. You could scarcely smite your enemies without one.

  My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. (Jeremiah 4:19)

  Except for the rams-horn variety, Poppy couldn’t find anything in either testament to inform him what biblical trumpets were made of. He presumed that earthly trumpets were made of brass. But he was interested in heavenly trumpets, especially those recorded in Revelation. Yet those lacked descriptive detail of any sort. At least the Bible didn’t rul
e out heavenly glass.

  Of all the many trumpets mentioned in Revelation, the two that caught his attention were those associated with stars falling to Earth. Surely, what was the blinding light that had knocked him off his iron steed if not a falling star?

  The problem was that both of these trumpets spelled major trouble, and you didn’t want either of their associated stars to fall in your back yard.

  His trumpet might have belonged to the Third Angel:

  And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountain of waters;

  And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. (Rev 8:10, 11)

  If the falling star Poppy encountered was, in fact, the one known as Wormwood, the waters of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest were doomed. True, the pond the star fell into was frozen, but those ponds never froze completely. A trickle of water flowed even in the coldest weather. The road glaciers on the McHardy Road were proof enough of that. Eventually, the wormwood poison would seep into the Mizina River, which joined the Chitina, which flowed into the Copper, which emptied into the Gulf of Alaska at the northernmost corner of the Pacific Ocean.

  The Copper River watershed drained one sixth of Alaska’s land mass, and since Alaska was equal to one sixth the area of the Lower 48 states, that meant that one sixth of one sixth of America’s freshwater reserves would soon turn poisonous. Poppy had never been a star pupil in math, but even he knew that 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3. The “third part of the rivers.”

  Fortunately, his family was safe. They possessed seven million gallons of the freshest, sweetest water in the world. Moreover, their water was sheltered and secure in the bowels of a mountain. Pity everyone else downstream of them, saint and sinner alike. This was one more proof of Father God’s plan in bringing his family to this Promised Land.

  That is, if the fallen star was indeed the one known as Wormwood. By Father God’s grace, he could test whether or not it was so (whoever said a Christian man couldn’t be a scientist?) because Poppy actually knew how Wormwood tasted.

  Wormwood was an ingredient in absinthe, that foul, sea-serpent-green, hallucinogenic liquor that he and his first wife, Abbie, scored while in Paris on holiday when they couldn’t find any acid or mescaline. (This was, of course, before Poppy took Elder Brother Jesus as his personal savior.)

  Absinthe was nasty, nasty stuff. Vile and more bitter than even peyote buttons. And the quality of the high it engendered was downright hellish. Ecstasy it was not. Mellow Yellow it did not make you, nor Lucy-in-the-Sky-with Diamonds. More like a hot poker stabbing you in the eye, with venomous snakes dripping from the rafters, and every crack in the sidewalk an open wound. Wet death on the breath of his beloved. All hope lost.

  Nasty stuff, but Abbie said she liked it fine, and when a guy she met the following week offered her more — Gilles was his name, a thug and petty thief from Algiers — they had a party in Gilles’s room without Poppy. Wormwood, then, was the beginning of the end of Poppy’s first marriage.

  And now millions of American men, women, and children were about to be treated to a taste of the same medicine — that is, if the star was the one known as Wormwood.

  THE THIRD ANGEL was bad enough to deal with, but he was child’s play compared to the Fifth Angel.

  And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. (Rev 9:1)

  If the golden marble plugging the mouthpiece of the trumpet was the key to the bottomless pit, it would jeopardize Father God’s whole plan of salvation.

  The bottomless pit was the subterranean prison into which Elder Brother Jesus would banish Satan at the end of the Apocalypse and where He would bind him for a thousand years. Elder Brother Jesus would reign over a New Earth during that time in an unprecedented era of universal peace and harmony.

  But without the key to the pit, Satan could not be bound, the war in Heaven and on Earth would never end, and there would be no New Earth or New Jerusalem. Judgment Day itself would have to be postponed or cancelled. Losing the key turned the promise of salvation on its head. The saved would not be saved, and sinners would not be punished eternally in the lake of fire as was their due.

  A more immediate threat caused by a fumbling Fifth Angel would be the widespread effort to recover the key. Everyone in Heaven and Hell would be searching for it. Angels, devils, saints, and demons. And the combined armies of Gog and Magog would soon be beating a path to Poppy’s door.

  How could Father God tolerate such a clumsy angel? That angel deserved to have his wings clipped, or worse.

  Unlike the Wormwood star, Poppy could think of no way to test whether the golden marble was a key to the pit or to anything else. Grant me the wisdom, Holy Spirit, to know what to do. Amen.

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  Sidebar: So He Masturbated

  SH1 1.0

  SINCE THE END of tourist season and the absence of horny girls from Outside, Jace had been doing a lot of it. Usually in bed, assisted by a dollop of Vaseline and a couple of facial tissues. He was a skilled masturbator. The trick was in the quality of his imagination, the inventiveness of the sex scenarios he could conjure up, and the bootylisciousness of his fantasy partners.

  Though thoughts of Deuteronomy Prophecy ruled Jace’s waking hours, he never allowed himself to fantasize about her while spanking the monkey. It was a matter of honor for him. He respected her too much to use her for sex without her permission, not even in his imagination. Even mental rape was rape. When they eventually did make sweet, hot love in reality, if they ever did, his heart would be pure.

  Deut Prophecy looked up at his entrance into the bathhouse. She suppressed a smile and went back to the business of folding the family’s laundry on the long, wooden table. Only the pink flush of her cheeks revealed her interest. Her eyebrows were so fair as to be all but invisible on her brow — until she blushed!

  She was, he told himself all over again, the most unlikely young woman a powerful and god-hating governmental employee could ever expect to make himself a fool over. She was Christian Taliban. She had a heavily armed posse of older brothers who hated his guts and a father who would gladly pitchfork him in the throat.

  No, that would not do.

  Instead, Jace usually chose one of the girls of summer for his partner, a real girl he’d actually boinked or wanted to boink but never got the chance. And always waiting at the front of the queue was the French girl. Danielle was the hottest girl he’d ever made love to, and she had given herself to him wet and eager that first time in Anchorage. There was still a lot of good masturbatory material to mine from that encounter, but most of Jace’s fantasies sprang from her brief visit to his McHardy “chalet.”

  In a way, these sessions with Danielle followed a “do-over” script. And they were much bloodier than his usual erotic reveries. They began with some fresh insult from the Prophecy clan, over which Jace would confront the cowardly bastards and trade them blow for blow. Sometimes he delivered nothing more than a drubbing, a bloody nose, or a broken bone with witty riposte: Who’s your savior now? Usually, the target of Jace’s retribution was the surly one, Proverbs, and the confrontation escalated from fisticuffs to bodily dismemberment. Knives, axes, chainsaws — that sort of thing. Whenever Jace killed off Proverbs, Danielle was right there, an eager witness. The brutish callousness with which he butchered the boy never failed to arouse her. Often she became so hot that he had to break off the fight to fuck her on the spot, even as Proverbs’ arterial blood squirted from his body. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  SH2 1.0

  FOR DEUT’S PART, she never did it, not once. If pressed on the matter, blushing fiercely, she wouldn’t even know what the word masturbation meant. Except that, whatever it was, it was a devastating sin and Satan’s tool to lead young Christians away from Father Go
d. Deut didn’t need to know more than that, and frankly, with Mama P on vacation in Heaven, she didn’t have anyone she could ask. (Not that Mama P had ever discussed sex with her anyway.)

  Actually, it was impossible to grow up in the country and not witness Father God’s creatures engaging in procreation. Goats, horses, donkeys all did it no matter who was watching. The rabbit bucks they raised were especially randy little beasts, and a dog they once owned tried to mate with anyone or anything, even your leg, once even with a chicken. (Poppy got rid of him soon after.) But as Mama told them, it didn’t mean you had to watch.

  The few times Deut had brought up the subject of sex, Mama told her to wait. When the time came — meaning when she was betrothed to marry — they would have a talk and all would be explained. Exactly where Deut would find a suitable mate while locked up in a cave for seven years was a mystery. But Father God was sure to provide. After all, didn’t He find matches for Adam and Proverbs?

  Now that Mama was on vacation, there really wasn’t anyone to ask about these things. For a while Deut considered broaching the subject of masturbation with Ginger. Ginger lived in the fallen world, but she was still godly and faith-filled. She even went out on dates with boys. She would have a wholesome take on the matter. Still, masturbation was not something Deut would bring up on her own.