Ravens (16 page)

Shaw had organized it. Everyone was supposed to gather at the spillway to watch the meteor shower, the Perseids. Shaw said
the spillway was situated over a ‘ley line of power’ — whatever that was — and from that vantage point the meteor shower would
spell out some essential truth about the universe. He said forty people had agreed to come. He said there were pretty girls
on that list. Romeo went with him to the liquor store where they bought six quarts of Johnnie Walker and a lot of beer, cups,
ice, and Doritos; then they climbed up onto the levee above the rushing water. It was a perfectly clear August night. But
nobody showed except Chris and Pissboy and Ricky Cobb’s cousin from Toledo.

The five of them sat there and drank. Looking up at the sky, making comments about the bitches who hadn’t shown. The meteor
shower was disappointing. It wasn’t like a fireworks show; it was just occasional pale streaks in the sky. But the watchers
were patient, since they had nothing else to do, and finally there came a sky-crossing that was worth the wait. Slow and pompous,
a fiery strut, a star that knew it was a
star
. The boys on the levee cheered and whistled and were sad to see it burn out. Then they got quiet. Romeo was trying to figure
out why nobody had come. Obviously, Shaw wasn’t as popular as he’d been in the old days. The stupid tech job was eating him
up. He was doing too much chronic and too much dex, and the years were elbowing past him. Maybe he was getting a little weird.
Restless, too strident, a surfeit of visions. These days he scared away a lot more girls than he scored. You started to think
he’d be doing tech support in the Piqua/Dayton area when he was sixty — unless he got adventurous and moved to Cincinnati.

And me the same, Romeo thought.

One by one Chris and Pissboy and the guy from Toledo passed out. Then it was just Shaw and Romeo. Shaw said that, in his judgment,
nobody in southwestern Ohio knew how to fucking
live
. He talked about the need to live passionately. “Which of our friends lives passionately? Not one. Not
one.
I mean there’s a difference between existing and really
living.
”

Then he told Romeo, “Now what
you
do, is you live. If it weren’t for you, I believe I might fucking kill myself.” He was serious. And drunk, and in a state
of agitation.

He said, “I don’t know if anything lasts or not. Give it a thousand years, does anything count for shit? I don’t know. You
look up at those fucking billion-year-old stars, could anything down here count for shit? Does anything last? But I bet one
thing lasts. This thing
we
have, between the two of us. This friendship? This will last. In some form. Because this is the only worthwhile fucking thing
in history.”

Romeo was too moved to say anything.

Shaw went on, “No, I mean it, you and me, we’re gonna keep reverberating through this universe. When all the dull assholes
who didn’t show up tonight have been reduced to their fucking muons and quarks, you’ll still get an echo of
us
— this I guarantee.”

And now, remembering all this two years later, Romeo didn’t feel like driving anymore. He couldn’t go home to Ohio. He couldn’t
leave Shaw.

Just short of Darien, at the entrance to the Two-Way Fish Camp, he turned around and drove back to the Wick.

Tara
was made crazy by all the calls. The calls came in from Fox News, from the
Bombay Times
, from some megachurch evangelist who begged an audience. Various unknown Boatwrights called. The Faith Renewal Church of
Greenville, South Carolina, called. Senator DeWine’s office called. Mom’s friends called to say they were organizing a big
Jackpot Party for tonight.

By now nobody in the family was bothering to pick up, but the recording kept playing. The voice of Jase: “Yeah, you got the
Boatwrights, but we’re too lazy to answer,” then the
beep,
then importunities from all over the world. This routine growing more and more unbearable till finally Tara said, “Hey, could
we shut that off for a while?”

Shaw was at the little faux-empire desk, studying Mom’s Bible, marking key passages in yellow. He looked beaky, owlish, fevered.
“What?”

“The message machine. Do we have to keep it on?”

He said, “What if Oprah calls?”

Tara knew she was supposed to smile, but she was too weary. She lowered her eyes. He relented: “Yeah, sure. Turn it off. Oprah
knows where to find us when she’s ready.”

She pulled the plug. Then they just sat there, listening to the squeak of Shaw’s magic marker, and the dying on Jase’s Micro,
and the accumulating hubbub out on the street. You’d think all this might disturb a man trying to pull off a hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar
extortion. But Shaw kept serenely highlighting that Bible. If anything, the fuss seemed to please him. He chuckled when he
heard some woman outside insisting: “We’re from the
Today
show! Don’t tell me you don’t know what the
Today
show is!”

Then Trevor: “The family’s not giving any interviews. But I’ll give them the message.”

“Just two minutes! If you could let Matt Lauer have two
minutes
—”

“Ma’am, I gotta say, you’re trespassing.”

“Think of the good that Shaw could do with an appearance on —”

Trevor: “You see the number I’m dialing here? I’m dialing 911.”

Romeo
got back to the trailer and found that Claude was still by himself. Looking wretched and smelling like a pot of fermented
cabbage. Romeo gave him a few pumps of morphine, and straightened up the trailer. He washed the dishes. He took out the garbage.
He vacuumed. Then he gave the old man a sponge bath.

At Hermann’s Candle Shoppe in the mall, he’d bought a true sponge from the ocean. Now he found an enamel pot under the sink
— which reminded him of the bedpan his mother used to set out whenever he was sick — and he scrubbed out the grime and the
cobwebs, and filled it full of hot soapy water. He set down clean towels on one side of the bed, and rolled Claude onto them.
In turning him on his belly you had to be careful not to bruise him, and make sure he was breathing OK. Bear in mind you’ve
never handled anything so perishable before.

Claude groaned when the sponge touched his back.

“Too hot?” said Romeo.

“No no. It’s. Good.”

Romeo started at Claude’s shoulders and worked his way down. Where the skin was pocked and mottled, its texture resembled
the sponge, but Romeo didn’t find that repellent. Even Claude’s swollen calves didn’t bother him — even that horseshoe-crab
mockery of a pelvis, even cleaning around the withered asshole. When he had finished the feet, he turned Claude back over,
and did his front. The old man’s testicles were prodigious: a brace of quail in a leather sack. Everything else had shrunk
up, but not his nuts.

But his stomach was ticklish, like a little child’s.

Romeo had made it all the way up to the gossamer ribcage when he heard a car outside. He looked out and saw Wynetta’s pickup,
and the sight dismayed him.

“Your daughter’s here.”

“Oh.” Claude made a gesture: cover me. Romeo got the sheet pulled up just before Wynetta came bursting in. She went right
to her father’s side and spoke with unnatural volume, as though a court bailiff had just told her to speak up: “Oh, Daddy,
I’m sorry! I haven’t had no fuckin cell phone! If you knew how crazy everything’s been!”

Claude gave her his sweet wobbly toothless smile. “It’s OK.”

“I’m so
fuckin
sorry.”

“No. Problem.”

Now she regarded Romeo. Her lips curled into a sneer. “Oh, shit, the stoned elf. What
you
doing here?”

Claude explained, “He’s taking. Care of me.”

She said, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Were you giving him medicine?”

“Yeah,” Romeo admitted.

She said, “You an RN?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t give him medicine. God. Daddy, he didn’t make you mess with your
will
, did he?”

Claude shut his eyes.

“God,” she said, “Where the hell is Joanie? She’s supposed to
be
here. God damn it to hell. I knew I shouldn’t trust that bitch.”

“It’s OK,” said Claude. “I’m good.”

“Daddy, you know where I was? I was in Tifton. I went to Tifton with that Greek fucktard? And it’s like, I lost my cell phone,
I don’t even know the number of my own father, ’cause all the numbers were on my cell phone. And then I was trying to get
that shitwad to give me a ride home like he said he would, but he’s like Numero Uno Selfish Cocksucker of the Universe, oh,
Jesus, and I keep telling him, my
daddy
! My poor daddy’s
sick.
God fuck it.”

Claude smiled at her, with all the forgiveness he could bring to bear.

Wynetta turned to Romeo. “Hey, fucktoad. I know what you want, but you ain’t gonna get it. My daddy is not your meal ticket.
You can clear the fuck out of here. Right now.”

Claude said, “Wynetta.”

“What?”

“He’s been good. To me.”

“Oh, Daddy. If you knew. I been crying all the way back here. I ’bout had a wreck in Nahunta. Is there any beer?” She opened
the fridge. Stuck her head in, and moved things while she searched. Her voice came out flattened. “You didn’t drink the PBRs
in here, did you?”

Claude took Romeo’s hand and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

But Wynetta had already pulled her head out of the fridge, and she heard this. She said: “Uh-uh. No sir. You come between
me and my daddy? I’ll make you bleed outta your
ass
.”

Patsy
set up her laptop in the kitchen, and went to Bible Gateway.com, to spend some serious time with Scripture. Vowing to herself
to go easy on the gin today, and keep far from the temptations of Malibu. Just let me find some gentle parable to give me
strength. Sweet Jesus? I’m in your hands. This is your little lost lamb Patsy. Please, Lord. Deliver me from Evil and from
these Demons who have come into my life!

But while scrolling through the pages of the Holy Book, she felt more lost than ever. What the hell was all this gobbledy
gobbledy? The massacres of Chronicles, the oppression of Kings, the merciless butchery of Judges: where was the comfort? Pretty
soon her eyes began to glaze over. She sighed, and huddled herself closer to the screen. And sneaked a quick trip over to
Google. Keying in:

luxury homes

Just for one minute, she thought.

But the houses she found seemed too generic and suburbs-of-Fort-Worth, so she amended her search to:

luxury homes ca

That was better — she got some very nice pictures of estates in Brentwood and Bel Air. The residents were maybe not the cream
of the A-list, but they weren’t warmed-over reality stars either. They had respectable properties. Cobblestoned drives, box
hedges. Still, there was something missing. Everything looked kind of stodgy and lonely, and she surfed from one house to
another without satisfaction until finally she gave in and added that magic elixir:

luxury homes ca Malibu

Just for one bittersweet minute!

The first place she came to was a twenty-two-million-dollar hideaway in the Colony that looked, she thought, like the concrete-block
rest-room station at the Welcome Center on I-95. I can’t
believe
this; these places can’t cost this much! I bet I could get this for
half
what they’re asking! If I even wanted it, which I
don’t
—

Shaw came into the kitchen.

“What you looking at, Patsy?”

She touched her way back to BibleGateway.com just in time, just before he came to peer over her shoulder.

She said, “I’m looking at The Book of Nehemiah. The Word of Our Lord. Is that permitted?”

“Sure,” he said. But then he grinned and reached down and checked her History. It was all right there — luxury homes, luxury
homes ca, luxury homes ca Malibu — and he laughed. “More like The Book of Brangelina. What a comfort in times of stress! What’re
you drinking, darling?”

“I’m not drinking.”

“Well, let’s get to it, girl. This is a time for celebration. How about a couple of g&ts?”

“Oh, not for me,” she said.

“All right. Make me one?”

She shrugged. She got up and fixed him a drink so strong it smelled like Christmas. An aroma so endearing she changed her
mind and made a little one for herself as well.

She came back and handed him his drink, and sat. He said, “You think I’m messing with your dreams, don’t you?”

She gave her ice a swirl.

He said, “I just want you to understand, I’m not going to cost you money. I’m going to
make
you money. You’ll be much richer because of me. This I guarantee. You’re going to make a billion dollars. One
billion
. You think I’m insane, but I’m telling you the truth. You know how I’m gonna make you a billion dollars?”

She kept her eyes down. Thinking, one
billion
?

“Because you haven’t just won the jackpot here. What you’ve done, you’ve become a receiver of God’s power.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. She was wondering how much a billion was.

He went on: “There’s all this power passing through us, every second. Radio waves, TV waves. Messages from distant stars.
Currents of pure healing. All the power in the universe just passing through us all the time — except not through you, Patsy.
Because when the power gets to you, it stops. You
receive
the power. Which everyone is starting to notice. Everyone’s in awe of you, because the power of the Lord is with you. And
I’m going to make sure it stays with you. Everyone will read your books. Everyone will watch your videos. Everyone will come
to hear you speak.”

“Me?” she said. “Are you kidding?”

“They’ll pay you not millions, but tens of millions.”

Was he
toying
with her? Was this just a string of lies to amuse himself? But he was looking right at her like he really meant every crazy
thing he was saying.

“Within two months, I guarantee, you’ll be having lunch with Oprah. Dinner with Regis. You’ll have weekends with Montel Williams
and Dr. Phil. And when I say a billion? I’m dead serious. Actually, I’m lowballing it a little. You could wind up with more
money than Bill Gates. The only question is what’re you gonna do with it once you get it?”