Resurrection (32 page)

Now, Mitch could have given a high hairy shit
what
Miriam believed in or didn’t believe in, but you didn’t go shoveling this neo-facist bullshit down the throats of impressionable children. You just didn’t.

And handguns? Jesus, you just didn’t pass them out to kids.

“That’s what she kept saying,” Rita told him. “Then when you came up on the porch, she told us to shoot you. And when we wouldn’t, she shot at you instead.”

On the floor, Miriam looked like a cobra all coiled up and ready to spit its venom. Her eyes were fixed and glassy and she was trembling like something in her was ready to explode. Mitch figured if Tommy and he hadn’t been there, she would have killed Rita and Rhonda. Bloody drool was hanging from her lower lip and she did not seem to care.

She made to open her mouth and Tommy shook his head.

She closed it just as quick.

“What happened then?” Mitch asked.

Rita shrugged. “Then I hit her. I punched her in the face twice.”

She was so honest about it, so completely matter-of-fact, that Mitch almost started laughing. Miriam did not seem to think it was funny, though. Her right eye was nearly closed now, black-and-blue and in need of a cold steak. Mitch had to turn away from her. No, it was not exactly humorous that some eleven-year old toughie had flattened her, but at the same time, it
was.
If Rita had not acted quickly and decisively, Miriam might have killed Tommy or he. There was a very good chance of that. Mitch knew those girls had balls—the entire neighborhood was very much aware of
that
—he just never knew how
much
balls. Until now. He could just about envision it in his mind. Miriam going coo-coo and blasting at the door and Rita stepping over and giving her two shots to the face that dropped the old bitch.

And lookit that shiner, will ya? That kid has some kind of hook on her!

Miriam was rocking back and forth on her haunches. She was into her seventies, just a kid by Wanda Sepperly’s gauge, but still pretty old. But looking at her there, she looked not only spry but dangerous.

“Am I allowed to talk now?” she said in her characteristically shrill, catty tone.

Nobody objected. But Rita’s eyes narrowed and you could see the threat in them, the promise to Miriam that if she started running down her parents again, there was a whole can of ass-whooping still on the shelf, seal never broken, and it had Miriam’s name on it.

Mitch thought she was going to start shouting at the girls again, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “I know you, Mitch Barron. Oh yes, I’ve got your number, Mister Union Man. Don’t think I don’t.”

“It’s in the book,” Mitch said.

Then she looked right at Tommy. “But you? I don’t know you. Now tell me, hotshot, are you a Republican or a Democrat?”

Tommy looked like he was going to laugh, but he held it in. “Neither. I think they’re all a bunch of freaking parasites. So I think you’ve got my number, too.”

Miriam looked like she was ready to leap. “If my husband were alive—”

“If you’re fucking husband was alive, you old hag, I’d hope he’d have more sense than to be handing out guns to grade school kids,” Tommy said to her.

Mitch figured the both of them were about to launch into some half-ass argument, but that didn’t happen. Because the Kneale Street posse arrived.

11

They were one sorry sight: Margaret Boyne and her son Russel, and Lou Darin, the district school superintendent.

“We heard shots,” Margaret said and then saw Miriam Blake sitting there, beaten and bloody. “Oh my God…what happened?”

Mitch said, “Miriam ran out of clay ducks so she thought she’d use us instead.”

He briefly sketched in what had transpired and Miriam didn’t even try to stop him. She looked right at him as he told his story, a scowl on her face. She made sure everyone could see that scowl and how her eyes rolled upwards in their sockets like it was the biggest load of bullshit Mitch Barron had ever shoveled.

Russel just stood there with that stupid expression on his face, the same one he got when people dared asked him how a healthy man pushing forty could live off his mother and never do a day’s honest work. “There’s been weird shit going on all over town. I been hearing things you wouldn’t believe. This whole thing’s like Y2K…except it’s real this time, it’s really happening.”

Margaret just nodded. She always nodded to what Russel said. Maybe the rest of the neighborhood thought he was a bum, but you’d never convince his mother of that.

Lou Darin, however, did not seem interested. “Well, I for one am not surprised. Anyone with all these guns is bound to crack sooner or later.”

Tommy said, “I have a gun and I got more at home.”

Darin just nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you do.”

Mitch had once most colorfully described Lou Darin as a prick wrapped in an asshole and then dipped in a cunt. That had gotten its share of laughs around the neighborhood because Darin wasn’t exactly real popular. He thought he lived in a gated yuppie community sometimes instead of your very average American working class neighborhood. He had numerous times went before the town council trying to get dogs outlawed in the city limits, clotheslines prohibited, and colorful molded plastic children’s toys of the Little Tike’s ilk banned from yards…these things made the neighborhoods look trashy which brought down property values, you know. He was generally disliked on the school board he lorded over and several parent’s groups had tried unsuccessfully to have him removed from office. Lou Darin was the sort of guy who’d run a red light and then swear at you if you dared beep at him. And when he was asked why he couldn’t seem to balance the school’s budget after four years in office, he was quick to point out that it was the fault of the guy
before
him. Because it certainly couldn’t be Lou Darin’s fault. Maybe he didn’t go around with a button that said I AM GOD…but then he didn’t have to.

Margaret helped Miriam up onto the sofa and Mitch told the Zirblanksi twins to go over to his house, wait there with Lily.
Maybe after Miriam, she won’t seem quite so nutty to you guys.
He hated himself for thinking shit like that, but he was worried. About her. About Chrissy. About a lot of things.

Tommy lit a cigarette and Miriam did not object. “Listen to me, all of you. I don’t know where you’ve been today or what you might have seen, but there’s some ugly shit going on in this town. I’ve seen it and I still don’t believe it myself. There’s gonna be shit happening tonight. Bad shit. Now, me and Mitch have been going through the neighborhood here, just warning people. It’s gonna be dark soon and all of you had better just lock your doors and wait it out.”

Which got Russel nodding his head. “He’s right. From what I been hearing, there’s things out in the rain. Things like dead people walking around.”

“Excuse me?”
Lou Darin said. “Did I just hear you right? Because certainly I could not have. Dead people walking around? Are you losing your mind? We’ve got a situation out there, surely, but I hardly think we’ve stumbled into a trashy B-movie.”

“Maybe we have,” Mitch said.

Russel said, “It’s more than that, Mr. Darin. A lot more. There were these people came knocking at our door—mom you were still at work—and they started talking, started telling me stuff and it all fits in. This is the end of the world. That’s what it is. It’s all in the
Book of Enoch…
said so in the pamphlet they gave me. God is sending this flood to wash people off the earth. To punish them for being wicked and stuff. They said that foul abominations will crawl forth from the cellar of hell. That’s what they said and I believe them.”

His mother kept nodding her head. Though, truth be told, to Margaret, the
Book of Enoch
could have been a collection of dirty jokes for all she knew. But if Russel had said it, well, then it had to be true.

As Lou Darin rolled his eyes, Tommy said, “Excuse me, but who were these
people
that came to your door?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Oh, no, I’d really like to hear this,” Lou Darin said.

Russel got a little red around the cheeks like somebody had just sandpapered his face. “They were Jehovah’s Witnesses…but I don’t see why that matters.”

“The JoHo’s?” Tommy said. “Christ, I lived next door to one for years. They predict the end of the world every time the Pope farts.”

Russel stared at him. “You know, I don’t recall you being from this neighborhood, smartass. Who the hell are you?”

Tommy smiled. “I’m a spy sent by the Seventh Day Adventists.”

Even Lou Darin managed a thin smile at that. “Let’s try and be rational here, shall we? These individuals you’re talking about, Russel…well, they’re
fringe.
You can’t go around believing anyone who wears an END OF THE WORLD placard. People like that are a dime a dozen. So, no, sorry, I think maybe you’re more than a little gullible, but don’t expect me to stand here and listen to that sort of nonsense.” Then he looked over at Russel’s mom. “Margaret? Are you with me on this?”

Oh, Christ, now that was tough. Margaret never disagreed with Russel. She looked from Darin to her son. “Well, I, um…that is…”

But Mitch saved her. “All right,” he said, “I want you to listen to what I have to say. You may not like it, but you’re gonna listen. You’re gonna hear what I have to say.”

They were all looking at him, so he started talking. He told them about the things at Sadler Brother’s and the living severed arm, the burned woman in the culvert pipe and what happened at Lisa Bell’s house. And finished it all off with what came up out of the flooded cellar of Bonnie’s One-Stop over in Elmwood Hills. He left out the part about the dead man exploding when they’d mowed him down in Tommy’s truck. Thing was, about half way through his tale that sounded like something he’d cribbed from a horror comic like
The Vault of Horror,
he started to run out of steam. It was the subject matter. By the time he’d finished he didn’t even sound like he believed it himself.

Of course, halfway through, Lou Darin began to roll his eyes and then shake his head. He took off his glasses, wiped them clean on a tissue, and then put them back on in time to roll his eyes yet again.

“What do you take me for?” he finally said when nobody laughed. Because he’d spent any number of years in the school system and he’d heard his share of whoppers told by kids and this had to be something along those lines. “No, really, Mitch: what in the hell do you take me for? Do you think I’m a complete idiot that will believe any ridiculous story shoved down my throat? Do I look stupid? What do you think I am?”

Miriam was grinning ear to ear, just eating it up.

Tommy said, “Go ahead, Mitch, tell him what you think he is.”

“I think maybe you should stay out of this,” Lou Darin warned him. “Because, you know, you wiseass, we’ve got enough trouble without every idiot in the city crawling out of the woodwork and flapping their mouth. So, as I said, I think maybe you should just stay out of this.”

Tommy had the smirk on his face that told Mitch he was looking for a fight. And would keep looking until he found one. “And I think maybe your mother should have kept her legs crossed.”

Lou Darin was a very slick and officious man. He was master and commander and he was not used to being talked to like that. Standing there in his yellow L.L. Bean Southwester with his three-piece Kuppenheimer’s pinstripe beneath and his shiny black rubbers, you could see he was a man who demanded respect. “Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that? Do you know who I am, you inbred little shit?”

“Easy now,” Tommy said. “You make ‘inbreeding’ sound like a bad thing.”

“It’s all just like the pamphlet said,” Russel piped up. “These are the End Times and all the horrors of hell have been unleashed.”

Miriam started laughing. “Well, isn’t this a fine kettle of fish, Mr. Mitch Barron! See what you and your kind have brought about? Do you see the evils you have set lose? You and your effing unions and your no prayer in school? Do you see what you’ve set into motion?”

Margaret had tears in her eyes. She looked like she wanted to swoon.

Mitch just stood there, getting pissed and feeling frustrated.
If this really is the end of the world,
he thought,
then God must be laughing his ass off, because he left it in real good hands.
He looked over at Tommy and Tommy just shrugged.

“I’m telling you, each and everyone of you, what I saw out there today,” Mitch tried again in a very calm voice, speaking very slowly. “I’m not making this shit up. I wish to God above that I was, but I am not. I have nothing to gain by lying here.”

“Except to stir a general panic,” Lou Darin pointed out. “And I believe there are laws against that. Now listen to me, all of you. This has gone far enough. Halloween is some weeks away and I’m really not in the mood for anymore ghost stories.” Then he turned to Mitch. “You know, I would have thought better of you, Mitch. A lot better. I would have thought you would have known better than to play silly, childish games like this. No, no, don’t waste your time arguing. I can see it in your eyes and, believe me, I couldn’t possibly swallow that nonsense. I don’t believe in ghosts or the boogeyman or prophecy for that matter. I know there are no such things. The sun rises and it sets. The sky is blue and the world keeps turning.”