Salvation City (29 page)

She was smiling, her head tilted to one side, watching him as if she was seeing something curious about him, or something she hadn’t noticed before. He thought she had never looked so soft. She had never looked so beautiful.
Something awesome is going to happen.
Something awesome was happening right now. She was standing just inches away from him. He thought he smelled peaches. He held the cookie mush in his mouth, unable to speak, unable to swallow.

She lifted her shoulders high and then dropped them again, an exaggerated gesture, followed by an exaggerated sigh. “I was just thinking how much love for you there is in this house.” She gazed upward, as if this love were something that could be seen, a pink cloud floating by . . . Cole pretended to see it, too. She said, “I feel so blessed that you’re part of my family.”

Touch me
, his heart boomed. And to his astonishment she did. She put her arms around him, and because she was wearing her hair up today he was able to press his face right into the curve of her neck, where it fit like a puzzle piece. Not marble-cool like he’d always imagined, but very, very warm. She squirmed when she felt his lips move, and then, as if she’d heard a scream for help or smelled something burning, she broke free and fled the room.

Cole waited for gravity to pull him earthward again. He spat the half-chewed cookie into his palm and threw it into the trash. A tingling sensation low in his belly made him want to get behind a closed door as quickly as possible. But first he checked his e-mail.

Still no message from Addy.

THE MESSAGE WAS THERE the next morning. Addy was back in Berlin.

But she did not want Cole to think she had abandoned him.

He didn’t answer right away. He was glad to know Addy was safe, but right now he couldn’t think about her or about going anywhere. Starlyn was leaving tomorrow. He didn’t know when he’d see her again. That was all Cole could think about.

THREE DAYS AFTER she’d driven to Salvation City to take her daughter home, Taffy called her sister Tracy. Her speech was so distorted she had to repeat herself twice before she could make herself understood.

That morning, she’d slept through the alarm (the lovebirds had been out two-stepping the night before) and was rushing to get ready to go to her job at the insurance office where she worked as a receptionist. She wondered about Starlyn, who was usually up before her. She hoped her daughter wasn’t coming down with some bug.

When she was ready to leave the house, Taffy went to Starlyn’s room and found her gone.

“Nothing else is missing. Not her backpack or iPod or even her wallet. No makeup or toiletries, far’s I can tell, and none of her clothes. The things she was wearing yesterday, everything, including her flip-flops and her teensies, the angel locket you got her for her birthday, her scrunchy, her watch, her tears-of-Christ pendant, her purity bracelet—it’s all there in a heap on the floor. And her cell’s sitting on her dresser.”

The shock had knocked Taffy flat. “When I come to, I was laying face down across her bed.”

Later that same day, Lucinda Boyle, who was feeling too unsteady to leave her bed, called her next-door neighbor, Rutha Mae. She didn’t mean to be any trouble, she said, but her son had left the house that morning to get a prescription for her muscle relaxant filled and he hadn’t come back. She’d tried calling him but he wasn’t answering. “Which, you know, ain’t half like Mase.” Who answered his phone even while leading Bible group.

Rutha Mae said she was sure there was a simple explanation, that if anything had happened to Mason they’d surely have heard by now, but she’d be right over anyhow so Lucinda didn’t have to wait all by her lonesome. She’d bring some pineapple loaf cake, Rutha Mae said.

Minutes later, as she approached the house, Rutha Mae was surprised to see Mason’s car parked in the garage. The garage door being open, Rutha Mae stepped inside, where she saw some clothes scattered on the floor.

“Everything he put on that morning,” Rutha Mae reported later. “Plus his wallet and his keys and phone, and that silver stud he always wore in his ear? Everything but his tattoos! He must’ve been just about to get in the car.”

COLE FOUND PW SITTING ALONE out on the back porch. The temperature had finally dropped, and the evening was humid but cool—too cool to be wearing nothing but a pair of baggy shorts. But that was how you’d usually find PW dressed these days.

The rash and the blisters that had itched him to such distraction were gone. But PW was not yet out from under the devil’s whip. He could not bear the weight of even the lightest cloth against certain parts of his torso. A draft of air touching one of those spots was sometimes enough to make him hop up and down in pain.

Postherpetic neuralgia. Something to do with the nerves being confused and sending false messages to the brain. Occurring in about twenty percent of shingles cases, according to the doctor, and PW’s case appeared to be unusually bad. The painkillers the doctor gave him weren’t doing much good. Nor could the doctor say how long the condition would last. Maybe months, maybe years. He did not say maybe forever, but that grim possibility was understood.

The doctor was worried about PW’s mental state. He wanted to put him on antidepressants. PW refused at first (“Rather put my faith in prayer”), and later, when he changed his mind, the antidepressants, like the prayer and the painkillers before them, would not do the trick.

One day worse than usual—the whip lashes raining down especially hard and thick—PW resorted to bourbon, whose medicinal effects he hadn’t forgotten, and discovered that here was something that did help, if only a little, and only if he drank a lot.

 

 

 

“What is it, son? What’s on your mind? Here, come sit closer to me.”

Was it a sin to find the smell of whiskey on a person’s breath so pleasant? (Cole’s parents had drunk only beer and wine, both of which, like coffee, left smells he found gross.)

Not so pleasant was the way the whiskey messed with PW’s speech and sometimes even made him drool. Also, Cole could not get used to him being half naked all the time. Something about those beefy shoulder pads, the tufts and whorls of black hair, and the Hershey’s Kiss-like nipples hidden in there made Cole shy away from sitting
too
close on the wicker sofa.

“It’s about Starlyn.”

“Yeah?”

“I think Mason kidnapped her.”

“Now, why on earth would you say a thing like that?”

A promise is sacred.
Cole chose his words carefully. “Because—because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would just the two of them be raptured and nobody else?”

PW breathed a pungent sigh. “First of all, it hasn’t even been one whole day yet. Second, Scripture tells us very little about the rapture, so we don’t really know what to expect. No one knows the hour or day, not even the angels in heaven, according to Matthew. Only God the father knows. So maybe it was never intended for all believers to be taken away in exactly the same breath. We don’t know. Like we don’t know what’s going to happen in the
next
breath, either.”

Cole didn’t understand how PW could be so calm. Others, he knew, were nowhere near calm. In fact, something very different from the joyful and triumphant celebration Cole had heard so often and so confidently foretold was now unfolding in Salvation City. To the stream of callers wanting to know such things as whether they should climb up on their roofs or keep their doors and windows open, whether they should eat normally or start fasting, whether it was okay to have sex, or safe to drive, and what should they do about the dog—whether there was any chance they’d actually missed the rapture and were now officially left behind, and how could such a thing have happened (“Weren’t we
promised
we were saved?”), and how much time did they have before the tribulation began in earnest—to all these confused and shaken souls Pastor Wyatt responded alike: Be patient. Gather with your loved ones. Stay home. Wait. Pray.

Their own household had been turned upside down. Poor Tracy had already had enough to cope with in the weeks since Addy’s arrival. Now her legs kept giving out from under her as if she’d been struck by a palsy. After she toppled downstairs, spraining her ankle and splitting open her eyebrow, PW had ordered her to bed. He made her swallow a handful of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him and which he knew had a sleep-inducing effect. She had slipped into oblivion babbling blessings and prayers, convinced that when she opened her eyes again she’d be resting on the clouds of 1 Thessalonians.

“I’ll be the first to admit I am not sure what’s happening,” said PW. “But I’m also sure the Lord will let us know all we need to know in his own time. Have faith, and the mystery shall be revealed.”

“But there’s no mystery,” said Cole. “There’s an explanation.”

“What? Two people naked as Adam and Eve and without a penny on ’em walk off into the yonder without anyone taking notice?”

“Mason—”

“Oh right, the Great Kidnapper. And how’d he get to Louisville without his car?”

“There are other ways!”

“Hunh!” PW lurched in his seat as if he’d been Tasered. “It’s okay, son,” he said quickly. “I’m all right.” But he spoke through gritted teeth, and his face was milk white. “Don’t look so scared.” He tried to smile. “It hurts worse to see you scared.”

Every time this happened—and it could happen several times a day—Cole felt not only scared but the worst kind of helpless. All he could do was sit and watch as PW struggled, breathing shallowly, skin sheened with sweat despite the cool air. Cole sometimes wondered why the bigger a person was, the bigger their pain could seem. The way a suffering whale was so much worse to imagine than a suffering mouse.

PW reached down to the floor next to the sofa and picked up a bottle Cole hadn’t known was there. He took a few large sips and put the bottle back in its spot. Then he sagged back against the sofa cushion, a fist to his mouth, and bowed his head. Under his breath, but loud enough to be heard, he asked God to forgive his weakness.