Salvation City (30 page)

If it was part of God’s plan, then suffering was not an evil but a blessing. This was something PW often said when preaching about sickness and pain. Cole had also heard him say that he would not be suffering so severely now unless God was punishing him. “And it’s for me to search my heart for what I’ve done to displease him.” Cole thought he had a pretty good idea what that thing might be. But PW never wavered from his testimony that in everything regarding Cole he had done God’s will.

There was no mistaking the Lord’s voice, PW had told him. It was the morning after Addy’s visit and they were sitting in the den. PW had one hand on Cole’s shoulder and the other on the massive desk Bible. “When the Lord speaks to you, the words enter you in a special way. They become part of your flesh, and they never leave you.”

The Lord had spoken. He had spoken clearly. And his words were
save the boy
.

Three times in one night he had woken PW with the same message. “And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

But why, oh why, Cole had to ask himself, didn’t Jesus send a message to him and Addy, too? Wouldn’t that have helped them all?

PW picked up the bottle again. It was past sunset now, and the dark was like some night animal rubbing its furred flanks up against the porch screens.

PW drank and drank. It was as if they could not start talking again until every drop was gone. Each time he took the bottle away from his lips he let out a heavy sigh, aromatizing the air with bourbon like room spray.

Just as Cole was beginning to think he’d been forgotten, PW reached over and punched him playfully on the shoulder.

“So let me get this straight. You’re saying Mason somehow got himself to Louisville, sneaked into Starlyn’s house, bopped her over the head like a caveman, and dragged her off by the hair?”

Cole refused even to smile.

“Mighty strange he waited till she was gone, don’t you think? When just a couple days ago she was here? How’d you explain that?”

Cole said nothing. What was the point in explaining anything? Why couldn’t PW see the truth? What was wrong with Tracy, and Starlyn’s mother? What was wrong with them all? By the time they caught on (and Cole was beginning to fear this might never happen), Mason and Starlyn would be far away. In his mind, they were headed to Mexico and a life of drugs and sin.

PW spoke as if he’d been able to read Cole’s thoughts. “Okay, then. That’s the case, what we got to do is examine what happened and why it happened like it did. We got to ask ourselves just what is the Lord trying to make us
see
here. Now, it’s possible he is
using
those two. Maybe he thought it was a good thing for us to go through a false alarm, just to show us how unready we really are. You see, God—”

“This has nothing to do with God,” Cole said wearily.

“Shame on you, son. I know I’ve taught you better than that.”

Cole was ready to cry. “Aren’t you even worried about her?”

It was the laugh Cole swore he’d never forgive.

“Come on, now, Cole, you know your cousin can take care of herself.”

His cousin! It was the first time he’d ever heard Starlyn called that.

PW reached for the whiskey again, forgetting there was none left. “Tell you who I
am
worried about, though. I’m worried about Jeptha’s mama.” He was talking about Boots’s daughter-in-law, whose son had just been killed in Israel. “Losing your only son, that’s got to be the worst kind of hurt. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so torn up as that poor lady. Far’s I know she’s always had a powerful faith. But the other day it was like you could see it evaporating off her, like a mist. She would not be comforted. I’d try to get her to pray with me and she’d just give me this smile, this cold, twisted kind of smile. Like I tried to cheat her and she just got wise. Shook me up.”

“She’s only sixteen,” Cole said, his heart breaking.

PW shrugged his big shoulders. “My granny had two babies already by that age. My mama had her first when she was barely seventeen.”

“But aren’t you going to call the police?”

“Dude, just what
is
it about you and the police? Didn’t you and me already have this conversation?”

Cole wasn’t sure if PW had raised his voice because he was angry or because he was drunk.

A promise is sacred.
Cole made a quick decision and plunged ahead.

“I saw them. I saw Mason—I saw them kissing—that’s how I know—”

To Cole’s astonishment PW laughed again.

He
must
be drunk. How else could he laugh?

“Listen to me, son. You think you’re the only one that’s got eyes in his head? You really think I didn’t know what was up with the two of them?”

Yes, he could see it now. That
had
been pretty stupid of him. He was seeing a lot, finally. No wonder he’d started to feel sorry for Starlyn.

“So you’re mad at Mason. So you go and make wild accusations, talking a heap of nonsense about kidnapping—and why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re jealous.
Because you think he stole your girl.
Isn’t that what this is really about?” He punched Cole’s shoulder again, less playfully this time. “Like you had any business sniffing after her.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Cole said hoarsely. He was mortified that PW had used the word
sniffing
.

PW kept silent, as if to give Cole a chance to explain himself, and when that didn’t happen he sighed and said, “Look. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you got to understand this has nothing to do with you. We shouldn’t even be discussing the matter, it’s not fitting. I want you to promise you’ll put it out of your mind and leave it to your elders to worry about, okay?”

Cole nodded mechanically.

“Good. Now, let’s talk about something else. What do you hear lately from that aunt of yours?”

“I’m thinking about going to see her in Germany.”

In fact, until that moment he had been thinking no such thing.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Cole remembered that he had not yet passed on the news that his aunt was back in Berlin. He was about to explain when PW doubled over.

The attack this time was shorter but more vicious than the first. When it was over PW stood up, saying, “Let me go dry myself off.”

Left alone, Cole tried—unsuccessfully—to pray. All his other emotions were now swamped by a new fear. What if PW never got better? What if he could never live a normal life again? What if he just drank and drank and drank?

Cole was distracted by the appearance of a moth that had come indoors and kept banging into one thing or another until finally it knocked itself onto its back. Fantastically large, almost the size of a sparrow, it lay quaking on the floor, filament legs kicking furiously. Then it went still—not dead, Cole figured, just wiped out from struggling. It could rest there all it wanted; no harm would come to it. He resisted the impulse to pick it up. He’d been told that touching a moth or a butterfly could hurt its wings and maybe even kill it.

This time, unlike a moment before, and without trying, he found himself praying. He prayed to God not to be too hard on Starlyn, and if it turned out she was never coming back he prayed that God might bring her, somehow, somewhere to safety. Amen.

PW returned wearing a clean white shirt, left unbuttoned, and carrying a fresh pint of bourbon. He tousled Cole’s hair with his free hand as he sat back down on the sofa. He seemed to have forgotten what they’d been talking about before, and Cole did not remind him. They sat for a few moments without speaking. The second attack had so weakened PW that his arm shook just from the effort of bringing bottle to mouth.

“You know,” he said, staring straight ahead as if he were addressing someone other than Cole beside him, “God put men at the head of women because we’re the stronger sex. But it’s my observation that when it comes to physical pain women can take more. Think of Tracy.” Which Cole did very reluctantly, recalling the time he’d accidentally hit her in the chest. “People still talk about how brave she was when she had the cancer, and I can testify she was a real trouper when she got the flu. I just know she’d be able to deal with this neuralgia thing better than I can.”

Cole said nothing. A cosmic sadness was seeping into him. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he would start wailing and not be able to stop. It was happening again, he thought. Everything was changing. The air felt supercharged, and there was a weight to every passing moment that said nothing would ever be the same. He saw how wrong he had been to believe he was no longer a child. He was a child, only a child, too young to know what to do. Everything was too hard and too complicated, and he was too young, he was too weak and powerless and dumb.

He wanted to be alone. He was tired and confused and filled with anxiety at not knowing what was going to happen next. Too much had happened already, and he wasn’t able to put all his trust in God the way PW and Tracy and the others did. He would try, but it wouldn’t work. It was like trying to stick a piece of paper to the wall with spit.

He wanted to be alone. He thought that if he was alone some idea would come to him. If he was in his room he could start to draw something, and that would make him feel calm and normal again. But then the thought of drawing—the thought of all the drawings he had done and the pleasure they had given him and the pride he’d felt at being praised for them—suddenly all this struck him as embarrassing, cause for shame. He thought of the comics he’d lavished so much of himself on, and he cringed. He’d made a fool of himself, he thought. Just like when he was on the radio. It would be a relief to destroy them, to burn every one of them. Then he could start all over again. This thought made his throat ache.

He wanted to be alone. But he could not leave PW. He had to wait until PW—already breathing heavily and listing at his side—was ready to pass out. Then Cole would help him get up the stairs and to bed.

THAT NIGHT HE RODE THE HORSE AGAIN.

A game—long forgotten—from the days when his mother used to tuck him in.
Time to ride the horse!
Scooping him up in her arms. Not into bed but onto the back of a horse he’d pretend to climb—
Now, off you go, pumpkin
—to ride through the night.

His mother’s smell.

His bronco sheets.

That night he rode the horse again. A hero’s horse, fast and thunderous as a train. Here and there along the path masked figures rushed at them. Hands reached up to grab and yank Cole to the ground. But the horse knew never to stop or slow down.

And he could never get lost, his mother said; the horse knew the way.

Morning: this was where she always promised to meet him.

He sat up, drying his eyes.

He had slept as usual with the blinds open. Outside the light was pale. The sky looked low and as fragile as eggshell, as if a rock hurled hard enough could smash it.

He glanced uneasily around the room, gripped by a vague pang of fear—but no, it was all right. He hadn’t actually burned or destroyed anything, he remembered now. It was just a silly passing thought. Coming in last night and seeing the drawings lying around or taped to the walls, he’d felt sheepish about his vow to get rid of them. Most of them still made him cringe. They were childish, they belonged to yesterday, they should be put away in a box or a drawer somewhere. But there was no reason to destroy them. What if it turned out he never saw Starlyn again? Wouldn’t he hate himself for not having kept those drawings of her?

His senses told him he was the only one in the house who was up. He got out of bed and dressed quickly.

Downstairs, he went first to the porch and collected the bottles. This morning the whiskey smell, though faint, made him queasy.

The moth! He searched, but it was gone.

He was waiting for the computer to boot up when he heard someone coming up the back walk. He had no idea who it might be at this hour, or why he went cold, his heart hopping like a bird from rib to rib. When the bell rang, he stayed in his chair as if welded there, terrified and ashamed of his terror at the same time. He remembered a boy in their building back in Chicago who’d answered the door while his mom was in the shower and let in a man who then—

But this was Salvation City, where people kept guns in their homes but did not always lock their doors.

“Hey, didn’t you hear me ring?”

Rather than lie Cole said simply, “Hey, dude, what’s up?”

“I was supposed to come by and get some help with this sermon I been working on. I know it’s way early.”

“You ride your bike over?”

“Yeah. Actually, I been riding around since light.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just checking things out. Lotta people didn’t sleep last night, you know. They’re way freaked out.”

“What about your house?”

“I guess they’re okay.”