Suffer the Children (12 page)

He got out and waited in line at the door of a trailer. Inside, the bald giant behind the desk checked the ZIP codes in his pickup area and told him he was in the wrong place. In the next trailer, a teenage girl typed the information on his forms into a computer set up next to an overflowing ashtray. Doug lit a cigarette but quickly put it out; it felt hot and stuffy in the overheated space. The girl cursed as her computer froze. Behind him, the line of impatient drivers continued to stack up.
The general lack of competence in this massive, thrown-together operation didn’t inspire confidence that the children were being properly mapped for later retrieval. He’d have to remember himself where he’d put Nate and Megan.

Cold air filled his lungs as he left. He stumbled on the steps.

I’m wasted
, he thought.

Which was strange, because he didn’t feel drunk at all.

He used to worry about somebody breaking into his house when he wasn’t home.

He found Tom sleeping when he got back, curled into a ball against the door, practically sucking his thumb. Doug honked the horn to wake him up.

“Shit,” said Tom, wiping drool from his cheek. “I’m still here.”

Doug drove into the works. A man waved at him with a pair of glow sticks and pointed at another man in the distance, who directed him toward a freshly dug trench. Cold wind blasted him when he opened the door.

Two workers were waiting for them there, looking dirty and cold to the bone. Jack, a fiftysomething with leathery skin and a slim, athletic build, and Mitch, an overgrown teenager with a mean face.

Doug used to worry the government was going to take his guns.

“We’ll unload the truck and hand off the bags to you guys on the ground,” said Jack. He squinted at Tom. “You’re looking a little pale, brother. You all right?”

“I just hadn’t expected so many.”

“We’re getting forty thousand at this site alone. You’ll get used to it.”

“No, he won’t,” Doug growled.

Jack shrugged. Doug handed him his flask, and he and Mitch each took a long pull.

“Wish I’d thought to bring something,” said Mitch.

“When you’re old enough to drink, you can,” Jack told him.

“I’m not a kid. Or didn’t you hear? All the kids are dead.”

The men laid out the bodies in a neat row along the lip of the
trench. Jack announced a break while they waited for the clergy to come and read over the dead. He produced a tin of Red Man, and he and Mitch each put a plug in their cheeks. They stomped their feet to keep warm. Doug lit a cigarette and stared at the bodies in the bags.

Tomorrow night, he would bring his own children here. After the wake that Joan was putting together. He would lay them in a trench just like this one, and the bulldozer would come and blanket them with cold earth.

Despite the warmth of the bourbon in his blood, he shivered.

He used to worry about losing his job because of side-loaders.

“What do you do for a living, Tom?” he asked to pass the time.

Tom started. “What?”

“I asked what you do for a living.”

“I work in the Office of Economic Development. We help corporations come and do business in the county—site selection, permitting, tax incentives, and so on.”

“Economist, huh?” Jack asked him. “What do you think is going to happen with the economy? With the children being taken and all that?”

“Well, I’m not a real economist, but I did study economics and political science in college.”

Mitch smirked and spat tobacco juice onto the ground. “College, huh?”

Tom ignored him. “We’ve got serious problems ahead. Think about all the industries serving kids. Toys, books, TV networks. Movies, breakfast cereal, clothes, car seats. Schools, teachers, pediatricians—jeez, the list goes on and on. They’re all basically out of business. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars, a big chunk of the GDP right there. There’s going to be a massive recession.”

Jack looked humbled. “I guess we’re in for a bit more trouble then.”

The clergymen arrived in their orange safety jackets and respirator masks. Covered in dirt, they stood in a row over the line of body bags and muttered the words that consecrated the burial according to their different faiths. Trying to make this terrible place holy.

Tom went on as he warmed to his subject. “That’s not even the half
of it. There’s going to be at least a twelve-year gap in student enrollment in all schools and colleges, in workers contributing to Social Security, in new people entering the workforce. Think about how many geniuses we lost when Herod’s struck. Kids who would have grown up to cure cancer or make a better lightbulb.”

The clergymen left. Doug nudged him with his elbow, and they hopped into the trench.

Doug used to worry about the economy.

“Shit,” said Jack, shaking his head. “Any advice?”

Tom shrugged. “Buy stock in liquor companies.”

“Very inspiring,” Mitch said as he and Jack picked up and lowered the first body. “They should have you speak at the vigil tomorrow night.”

Nobody laughed.

“What do you think, partner?” Jack asked Doug.

“It don’t matter what I think,” he answered. He laid the first body onto the frozen ground. “The world’s gone to shit. It can’t get any worse in my book.”

Tom snorted. “It can get
a lot
worse—”

“Yeah?”

“Well, yeah, I mean—”

“Look at where I am, Tom. Look what I’m doing. I lost both my kids. How much worse could it possibly get for me? What else can be done to me that hasn’t already been done?”

Tom shut up, looking paler than ever. Doug accepted the next body and laid it to rest.

He used to worry about whether his kids would go to college.

A gunshot rang out across the frozen field. Doug peered over the top and saw men running toward the next trench over.

“What happened?” said Tom.

“My guess is somebody wanted to be buried with his kids,” Doug told him.

He used to worry about whether his children were safe.

“Holy shit,” said Mitch.

“Damn,” said Jack. “I guess this sort of proves your point, Doug. Don’t it?”

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening. He took off his gloves, unscrewed the cap of his flask, and tilted his head back to take a long burning swallow.

For the first time in days, he smiled. “Here’s to you, guy.”

Doug didn’t have anything to worry about anymore.

76 hours after Herod Event

The wake began at six o’clock.

Nate and Megan lay on a table in the living room in their Sunday best. Their slack faces glowed pale in the light from the fireplace. Major paced and whined under the table until Doug put him back in his kennel.

Joan had arranged a series of photos at their feet. Megan prancing in a princess costume. Nate after a game of shinny, grinning and flushed. Megan as a baby, giving Doug a toothless smile. Nate asleep in his crib. A smiling Joan holding both kids on her lap on Christmas morning. So much had already happened in their short lives, so much had been captured in memory and in pictures, and Joan wanted to share as much of it as possible.

She’d worked hard and now took pleasure in how everything looked. The only thing out of place was the Christmas tree, which stood near the front window with its lights off. She hadn’t had the heart to take it down.

Her parents had come, as had her brother, Jake, and his wife, Sylvie. Aunts and uncles and cousins. Joan offered sandwiches and made sure
everybody’s drinks stayed filled. She felt her nerves bleeding out. This was it.

Tonight, she would mark her children’s passing and later join the rest of Lansdowne at the vigil while Doug did his part and put them in the ground. Tomorrow, she’d have to begin to really process what had happened. The prospect terrified her.

She poured herself a gin and tonic and sipped it. She found it comforting to have her own flesh and blood in the room. Dad had Doug pinned by the fireplace. Doug hadn’t shaved, but he’d put on a black suit and tie with a clean white collared shirt. He slouched and swayed on his feet. He’d been drinking. She should have been furious but found she didn’t really care.

She approached just in time to prevent a scene.

“They’re in a better place now,” Dad was saying.

Doug bristled. “Oh, you think so?”

She linked her arm in her husband’s and guided him toward the other side of the room. She knew he didn’t like the house being so crowded. He wanted everybody to get the hell out as soon as possible.

He said, “Your asshole dad thinks Nate and Megan are happier not being here.”

“Let it go,” she whispered. She glanced at him and saw a man in deep emotional pain. In the coming days, she was going to have to decide whether or not she still loved him.

“Old Bob thinks they’re better off dead.”

“Stop it.”

“He never thought I was good enough for you and the kids anyway, and you know it.”

“He wasn’t talking about you. He was trying to be supportive.”

“You call that supportive? Running me down like that?”

“This is why you shouldn’t drink. Always getting into fights.”

“Don’t you start on me too,” he growled.

Joan stepped away from him and called for everybody’s attention.

“Thank you for coming tonight to pay your respects to Nate and Megan. I want you to know that Doug and I are taking great comfort
from you being here. Now we’re going to have Sylvie start things off with a reading.”

Maybe Pastor Gary was right. Maybe God was a son of a bitch. Vindictive enough to kill the children, or callous enough to let them die. Joan wanted a Bible reading anyway. If there was a supreme being and an afterlife, she wanted her children to arrive right with God. They were not always good, but they were always pure. They were innocent.

“This is from the Book of Mark, chapter ten, verses thirteen and fourteen,” said Sylvie, reading: “ ‘One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”’ ”

Joan remembered reading the same verses in the King James Bible and had admired the archaic language.
Suffer the little children
, it had read. Don’t stop them. Let them go to Jesus.

She tried to picture Megan sitting on Jesus’ lap right now up in Heaven. Knowing her little girl, she was telling him what she wanted for Christmas. She smiled at the image.

Here they are, God. Meet Nate, age eight, who loves hockey and NASCAR. Meet Megan, age four and a half, who loves to play dress-up in princess costumes and lick the mixing bowl after baking with her mommy. You gave them life, and then you let them die for no good reason.

“Amen,” said Sylvie, closing the book.

“Amen,” the crowd muttered.

“Lord, we give you our littlest angels. Too sweet for this earth. Too soon to leave it.”

Joan gave Sylvie a long hug. She then told a story about Nate; after his first day of first grade, she’d asked him what he’d learned.
Not enough, I guess
, he’d answered, just like the old joke:
They said we all have to come back tomorrow.
The stories were about small things, and
none very funny, but everybody listened, and laughed, and told their own. For just a short while, Joan felt like her kids were still alive.

Yet she knew she wasn’t doing them justice. The right words failed her. Her family knew Nate and Megan from visits. Nobody knew her kids as well as she did, not even Doug.

She wanted to tell them all about the real Nate, how he was always on the go, rushing breathless from one thing to the next, inquisitive and always up for anything. Nate wanted to be a doctor and loved geography. The world fascinated him. He never seemed to feel fear.

She wanted to reveal the real Megan, the girl who lived in a fantasy world where magic and fairies were real, who slept hugging a stuffed animal under each arm and dreamed of hearts and kisses. Megan had always surprised her with how well she could articulate her feelings. She already knew the words to her favorite songs and liked to invent new lyrics. She had empathy for every living thing and mourned the passing of birds and ants. She wore all her feelings, too big for such a small girl, on her sleeves.

They lived in Joan’s head now, but she didn’t trust herself to keep them alive that way. She wanted to share the burden.

“What about you, Doug?” Jake called out.

Doug stared at the liquor in his glass for a moment. “I’m just listening.”

“I was hoping you would say a few words.”

He meant it. While Joan’s father and Doug had little love for each other, Jake always looked up to Doug as a hardworking family man.

The room quieted as Doug considered his words. Joan watched him.

She said, “Doug feels—”

“They were good kids,” he said.

Everybody waited, expecting more.

“They know how I feel about them. It’s time to say our final goodbyes, Joanie.”

The room stayed quiet. Whatever joy they had accomplished through memory, Doug had drained it with a simple reminder of reality.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

Doug stood over Nate and Megan. Joan joined him. They stared at their children for a long time.

He scooped Megan into his arms. “Come on, princess.”

Joan lightly kissed the top of her head.

“Good night, Meggie.”

He took her little girl outside to the truck, where he put her in a body bag.

Joan clutched Nate’s hand and kissed it.

“Send me a sign you’re okay,” she whispered. “I just want to know you’re safe.”

She didn’t want to say good-bye.

Doug returned. The mourners parted for him.

“Come on, sport.”

Joan watched in horror as he picked up their son. Doug stared at her hand, still holding on to Nate’s smaller hand. She let go.

“Good night, sweet boy,” she said, kissing the top of his head.