China Lake (7 page)

He said, ‘‘Way to go, Delaney.’’

He reached up, found my hand, and pulled me down to him. Vining his arms around me, he kissed me. Again, and again. I closed my eyes and leaned against him. This was in the top ten, the best about him—this passion for me when he knew I was doing right. It went beyond seduction, beyond romance, to the bedrock. I clung to him, nourishing myself with the moment.

When I first met him, before his accident, I had presumed him one of those all-Americans who would soar through life on good looks, brains, and athletic prowess, blessed and untouchable. I didn’t really know him. It took disaster for me to learn about his grit, and relentlessness, and his ungodly ability to touch me in exactly the right way. I kissed him again, letting my hands slide up his arms and around his back. He had a swimmer’s physique, shoulders and arms like carved oak, strong from doing double duty these past few years. They were a shelter, and I curled against him.

He said, ‘‘Wish I could stay.’’

‘‘I know.’’

He wouldn’t spend the night. He had an early court date the next morning; he didn’t live nearby, didn’t have fresh clothes or the pain medication he needed. His broken back meant that things took time. The package didn’t include spontaneity. Nevertheless he snaked his fingers into my hair, tilted my head back, and kissed me at the base of the throat. I felt his breath whisker my chest where my shirt gapped in the front. Then his teeth, teasing loose the top button, and his lips, brushing my skin.

And behind me, a small voice. ‘‘I’m thirsty.’’

I jumped, and Jesse’s head snapped up. Luke was standing in the doorway, eyes fighting the light.

I lingered, but knew he wouldn’t return to bed empty-handed, and got up to pour him a glass of milk. When I returned with it, he was tucked next to Jesse on the sofa. He drank the milk sleepily. After he finished it I took his hand and said, ‘‘Back to bed,’’ but he pushed his face against Jesse’s chest, ignoring me.

Jesse said, ‘‘Come on, I’ll give you a ride.’’ Levering onto the wheelchair, he patted his knee. ‘‘Hop on, little dude.’’ Luke clambered onto his lap.

Not long after tucking Luke in, he headed home. I walked him out to his car, which had a big engine and hand controls, bent to kiss him good night, and watched him maneuver in. A coolness had descended on the night, and as he drove away I stood by myself on the sidewalk, sore hands rubbing my arms. A chill breeze whispered across my shoulders.

Autumn: I was too tired to resist the imagery. Change was about to hit me, and I feared that it would strip off my facade, leaving the bare branches of my life exposed. Things had been going well—I had cash in the bank, and a novel that was going to be featured in the city’s upcoming book festival. I even had a man who loved me. Yet once Luke left, I knew what I would see: the cobbled-together, freelance quality of my existence. I had a job scrabbling for legal piece-work. I had a lover who drove away at night. I had a room in the house that would soon be empty.

I walked back through the gate. Near the house I stopped to pick up toys Luke had left outside.
Star Wars
action figures—Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, names I knew better than those of the Apostles—they were part of the arcana of childhood I had recently learned about. Like knowing that, of the objects a little boy will stick up his nose, chopsticks look worse than M&M’s but are easier to extract.

I tilted my head back. The stars were a wet blur in the sky. It was a kid’s trick: Let the tears run back into the tear ducts.
I’m not crying, no, ma’am. Just looking for airplanes, Aunt Evvie.

‘‘Damn,’’ I said, and walked back inside with my eyes streaming.

In the morning I said nothing to Luke about Tabitha, not wanting to unsettle him before school. He roused slowly, sparking up only when he saw his hair in the mirror. I heard, ‘‘Oh, man, it’s all scribbled.’’ It was a semiregular crisis. Brushing failed, and I had to dunk his head under the tap. Out the door late, we were still a block from school when the bell rang. He broke into a sprint, mouth set, backpack bouncing, and ran through the gate.

I spent the morning researching cases for an appellate brief I had been hired to write, chasing precedents until the Westlaw search engine told me I had cornered the big ones. Several times I tried to reach my brother, without success. I also phoned Cottage Hospital to ask about the church intruder’s condition. They gave me no information, not even the man’s name. That made me think his chances were poor.

Feeling itchy, I drove downtown to the Santa Barbara Public Library. I wanted to reconnoiter the Remnant, to scout Tabitha’s new . . . What were they, soul mates? Puppeteers? When she came at me, I wanted to know whom I was facing.

The library was an airy Spanish-style building across the street from the courthouse. Outside it, a banner advertised the Santa Barbara Book Festival, a thought that cheered me. But, scrolling through
News-Press
back issues on microfiche, I found little cheery information about the Remnant.

The church, I learned, was just five years old. Before then Peter Wyoming had run a carpet-cleaning business. Hearing the call to the ministry, he sold Spruce Steam-Clean, started booing nonfundamentalist views in public, and attracted followers—including a wife. A weddings notice announced,
Peter Wyoming Weds Chenille Krystall.
It was quite a name, and, from the photo, she was quite a bride, stout and triumphant in a virgin-white Stetson. It was the choir soloist, she of the cool dabbing cloth and the shit-kicker cowboy boots. Other recent stories covered Remnant protests at the funerals of a Hindu coed who had been thrown from a horse, and a gay man murdered during the summer. The list of their protests read like a litany:
Resent, the End Is Near
. It wasn’t much for me to go on.

Leaving the library, I crossed the street to look in on
Gaul v. Beowulf’s Books
at the courthouse. Skip Hinkel, Priscilla Gaul’s attorney, was pacing the courtroom, questioning a man from the California Department of Fish and Game. Asking, ‘‘What microbes does a ferret’s mouth harbor?’’ ‘‘What’s the PSI its jaws can administer?’’ Saying, ‘‘The ferrets involved in this case came from a Vancouver animal shelter—are Canadian ferrets especially ferocious?’’ Jesse was leaning his forehead on his hands, looking as if he’d had a long day already.

On the way home I spun the radio dial, hoping for the Dixie Chicks, but all I heard were reports about the beached gray whale. One station was mourning the beast’s death, another discussing the logistics of removing it from the pricy shoreline property where it was decaying. They had a deejay at the beach. He sounded as if he were covering the
Hindenburg
explosion.

‘‘It’s an incredible sight,’’ he reported. ‘‘Have you seen it, Corky?’’

‘‘No, Adam, but I’m planning to come down right after I go off the air.’’

Santa Barbara sometimes thought it was Monaco, but at times like this I knew I lived in the sticks.

At home I ate a tuna sandwich and tried another stream of inquiry, logging on to the Remnant’s Web site. Its home page was eye shrapnel: spinning crosses, throbbing flames, multiple exclamation points.
Beast-Watch! !! Ho of the Month!!!
October’s honoree was a U.S. senator.

One topic snagged my eye:
Big Brother is watching! !!

Government computers, it warned, were recording all e-mail and phone conversations. Satellites were monitoring people’s movements via anticounterfeiting strips in twenty-dollar bills. The purpose: to identify Christians, and, eventually, to track and capture them. The Remnant faithful should avoid phones, instant messaging, and the mail. Talking face-to-face was safest, and discretion was vital. Federal agents were adept at penetration. Confide only in a few other trusted church members. That way, even if part of the Remnant was compromised, it would not destroy the whole. No one could wipe them out.

I rubbed my forehead. This smelled like leaderless resistance, the paramilitary strategy fashioned by rightist Christian Patriots and antigovernment militias. The theory held that ‘‘resistance groups’’ shouldn’t train a combat force, but should create tactical cells, small groups that planned and acted in isolation, on their own initiative. There was to be no chain of command, and thus no way to kill the Hydra by cutting off one head. Terror would be the gift that kept on giving.

My suspicions deepened when I checked out the Web site’s ‘‘Links’’ section. I skimmed through
The Christian Guide to Small Arms
, patriot manifestos, and conspiracy babblings, crossing onto the turf of the loners, the outsiders, the digital screamers, a territory of inchoate rage and belief in the rectifying power of kerosene mixed with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It made sickening reading.

The Remnant was planning something. But what, and when? I wondered if the church really advocated leaderless resistance. The strategy was not solely defensive. It granted cells the freedom to attack at will.

I logged off. Sat for a minute, my anxieties twisting and tautening. Thought, Screw it; this isn’t helping anything.

I headed across the lawn and knocked on Nikki’s kitchen door. She was home, having shut her art gallery for the week. She was sitting at the butcher block table, answering sympathy cards, looking wan in a bright, oversize Big Dog T-shirt that stretched across her belly. Bare of the elaborate silver jewelry she loved to wear, she seemed silent. I missed the
ting
of her bracelets.

I said, ‘‘How about taking a walk on the beach?’’

At Arroyo Burro we walked barefoot on the wet sand, below a tall cliff. The waves ran cold across our ankles. A lone surfer sculpted turns on a glittering curl of water. The day looked polished, pure blue, and for a long while we were silent.

My worries about the Remnant refocused, from the elusive
what
to the confounding
why
. Why had they developed a hysterical cosmology? Was it grievance or gullibility? Were their lives so dull that they couldn’t get their kicks from line dancing or whitewater rafting, but had to declare themselves the focal point of destiny?

Nikki said, ‘‘Mom hated the beach; did you know? She grew up on a tropical island, lived here twenty-five years, and could not abide the very idea of sand.’’

She smiled as she said it. We began reminiscing about Claudine, remembering her quirks and wit, her lack of bitterness after contracting AIDS, during a late-life relationship with an old flame from Haiti. Eventually Nikki began replaying the funeral, in detail. I knew she needed to hold on to it. But when she began talking about the protesters I fell quiet. She looked at me.

‘‘You’re awfully far away. Something going on?’’

I started to shake my head, but she pointed at my hands—the cuts—and raised an eyebrow. ‘‘Dish it. I could use the distraction.’’

She listened with amazement and consternation. ‘‘Does Tabitha have spiders loose in her head? Male bashing during a divorce I could see, but joining a sect that says her man is Satan’s toady—that’s extreme.’’

The Remnant’s antimilitary slant, I said, was one thing that must have drawn her to the group. Another was Pastor Pete’s theory about end-time hoaxes.

Tabitha’s mother, SueJudi Roebuck, had belonged to a church that expected the Rapture to occur on Pentecost 2000. When it didn’t, her ecstasy shattered into despair. Feeling betrayed and spiritually un-moored, she spiraled into a depression from which she never escaped. To Tabitha, a diabolical plot must have seemed a compelling explanation for her mother’s despondency.

‘‘But Peter Wyoming has inverted reality,’’ I said. ‘‘The fact that the world hasn’t ended means that it’s about to. Complete normality proves the existence of a demonic conspiracy.’’

‘‘They’re paranoid, Ev. That’s how paranoids think.’’

‘‘Absence of evidence equals proof. The silence howls at them.’’

‘‘Silence doesn’t always mean inaction, though. Ever hear the term ‘cover-up’? And don’t be so quick to dismiss conspiracy theorists. They question authority, and that’s good. You want people doubting government spinmeisters and slick corporate mouthpieces.’’

‘‘The voice crying in the wilderness.’’

‘‘You got it. Peter Wyoming may sound whack, saying anthrax inoculations are part of the devil’s end-game, but don’t take the Pentagon at face value. You really think troops are just being protected against tomorrow’s holy man with a missile launcher and a vial of spores? In the fifties the CIA experimented on GIs with LSD. And the army sprayed bacteria into the air over San Francisco, they said to see how effective biological warfare would be. Right. Warfare by whom, against whom? It was American citizens who got sick.’’ She pursed her lips. ‘‘Pastor Pete didn’t invent Black Ops.’’

She got this streak from her late father, a Marxist professor of politics. No matter how distracted or bereaved she was, I could always count on Nikki to back-hand the conventional wisdom. It was one of her most endearing traits.

‘‘Besides, paranoia gets the blood flowing and lets little people feel larger than life,’’ she said. ‘‘Imagine how important Tabitha must feel—expecting a global cataclysm to detonate, with her new tribe at ground zero.’’

‘‘Armageddon’s a real confidence booster. I never looked at it that way.’’

‘‘The Apocalypse. When you think about it, it’s a thrilling thought.’’

Taken aback, I stopped walking.

She said, ‘‘ ‘The present sky and earth are destined for fire, and are only being reserved until Judgment Day so that all sinners may be destroyed.’ ’’

‘‘Honey, sit down and put your head between your knees.’’

‘‘Therefore . . . ‘What we are waiting for is what he promised: the new heavens and new earth, the place where righteousness will be at home.’ ’’ Sly look. ‘‘My pop wrote a book on concepts of utopia.
Destined for Fire
. Atheist perspective, but he got the title from the Bible.’’