Hot Water (12 page)

Yancey—it was just Yancey, no first name that I knew of—was a media activist. Groups hired him to gain them more publicity and funding. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what Grandel was paying me for. No wonder this job made me feel slimy. “You’re working with—”

“The First Church of the Redeemer.” He stood, his voice dropping in timbre as it rose in volume. “The end days are near and that reactor is going to bring down the Lord’s wrath in a cataclysm that will destroy the world.”

A man showed up from behind the bar—a small corridor connected the café to the office. “We’re closed,” he said, “but since he,” he nodded to Yancey and the six pack that sat on the counter beside him, “brought his own, you’re welcome to sit awhile.”

“Thanks, that’ll be fine.”

He nodded again and left, seemingly unworried about leaving two total strangers in the middle of his treasure trove of pecans and plastic alligators.

“So does your church want to end the world? Or do you want to stop the reactor?”

Yancey chuckled and took his seat, handing me a bottle of Sam Adams. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Both, I think. It gets a bit confusing, and if you press them too hard, they start speaking in tongues and hallelujahing so loud I can’t think.” He shrugged, wiping beer foam from his lips with the back of his hand. “Don’t really care one way or the other as long as they pay the bills. But it does make for a challenge getting the crowd behind us.”

“Sounds like they’re just scared.”

“Maybe. Aren’t most people? Especially when they don’t understand what’s going on?” He stared at me over the rim of his bottle. “You could help with that.”

“Had a feeling you were going to say something like that. I already have a client.”

“Owen Grandel, right? If so, then maybe we can work together.” He slid me a sly glance. “You know it has nothing to do with religion, right? Grandel already tried to buy off Reverend Vincent—he’s the head of the church. Vincent’s response was to hire me to ‘raise a ruckus,’ as he put it.”

“And Grandel’s reaction was to hire me to restore his ‘ruined reputation.’ Sounds like what they really both need is a time-out.”

He finished his beer and glanced at the clock. “What are you doing tonight? Why don’t you come with me, meet them? They’re not so bad as they sound—or as Grandel makes them out to be.”

Yancey didn’t have me fooled—he wanted something from me, that much was clear. But I followed him out, figuring that it never hurt to check out the competition.

David pushed his wheelchair onto the hospital’s visitor elevator ahead of Elizabeth. He quickly swiveled and found the button to hold the doors open for her. She smiled at him, but it wasn’t her usual smile. This one was a smile that was polite but otherwise absent, barely making it past the worry lines that had appeared around her lips.

His mom got those lines sometimes. Like when the bill collectors were calling or when they’d got kicked out of their apartment. But somehow Mom always figured out a way past the worry and things worked out just fine.

He wished now that he hadn’t acted like such a jerk on the phone with her. Sometimes he just couldn’t help it—she’d say something or not even say it, just imply it with her tone, and he’d react before he could think.

He wished now that he had told her to come home. Not that he needed her or anything. But somehow when Mom was around and bad things were happening, he felt better. Like she could make things right again.

Of course, she couldn’t. Wishful thinking like that was stupid. She was just an ordinary mom, no one special—which was why she couldn’t save his dad.

That was the heart of his anger. Losing his dad after waiting so long to find him. And Mom couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“David?” Elizabeth was reaching past him to release the doors and push a button. “I said Flora is on the third floor.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The doors closed and they started up.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just don’t like hospitals,” he lied.

Despite his many visits to hospitals, he usually liked them—as long as he wasn’t too sick. The nurses would come and take care of you whenever you pushed a button and were always smiling, willing to find you the red Jell-O instead of the yucky yellow stuff or wheel the big videogame console down if you were stuck in bed. And you could learn all sorts of cool stuff in a hospital—last time he had surgery on his tendons, the resident taking care of him told him all about her research into nerve regeneration. She even let him watch her PowerPoint presentation—really neat, made him want to learn how to work miracles like that, help people.

That was almost two years ago. Now he was torn between forensic archeology and quantum mechanics. Both a form of time travel—one to the physical past and one to the subatomic never-never land. Yet, they were both strangely connected in theory: that there was more than one reality. The reality that we perceived and took for granted was recorded in history books or by our senses. But there was also an alternative reality, just as valid but never measured or preserved for examination.

If people could just open their minds to all the wonderful possibilities surrounding them. . . .The elevator lurched to a stop. David wheeled out and waited for Elizabeth, who was still moving at a speed slower than normal. She glanced at a slip of paper in her hand.
Room 307.

She turned—the wrong way. David waited and she turned back after two steps. She let him lead the way until they reached Flora’s room.

By the time they got there, Elizabeth was as gray as the dingy linoleum beneath their feet.

“You don’t like hospitals,” he said, feeling sorry for her. She looked worse than she had when dealing with Jeremy puking.

She shook her head. “It’s the smell. I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Try breathing through your mouth.”

“Thanks.”

It felt so weird, the way Elizabeth let him take charge. A good kind of weird. Like she trusted him. Believed in him.

So unlike Mom. Mom didn’t trust anyone.

Elizabeth knocked on the door, cracked it open. David could see Gram Flora lying on her bed, sleeping. The other bed in the room was empty. Elizabeth pushed the door the whole way open and they went inside. It was way past visiting hours—any of the nurses at Children’s would have kicked out anyone who wasn’t a parent long before now—but the nurses here didn’t seem to care. They’d only seen one since they came on to the floor and she was headed the other way, into a patient’s room.

Flora looked so frail—so very, very old, like an Egyptian mummy all hollowed out and empty. David swallowed his fear, trying to keep it from his voice.

“We can stay with her, can’t we?”

Elizabeth’s legs wobbled and she sank into the chair beside Flora’s bed. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here. But they couldn’t leave Flora alone—what if something happened and her nurse was too busy to notice? This little hospital was nothing at all like Children’s, where there was always a buzz of activity. This place felt abandoned, like there weren’t enough people to remember everything.

David was beginning to understand why his mom never trusted anyone—especially in hospitals.

Plus, what if he was right and someone had done this to Flora on purpose?

“Please, Elizabeth.” He sounded like a baby whining, but he didn’t care. He held Flora’s hand—the one that was free of the IV and pulse-ox monitor. His hand covered hers easily. He’d never before realized how tiny she was; her bones felt so thin beneath his fingers, like he could snap them without even trying.

“Okay.” Elizabeth gave in just like he knew she would. “We’ll stay.”

FOURTEEN

I insisted on driving—no way did I want to be at Yancey’s mercy in case he got distracted and ditched me while he went skirt-chasing. He directed me down the highway, and then we wound our way through a series of unmarked back roads lined by large tracts of unoccupied land and the occasional shack or rusted trailer interspersed with woe-begotten FOR SALE signs. It was a clear night, and occasionally I’d catch a glimpse of the river through the thickly leaved trees and their tattered curtains of Spanish moss.

We rounded one more bend and came to a clearing beside the river. The river was wider here, and without the thick foliage to obscure it, it seemed endless. Rows of cars were parked in a field in front of a large circus tent lit up by spotlights that waved through the sky as if beckoning the faithful. Or in my case, a no-longer-believing heathen, calling to those long ago fallen from grace.

Children raced through the field of cars, unsupervised as they squealed and ran, giddy with freedom. Adults milled around the open walls of the tent, some talking earnestly, a few clustered together holding hands or kneeling in prayer, others alone, staring out over the stars reflected in the water as if weighing a decision.

We emerged from the car, and for the first time since arriving in South Carolina I breathed a lungful of salt air. “We’re close to the ocean.”

“About half a mile that way.” Yancey pointed. “But look over there.” He placed his hands on my hips and rotated me to look directly past the revival tent, across the river.

A blue-white glow filled the horizon. Colleton Landing, I realized. “It’s beautiful.”

He shrugged as if taking credit for the light show. “You can see why it’s such a powerful focus for Vincent’s group. Something that beautiful can’t be neutral, it has to be good or evil. Or, in Vincent’s case, both.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to. Listen.”

We stood at the rear of the tent, beside one of the large supporting poles. At least a hundred people were crammed beneath the canopy, all leaning forward to hear the man pacing the stage above them.

He was tall—around Ty’s height—with hair so blonde that it sparked white in the glare of the spotlights. Classic Nordic good looks accompanied a voice pitched just low enough to mesmerize as it enticed you to attend each word.

“Brothers and sisters,” he was saying, pacing so close to the edge of the stage that I was afraid he’d fall. He kept going back and forth, back and forth, as if revving himself up for a spectacular explosion of words. “Brothers and sisters!”

A handful of
Amen
s and
Hallelujah
s greeted him.

“We live in a fallen world.”

More shouts of agreement.

“A world fallen into Satan’s hands. Corrupted by sin. And what must we do with corruption when we find it amongst us?”

“Purge it! Purge it!” the audience chanted back.

“That’s right! We must purge corruption. And how do we do that? By embracing God. By embracing his plan for our lives. By relinquishing our hold on this world and preparing for the next!”

“Amen!”

Still Vincent was pacing, faster and faster, now pumping his fist into the air as he spoke, his other hand holding a Bible to his heart. The crowd was swaying in time with his pacing, heads nodding with each fist pump.

“In Second Corinthians, Paul says that this life of affliction lasts but a moment. He says that we are all on an eternal path to glory. That we can find our path by looking at the things not seen by man but only seen by God. That unseen world is eternal. It is God’s gift to us if we can only forsake this corrupt world, the world of the seen, the world of the mundane.”

“Forsake it!”

“Instead, we must embrace our destiny. And what is our destiny? What awaits us in God’s kingdom?”

He stopped. Center stage. His audience, whipped to a frenzy, suddenly found themselves off balance and out of breath as they caught up with him and focused. He stood, head bowed, both hands cradling the Bible.

“What is our final destiny?” His voice was a whisper, yet it carried effortlessly to the back of the tent.

Everyone there leaned forward, eager to hear the answer. Silence heavier than the humid night air filled the space.

“What is God’s plan for us?” He jerked his head up as if he too were listening. Then his eyes went wide and he seemed to grow taller.

He alone had the answer from on high, his posture shouted. “We must embrace that which is unseen and eternal. The divine spark that is God’s and God’s alone. We must use it to end this corruption and bring forth God’s kingdom here on Earth!”

Now he was shouting as the crowd thundered in response, clapping and stomping and praising God in a whirlwind of voices.

The lights came up behind him to reveal a choir and small band. They began singing and playing music, something about an unseen world beyond this one, as ushers passed an offering basket and asked for anyone who wanted to receive a “healing blessing” from Reverend Vincent.

Soon there was a line of people waiting for the healing. The ushers expertly culled the herd and shepherded to the stage a frail old woman, spine crooked, hands knotted from arthritis, leaning heavily on a walker. Two assistants joined Vincent on stage and supported the woman on each side.

Vincent prayed. At first silently, with his lips moving, then louder and louder until he laid hands on the woman so powerfully that she was pushed back away from her walker. The walker flew to the side—it would have appeared propelled by God’s hand except that I caught the dexterous kick one of the assistants applied. The audience gasped, holding its breath. Waiting.