The Buck Passes Flynn (3 page)

“What about institutions, Frank?”

“What institutions?”

“Foundations. The mob. Groups that have that kind of money.”

“Usually groups have at least one sane person somewhere.”

“Take N.N., for example,” said N.N. Zero. “Hot down there in Texas?”

“There’s a hot wind blowing, and me dressed in the tweeds.”

“Keep in touch with Central, Frank.”

Randy, one of Flynn’s fifteen-year-old twin sons, answered the phone at the house in Winthrop.

Flynn could tell the voices of his twin sons apart.

“Randy, I have a puzzle for you.”

“Yes, Da?”

“What could depopulate a town in Texas, cause the people of a resort town in Massachusetts to go berserk and act against their own best interests, and render an important Intelligence department at the Pentagon completely useless?”

“A skunk?”

“Guess again.”

“Pollution.”

“What kind of pollution?”

“Something in the air? A gas?”

“Guess again.”

“Poison. A poisonous gas?”

“Keep working on it. Tell your mother I’ll be away for a while. I’ll call in whenever I can. If there’s an emergency, she should call Pittsburgh.”

“WOULD you be the Reverend Sandy Fraiman, by the least chance?”

Even in the wind, Flynn was sweating on the broken front porch of the pitted white house next to the church.

“Yes,” said the man through the screen door. His eyes were badly bloodshot.

“I’m someone named Flynn. Sent down here to ask you what happened to this town.”

The man pushed the screen door open.

“I’m glad to see anyone,” he said.

Flynn followed him into the barely furnished, rugless living room. The drawn Venetian blinds were clattering against the window frames.

Reverend Sandy Fraiman was in his late thirties. He was dressed in a torn T-shirt and new-looking jeans and his feet were bare. His hair and his eyes were black as an ambassador’s shoes.

“Tell me,” said Flynn. “Is the name Sandy, in your case, a diminutive for the proper name Alexander?”

“No. Why should it be?”

“You mean Sandy was the name given you at birth?”

“Sure.”

“Well,” said Flynn, “I hope you know your parents had trouble with their eyes. Sandy you’re not.”

Before Flynn’s eyes were adjusted to the light in the dark house, he thought he saw the minister slide a glass under a chair with his toe.

The minister sat in the chair.

“Sit down, Mister Whoever-you-are.”

“Flynn,” said Flynn.

“It’s just this side of perdition, living in an empty town. The Lord be praised. The things He sends to try us.”

Flynn lowered himself onto the uncomfortable wooden-framed divan.

“I’ll give an amen to that, I will.”

Ada, Texas, was empty.

On the long drive from Austin in his rented Plymouth, Flynn had felt the sense of space keenly. Thirty miles from Houston he realized a yellow Fiat convertible was behind him, maintaining exactly his speed, not catching up to him, not falling behind. Twenty miles farther, the car turned off on a ranch road. Through his rearview mirror, Flynn watched its dust rise. For the rest of the way he had nothing to watch but the horizon turning with incredible slowness, the highway remaining as unchanging as a spinster.

Miles from the town of Ada, Flynn had seen evidences of abandonment. Tractors stood out in the open. Front doors and even some barn doors had been left open, blowing in the wind. Cattle lay, their bellies bloated, dead in the scrub pastures and along the road.

Ada’s main street (there was only one street), was shut up. The window of the hardware store was cracked and the shades of the grocery store were drawn. The feed store looked locked.

At best, Ada, Texas, had been a boring town.

“The Lord has not abandoned me,” said the Reverend Fraiman. “That I know.”

“He’s left you crying in the wilderness, though.”

“The Lord is within every person. In every one of us.”

Flynn scratched his head. “Then a lot of the Lord just left town.”

Although there were only two of them in this abandoned corner of the world, the Reverend Fraiman raised his chin and spoke to the back of the small room. “No matter how much the messenger of the Lord raises up his people, he must not raise them up in their own eyes. For the Lord is God and He does not love the pride of arrogance. Nor may the messenger, however much he loves his own people, raise them up even in his own eyes. For the Lord is his God and not even God’s most wonderful creature, man, may be allowed to obscure the messenger’s vision.”

A particularly strong wind rattled the Venetian blinds.

“Reverend Fraiman, if you could tell me what happened here, to the people of this town …?”

“Satan came to them in the night, every man, woman, and child of them, and whispered in their hearts that despite all the manifestations of the Lord they had witnessed on this earth, they were his children, the children of Satan, and he filled them with madness, and he stole their souls away.”

“The devil took them?”

“As the Lord said …”

The reverend’s chin remained high, but there were tears in his eyes. He swallowed.

“I’m sure you’re right, Reverend Fraiman,” Flynn said. “In a way. Sure, the devil took them. And your wife … may I ask after her?”

“No, no.” There was alarm in the reverend’s eyes. “She just drove into Bixby. She has to drive all the way into Bixby just to get the groceries.”

“I see.” Flynn tried again to make himself comfortable on the broken couch. “I’m sure the people in
such a wee town as this come to mean the world to each other.”

“Sure.”

“Ach, sure, I know,” said Flynn. “They grow up together, love each other, hate each other, marry each other, have babies, know well each other’s surprising sins, each other’s surprising nobilities.”

“What did you say your name is?”

“Flynn.”

“You’re not from around here.”

“No,” said Flynn. “I’m not. I’m not from anywhere in Texas.”

“You like this part of the world?”

“There’s a lot of it,” admitted Flynn.

“Are you Christian?”

“Well,” said Flynn, “I’m workin’ at it. Isn’t that the most that can be asked of any man, whatever the question is?”

“Have you the gift of tongues?” asked the minister.

“No, sir,” answered Flynn. “Only the gift of gab.”

“Will you pray with me?”

The reverend’s bloodshot eyes stared at Flynn.

“Good Lord, man, what do you think I’m doin’?”

“On our knees, Mister Flynn, we shall join hands and raise our voices in praise of the Lord.”

“I’ll do my own prayin’,” said Flynn, “on my own time.”

“Are you saying you will not pray with me?”

“I’m on duty. I’m here, you see, to inquire why the people of this town ran off between a Saturday and a Thursday. Now if you’d only speak to that?”

“Mysterious are the ways of the Lord.”

“Reverend Fraiman, if I wanted to inquire into the ways of the Lord, I could have stayed home with my family.” Flynn’s tweed trousers were sticking to him in the heat. “Now on that Thursday you called the F.B.I., it wasn’t to ask them to praise the Lord with you, although I’m sure a dose of the old ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ would do them no harm, either. I’d be pleased
if you’d tell me what you told them, in the greatest detail of which you are capable.”

“Aren’t you from the F.B.I.?”

“The F.B.I.,” sighed Flynn, “wrote out a report of this incident and sent it on to us.”

“Then why do I need to go through it again?”

“What?” said Flynn. “Have you never repeated yourself in your life? Then, for all that, you’ve done damned little what-you-call prayin’.” Flynn leaned forward and said more gently, “You may take it, Reverend Fraiman, that the F.B.I. do indeed have the gift of tongues. Their every utterance is magnificent in its power, but mysterious to us poor mortals who cannot keep up with their codes. I’m sure the Lord understands them, but the rest of us are left on our knees, gaping at the wonder of it all. Therefore, if you wouldn’t mind giving me the word, I suspect all Israel will hum your praises.”

“You’re not an ignorant man, Flynn.”

“Even at this very moment,” said Flynn, sitting back and raising his hand to the ceiling, “I pursue knowledge. Now: about three months ago, you called the F.B.I. office in Austin. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Had you ever called an F.B.I. office before in your life?”

“No.”

“Had you ever met the F.B.I. agent in Austin?”

“No.”

“Have you ever called the police for any reason whatsoever before in your life?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“When?”

“A year ago. A year and a half ago.”

Flynn waited for him to explain.

“Coming home late one night. From a Prayer Day in Austin. I found a couple of dozen kids on the highway. Cars, pickup trucks. I stopped. I realized they were arranging drag races, or whatever. I asked them
to stop. Even when I identified myself, they ignored me. This was outside Bixby. There were no Ada kids there. Some were drinking beer, and I saw a whiskey bottle. I stopped at a ranch nearby and called the police. The police in Bixby. I was afraid someone might get hurt.”

Flynn said, “You’re not a man to call the police every time there’s a shadow on the road.”

“No,” said the minister. “I’m not. There is a higher law….”

“Then calling the F.B.I. was not a small matter to you….”

“My wife and I discussed what I should do many times before I did anything. Before I called Austin. We prayed over it.”

“All right now, Reverend: why did you call the F.B.I.?”

“The sheriff was gone, too. He left Tuesday. We saw him leave.”

“Were you thinking a crime had been committed?”

“A crime?”

“People are prone to call the police or the F.B.I. when they think a crime has been committed.”

“I don’t know whether a crime has been committed. A mystery had happened. Everyone in town just got up and left. We wanted the mystery investigated.”

“Do you feel the mystery has been investigated?”

“An agent, an F.B.I. agent came down. A nice young man. Named Silvers. Agent Silvers. I told him all about it.”

“What did he say?”

“He agreed with me.”

“How’s that?”

“He agreed it was Satan’s work.”

“He did, did he?”

“Before he left we joined hands and shared in praising the Lord.”

“My God.”

“Since then, I have racked my brain and spent
many hours going over the word of the Lord, studying each sample in the Testament of sudden emigrations.”

“And what have you found out?”

The minister lowered his head. “I can find no parallel. Here there was no famine, no pestilence.… I’m sure there is a lesson somewhere. I’ve even written the dean of my old school in Alabama.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t exactly write me back. Not yet, that is. He sent me a copy of his new book,
Jesus, I’m Coming
. That was real good of him. I read through it, believing there might be some reference to sudden emigrations, but there wasn’t.”

“Did the book come with a bill for it?”

“No! Lord, no. I did see the price of the book and mailed him a contribution to cover expenses.”

“Mysterious are the ways of the Lord, indeed,” said Flynn. “Your Man chased the money changers from the Temple, but so far no one’s done anything about those who take advantage of others through the mail. And have you ever heard back from the devout F.B.I. man again, Agent Silvers?”

“Yes, he called once.”

“To say what?”

“Well, to say Alligator Simmons had been killed.”

“Who was Alligator Simmons?”

“A boy from town. Agent Silvers said he had been shot dead in a bar in Fort Worth.”

“In the act of robbery? Was he holdin’ up the bar?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Agent Silvers said it was one of those ‘I’m-from-Ada-and-can-whup-anyone-in-Fort-Worth’ kind of things.”

“He was shot for that?”

“Well, you’re not from Texas, Mister Flynn. He said it several times runnin’.”

“And someone shot him?”

“In Texas, they call that
lookin’ to be shot
. In Fort Worth, especially, that kind of talk is suicidal.”

“My, my. I must remember to mind my manners if I’m ever in Fort Worth.”

“Alligator was carrying a gun.”

“Why was he carrying a gun?”

“You wouldn’t go into a bar in Fort Worth and say that kind of thing unless you were carrying a gun.”

“I believe Texans have a most refined sense of suicide,” mused Flynn. “And tell me, how old a boy was this Alligator?”

“Fifty. Fifty-two maybe.”

“Fifty-two! He got a skinful, stood up on his hind legs, and bellowed bravely for three minutes runnin’—and someone shot him?”

The minister’s bloodshot eyes bulged, but he said nothing.

“And did you ever hear anything else from Agent Silvers?” Flynn asked in a milder manner.

“No,” the minister answered. “Two other men came down and took the town records from the sheriff’s office. They didn’t say much.”

“Did you get them on their knees?”

“What did you say?”

“Never mind. The sound of the wind tires a body out, doesn’t it just? Now, if you’d just tell me what you told Agent Silvers in the first place …?”

“Sure.”

“Whew. Hot enough, too.”

Flynn tried to pick the tweed away from his legs.

“Saturday—all of three months ago, now—I went to see Billy Pat, sayin’ the Lord had blessed us and I was prepared to engage him and his men to spruce up the church. The foundation’s cracked….”

“If you’d begin at the beginning,” said Flynn, “we’d get to the end faster.”

“The beginning?”

“You and your wife rise up from the sleep of angels … at about what time?”

“We got up at six-thirty.”

“You buckled on your toast and coffee….”

“We came to the living room, knelt. I read a chapter, she read a chapter, I read a chapter.”

“On your knees?”

“Of course. We joined hands and sang a hymn. We said the Lord’s Prayer together.” The minister blushed. “Then we kissed and wished each other a good day. This is a Christian home, Mister Flynn.”