The Calling (15 page)

“Christopher, would you like some more?”
 

Grandma’s plate was cleared and she was sliding out from behind the table.
 

I’d hardly touched my own plate. I shook my head.
 

As she went to the stove to fix herself more, I glanced back out the screen at Moses Cunningham’s RV.
 

First, talk to my father
.
 

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more about today. Standing there over Joey as he spoke his last word and watching his only good eye grow blank and glaze over. Or coming out of his room into the hallway and seeing his father sitting there looking back at me, giving me a look as if to say this wasn’t a surprise to him at all and he knew exactly what his son had just said before he died.
 

He’ll explain about me
.
 

Sheriff Douglas was pissed, as was my uncle and everyone else. They wanted information which I couldn’t provide, and it didn’t help that I’d stopped the tape recorder, even if they could clearly hear Joey’s voice telling me to turn it off.
What did he tell you?
they wanted to know, but I couldn’t tell them the truth, I knew they wouldn’t believe me—even I was having a hard time believing it myself. Then again, I wondered as I stood there under their scrutinizing gazes, what if they did believe me? This last was an even scarier thought, and so I lied and told them he had just wanted to witness to me one final time, that was all, he was some kind of Jesus freak and that was it.
 

Whether they believed me or not, I didn’t know, nor did I care. Right now I had more important things to worry about.
 

As my grandmother set her plate on the table and began to side back into the booth again, Mrs. Roberts tapped at the screen door. “Mind some company?” she asked.
 

Grandma started to say something, about how it probably wasn’t the best time, but I shook my head and told her it was okay, that I was going to go back to my trailer anyway, thanks so much for the great dinner.
 

When I stepped outside, I glanced toward the Rec House, at the spot where the deputy’s cruiser had once been. It was still vacant. I briefly wondered if they were having any luck in finding Joey’s abductor. Then I started down the drive, toward my trailer, as if that was really where I was headed.
 

I knew better.
 

A minute later I stood beside Moses Cunningham’s RV. I waited by the door, debating whether I actually wanted to go through with this or not. Then before I even had a chance to turn and walk away, the door opened. Moses stood there staring back at me, his dark face hard and set.
 

“Hello, Christopher,” he said. His voice didn’t sound the same as it had two days ago in church; now it sounded faint, nervous, almost strained. He opened the door. “You might as well come inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

•
 
•
 
•

T
HE
INTERIOR
OF
the RV was small and tight, much like my grandmother’s own trailer. Behind the two front seats were a couch and chair. A table rested against the refrigerator, which stood directly across from the sink and stove. Back farther were the bathroom and bedroom, but neither of those rooms concerned me as I sat on the couch. I could only imagine all the places Moses and Joey had driven in this thing, all the trailer parks just like this one they’d stayed in for a night or two before moving on.
 

Except now it was just Moses.
 

Would always be Moses.
 

He pulled a fifth of Captain Morgan’s from a cabinet above the sink, then two small glasses from another cabinet. They were from
Sesame Street
, one showing Big Bird, the other Ernie. When Moses turned and handed me the Ernie glass, he noticed the look I was giving him and asked, “You don’t drink?”
 

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “I just never thought I’d be drinking with a preacher is all.”
 

He smiled as he poured. “If it eases your conscience any, I consider myself more of a teacher than a preacher.”
 

“Why’s that?”
 

“A preacher is somebody who tells you what’s true. A teacher is somebody who shows you why it’s true.”
 

He finished pouring himself a glass, then placed the bottle on the small table—what probably passed for a coffee table in Winnebago territory—between us. A book lay there face-up. From where I sat it was turned away, forcing me to read the letters of its title and author upside down. Moses must have noticed my eyes scanning the cover, because he said, “Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man
. Have you ever read it?”
 

I looked up, startled like a kid caught reading his old man’s
Playboy
, and shook my head.
 

Moses took a sip of his drink. “How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
 

“Eighteen.”
 

He nodded, the number not surprising him at all—and even then it didn’t occur to me that he already knew everything there was to know about my life, that these questions were merely asked to loosen me up. “Yeah, I don’t think they teach this one in high schools. At least not yet. Damn shame, too, because it’s a great book. I actually read it to Joey—excluding some parts—when he was six. After that he managed to go through it twice himself.”
 

“What is it about?”
 

“Finding one’s identity. Ellison wrote it with the Harlem Renaissance in mind, bringing voices to the blacks. But the story itself ... it could stand for anyone who doesn’t know who they are just yet.” He paused, seemed to shrug, and said, “My wife majored in English for two years. Loved the stuff. Made me read most of what she had to in her classes so that we could always have something to talk about. Guess it rubbed off on me.”
 

I smiled but said nothing, just sat there with the glass resting in my lap. Finally I said, “I’m sorry for what happened.”
 

“So am I.”
 

I took a swallow and winced at the burn. “Before I saw him today, you said something to me. You said Joey told you about me even before you both came here. Even before he met me. How is that ... how’s that possible?”
 

Moses stared down at his glass and swirled it around. He took another swallow and said, “Before we get too deep into this, I was wondering if you could answer me something.”
 

“I’ll try.”
 

“Do you believe in God?”
 

I opened my mouth but then shut it. Just sat there, staring down at my drink, at the dark golden liquid.
 

“I take it from your silence you do.”
 

“Why do you say that?”
 

“If you didn’t believe in God at all, you wouldn’t have hesitated.”
 

“No, I do believe in God. I believe he’s absent. Indifferent. Lazy. Pick an adjective.”
 

“And you believe God is this way because ...”
 

“He doesn’t do shit.”
 

“Man acts, God reacts.”
 

“Meaning?”
 

“Meaning God isn’t going to save the world on his own. If that were the case, why would he need us? Our purpose here on this earth is to serve him. And when we do that, God rewards us.” He downed his glass, set it on the table. “Now what about the devil?”
 

“What about him?”
 

“Do you believe in him?”
 

Not hesitating this time, I said, “My mom thought a demon once tried to kill me.”
 

“How so?”
 

I told him the story, and when I was finished he said, “Do you think it was a demon?”
 

“I don’t know. What do you think?”
 

“It could have been. Or you could just have simply had some kind of temporary asphyxiation.” Moses leaned forward, produced a pack of smokes from under the table. “Joey never liked it when I smoked. I’d been so good about it for the longest time, but now ... well, as you can imagine it’s been a pretty stressful week. Would you care for one?”
 

I shook my head.
 

“Okay,” Moses said after he had his cigarette lit, “before we start, I figure it might be a good idea to tell you a little about myself. Just the basics. I was born in Riverdale, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. My dad was a cokehead, my mom was around so he could beat her and screw her whenever he wanted. He beat me too, sometimes really bad, and one time he even raped me. So I ran away from home. This was about when I was thirteen. I went up to Atlanta and was living on the streets. I got heavily into drugs. Mostly cocaine, but some heroin too. Actually, it got so bad I would do anything to score a hit. Anything. I’m not proud about most of the things I’ve done in my life, but I will take responsibility for them. I’ve mugged people for money. I once nearly beat a man to death. I was way out of control, and by all rights, I should have died out there on those streets.”
 

He leaned forward, stubbed his cigarette out, and lit another one. “But God saved me.”
 

Except it wasn’t really God Himself who rescued Moses from the mean streets of Atlanta, but it was through a church, through a reverend who was out late one night and who Moses had attempted to mug. He came up behind the man on the dark street, pulled out his knife and ordered the man to give him all his money. The man just stood there, not saying a word or moving a muscle, and the next thing Moses knew the two of them were surrounded by hundreds of people.
 

“I couldn’t see their faces, or even their bodies, but I sensed them there. They were like shadows there in the dark, just these ... these figures. So I started to run away, I started to bolt out of there, when the man told me to stop. He called me back. He said it would be all right. He said I didn’t have to run anymore, that I could change my life around. It was the same stuff I’d been hearing from other priests and pastors and reverends for the last three years I’d been on the street, but there was something in his voice right then, something that told me this time it was true. So I stopped running. I turned around. And the hundreds of people surrounding us were gone. It was just me and him, and he held out his hand to me. I just stared at it for the longest time, not knowing what to do, because you want to know something sad? In the sixteen years I’d been alive, never once had I shaken anybody’s hand.”
 

The man took Moses into his home. He fed him, clothed him, taught him how to read and write. Then, one night when Moses had decided enough was enough and was ready to run away, to steal everything he could from the man, the man caught him. Moses was in the man’s study at the time, rifling through the drawers of the desk, when the man stepped in and turned on the light.
 

“I expected him to be angry. I expected him to kick me out of his house. But do you know what he did? He actually stepped forward, went to the bookcase, and took down a book from the top shelf. It was one of those trick books, because when he opened it there was a hole inside, containing a thick roll of bills. He pulled the roll out and handed it to me. He said, ‘If what I’ve offered you is not good enough, then there’s nothing I can do to help you anymore.’ I didn’t move from where I was behind the desk. Eventually he set the money down on the table beside the door, closed the book and placed it back on the shelf, then left the room.”
 

In the end Moses almost took the money and ran. But then he really thought about it. For the past five months the man had been taking better care of Moses than anyone ever had before. He forced Moses to go to church on Sundays, that was true, and he forced him to help clean the church and help out during activities on other days, but he constantly showed Moses respect, acted like they were equals. And the biggest thing to Moses, at least right then, was that first night, after Moses had tried mugging him, the man had actually held out his hand and wouldn’t move it until Moses accepted it and they shook.
 

“So to fast forward,” Moses said, “I cleaned up my act. I understood God was real, and that He cared about me, and that it was my purpose to serve Him. So I started to work for the church. Eventually I moved up north, to help out another church in Ohio. And it was there that I met my wife, Sabrina. It was there that ...”
 

He paused.
 

“But maybe I’m getting a little too ahead of myself. First, if you don’t mind, may I ask what my boy talked to you about today?”
 

“You mean you don’t know?”
 

“I’m sure I know most of it.”
 

This wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting, though I realized this entire situation had gone far beyond expectations.
 

When Moses saw that I wasn’t going to answer him, he said, “Did he at least tell you who took him?”
 

I hesitated again. “He said ... it was an angel.”
 

“An angel?”
 

“The angel of death.”
 

“Did he give a name?”
 

I thought for a moment. “Samael.”
 

Moses said, “Did you tell the police the angel of death abducted my boy?”
 

“No, of course not. That would have sounded ...”
 

“Crazy, I know.” Moses forced a smile. “Now do you see why I asked you about whether or not you believe in God and Satan? Because everything you’ve heard from Joey, and everything you’re about to hear from me, is going to sound crazy to you. But I’m asking you to keep an open mind.”