The Valley of Dry Bones (3 page)

Katashi looked embarrassed by the attention, but Sasha was squinting directly at Zeke, clearly puzzled. He forced a smile, but she didn't look away.

“We had a fenced-in backyard,” Alexis continued, “and he'd been punished before for leaving it. That day I made him come inside while I put Sasha down for a late afternoon nap. She had just turned three that week. I heard Junior in the kitchen while I was reading to her. And then I didn't hear him. If you're a parent, you hate that sound . . .”

Zeke was so rattled by the hallucinations—or whatever they were—that he worried they portended an attack by the Mongers. He peered out the slit in the window.

“Zeke?” Alexis said, startling him. “I'm up to where I called to tell you I couldn't find Junior.”

“Right, sorry. So, Mahir here”—Zeke pointed at a French man with a dark-complexion about his age—“and I were working on a project at the California Department of Water Resources substation in Lakewood . . .”

He told of how he and Mahir had raced home, only to learn the awful news, and how Mahir watched little Sasha while Zeke and Alexis went to the hospital to identify Junior's body. “But I had so many questions,” Zeke said. “All we knew was what the officer had put in his report. I was
desperate to know more. Was he killed instantly? Did he say anything? Was anyone with him? That's when we met our angel.”

The widow Elaine Meeks, sixty now, stared at the floor as she spoke. “I was about to get in my car when I heard all the noise and looked up just in time to see the truck lurch. I knew it had to be bad. I used to be a nurse, so before I knew it I was at your Junior's side.” She paused and looked into Alexis's eyes. “I've always believed it was God's gift to me to get to be with your precious boy just before he went to heaven, and I know that's where he is, because he told me that's where he was going.

“But then I did something way out of character. Katashi was in a bad way, and I was worried what he would do.”

Katashi spoke up. “The only thing that kept me from killing myself was that I didn't know what would happen to me when I died. Mrs. Meeks had told Junior he could be in heaven with God, and he said he already knew all about that. I couldn't believe it! He was scared of dying, like anybody would be, especially a child. But he believed with all his heart that he was going to heaven. After the police took my statement, Mrs. Meeks was there waiting, as if she knew I wanted to talk to her.”

“I thought you might need a friend,” Elaine said.

Elaine's and Katashi's stories never failed to move Zeke, and he never grew tired of hearing how Junior knew he was going to heaven. The room had begun to warm with the body heat and the peaking of the sun, and he squinted out the window down the boulevard. Ironic that he and his friends still called it that. True, a few street signs still dangled with hints of that name visible, despite unyielding irradiance from the sun since the day Ezekiel Jr. had been born.

What Zeke and his friends still called a boulevard had once been a bustling thoroughfare of commerce. Now the unrelenting heat from dawn to dusk made for billowing clouds of fine silt at any footstep or tire on former pavement. Even concrete and asphalt had given way to the ravages of nature.

Every other debilitating drought in the history of the state had been attributed to lack of precipitation. But just four years into this one—when
it had already been deemed the worst in more than a millennium—it was determined to be entirely temperature-driven. Zeke, in his early twenties then, had predicted catastrophe if things didn't change, but nothing on this scale.

Suddenly the voice rang clear in his ear again, “That was My doing.”

Great. He was losing his mind. Should he be surprised? It hadn't taken long for the most populous state in the union to become the least populous. Sane people? Gone. Yet here he was with a small crew of holdouts as fanatical as he. As cathartic as this meeting was, remembering how God had used such tragedy to bring them all together, all he wanted now was for it to be over so he could get Alexis alone and tell her.

But what would he say?
I'm hearing voices
? Problem was, it was more than that. What about those phantom touches? At least this time he kept from jumping and causing everyone else to panic. What would Lexi think? All she needed was a husband with his crazy on.

Zeke saw dust on the horizon and hoped it meant only a breeze. He turned back when the room fell silent. Mahir's hand was in the air. “Excuse me, Zeke,” he said, a hint of French still in his tone. “You don't look so good. Want me to watch so you can sit down?”

“Yes,” Doc said, leaning forward and peering at him. “You all right, Zeke?”

“Sure, I'll sit. Thanks.”

As Mahir moved past him, Zeke whispered, “Keep an eye on the horizon, see?”

When Zeke sat, Sasha slid next to him and laid her head on his shoulder, which moved him. He hoped whatever was tormenting him would not be obvious. She caressed his back. “You all right, Daddy?”

He nodded, but almost immediately something forced him straight up and pressed him back in his chair. Without meaning to, he had pushed his daughter aside. Zeke tried to make it appear as if he were just shifting his weight, so he kept his eyes on Katashi and casually draped his arm around Sasha, fighting to maintain composure. The hand in his lap balled into a fist so tight his knuckles were white and his biceps quivered.

And here came the voice again.

“Listen to Me! I am that I am.”

Lord! It's You?

“My mercy is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Me, and to those who remember My commandments. I have established My throne in heaven, and My kingdom rules over all. Listen to Me! Hear Me!”

Zeke lurched forward again, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, tears streaming, praying silently,
I hear You, Lord! I'm listening!

“Daddy!” Sasha whispered, and Zeke heard Pastor Bob approach and lay a hand on his back.

“Let's give Zeke a minute. He's told us he's all right, but benchmark anniversaries like these are hard, and you never know how they're going to affect you. Let's pray. Father, be with our brother in a special way, we ask in the name of Your Son. Amen.”

Zeke thought that might have been one of the least necessary entreaties in history. For God was saying to him even then, “And it shall come to pass in the last days that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.

“And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven and signs in the earth: blood and fire and smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

“And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

E
ZEKIEL
T
HORPPE WAS NOT
from a tradition comfortable with outward manifestations of the Spirit of God, let alone dramatic ones. He didn't quarrel with those who went in for that sort of thing, though he suspected much of it was exaggerated.
If they were raised that way
, he thought,
fine, let's consider it a “distinctive” or a “denominational preference,” certainly nothing over which to split hairs or break fellowship
. He had grown fond of saying, “I quit drawing lines in the sand when I realized how few of us were left on the beach” and felt magnanimous when he said it.

Well, terrific. Now what was he going to say? God Himself had invaded Zeke's cozy little theological cottage and spoken to him the way He had the saints of old. Zeke wasn't sure exactly what He wanted yet, but listening up was clearly a no-brainer. God had his attention all right. Either that or Zeke had a first-class, one-way ticket to Cuckooville.

Mahir seemed riveted by something outside, but Zeke knew he would say something if he feared a legitimate threat. He decided to relax. He sensed the support of his friends, even if they did assume his discomfort came from reliving the worst night of his life. How he and Alexis got through that, not to mention the next year, he still couldn't say—apart from God, of course.

He'd known supernatural grace as he'd seen others bear inconceivable trials. Any parent has imagined the worst of all tragedies, but no one
could know how they'd hold up under it until it came. Zeke knew people expected him to say they had probably been in shock and might not have clearly remembered the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the tragedy, but that wasn't true—at least the amnesia part. He and Alexis had revisited it endlessly over the past decade, and while naturally their hearts and spirits, and yes, even their bodies, had shifted into some sort of self-preservation mode, they believed they remembered everything.

Now as Katashi and Elaine recalled the meeting at his place, it was as if Junior were suspended in time, tireless, lithe, running, jumping, climbing, smiling, eager for the next adventure. What kind of a seventeen-year-old would he have become? Rebellious and sullen? Unwilling to live in the godforsaken desert California had become? Or brilliant and task-oriented, impatient for the next challenge?

Katashi was saying, “I'll never forget Alexis telling me, ‘I only want to blame you so I don't have to blame myself, or the building owner for not having enough security, or God for taking him too soon.'

“I kept telling her, ‘No, no! Blame me! It's my fault! I should have waited, should have checked!'

“But she told me, ‘We wouldn't have come if that's how we felt. We know you feel bad and that you will have to live with this all your life too. We just want you to know we forgive you, that we know it was an accident.'

“Who does that? I had to know! First their boy knew he was going to heaven. Then they forgave me for killing him. Truthfully, I wished they'd yelled at me, hit me, tried to kill me. That's what I deserved. That would've made me feel better, if anything could have.

“As soon as they left I called Raoul. He'd heard all about it from someone who called him from work, and he invited me over. I told him I didn't want to bother him when he was sick, but he told me he had just called in sick to get the day off. That made me mad. Everything just burst from me and I cussed him out and told him it was all his fault, that if he'd been there it wouldn't have happened. He hung up on me, and I didn't care if I ever saw him again. Now I had lost everything, including my best friend, and I
really
didn't want to live anymore.”

Katashi broke down. “Bear with me,” he said, holding up a hand. “I'm here, so you know this ends well.”

“And I'm here too,” Raoul said. “So it gets better.”

“Raoul showed up within ten minutes,” Katashi said. “He told me he didn't like something in the way I sounded. He said he'd heard fatalism in my voice.”

“And I don't even understand Japanese people, you know,” Raoul said, making the others chuckle. “I never have.”

Zeke stood and switched places with Mahir at the window.

Mahir whispered, “The dust died down.”

And so it had. Zeke didn't like it. If Mongers were in the area, the dust told him they were about a mile away. But no dust didn't necessarily mean they were gone. It could mean they were closer. Or coming from another direction.

Raoul continued, “I figured the best way to keep Katashi from doin' somethin' stupid was to make him tell me the whole thing again from the beginning. I told him I was sorry about calling in sick without really being sick. It wasn't like we both hadn't done that before, but we always told each other. Anyway, I ordered some food because I knew he needed to eat and I wanted to keep him away from the booze. Then I called Benita and told her I was going to sleep at his place.”

“It's a good thing he did,” Katashi said.

“I think so too,” Raoul said, “because I was there the next day when Mrs. Meeks called and said the Thorppes wanted Katashi to come to the funeral a few days later. No way he woulda done that if I hadn't talked him into it.”

“For sure,” Katashi said. “And no way I would have gone if you hadn't gone with me.”

“I had to drag you there, dude.”

“It meant so much to us,” Alexis said.

“It was the hardest thing I've ever done,” Katashi said. “Everybody knew who I was. There's nothing worse than a funeral with a tiny casket, but to know you're the reason and that everyone else knows too . . . Oh, it was awful. I wanted to crawl in a hole.”

It was hard for Zeke and Alexis too, of course, though Pastor Bob had preached a message on salvation, as they asked, including Junior's last words that though he was scared he knew he would soon be in heaven with God, “because of Jesus.”

“That was the first time Benita and I had ever heard anything like that,” Raoul said. “And we went to church a lot, you know? All our lives. In Mexico and when we moved to Angelino Heights. We believed something like that, but not that. It wasn't
because
of Jesus, but because of us—what we were trying to do for Him. We talked about it all the way home and all week, about what we would have said if we were the ones dying. We woulda said we
hoped
we were going to heaven, God, because we tried really hard.”

“I was listening too,” Katashi said, “because Elaine had explained it all to me, and Pastor Bob was making it clearer. But the whole time I was dreading going to the cemetery. I wanted out of that, because I would be standing shoulder to shoulder with all these people again, and I didn't know if I could take another minute of it.”

Elaine said, “You asked me if I thought the Thorppes would mind if you slipped away after the service. I told you they'd forgiven you for something much more serious than that, but that they
had
asked you to be there, and didn't you think you owed them at least that much?”