The Warning (2 page)
God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do. . . . seven years of famine will arise, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine will deplete the land. So the plenty will not be known in the land because of the famine following, for it will be very severe.
Buddy prayed once more. Anything to make this anxiety leave him alone.
Show me what this means
.
When nothing happened except an easing of the pain in his chest, he opened his eyes and put the car back in drive. As he put on his blinker and checked for oncoming traffic, he sent another quick prayer heavenward. This one asked God to keep him from going insane.
“Okay, you can sit up now.” Dr. Jasmine Hopper cut off the EKG machine. “How long have you had these chest pains, Buddy?”
“Hard to tell. Maybe a couple of weeks. No longer.”
Dr. Jasmine Hopper was a woman of substance in every sense of the word. She was dark haired and big boned, with hands that would have suited a man, long-fingered and supple. She pulled the wires from their connectors, then began stripping the tabs and the tape from his chest. “Turn around and let me get to those on your back. Have you been under any undue pressure at work?”
“None to speak of.”
Her gaze rested on him as she coiled the wires in a bundle. “What about at home? The boys doing okay?”
“The boys are fine, Jasmine. Their wives are fine. Their children are fine. Molly is fine.”
“Something certainly isn't fine.” She slid the long paper streamer through her fingers and tore it out of the machine. “No, leave your shirt off. I want to have another listen after I've studied the readout. I'll be right back.”
The door closed behind the doctor. Buddy sat on the edge of the examining table. The room smelled faintly of some biting odor, sharp and clean. Buddy looked at his reflection in the long wall mirror. He straightened his shoulders and pulled in his gut. Even so, there was no escaping the fact that somewhere along the line middle age had sneaked up on him.
His black hair was graying but still pretty thick. Thick and straight, other than the bald spot at the back that he could usually ignore since he could not see it. He was a small man, standing just under five-foot-nine. His height had always been a disappointment, especially since his father had towered over the world. Six-foot-six his father had stood, and strong as an ox. Buddy had taken after his mother, a sparrow of a woman. It was hard to tell from whom he had gained his quiet nature, since both his parents had been tight with their words. But all his life he had wished he could have had at least a little bit more of his father's strength and height.
Buddy's father had come from the old country. That was how he had always referred to it. At the turn of the century, it was one forgotten corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then it was called Czechoslovakia for fewer than thirty years. After that the Nazis overran it and took all but the name. When Stalin assumed power he replaced one form of tyranny for another. With democracy came independence, and the old country split in two.
Now the old country was Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and Buddy did not even know from which part his father's family had come. His father had almost never spoken of what he had left behind. His father had been nine when his own father, Buddy's grandfather, had pulled up the family and brought them to America. As far as Buddy's father had been concerned, it was America first and last. Whenever the old country had been mentioned in the news, Buddy's father had listened with a sort of bemused satisfaction, very glad in his silent way to be here and to be an American.
His father had been a handyman and carpenter and cabinetmaker. Buddy was the first of their family ever to graduate from college, the only occasion in Buddy's entire life when he saw his father cry. When Buddy had left for his new job at the then Aiden Bank, his father had been so proud he could have burst his shirt buttons. A picture of Buddy taken that first morning, dressed in his spanking new suit and tie, had stood on his parents' mantelpiece for as long as they had been alive.
“There is no indication whatsoever of any cardiac arrest.” Dr. Hopper interrupted Buddy's musings as she shut the door behind her. She pulled the stethoscope from her pocket and fitted the earpieces into place. “Let's have another listen.”
Buddy submitted to the quiet inspection, breathing as instructed. He was glad beyond words that his worst fear had proved to be groundless.
When she finally straightened, Jasmine went on. “I can't find a thing wrong with you.”
“You don't sound very pleased about it.”
“You say you've been having severe chest pains for the first time in your life. Generally this can be traced to some specific physiological change or new source of stress.”
“I can't think of anything.”
“Yet Molly says you've been having nightmares that leave you dripping wet and gasping for breath. Do the chest pains come with the dreams?”
“Yes.” Able to be honest about it, now that it was not life threatening. His father had died from heart failure, keeled over three days before his sixtieth birthday. “Every night.”
“You have had the same dream each night? For how long?”
“Just over two weeks.” And each night the mysterious countdown continued.
Forty-one days
. But no need to mention that.
“You can put your shirt back on now. Can you tell me what the dream is about?”
“Ordinary things.” Buddy hid his sudden discomfort by turning and reaching for his shirt. He ducked his head to fasten the buttons. “I'm in the bank and then on the street downtown. Nothing that should scare me.”
“Try to remember. Did anything out of the ordinary happen the first day? The day of your first nightmare?”
Buddy thought back. “Well, yes, but nothing that serious. The monthly business forecast arrived. The bank subscribes to it; all the bank's managers receive a copy.”
“Bad news?”
“No, as a matter of fact it was all good.” Too good. That had been his reaction. Buddy recalled it clearly. Strange how he could have forgotten that until now. But that had been his reaction the
instant
he had read the headlines.
Inflation was back under control, the statement had read. Interest rates were on the way back down. Employment figures were stable, factory orders in good shape, consumer confidence sound, housing starts up for the third month running. It looked to be a banner autumn for the stock market and a great final quarter to the year.
But Buddy's response had been entirely different. The paper had seemed alive in his hands. And despite the rosy forecast, he had felt a rising sense of dread. It had seemed as though barriers separating him from the future were being rolled back, until before him lay only bleakness and sorrow.
He looked up to find Jasmine Hopper watching him closely. This was one of the qualities that endeared Jasmine to her charges and made them friends as well as patients. She would stand and wait with them, working not just to treat the ailment but also to find the cause. “Something bad?”
“No. Well, yes. But not . . .” He stopped. There was no way he could put into words what he had felt that day.
Her eyes narrowed at his inability to continue. “Buddy, I could give you a prescription that will help you sleep. But I don't think that's what you want.”
“No,” he agreed, definite on that point.
“Do you have a psychiatrist you could speak to? I could suggest one if you like.”
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he could manage, “I don't think that's necessary.”
“What about one of our pastors? Somebody you can trust with your darkest secrets?”
“Yes.”
“Something is trying to work its way out. That's my guess. Talking to a trusted professional is perhaps what you need to put all this behind you.”
“I'll think about it.”
“I want you to do more than think. I want you to act.” She moved for the door. “And if the chest pains grow any worse or start appearing at other times, I want you to call me immediately.”
“All right.”
“For that matter, make an appointment to see me next week, regardless.” She nodded and gave a brisk smile. “Remember me to Molly.”
When Buddy arrived home that evening, his older boy, Paul, was sitting at the kitchen table. Somehow his father's height and strength had managed to skip a generation, bounding straight over Buddy's head and landing in his son. Nobody had any idea where his son had obtained his blond looks, however. Paul looked like a giant Swedeâhair almost white, skin reddened by twenty minutes in spring sunshine, eyes the color of an early morning sky.
Jack, his second boy, was stamped from Buddy's mold. He had the same small build, the same intent air, the same dark hair and eyes. Jack was a lawyer with one of the local firms, a member of the town council, and a quiet bastion of their community.
Paul was as gentle as he was big. Both Buddy's boys were. Their gentleness had been a source of great concern to Buddy when the boys had been younger. Buddy had pushed them as hard as he could manage, trying to instill in them a need to excel and to do the most with what they had.
“Hello, Son.”
“What did the doctor say, Pop?”
“Clean bill of health.” But Buddy's eyes were not on Paul. They were on his wife. The scar that began just below her left ear and spilled down her chin and disappeared into her high collar was red as a beet. This was a signal of strong emotion. Anger, happiness, sadness, distress, joyâit did not matter. Whatever Molly felt, if she felt it strongly, was displayed the length and breadth of her scar. Molly was so quiet that this was often his only signal that she had been hit hard by something while he had been away. And right now it was blazing as if lit by an internal fire. “Anything wrong?”
“No, not wrong.” Paul had a glow of quiet satisfaction about him. He set his mug down. “Mom tells me the dreams are still bothering you.”
“From time to time.” Buddy kissed his wife and studied her gaze. He saw a gentle joy in her eyes. He sighed silently with relief. Whatever had her so worked up was good. “But my health is sound, and that's what matters.”
Molly asked, “And your heart?”
“Fit as a fiddle, according to Jasmine.” He accepted a mug and seated himself across from his son.
“That's good, Pop. Real good. We've been worried.”
“No need.” He took a sip and gave thanks for the umpteenth time for having been blessed with two quiet and well-behaved sons. He did not know how they would have coped with loud or rambunctious children. He and Molly were simply not made for confrontation and anger. In their twenty-nine years together, he did not think he had ever shouted at her. Not once. It was just not their way. “Dr. Hopper wants to have another look at me at the end of next week, but she thinks everything is all right.”
“I'm glad you talked with her,” Molly said. “But I'm still worried about those nightmares.”
He nodded, not wanting to go into that. He was glad his son was there; he was glad that something else in the air kept them from dwelling on what he still did not understand. “What brings you over today?”
Paul and Molly exchanged a look that filled the room with shared anticipation. Paul turned back to him and announced, “We've decided to expand. We're going to set up a second store in the new shopping mall.”
This should have been the best possible news. Buddy had been after Paul for years to start a second shoe store. But his son was naturally cautious. Running one successful shop had been enough. Even when Buddy had walked him through the statistics and the calculations, shown him how he was being overcharged for his product, and pointed out to him how fragile his outlook was with just one source of revenue, his son had held back. Until now.
Yet Buddy felt none of the pride and satisfaction that he would have expected. Instead he felt a sense of danger.
Molly prompted Buddy with her words. “Son, that's wonderful.”
Paul fiddled self-consciously with his mug. “I'll be coming in tomorrow to meet with you, Pop. I just wanted to let you know in advance that we're going to do it like you said. Keep our savings in place and borrow what we need, so we can write off the interest.”
The words wrapped around Buddy in a veil of dread. “I'm not sure that's a good idea.”
Paul's eyes widened in surprise. “But why, Daddy?”
It was the first time Paul had called him Daddy in years. Why, indeed? Buddy could not explain it, even to himself. Yet the dread continued to build, like floodwater rising to surround him. “I'm not sure now is a good time to saddle yourself with more debt.”
His words were met with absolute silence. Molly slipped into the chair beside her son. “You've been after him for years to start that second store.”
“I know I have.” He rubbed his palms together, wiping away the dampness. He asked Paul, “Could you put off the decision for a while?”
“I suppose so.” Paul was watching him strangely. They both were. “For how long?”
Despite his strongest efforts to keep it at bay, the pressure continued to mount. Once more an unseen force seemed to push at him and to squeeze his mind and his heart so tightly he could scarcely draw breath. “Two months,” he managed. His voice sounded weak to his own ears. “Wait two months.”
Paul looked frustrated. “And then?”
The idea popped straight into his head and exploded with the force of a skyrocket. Buddy said, “I've decided to sell the ridgeline.”
Both his son and his wife gaped at him. “What?”
“Tomorrow. Those developers were back again yesterday. They want to build a hotel.”
“But, honey.” Molly's voice sounded as weak as his own. “You've always said that was for our retirement.”
