When the Day of Evil Comes

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing is a tedious and solitary endeavor. In the glow of the computer screen at 3:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, with a full day of civilian work on the other side of daylight, writing a novel can seem like the most extravagant, irresponsible indulgence.

I offer immense gratitude to those who encouraged me to stick with it.

My parents, Dot and Ron Wells, taught me to color outside the lines. Felicia Brady, singer-songwriter and fellow traveler, has quite literally cheered me on. I have the poster to prove it. Susan Thornberg read every word of an earlier work and always wanted more. Kim Coffin read this manuscript in her usual obsessive manner, noticing details everyone else had missed, as did Elizabeth Emerson. My fellow Wednesday night whiners—the Waah Waah Sisterhood—prayed for me and encouraged me weekly Trish Murphy, singer-songwriter and best friend, shares the crucible and has fried me lots of chicken. And Dennis Ippolito, who sees with such a clear eye, encouraged me to set a deadline, take some time off work, and finish this book. He then read every word, more than once, through drafts, rewrites, and edits, pen in hand, and offered invaluable insight.

Following the bread-crumb trail to Multnomah … Allen Dorsett of the Sanctuary International pointed me across the room to James Langteaux, who was visiting Vail that evening and had just signed with Multnomah. James read an early work of mine and sent it to his editor, David Kopp, who walked it down the hall to Rod Morris, who liked my voice. A particular, thunderous thanks to Rod, who encouraged me to write this book, continued to check in on me, even during the wasteland years, and when the manuscript finally arrived, uttered the magic words, “I like it. I want to publish it.” Rod went to bat for this book and then, with a careful surgical hand, shaved the edges off and left a book that is exactly what I hoped it would be.

All my thanks.

S
OMEONE SAID TO ME THAT DAY
, “It’s hotter than the eyes of hell out here.” I can’t remember who. Looking back, I wonder if it meant something, that phrase. Something more than a weather report. But as it was, I let the remark pass without giving it a thought. It was hot. Hotter than the eyes of hell. That was true enough.

If I’d known enough to be afraid, I would have been. But I was a thousand years younger then, it seems, and I didn’t know what was out there. To me, it seemed like an ordinary day.

I was making a rare appearance at a faculty event. I hate faculty events. Generally, truth be told, I hate any sort of event. Anything that involves pretending, in a preordained way, to like a bunch of people with whom I have something perfunctory in common. Faculty events fall into this category.

This particular faculty event was a picnic at Barton Springs in Austin. The picnic was the final fling of a faculty retreat—my definition of hell on earth, speaking of hell. They’d all spent the weekend at a retreat center in the hill country of Texas, getting to know each other. Or bonding, as we say in the industry.

Imagine the scene. A dozen puffed-up psychologists (I include myself only in the latter part of this description, for I do
admit I’m a psychologist), wallowing in all the clichés. Bonding exercises. Trust falls. Processing groups. Sharing. I could imagine few things more horrific.

I’d begged off the retreat, citing a speaking engagement in San Antonio. A speaking engagement, might I add, that had been carefully calendared a year before, timed precisely to oppose the dreaded faculty retreat.

So I’d spent the weekend in the hill country too. But my gig involved talking to entering master’s-degree students about surviving graduate school. A topic on which I considered myself an expert, since I’d done more time in graduate school than 99 percent of the population of this grand country of ours. Hard time, in fact. I’d won my release a few years before by earning my PhD and promising myself I’d never breach the last frontier—the suck-you-in quagmire known as “post-graduate education.”

Over the weekend, I’d let those entering students in on my secret—higher education is all about perseverance. It has nothing to do with smarts or creativity or anything else.

It’s about cultivating the willingness and stamina for hoop-jumping.

Jump through the hoops, I’d said. Do it well. Do it relentlessly. And in a few years, you can join the elite of the American education system, secure in the knowledge that you too can endure with the best of them.

After sharing this little tidbit, I’d decided to take my own advice and jump through a hoop myself. The aforementioned faculty picnic at Barton Springs.

Barton Springs is a natural spring-fed pool in the heart of Austin, which is in the heart of Texas. And since it was the heart of summer, the water would be sixty-eight degrees of heaven on a hundred-degree day.

I like picnics, generally. And anything that involves water is a good thing in my eyes. I’d started swimming competitively once I figured out that swimming is like graduate school. Perseverance is the thing. And I’m pretty good at that.

So I drove to the picnic that day with a fairly good attitude, for me, considering this was a herd event for professional hoop-jumpers.

I parked my truck in the shade, saying a quick prayer of thanks for the shady spot. I don’t know why I do things like that, pray over a parking spot, as though the Lord Himself is concerned about which parking space I get. Surely He has more important things on His mind. But I said the prayer anyway, parked my truck, grabbed my swim bag, and set out to find my colleagues.

They were bunched up in a good spot: near a group of picnic tables, under a live oak tree, and next to one of my favorite things in life. A rope swing. What could be more fun, I ask you? Rope swings are childhood for grown-ups.

I said my hellos and settled in at one of the tables next to my department head, Helene Levine. I liked the name. It had a swingy, rhymie sort of rhythm to it. One of the matriarchs, as she liked to describe herself, referring to her Jewish heritage.

Helene is indeed matriarchal. She’s an imposing woman, with a big battle-axe bosom and a manner that is simultaneously threatening and nurturing. I don’t know how she pulls that off, but I love her. And she loves me. For some reason, as different as we are, we hit it off from the beginning. I signed up as daughter to her nurturing side.

This day, she was in threatening mode, at least with everyone else. Foul-tempered in the heat, I guess. And probably sick of babysitting her faculty charges. In any case, she brightened when she saw me, handed me a plate of fried
chicken and potato salad, and poured me a cold soda. I settled in to eat.

The food was good. Few things in the world sing to my heart like picnic food. Especially good fried chicken, and I knew Helene had fried this chicken herself. I ate a breast and a wing, two helpings of potato salad, and a huge fudge brownie, all washed down with the national drink of Texas, Dr. Pepper. A meal of champions.

Then the rope swing beckoned.

Since most PhD’d folks spend lots and lots of time bent over books or lecturing halls full of students, they don’t get outside much. Hence, they tend to be white and lumpy. They are also not very much fun.

I am not terribly lumpy by nature and try to grasp at any fun that is to be had, being determined as I am not to sacrifice my life on the altar of academe. So while everyone else stayed safely dressed and sheltered on the shore, I availed myself of the dressing room, changed into my bikini, and jumped in the pool.

For a while, I was self-conscious, with all those psychologists watching me frolic by myself. Surely there was something Freudian in my behavior that would get me duly diagnosed and labeled. I kept at it, though, and eventually they lost interest in me and returned to their conversations.

After some diligent practice with the rope swing, I discovered that if I timed it just right, letting go at the very zenith of the arc as I swung out over the spring, I could hit a deep well in the pool, falling into cool, dark water that seemed to take me somewhere safe and almost otherworldly. I did that over and over, sloughing off my stress from the weekend (I had been working, after all) and leaving it on the cold smooth slabs of limestone at the bottom of the pool.

After several minutes of this, I climbed onto the shore, ready for another go, and discovered that someone was competing for my toy. A man stood there, holding the swing tentatively I found everything about him unsettling.

His skin was chalk-white and he was hairless as a cue ball. He looked like a cancer victim. Not a survivor, which conjures up sinewy visions of strength and triumph, but a victim. Someone weak and bony and sickly, just this side of death. Next to me, with my against-dermatologist’s-advice summer tan, he looked like death itself.