Salvation City Part 13

MEMORY DREAMS. Dr. Ha.s.san had told Cole that they might happen. People with amnesia sometimes dream of things they actually experienced but can't remember at all, not even after being told about them. "And then sometimes, perhaps triggered by the dreams, the waking memory of those events comes back to them."

He is back in Little Leap, he is crawling through the house on his hands and knees when he discovers his mother in the bathroom, pitched over the toilet bowl. At first he thinks she is being sick, as he himself keeps being sick. Then he sees that she is drinking greedily, scooping up water from the bowl with both hands.

His mother is leaving the house. She is wearing her winter coat and her blue bandanna. She warns him to lock the door and not to let anyone in. "Even if they tell you Jesus sent them."

He is in the kitchen, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the mold from the last slice of raisin bread. The raisins are like bits of gravel.

He is standing outside his parents' room. Through the half-closed door he sees someone sprawled across the bed. Really, all he can see is a pair of bare legs. A woman, not his mother, the legs are too dark to be his mother's, the legs are black. He steps back, not wanting to intrude, not wanting to disturb this person, this mystery guest, he cannot imagine who she is-they do not know any black women in Little Leap-and he cannot imagine why she has been put here, in his parents' room, instead of in the guest room down the hall.

The way she lies there makes him think she's asleep, but it is daylight (the only time he'd be able to see since the power went out), and she is not still, she is restless, her legs keep moving, moving, as if she was dreaming of climbing stairs, and she is talking to herself, a muttering singsong that spooks him.

A single thought is being hammered like a nail to the inside of his skull: something must be done. But the thought that should follow-what it is that must be done-doesn't come, and will not ever come, there is just the hammering, harder and harder, the nail being driven in deeper and deeper, until there is only pain, unimaginable pain.

He didn't let them in. They broke in. He hears them banging and shouting. He hears them coughing and gagging, sees the scurrying beams of their flashlights before they tumble pell-mell into the room.

It's okay, you're safe now, they say. But they look as if they were seeing a ghost.

A woman's trembling fingers caress his cheek. "Poor little thing."

He says, "Are you from Jesus?" and everyone smiles.

He dreams. He remembers.

Now an old story comes back to him, a story his mother liked to tell-and one he liked to hear-about a man who saved a younger man from being run over by a subway train. A seizure had sent the younger man sprawling onto the tracks. The other man had only seconds to decide what to do. He jumped onto the tracks and lay down, protecting the convulsing man with his own body. The train rolled just inches above his hunched back.

Once, the story came up when his parents were having some friends over for dinner. The others laughed when his mother confessed that she thought about the Subway Superman all the time. He was the person she most wanted to be.

"Don't laugh, it's true. I'd rather pa.s.s a test like that than win the lottery. Maybe it's because I'm the kind of person who's afraid of everything and can't imagine ever doing such a thing myself. But just think, with something like that on your resume, you could be at peace with yourself. It wouldn't matter what mistakes you'd made, or whatever stupid, shameful, petty things you might've done. Anytime you started to be down on yourself, you could look back to the day you proved to the world you were a good human being. How could you ever hate yourself again? Plus, everyone would have to treat you with respect, no one could say they were better than you.

"And think about his kids." (The man's two little girls had been with him that day.) "How lucky for them to know this about their father. Anyway, if it was me, even if I never accomplished another thing in life, I'd die happy. I'd have given my son a reason to be proud for the rest of his life."

Her voice had wobbled a bit as she finished, and Cole's father addressed the table in a stage whisper: "I think my wife's had a little too much wine." And though his mother laughed along with everyone else, Cole knew that later, after the guests were gone, his parents would fight.

"But hold on," one of the guests said then. "I know what you're saying, Serena, but I'm not so sure a single incident like that would change a person's whole life. My guess is people who do heroic things still have the same problems and negative feelings about themselves as they had before."

"Yeah," said someone else. "And for some people, like soldiers and firemen, it's a job, something they do all the time-"

"But that's different," Cole's mother said, her voice rising. "This was just an ordinary guy. It wasn't his job to run toward danger, and there were other people on the platform that day who did nothing. It's a whole other level of sacrifice, in my book. Remember that pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson? That was admirable, of course. But I wouldn't call him a true hero like this other man. I mean, the pilot acted to save himself, too. He wasn't risking his life for a stranger."

"This might sound weird," said a third guest, Cole's mother's friend s.h.i.+reen (the only other woman at the table). "But I'm thinking about what you said about the kids. I can imagine being one of his daughters, or his wife, say, and actually resenting resenting what he did. Like, you're right, look at the risk he took. Didn't he stop to think what it would mean to those girls if he were crushed before their eyes? I'll bet his wife thought of that. I mean, he made a choice, and if he'd gotten killed saving that guy his family might have ended up hating him. Like, how could you put a total stranger ahead of what he did. Like, you're right, look at the risk he took. Didn't he stop to think what it would mean to those girls if he were crushed before their eyes? I'll bet his wife thought of that. I mean, he made a choice, and if he'd gotten killed saving that guy his family might have ended up hating him. Like, how could you put a total stranger ahead of us us? I think it would be perfectly natural for them to feel some kind of anger."

Addy was right, thought Cole. His mother had had been brave. But at the time he hadn't been proud of her. He'd been angry and frustrated and hurt. Even though she never left him alone for more than an hour or two, and even though during that time he'd usually just sleep-still, he hated her for going. He only had to tell her if he wanted her to stay, she kept saying, but he didn't been brave. But at the time he hadn't been proud of her. He'd been angry and frustrated and hurt. Even though she never left him alone for more than an hour or two, and even though during that time he'd usually just sleep-still, he hated her for going. He only had to tell her if he wanted her to stay, she kept saying, but he didn't want want to have to tell her, he wanted her to to have to tell her, he wanted her to know know how he felt how he felt without without being told and then being told and then just do what he wanted just do what he wanted. He was deathly ill, but his stubborn streak was thriving. He didn't care how bad things were at the clinic. He didn't care about the other sick people, he cared only about himself. Once when he was alone he woke up dying of thirst. His mother had left a full pitcher of ice water by his bed, but when he went to lift it his arm was too weak and he sprained his wrist, spilling the water all over himself. He had lain there howling in rage and pain and thirst, and he had cursed her over and over. Miles across town she must have heard, for there she was, running up the stairs, taking him into her arms and rocking him, begging forgiveness and promising him he'd be all right. He remembered how hot her body was because her fever had started. And he would blame her for that, too. If she hadn't insisted on volunteering at the clinic, maybe she wouldn't have got sick and died.

He hadn't understood before how much he was still holding all this against her. He'd been told that this was a natural response, but it was hard not to feel ashamed. Whenever he looked back now he hated the boy he had been, especially the way he had treated his parents. In almost every memory he appeared selfish, spiteful, mean. He saw how difficult he had made it for them to love him. He had been heartless and unfair. And then he would think that he had no right to miss them, no right to feel sorry for himself. He who had wished so many times that he were an orphan. Who had cursed his mother over and over. He had not honored his father and mother. He had not loved them enough. They had died at the moment when he was feeling most alienated from them, when he had barely been speaking to them. It was a terrible punishment-like the kind visited upon one of the many bad sons in the Bible stories he was coming to know so well.

In this way, though, he had always understood his mother: he wanted to be the Subway Superman, too.

Later the night of the dinner party, while his parents had fought ("You humiliated me!" "You humiliated yourself!"), he'd logged on to YouTube and watched a video about the man, whose name was Wesley Autrey-the first of many views. Cole had even used Wesley Autrey's story to create one of his first comic strips. But like everything else that had once belonged to him, it had somehow been lost. In fact, he'd forgotten all about it.

Not just Wesley Autrey's story but other true-life stories of heroism obsessed him.

In Iowa, a group of Boy Scouts is caught in a tornado. Though injured and in severe pain, one boy struggles to pull his scout mates from under the rubble. Why couldn't something like that happen to him him? For there seemed no end of such stories on the Net, and the population of heroes his own age was surprisingly large. Here a boy rescued not one but two two people from drowning. There a boy helped his mother to give birth. In his neighborhood in Chicago there'd been a boy called Major who'd stopped a whole gang of kids from torturing a dog. The dog, scarred and lame from its ordeal, dragged everywhere behind Major like a broken tail. people from drowning. There a boy helped his mother to give birth. In his neighborhood in Chicago there'd been a boy called Major who'd stopped a whole gang of kids from torturing a dog. The dog, scarred and lame from its ordeal, dragged everywhere behind Major like a broken tail.

A few days after her visit to Salvation City, Addy e-mailed Cole some pictures. One of them showed the light-colored six-story building where she had her apartment in Berlin, in a neighborhood called Prenzlauer Berg. It was the only picture in the group Cole hadn't seen before. Most of the others were copies of photos his mother had sent to Addy over the years. There were some baby pictures, including one taken by his father immediately after Cole was born, and there were several school pictures. In some of the photos he was by himself and in others he was with friends or parents or grandparents. There was a picture of him with Sadie when she was a puppy, another of him and his dad at a Cubs game. In the most recent photo, he and his parents were standing outside their building in Chicago. It was snowing. It was their last Christmas together and Addy was visiting; that would have been Addy behind the camera. There were also pictures of his parents without him (more of his mother than of his father), some taken years before Cole was born. It was a picture of his mother when she was a little girl (same eyes, much curlier hair) that brought him the greatest emotion.

It wasn't until he saw these photographs that Cole understood his fear was real: he was starting to forget what his parents had looked like. Recently he had tried drawing them from memory but had given up in frustration. He was thrilled to have the photos now-for one thing, he could use them for drawings-though every time he looked at them he suffered fresh pain. He would never see his parents alive again. There had been no mistake-they would not rise from the dead as he and Addy had done. But something had changed. Disturbing as Addy's visit had been, it seemed to have quieted some storm in him. It was as if in some way she had given his parents back to him. At least, they felt closer than they had before. He was still their son. They were gone, but they were still his parents. He did not need any others.

He did not care so much about the photographs of himself. He didn't like looking at pictures of himself, and he'd always hated having his picture taken. He could not recall a time in his life when he hadn't thought there was something (either big or ginormous ginormous, depending on his age) about his looks that was wrong. In fact, he was surprised anew each time he recalled how Addy had described him: like a young man now, so handsome and so serious. like a young man now, so handsome and so serious.

Alone in his room, he stared bravely and hopefully at the young man in the full-length mirror hanging inside his closet door. So handsome and so serious. Yes, maybe. Sometimes he thought he could see it, too.

PART FIVE.

It began as a small thing: a red round mark on the right shoulder blade, as if a hot dime had been pressed there.

"It's nothing," said PW. "It just itches." He asked Tracy to dab the spot with some calamine lotion. But the next day the itch was worse, and all up and down his spine he had tingling and p.r.i.c.king sensations, which soon turned into what he said felt like a bad sunburn across his back. He had a fever, too, and a mild headache. He took some aspirin and went to bed. "I'll be fine in the morning. You know me." Never sick a day in his life.

And maybe if he'd been able to sleep that night-maybe then he would have felt better in the morning. But the "sunburn" kept him up. And now there was a red stripe down his back ("Long as it ain't yellow!"), like the mark of a whip.

Tracy wanted him to see the doctor, but PW said he wasn't about to make a big deal out of what was probably just a simple case of hives. "Maybe I've developed some kind of allergy." After all, the person without some kind of allergy these days was the exception.

Tracy said hives didn't give a person headache and fever. "I think it's some kind of nerve thing," she said.

"Your wife was right," said the doctor. "I wish you'd come in sooner."

Nine days after the first symptom, painful oozing blisters covered much of PW's torso, front and back. Had he come in right away, an antiviral drug might have helped. As it was, not much besides rest and painkiller could be prescribed.

The rash should clear up in another three to four weeks, the doctor said. "But I've got to warn you it could be a rough ride. Things might get worse before they get better." Much Much worse, he should have said. worse, he should have said.

Cole had never heard of s.h.i.+ngles before. It was frightening to see PW so helpless in its clutches. He couldn't help thinking about his father in his last anguished days, though no one had said anything about PW being in danger of dying. The pain was so bad ("It's like someone across the room is throwing knives at my back") that he could not give his sermons. Some days he could not even leave his room. At its worst, it turned him into a raving stranger.

"What is it now? Just what is it you're trying to tell me, Lord?"

Cole and Tracy huddled together downstairs, listening to the commotion overhead. Shouts and roars accompanied by much fist banging and foot stamping and now and then the crash of some object hurled across the room.

"Just why are you making my life so hard? Just tell me, how'd I screw up this time?"

But even as she wept Tracy a.s.sured Cole that PW would be all right. "The Lord never sends anyone more suffering than they can bear."

Not that that was going to stop her from blaming the suffering on Addy. An almighty coincidence, was it not, that PW, who was never sick, should have become so very sick at this particular time?

Cole had kept his promise to Addy to stay in touch. It was from her that he learned that another name for s.h.i.+ngles was "the devil's whip."

WHEN BOOTS HEARD Cole was learning how to shoot, he blessed him with a Remington .22 from his own collection.

The first time Starlyn saw Cole with the rifle, she said, "Now you're complete." Said it lightly, like something that had just popped into her head. But Cole pretended it was her way of saying she liked him better now. Certainly these days she was nicer to him. But that niceness appeared to be part of a larger change taking place in Starlyn that summer. She was still apocalyptic, but it was as if some restless, ornery part of her had gone into hibernation.

Earlier, when she was in a mood, you'd know it by the way she flounced in and out of rooms and acted as if she didn't always hear what was said to her. Now she was more likely to lapse into something like a trance. Cole had observed her staring at the same page of a magazine for almost an hour. When something on TV made everyone else laugh, she startled, proving she hadn't really been watching.

Maybe it was about turning sixteen-no denying she acted more like a grown-up than when he'd first met her. More likely it was about Mason, the burden of her secret love. Or maybe it had something to do with being a rapture child (though Cole still wasn't quite sure what made her-or any other kid for that matter-one of those; and sixteen was old for a rapture child).

Whatever it was, he couldn't help preferring this new Starlyn, who was not only nicer but even prettier in her new soft dreaminess. Not that he'd lost all fear of her, but most of his feelings for her were tender ones, including something he wouldn't have expected to feel and which he thought she might find insulting. He He found it baffling: what reason could there be for him to feel sorry for her? found it baffling: what reason could there be for him to feel sorry for her?

Yes, he'd caught her crying while listening to her iPod-but what girl didn't cry at "O Lonesome O Lord"? Cheerful-ness was beneath apocalyptic girls, but no one would have called Starlyn unhappy. Nothing came easier to her than making friends. And this summer there was an exciting new face: Amberly, who was twenty and newlywed and who'd just moved to town from Evansville. Amberly wasn't apocalyptic, but she had dramatic dark eyes and the grace and perfect posture of a ballerina. Starlyn was flattered that a twenty-year-old married woman would want to hang out with her. They saw each other almost every day. It occurred to Cole that at least some of the time Starlyn was supposed to be with Amberly she might actually be with Mason. But no one shared that suspicion as far as he knew.

At first he figured it was because of Mason that Starlyn was spending so much time visiting Salvation City-why else? But then he thought it could be Amberly, and later he learned of another factor. Starlyn's mother, divorced already a few years from Starlyn's stepfather (her real father had run off before she was born), had just started dating a certain man. There'd been other men since the divorce, but "This one's a keeper" (Tracy). Cole sensed a problem, though, something about which everyone was tight-lipped, at least around him.

Lovebirds need a little privacy, he was told. But Cole thought maybe Starlyn and this man, Judd, didn't like each other. Starlyn herself never spoke of Judd. But once Cole made the mistake of mentioning him, and Starlyn turned so sharply on her heel that her hair, which she happened to be wearing braided that day, smacked him in the mouth like a cable. The sting lasted a remarkably long time, and whenever Cole was tempted (and he was tempted a lot) to ask Starlyn whatever happened to that boyfriend of hers in Louisville, he felt it again.

Starlyn didn't talk about that boyfriend anymore, but she didn't talk about Mason, either, and for all Cole knew there was nothing to talk about. Say it was just one kiss, just that one time, just playing around, no biggie. No secret love. No love love at all. at all.

But Mason, too, was a different person these days. In Bible study he often had trouble sitting still, instead bouncing around the room or pacing the floor like someone expecting major news or an important visitor any minute. He mixed up names and faces as he hadn't done before. He mixed up Cole and Clem, for example, who, though they usually sat next to each other, looked nothing alike.

Riding his bike downtown one day, Cole saw Mason walking along, and though he waved and even called out, Mason ignored him.

Once again, as when they'd first met, Cole found Mason scary-looking. The same tense, starving-wolf look as the three men on the mountain. A wolf with one supersharp, blood-shot, ever-s.h.i.+fting eye.

Cole wasn't the only one to notice a change in Mason.

"It's like he's shook up somewhere deep" (Tracy). Probably for the same reason as her own whirlpool-stomach feeling. It wasn't just the two of them, either. It was another epidemic: more and more people feverish with the notion of living on the cusp of Something Big.

Partly it was the weather-though the era of extreme weather was old by now, and if the floods and droughts and violent storms that struck season after season really were a sign of the end, no one could say what the Lord meant by dragging it out. Once again that year, spring had brought a record number of tornado outbreaks and enough rainfall to cause flooding throughout the Midwest. Now it was heat waves. Late July was especially bad, and nowhere worse than in Chicago.

It's been over a hundred for five days straight, and I've never felt humidity like this before. The anxiety level is pretty high, too, because everyone knows the city doesn't have the resources to cope with an emergency.

With this message Addy sent Cole links to articles about the connection between extreme weather and global warming.

"Whatever you call it, and you can call it global warming or climate change or anything you want," said PW, "it's still the hand of G.o.d. Meaning it is part of his plan. And the only way we can understand any of it, or where G.o.d is going with it, is by praying and pondering Scripture and praying some more."

Many Christians had grown up believing that the Gospel age would end in their lifetime. Many had taken it for granted that, when the pandemic struck, the final days had arrived. But as weeks and then months went by, people began craving a sign. Was it wrong to pray for a clearer idea of how much longer the world had to exist? There were a lot of pastors who differed from Pastor Wyatt about righteous Christian behavior in this regard. They believed time was so short that people should drop everything else and focus all their efforts on preparing for Christ's return.

"And a little child shall lead them."

"If you do not change and become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."

On this point Scripture was clear. It was the small fry on earth who'd be the big fish in heaven. Look to the child for the way. Look to the child for the way. It was because of this that rapture children were now more sought after than ever, and though child preachers were nothing new, congregations could not get enough of them. It was because of this that rapture children were now more sought after than ever, and though child preachers were nothing new, congregations could not get enough of them.

Earlier that summer, during a service at a church in Denver, a three-year-old named Dewdrop had toddled down the aisle, cutting the minister off in midsentence by tugging at his trouser cuff. When the minister asked her what she wanted, she said, "I want to preach." Struck (as Reverend Gates later explained) by the authority in her tone and the meaningful way she locked eyes with him, he lifted her up to the mike. And in a voice that managed to be at once like honey and a clap of thunder, she said, "Obey the Commandments. Love and forgive. Pray to the Lord, who is near." Like a tsunami, was how members of the congregation described the wave of emotion that swept through the church. Many broke into loud weeping, flinging their heads back or their arms into the air. Others hurled themselves to their knees in the aisles, crying out to be saved. All was caught on camera, and soon more than a million people around the world had sent messages to Dewdrop asking her to pray for them.

There wasn't really much of the child anymore about Clem Harley, who most people probably would have taken for older than his age of thirteen. He often seemed (people said) like a man in a boy's body (the way Pastor Wyatt often seemed like a boy in a man's body). With Pastor Wyatt too sick to do his duty, the Church of Salvation City's boy preacher was called to step in. But those who'd seen videos of Dewdrop or of other famous baby preachers couldn't get too excited about Clem. He had a crackly voice and a droning inflection, the complete opposite of Pastor Wyatt. And unlike Pastor Wyatt, Brother Clem never smiled.

Not that Clem wasn't a prodigy. But knowing the Bible backward and forward as he appeared to do just made him seem even less childlike. No one complained, of course; no one would have wanted to hurt his feelings. Though his feelings must have been hurt anyway when people nodded off, as at least some did every sermon.

It was now common practice to ask if any children in the congregation had received a word to share with their fellow wors.h.i.+ppers. Pastor Wyatt had started doing this at every service, but so far (in spite of some whispering and sharp elbowing here and there) no child had stepped forward. Each time, the disappointment in the air seemed to grow a little thicker. Then Pastor Wyatt would chide his flock for lack of faith and for the sin of impatience, quoting from Lamentations, "The Lord is good to those who wait for him," and from the book of James, "Be patient, then, my brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord."

And, according to Clem, "If they hadn't been so darned impatient, Adam and Eve would still be in Paradise."

"I KNOW ABOUT YOU AND MASON."

Had he actually said it? Starlyn's face left no doubt that he had. And instantly Cole was sorry. And he was even more amazed: where had he got the nerve?

They were alone in the house. An hour ago, someone had called to say that one of Boots's grandsons, Jeptha, a leader in the Christian Zionist Defense League, had been killed by rocket fire in the Holy Land. Tracy and PW had gone to be with the Ludwig family.