BY FIVE that afternoon David finally had to get out of the house. He drove to Angel’s Lawn and stood next to Clay’s grave. He tried to do this once a week. Tried to pray for Clay’s soul but couldn’t concentrate.
So he drove the freeways. Got some motion. Steered and tried to pray and watched the exit signs blip past. Made him feel like he was progressing. Moving through time and space in a certain and purposeful way.
Then to Max and Monika’s like he often did. Just to see them and share a few words. He loved them. And pitied them, too, because they’d overcome a lot in their lives but couldn’t overcome Clay. David had prayed on that a million times but sometimes even God couldn’t heal a broken heart. Clay showed up in David’s dreams all the time. Just like he had always been-brash and funny and confident. Like he didn’t care he’d been killed outside a village few people in his own country could even name.
David parked in the driveway beside a black Lincoln four-door. Two men in dark suits by the Lincoln eyed him hard. David nodded and started up the walk and saw Dick Nixon coming from the house. Frown on his face, lips pursed. Gray suit and fresh haircut. Wing tips heavy on the concrete. Another Secret Service guy behind him.
Great, thought David. Like Hambly had conjured the meeting. Given him his first chance at betrayal.
Nixon smiled when he saw David, shook his hand. They made small talk there in the driveway for a minute. Nixon was interested in how the church was growing. He had that undistractable intensity that drew people, made them believe he was involved and concerned. Their man.
“Good luck in November, sir,” said David.
Nixon nodded solemnly. “I hope for the best. But I do wish I could see more eye-to-eye with the JBS, David. I know your father and Roger Stoltz are disappointed. I am, too.”
“They’ll support you.”
“It isn’t that.”
David saw something dark pass across the former vice president’s face. Dick had always seemed actively haunted.
“Good night, sir.”
“Regards to Barbara and the children.”
“And ours back to Pat.”
It was only six but Max appeared inebriated. Held a huge tumbler half full of gin and ice as evidence. Shot up from his blue recliner with a smile and his free hand extended. The old living room. So many memories. Cronkite and the body count for today: seventeen.
Monika smiled when she saw him come in. The same polite replica that had replaced her true smile the moment she’d heard about Clay. David leaned over, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. The bones in her back seemed large.
“Did you see Dick?” she asked.
“Said hi in the driveway.”
“He’s going to win but he won’t forget us,” she said. “He’s from Orange County. From good people. And he’ll be a huge improvement over Johnson.”
David pulled up a dining room chair, sat between them.
Max told David all about his workday at RoMar Industries today. How Marie Stoltz nominally ran the operation but needed Max to get things accomplished. Shipped eight thousand barrels last week, lost a flatcar halfway across Texas, nobody hurt but four hundred thousand gallons of Orange Sunshine wasted on tumbleweeds and armadillos, be the shiniest armadillos God ever saw.
“Drink, son?”
“No thanks, Dad.”
“Time for a refill.”
Max steered to the kitchen. Monika held David’s hand, looking from him to the TV and back again. But mostly at the TV.
“How have you been, Mom?”
She patted his hand. “Just so busy. You know.”
He really didn’t know. Her children were grown and she didn’t work. Max was gone forty hours a week at RoMar. She had no hobbies. And few interests except for the Birch Society meetings and publications.
Max lowered back into his chair, drink raised for balance.
“I’m working a few hours a week at the bookstore,” she said.
The American Opinion Bookstore, David knew. Official JBS propaganda outlet. Books on Communist takeovers and how the United Nations was a waste of time and money, how the Russians wanted America to fall. Until a couple of years ago the clerks would grouse about the tax when they rang up a sale. Because the California sales tax went to Governor Pat Brown, a Democrat. The clerks liked to say, If it’s brown, flush it. David actually believed a lot of what the JBS said. Just didn’t like the way they thought they were right and everybody else was stupid.
“Four hours, actually,” she said. “But you know, son. One thing leads to another. Not enough hours in the day. You?”
David told them about Barbara’s youth league and Matthew’s language skills, Rachel’s brave toddling, and Wendy’s supernal calm as an older sister. For a few minutes he was able to appreciate his wife and children from a distance, in the telling of their virtues. And to forget Hambly and his pictures and the colossal stupidity of what he had done.
He drove away slowly, lost in thought. Prayed to get through this. Realized that you could drive across the entire continent never seeing farther than the beams of your headlights. Wondered if there might be a sermon in that metaphor.
Faith as your headlight.
THAT NIGHT in bed David lay trembling in Barbara’s arms and told her what had happened with Special Agent Hambly. The breath caught in her throat when he said that Hambly had code-named him Judas. She used an oath that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
She made ferocious but tender love to him. She seemed to almost inhabit him at times like this. To feel what he was feeling.
After, she drew a warm bath and led him to it. She lit candles in the darkened bathroom. With her knees on a folded towel she leaned over the tub to work the shampoo into a lather, scrub the sponge up and down his back. And later to cup the handfuls of fresh water over his head.
“It may be time to settle on a partner,” she said.
“I want you to take over if anything happens.”
“No, David. We would lose the congregation. Properly prepared, they’ll follow another man. But they won’t stay with a woman.”
“I feel like giving up.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “But in the morning you won’t. You’re a fighter and a warrior and a man of God. You have power in your heart. I’ve seen you down and you always get back up. Always.”
He felt the water running down his head. Heard the splash of it around him. Smelled the soap and conditioner and melting candle wax.
“I’ve narrowed down the candidates to two,” said Barbara. “Either would be fine. Edmond has age and intelligence. Whitbrend has youth and ambition. They would both bring modest congregations. They’re both amenable to the base agreement and incentive scale and escalators. They’re both keenly aware that the way the congregation is growing, the sky is the limit, and that television will take us there. Literally. Look, David, here we are hardly moved into the new chapel and it’s time to think about a larger one. The television ministry that you are so afraid of? It must happen, David. It will take your congregation from a thousand to millions. Millions. You are a very powerful and charismatic minister, Reverend Becker. You have a responsibility to provide for your worshipers like you do for your family. As an employer would for his workers.”
“I know.”
She wiggled one of his earlobes. “And you should benefit from your hard work like anyone else. God in heaven certainly does.”
“I don’t presume to understand Him.”
“No. You’re right. I won’t, either.”
He sighed. Listened to the music of water hitting water.
“Call the younger one tomorrow morning,” he said quietly. “Whitbrend. He had an interesting look in his eye.”
18
JANELLE VONN’S PALE BLUE Volkswagen Beetle sat in the shade of the impound yard. Hood up, engine compartment open, a layer of windblown dust on the windows. Nick and Lucky Lobdell looked down on it in the brisk fall morning.