Three hours later, when she woke up, Dee Dee said, “I need to pee.”
Ash pulled off at the next rest stop. They put on baseball caps. Ash bought some chicken fingers and fries to go. When they got back on the highway, Dee Dee asked, “Where are we headed?”
“We don’t know what the cops have on you.”
“That’s not an answer to my question, Ash.”
“You know where we’re going,” he said.
Dee Dee did not reply.
“I know it’s near the Vermont border,” Ash said. “But I don’t know the exact location. You’ll have to direct me.”
“They won’t let you in. No outsiders.”
“Got it.”
“Especially men.”
Ash rolled his eyes. “Gee, that seems normal.”
“That’s the rules. No outside men in Truth Haven.”
“I don’t have to go in, Dee. I just need to drop you off.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“You think it’s not safe for me anymore.”
“Bingo.”
“But it’s not up to you to decide what’s safe,” she said. “It’s not up to me either.”
“Don’t tell me,” Ash said. “It’s in God’s hands.”
She smiled at him. It was, as always, even with the strange hair color and new cut, beatific. The smile struck his heart with a gentle boom.
“It’s not just God. It’s the Truth.”
“And who tells you the truth?”
“For those who can never understand, it’s easiest to call him God.”
“He talks to you?”
“Via his personage on earth.”
Ash had studied up on the nonsense of her cult. “That would be Casper Vartage?”
“God made his choice.”
“Vartage is a con man.”
“The devil doesn’t want the Truth to flourish. The devil dies in Truth’s light.”
“So Vartage’s jail time?”
“That’s where he was told the Truth. In solitary. After they beat him and tortured him. Now when the media and outsiders speak ill of him, it is because they are trying to silence the Truth.”
Ash shook his head. Pointless.
“It’s the second exit after the Vermont border,” she said.
Ash flipped the station. The seventies classic “Hey, St. Peter” by Flash and the Pan came on the radio. Ash had to smile. In the song, a man arrives at the gates of heaven and pleads for St. Peter to let him in because living in New York City means he’s already done his time in hell.
“Do you have music at the compound?” Ash asked.
“We call it Truth Haven.”
“Dee Dee.”
“Yes, we have music. Many of our members are talented musicians. They write their own songs.”
“You don’t have outside music?”
“That wouldn’t spread the Truth, Ash.”
“One of Vartage’s rules?”
“Please don’t use his before name.”
“His before name?”
“Yes. It’s forbidden.”
“Before name,” he said again. “You mean like you’re now Holly?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you that name?”
“The Truth Council did.”
“Who makes up the Truth Council?”
“The Truth, the Volunteer, the Visitor.”
“Three people?”
“Yes.”
“All men?”
“Yes.”
“Like the Trinity.”
She turned toward him. “Nothing like the Trinity.”
No reason to get into that, he thought. “I assume the Truth is Casper Vartage.”
“He is, yes.”
“And the other two?”
“They are the offspring of the Truth. They were born and raised in the Haven.”
“His sons, you mean?”
“It’s not like that, but for your purposes, yes.”
“My purposes?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Ash.”
“Another line from every cult.” He held up a hand before she could admonish him. “And what happens if you question the Truth?”
“Truth is truth. By definition. Anything else is a lie.”
“Wow. So everything your leader says is gospel.”
“Can the lion not be a lion? He’s the Truth. How can what he says not be true?”
Ash shook his head as they crossed into Vermont. He kept sneaking glances at her.
“Dee Dee?”
She closed her eyes.
“Do you really want me to call you Holly?”
“No,” she said. “It’s okay. When I’m not in Truth Haven, I’m not Holly, am I?”
“Uh-huh.”
She said, “Dee Dee can do things that Holly cannot.”
“Nice moral out.”
“Isn’t it?”
Ash tried not to grin. “I think I like Dee Dee more.”
“Yes, I think you do. But Holly is more complete. Holly is happy and understands the Truth.”
“Dee Dee?” Then, pausing, he sighed and said: “Or should I say, ‘Holly’?”
“This exit.” He took it. “What, Ash?”
“Can I be blunt?”
“Yes.”
“How can you believe this crap?”
He glanced at her. She tucked her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged in the seat. “I really do love you, Ash.”
“I love you too.”
“You did some Googling, Ash? On the Shining Truth?”
He had. Their leader, Casper Vartage, was born of a mysterious birth in 1945. His mother claimed to have woken up one day seven months pregnant — the very moment her husband died leading the charge on Normandy Beach. There is no proof of any of this, of course. But this is the story. As a youngster in Nebraska, Casper was considered a “grain healer” and farmers sought him out during droughts and the like. Again no one backs up this claim. Vartage rebelled against his powers — something about the Truth being so potent he tried to fight it off — and ended up in prison sometime around 1970 for fraud. That part — the fraud — there is evidence of and plenty of it.
After losing an eye in a prison fight and being thrown into a hellhole described as the “heat box,” ol’ Casper was visited by an angel. Hard to say if Vartage just made this part up out of whole cloth or if the sun caused delusions. Either way, the angel who visited him is known in the cult’s clever folklore as the Visitor. The Visitor told him about the Truth and the symbol he had to find behind a rock in the Arizona desert when he was free, which supposedly he did.
There was more crap like that, typical nonsense mythology, and now “The Shining Truth” had a compound where they brainwashed disciples, mostly women, or beat or drugged or raped them.
“I don’t expect you to see the Truth,” Dee Dee said.
“I just don’t get how you don’t see this is a crazy-ass cult.”
She angled her body toward him. “Do you remember Mrs. Kensington?”
Mrs. Kensington, a foster mother they’d had in common, took those in her care to church twice a week — Tuesday afternoons for Bible studies and Sunday mornings for mass. Always. She never missed them.
“Of course you do.”
“She was good to us,” he agreed.
“Yes, she was. Do you still go to church, Ash?”
“Rarely,” he said.
“You liked it though. When we were kids.”
“It was quiet. I liked the quiet.”
“Do you remember the stories that we heard back then?”
“Sure.”
“Mrs. Kensington believed every one of them.”
“I know.”
“So remind me: How old was Noah when he built the ark?”
“Dee Dee.”
“Somewhere around five hundred years old, if I recall. Do you really think Noah put two of every creature on that ark? There are a million types of insects alone. Think he managed to get them all on board? That all makes sense to you and all the Mrs. Kensingtons out there — but the Truth doesn’t?”