“Hey,” the kid said. “Heard you got arrested.” He slid into the seat opposite Jason at the cafeteria, plopped down his plastic tray with his plastic-looking sloppy joe.
“Not arrested,” Jason said. “Not exactly.” He was trying to remember the kid’s name. All he could think of, for some reason, was “Muppet,” which did not seem likely. Could it be Buffett? Moffett? He had curly dark hair and a compact, strong body, and wore a striped shirt, boots, and jeans. The cafeteria juke box, which had been playing something by Nirvana, switched to Garth Brooks. One of the little cultural contrasts that came with the neighborhood.
“What did you do to get Eubanks after you?” Muppet asked. His two friends, one of whom was the son of the Epps who ran the feed store, plunked their sloppy joes down on either side of him.
“Took a ride down the water tower on my skates. Down the rail, I mean.”
“Cool,” said Muppet. “I’d like to do that.”
Young Epps grinned at him. “If you did that, Muppet, you’d break your neck.” His name actually was Muppet, Jason thought. How about that?
“You would have died,” Jason confirmed. “I’ve been skating for years, and it was a rough ride.” The others looked at him with a degree of admiration. Jason realized that they thought he had ridden the whole tower, all the way from the top.
He thought about telling them the truth, then immediately dismissed the idea. After all, he would have ridden the entire rail if he had the chance.
“What did Eubanks do to you?” asked Epps.
“Yelled at me some. Took me home so my mother would yell at me, too.”
“That bastard,” said Muppet. “He’s so wack.”
“Wack,” Epps agreed. “He spends his day following teenagers around hoping to catch us at something. If he followed grownups around that way, he’d get his ass kicked off the force.” Jason looked at the dark-haired kid sitting across from him. “Is your name really Muppet?” he asked. Muppet gave an embarrassed grin. “That’s what everyone’s been calling me all my life,” he said. “But my name’s really Moffett. Robin Moffett.”
“Robin?” His other friend, the one who wasn’t Epps, seemed surprised. “Your name is really Robin?”
“Yeah.”
“Robin Hood? Robin Redbreast?”
“Robin Lawrence,” Muppet said.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Jason.
Muppet looked at Jason. “What did your mom do?” Muppet asked. “Did she ground you or anything?”
“No. She took away my skates, and she said I couldn’t use the Internet for the rest of the month.”
“That’s tough. ’Course, there’s no place to skate anyway.”
“I know. And I can sneak some online time when my mom is at work, at least for email, but I can’t stay online too long, because if she calls there’ll be a busy signal, and if the busy signal goes on too long, she’ll know what I’m doing.”
“You and me can come over to the store,” said Epps, “and use the computer there. It would have to be after hours, though.”
Jason looked at him. “You’ve got an Internet connection?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Jason smiled. “Thank you,” he said.
His future, suddenly, did not seem quite so bleak.
And all he had to do to secure a place in the community was to take a little ride in a police car.
Seven Indians were swallowed up; one of them escaped; he says he was taken into the ground the depth of 100 trees in length; that the water came under him and threw him out again—he had to wade and swim four miles before he reached dry land. The Indian says the Shawnee Prophet has caused the earthquake to destroy the whites.
“Verily I say unto you,” said Noble Frankland, “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” He nodded into the microphone as if it were a member of an audience.
“That’s Matthew 24:2. What could be plainer than that?”
He leaned closer to the microphone, raised his voice. “Not be left one stone upon another! That is the voice of our Lord! And what he said came to pass, for in the Year 70 a.d. the Temple was thrown down!”
Frankland scanned the rows of dials and potentiometers before him. His station, steel-walled, bolted down to a concrete foundation he had poured himself in Rails Bluff, had been designed so as to be operated by only one person. He and his wife Sheryl were the owners, the chairmen, the programming directors, the disk jockeys, the talk show hosts, the advertising managers, the engineers, the electricians, and usually the janitors as well. They did it all, together with a little volunteer labor from Frankland’s parishioners.
Money rolled in, from the syndication of his daily Radio Hour of Prophecy program, and from the Tribulation Club members across North America. But it was all spent as soon as it arrived, on maintaining the station and his small church, on the supplies necessary to survive till the arrival of God’s Kingdom, and on the weather-proof, disaster-proof bunkers he’d dug on his ten Arkansas acres in which to house the supplies till the Tribulation Club members needed them.
Frankland leaned closer to the mic again.
“And what else did our Lord tell us that came to pass?” he asked. “Wars and rumors of wars!—verse six. Famines, pestilence, and earthquake!—verse seven. Betrayal!—verse ten. False christs and false prophets!—verse twenty-four. And that’s only the Book of Matthew! You want more? Let’s look at Luke 21:10!”
His stubby, powerful fingers ran down his notes, ticking off the quotations one by one. Citations spilled from his lips in a cascade of verses, interpretations, commands. The Spirit was rising in his heart. It usually took him a while to get warmed up. It was harder when he was talking on the radio, because he didn’t have the feedback from a live congregation before him. Alone in the steel-walled studio, Frankland had to imagine the audience before him, imagine their responses to his calls, the love they sent him, a love hot as a flame, that he used to kindle the Spirit.
“The Word of God isn’t hard to understand!” he said. At his sudden burst of volume the needles jumped on the peak level meters, but this was no time to drop his voice. “It’s in plain language. Just read it, Mr. Liberal God-just-wants-us-all-to-get-along! I’ve got news for you—God doesn’t want us to just get along! God doesn’t want us to be nice! God doesn’t think that obedience to the Antichrist is just another lifestyle choice! God wants us to obey his word!” The needles on the level meters had just about maxed out, and Frankland, concerned that some of his listeners’ speakers, if not their eardrums, might be about to explode, decided it was time to attempt sweet reason. He lowered his voice.