Stephen Hunter - Night of Thunder

The Reverend seemed to be getting a little crazy. The Y-veins on his forehead pulsed, his eyes sank to the size and color of ball bearings, his breathing grew harsh and shallow, and he clenched and unclenched his big hands. He looked like he wanted to strangle the life out of Brother Richard and was but a second from doing it.

“But let’s leave poor Vern out of this. He’s only your pattern played out, what chance did he have with a pa who was so sexed up sometimes he didn’t care what kind of hole he put it in, am I right? Oh, that’s the pattern, I see it now. He’s got video on you and some chicken, right? Some boy whore. Some boy-child even, one of those classic cases of the holy man who can’t keep his mitts off of little Billy and Bobby and tells them God commands them to drop their drawers? Oh, that’s it, I hadn’t seen it till now, that’s got to be it.”

“Sir, you are the Whore of Babylon, the Antichrist, hiding behind a smiley demeanor and a charming patter, but truly inside, the Beast.”

“Arf, arf,” said Richard. “Now I see. You’ve been leveraged into this job, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But you cannot accept it either, because the fulcrum on which it turns is your own darkest secret, the one that would destroy you in front of all Grumleys. So your attitude is classic passive-aggressive, and the longer it goes on, the longer it annoys the bejesus out of you. So now you have it: an excuse to quit, an excuse to fail, an excuse to die.”

The Reverend looked skyward.

“Lord, help the Sinnerman all on that day. He has nowhere to run to. The moon won’t hide him because it’s bleeding, the sea won’t hide him because it’s boiling. With his education he comes up with terrible ideas and he contaminates those who believe. Lord God, smite him, and take him with you and give him a shaking and a talking to, so that he knows why it is you’re sending him to an eternity of burning flesh in the dark and sulphurous caverns of hell.”

“Who writes your stuff, Stephen King or Anne Rice? Anyhow, let me tell you: Call in the boys. Settle ’em down. We need ’em calm and collected for Race Day. We can do this thing, I tell you, and I can have my little run through Big Racing’s peapatch. And we can all go home rich and nobody, nobody, will ever forget the Night of Thunder. Okay? Concentrate. That’s how you beat your tormentor. You pull the job, you get the money, you get your film-at-eleven-minister-fingerfucks-choirboy back. Living well is the best revenge. Oh, and a few years down the line, you go back and kill the shit out of whoever was blackmailing you.”

The Reverend looked at him sullenly.

Richard continued. “Apostate speak with wisdom, no, old goat? Infidel know thing or two, eh, Colonel Sanders? Think on it. Think on it, for God’s sake. Now I’m going to leave. I have to get into Bristol and get a look at my little peapatch, so I can prepare my own kind of fire and brimstone for what’s coming up next. I’m not even going to demand that you change your plan and call those boys in, because I know you will.”

“Thou art sin,” said the Reverend. “Thou wilt burn.”

“Just so I don’t roll,” said Brother Richard.

On the way back to Mountain City, Bob tried to call Nick Memphis, special agent, FBI. He had Nick’s own private cell number, and he punched in the numbers as he drove north on 81 from Knoxville in the setting afternoon sun. But there was no answer, only Nick’s voice mail. “This is Memphis. Leave a detailed message and I will get back to you.”

“Nick, Swagger. I have to run something by you and sooner would be so much better than later. Call me on this number please, bud.”

But Nick never called him back.

He was disappointed. He loved Nick. Years ago, so long ago he’d repressed it and most of the memories had vanished, Nick had believed in him. He was on the run, set up by some professionals, briefly number one on the FBI hit parade. Every cop in America was gunning for him. Then along came Nick, who’d looked at the evidence and saw that the narrative everybody was dancing to simply couldn’t have happened. By the laws of physics, too many anomalies, too many strangenesses. Nick looked hard into it, then hard into Bob’s killer eyes, and believed.

Bob knew: He was reborn that moment. That was the moment he came back. That was his redemption. That gave him the strength to play it out, to go hard again, to find the lost Bob the Nailer and put the drunken, self-pitying loser-loner behind him. Nick’s faith became Julie’s faith became Nikki’s faith became Miko’s faith, all in a line, and let him be what he was meant to be, what he’d been born to be. And it let him almost, after all of it, get close to the one god he worshiped, his great, martyred father.

But Nick wasn’t there. Where the hell was Nick?

So he called the number he had for Matt MacReady.

Again, he just got the machine. “This is Matt. Leave a message.”

“Matt, Swagger here. Boy, hate to bother you so soon before a race. One question: Recently I saw the tracks of some kind of machine. Steel wheels, maybe eight or ten inches apart, cut deep in the dirt. Hmmm, I recall all kinds of tracks in the pits when I visited you. Any idea what those kinds of tracks could be? Sure could help me. Thanks and good luck on Race Day.”

He did catch up on the news from a Knoxville twenty-four-hour radio station. According to the reporter, the two dead men in the Johnson County Grocery Store shootings had been identified as Carmody Grumley and B.J. Grumley, both of no fixed address, both known to have organized crime connections and thought to be part of a mobile, shifting culture of strong-armed men used in various mob enterprises over the years. Each man had a substantial rap sheet. Young Terry Hepplewhite, the grocery clerk who shot it out with the robbers, was being hailed as a hero, though he had yet to meet with the press and tell his side of the story.

Grumley, he thought. The Grumley boys. What is this Grumley? Another question for Nick, who could dig up a file on Grumley.

Instead of going to his motel, where he thought these Grumleys might have had lookouts waiting, Bob went to the first church he saw, which was John the Revelator Baptist Church of Redemption. Just a one-story building with a steeple that hardly went up twenty-five feet, it wasn’t a mighty structure but had a rough quality, as if it had been slowly assembled brick by brick in the humblest of ways. When he entered the hushed devotional space, he first thought he’d gone astray, for two worshipers were black, and it occurred to him that their memory of large white men in jeans and boots might not be all that warm. But shortly a young black man in a suit and tie came out of a walkway and came over to him.

“May I help you, sir? Do you come to worship? You are welcome.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bob said. “But actually I have a biblical puzzle to solve and I thought someone here might pitch in.”

“I can try. Please come this way.”

The doors led Bob to a spare office with many Bibles and other books of religious persuasion occupying the shelves on one wall.

“Have a seat. My name is Lionel Weston, I am the pastor of John the Revelator.”

“My name is Bob Lee Swagger, and I’m greatly appreciative, sir. This has to do with a passage that has come to my attention. My daughter was interested in it before an accident she had, and I’m wondering what it could mean.”

“I’ll try.”

“Mark 2:11.”

“Ah,” said the Reverend Weston, “yes, of course. ‘Arise from your bed and go to your home.’ Or sometimes, ‘Arise from your pallet and go to your house.’ Christ has just performed a miracle. He had restored mobility to a paralyzed man. Doubters have assailed him even as worshipers have brought the sick and malformed to him. Not from ego, not from pride, but from compassion, he has restored this man’s limbs to strength. It’s one of the great miracles of the text. In fact, one might say those words express the pure joy of God’s power, his ability to restore the infirm through faith. Does that help, Mr. Swagger?”