Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

“Tell your father about what you learned today, Matthew,” said Candy, breaking the awkward silence that followed the blessing.

Dodge loaded his plate with chicken casserole and passed the dish across the table to Cade, who looked at him with thinly veiled contempt. Matthew’s reedy little voice replied, “The Declaration of Independence.”

“What about it?”

Matthew squeezed his fork between both hands as he rolled his eyes upward in thought, crushing noodles and sauce through his fingers like Play-Doh. “Um…that it was wrote by President Thomas Jefferson to tell the world that we had gotten independent from all our enemies.”

“That’s right,” said Dodge. He forked in a mouthful of chicken. “Enemies like who?”

“Tyrants. Like the British and judges and foreigners, and the merciless Indian savages, and the Muslims.”

“Very good.” He nodded to Candy. “Nice work there, Momma.”

Candy beamed.

Cade took a long drink of his iced tea. Then he said, “I don’t think the Muslims were a big threat to the colonies at that time.”

“There were Muslims back then,” Dodge said.

“There certainly were,” agreed Candy. “The Muslims have been around since the time of the Jews. Ask Elias—he was just over there fighting them.”

“You want to straighten her out on that one?” Cade prompted his brother. Elias looked up, and Cade tipped his head imploringly. “Who are we fighting over there? The Muslims, or al Qaeda, or what?”

“The Taliban,” Elias answered. He picked around in his dinner with his fork and added, “And ignorance.”

“Ignorance?”

“People not knowing any better way.”

“See,” said Cade, “now, that makes sense. Let’s hope we’re making progress on that one.”

“We aren’t,” said Elias.

“You want to talk about enemies,” Dodge said, and jabbed his fork in the direction of the front window. “Drove down to the rental property today to fix the dishwasher, and they wouldn’t even let me in. Gonna put those people out on their ass, first of the month.”

“You can’t do that,” Cade told him. “There’s a process. They’ve got a lease.”

“Lease that says I’m the landlord. I can go in whenever I feel like.”

Cade nodded toward his father. “ Dad’s the landlord.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Legally, it does.”

Cade’s mother stood up and lifted the iced tea pitcher from the center of the table. “Stop your arguing. Let’s not turn a nice supper into one of those TV programs where everybody bickers at each other.”

“So as I was saying,” Dodge continued, “they wouldn’t let me in. Girl there said her father told her a man has to be home before she can let me in. Don’t think I don’t know what that’s all about.”

Leela’s brow creased. “Nothing wrong with that, really. They’re religious, remember. Don’t they belong to that church down the road apiece? The nondenominational one?”

“Uh-huh. Randy’s church.”

I looked from Cade to his father and back again. Randy was the uncle they never spoke to because of some old argument about a gun club. But Cade only said, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m betting Randy’s been saying things. They never had any issue with me coming in before, and now all of a sudden they need the father home. Sounds to me like there’s been some trash-talking and murmuring going on. I don’t take well to that at all.”

Elias mumbled something, and Dodge looked over at him sharply. “What’d you say?”

“I said that’s goofy.”

Taking on an exaggerated posture of shock, Dodge leaned back and shot Elias a squinty glare. “ Beg your pardon?”

“Chill out. It isn’t all that.” Elias chopped his fork around in his casserole, looking up just enough to catch Dodge’s eye with his own placating gaze. “That’s not Randy’s style, is all I’m saying. He wouldn’t go around gossiping about people. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Dodge shook his head. “You picked a strange place to stand up and defend that individual. But it’s a free country, right, Matthew?” His son nodded adamantly. “You can defend that cockwad if you like.”

“ Dodge ,” Leela scolded. “For goodness’ sake, stop it. First time we ever have Cade’s wife at our table, and what’s she going to think of us, with you speaking like that at supper? I’m sorry, Jill.”

“She’s not his wife,” Dodge pointed out. He didn’t bother to look at me when he said it. I glanced at Cade and he lifted his eyebrows in a silent I told you so . I might have felt irritated by the look had it not been so obvious that he was right about the guy. I could handle him, but Cade’s embarrassment made all the sense in the world now.

“She’s his wife in the biblical sense and that’s good enough for me,” Leela said. She caught my eye and wagged her head up and down. “You hear me, Jill? It’s good enough for me.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“Well, far be it from me to argue with the Bible,” said Dodge. “Pass the green beans over here, will you?”

The bowl sat in front of me, but he hadn’t addressed me directly, so I made no motion to pass it to him. For several moments he sat in expectant silence; the family continued to eat, and at last he stood and reached down the table to retrieve it himself. When I glanced up to see the shadow of Cade’s smile I felt Elias watching me, but when I looked at him he turned back to his dinner and said nothing at all.

The baby didn’t like the casserole. In the middle of the night I awoke with a raging case of heartburn—not the first of my pregnancy, but by far the worst. I tossed and turned for a while but eventually gave up and ventured down the stairs, hoping the Olmsteads kept antacids somewhere in their Armageddon pantry.

As I entered the addition I heard the television in the den turned down low and saw a column of cigarette smoke rising from the easy chair. I knew it had to be Elias, and when he caught my eye I offered him a polite wave. Other than the television, the kitchen’s only illumination came from Candy’s incubator on the back porch, a glass-and-wire box holding twenty parchment-colored eggs under the warmth of a sixty-watt bulb. It threw a shadowed light across the kitchen, and as I opened a cabinet and began poking around, Elias asked, “Whatcha looking for?”

“Tums or something.”

“I’ve got ’em over here.”

I padded over to the easy chair, and he pulled open the side-table drawer. “I’ve got a whole little field hospital over here. Tums, Tylenol, nail clippers, allergy pills, you name it. Keeps everything handy.”

“Is that a gun in there?”

He handed me the Tums and slid the drawer shut. “Hey, if I’m gonna be up at night, at least I can provide a little security.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed your family’s pretty big on emergency preparedness.”

He chuckled. “Yep, we’re ready for World War Three over here. You see that cabinet there?” He pointed to one above the refrigerator. “It’s got potassium iodide pills in it, in the event of a nuclear explosion. If anybody drops a dirty bomb on Lake Winnipesaukee, your thyroid is safe and sound.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Did you get a good look around the cellar? They’ve got enough water stored up to float the house to Canada.”

I chewed two of the antacid tablets, then asked, “What do you think of all that?”

“I think it’s not a bad idea.” He dragged on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment and exhaled out his nose. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that when the shit goes down, you’re on your own. And that goes for normal stuff, too. Out here, if it snows real bad, good luck getting out of the house for a week. If somebody breaks into your house, by the time the cops get here, all your stuff’ll be in a truck en route to Canada.”