Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

When the lecture was over, several students crowded around his father while Cole waited, staring at one girl with multicolored hair and glossy red-black lips and jeans so low-slung he could actually see some hair. She waited till the others were gone before approaching his father, and Cole had watched as she flirted with his father and his father flirted back.

And later, at the restaurant they’d gone to for lunch, his father had flirted with the waitress. Usually it bothered Cole when his father paid attention to young women, which he did any time Cole’s mother wasn’t around. But that day for some reason Cole hadn’t minded. His father was having a good day. He’d had a good run, taught a good class, and in the space of an hour two pretty young women had shown their attraction to him. Cole knew his father was proud of his fit body and his still-thick, mostly still-black hair, and how happy it made him when people thought he was much younger than he was. That day, he was wearing a turquoise shirt that made his blue eyes almost glow. People were always saying what beautiful eyes he had. The kind of eyes, his mother said, that flirt all by themselves.

There would be a time when the thought that he’d never see his father again would crush Cole with a weight he feared he could not survive. But what he felt mostly in those first hours of grief was overwhelming sadness for his father himself. He felt sorry for his father, who would never see or do anything in the world again—more sorry than he had ever felt for anybody in his life. He saw how terrible it must be to be afraid to die, to want to live and live, and to not have any power to change what was going to happen to you. He told himself he would have been willing to die in his father’s place—he would have done anything to save his father! And maybe if he had gone downstairs last night instead of going back to sleep, maybe he could have done something.

Why was he trying so hard to stop crying when he knew there was nothing wrong with crying, when the wrong thing would have been for him not to cry, and anyway there was no one to see? What did it say about him that he had an overwhelming desire to masturbate and that he did not think he was going to be able to resist?

They were on a motorcycle, it was nighttime, and Cole was very tired—too tired to hold on tight to his father’s waist. He kept falling asleep. His father had to keep reaching back with one arm to catch him, and each time he did this the bike veered and wobbled and they nearly crashed, until they did crash, and Cole sat up with a splitting head and a shout loud enough to wake his mother.

It was completely up to him, she said. If he didn’t want her to go, she’d stay home.

“I know it must seem weird to you that I’d want to be with a bunch of strangers right now, but my sitting around here crying isn’t going to help anyone. And you know the best thing for me is to keep my hands busy. But you still come first, Cole. You just have to tell me if you don’t want to be alone, even for a couple of hours.”

She asked him if he was feeling okay and he lied and said yes, hoping she wouldn’t feel his forehead. If she knew the truth, she’d never leave.

She made him promise to keep the door locked and not let anyone in. “Even if they tell you Jesus sent them.”

“There’s still some raisin bread and some peanut butter, I think, though unfortunately not much else. I’ll try to bring some food back with me. My god.” She shook her head rapidly back and forth, as if to throw off her own unbearable thoughts. “It’s like we’re in a movie, isn’t it? Or some crazy survival show. Oh, Cole, do you absolutely swear to me you’ll be okay?”

He nodded, and she went to hug him. He twisted awkwardly in her embrace, hating himself when she pulled away and he saw her eyes brim.

It was hard, but he said it. “Bye, Mom. Love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said with a look she might have given someone who’d just saved her from drowning.

He wanted to ask her something, but he couldn’t. He wanted to ask if sleeping in his father’s sheets could have given him the flu. He hadn’t thought about it yesterday when he crawled into bed. It had struck him only after he woke up, and he’d left the room in a hurry so his mother wouldn’t find him there. He thought of the story about the American pioneers who gave blankets infested with smallpox to the Indians in the hope of killing them all off. The idea that he might have caught the flu from his father and that he, too, might soon be dead was both thrilling and terrifying.

If it was true—if he really was infected—he wanted to keep it from his mother as long as possible. But now he saw that this could not be very long: his mother was hardly gone from the house when he started coughing.

He had missed so much school, he figured he was going to have to repeat seventh grade. But since this had to be true for so many other kids as well, it didn’t really bother him. He was even feeling a little excited about being back in school again. Then Pastor Wyatt told him to get ready for something different.

“I know the idea of homeschooling probably scares you somewhat. I’ll bet you’ve heard all kinds of nonsense on the subject, but you’ve just got to give it a chance. And anyhow, the nearest school still open round here is so far away you’d have to spend a couple hours just getting there and back each day. And I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like that, now, would you, son.”

Back when he was still in school, in Little Leap—and before that, in Chicago—Cole had been aware of kids who were taught at home by their parents, even though their parents weren’t real teachers. But he’d never actually known anyone who was being homeschooled. Now it was just the opposite. Cole didn’t know any kid in Salvation City who wasn’t being homeschooled. Most of their parents had been homeschooled when they were growing up, too.

From now on his teachers would be Tracy and Pastor Wyatt. But it turned out the only subject he studied with PW was the Bible.

“I know all this is new to you, so I have to explain some. But if you aren’t studying the Book, there isn’t much point in studying any other book. When we’re reading Scripture, that is one of the times—another is when we pray—when we’re able to bring ourselves closer to God. It’s when he sees we’re paying attention to him and trying to get at his truth. In fact, when we’re engaged in reading the Bible with our absolute undivided attention, it really amounts to the same thing as prayer. We’re not saying that math and science and all the other subjects aren’t important. We’re saying the Bible is altogether something else. Those other subjects will teach you plenty of things that are good to know, but all of them put together can’t teach you how you should live.”

Among the many books in Cole’s parents’ library had been a Bible, but the only thing he remembered about it was that it was the most ridiculously long book he’d ever seen. He could not imagine anyone reading it.

“Uh-oh,” said PW. “I see that look on your face, and you can just chill right there. Nobody’s saying you’ve got to learn everything in a day. We’re going to take things slow, and trust me, nobody’s going to make you sit in a corner and read the whole Bible cover to cover like some kind of punishment. So wipe that frown off and come give me a hug.”

It had taken some getting used to, PW’s eagerness to hug and be hugged. At first Cole had dreaded these moments, when he never knew quite where to place his hands or which way to turn his head. His face would color and he would hold his breath and stare at the floor. After a while, though, he lost his excruciating shyness and awkwardness, and now there were times when he wished it weren’t over so quickly, that PW would keep holding him longer.