Сигрид Нуньес - Salvation City

Not so pleasant was the way the whiskey messed with PW’s speech and sometimes even made him drool. Also, Cole could not get used to him being half naked all the time. Something about those beefy shoulder pads, the tufts and whorls of black hair, and the Hershey’s Kiss-like nipples hidden in there made Cole shy away from sitting too close on the wicker sofa.

“It’s about Starlyn.”

“Yeah?”

“I think Mason kidnapped her.”

“Now, why on earth would you say a thing like that?”

A promise is sacred. Cole chose his words carefully. “Because—because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would just the two of them be raptured and nobody else?”

PW breathed a pungent sigh. “First of all, it hasn’t even been one whole day yet. Second, Scripture tells us very little about the rapture, so we don’t really know what to expect. No one knows the hour or day, not even the angels in heaven, according to Matthew. Only God the father knows. So maybe it was never intended for all believers to be taken away in exactly the same breath. We don’t know. Like we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next breath, either.”

Cole didn’t understand how PW could be so calm. Others, he knew, were nowhere near calm. In fact, something very different from the joyful and triumphant celebration Cole had heard so often and so confidently foretold was now unfolding in Salvation City. To the stream of callers wanting to know such things as whether they should climb up on their roofs or keep their doors and windows open, whether they should eat normally or start fasting, whether it was okay to have sex, or safe to drive, and what should they do about the dog—whether there was any chance they’d actually missed the rapture and were now officially left behind, and how could such a thing have happened (“Weren’t we promised we were saved?”), and how much time did they have before the tribulation began in earnest—to all these confused and shaken souls Pastor Wyatt responded alike: Be patient. Gather with your loved ones. Stay home. Wait. Pray.

Their own household had been turned upside down. Poor Tracy had already had enough to cope with in the weeks since Addy’s arrival. Now her legs kept giving out from under her as if she’d been struck by a palsy. After she toppled downstairs, spraining her ankle and splitting open her eyebrow, PW had ordered her to bed. He made her swallow a handful of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him and which he knew had a sleep-inducing effect. She had slipped into oblivion babbling blessings and prayers, convinced that when she opened her eyes again she’d be resting on the clouds of 1 Thessalonians.

“I’ll be the first to admit I am not sure what’s happening,” said PW. “But I’m also sure the Lord will let us know all we need to know in his own time. Have faith, and the mystery shall be revealed.”

“But there’s no mystery,” said Cole. “There’s an explanation.”

“What? Two people naked as Adam and Eve and without a penny on ’em walk off into the yonder without anyone taking notice?”

“Mason—”

“Oh right, the Great Kidnapper. And how’d he get to Louisville without his car?”

“There are other ways!”

“Hunh!” PW lurched in his seat as if he’d been Tasered. “It’s okay, son,” he said quickly. “I’m all right.” But he spoke through gritted teeth, and his face was milk white. “Don’t look so scared.” He tried to smile. “It hurts worse to see you scared.”

Every time this happened—and it could happen several times a day—Cole felt not only scared but the worst kind of helpless. All he could do was sit and watch as PW struggled, breathing shallowly, skin sheened with sweat despite the cool air. Cole sometimes wondered why the bigger a person was, the bigger their pain could seem. The way a suffering whale was so much worse to imagine than a suffering mouse.

PW reached down to the floor next to the sofa and picked up a bottle Cole hadn’t known was there. He took a few large sips and put the bottle back in its spot. Then he sagged back against the sofa cushion, a fist to his mouth, and bowed his head. Under his breath, but loud enough to be heard, he asked God to forgive his weakness.

If it was part of God’s plan, then suffering was not an evil but a blessing. This was something PW often said when preaching about sickness and pain. Cole had also heard him say that he would not be suffering so severely now unless God was punishing him. “And it’s for me to search my heart for what I’ve done to displease him.” Cole thought he had a pretty good idea what that thing might be. But PW never wavered from his testimony that in everything regarding Cole he had done God’s will.

There was no mistaking the Lord’s voice, PW had told him. It was the morning after Addy’s visit and they were sitting in the den. PW had one hand on Cole’s shoulder and the other on the massive desk Bible. “When the Lord speaks to you, the words enter you in a special way. They become part of your flesh, and they never leave you.”

The Lord had spoken. He had spoken clearly. And his words were save the boy .

Three times in one night he had woken PW with the same message. “And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

But why, oh why, Cole had to ask himself, didn’t Jesus send a message to him and Addy, too? Wouldn’t that have helped them all?

PW picked up the bottle again. It was past sunset now, and the dark was like some night animal rubbing its furred flanks up against the porch screens.

PW drank and drank. It was as if they could not start talking again until every drop was gone. Each time he took the bottle away from his lips he let out a heavy sigh, aromatizing the air with bourbon like room spray.

Just as Cole was beginning to think he’d been forgotten, PW reached over and punched him playfully on the shoulder.

“So let me get this straight. You’re saying Mason somehow got himself to Louisville, sneaked into Starlyn’s house, bopped her over the head like a caveman, and dragged her off by the hair?”

Cole refused even to smile.

“Mighty strange he waited till she was gone, don’t you think? When just a couple days ago she was here? How’d you explain that?”

Cole said nothing. What was the point in explaining anything? Why couldn’t PW see the truth? What was wrong with Tracy, and Starlyn’s mother? What was wrong with them all? By the time they caught on (and Cole was beginning to fear this might never happen), Mason and Starlyn would be far away. In his mind, they were headed to Mexico and a life of drugs and sin.

PW spoke as if he’d been able to read Cole’s thoughts. “Okay, then. That’s the case, what we got to do is examine what happened and why it happened like it did. We got to ask ourselves just what is the Lord trying to make us see here. Now, it’s possible he is using those two. Maybe he thought it was a good thing for us to go through a false alarm, just to show us how unready we really are. You see, God—”

“This has nothing to do with God,” Cole said wearily.

“Shame on you, son. I know I’ve taught you better than that.”

Cole was ready to cry. “Aren’t you even worried about her?”

It was the laugh Cole swore he’d never forgive.

“Come on, now, Cole, you know your cousin can take care of herself.”

His cousin! It was the first time he’d ever heard Starlyn called that.

PW reached for the whiskey again, forgetting there was none left. “Tell you who I am worried about, though. I’m worried about Jeptha’s mama.” He was talking about Boots’s daughter-in-law, whose son had just been killed in Israel. “Losing your only son, that’s got to be the worst kind of hurt. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so torn up as that poor lady. Far’s I know she’s always had a powerful faith. But the other day it was like you could see it evaporating off her, like a mist. She would not be comforted. I’d try to get her to pray with me and she’d just give me this smile, this cold, twisted kind of smile. Like I tried to cheat her and she just got wise. Shook me up.”