Salvation City Part 7

Boots Ludwig, though he was past seventy and had eighteen grandchildren, wanted to adopt "a whole football team and all the cheerleaders." He spent a lot of broadcast time thundering against the system. "Let my children go!" It was a matter of urgency in more ways than one: many of the orphans were unsaved.

"If it weren't for those G.o.dless pigheaded fools, we could get those kids right with G.o.d before it's too late." In which case, they would be spared the great tribulation.

Boots Ludwig liked to say the reason he loved radio so much was that he was too ugly for television. In fact, it wasn't so much that he was ugly as that he looked as if he'd been slapped together in a rush: one of his shoulders was higher than the other and he had tiny dark eyes, like coffee beans, stuck unevenly on either side of a nose that had been broken in boyhood and had healed askew. He always dressed Western, from the boots that gave him his nickname to his hat, and he wore several chunky rings, like bra.s.s knuckles, on each hand. Of all the people Cole had drawn, drawing Boots was the most fun. PW said Boots was only joking about the reason he preferred radio. The truth was, both men regarded it as the superior means of spreading the Word.

"The idiot box has a way of putting everything on the same superficial plane. Plus the remote encourages a short attention span."

Contempt for TV was one thing PW and Cole's parents had in common.

"Televangelism," said PW. "To most folks today it's a dirty word. I can't tell you how much I hate the word myself. Oh, I can see how it looked like a great idea at first, preacher's dream, beaming the Good News into millions of homes-where's the downside? But just look what happened. Greed, theft, false testimony, megalomania, cult of personality. I'm not saying Satan created TV, I'm just saying he really knows how to work it."

Also like Cole's parents, PW thought people would be better off with a lot less "e" and "i" in their lives.

"I'm all for Christians connecting online, sharing stories and music and videos and such. But remember, it's always better to be together, in church or some other safe place, wors.h.i.+pping or doing Bible study or community service-whatever-than to be sitting home alone clicking away."

Cole had always thought it was lame the way so many ordinary people wanted to post pages with photos of themselves and lists of all their favorite things and have everyone follow their every dumb move-like, who cared? He'd never kept a journal, but he was sure if he ever did he wouldn't want it to be where the whole world could read it! What would be the point? Still, it was way strange at first, living in a house where the only computer you were allowed to use was in the breakfast nook (he was still in the hospital when he learned that his laptop, along with his parents' laptops and everything else of value, had been looted from their house in Little Leap) and set up so that every site you browsed could be checked by someone else. His parents had never done that, but they would have approved of PW's preaching a gospel of a less noisy and distracted life. They would have given an amen to his call for the need to break the hold the Internet had on people's lives, especially young lives. Say what you would about the pandemic, at least it had helped slow down the rat race. It had also got people thinking more about the world to come. In communities like Salvation City, life had become simpler and more purpose-driven. People were sticking closer to home, spending more time with their families. And everywhere church attendance had soared.

According to Pastor Wyatt, what Christians had needed to figure out was that they'd had it right before before. Dirtying their hands in politics, trying to influence the government and change the laws-all that he and many other Christians now declared a mistake. "We only made fools of ourselves. Everyone seemed to forget the saying that politics is the art of compromise, and that's just not where our church is at. What do we care how we look to the rest of the world? What matters is how we look to G.o.d. Why should we waste energy trying to win other folks' respect? Don't we got a more important job than that? I want my flock to care less about what secular folks are up to and more about their own spiritual lives."

It was said that when the Antichrist came he would make use of the Internet to lure people from the true path. Certain hidden codes were said to be already in place, waiting to be activated.

But why was it the Antichrist who got to use the Net? Cole wanted to know. Why wouldn't Christ use it, too?

When Cole asked about this in Bible study, Mason's one eye twinkled and he said, "Who's to say he won't use it, little bruh? Maybe he will. Maybe he'll decide to have his very own blog. Wouldn't that be dope?"

But PW said, "Jesus won't need the Net nor any other worldly tool. He'll be on his white charger, he'll be wearing his blood-red robes, he'll have his sword and his army of angels and saints. All the trumpets will be blowing. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Revelation, my boy! The King of kings! Say now, why would my Lord need a blog?" Revelation, my boy! The King of kings! Say now, why would my Lord need a blog?"

Boots Ludwig and Pastor Wyatt were good friends, but that didn't mean they always saw eye to eye. When Boots and his wife, Heidi, came to dinner, the two men often argued, as they often argued when they were on the air. They argued about more or less the same things all the time.

Boots accused PW of being too soft. He made it seem easy to be a Christian, Boots said, when being a Christian was never easy and was never meant to be. These days, too many preachers made the church sound like a warm, cozy nest where all you had to do was curl up and be loved. At heart everyone was a good little boy or girl, and however they might have strayed, the good Lord, like some soft-touch daddy, was happy to forgive them.

"Oh, I hear you, Boots, and I know what you want. You want me to put a little more fire and brimstone into it. Use scare tactics. Send folks home with their knees knocking and their teeth chattering in their heads. But you know, nowadays, the last thing I want to do is foment fear. I think we've already seen enough of the damage that that can do. You know as well as I do, when folks get scared, that's when 'What would Jesus do?' tends to go right out the window." can do. You know as well as I do, when folks get scared, that's when 'What would Jesus do?' tends to go right out the window."

"Well, I'm the kind of man, if there's something that doesn't sit right with me, then you know I got to speak out-"

"And I am listening, my friend. Aren't I listening?"

"-and I don't like coming out of wors.h.i.+p service and seeing every kind of expression on people's faces but the appropriate one. Seems to me, leaving church, you ought to have some mighty sober thoughts inside your head. It shouldn't be the same as if you were leaving a ball game or a party. People shouldn't be yakking away about what's for dinner, and why h.e.l.lo there, Mrs. Ludwig, you do look fine today, is that a new dress, and so on."

Speaking of Mrs. Ludwig, Tracy often did just that after listening to one of Boots's tirades, and usually it was the same two words: Poor Heidi Poor Heidi.

Heidi Ludwig was amazingly fat-globular-a circus fat lady. Even her scalp was fat. She hadn't taken a plane anywhere in years, but the last time she'd flown, Cole was awestruck to hear, the airline had made her pay for two seats. Cole would have loved to sketch Mrs. Ludwig, but he didn't think it was possible to draw her as she was without seeming mean. He'd had the same problem with Mason, but then Mason himself had insisted he wanted Cole to draw him. Cole had done his best, but he simply could not get the scarred part right, and Mason had come out looking like a pirate.

Boots said, "I can't help feeling sometimes when you talk about sin it goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe it's because you're always smiling."

"That's what happens when I get filled with the Spirit."

Another thing Boots couldn't stomach was the praise songs of the church's wors.h.i.+p band. "What's wrong with the old hymns? 'Victory in Jesus,' 'His Eye Is on the Sparrow.' Those are songs you could sing with your head high! And don't give me the same old argument about changing times. Nothing sadder than a bunch of Christians trying to prove they're every bit as hip as the lost-unless it's a bunch of Christians coming up with an idea like Testamints. I tell you, when Christ Almighty comes, he's gonna go after those who dare to sell things like breath mints in his name like he went after the sheep traders and the money changers-with a scourge! My father's house is not a place of business My father's house is not a place of business."

"Boots, you know I don't like Jesus junk any more than you do, but maybe you need to lighten up."

"Now Heidi tells me the gals are starting a Knitting for Jesus group. I got nothing against knitting, but you know well as I do it's just another coffee klatsch. They're not knitting for the Lord any more than those Testamints are 'Christian' candy. And you know it gets to me, hearing the way some people jabber on about the end times. I mean, we are talking about Armageddon, the mother of all battles, like every WMD on the planet going off at the same time, and these gals-just listen to them. It's like they're planning a big shopping expedition or some kind of holiday."

Had the flu been a plague sent by G.o.d as a pre-Apocalyptic punishment? Boots thought so. "We know from the Bible that when a society violates G.o.d's laws he will punish that society long before Judgment Day." And when listeners to Heaven's A-Poppin'! Heaven's A-Poppin'! are invited to call in, most of them say they think Boots is right. are invited to call in, most of them say they think Boots is right.

But PW said n.o.body could know for sure, just as no one could know for sure what would happen to children in the rapture. PW believed all children who were too young to have accepted Jesus would be saved, but Boots insisted this was contrary to Scripture.

"The children of the saved will surely be raptured with their parents. But the others, well, take a look at the Flood. Take a look at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. G.o.d didn't spare the children then, not even babies in the womb."

"But we know that Jesus loved children above all," argued PW. "We know that he is coming to destroy evil and bring perfect justice forever, and I cannot see him casting babies into the bottomless pit because their parents turned their backs on his gift. I can't wrap my mind around our just and merciful savior doing this cruel and monstrous thing. I admit in this case there's no crystal-clear verse. But I believe that although everything in the Bible is true, that doesn't mean every truth is revealed there. We have to accept there's a lot we don't know. G.o.d may have some special plan for these children that we won't find out about till the end."

One evening, as the two men argued straight through dinner, Heidi fell asleep in her chair. With a sigh Tracy got up and started clearing the table. Starlyn, who lived with her divorced mother in Louisville, happened to be visiting for the weekend, as she did once or twice a month. She, too, left the table and followed her aunt into the kitchen. After a few minutes Cole picked up his plate and carried it into the kitchen, where he found Tracy clutching her middle, all flushed and teary from the effort to contain her laughter. Before her stood Starlyn, a metal colander clapped upside down on her head and a wooden spoon in her hand. Hitching one shoulder higher than the other, she flourished the spoon like a drum majorette, silently moving her lips as Boots's voice boomed from the dining room.

Even making faces, even with the silly colander on her head, she looked beautiful. She was almost sixteen, and a head taller than Cole. She had rapture-child blond hair and gray eyes with gold dust in them, and her cheeks had the kind of plump round freshness you don't see much except on babies. It had never occurred to Cole before that a nose could be beautiful, in the same way it hadn't occurred to him that ears or feet could be beautiful. Nor could he have said what it was about Starlyn's nose that made it beautiful, but he could have stared at her profile for hours. It confused him, this attraction to, of all things, a girl's nose, and it shamed him, as did the bizarre desire that seemed to have come from the same confusing place, a place he hadn't known existed in him before: the desire to suck her earlobes.

Darlin' Starlyn. Cole did not have the courage to call her that, even if everyone else did. Mason had other names for her as well: Peaches 'n' Cream (those cheeks). Sweet Little Sixteen. Her birthday was just a few weeks away, and a surprise party was planned.

In the kitchen Starlyn glanced in his direction and, as usual, appeared not to see him. Tracy wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled in a way Cole knew was meant to make him feel he wasn't intruding. But his feeling of intruding was in fact too much for him; he dropped his plate clatteringly into the sink and immediately left the room again.

Anyway, as he thought later, he would have felt guilty joining them in making fun of Boots. Cole knew that a lot of people besides Tracy had problems with Boots, and that he tried even PW's patience. But of all the people in Salvation City who'd been kind to Cole, Boots Ludwig may have been the kindest. He was a little deaf, Boots, and like many people who don't hear well he sometimes forgot that others hear just fine. In the beginning, when Cole first arrived, he got used to hearing Boots murmur "tragic, tragic" whenever Cole happened to be around.

He's my nineteenth grandchild, Boots told everyone. Whenever he came to the house he blessed Cole with something, and it was always something good, like a new video game, something he'd made sure Cole really wanted. And he called Cole "my dear," as if Cole were a girl. Except that Boots didn't like girls. Girls and women were not his dears; girls and women chafed him. He didn't appear to like Tracy much, he was the only person in Salvation City not smitten with Starlyn, and he seemed angry with his wife most of the time.

"Poor Heidi," Tracy said. "If it wasn't for her, I'm not sure I could go on being nice to that man. All this nonsense about some innocent little candy! And frankly, if bad breath isn't from the devil I don't know what is."

Cole agreed to be on the radio even though he didn't want to do it, and even though he'd been told several times he didn't have to do it. He agreed because he wanted to please Boots, and he wanted to please PW. But no sooner had he agreed than he began to regret it, afraid that he was going to let them down. But then he couldn't bring himself to say he'd changed his mind, afraid it would make him look like a coward.

He knew all about how this could happen, how your intentions could be not just good but n.o.ble, and still somehow you end up disgracing yourself and disappointing others. People you loved, people you wanted to make happy, people you wanted so badly to think well of you.

And now he would be forced to remember a time he had been trying to forget. He'd be forced to talk about things he didn't want, or even know how, to talk about.

His father used to accuse his mother of not being able to let anything go. She needed to learn to put the past behind her, instead of dwelling on what couldn't be changed. "Don't be like your mother," he warned Cole, "unless you want to be depressed."

And wasn't PW forever saying that letting go of the past was an important part of being a Christian?

"You take Paul. He had to learn to forget the bad things that had happened to him, forget the bad things he himself had done as Saul. 'Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the heavenly prize to which G.o.d in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.' That's how he tells it in Philippians. Forget and press on. That's what we've all got to do."

But now they were asking Cole to remember remember.

He remembered being allowed to stay in bed for days after he arrived, even though he wasn't sick anymore. So many cots were packed into the room, you had to walk sideways. All through the night you'd be wakened by noise: a boy shouting in his sleep, a boy sobbing, two boys having a fight.

All day long boys came and went, some approaching Cole's bed to stare but rarely addressing him, and he'd watched one of them steal another one's sneakers, shaking a silencing fist at Cole before making off with them.

He wasn't sick anymore, but it still hurt sometimes just to think. He still zoned out, momentarily forgetting what he was doing or where he was; he still had memory gaps. He felt like a man in a spy movie he'd seen, whose enemy injects him with drugs to skew his mind. But Cole knew his own mind was actually getting better.

In the hospital, after his first bout of fever, he'd had to be told all over again that his father was dead. Pause. His mother was dead, too.

Pa.s.sed, they said. Your mother pa.s.sed a week ago. Your mother pa.s.sed a week ago.

Immediately, his temperature had shot up again.

He knew, of course, that it was a lie, for when he was alone she came to him. She was working on a plan to get him out. His job for now was to go along with his captors, to play dumb. He must understand, they were in serious danger: these aliens were capable of anything. He must be vigilant. One slip on his part could doom them both.

But he did slip. He panicked one day and bit one of them, the one he saw most often, a woman, tall and green, like a spear of asparagus. Always frowning. She and her evil syringe. After he bit her he was put in restraints. He cursed and cursed. To punish him they loosed stinging insects between his sheets. Because of the restraints he was at their mercy. He screamed and howled. He didn't care anymore what the aliens knew, or what they would do to him, he kept calling for his mother. She came one last time. It was no good, no good, she said, twisting her hands; she couldn't attempt a rescue now, it was too risky. She had to go meet his father. Not a word about coming back.

He had never been so frightened, he had never known that kind of pain. And when it was over, when the fever and the delirium had left him for good, it was as if part of his ident.i.ty had vanished, too. As if half his life had never happened.

He was told that, after his relapse, he had not been expected to recover. "But you put up such a fight!" said the doctor, pumping his fist. Dr. Ha.s.san was unmistakably proud of him, though Cole didn't see how a sick person deserved credit for getting better. Dr. Ha.s.san and other members of the hospital staff were gathered around Cole's bed. Except for Dr. Ha.s.san, they were all in green. They all beamed down at him, they were all proud, and after Dr. Ha.s.san spoke, everyone clapped and the nurse Cole had bitten cuffed his cheek playfully with her bandaged hand.

Cole hadn't been able to look any of them in the face. He hadn't been able to say anything, either. He would never have said what he was thinking, and he was angry with Dr. Ha.s.san, he was angry with all of them. How could they not know how he felt?

Eden knew. "Sometimes when things turn out this way, survival can feel like betrayal."

She told him that his parents were together now, they were together in heaven, from where they were able at all times to look down and see him. He knew the story, knew that this was all it was, a story: his parents themselves had told him so. He knew that they were not able to see him, and that he would never see them again. This was what their being dead meant. And yet his mind could not take it in, that they had been here on earth-never a time in his life when they had not been here-but now they were nowhere nowhere. They had become nothing nothing.

But you can't be angry at nothing, can you? And he was most definitely angry at them.

None of it had had to happen, he believed. His parents had not had to die. He had not had to get sick himself. He refused to accept that nothing could have been done. His parents had been stupid, careless. His father was right: they had blown it. The whole world had blown it. The whole world had blown it. He remembered all those warning articles he'd read. Why hadn't they been prepared? Someone was responsible. Someone had to be to blame. And indeed, now that the virus had pa.s.sed, this was what He remembered all those warning articles he'd read. Why hadn't they been prepared? Someone was responsible. Someone had to be to blame. And indeed, now that the virus had pa.s.sed, this was what everyone everyone was saying. was saying.

"Now is not the time for accusations and finger pointing. We would do better to join hands and look not back but ahead. Let us take up the vast work before us, let us pull together, as one nation, bound in sorrow by this terrible tragedy but full of hope for our future."

When the president appeared for the first time after her illness, thin, hollow-eyed, and still so frail that she had to support herself on two canes, even among those who hadn't voted for her-even among those who hated her-there was an outpouring of emotion. America's mother had been brought to the brink of death, but she had survived. And America would survive, too.

In memory, it was as if he'd never left Chicago. The move to Little Leap and the house he lived in briefly there and the school he so briefly attended-all this he remembered hardly at all. Ironically, some of his most distinct memories turned out to be false. His father had brought home a new dog, a stray he'd almost hit with his car. A feisty young sheepdog that chased a cat under the porch of the house across the street and got into a fight with another dog, an old Labrador.

Zeppo, he'd named the new dog.

Only there was no Zeppo.

Dr. Ha.s.san promised that, in time, his mind would return to normal. "Maybe you won't be able to remember everything you want to remember when when you want to remember it, but for all practical purposes your memory should function just fine." you want to remember it, but for all practical purposes your memory should function just fine."

No one said anything, though, about what recovering certain memories might do to him.

For the first time in his life, he had migraines. He had ringing in his ears. He had constant nightmares and episodes of sleepwalking.

Occasionally, when he spoke to someone, the person would look at him blankly. Rather than what Cole had intended to (and heard himself) say, out came gibberish.

Once when he tried to stand up from a chair, his legs would not obey.

If people hadn't kept telling him such things were also happening to other flu victims, he might have gone out of his mind for good.

Nurse Asparagus told him about a famous writer who'd been a child math prodigy until he came down with a case of common flu and mysteriously lost his gift. "We can't explain it, but we know a fever high enough to cause delirium can scorch things right out of the brain."

The boy in the bed next to Cole's had spoken both Spanish and English before he got sick but now could speak only Spanish. Another nurse translated: "Where are my parents?" "I see c.o.c.kroaches!" "No more needles, they hurt!"

And Cole would hear many other stories like this, including stories of people who'd come through the flu blind or paralyzed or mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded, or who'd go on to develop symptoms of parkinsonism. And the more he heard, the more he understood that he had been lucky.

It was Tracy who said putting Cole on a live radio show might not be such a good idea.

"Why not?" demanded Boots, bean eyes jumping with irritation, and when Tracy replied that she wasn't quite sure: "In other words, no reason at all? Just women's intuition or some like nonsense?"

Tracy knew better than to argue with Boots. And since she believed firmly in a wife's biblical duty to submit to her husband's authority in all things, she did not challenge PW's view that she was just being an anxious mother hen.

But as late as the day of the broadcast-that morning-she reminded Cole that no one was forcing him; he could still change his mind.

"Maybe it's just me, Cole-cakes, but I don't think I've ever seen you look so pale. And I know you haven't been sleeping so good."

But Cole couldn't imagine surviving the shame if he backed out now.

It was true he'd been sleeping poorly all week, but it was not just at night that his mind was unrestful. The thought of the upcoming show-"We'll keep it real easy and relaxed. Just you and me for about fifteen minutes, then we open up the phones to questions"-had naturally got Cole wondering what he might be asked and how he was going to answer. And it was as if a fissure had opened in him out of which more and more of his past life seeped through.

Now that his memory was so much better, he was able to see how the false had got mixed in with the true. No dog named Zeppo, but his father had had hit a dog with his car one time. And Cole remembered lying to his new cla.s.smates about wanting a sheepdog, and then wondering why he'd lied. He remembered the first day of school and the last day of school and all the chaos in between. Dogs: the chocolate Lab that belonged to the man who lived on their street, the old man who'd helped his mother carry Cole's father to the car but refused to go with her to the hospital-he remembered all that. He remembered wanting to hurt that man. hit a dog with his car one time. And Cole remembered lying to his new cla.s.smates about wanting a sheepdog, and then wondering why he'd lied. He remembered the first day of school and the last day of school and all the chaos in between. Dogs: the chocolate Lab that belonged to the man who lived on their street, the old man who'd helped his mother carry Cole's father to the car but refused to go with her to the hospital-he remembered all that. He remembered wanting to hurt that man.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough. That sound lived so deep in him he didn't see how he could ever have forgotten it, even for a while. But then, forgetting your own name-how unlikely was that?-and he had done that, too.

His mother at the kitchen table, b.u.t.toned up in her winter coat-had she ever finished writing that message to Addy?

I'm sorry for your loss. A man-not a doctor or a nurse-a man dressed in street clothes. Visitor's badge, hair-choked nostrils, crooked brown teeth. A man with a laptop. A man-not a doctor or a nurse-a man dressed in street clothes. Visitor's badge, hair-choked nostrils, crooked brown teeth. A man with a laptop. We need to talk about next of kin. We need to talk about next of kin.

Cole was still feverish, his head was like a noisy machine churning mud. He tried to churn up answers. Somewhere in Florida were his grandparents: his father's father who had Alzheimer's, and his father's mother, paralyzed from a stroke. In a home for old people but-and this had always puzzled Cole-not the same home. He could not remember the name of the town or the last time he'd seen them.

No brothers or sisters on his father's side; on his mother's side only Addy. When the man asked him where Addy lived, Cole slipped and said Chicago. Sometime after his second, more severe, bout of illness, he was told his aunt had not yet been found. He was confused; he had no memory of telling anyone about Addy.

He would be living at Here Be Hope for weeks before the mistake about Addy's whereabouts was discovered. But Cole thought if Addy had been trying to reach him she'd have done so by now, and he was not surprised when one day, not long after he'd moved to Salvation City, PW gave him the news that she had pa.s.sed. PW didn't say anything about Addy's being Jewish, or about her being unsaved and therefore condemned to h.e.l.l. He only repeated what he'd told Cole before: the best way to remember people after they've pa.s.sed is to remember the good about them. And then they had prayed together.