And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.
–James 3:6
I awaken from a nap, I suppose, thinking I still must be in the dream. I stand up and black ashes fall away from me. My body is covered in burns; I am burned black but feel no pain.
Around me the fire blazes on. People everywhere are bursting into flames and collapsing under its intensity.
There is singing, beautiful voices are all around me. They are singing a hymn written by a young girl named Rebecca; she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten when she wrote it. No one knew it would be such a prophetic hymn. But on this day no one is surprised.
David approved of the hymn, and we sang it often at Bible meetings:
In the pillar of fire,
We can hear our Savior calling.
He has laid the funeral pyre,
As is written in His word.
No more pain and no more crying,
We can see our Savior smiling;
We are living as we’re dying
In the pillar of fire.
There she is, Rebecca herself, twelve now, perhaps. A beautiful, pious little girl, singing her hymn as the flames catch on at the hem of her dress, a dress she made herself by hand with no machine, simple and pretty, like her, made of a fabric that ignites quickly and spreads up her small frame like a bird frightened out of a bush. Rebecca’s hands are outstretched, prayerful. Her fingers stretch out briefly then relax; there is no other sign that she feels the flames.
She sings as her naked body shows through the cloth of her dress and panties, as the fire consumes them, consumes her; her skin reddens then bubbles and bursts open; the muscle cooks, bones appear. The fire ignites her head; hair falls off of her shoulders to the burning ground in smoking clumps. Her lips and eyelids melt like wax.
I stand here in horror, surely, but I feel strangely calm. I feel light. In fact, I am floating upward, out of the flames. Rebecca is, too. I look over and there she is, rising up alongside me, no longer blemished by the flames, her dress untouched, her skin smooth and soft, the hymn still rising from her lips.
It catches me unaware, this realization. This is the Rapture! This is what we’ve always known in our hearts was the Truth. Jesus is coming to meet us in the clouds! As we rise up, I see others around us, people who aren’t a part of the family; reporters; soldiers doing their jobs on our property; people in town—the sky is filled with specks, bodies, people, the saved and faithful floating up to meet Jesus!
Someone is quoting Revelation: “Look, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him; even those who pierced Him; and all the people of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen.”
I look toward the clouds; I don’t know for sure what I’m looking for, but I’m confident I will know it when I see it. This is a precious day—a beautiful day; this is the only day that matters anymore. The Prophecy has begun; the End Times are upon us! Oh, glory be—that I am numbered among those going to heaven!
I hear trumpets! And singing! “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever.”
My senses are alive; there is nothing wrong, no acrid smells in the air. Though bodies and buildings burn beneath us, though the smoke of the burning rises up and floats past us, there is no smell of flesh or wood or chemicals; there is no smell of keratin or sulfur. The air smells fresh – I fill my lungs – there is even a tinge of perfume floating on the air. Surely that is the perfume of our Lord. David spoke of this. Rose, sandalwood, lilies, pomegranate, honey, coriander, myrtle, myrrh, frankincense, these are the scents David said we would smell during the Rapture!
My beloved used to smell of sandalwood and honey.
Is it too late? Will she be saved? Will she rise up with the rest of us and spend the rest of time in Heaven? What about my children? Our children. Do they have a chance? Can I spend eternity without them? Dare I say it wouldn’t be Heaven alone without my earthly family to share it?
Lord, forgive me for my blasphemy! But it is You who brought us together; it is in Your image that our children were created. I have a responsibility to them, don’t I, Lord? Shouldn’t I at least try to see that they have the opportunity to be saved?
I look to the clouds, to the bright white storm gathering inside of them, the light brighter than the sun, which is Jesus Christ; and then I look down at my earthly place, all that I am leaving behind.
I must go there, Lord. I must try. I will pray and accept whatever consequences I must suffer for this, but my suffering would be greater if I didn’t at least try.
*
Throughout his life, whenever August was ill, whether it was a serious illness or a minor one, he was prone to panic attacks. He didn’t know exactly the cause, though he had given it considerable thought.
He couldn’t sleep on the plane – he had never been able to sleep in a moving vehicle – so that was what occupied his mind. His stomach had been upset most of the day; he had already gone to the toilet on the plane three times with diarrhea. He wasn’t particularly afraid of flying, but sitting in that little white box with its curved ceiling closing in on him made him anxious.
He was sure the smell was upsetting to other passengers; he would have lit a match if that was allowed or sprayed deodorizer if there was any available. Instead, he sat on the toilet and broke out in a cold sweat, holding the walls to keep them from closing in on him.
Naturally, there was the fear of death, August decided, back in his seat with the seatbelt fastened. But it was more than that, these panic attacks. His mother would never believe there was anything wrong with him. She said he was only trying to get sympathy, or that his symptoms were psychosomatic. Even if August was vomiting or had a fever, Dar would say his condition was more emotional than physical.
She didn’t do this to be cruel. Not really. She was trying to protect them.
August was three when his sister June was born (three months later, he turned four). He was too young to see that that event was the cause of the change in Dar, in the marriage, in their family. That was when the ball of yarn started unraveling.
Who knows what was said behind closed doors, but it was obviously forbidden for anyone to talk about June’s condition. As far as Dar was concerned, there was no “condition,” June was the same as any other child, just quieter, more artistic, more focused on solitary things—like the way all of her dolls wound up with multiple ponytails all over their heads, bound up in rubber bands or little pieces of dental floss that June managed to tie by herself with her clumsy little fingers.
Or the stacking. June was always stacking things, anything that would stack.
Dar was right. There wasn’t anything wrong with June when she was at home. She was completely “normal” in the house. It was the people out there who made the commotions, who acted different. Just because a pre-teen girl is seen in the middle of a field off of the highway next to an oil derrick, standing completely still for hours on end in a clean white dress as her mother, the artist, paints her, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the girl. Dar said on numerous occasions that June’s ability to stay motionless for long periods should have been seen as a plus, a talent—a blessing.
People talked. Tom heard about it at work. He was worried more about June than Dar, though he did have concerns about her as well. He suggested they take June to the doctor. Dar refused. She refused to believe there was anything wrong with her children. She clung to this belief, and eventually it drove Tom away. It took him leaving home and Dar’s parents stepping in to get June to a doctor for the diagnosis: Asperger’s syndrome.
Dar denied it, refused to accept it. She cut herself off from her parents and busied herself with her work at Rice Gallery, where her creativity flourished and no one ever questioned her methods, at least not in her presence.
It was in this way that Dar protected June from herself. And now, June was being held captive by her situation, Asperger’s, and now agoraphobia as well. August didn’t want to take the blame for it, though he couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of responsibility. He had called June every week since he left town, had tried to be a good brother, even though he couldn’t physically be there for her. But now it looked like all of his efforts had failed. Otherwise June would never have called him.
She never used the phone. She answered when he did his special ring – one ring, hang up, and then call back, so that he wouldn’t have to talk to Paul or Dar – but other than that, she kept to herself, played mother to her infant half-sister.
But she had called him on this day. Obviously, this day was different. Things were happening in Texas and August was far from home, all the way up in New York City, with his life of nearly five years.
“Isn’t that enough time, Oggie?” She asked him. “When is enough? When are you coming back home?”
It was the most upsetting call August had ever received. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say, he couldn’t say what he really felt, which was, “I’ll come back when he’s gone.” He wasn’t a little boy anymore; and although his sister was twenty years old, she was a little girl, or very much like one in many ways. He had to be the man of the family now, he had to go back and take it away from the imposter he had introduced into the house.
But he was sick to his stomach. Sickened by the things he had learned in the phone call, things that prompted Lorax to suggest the two of them buy tickets and fly to Houston right away, that very day.
Lorax was dead asleep in the seat next to August, calm in the face of the storm, as always. In his face, all the beauty and comfort and sadness and compassion of a mother. The gentle lines in his forty-two year old face, his wispy moustache and beard with their aberrant gray stands—not coarse hairs, soft against the face with the darker ones.
August saw the beauty, comfort, sadness, and compassion in those single hairs, as he did in every inch of his lover.
Hah! He doesn’t use a last name and neither does Dar, August thought to himself. I did marry my mother! A smile crossed his face and took him out of his internal misery for a spell.
That wasn’t true, of course; Lorax wasn’t the least bit like Dar. –Well, the least bit, yes; they were both born with the same female parts, but had taken wildly divergent paths in their artistic lives.
It had been years since August talked to his mother. Just shy of four years. She would be four years further evolved, though she never did show a very clear trajectory. She was in love with Tom, August’s father, until they had an autistic child. After he left home, she followed her Indian guru for a while (until he was deported for illegal activities). Then she snatched up the man who might very well have become August’s lover, bisexual Paul, with whom she had a mentally retarded baby they referred to as “Booboo.”
Lorax shifted in his seat, his shirt fell slightly open, enough to where August could see the scars. The plastic surgery didn’t get it quite right; the skin was left taut in places, giving it the slight appearance of burns; and the nipples, piecemealed together from the originals, made smaller, more “masculine,” ended up looking like nearly symmetrical brown smears.
Lorax was young when he had the surgery; he thought he would have it all done – the “works” – but things changed, life happened, the more involved procedure became unimportant. To the outside world, Lorax looked like he felt on the inside, and that was enough.
Then he met August, and their friendship turned into the Great Love Affair. Lorax blossomed in August’s hands—they both did. Even Lorax’s vagina became a source of beauty, comfort, sadness, and compassion for August. Here was none other than the love August had yearned for all of his adult life.
He reached across the armrest between them and took Lorax’s hand. Lorax stirred but didn’t wake fully, folded both of his hands over August’s and returned to sleep. The beauty of the moment brought tears to August’s eyes.
*
The doorbell rings at 4109 Paisley Circle, August Collins’ childhood home. August isn’t there; he hasn’t been home in years. Paul Bozich is there, ground floor, center stage. This is his show now.
The couch on which he likely seduced August’s mother is gone, replaced by recliners, two of them, a matched pair, with a ceramic magazine rack / coaster / ashtray combo on a wire frame standing between them. The chairs are obviously “his” and “hers,” Paul’s and Dar’s, the happy couple, though the condition of the chairs belies the title. The chair stage right looks fairly new, rarely used: Dar’s chair; the one stage left, though purchased at the same time, has darker foot- and armrests, and faded bath towels have been tucked in over the seat and back cushions. The chairs naturally face the television, unseen against the fourth wall.
Whatever 70s and 80s wall décor that had for so many years been the mode actuelle, has all but disappeared, replaced with four prominent paintings by the artist-in-residence, hanging on the upstage wall. They show a new direction in Dar’s work, a style one might call “apocalyptic realism.”
The four paintings obviously belong to a set; the first is of a lion, the second is of an ox, the third is of a man, the fourth is of an eagle. Each of the creatures has three pairs of wings and eyes all over their heads and bodies. In the backgrounds of each painting, something is burning: a cage, a field, a house, a tree.
The model for the painting of the man was Paul, a younger Paul, when his skin didn’t sag, before the mouth cancer turned the left half of his mouth into a dark, downward scowl. His hair used to be thick and beautiful; now it hangs around his face like dead snakes.
He is standing at stage left when the bell rings, fixing himself a salty dog at the buffet next to the dining table. He has just salted the rim and is putting ice cubes in the glass when the bell sounds. He doesn’t halt his process. The bell rings again, followed by a couple of quick knocks on the front door.
“Jesus Christ!” Paul says, then louder, “Don’t you have a key?”
He finishes making the drink quickly, sloshing vodka then grapefruit juice into the glass. Then he reaches for it and knocks it over. “Shit!”
Paul heads across the room, perturbed. He twists the deadbolt, and as he turns the knob, he says again, playfully – mostly for his own entertainment because he knows it annoys Dar – “Don’t you have a key?”
A tall man, coal black head-to-toe (clothes and all), stands before him. Paul considers the stranger momentarily. “No, I guess you don’t,” he says, finally.
The black man says, “Is Dar at home?”
“No! I thought you were her. Until I opened the door.”
“What about the children?”
“Upstairs.” Paul has a moment of clarity. “Anyway, who wants to know?”
The black man leans toward Paul. “May I come in?”
Paul doesn’t see why not. He makes a comic courtly gesture into the room. The black man enters. Paul passes him and heads to the kitchen. The black man walks hesitantly around the room, looking at the paintings, the knickknacks, books, newspapers, old things, newer things. Everywhere he touches or steps, he leaves behind black marks.
Paul returns with a kitchen towel; he starts sopping up the spilled cocktail on the buffet top and carpet. He squats and sighs, “I’m just gonna let it burn.”
The black man looks up from a soapbox derby car August painted as a boy but never raced. “Excuse me?”
“She’s late. Dinner is gonna burn.”
“Oh.” He puts the car back on its shelf, makes his way to the recliner with the bath towels tucked into it, Paul’s chair. He sits.
Still squatting, Paul asks, “Would you like a drink?”
The black man pulls a lever on the side of the chair and falls into an almost horizontal position. He didn’t expect the abruptness of the action; he laughs at himself. “Excuse me, what?”
Paul is standing now, frozen on the black man reclined in his chair, the towel balled up between his hands. “You want something to drink?”
The black man is still laughing, righting himself in the chair; he feels giddy. “Yes! A Tom Collins!”
Paul drops the towel on the dining table and reaches into the gold chrome ice bucket. “Are you serious?”
The black man straightens out his face. “No. I’m not serious.”
Paul says, “Are you sure? Tom Collins—what is that, gin? We might have some gin in the house.” He squats and digs through the bottles in the buffet cabinet. “I mean, we wanna be accommodating, don’t we?”
The black man stands. “No, no, thank you. I don’t drink.”
Paul lights a cigarette and shakes his head at the game he’s obviously been tricked into playing with this stranger.
“I was wondering if I could see the children,” the black man says.
Paul sets a bottle of gin on the buffet and continues making his own drink. “Oh, yeah, sure. They’re upstairs.”
The black man floats up the stairs silently, leaving handprints up the white banister.
“First door on the right,” Paul says sarcastically. He stops at his chair, looks at the imprint of the black man’s body, as coal-black as him, on the towels. He takes a drag, blows smoke toward the man at the top of the stairs, turning, opening the door, disappearing into the bedroom light reflected on the upstage wall, a rectangle of light getting narrower and narrower until it is just a sliver, and then it is gone with the sound of the door meeting the door frame gently. The excited laughter of girls echoes in the bedroom.
*
Lorax was of medium height but always stood out in his carefully chosen colorful garb: red tennis shoes, an orange short sleeve button down with lime green pinstripes. He and August stood side-by-side at the baggage carousel on the ground floor of the Intercontinental Airport in North Houston, their arms touching occasionally.
August towered over Lorax, but his black outfit camouflaged him somewhat. They didn’t have to speak; they were comfortable in the many silences that existed between them. When the spinning yellow light atop the carousel started up after a pair of beeps, August seemed to come to.
“How far is it to your mother’s house?” Lorax asked.
August looked at his watch but didn’t register the time he read. “Forty-five minutes.”
“Should we get a hotel on this side of town and head over in the a.m.?”
“Yeah, probably,” August said.
Luggage started trailing past them. Eager passengers pushed closer to the moving belt.
“Actually,” August said, “I think I need to eat something.”
“Your stomach’s okay?”
“I don’t know for sure. It’s empty; I know that.”
“Well, then,” Lorax said with a concerned smile, “we should probably stop for a bite.”
“Yeah,” August said, “that’s sounds good. Something light.”
“Whatever you like, dear.”
After they picked up their bags and rented a car, they would stop at the first restaurant they saw on the 610 Loop, a Kip’s Big Boy, and over dinner salads, bowls of soup, and sodas, would talk themselves into driving on to Southwest Houston that night (and make a decision about where to stay after that), convincing themselves that knowing something would be better than anxious waiting.
*
Paul sits in Dar’s chair, nestles uncomfortably into it through a whole cigarette. The ashtray and coaster are on the wrong side of the magazine rack. The order of everything is wrong!
Paul has a very orderly way of doing things. He sees this as his contribution to the household. Meals are served on a specific timetable, and the house itself is kept in a fairly clean state, the floors vacuumed, things put in their proper places, shelves dusted if need be.
It gets under his skin when the balance of things is upset. Like showing up late for dinner. That’s bad enough! But not even calling to say so, not fessing up to the crime… Unless she’s dead. Paul doesn’t think that’s likely; that’s just not the way life works.
He puts his drink in its usual place, the coaster indentation on the back half of the rack. When he’s in his chair, this placement is the most convenient; now it’s in the way. But the front coaster is stacked with More brand cigarette butts, like a pyramid of little logs. He composts the ashes with the kitchen scraps and trashes the butts, so he has to keep them separated.
Or at least that’s his intention. He usually manages to knock most of the butts into the center ashtray section or onto the floor – some inevitably hide under the chairs – before the night is over. Out of sight, out of mind is one of Paul’s mottos (which goes as much for children as for cigarette butts).
The ashes usually end up muddy from Paul’s final salty dog of the day, the ice melts and the condensation overflows the coaster into the ashtray. He takes care of the mess each morning when he wakes up there beside it. He usually sleeps in his chair, so he is the first one to see it, and it is the first thing he sees.
A key turns in the front door, turns and locks the deadbolt. The knob is turned a couple of times then the key returns and unlocks the door this time. By the time she enters, Paul has readied himself for the onslaught. He pictures himself the Edith Bunker in this scenario, the innocent.
“Was the door unlocked all day, Paul?”
Those are the first words she says, he asks himself. “Hello to you, too,” he says, sipping.
Dar enters the room in a high-waisted 70s-era pantsuit, bright white with a wide gold belt buckled under her breasts. Her hair is more voluminous than usual. “Paul, it’s smoky in here.”
He faces forward, smiling.
“Did you hear me?” She makes her way to the kitchen, dropping her keys and oversized purse onto the dining table. “Are you going to ignore me all night?”
“I’m not ignoring you, you’re ignoring me.”
“What? –Paul, I’m too tired—”
He interrupts her. “I said hello and you didn’t respond, and that’s why I haven’t responded to your questions.”
She pushes the kitchen door open and smoke billows into the main room. “Damn it, Paul!”
She disappears into the kitchen awhile as Paul drinks his cocktail and smokes his cigarette. He doesn’t put either of them down on the magazine rack, so as not to breed confusion in his mind. He sits upright in Dar’s chair awaiting her return.
She comes into the living room fanning the air and clearing her throat. “Why didn’t the smoke alarms go off?”
“Because I took the batteries out.”
“What for, Paul?”
“Because they kept going off!”
Dar goes to the buffet to make herself a drink. “You’re gonna burn the house down.”
The vodka bottle is empty. An unopened bottle of gin stands next to it.
Dar is putting ice in a glass. “Are you drinking gin?”
“Not yet. I was gonna make a Tom Collins.”
“What for?”
“The black man.”
“What?”
“I was gonna make a Tom Collins for the black man.”
“Paul, you’re drunk.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“Yes it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes. It does. –Are we out of vodka?”
“No it doesn’t!”
Dar snaps her fingers wildly at the air. “Hello? Paul? Are you with me?”
He says, “Yes.”
“Are we out of vodka?”
“Yes. I was going to tell you to get more on your way home when you called—if you called to tell me you were gonna be late.”
“I did call.” She carries a bottle of red wine with her to the kitchen.
“No you didn’t.” Paul shuffles in the chair. “Don’t you walk out on me! Where are you going?”
Dar returns directly, waving a corkscrew. “Screw you,” she says, laughing.
He shakes his head. “Don’t get Martha with me, Dar.”
“I have to, Paul. It’s the only defense I have against your George. Remember, I haven’t had one drink yet today, and you’ve had—what is that, your tenth greyhound?”
“Salty dog.” He finishes it, gets up to make another and passes Dar walking to her chair with a very full glass of wine.
She sits in her chair and drinks. “Have you even seen the girls today, Paul?”
“At lunch.”
“Not since lunch?”
He realizes there is no vodka. “Shit.”
“Have you seen the phone today, Paul?”
He is deep in thought about whether he wants to make himself a Tom Collins, and, if so, how he would go about doing that, besides the gin. “What?”
“I said have you seen the telephone today? Since lunch?”
“What? Are you trying to accuse me of something?”
“No. I’m just asking. Where’s the phone, Paul?”
He’s about to say, “Right there where it always is,” which would be on the phone hutch at the bottom of the stairs near the kitchen door, but just before the words come out, he glances in that direction and sees it clearly missing. And then he sees the phone cord running up the stairs along the banister.
He says, “Stop nagging.”
Dar takes a big gulp. “June called August.”
Paul pours his glass half full of gin and the rest of the way with grapefruit juice. “When?”
“Today.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she called to tell me.”
Paul feigns nonchalance. “August? What for?”
“Did you happen to watch any tv today, Paul? –Oh, no, wait, you were too busy burning dinner.”
“It would have been fine if you had been on time.”
“She called him,” Dar continues, “because of that Branch Davidian thing.”
Paul collapses into his chair. “She must have called the black man, too, then.”
“What? Paul, be serious for a minute.”
“I am being serious. I’m serious as a heart attack.”
“No, you’re not. Paul, please!”
Paul reclines his chair. “There’s a black man up there with the girls right now.”
“Paul, you’re being ridiculous—morbid. Stop being such an ass.”
He rests his glass in its proper coaster and lights a cigarette. Everything feels right again; he takes a deep breath and relaxes. “See for yourself.”
Dar stands and takes a long swallow, the backs of her legs against her chair. “I don’t know how long this can go on, Paul.”
He lifts his head. “What are you talking about?”
“This.” She stirs her free hand in front of her. “This arrangement.”
Paul smiles. “This arrangement?”
“Yes.” She starts up the stairs.
“This isn’t an arrangement, Dar, this is life.”
She stops. “Ha!” And continues.
“This is your life, Dorothea. This is my life—our life. We’re a family.”
She stops on the stairs, holding the banister, not noticing the black handprints. “We are not a family, Paul. This is not a family!”
“The hell it isn’t. Like it or not, Dar, you’re stuck with me. That’s my kid you’re going up there to see.”
Dar stomps down the stairs and stands over Paul. “No! One of them is your child. One! But both of them are mine. I carried them. I am their mother. You’re just a sperm donor, Paul!”
“A lotta good my sperm did you, huh? A little mongoloid baby!”
Dar stomped her foot. “Asshole!”
“You know what, Dar? That other kid of yours ain’t too perfect, either. And you know what that tells me? It must not be the sperm donors who are making the retards, it must be the ‘mother’!”
She stands stunned for a moment then throws her wine glass at him. It hits the ceramic magazine rack, shatters and splatters all around Paul.
Paul springs upright but remains sitting. “Hey! Bitch.”
“I want you out of here, Paul. Go sleep in your bus or at a motel or somewhere—I don’t care. But I want you out of this house. Tonight.”
He is nursing a small cut on his right hand, holding the intact stem of the wine glass in his left. He doesn’t have time to gather his thoughts and hurl them back at Dar; for the moment he is incapacitated.
She’s gone, up the stairs and into the bedroom with the laughter. And the black man.
He drinks down his makeshift Tom Collins in bitter gulps, finishing one cigarette and starting another amid the gulps, stewing over what has become the latest episode.
After a while, Paul calmly climbs the stairs, dragging his wounded hand on the banister, smearing the black marks and leaving occasional smears of red. He knocks gently on the girls’ bedroom door and calls out to Dar. She doesn’t answer. He leans close to the door, presses the side of his face to it, and calls her again, a little louder, but without any insistence, trying his best to sound apologetic.
A booming voice—the voice of the black man—responds. “I know your deed, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. But because you are lukewarm, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
“Shut up, you fool,” Paul says, barely audibly.
The black man seems to hear him clearly, and responds, “Whoever says ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”
“Come out of there,” Paul says, louder.
And the black man says, “Fire came down from heaven and devoured them.”
Paul pounds on the door. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
The bedroom door opens suddenly, but only a tiny bit. Dar peers through the opening with one eye. “Paul, do you want me to call somebody?”
“I want the black man to come out of there!”
“You’re talking crazy, Paul.”
“No! He is.”
“Paul, I want you to go sleep in your bus. Don’t drive; you’re too drunk. But don’t stay in the house. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She closes the door and engages the lock on the knob.
Paul says, “Who is that man?”
The black man speaks gently, softly, as if he were standing right next to Paul with his lips against Paul’s ear. “I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star. I came to send fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.”
Paul shakes his head, tries to shake away the voice, the closeness of the voice. He stumbles down the stairs, lights another cigarette as the previous one lies comatose in the ashtray, tips back his empty cocktail glass. Ice smacks him in the face, but it doesn’t sober him up one iota. He goes for the bottle of gin, but keeps on going, into the kitchen, through the kitchen, into the garage.
“What am I doing here?” he asks himself.
The garage is warm, the air thick and stale. Gasoline, that’s what he smells. He finds the red gas can next to the lawnmower and weed eater, neither of which gets much use, picks up the gas can. It’s half empty. He rocks the plastic container to survey its contents.
“Not enough.”
He steps on his cigarette, unscrews the caps on the lawnmower and gas can, shoves a waiting funnel into the gas can then attempts to lift the lawnmower and drain its contents into the can. He manages to get some of the fuel into the funnel, but his khaki pants and button-up shirt soak it up readily. Paul feels the chill of the fuel on his skin.
Carefully, quietly, he sets the lawnmower down, everything dripping, removes the funnel from the gas can and carries it inside, uncapped, through the kitchen, across the living room, up the stairs to the bedroom door. He knocks. One or both of the girls scream.
There is no apology left in his voice. “Dar!”
She speaks to him through the door. “I’m serious, Paul. The girls are frightened. I’m calling somebody now.”
“Tell him to come out.”
“Who, Paul?”
“The black man! I want to talk to him.”
She opens the door a small space. “Paul! Go!” And then she notices the gas can and Paul’s wet front. She slams the door and locks it. “Oh, my god! Paul, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
Paul sloshes gas onto the door. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire,” he says, “a jealous God.” He touches his pants and shirt pockets and realizes his lighter is downstairs on the magazine rack. He tromps down the stairs shouting, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are His judgments! He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries! He has avenged on her the blood of His servants!”
*
Lorax noticed the smoke rising up in the distance first. August was focused on the road, on the traffic in front of him.
“Looks like a fire,” Lorax said.
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” August joked.
As the 610 Loop curved eastward, the smoke still seemed to be in the right location, or at least in the neighborhood August had grown up in. A chill ran down his spine.
The exited at Stella Link Road; August turned right.
“Fireworks,” Lorax said calmly, pointing farther east.
“Astroworld,” August said. “The theme park.”
“Oh, isn’t that where your father painted signs when you were young?”
August smiled at Lorax. “Right.” Lorax remembered every detail, no matter how insignificant it might have seemed; it was yet another reason to love the man, August thought.
He turned right on Honeycutt then left on Willowbend. They immediately saw the flashing lights on the police car two blocks away.
“Oh, my god,” August said.
“What’s the matter?”
“That’s my street.”
They were silent. Lorax reached a hand across the front seat and rested it on August’s left thigh.
Paisley Circle was closed off; August slowed at the intersection and a police officer directed them onward with a flashlight. August stopped, looked past the policeman, past the police cars, down to the end of the street, to the fire engines at the cul de sac framing the smoldering remains of his childhood home.
“Oh, my god.”
The officer made his way toward the rental car; Lorax lowered the passenger side window and called out , “Officer.”
“You need to move on,” the officer said.
“That’s my house!” August bellowed.
“Officer,” Lorax said, “is there any way we can get in. His family lives in that house.”
“Do you have id?”
“Yes,” Lorax said.
“Does it have that address on it?”
August said, “Yes.” For some reason he had kept his Texas driver’s license active and updated.
The police officer leaned into the car, noticed Lorax’s hand on August’s leg. “If you have the proper id, I can let you in.”
Lorax slid his hand into his own lap. “Thank you, officer. Pull up there and park, Oggie.”
August started forward. “You have to go with me, Lor.”
“I can’t, honey. I’ll stay with the car. You find out what you can then come back.”
August put the car in park. “I’m scared, Lor.”
“It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. I’m here, Og’. I’m not going anywhere.”
August climbed out of the car and walked to the officer, digging his wallet out of his back pocket and his driver’s license out of it. He handed it to the officer, who shone his flashlight on it then briefly into August’s face. August squinted.
“All right…Mr. Collins,” he said, handing the license back, “don’t go into the house; don’t go any further than the ambulances. Officer Peters is down there; he can help you. I’ll radio him.”
August stuck his wallet in his pocket and held onto his license for no other reason than he wasn’t thinking clearly. He started walking, feeling the meal he and Lorax had had sitting heavy and low in his stomach.
Paisley Circle was a long block, even longer this night on foot. August walked past the houses left and right that brought memories of childhood. Little had changed; the lawns were as green as ever, some had new siding or a different color trim. Neighbors stood in their yards in packs, some in house coats, whispering to each other and looking down the block at 4109, and at August as he slunk toward it.
The cul de sac had fire hoses crisscrossing it like fallen streamers; the fire engines stood on either side of Paul’s old vw bus. Right where I left it, August said to himself.
He passed two ambulances without even noticing them, one on either side of the street behind the fire engines. A police officer broke away from a fireman where they were standing in the driveway and made his way to August.
“Mr. Collins?”
“Yes,” August said weakly.
“Your mother is Dorothea?”
“Yes. Is she—”
“She’s okay, son.” The officer touched August’s arm. “She’s in the ambulance, with the baby.”
“Oh, my god,” August managed to say, thinking suddenly of June.
He turned and walked to the first ambulance he came to. The doors were closed and through the back windows he saw a long naked body on a gurney, blistered and red as a boiled lobster. One arm was stretched upward and August could see ink lines, tattoos, Paul’s crucifix.
Two paramedics were huddled over him, working quickly, unaware of anything else. Paul’s face looked like a melted candle; he was rocking his head back and forth, teeth bared, in obvious pain.
August crossed the street to the other ambulance. The back doors were open. There were two adults sitting next to the gurney; one was a paramedic, and the other was wearing an oversized fireman’s shirt, back to the doors. On the gurney was a small lump, a lifeless body covered completely with a white sheet.
The person in the borrowed shirt was a woman; her head was a wild tangle of singed hair. August knew it was his mother. The paramedic was doctoring her right arm, which was stretched out in front of her.
August said, “Dar?”
She didn’t respond.
He said it again, louder. “Dar?” Then added, “Mom?”
She turned slowly to face him. Her left hand was holding an oxygen mask to her mouth and nose; the front half of her hair had been burned off. Reluctantly, the mask was lowered and August saw the real tragedy of the situation. Someone had written on her face in black permanent marker:
mystery
bablyon the great
the mother of prostitutes
of the abominations of the earth.
It started at her forehead and ended across her jaw line, ear to ear. Her lips were stuck in a quivering pout.
August felt a tear run down his cheek. “Who did that to you?”
She lifted the mask and covered her face and turned her back toward him again.
The lights on the ambulance carrying Paul started dancing on the houses and the ambulance slowly pulled away. At the front end of Paisley Circle, the police officer held traffic as the ambulance passed silently then turned on its siren.
Another paramedic stepped in front of August, excused himself, closed the ambulance doors, then he got into the cab of it and drove away in the same manner.
August wiped his eyes and saw that he was standing in a big open space in the middle of the street, the neighbors watching him curiously. He turned around to look at his house. Officer Peters was making his way toward him.
“Where’s my sister?” August asked, sniffling.
“The infant?” The officer was prepared to deliver the grim news.
“No, my other sister. June. Where is June?”
The officer took out a small notepad with a spiral along the top.
“June Collins? Twenty-year old female?”
“Yes,” August answered.
The officer crinkled up his face. “Does your family know a…‘black man’?”
August shook his head. “A black man?”
“I’m sorry, son, I don’t have a name.” He referred to the notepad again. “Mr. Bozich, the gentleman in the ambulance, told me that your sister left with a black man. Before the fire started.”
August shook his head. “A black man.”
“I know, it sounds odd. Mr. Bozich was quite delirious, but that’s the only thing we have to go on. There were no other bodies in the house, and Mrs. Collins hasn’t said anything. Of course, we’ll straighten it out at the hospital.”
Officer Peters paused, waiting for some sort of response, as August seemed to be thinking.
He was thinking. He was wishing Lorax were at his side. August was sure that Lorax would be able to sort it all out with little effort. He looked up into the officer’s eyes, tears flowing down his face as he contemplated his lost sister.
Then he thought back on something June had said when she called him earlier that day. It was something that at the time he hadn’t given much thought to, considering what he was seeing on cnn. She said, “Daddy’s coming to get me!”
Office Peters put a hand on August’s shoulder. “Could she have left on her own, or with somebody else?”
“Maybe,” August said, believing in his heart that that was the truth.