D.D. tries crawling toward the general store, but Matthew grabs him by a foot, drags him back, his nose banging on the sidewalk, letting loose a flow of blood. Matthew gives a hard twist, breaking D.D.’s ankle with a sickening snap. D.D. rolls over, clutching his leg, screaming in agony.
It had taken only a few dizzying seconds, and now it was over, the three locals moaning, begging for peace. With Rachel clutching his arm, David walks into the circle of destruction. Suddenly, the whimpering D.D. reaches into his boot and comes out with a short-barreled .38. Blood dripping from his nose, face twisted in pain, he points the stainless steel gun directly at David’s heart.
David’s response is a tranquil smile. He lifts his left palm to show that it is empty. He runs his right hand behind his back, slips it beneath the flap of his bush jacket and removes a hand grenade from a metal loop. He continues to smile as he holds the grenade toward D.D., then pulls the pin.
D.D. licks his lips and says in a shaky voice, “That thing ain’t real.”
“In twelve seconds we’ll find out,” David replies, holding the grenade in one hand and the pin in the other. “Nine, eight… ”
“Shoot him!” Hoss yells.
“Six, five… ”
Cletis scrambles to his feet. “Don’t do it, D.D.!”
“Three, two… ”
Looking into the bottomless depth of David’s penetrating stare, D.D. drops the gun. David swiftly inserts the pin in the grenade.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Hoss whines.
“Was it real?” D.D. asks, like the poker player who folds but still insists on seeing the winner’s hand.
“Oh, most assuredly,” David tells him. “Standard Army issue.”
“Then what’s the trick?”
“Ah, the trick,” David says, letting them see the warmth and wisdom of his holy countenance. Enjoying it now. He is the rabbi, which he knows from his studies of the ancient Hebrews, means teacher. “The trick, as you call it, is the essential message of life. The trick, my simple lost child, is having no fear of death.”
“Crazy fucker,” D.D. says under his breath, but David hears him, and approaches. D.D. staggers back a step, afraid of being hit. David stops, his face a few inches from the cowardly heathen, who cringes in fear.
“On your knees, sinner.”
“What?”
“On your knees before He who would save you.”
D.D. drops to his knees, his head level with his teacher’s groin. David feels the power now. Lording it over the fallen man, a King among peasants. David leans over and lifts D.D.’s head by the chin. “Now, what lesson have you learned today?”
“Lesson?” Even when he is not in excruciating pain, D.D. is not the quickest mind in Wyoming. Now, he is completely befuddled.
“Again, my child, what have you learned?”
“I don’t know,” D.D. says, fighting off tears. “I skipped a lot of Sunday school.”
“Then I must tell you.” David releases his grip, letting the infidel sink to the pavement. “The lesson, you woeful sinner, is this. Never fuck with the Lord.”
-10-
The Trout Are Calling
Airman Sayers drives the Air Force Jeep, Reynolds next to him, Jericho sprawled in the back. The sun sizzles just below the mountains on the horizon, and the clouds shimmer with a lustrous glow over the valley. Folded beds of black and purple shale slope down toward a rock-strewn river.
A rancher in a dusty pickup pulls out and passes the Jeep on the two-lane road. The pickup coughs a burst of oily smoke. The Wyoming license, with its cowboy and bucking bronco, is personalized, “BEEF.”
Sayers flicks on the headlights as the Jeep approaches a bridge. “Captain’s got no cause to bust your chops, Sarge.”
Slouched with his helmet over his eyes, Jericho is silent.
“Only weapon the Captain’s ever held,” Sayers continues, “is the little one between his legs.”
“Which he only fires on solo missions,” Reynolds adds.
The Jeep rumbles across the bride. Jericho stirs and looks out at the water tumbling over small rapids in the moonlight. “Stop the Jeep!” he yells.
Sayers hits the brakes and the Jeep squeals to a stop. “What?”
Jericho’s head is cocked toward the river. “I can hear them.”
“Who?” Sayers says.
“The trout. They’re calling to me.”
“Nothing doing, Jack,” Sayers says.
“Spike’s right,” Reynolds says. “We’ll never make it back in time if—”
“Go on without me. I’ll meet you at the sentry post at 1500 hours tomorrow. Puke’ll never know.”
Sayers pounds the steering wheel in frustration. “You crazy? How you gonna get back? Call a cab, rustle up a buffalo? We’re a hundred miles from base.”
“Not as the crow flies,” Jericho says. “Fifty bucks says I beat the two of you there.”
Sayers and Reynolds swap startled looks. Then they exchange high-fives and, in unison, yell, “You’re on!”
-11-
A Great Star Will Fall from the Sky
The setting sun slants through a stained glass window and across the altar in the Eden Ranch chapel. A beacon from heaven.
The chapel is a converted horse barn that still smells of straw, sweet molasses feed, and creosote. About eighty worshipers sit, ramrod straight, on wooden benches. Women without makeup in long, flowing dresses, men in baggy pants and sandals and a pack of children, many barefoot, digging their toes into the wood chips that cover the floor. Matthew and Jeremiah are in the back row, flanking the door.
At the altar, Brother David looks out over his flock. “I see your auras, and they are strong and vibrant,” he proclaims. “You are healthy in body and spirit, and your halos reflect your holiness.”
He goes on for a while about his parishioners’ energy fields and the body’s seven major chakras points. Finally, he slips from his New Age mumbo jumbo into fundamentalist Biblical preaching. Dropping his voice into a seductive sing-song, he calls out, “Our cities are sewers of pornography and sin!”
The congregation murmurs its righteous ire. In the front row, Lieutenant Billy Riordan, in jeans and a pressed blue oxford cloth shirt, stares in rapt attention. Next to him, Rachel laces her fingers through his and squeezes. He blushes. On the other side of Billy is a ten-year-old girl in pigtails who prays silently, but moves her lips.
“In Isaiah, it is written, ‘I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity,’” David chants.
“Amen!” they cry.
“In Revelations, it is written, ‘I have the keys of Hades and of death.’ It is our Savior’s proclamation that He alone has authority over hell and the grave.’”
“Amen!” the faithful chorus.
“And how, my brethren, do we achieve everlasting life?”
“From the Word!” they shout back.
David nods. “In chapter two, verse ten, it is written, ‘Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.’”
More prayerful “amens” are sung to the heavens.
David beseeches them, his voice thundering across the chapel. “Do you believe!”
A unanimous chorus of “hosanna” and “praise the Lord.”
“As is prophesied in Revelations, ‘The angel shall sound his trumpet and a great star, blazing like a torch, shall fall from the sky. The waters shall turn bitter, and the wicked shall die.’”