He didn’t feel nothing, though, and per Justin’s caution he knew that was a good sign.
Instead of nothing he felt relief.
– 94 -
The white sign ran the length of Harold Devereaux’s front porch, with vinyl letters pressed on in black:
Soldiers for Christ / Hands of God Picnic Social
A half dozen men and women sat in chairs or stood against the wood siding, using the sign to shield their eyes from the late-morning sun. Twenty or so children played about, some on the swing set, some out in the old barn, a few in the house, where they were stepped over and patted by elders with paper plates full of watermelon and hot dogs and cold pasta salad. A band played under a yawning oak tree – guitar, bass, keys, and drums in an incompetent punk formation both too old and too young for this crowd. Their lyrics were political and radically conservative, antigovernment, anti-immigrant, and, of course, anti-cloning. Hardly anyone was paying attention.
In the yard behind the house a man in a clerical collar sat at a bleached picnic table and gestured crazily as he spoke, his hands shooting out from his body like yo-yo tricks, always coming back to rest on the redwood tabletop before flinging themselves again to make this or that point. He was Reverend Garner McGill, the founder and “chief executive minister” of Soldiers for Christ, a nationwide organization that claimed more than 250,000 members (although to qualify for membership all one had to do was agree to receive the free Soldiers for Christ newsletter six times a year). Fifty of the more devoted members of the organization had come down for a weekend of joint meetings with the smaller and lesser-known Hands of God, a summit Harold had conceived and arranged himself. The purpose was social first and strategic second, Harold said, although privately he worried the Hands of God had lost direction since Mickey’s retirement, and he thought perhaps a merger of the two groups might revitalize the HoG and radicalize the SFC, changing both for the better.
The Soldiers for Christ was the country’s best-known religious anti-cloning group. Reverend McGill was known and despised in every fertility clinic in the nation. He had friends on Capitol Hill and had even spent the night in the White House during a previous administration. His sermons could fill revival tents for a month or basketball arenas for a week. More and more he chose the latter.
The Hands of God, however, remained obscure, occasionally mailing press releases about clinics and research facilities with especially heinous practices (according to them) or statements concerning the status of anti-cloning legislation in Washington. They claimed about forty members in their Ohio church, and had a mailing list of some five thousand. Because of threatening letters bearing its name, the government labeled the Hands of God a suspected terrorist organization, although the group officially denied having anything to do with terror and the feds had never pressed charges. Five of the thirteen founding members were here, the others having passed away or moved on. They didn’t talk about their real work. Not in public.
Harold Devereaux’s farm wasn’t public.
“How many on the list are his?” Reverend McGill was saying to Harold, who sat across from him. “I mean really. I always figured Byron Bonavita was an urban myth or something. He never had any affiliation with us, and I never met anyone who knew him. I think the feds always knew he was dead and kept pinning the killings on Bonavita because it was less embarrassing to say they couldn’t find him than admit they didn’t even know the real fellow’s name.” Words spilled out of McGill in a high-pitched Georgia drawl, but his laugh was loud and low and rhythmic, like Santa, only heh! heh! heh! instead of ho! ho! ho!
Harold wiped his hands low on his cream-colored wide-collared silk shirt, on the hips, where the sweat and the grit wouldn’t show so much. He was listening but his eyes scanned the yard behind McGill in a slow sweep. People had broken up into fours and fives on chairs or stumps or other temporary seating. He knew most of these people through the Web site and chat rooms and virtual anti-cloning meetings conducted in Shadow World. He knew only a handful of them by their faces, however.
Mickey the Gerund had his fingers two knuckles into the mulch around the tall decorative grasses at the corner of Harold’s main house. He hadn’t been much of a gardener when he was young, but in all those years on the road, driving past miles of wilderness and irrigated pasture and landscaped yards and potted medians, fertilizer and seedlings became part of his fantasy life. He began watching gardening shows on the motel televisions and reading up on shrubs and flowers and trees and grasses and dirt. Since retiring, he spent most of his time about the grounds of the Hands of God church, tending to the lawn and the beds of tulips and the small plot of vegetables. The other members of the church thought he deserved a quiet retirement, and they enjoyed the fresh vegetables and the respectable appearance that Mickey’s labors afforded.
This afternoon at Harold’s, Mickey was sifting through the gardens trying to deduce what brand of plant food Harold used to such great effect in hot weather. He knew if he asked, Harold wouldn’t know. Harold had a landscaper, no doubt, and the landscaper was hired by Harold’s pretty wife. Mickey was also digging with his hands in order to look occupied. He really didn’t want a bunch of strangers asking him about his days on the road. Mickey may have longed for a garden in those days, but never human contact. He had been a traveling monk, a man alone with God, and he still believed that other people were only obstacles standing between him and the Lord.
“Hey, Mickey!” Harold shouted. “Come here! I want you to meet someone!”
Exhaling, Mickey stood slowly and turned to see what horror Harold had planned for him. An overweight Baptist grandma from Arkansas who’d baked him purple-frosted Jesus cookies? A teenaged HoG wannabe who would burst into tears if his mommy gave him two cross words but who was convinced that it was his destiny to execute gynecologists? Evangelical parents who wanted him to lay his hands on their colicky tot? He’d met all of those just since he’d arrived last night. If this many people knew him by sight, he considered it a miracle he wasn’t sitting on death row.
As he drew closer he saw it was Garner McGill. He knew the man, though they had never met face-to-face. McGill was the anti-cloning generalissimo who cheered the Hands of God from the sidelines but who, despite calling himself a “soldier,” didn’t have the balls to tell his quarter million followers what was really required to be a member of God’s army. You’ll never hear Reverend McGill say you can’t fight evil with petitions and bullhorns, Mickey often said at private meetings back in Ohio. God’s enemies will be defeated at the end of a gun and McGill knows it, but he doesn’t want the rifle in his own hands.
“Have you two met?” Harold asked. “Reverend McGill? Mickey Fanning?”
They shook.
“This is a pleasure, a real pleasure,” McGill said. “Mr. Fanning, I don’t have to tell you how important your personal ministry has been to the cause of righteous men. The Lord smiles upon your work, and He celebrates your sacrifice in the service of your faith.”
Mickey nodded. What a load of crap. “Reverend,” he said. He sat down next to Harold and in his periphery he could see other Soldiers for Christ wandering over. He scooted to his right, hogging the rest of the bench so no one could claim a seat on either side of him.