“Come on,” he said.
“No, no, no!” Delores called out behind her. “I was kidding! I kid. Come on. He no worth it.”
But he was so very worth it. He was worth every damn penny she’d spent on hamburgers and martinis and self-respect. Just a nick, just a quick shave. That would scare the living daylights right out of him. No more Debbie Lyn to woo and cajole and lie to, his penis erect and mocking like an angry finger pointed right at her.
Blam. Blam. One shot to the right cheek and another to the left.
And damn. She knew she’d screwed up when he toppled off the diving board, a dark-red period showing right between his eyes, his bony old body landing with a hard splash. Delores was screaming. The hefty blond woman was screaming. Debbie Lyn lowered the gun. She placed it in her purse.
She took a long, easy breath and smiled. Good. That was done. She’d done good, right?
Walking around to the other side of the pool, Debbie Lyn stopped the music and pulled out the CD. She placed it in the purse right next to the gun.
After all, it was hers.
The Midnight Preacher
by Sarah Gerard
34th Street
The Victory Motors building was squat and run-down, some of the windows partially covered with thick Styrofoam panels painted electric blue, molding and crumbling. Others were covered in plywood or a crosshatched layer of plastic. A low overhang provided shade. Two long, narrow signs taped near the top of the windows read, IN HIS NAME, in a seventies color palette and retro computer font.
A sign on the door read, No Trespassing: Violators Will Be Shot, Survivors Will Be Shot Again. Another, illustrated with a human target, read, We Don’t Call 911.
I was looking for the Live Crusade, particularly for Buck Hill, who used to have his studio in the back office of Victory Motors. The televangelist had disappeared from the airwaves and Internet without a trace two days after the election of Donald Trump, a week prior. I’m a freelance writer, and had convinced the Tampa Bay Times to let me look into his disappearance.
A stack of printed-out articles and e-mails sat just inside the front window, with a Post-it on it that read, Trump stuff, file. The article on top was dated 2013, and attributed to “Capitalist Evangelist” radio host Wayne Allyn Root, who had variously aligned himself with the Republican, Libertarian, and Tea Parties, and endorsed Trump in the 2016 presidential race. The front door was ajar.
At the sound of the bell, a tiny, frail-looking old man emerged from the back office. I assumed this was Clive Waters, owner of the car lot, whom I had read about in an old issue of the Times. Waters had donated the office space to Hill, explaining, “I like what he’s doing. One-third of the population is up at that hour anyway. Better they find Buck than temptation.”
There appeared to be no one else at Victory Motors that day, save for a longhaired cat, asleep on a rolling chair. I asked Waters if Buck was there. It took a moment for him to understand that I was talking about Hill.
“He hasn’t lived in St. Petersburg or had his office here in several years,” Waters said.
Indeed, there was no remnant of a production studio in sight. I informed him that Victory Motors was still listed as the Live Crusade headquarters.
“We collect Buck’s mail for him and send it down to Naples,” he said.
He looked at me suspiciously. I smiled to reassure him that, as an attractive young woman, I was no one to fear. Usually, a smile was enough to convince people to give me information. “Do you know why he stopped broadcasting?” I asked. I decided to follow this with, “Is he okay?”
Clive relaxed. “Maybe he’s getting ready to do something big.”
I looked around the Victory Motors office again. The state of disrepair suggested no one was doing business there anymore. I thanked Clive for his time and left, heat waves warping the asphalt back to my car, crosshairs at my back.
More interesting than where Buck Hill had disappeared to was why I wanted to know in the first place. I suppose I wanted to come face-to-face with hate.
In the days after Trump’s election, like many, I spiraled. I started drinking again after two years sober. I broke up with my boyfriend, whom I suspected of voting for the wrong side. I locked myself inside a room at the Gateway Motel, which advertised Jacuzzis and free adult movies. I refused to answer the phone. I called in sick to my part-time barista job, claiming I had the flu.
Whenever I made eye contact with someone on the street, I wondered whether they were responsible for the rise of evil. I ate pickled pigs feet from the gas station, figuring, If they want me to die, then I will. I derived a sick pleasure from imagining someone discovering my body. It rained for days. Thankfully, the Gateway had wireless Internet. I couldn’t tear myself away from the bad news.
I had never heard of Buck Hill until I saw his name on the Southern Poverty Law Center website. I had gone there trawling for hate groups I could infiltrate and explode from the inside; this delusion had become my lifeline. Live Crusade was listed among the sixty-three active hate groups in Florida. There was the Supreme White Alliance, the Daily Stormer, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party. Then there was the Live Crusade, just a mile away from me, listed under “General Hate.” Buck’s anti-Muslim vitriol, racism, and homophobia had earned him the designation.
“It’s sad, it’s always sad when these things happen, whenever people have to die,” he said. I was meditating on my encounter with Clive by combing Buck’s old videos, which I had discovered on YouTube, looking for clues about his move down to Naples. He was a bloated white man broadcasting alone from a darkened room, his thinning, dyed-blond hair gelled into spikes, the camera tilted up at his face, illuminated blue as if from a laptop screen.
“But then you have to think, four thousand babies die every day in this country and nobody’s upset about that. Nobody is pro-choice. Don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re pro-choice. You’re either pro-life or you’re pro-death,” he said.
He leaned toward the camera and away from it, eyes darting wildly around the room. I wondered if he might be drunk, like I was.
“Don’t let them confuse you with this weasel language — call it what it is,” he said. “They’re baby killers.”
I’d had an abortion the year before. My boyfriend and I were stupid; I was stupid, taking my hormonal birth control pills when I happened to remember. I smirked at Buck and left him ranting in the background while I dove into the black hole of his web history. He had risen to prominence in the early days of the Internet with “the world’s first full-service Christian website.” At its height, he sent free Worship War newsletters out to more than two million readers each day. The newsletters, called “Battles,” were part Live Crusade news and part sermon. Some of the most popular of them were addressed to Osama Bin Laden, Ann Romney, and Oprah. Buck had called Oprah a “new-age witch” and “the most dangerous woman on the planet.” I appreciated his flair.