Not too long after that, the Prion suit came by to give his spiel. They gathered everyone in the cafeteria to pitch inmates on a new initiative: contracting prisoners to the state and federal governments for search, rescue, and cleanup services following natural disasters. The pay was the same as the garment factory, about $2 an hour, but you’d be transferred, first to a training facility where you’d have to pass a six-week course, and then to the field. Your ears perk up when the suit says, “Carry out the job without incident, and you’ll also have the benefit of a significant reduction in your sentence.”
You signed the papers that day. Two weeks later, they moved you to the training facility in Colorado. Too far for Raquel and Toby to visit, but that’s better anyway. Toby didn’t have to grow up seeing his dad in prison greens.
Your attention returns to Andrade. “There is a war over the very meaning of Christian doctrine that’s playing out in the media, online, and, I would say, in our very hearts.”
He grips the lectern and looks down at his notes, the scribbled bullet points of a rough outline. The reverend played quarterback in high school, and he’ll often say, “All I can do is scramble.”
“A lot of folks in these parts go to church to hear the word of Christ, but they don’t listen,” said Andrade. “I’m going to come right out and say this, and I know some folks won’t like it: This man who’s now running for president, this so-called Pastor, is, in my opinion, an imposter. He’s a carnival barker who’s corrupting the word of the Bible to suit his own purposes, prejudices, and vanity. My job is not to tell people what they want to hear, my job is serving as a faithful, and humble, conduit for the word of the one true God.” He bounced his fingers off his chest. “That food Ginna and I hand out every Tuesday? To people who are hungry, to people who need something to eat about as bad as they’ve ever needed anything—I’m not ashamed to say that food is bought and paid for with a grant from the folks at A Fierce Blue Fire, and I don’t care how many emails I get telling me they’re in a partnership with Satan. They are doing compassionate work. Compare that to The Pastor’s church, which is telling people to deny the impoverished a helping hand, teaching people to hate their brothers and sisters, filling people’s hearts and souls with fear and discontent. And so when people tell me to shut up, to quit speaking up for the powerless and voiceless, many of whom are your neighbors and live right here in this community, I tell them, I simply cannot do that. When even my own parishioners demand I cut ties with FBF or the Immigrant Defense Council, which is trying to save people from these dreadful detention facilities along the border, when they want me to deny my brothers and sisters their humanity, I tell them I simply cannot do that.”
You think of what another PRCC guy told you the first time you had to pick up a dead body in Los Angeles, Just be glad you’re not at the border centers. They put them in solitary, these metal boxes, and they don’t come out. They fry ’em alive and call it “death by heat-related illness.” Bodies end up so swollen and bloody, they slide apart in your hands.
Andrade pauses, and you are now locked in, arrested by him. There is defiance in his voice.
“We often forget that Christianity began as a revolutionary movement of the powerless facing down the cold fury of the Roman Empire. It was a movement of the poor and dispossessed finally rising up. Christians waged a spiritual war for centuries with God’s love as their only weapon. It was a faith built to defy an empire, and it was persecuted with barbarity. People were crucified and burned alive for holding fast to the love and mercy of Christ’s gospel. So is this not a miracle we’re seeing? People demanding their safety and dignity and value on a global scale? Is this not how God works? Forget about mysterious ways—His hand moves through us with galvanic purpose that only the truly blind cannot see.”
You study the shadows falling across Christ’s ponderous face, the statue hanging just behind and above Andrade’s head. You think, as you often do, of the little Black girl you found in the crib in Amelia City. Plastic butterflies still clipped in her hair.
“The Pastor brings up Revelation, but he doesn’t understand it. It’s right there in chapter eleven, verse eighteen: God will bring ruin to those who would destroy His creation. Therefore, we have a responsibility, as Christians, as Americans, but first and foremost as human beings of free will on a just and gorgeous planet. You must see that we have the tools to build another path. It is the message from Paul in Second Corinthians: ‘For though we live in the world, we are not carrying on a worldly war. For the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds.’ ”
You’re hungry again. You wish you could take your family to a restaurant. After the service, you pack your family into the car, off to scavenge cans at the food pantry, everyone quiet as you pilot the car down the dark of Cherry Street.
The next day, you tell Raquel you have a job interview lined up, and you need the car for the day: a stocking position at a grocery in Kimbolton, all the lies coalescing stiffly in the moment.
“Kimbolton? How in the hell you gonna get over to Kimbolton every day?”
But she agrees to get dropped off at work so you can go see about it.
The drive to Sugarcreek is a bit treacherous. A winter storm put down six inches, and the salt trucks haven’t hit all the roads yet. Route 93 still has a coat of tire-packed snow. On the way, you eat some of the cold dog meat. It tastes like beef but fattier. Gamey in your nostrils with a tangy aftertaste. The GPS gets you a little turned around and you have to stop at Woodsmoke Stables to ask for help with the address. The fella in a trucker hat and shit-kicker boots throws you an unhappy look but gives you directions anyway.
At the compound gate, there are two men in heavy winter coats with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They ask your business, and you give them Dick Underwood’s name. One of the guys produces a radio, gets the affirmative, and tells you “Park by the bodies.”
You have no clue what this means until five minutes down the winding dirt road when you come to a vast field of barns, sheds, and other hastily built structures. A crop of vehicles fans out around a sturdy oak tree, and from those branches hang several figures, noosed by the neck and creaking in the cold. As you park, you confirm these are not real people. Dolls of some kind, maybe a dozen, too realistic. You recognize the plastic face of Mary Randall and Victor Love and the greeniac woman from the sex tape who melted down D.C.
Walking through the haphazard scrum of barns, aluminum sheds, army tents, and makeshift garages, you also see a stage all but ready for a band to walk on: drum kit, microphones, everything. The banner behind the stage has three dog heads protruding from the same body, all with blood on their teeth. A teenager strides toward you on a mission. He’s got a scrub-brush head made worse by the unevenness of the haircut, busted brown teeth, a multitool looped to his belt, and a T-shirt with the nonsense phrase STORM BESLUTNINGSTAKERE. He’s as short as you but may still have a growth spurt ahead of him. He pumps your hand as hard as his skinny arm can manage. Pops of gunfire in the distance.
“Welcome, welcome, new guy. I’m Freddy. Freddy Riley Poppen. I’ll be showing you around today until the captain’s ready for you. How’s that sound? Good! C’mon, let me give ya the tour.”
The kid speaks breathlessly, every word bubbling up on his lips to chase the last one before he’s finished it. He asks a lot of questions he does not seem to care about the answer to.