But it’s not your house. The smoke is billowing from too high a point. This is a second-story sucker. About three houses down from you. For once, someone with more money has to eat the world’s curb.
“Lightning strike,” says the police officer directing traffic. “You’ll have to go around.” More lightning licks the sky. The rain picks up. At the base of the smoke you can see the yellow flicker of flames in the upper rooms. “Have you been drinking?” he asks. Of course, you didn’t even consider all the booze on your breath. Without saying another word, you pull away, breaking for a street that’ll help take you around.
In your driveway, you can see the other side of the fire trucks and ambulances and patrol cars. All that blue and red comes screaming past the curtains, lighting your whole living room. Raquel is asking if you’re drunk, but you’re already stumbling for the bottle of whiskey you’ve hidden in the closet. Toby is wailing. Your little nigger baby is wailing. How could you have done this? Your whole life spent trying to stay away from these ugly, disgusting animals and you go and have a baby with one. You got a white baby somewhere and you choose to stay with this half-breed and his dope-addict whore mother. Raquel is in your grille about something, and you bounce her face off the wall to back her up. The last thing you really recall is the door to the bedroom slamming closed, and you’re too weak to kick it open, though you damn well try. You kick and you scream slurs at Raquel, and you threaten to put Toby out in the field for the stray dogs to get. But she’s stuffed a chair under the knob or something. Eventually you lay down and watch the light slither under the door.
For two days, Raquel does not speak a word to you. At work, Casey simply says, “No more bowling, I guess. You should think of finding another job.” Once you are past the crush of the headache and reclaim the retrievable memories, you don’t feel like apologizing so much as asking for apologies. From Levi for being a prick, from Casey for not taking your side, from Raquel for letting you pass out on the floor. And then after that, the shame. The shame of your whole of life. The shame of being.
The fourth derecho of the summer was not the worst. The power even stayed on. Yet it feels like it’s drained the town completely. The second story of that house burned, and it’s derelict now, its occupants hospitalized or homeless. The Kroger had a window blown out by a piece of flying debris. Your church lost its roof, and when you drive by you see an incredible hole sagging through the apex, like someone dropped a piano through it. Two trees in the field, dirt-clotted roots shredded from the ground.
“You ever gonna talk to me again?” you finally ask Raquel over dinner. Toby, unaware of anything else now that the awful night of the storm is over, happily puts a toy truck in his mouth while he paints the high chair with his food.
“I had anywhere else to go, I wouldn’t be here right now,” she says, not looking at you.
“Who brought you home this meat loaf?” you ask as you fork the meat into ketchup. Raquel just shakes her head to indicate this is as nonsensical as you know it is.
“You got a bad side,” she tells you. “A serious bad side.”
“What do you want me to do?” you ask. “Lemme make this better. I can’t live with a woman who spends all her time hating me.”
Toby hands you his slimy truck. You take it.
“Seems like you already hate me. And Toby. From what you said.”
The wave of guilt is too much. You want to both beg her for forgiveness and punch her in the eye. The feeling makes you wish you’d ripped off Levi’s eyelid. At least there would have been satisfaction.
“I won’t drink again,” you promise. “Never again.”
Toby now wants his truck back, reaching his pudgy hands for it. You hand it over.
“You need more than being sober, Keeper. You need God in your life. Don’t think I ever met no one who needs God in his life more than you do.”
“I’ll get saved.”
She looks up from her meat loaf, which she’s pushed around in her ketchup until it’s a soup.
“I’ll go get saved from what’s-his-name.”
“Reverend Andrade. Lord, Keeper, you don’t even know his name?”
“I know his name. And yeah, I’ll get saved.”
She stares at you, her eyes bright twin questions. You understand you’ll never be able to live without her and Toby. That if the two of them leave you, you’ll take everything you have to the pawn shop, buy a gun, a bullet, and put it in your brain.
“The service this Sunday.”
“How? The place’s got a hole in its roof the size of a car.”
“There’s gonna be a service on the lawn.”
Toby hands you the truck again. He smiles, giggles, thinking this an awesome game.
Sunday comes, and the temperature is 101. The weather calls it a heat dome. Temperatures ranging from 120 across the Southwest, to 110 in the South, to as high as 105 in the Northeast.
“He’s still having this? Ain’t old ladies gonna keel over dead?”
“Heat don’t stop Jesus, Keeper.”
You don’t have any kind of suit, but you put on one of your two church shirts and gray pants. You fidget more than Toby on the drive over.
There are about thirty people out on the lawn beside the church, which now has a blue tarp over the hole in the roof. You shake hands with a few you barely know. Some of them appear leery, and you wonder if news of your antics last Saturday reached them.
Reverend Andrade calls the service to order. A semicircle gathers around him. People are fanning themselves with whatever’s handy.
“All right folks, we’re not going to be here too long on account of the heat,” he begins. “But the plate will go around as always, and please maybe give a little extra on account of some repair work we have to do now.” He smiles saying it, hesitates. He is old but smooth-faced. Pale brown skin. Graying black hair. Real smiley. Very straight teeth. You hate him. “You know, we’ve had a really tough summer in this community. Between all the storms and the lives lost and a couple of store closings with the layoffs, and of course our beautiful church”—he gestured—“taking the insult from nature that it did, it’s been a rough go. Among our own members, Mrs. Slovic, who’s in the hospital right now and may not be with us much longer, and Jaquan Daniels, who took his own life last year—you know it feels like the bad news just keeps coming and coming. But here’s the thing: all bad news—it’s nothing when stacked up against Jesus Christ’s love.”
A few amens float from the crowd. The reverend motions you to come forward. You do not want to. You do not want any part of this cheesy bullshit. Your feet, you find, will not let you move.
“That’s why for today’s sermon, we’ve got something long overdue. This is our brother, Keeper. C’mon, Keeper, come forward. That’s the devil that’s got you rooted there.”
Raquel nudges you, and you finally venture into the crisp brown grass. Reverend Andrade puts a hand on your shoulder.
“Keeper’s what we call a long time coming. He’s had his struggles. Him and his family have had a tough time. But recently they became a part of this church.”
“Amen,” “Amen,” “A-MEN!”
“And today Keeper—Keeper, why don’t you kneel down with me, let’s kneel before God.” The reverend takes a knee, and you follow his order and come to one knee on the ground. You’re sweating. “Keeper has chosen today to let Jesus Christ into his heart. He’s getting saved today. All this pain, all this misery we’ve all been enduring these last months, these years, these decades—none of it matters before the glory of Heaven, right? Before Kingdom Come.”