Frankland stood by and waited for Sheryl to finish. She had always wanted to be a pastor’s wife, and she hadn’t shrank from any of her duties, but when they married she had demanded one promise from him. “I want you to let me have an hour a day to work on my Apocalypse,” she’d said. “And the rest of the time is for you and the Lord.”
He hadn’t minded. Frankland had projects of his own. They’d spent many hours in pleasant silence, Sheryl working on her art, Frankland working on his plans—perhaps equally detailed—for the End Times, the plans that he kept in fire-proof safes in the guest bedroom closet. Sheryl finished the angel’s eye—it glowed a beautiful aquamarine blue, with a little wink of postage-stamp light in a corner of the pupil—then blew on the glue to dry it and rolled up the linen scroll. “I’m ready, sugar bear,” she said.
The picket signs were thrown in the back of the pickup truck, and Sheryl climbed into the driver’s seat. Sheryl put the truck in gear and wrestled the wheel around to point it toward Rails Bluff. The pickup was a full-size Ford, and Sheryl had to work hard to make the turn, but Frankland did not want power steering on his vehicles. Or air-conditioning, power brakes, power windows, or power anything.
It wasn’t that he objected to these conveniences as such. It was just that he figured that during the Tribulation, spare parts for power steering mechanisms and other conveniences might be hard to come by, and he didn’t want his ministry to be immobilized by the failure of something he didn’t actually need. He wiped sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. Maybe, he thought, he should have relaxed his principles in regard to air-conditioning.
At least the sun was beginning to sink toward the west. The heat would soon begin to fade. The truck jounced out of the driveway and onto the asphalt. Frankland rolled his window all the way down, and inclined his head toward the air that blasted into the cab as the truck picked up speed. He waved at Joe Johnson, one of his parishioners, who was pacing along the edge of one of his catfish ponds. Johnson looked up from beneath the brim of his Osgold feed cap and gave a wave. The pickup drove on. Cotton fields broadened on either side of the road.
“Robitaille,” Sheryl said flatly. She slowed, swinging the big truck toward the shoulder. A large, elderly Lincoln zoomed past, heading in the opposite direction, its driver a dark silhouette behind its darkened windshield. Frankland looked over his shoulder at the Lincoln as it roared away. He could feel distaste tug at his features.
“Driving like a maniac, as usual,” he said.
“Driving like a drunk,” said Sheryl.
The Roman Enemy, Frankland thought, and turned to face the foe.
The Rails Bluff area had so few Catholics that there was no full-time priest in the community. The little clapboard Catholic church shared its priest with a number of other small churches in the area, and Father Robitaille drove from one to the other on a regular circuit. In Rails Bluff he heard confession and said mass on Monday nights, then roared off in his rattletrap Lincoln to be in another town by Tuesday morning.
Robitaille did not show the Church of Rome to very good advantage. He was from Louisiana originally, but alcoholism had exiled him to rural Arkansas. And he drove like a crazy man even when sober, so sensible people slowed down and gave him plenty of room when they saw him coming.
“I don’t know how he’s avoided killing himself,” Sheryl said.
“The Devil protects his own,” said Frankland.
A cotton gin shambled up on the right, corrugated metal rusting behind chain link. 750 friendly people welcome you, a road sign said.
The population estimate was an optimistic overestimate. Both in terms of number, and perhaps even in friendliness.
The Arkansas Delta, below the bluff, featured some of the richest agricultural soil in the world combined with the nation’s poorest people. The mechanization of the cotton industry had taken the field workers off the land without providing them any other occupation. The owners had money—plenty of it—but everyone else was dirt-poor.
Rails Bluff, however, envied even the folks in the Delta, and sat on its ridge above the Delta like a jealous stepsister gazing down at a favored natural child. The county line ran just below the town on its bluff, and all the tax revenue from the rich bottom land went elsewhere. It was as if God, while showering riches on everyone in the Delta, had waved a hand at everyone above the bluff and said, “Thou shalt want.” In the Delta, many people were poor, and a few were rich. In Rails Bluff, nobody was rich. Now that a Wal-Mart superstore had opened in the next county, things in Rails Bluff had grown worse. The hardware store had just gone under, and the clothing store was hanging on by its fingernails. If the world did not end soon, Frankfand thought, Rails Bluff might well anticipate the Apocalypse and vanish all on its own.
The truck drove past an old drive-in theater, grass growing thick between the speaker stanchions, and then passed into town. Sheryl pulled into the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, and Frankland saw that Reverend Garb was already waiting, standing with one of his deacons, a man named Harvey, and a smiling, excited crowd of young people, members of his youth association.
Garb was a vigorous man in gold-rimmed spectacles, pastor of Jesus Word True Gospel, the largest local black church. The kids—all boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen—were all neatly dressed in dark slacks and crisp white shirts. Garb and Harvey added ties to the uniform. All wore white armbands.
Frankland hopped out of the pickup and shook Garb’s hand. “Glad you could make it, Brother Garb.” He looked at Garb’s youth brigade. “I hope my parishioners give us such a good turnout.”
“I’m sure they will, Brother Frankland. Some are here already.”
Frankland looked at the rows of cars and trucks parked at the Piggly Wiggly, saw familiar faces emerging. He greeted his parishioners as they approached, heartened by their numbers. As he was talking to one of his deacons, a battered old 1957 Chevy pickup, rust red and primer gray, rolled off Main Street into the parking lot, a big man at the wheel. There was a gun rack in the truck’s rear window with an old lever-action Winchester resting in it. Frankland walked toward the pickup truck to greet its driver. Pasted on the back window was a sticker that read trust in god and the second amendment.
“Hey, Hilkiah,” said Frankland.
“Hey, pastor,” Hilkiah said cheerfully.
Hilkiah Evans stepped out of the truck. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, powerful arms, and a pendulous gut. His prominent nose had been broken over most of his face, and his arms were covered with tattoos. The old ones, the skulls and daggers and the
Zig-Zag man that dated from his time in prison, were getting blurry with age as the ink began to run—a contrast to the later tattoos, the face of Jesus and the words “Jesus is Lord,” which were sharp and clear. A naked woman, prominent on his left bicep, had been transformed into an angel through the addition of a pair of wings and a halo.
Hilkiah was one of Frankland’s success stories. After his second stretch for armed robbery, Arthur Evans had been introduced to Frankland by a member of his church, Eliza Tomkins, who was also his parole officer. Though Arthur had at first resisted Frankland’s efforts to get his mind straight, it was clear that Eliza had detected a void in the man, a void that needed to be filled with belief and with the Light. And, by and by, Arthur had listened, and as a mark of his conversion had changed his name to Hilkiah. Now he was one of Frankland’s stalwarts, a deacon and a tireless organizer. He had joined the Apocalypse Club and purchased a two years’ supply of food, although he’d had to do it on credit. Though he always had to scrape to make ends meet and was always working at least two jobs in the community, Hilkiah nevertheless donated much of his time to work at the radio station, to helping with church projects, with the youth and outreach programs.