“You don’t look awright is why,” the third pilot says. This is Christian Thurston, a Houstonian who seems perpetually to engage Jimbo in a competition to see who can talk more down home. He normally wins—with Thurston, the accent is not an affectation.
“Would you be lookin’ awright?” Jimbo says. “I mean, seeing as how, you know, considerin’.”
“Considering what?” Stan says.
“Might be you should have a word with the padre,” Chris says. “He’s the closest thing to a rabbi we got.”
“I don’t need a rabbi, or the padre.”
“Stanny, we don’t like this business no better than you do,” Jimbo says. “It’s just we don’t want to be surprised by no six o’clock developments. If’n you get my drift.” By this he means too late a warning that enemy aircraft are coming up from below.
Chris picks up the theme as though the two Southern boys have rehearsed it, which they have. “Stan ma man, we don’t want you to go all vigilante on us.”
“I don’t know what you pricks are talking about.”
“Just sayin’,” Jimbo says, looking up for a moment at the mute TV screen. “Sometimes people gets all hot and bothered about certain things. Like one day when I’s a kid I hit another kid for something someone tol’ me he was sayin’, and it weren’t even not somethin’ me and the other black kids might be sayin’, on account we said nigger every third word, but it kind of got to me, from the white kid’s mouth I mean. So I hauled off and done broke his jaw. Later I heard he weren’t even the one sayin’ it, was some other shit-faced—”
“Look, as a Jew it’s true I may have certain feelings—”
“Hey, man, you don’t have to be a Jew to have them kind of feelings,” Jimbo says. “I mean, those things on CNN, man, they not right.”
“Hell, this here matter ain’t no Jew thing,” Chris says. “Anyhow, I never even so much as knowingly viewed a Jew before I set eyes on your ugly face. First time we met I was all wondering how you fit them horns under your flight helmet. Ain’t no Jew thing.”
“I file them down every night.”
“I mean to say, Stanny, not only Jews got feelings for the holy land is all. Or for a buddy.” Suddenly Chris seems to find a bit of interesting lint on his flight suit. “I mean, just sayin’.”
“Yeah?” Stan says. “Just what the fuck are you saying? You think I’m a Jew before I’m an American, is that it? Because if that’s what you two-bit shit-kickers think—”
Jimbo cuts in. “Just, you know, lets us toss this around a little bit before we go and cowboy up.” He turns on the TV sound.
“Meanwhile,” Damian Smith is saying, once again hauling out the same predictable connective without which television news would be mute, “here at home, many churches have declared Sunday a national day of prayer for Israel. Rev. Gerry Stallwell, pastor of Nashville’s Christ the King Family Mega-Church, leads a group calling itself Christ 4 Israel. Rev. Stallwell, your group has chartered two ships to bring aid to Tel Aviv. Is that true?”
The pastor’s moonlike visage fills the screen. Middle-aged, his hair so elaborately styled, straightened, and oiled that it vies for attention with the huge gold medallion he wears on a gold chain high on his chest: a cross superimposed on a blue Star of David. “Damian, that’s now six ships,” he says with evident pride. “Seems like the plight of our poor Hebrew brethren in the holy land is worsening fast. We’ve got people over in Europe buying up food, water, and medicine. Folks sometimes forget that right in the middle of Jesus Christ there’s the letters U and S plain as day, and that stands for the name of this great believing nation, which is to say, us. You might say every one of us here in the US is part and parcel of Christ our Lord. Which translates out to a simple message: sometimes the Good Lord can use a bit of help.”
“Rev. Stallwell, are you aware the Islamic Liberation Force has announced it will open fire on any ship trying to break its blockade of Tel Aviv?”
“Son, as aware as Daniel in the lion’s den, but we believe on the people of Israel as God’s chosen. Don’t forget Jesus of Nazareth was a humble rabbi, his stepdad a regular old Hebrew carpenter. Far as scripture is concerned, we’re doing the Lord’s work, and if those Muslimites blow us out of the water we’ll just keep on a-doing it.”
“There’s been some criticism of these efforts, Rev. Stallwell, on the grounds that your group is actually creating and implementing an independent US foreign policy. Have you had any consultations on this with Washington, pastor? The White House?”
“Don’t have to. You know why? These Friday people, today they’re coming after the Saturday people. Know who’s next? The Sunday people. Just like the Constitution gives every citizen the right to bear arms, so it gives us freedom of assembly. We are assembling a Christian effort to save the besieged Israelites, and in so doing we are defending our own Christian selves sure as we might with firearms. These people over there that invaded and are despoiling the holy land got a simple agenda: destroy the Jews, then annihilate the Christians. You know what, they got no use for Hindus and Buddhists neither. We people of faith got to hang together or we going to hang separately.”
“So you see this as a religious conflict?”
“Damian, if it isn’t, why are these fanatics knocking down churches all over the holy land along with the synagogues? Chew on that one for a while. Trouble is, the president of these United States won’t lift a finger to help. He’s afraid he may not get reelected if the price of oil keeps going up. Well, I got a message for our president, the Lord bless him and keep him: this county don’t get off its heinie and save our Israelites, then the wrath of the Almighty is going to descend upon our elected leader for failing to do God’s will and then for sure he won’t be re-elected. Son, I got folks in my church vowing to vote for a dead skunk just to see the president punished for what you and I know, and every God-fearing Christian in America knows, is a sin that makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like a three-legged race at a county fair on the Fourth of July.”
Damian is getting signals from his control room: get this crank off the air before he starts talking assassination. “And thank you, Rev. Gerry Stallwell, pastor of—”
Accustomed as he is to talking directly with the Almighty, the good reverend is not about to be shut up. “You folks at home. Visit with us right now at christ4israel.org. Reach down in your pockets. Time’s a-running out. Save the Israelites!”
The control room goes immediately to station break, with no bridge from Smith, no teaser about what’s coming up next.
Again Jimbo cuts off the sound. “Y’all heard the man. Tick tock. Time’s a runnin’ out.”
“A-rabs gonna blow them Christian ships right out the water,” Chris says.
“I ain’t just sayin’,” Jimbo says.
“We ain’t just sayin’,” Chris echoes. “Not no more.”
Stan looks from one to the other. He has never felt so un-alone in his life.
55
DESPITE THE WORLD’S CONTEMPORARY dependence on technology, not all communication requires electric current. This is evident in any prison, where within hours, sometimes minutes, news can be transmitted via relay, either through voice or agreed signals. The prison that is Ghetto Tel Aviv is no different. That the State of Israel has come under new management becomes known in every part of the crowded city so quickly that it is difficult to believe this is the same Israel once dependent for information on radio broadcasts and newspaper reports amplified by a network of cell phones that kept every citizen in a constantly refreshed loop of fact, rumor, innuendo and, inevitably, falsehood. A photo of any prewar Israeli street would show a cell phone pressed to the ear of every pedestrian; it was not uncommon for Israelis to be seen strolling down Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’s main drag, with a cell phone at either ear. Such a nation of communicators can hardly stop communicating despite no electricity, no radio, no Internet, no mobile telephony. The chief of staff learns of Yigal’s coup in an hour.