Eight men and seven women took their places against the cliff face, and the red spouted again. And again.
“Joshua!”
The machine gun fired again.
“Joshua!!”
And again.
Joshua opened his eyes. He saw Socorro’s concerned black eyes staring down at him.
“What’s the matter?”
“I…” He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I had another…”
“Poor baby,” she said. “Okay now?”
“No. It was… No. Yeah. It was—”
Harlow interrupted. “Can I ride on rocking Daddy?”
Socorro laughed, rubbed the boy’s head. “No, Daddy’s done rocking the hammock,” she said. She picked him up onto her hip. God, Joshua thought, I wish I could hug them as easily as she does. It didn’t feel right to him. Thanks again to Father. But there was more to love than the physical.
Joshua reached out and stroked the back of Socorro’s leg. The contact soothed him. The vision was past, receding. And Socorro was here, present. The sexiest part of a female body, he thought, the back of the leg. He squeezed her his desire.
“Later,” she winked. She put Harlow down, kissed him on the head, and sent him into the house. “This was bad?”
“This was bad,” he echoed. “It looked like World War II. They’re moving closer and closer to the present.”
“Are you ready to see Dr. Veille again?”
“No, drugs won’t help. I know that.”
“How?” she had asked him several times, “how do you know that?” He didn’t know how he knew. He just knew this wasn’t a problem that doctors or drugs could treat. This was not merely an abnormal form of epilepsy. It wasn’t that simple.
“We’ve got to do something.”
Joshua turned and sat awkwardly, his feet barely touching the ground. He tried to stand, but his legs gave way and he fell to the ground.
“Klutz,” Socorro laughed quietly, but Joshua could feel the concern behind the voice. How many words like klutz did she use now? How many words like miho did he?
Joshua laughed his agreement, yes—it always was tricky getting out of a hammock, wasn’t it—not admitting that it was a lack of strength in his knees which had made him fall, not wanting to add to her worry. This vision had taken a lot out of him, more than any of the others.
At first the visions come only rarely. Now they were occurring more and more frequently. All were murder and butchery, blood and brutality. From the seventeenth century until World War II. All the victims were Jews.
Jews. All the victims had been Jews. Joshua had been brought up as a practicing Jew. At thirteen he had stood before the Torah next to his adoring father. His first public speaking—he remembered the terror. And the money which put him through college. When it came to Judaism, his father was adoring. When it came to atheism, the crime Joshua committed in his fourteenth year, his father had turned his face away. Shocked. Scandalized. Unforgiving. His father became cold and distant—if he won’t talk to God, he won’t talk to me! the old man had bellowed. The phrase became an incantation. He spoke only to correct his son. Mealtimes became a deadly chore. God, how Joshua had hated dinner!
Religion, Joshua understood early, meant more to his father than blood, God more than love. If Joshua would not have the Lord, then neither would he have his father’s love.
Three days out of Princeton’s M.B.A. program, two weeks before he started his job he married Socorro. That was it, the final blow. “He married an Indian!” became the new refrain. Socorro was not kosher. Beautiful, but not Jewish, not even white. Trayfe. Not even mentioned in Scripture. Central America was not in the Scriptures. (But then, neither was North America, South America, most of Asia, etc.)
Socorro was love and joy and freedom. She reveled in the fact that she was four months’ pregnant with Kevin at the wedding. The contest between honoring his father and mother and cleaving unto his wife had been no contest at alclass="underline" Socorro won. She would always win. The boys would always win. Who needed the old man, anyway? For ten years he had not come to look at his grandchildren, had not spoken to his son. His God must be a cold comfort.
After the boys had been told for the final time to stay in bed, Socorro and Joshua lay together. The television flickered a pale blue light and droned in the background. Joshua liked making love with some light in the room. He could see all the fine smoothness that he felt.
“I called your father today,” Socorro said.
“You what?” Joshua was aware that he had spoken too loudly.
“I explained about your dreams.”
He sat up against the scrolled headboard. “They’re not dreams.”
“I know that. You know that. I was in a hurry to get his attention before he hung up on me.”
“You called him!” She nodded her head. “Really?” He found it impossible to believe.
“He wants to talk to you. He’s coming tomorrow night for dinner.”
Joshua stood up. “Dinner? He’s coming here?” He started pacing around the bed. “For dinner?” My mother will be in trouble, he thought. Harlow will blow her cover. “Hi, Gramma,” he’ll say and Father will know that she’s been sneaking visits.
“I’m making a kosher ham.” Socorro said keeping a straight face for a long moment before breaking up. Reluctantly, Joshua laughed, too. “I really should—but Mother is bringing her own food.”
And her own dishes, Joshua added silently. But her joke had broken Joshua’s mood.
“I already told Kevin to pretend he doesn’t know Grandma.” She was so smart. Nothing to do about Harlow, though. He couldn’t keep a secret, not at three.
But then, his father would ignore his grandchildren as he had ignored his own children, so he probably wouldn’t notice. What could children know? What could children offer? They weren’t old enough to talk seriously about God.
“Why? Why did you call him?”
“We’ve got to do something.”
“I know just the something, too,” he offered as he returned to the bed.
Joshua helped the frail, old, so suddenly old, man out of the front seat of the car. He felt so light, so brittle. He might break if dropped. Certainly, this wraith could not hold much power over him anymore.
“You see,” the old man said—the same voice, pitched slightly higher, squeaked, “what it is to throw over your God.” No “Hello, Son,”—he hadn’t spoken Joshua’s name in twenty-two years—no hello of any kind, nothing but God first, and the lecture.
“Oh, Pop.” Joshua hated himself for reverting to a phrase he hadn’t used in years. Still, he could not hold onto the anger he had held for years. The old man was too pitiful a sight.
“You have heard, of course, the stories!” The old man walked on his own, but Joshua’s mother walked close by, with one hand ready to reach out and steady him.
“This must be Socorro,” she said. Always the diplomat, always willing to step into the fray, even when her husband would side with Uncle Morry. “And Kevin and Harlow.”
Kevin said a simple, “Hello,” smiled obviously behind his hand, and tried not to laugh. Harlow chirruped his glad welcome in a language which the old man would not grasp, would not try to understand. His father, the redoubtable Benjamin Yosevs, simply did not listen to children. His own or people’s.
“We brought our own food,” Benjamin informed Joshua, pointedly ignoring Socorro. Socorro shrugged a smile at Joshua. Her body told him, “It’s what I expected.”
Joshua was not happy to have to endure the rituals before eating. Kevin kept asking questions with his eyes and body. But his father was a guest and would not have eaten otherwise. The meal itself was anticlimactic. His father ate in stolid silence. Just like dinner at home, the same, the same slow torture.