Beyond the Farthest Star (14 page)

Adam stared after Harrison for three long heartbeats, then stuffed Cutter’s folder into his briefcase along with the speech and slid the satchel along his desktop. The movement revealed anew the family portrait of Maurene, Anne as a child, and himself.

Without thinking, Adam stuffed the painting into his case, flipped off the lights, and left.

S
HERIFF
B
URNS
SWIVELED
his creaking desk chair from side to side and narrowed his eyes. Anyone who had known him for more than a month recognized all the signs of severe irritation and avoided antagonizing him. The dispatcher, Joyce, and Deputy Harliss Williams had certainly been acquainted with the sheriff long enough to heed the warnings, but tonight was not business as usual.

On top of a file cabinet in the corner of the outer office was a television set. Though it was tuned to a national all-news station, the events being reported were happening on the streets of Leonard, right outside the office door.

At the moment the screen displayed a composite computer graphic made up of a church steeple and a dome like the Capitol building. As the intro music built to a climax and a crash of drums, an electronically generated earthquake split church and state symbols so that both buildings fell away from each other toward the outside of the image.

A blonde-haired, twenty-something anchorperson picked up the tale after the drum roll faded: “Tonight, what some are calling the
Roe v. Wade
of the Church-State boundary dispute has erupted in a little Texas town. We go now to our own Rebecca Quinn, live from the Leonard, Texas, city hall … Rebecca?”

The sheriff stared moodily out the front window of the station. A thicket of television news vans, sprouting a forest of satellite
antennas, clustered around the town square. Camera lights blazed down, illuminating a scene in which protestors and newshounds vied for attention with curious onlookers from as far away as Dallas, to judge by the license plates.

A gust of wind set the masts to swaying and caused the sheriff to turn slightly toward the remains of the burnt-out crèche, still surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape.

On screen the local reporter picked up the tale: “That’s right, Jill. We’re just minutes away from a Leonard town hall meeting that will determine if this tiny Texas community will take on the outspoken Senator Cutter.”

The sheriff sniffed and his lip twitched. Outside his very office, in
his town,
was the live version of what was being broadcast. A full-size version of red-haired Rebecca competed with a miniature of herself on the television.

When, encouraged by Joyce, Deputy Williams reached out to turn up the volume on the set, the sheriff reacted. “Aren’t you s’posed to be findin’ me that Wells girl?”

Harliss ducked his head toward the door. “En route to the Greyhound in Maypearl right now, Chief.”

“And Joy-cee,” the sheriff continued barking orders, “call overt’ the Starlight in Wilma. Tell whoever’s workin’ tonight t’ keep an eye out for the preacher’s girl.”

“Will do, Gene,” replied Joyce with an excess of energy in picking up the telephone.

Levering himself upright, the sheriff retrieved his gun belt, hanging from a coat rack behind his desk, and buckled it around his ample middle. As he cinched it tight, he grunted at Kyle, who had just arrived. “You’re late.”

“Won’t happen again,” Kyle replied without meeting the lawman’s gaze.

Sheriff Burns jerked his thumb toward Kyle’s swollen face. “Mind tellin’ me how you got that fat lip, Tucker?”

His back to the sheriff, Kyle opened a janitor’s closet and seized a broom. “Tripped, is all,” he mumbled.

“Now listen, son,” Burns scolded gently. “I can’t help you if you don’t level—”

“Said I tripped, is all. Nothin’ fer you to worry about.”

The sheriff examined Kyle as if suspecting something didn’t add up, then shrugged. “Have it your own way. Get to it, then.”

Kyle peeled three black plastic trash bags from a mammoth-sized roll. He expanded one with a violent, angry flip of his hands and a
whoosh
of air.

As Sheriff Burns exited the office just behind Deputy Williams, he heard Joyce on the call to the Starlight Motel.
“Sí,
Luis! A vampire. That’s right,
vampira, comprende
? You call us if a young woman lookin’ like a
vampira
shows up tonight. You got that?”

The public hearing room in the Leonard City Hall was long on space and short on comfort. Designed to be a multipurpose space, permitting everything from civil wedding ceremonies to displays of school science projects, it offered folding chairs and a single, low platform at the front as a stage.

On this occasion the hall was jammed. Citizens had filled all the available seats two hours before the start of the meeting, and standees occupied the remaining slots on the side walls.

The back of the chamber was lined with television news crews and their equipment.

Adam occupied the center seat in a row of chairs on the platform, next to a handful of city officials, but it was Sheriff Burns who held center stage. Gavel in hand, he banged on the portable lectern used as a podium and called for quiet.

“I say we all do a little pride swallowin,’ chip in for a new nativity, and next year we set it up on First Church property
not more’n two miles from where it is now. Nobody’s constitutional rights get violated. The sign wavers and the TV cameras go somewhere’s else to picnic, and, most important, Leonard won’t wind up a ghost town like Blessin’, sittin’ there just thirteen miles away.”

The sheriff glanced over his shoulder at the mayor sitting with his arms folded over his chest and continued, “What was it, Mayor? Four years …”

The mayor fluttered his fingers.

“Three years, thank you, Mayor. So whadda y’all say?”

Adam scanned the faces of the crowd and did not like what he saw. Aside from a handful of First Church of Leonard supporters (of whom Margaret was the most vocal) most of those present agreed with the sheriff. Economic development was the lifeblood of a little town like Leonard. If Cutter pulled his investment commitments, Leonard would shrivel up and blow away like a patch of prairie wildflowers come drought and hot wind.

“So we’re agreed, then?” the sheriff queried. Then he added, “‘Less Pastor Wells’d like to have his say.”

“Get on with it,” someone shouted.

“Give Pastor a chance, you buncha heathens,” Margaret called out.

Adam saw angry looks directed his way as he stood and approached the microphone.
They think I’m the enemy,
he thought.
Don’t they understand what they’re bartering away here?

The hostile murmurs grew in number and volume until the sheriff banged his gavel again and demanded silence. “Pastor’s gonna exercise his constitutional right to speak if he wants, and y’all are gonna keep quiet while he does.” Then he added, “Or I’m gonna throw a buncha you in jail.”

Setting his briefcase down beside the podium, Adam extracted his speech, cleared his throat, then bent once more toward the
satchel. When he stood again, he raised the charred remains of the baby doll’s head and displayed it to the crowd.

All the red lights of the row of cameras were on.

The jostling stilled.

This was his moment: the occasion Adam had been called to meet … the crisis he had been preparing for all those years ago. Gesturing with the hand holding the skull-like remains of the doll, he said, “Take a good look at the new face of God in America if you and I are foolish enough to think all this is just about the torching of a few wooden statues … that it’s unimportant … that it means nothing.”

With each dramatic pause, Adam stared a different camera directly in its blinking, scarlet eye as he set the doll’s head to rest atop the lectern.

He glanced down at his other hand, resting atop his speech, and saw a tremor there. Quickly he clenched it into a fist. “Tonight I hope to convince you, as I am absolutely convinced, that it means … everything.”

Against the back wall, standing amid the row of video machinery, was the dignified, somber face of Mister Harrison of the Heritage Foundation.

Directly in Adam’s line of sight, just over Harrison’s head, a new, startlingly bright bank of lights was switched on.

Harrison’s features disappeared in the glare and so did Adam’s train of thought. Trying to regain his composure, he gestured toward the doll’s head, misjudged the distance, and knocked the plastic relic to the floor.

This isn’t going the way I planned,
he thought.
But I can still get it back. I can make them listen.

That hopeful image came right before Adam knocked over his briefcase and, bumping the podium, scattered the pages of his speech across the green linoleum floor.

When the contents of the attaché case spilled, the contents of Cutter’s file and Adam’s notes for his address became hopelessly enmeshed.

The muttering from the audience was rising again, their impatience increasing. There was barely a minute left to recapture their attention. Grasping a double handful of pages from the floor, Adam tried to separate them while ad-libbing.

“Like anything worthwhile, there will be a struggle. There will be battles. There will be sacrifices.”

His left hand was trembling again.
Smile for the cameras,
he told himself.
Show them that you haven’t lost your composure. It was a minor interruption, nothing more.

Where was the missing first page of his script?

Adam’s fingers closed around the news magazine with his picture on the cover and the banner AMERICA’S NEXT BILLY GRAHAM. Were the television cameras zooming in on the cover?

“I tell you,” he fumbled for the next line. “I tell you,” he said, parroting Harrison, “it’s a struggle we can’t afford to lose.”

“Can’t afford is right,” someone shouted.

Perhaps the next paper Adam seized would be the correct sheet. Instead, it was Calvin’s sworn affidavit.

“Must not lose … no matter what the cost,” Adam said, staring down blankly. “My wife. My daughter. My family.”

“The heart and soul …” Another paper surfaced amid the clutter. Colors and squiggles and love and caring. Anne’s finger painting: baby girl and mommy, and a daddy who hung the stars.

“Heart and soul … of America.”

Adam’s throat constricted. His vision blurred. Both hands were trembling now.

“I suggest … let me suggest we … but can’t.”

“What, Pastor Wells?” questioned the sheriff.

The audience had grown strangely silent.
What are they thinking?
Adam wondered.
What do they see when they look at me? Does it matter?

“What do you suggest, Pastor?” asked the sheriff, not unkindly. “I suggest we put up a Frosty … or a Santa … and call it even.”

Maurene stared, transfixed, at the motel room’s television screen. Displayed there, frozen like a deer in headlights, her husband was caught at the moment of capitulating to the forces of Senator Cutter. Underneath Adam’s stunned expression the caption read: LOCAL PASTOR PROPOSES INCLUSIVE X-MAS.

The blonde-haired anchorperson reported: “That was Pastor Adam Wells of the First Church of Leonard, Texas, just moments ago, conceding to ACLU demands that …”

From the bathroom came the bantering tones of Calvin Clay-man: “And Reney? Remember old Manzie? You know, All-State fullback Bobby Manzinski? Know what he’s doing now? Changing ones and fives in Toll Booth 11 on I – 5 outside …”

Maurene muted the sound just as Calvin emerged from the bathroom, two glasses of airline bottle rum and Coke in hand. He offered one to her, but she waved it away.

What happened to him?
she wondered about her husband.
Adam was so fierce about this moment of his return to the spotlight. Now he looks like he’s ill.
Her heart began to beat faster. Her thoughts whirled in confusion.

Calvin lifted his glass in mocking salute to Adam’s image. “What’d he do? Choke?”

Maurene stiffened. What was she doing here? Why had she come? Without speaking, she strode toward the door, but Calvin’s next words caught her with one hand on the knob.

“Remember how you said you chose the Ad-man instead of me? Fact is I chose Harvard instead of you.”

Maurene faced him then, temper flaring. “Is that why you came to Leonard, Calvin? To gloat about making a better choice? What is it you want, really?”

Calvin shrugged. “A picture to put in my photo-cube on my desk. And … I want you to call me Callie, like you used to.”