Lucky's Girl (9 page)

Errol was one of the few people wearing a suit, but it looked like it had been bought at a garage sale sometime before Reagan left the White House. He nodded to Kenny respectfully. Kaminsky gave him a look like he’d seen a ghost, even though he was well aware that Kenny McCord was back in town.

***

“And he’d want all of you,
all
of you to take up his cross and love one another. Give. Give your time, give your love, because… because…”

She looked out over the huge crowd filling the church far beyond capacity. She was shaking and sweating, tears streaking her makeup.

“Because without love, hope dies…”

And her voice trailed off as she looked out over the sea of sad faces, her eyes settling on a man near the middle of the church. A strong and healthy looking man in a new black suit. He looked so out of place but so familiar. Her hands went up over her eyes as she squinted at him through her tears. She was looking at
Kenny
. The boy who had spent so many days in their home, the boy who had soaked up their love like a sponge, the boy who was their son’s best friend.

A booming and the church was abruptly filled with blinding light.

The big front doors were flung wide open. A man stood in the center of the archway, lit by a blazing reflection of sunlight off a windshield in the parking lot. From the front of the church Abby raised a hand again to block his light. From her angle he was blinding, for the rest he was wreathed in blazing light. He wore flowing white robes and sandals with long lustrous brown hair hanging in curls around his shoulders. He emerged from the light and walked down the center aisle to the front of the church, speaking in a clear and beautiful voice.

“We have been given a ministry that is far superior to the ministry of those who serve under the old laws, for he is the one who guarantees for us a better covenant with God, based on better promises. If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. But God himself found fault with the old one: ‘“The day will come,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah…”‘ and yes, Elton Township. But I say to you all, the age of miracles is still with us! My father has passed, but we won’t dishonor his memory with despair, we will live this life in joy because we are children of God and deserve to be happy. The kingdom of Our God is NOW!”

***

The air around Jerry was filled with rushing sparks. A faint, high-pitched whirring pressed in from his ears and then out, growing louder, eclipsing his hearing, and constricting his vision from the periphery. He was in a tunnel of sparks. His leg muscles began firing to the tune of the stutter of his heart.

He couldn’t inhale.

He couldn’t exhale.

Mason Fucking James is walking right past me and I can’t club him to the ground, or take him to the cell for a richly deserved reunion because I’m having a heart attack at his dad’s funeral.

His hands fell from his lap to his sides and it took every ounce of strength to keep his head from lolling to the side.

I will not collapse.

I will not have a seizure.

I will not shit my pants in front of every single fucking person in this godforsaken town.

***

Something
about Mason had always made Abby so proud. From the day he’d been born she’d known he was special, that he was different. Every mother thinks her child is special and different, but almost every mother is wrong: Abby wasn’t.

Her son was a
Prophet
.

She and the Rev had known from the first time he’d gotten up in the middle of a reading, walked to this very spot, turned to face the crowd and had recited the passage from memory. And now he stood at the foot of the dais, in front of his father’s coffin reciting those same lines from the Book of Acts.
“In the last days, Our God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. On my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of Our God. And everyone who calls on the name of Our God will be saved!”

He held her in his gaze like a man would hold a bird in the palm of his hand. She was unable to speak, unable to move, unable to feel anything but joy and hope. She hadn’t seen her son in more than twenty years. And now, here he was, exactly the man he was supposed to be,
in spite of what he had done.

He walked around the casket, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him so they looked at one another before the entire assembly. His voice was beautiful. “I am here to tell you, we will not stray from the path my father has laid out but will find its source in Our God. The book of Corinthians tells us ‘
we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal!’”

Then he put his arms around her and she melted into his shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably from loss and redemption. The crowd cheered like no crowd had ever cheered in Elton Township. He turned his mother to face the crowd, his smile radiant, his arm around her.

Their Savior had arrived.

CHAPTER 12

“Daddy, is that Jesus?”

Kenny felt a cold ball of fear spinning in his gut, spreading icicles up into his shoulders and neck.

“Daddy, can he fix me?”

It was Jenny. She was speaking, asking him serious questions which he needed to address. He should deal with this right now. Not in a second, not in a minute, not in an hour from now. Right fucking now. But he couldn’t move. No air was going in or out. He was turning purple in a church pew on the other side of the country from his old life, from his home, from his job, from everything he had fled to come here.

Mason fucking James is standing less than fifty feet from me.

Kenny McCord is an underwater welder on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Not much scares him. He’s fundamentally braver than most men, in fact he’s fundamentally braver than almost any man. He works in icy black water, illuminated only by the electric blue of the welding torch. He’s seen giant metal struts buckle and tons of steel drilling apparatus raining from above, while inky clouds of oil boil up from below. He just never thought that he’d be in the same room with his best friend again.

PART 2

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

CHAPTER 1

“So where’s your shadow today, Lucky?” Kenny exhaled hard, pushing on the tailgate of his friend’s pickup. The tires rolled through the dirt, the truck hitting the decline in Kenny’s driveway and moving forward of its own accord.

“Now, Lucky!”

Mason let the clutch out, turning the key and tapping the gas. There was clunking, and shuddering, which ended with a bang and grey exhaust fumes coughing from the tailpipe.

Mason hung out the window, grinning from behind his Ray-Bans.

“Let’s take a ride, Kenny. I got a couple cold ones.”

Kenny gave his best skeptical look. “Schlitz again?”

Mason laughed. “
Molson
, Tonto. You know better than that, you think I’m gonna let you ride in anything less than first class? C’mon!”

Kenny ran to the passenger door and jumped in. “How’d you score this loot, amigo?”

Mason did his imitation of a shame face. “Fat Sally from Frankie’s.”

Kenny was taken aback for a moment. “That’s a new low, Lucky.”

They both fell silent for a moment then both burst laughter.

Kenny popped the top off one, handed it to Mason, and then popped one for himself.

“Please, tell me the cost was not as steep as I’m imagining.”

Mason took a swig, taking a corner to spin the bald tires.

“For shame, McCord. My name is Lucky, not shmucky. She sucked me behind the bar and gave me twelve of these bad boys.”

“She blew you and gave you a twelve pack?” Kenny exhaled. “You didn’t stick it in any of her other holes? Because, dude that’s just plain nasty.”

“No way, there’s things down there no shot can fix.”

“You don’t tell Christie about things like that do you?”

Mason shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“Christie knows about Mary and those kind of… nasty fucking road whores?”

Lucky shot his million-watt smile and laughed. “Son of the Preacher Man, Kenny.”

***

“So where’s Mary, dude?” Kenny took a swig, ambling to the edge of the pier, unzipping and beginning a long beer piss off the edge.

Mason, sitting on the tailgate, belched. “She’s feeling a bit under the weather.”

Kenny zipped it and listened.
How Great Thou Art
boomed out over the water and spread across the night sky.
Gorgeous
. The Rev was a practically unnatural choir director. As many times as he had heard this and the million other gospel standards, it had never failed to impress. That he could take the stumblebums of Elton Township and make them sing like that was amazing.

“You gonna be a daddy or something, Lucky? How you gonna stay Lucky changing out a bunch of Pampers?”

Mason didn’t immediately respond. He just sort of paused. This got Kenny’s attention even though he was four beers in. He thought about pursuing it but decided against it.

Finally Mason said, “Nah man, nothing like that. That ain’t ever gonna happen. I don’t want kids. Fuck, that’s the last thing I would ever want. Fuck all that. I’ll never ever get tied down like that.”

“You value your freedom.”

“Yeah, man, of course. How we gonna take our big roadtrip saddled with a pregnant bitch?”

Kenny inwardly cringed. He hated when Lucky called either Mary or Christie, or the other women who flung themselves at him, bitches. It was bad enough he got away with everything he did, but these unguarded glimpses into his actual thoughts really rubbed Kenny the wrong way.

But that’s the way Lucky was. He was Lucky, and Lucky did what lucky guys do; he took his luck for granted.
But
, Kenny thought,
Lucky could be a lot worse than he was
. If he kept the over-the-top arrogance out of sight then it was out of mind. And Lucky was his best friend, always was, and having the most popular guy in the Upper Peninsula as your best friend wasn’t such a bad deal.

Kenny sighed. “We been talking about this roadtrip for years and now we’ve graduated and supposed to go but I don’t have any money.”

Mason grinned. “Neither do I, dude. Who the fuck cares? We’ll live by our wits, be wild men, right?”

Kenny shook his head. He loved Lucky, but Lucky had never understood.
Couldn’t
understand. How could he? Lucky lived a charmed life, Kenny McCord didn’t.