The Rapture: In The Twinkling Of An Eye (8 page)

Stefan’s mother breathed laboriously through blood-caked nostrils as Lazar moved to the other side of the car and forced her feet through the openings in the ersatz handles. When Matei helped heft her from the car, he wondered if she weighed much more than the concrete.

The men carried her to a steep embankment and rolled her over the side, waiting a few seconds for the splash. By the time her body deteriorated and freed itself from the boots of death, there would be too little of her left for anyone to recognize. And who knew where she might wash up onto the bank of the rapid river?

Matei and Lazar cleaned themselves off and reentered the car. Matei pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket and held it up to the dim dash light. “Our next stop.”

“You tell me where my mother is and you tell me right now,” Stefan shouted, gushing profanities.

Fortunato lowered the volume on his TV and pulled the hem of his robe over his bare feet. “Your mother?” he said, pressing the phone tight against his ear. “Don’t do this!” Stefan said. “Where is she?” “Hmm,” Leon said. “If I knew something like that, I wonder how much I should charge for such information.”

73′

“I’ll give you the four thousand with interest!” Stefan said.

“So it was you and not Teodor who worked the con. Maybe I should hire a responsible young man like him to replace you.”

“Mr. Fortunato, please! Come after me; just don’t let anyone do anything to my mother.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Leon said. “Tell you what—next time you see her, tell her that I promised to look after her from now on. You’re going to be busy.”

“Busy? I’m going to be busy? What am I going to be doing? I’ll do anything to get square with you again.”

“Oh, I know you will, Stefan. And in the meantime, it would help my business if you warned people against trying to pull anything on me.”

“I promise, sir! I promise! Now, please! Don’t let anything happen to my mother!”

“I’m sorry, Stefan. We’ll have to continue this another time. I have to take this call.”

“Wait! No!”

Leon disconnected from Stefan and answered Matei.

“You’ve already heard from Stefan? You’re not worried he will tip off the girl?”

“Trust me,” Leon said. “He’s thinking of nothing and no one but his sainted mother right now.”

“He can think all he wants about her,” Matei said. “It’s done.”

“As planned?”

“No hitches, no evidence, no witnesses.”

Raymie’s bedtime arrived by halftime of the ball game, and Rayford knew it would soon be time to face the music. On the way up to Raymie’s room, Rayford said, “Hey, I forgot. I brought you something.”

“Something else?” Raymie said.

“Yeah, come on.”

The boy followed him to the garage, where Rayford pulled from the backseat of his
BMW
a padded envelope with a framed picture of himself in uniform in the terminal, his cap under his arm, a 747 showing outside the window. Rayford had signed it, “To Raymie with love, Dad.” Under that he had written, “Rayford Steele, Captain, Pan-Continental Airlines, O’Hare.”

“Cool!” Raymie said. “I’ll put it in my room.”

But on their way back inside, Raymie said, “Hey, Dad, look. Flat tire on the four-wheeler already.”

Rayford swore, then apologized.

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

Uh-oh.

“Will you come to church with us this Sunday?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Why not?”

“I said maybe.”

“That’s what you said last week.”

“Well, this Sunday I’m going to have to fix this tire.”

“C’mon, Dad!”

“Do you want me to fix this four-wheeler for you or not? I don’t have all the time in the world.”

“Next Sunday then?”

Rayford sighed. “For sure.”

As they mounted the steps toward Raymie’s room, Irene called out from the kitchen, “His Bulls pajamas are laid out. Don’t let him wear his socks to bed.”

A few minutes later Rayford was back in the living room, and he could tell Irene was on her way. He instinctively picked up a newspaper as a diversion.

“You mind if I turn the sound off until the third quarter?” she said. “Or do you want to see last week’s highlights?”

“It’s all right,” he said, the newspaper in his lap.

“Rayford,” she said, “I don’t want to fight, but please don’t undermine what has become so important to Raymie.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll try to behave.”

“Don’t make light of it,” Irene said. “Please.”

“Fair enough. I guess a little religion won’t hurt him, but you know my concerns.”

“It’s not like he’s going to become a missionary or a pastor,” she said. “Although that wouldn’t be all bad. He’s just a young boy very interested in the things of God, as I am.”

“He’s only interested because you are.”

“And what’s wrong with that? Aren’t we supposed to be examples to him?”

“Not of fundamentalists.”

Irene made a face. “It’s not fair to use inflammatory language, Rafe. Fundamentalists have come to be known as people who kill those they disagree with. When was the last time you heard of a Christian doing that?”

“Granted. But do you know what someone asked me the last time I went to that new church with you? They asked what God was doing in my life.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said He was blessing my socks off. You’d have thought I’d made their day. Now what’s all this both you and Raymie are trying to tell me about the preacher and some hobbyhorse he’s on lately?”

“It’s not a hobbyhorse,” Irene said. “It’s one of the major thrusts of this church. They believe in Bible prophecy, which says that Jesus is coming back someday, and we don’t know when. That’s why I wish you’d come with us this Sunday, because Pastor Billings is finishing up his series on the topic and he’s really going to put it all together. It’s amazing.”

“So it is a hobbyhorse.”

Irene shook her head and looked away, as if interested in the muted highlights on TV.

Rayford used the occasion to peek at the sports section of the paper. He fully expected her to scold him for not listening, but she was not talking. Rayford found something intriguing in the paper and was soon reading for real.

“I’m reading everything I can get my hands on about the rapture of the church,” Irene said.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s what Raymie was trying to tell me. Jesus is coming back and all that.”

Suddenly she was engaged again. “Can you imagine, Rafe? Jesus coming back to get us before we die?”

“Yeah, boy,” he said, peeking over the top of his newspaper, “that would kill me.”

She was not amused. “If I didn’t know what would happen to me,” she said, “I wouldn’t be so glib about it.”

“I do know what would happen to me,” he said. “I’d be dead, gone, finis. But you, of course, you would fly right up to heaven.”

He hadn’t meant to offend her. He was just having fun. When she turned away he rose and pursued her. He spun her around and tried to kiss her, but she was cold. “Come on, Irene,” he said. “Tell me thousands wouldn’t just keel over if they saw Jesus coming back for all the good people.”

She pulled away in tears. “I’ve told you and told you. Saved people aren’t good people, they’re—”

“Just forgiven, yeah, I know,” he said, feeling rejected and vulnerable in his own living room. He returned to his chair and his paper. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m happy for you that you can be so cocksure.”

“I only believe what the Bible says,” Irene said.

Rayford shrugged. He wanted to say, “Good for you,” but he didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. In a way he envied her confidence, but in truth he wrote it off to her being a more emotional, more feelings-oriented person. He didn’t want to articulate it, but the fact was, he was more intelligent. He believed in rules, systems, laws, patterns, things you could see and feel and hear and touch.

If God was part of all that, okay. A higher power, a loving being, a force behind the laws of nature, fine. Let’s sing about it, pray about it, feel good about our ability to be kind to others, and go about our business. Rayford’s greatest fear was that this religious fixation would not fade like Irene’s Amway days, her Tupper-ware phase, and her aerobics spell. He could just see her ringing doorbells and asking if she could read people a verse or two. Surely she knew better than to dream of his tagging along.

Irene had become a full-fledged religious fanatic, and somehow that freed Rayford to daydream without guilt about Hattie Durham.

Buck Williams had never seen Jim Borland like this. The longtime religion editor of Global Weekly had been a Princeton religious studies major a couple of decades before, and while they did not see eye to eye on everything, Buck considered Jim one of the savvy veterans on the staff.

But here was Borland, moping about the New York office, appearing in shock. Buck was dying to ask him what was wrong, but Borland surprised him by knocking softly on his door. “You got a minute?”

“Sure, Jimmy. What’s up?”

“You know where I am on this God stuff, right?”

“God stuff?” Buck said.

“The whole religious thing. I mean, I’m the religion guy but not that religious, okay? I come from the school of thought that believes a little bit of god is in everybody—whoever or whatever you consider god. Probably a strength for someone in my job.”

“As long as you know about and understand a lot of religions, sure.”

Borland reluctantly sat when Buck pointed to a chair. “Well, you know I was in Eastern Europe on some religious confab stories. Somebody invited me to what they call an evangelistic crusade. No interest. None. I have always wondered what these evangelists were thinking when they decided to call these mass rallies crusades, when they’re the first ones to howl when we remind them of the shame of the Crusades in the name of their God.”

“Right. So you don’t go.”

“No, I go.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, and here’s why. The so-called crusade is being held in Albania, okay? And the evangelist is not an American TV-type guy. I mean, I guess he’s an American citizen now, but it’s this Gonzalo Islando from Argentina. Heard of him?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Came to this country when he was young, patterned himself after Moody, Sunday, Graham—those types. Preaching salvation to the masses, you know.”

“Okay.”

“So I’m intrigued, because this is real cross-cultural stuff. This guy may be a naturalized American citizen by now, but he’s an Argentine and he’s preaching in Albania. Might be interesting. I’m thinking maybe I’ll catch him in some cultural gaffe, some ignorant move. So I check it out, and guess what? I end up going back two more nights in a row.”

“That impressive, eh?”

“Well, no. He wasn’t that big a deal. I’ll give him this—he knew the culture, was self-effacing, handled the press well, was self-deprecating, had a sense of humor, really seemed to love and care about the people of Albania—who knows why? As a preacher he was good, I guess. These guys are pretty simple, you know. Nothing deep. Nothing earth-shattering. You hear one hellfire-and-brimstone-except-that-Jesus-died-for-your-sins sermon, you’ve heard “Em all. I decided he was no charlatan; he really believes this stuff. You can’t earn your way to heaven, trust in the blood of Christ—all that.”

“So you became a believer.”

Borland snorted. “Hardly. I became convinced of Islando’s sincerity; that’s all. What got to me was the response. I’ve been to these things before, Williams, and I’ve always found them a little strange and amusing. There’s lots of emotion, a bunch of people following each other like sheep, people coming forward and getting saved—you know the drill.”

“Sure.”

“But this is different. Islando holds this deal at a stadium that holds around fifty thousand, and it’s packed. There’s cheesy music, then people witnessing or giving testimony or whatever they call it when they tell everybody else how bad they used to be and how good they are now because of Jesus. Then Islando preaches this simple message—pretty much the same every night. Being good isn’t good enough. You can’t earn it. Trust Jesus.”

“Same old same old.”

“Except that people start getting out of their seats and coming forward long before he invites them to. And it’s not just a bunch of counselors getting into position. I’ve seen that happen. It serves as a sort of priming of the pump. You realize the first thousand people down there are part of the deal, carrying their Bibles and their literature and wearing their badges.”

“But… ?”

“But not this time. Well, some of them, sure, but there were people weeping, crying out. It was like they couldn’t wait to get down there and pray and repent and get saved. There were way more converts than counselors at first, and it was a mess. I thought it was interesting. I was racking my brain to remember what it was that made Islando’s message so compelling to so many, and I couldn’t come up with it. Like I said, I went back the next night and the next, and thinking back on it, 1 can hardly tell you the difference between one service and the next. Except the response. That first night was the most I’d ever even heard of, let alone seen. But the next night topped that, and the next was even bigger. Buck, that was last week. Those meetings are still going on and getting bigger every night. It’s like that whole nation is going Christian.”

“True definition of revival.”

“I guess. Just blew me away.”

“And so?”

“So that’s not all. I’m on my way back to France, and I hear this Texas-based guy—fella by the name of Sandy Tibbitts out of San Antonio, younger than Islando but at this thing more than forty years himself—is doing the same thing in the Ukraine. Well, I’m a long way from Ukraine, but this I have to see. I can tell by the look on your face you’ve never heard of Tibbitts; neither had I. I find out he’s some kind of a Southerner and a Baptist, so I’m guessing big hair and slick suit and a wide grin, plus a lot of media, right?

“None of that. Discover this guy spends most of his time overseas, doing the same kind of thing Islando does, only a little less slick, a little less organized, more simple and direct. Not polished, just a loud, powerful preacher who somehow connects with people on some elemental level. And the same thing is happening. These people are running down the aisles to get Jesus.”