Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (21 page)

Mac suddenly appeared between them, whipping the wheelchair around in the broken glass. “Hold on, Parker,” he shouted. “You’ve already killed one good woman. Isn’t that enough?”

Parker jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “Mac.” He shook as if he’d seen the ghost of Peggy and Kristen accusing him. And for all I knew, maybe he did. Given what he’d been drinking, he could be seeing anything.

“It’s enough already. It’s time, Parker.” Mac’s eyes burned with a ferocity that paled the fire in Parker’s eyes like the sun overshadows the moon. “God, how I have hated you.”

Parker blinked rapidly, looking confusedly around him, slowly backing away from Mac as if from a rattlesnake.

Mac closed his eyes. “I laid there in that hospital, half alive, knowin’ you were just down the hall, and I prayed for you to live, and I prayed for strength.” His fingers were white as he gripped the arms of his wheelchair. “Just life enough for you and just strength enough for me. To crawl to your room and kill you myself with whatever I could find.” He opened his eyes. “And you lived.” He leaned forward. “And I finally have the strength.” His right hand jerked up as it pulled the armrest from the wheelchair.

Mac looked at his hand as if surprised at what it had done, as if it belonged to someone else. Parker fell to his knees and bowed his head like a prisoner awaiting execution. Sonia let out a cry and started forward, but Dad held her back, shaking his head.

Mac rolled the wheelchair forward, crunching through the glass, until his knees were almost touching Parker’s nose. “But there’s been enough death. It’s time for some life.”

Parker’s head jerked up, face to face with Mac. He squinted at Mac with his good eye and shook his head, confused. “But . . .”

“Hate is death, Parker. I’ve killed you a thousand times in my mind, and it’s made me a murderer. You and me, Parker, we’re the same.” Mac threw the armrest to one side. “No, that’s not right. You killed by accident, by carelessness at worst. I killed with knowledge and will, and gloried in it. Rejoiced in it. Desired it.”

Parker shook his head violently. “No, no . . . ,” he blurted out, clambering to his feet and stumbling backward. “No!” he shouted. “I killed ’em. I done it!” His hands flew to his face. “I got the mark to prove it,” he declared, tearing the patch from his face. The white scar slashed his flushed face from his hairline to his jawbone across a pale, sunken eyelid. “I don’t get no mercy. I been marked for hell, and the devil’s done took me.” A single eye glared down with fierce despair at the small man in the wheelchair. “You can’t change that, Mac. Can’t nobody change it.”

Mac looked back up at him, tears overflowing his eyes. “You’re right, Parker,” he whispered. “I can’t change it. Won’t never be able to change it.” He rolled closer. “But Jesus can. Jesus did.” Parker watched him anxiously, but stood his ground. “Can’t neither one of us bring back Peggy or Kristen. Whether we hate or love, can’t change that. But two lives wasted is enough. There ain’t no reason for me to waste another life in hatin’ you, or you to waste a life in provin’ to yourself that you ain’t no good.”

Parker shook his head. “It’s too late. I done crossed the line. I can’t come back. Look at me.” He held his arms out in a plea, desperation on his face as plain as the scar.

Mac looked at him for a long time. “I see ya,” he said quietly. “And I see it ain’t too late. You look at her and tell me it ain’t so.” He spun his chair around and pointed at Sonia.

Parker looked at Sonia. I looked at Sonia. Everybody looked at Sonia. Dad stepped aside and turned back to look at her. I looked, and hard. She looked like Sonia to me. A Sonia without makeup, which was pretty rare. A Sonia with wet hair plastered to her head and clothes dripping a big puddle on the podium, which was somewhat out of the norm, but still just Sonia.

Well, almost just Sonia. It wasn’t the same Sonia I had sold a paper to, shut up in a cave of a house. It wasn’t the same Sonia I had seen hysterically dropping keys and boots on the garage floor. This Sonia seemed a little more solid, even while looking around self-consciously before looking back at Parker.

That was all I saw, but I was at the end of a week during which everyone around me had seemed to see much more than I did. Now, during what I had hoped would be a reassuringly boring service, I was once again playing the role of the puzzled observer. I turned back to Parker.

Parker looked at Sonia with a wild distraction that made it hard to think he could see her at all. But he did. His eye focused on her, and pain seemed to pour out of him like water through a breached dam. He clutched his head and reeled like a man caught off balance, falling to his knees. Mac turned back to him and held out a hand. Parker buried his head in Mac’s lap, his shoulders heaving.

Dad stepped down from the podium and picked his way through the shards of glass to where Mac and Parker held everyone captive. He put one hand on Mac’s shoulder, the other on Parker’s shoulder, and waited for a long time—his head bowed so that I could see clearly where the crew cut ended and the bare scalp began. When the sobs that wracked Parker’s large frame finally subsided, Dad spoke.

“Parker, do you know that all these people here love you and have been praying for you?”

Parker raised himself to a kneeling position and nodded his head, which was still bowed.

“Do you know that Jesus loves you more than all the people here?”

Parker nodded.

“Nobody can undo what has happened, but Jesus can change what happens next. But only if you let Him. Are you ready to do that?”

Parker nodded.

We got home very late that night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Given the circumstances, early to bed, early to rise seemed to be a policy unlikely to be enforced. I did my final packing while Dad and Parker sat late into the night talking in his study. In my suitcase I included the AM radio, Pauline’s Bible, which took less space than mine, and for reasons unknown even to myself, Twain’s
Mysterious Stranger
. I set aside a stack of books to bring with me in the backseat, mainly science fiction. Then I turned off the light and lay in bed, trying to force myself to go to sleep. The events of the last few hours, the low murmur of voices echoing from the study through the air-conditioning ducts, and the anticipation of the trip conspired against my plans. I pulled the Twain book out of the suitcase and skimmed through it. Sometime after midnight I heard an F-150 start up and pull out of the driveway, followed by the click of light switches and footsteps as Dad traversed the length of the rambling house from the garage, past my bedroom, to his.

Not for the first time I wondered how Dad did it. It was as though he could see through this world into another—through what was, into what could be. Or would be. When Sonia had burst into the garage, all I saw was a frantic, desperate, abused woman. I would have lost a considerable sum if I had been asked at that moment to bet on what her state of mind would be ten minutes later. But then Dad prayed, and I watched her change, literally before my eyes. How could that happen?

The bolt-removal experience I could, and did, write off to Dad’s talent for improvisation, even if I didn’t mention it to anyone. But you don’t change people at the very core with improvisation. From what I could tell, you don’t change people at all, no matter how much you want to. Something else did it. The Parker who stormed into the church was no more like the Parker who walked out than I was like Jolene Culpepper. It was almost like in the movies, where something from outer space takes over a person, only backward. This invasion had left Parker more human, less alienated. Once again I watched a person change so completely that even his body seemed different. What could do that? Twain’s stranger didn’t seem to be acquainted with this side of God. Was a dream that powerful? Could a vagrant, formless thought alone in the universe transform other vagrant, formless thoughts? I woke up with the book in my hand, the sun in my eyes, and the questions still pestering my brain.

I leapt from the bed, suddenly very awake in the anticipation of the day for which I had been preparing for months. But my impatience would have no effect on the measured pace of our methodical departure for a Cloud vacation, events which were steeped in traditions, unspoken, undocumented, but as reassuringly predictable as any religious ritual.

As those traditions dictated, Mom sat in the front reading the jokes from
Reader’s Digest
to Dad. We kids in the back listened to see if she would translate the occasional d-word into “darn,” or, as she occasionally did, render it in the original French. If we went for the original, we would glance at each other in the backseat and raise an eyebrow. That was living on the edge!

We hit Houston about rush hour and the air-conditioning promptly failed, a harbinger, had we but known it. We resorted to the old reliable, 4-60 air-conditioning. (Roll down the four windows and drive sixty miles an hour.) Of course 4-60 air-conditioning is not effective against June in Texas, particularly during rush hour in Houston. When we got out of town and back up to seventy miles per hour on I-83, we cooled down. Mom gave up reading the jokes from the fresh
Reader’s Digest
because shouting over the wind made her hoarse.

We arrived in Austin at the house of Aunt Maureen and Uncle Ernest late that evening, somewhat wilted. My sisters and I sat gingerly in the den sipping iced tea and enduring the baseball game Uncle Ernest was sleeping through. Dad and my cousin, Ernest Jr., tore into the air conditioner and had it fixed by midnight.

Dad came in and tried to get us to load the laundry drum with our clothes, but Mom refused. We all changed to our pajamas, and Mom started a load in Aunt Maureen’s washing machine. Then Mom, Dad, Aunt Maureen, and Ernest Jr. talked over coffee around the kitchen table until we kids were dozing along with Uncle Ernest to the lullaby of a test pattern.

Tuesday morning we were back on the road. But not for long. Before noon the car made a few choking gasps, and Dad maneuvered it to the side of the road before it sputtered to a stop.

“Now what?” Heidi demanded of no one in particular. No one in particular answered.

Dad got out and opened the hood. After a minute or so he poked his head in the car. “Everything seems to be OK, but I smell gasoline real strong.” He went back and looked at the engine.

“What does that mean?” Heidi asked. Nobody answered. It meant nothing to me, and I knew more about engines than anyone else in the car.

Dad poked his head in again. “Dear, why don’t you try to start it while I take a look.” Mom slid over and gave it a try, but it wouldn’t fire.

“OK. Hold it for a second. I’m going to take off the air filter to dry out the carburetor. I think it’s flooded.”

We waited awhile for the gas to evaporate. The heat began to build up inside the car. We continued to sit in silence, swaying slightly when eighteen-wheelers whooshed by and shook the car.

“OK. Try it again.” Mom turned the key, and gasoline spurted out of the carburetor like a geyser. “Whoa! Hold it! Stop it!” Dad hollered. “I’ve never seen a car do that before!” He looked at me through the window. “Gas pours forth like a freshet in spring.” Then he leaned on the grille, staring at the engine.

“So, what are we going to do?” Heidi asked, undaunted by her previous failures to elicit any response. When nobody answered this time, either, she evidently gave up trying to find out anything and changed to declarations. “It’s sure getting hot in here.”

Heidi seemed to have a need to fill any lull with sound. I never understood why. I have a reputation for talking, but I only talk when I have something to say. That didn’t seem to be a prerequisite for Heidi. She would spout phrases at regular intervals, like a snooze alarm. In between comments I tried to fathom the motivations that drove her to spasmodically engage her mouth without necessarily including her brain in the process. I speculated that when things got too quiet, she felt waves of silence swallowing her. Then she would panic and blurt out something, anything, like a drowning man clutching at driftwood.

Well, that’s one theory anyway. Maybe it was chemical; I don’t know. I do know that if I was already irritated, it drove me crazy. Especially when she would spontaneously point out the painfully obvious. During the first hour of the trip, when we were driving in the Big Thicket, she said, “There sure are a lot of trees out there.” When we got stuck behind a log truck on a back road, she said, “He sure is driving slow.” I figured that one day she would finally drive me crazy, and I would hit her in the head with a bat. I was restrained by the thought that if I did she would probably say, “That bat sure is hard.”

After several minutes, Dad opened the trunk, moved some hanging clothes, and pulled out the toolbox. Years of experience had taught him not to bury the tools under luggage.

When I saw the tools, I figured he had a plan. I pulled on my shoes and joined him in front of the car, screening my eyes from the relentless Texas sun behind the fresh crop of hair I had been growing for this trip.

“So, what’s the deal?”

“Well, I think it’s the needle valve in the carburetor. I think it’s stuck open and flooding the engine.” He wielded a wrench that he used to tap on the side of the carburetor. “I’m hoping that I can jar it enough so that the needle will drop back down into the hole and it will start working properly.” He wrinkled his nose to keep his glasses from slipping down. Sweat ran into his eyes, and he blinked and squinted.

I leaned on the fender long enough to realize I had made a mistake. Maroon paint and the Texas sun had rendered the fender hot enough to fry the proverbial egg. I jumped back and rubbed my arms gingerly, checking to see how much hair had been singed off. “How long will that take?”

“I don’t know.”

I relayed the information to the womenfolk, two-thirds of whom received it without comment. Every five or ten minutes Dad would have Mom try to start the car again, with strict instructions to stop immediately if she saw a geyser of gas. After about an hour of tapping and cranking, the car finally started, and we were on our way once again, however briefly.

Within another hour we were back on the side of the road, stewing. Dad got out and tried his tapping trick again. After a few more roadside sessions, ranging in length from fifteen minutes to two hours, Dad concluded that the air conditioner was causing the car to heat up, which was causing the needle valve to stick, which was causing the car to flood, which was causing all of us considerable frustration. We once again resorted to 4-60 AC, which seemed to reduce the frequency of, but not eliminate entirely, the roadside sessions. Both temperature and tempers inside the car were rising.

About the time we hit West Texas and were sitting, once again, sweltering, on the roadside, Mom reached her limit. “I’m ready to turn around and head back,” she announced. “If this is the way it’s going to be for the rest of the trip, I don’t want to go.”

I couldn’t imagine a mundane thing like being stranded on the side of the road for thirty minutes every other hour being a problem of sufficient magnitude to stop a Cloud vacation. After all, two years earlier we had taken a rambling trek through Michigan to Canada, Niagara Falls, New York City, and Washington, D.C. En route we had the exhaust manifold replaced in Ohio by a former deacon; the generator rebuilt in London, Canada, by an electrical engineer who had emigrated from Hungary; and the clutch replaced in Alabama by the governor’s third cousin on his mother’s side. What was a carburetor to that? Car problems were a way of life for the Clouds. The publishers of Chilton repair manuals sent us Christmas cards. Car part dealers had put kids through college because of us.

But Mom was insistent. Evidently the Eastern Seaboard experience had left its mark on her. Then occurred the event that could only happen to the wife of a preacher. (Consider it well, single female readers, and ponder carefully your choice of future mate.)

Taking a break from tapping, Dad was sitting in the car with his feet hanging out of the door, his shirt hanging limply on his back. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been studying James 1 for the past few weeks. Verses 2 through 4 say:”

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

“I guess this is just the Lord teaching us patience in a practical way,” he concluded. He wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve that had the cuffs unbuttoned and hanging loosely from his forearms.

I recognized this stuff right away. It came just before the part about asking for wisdom. He was at it again.

That ripped it as far as Mom was concerned. “I don’t want to learn patience on the side of the road in West Texas. Let’s go back to Fred, and I’ll learn it in the air-conditioning.”

I weighed the options. In one sense I was with Mom. If I had to sit on the side of a West Texas road in hundred-degree heat to learn patience, I could do without it. My interest in refining my soul had a limit, and that was definitely beyond it. On the other hand, I was fervently anticipating our arrival in California, the land of Ultimate Cool. I was willing to endure considerably more than occasional turns tapping on the carburetor in order to get there. My vote was to get to the nearest town of consequence and have the carburetor fixed. However, I was not consulted and kept my own counsel, not being one to volunteer advice where none was sought.

Heidi, however, had no such reservations. “Why don’t we stop at the next town and get the thing fixed?”

Dad sighed. “A new carburetor would cost several hundred dollars. If we did that, we would have to turn around anyway because we wouldn’t have enough money to finish the trip.”

“Oh.”
That’s what you get
, I thought. A bit presumptuous, too, I figured, since she hadn’t taken a single turn tapping on the carburetor.

Once again we were down to Dad insisting on getting practical with the Bible. It had worked with the broken bolt, but this was different. That time getting practical had brought a quick resolution to our impasse. But in this case, it seemed like getting practical meant prolonging the difficulty, enduring the problem rather than solving it. Would that really bring patience? While I tapped on the carburetor, which was now beginning to look like a part bought from a demolition-derby scrapyard, I listed a few other things it might produce, like frustration, rage, ulcers, heatstroke, or apostasy. It didn’t seem to be having the desired effect on Mom, at any rate. Just how long was it between the trying of the faith and the producing of patience? I was afraid to ask.