Into The Inferno Part 10

From the day I was old enough to talk, I'd said prayers over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'd prayed next to my father. I'd prayed next to my mother. At bedtime. Upon rising. We'd prayed aloud on the street, and we'd prayed while strangers gawked. Even if I hadn't dodged a life of belief eighteen years earlier, the past few years would have shaken my faith.

How could I pray to a G.o.d who let Lorie abandon our two beautiful children? Or a G.o.d who'd allowed my father, surely the most righteous of individuals, to end up staring at a heat register for ten hours at a pop? How could I pray to a G.o.d who would let Joel McCain and Holly Riggs live out their lives as vegetables? Or who'd let Stan Beebe's four kids become fatherless in the blink of an eye. Maybe you could believe in G.o.d if all that had happened, but I couldn't.

I couldn't drum up a thimbleful of faith to save my life.

19. THE SIXTH ELEMENT OF THE SAINTS OF CHRIST; OR,.

HOW TO PRAY FOR ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING AND NOT GET IT.

My mind was racing as I climbed into my truck and headed for Tacoma, the visit to my father igniting the wildfires of memory.

Until I ran away from home at sixteen, we'd lived on Capitol Hill in a huge, rambling showplace initially owned and built by one of the Mercers, an early pioneer family who now had a traffic-clogged Seattle street named after them.

A doctor owned the mansion today, but when we lived there it was called Six Points and was the official residence of the staff and founder of the Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ, the minimalist cult religion my father had adopted in his late twenties and clung to until the church virtually disintegrated around him like a cheap suit in the jungle. In those days the neighborhood was riddled with Saints, eight or ten families-the cognoscenti-living in the mansion at any given time, additional acolytes in nearby houses.

It was only a week after my father met my mother that he quit his engineering job at Boeing, sold his house, his car, his personal belongings down to his Boy Scout knife, and signed the proceeds over to William P. Markham, simultaneously becoming a pauper and a board member of the church. As with many religions, the engine of the Sixth Element was fueled by cold, hard cash.

My father had been toying with the notion for months, maybe years. For reasons that were never clear, my mother embraced the religion, too, and they moved into Six Points.

It took decades for me to figure out my father's interest in religion was predicated on a fear of death, on an unwillingness to believe death would be the end for him, his initial donation part of a long religious tradition of paying now for a cushy spot in the afterlife. n.o.body feared death more than my father, and Markham had convinced his followers he knew the secret of everlasting life.

Being raised around Markham was like living with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and one of the apostles all rolled into one. Until I was sixteen, my stolen glimpses into the real world had been sporadic and taken with much guilt and little stealth.

It was only years later that I found out William P. Markham had been a functionary in a tent revival show in his youth, a religious circus of sorts that toured the Deep South fleecing suckers who felt in need of salvation. Markham had been a child healer and an infant prodigy who knew how to fire up a crowd of religious enthusiasts the way a pyro knew how to fire up a warehouse.

In his teens, he left his uncle's revival group under cloudy circ.u.mstances and attended UCLA on a scholarship that was later discovered to have belonged to another student. He majored in economics there and at times alluded to spending his middle years drifting from town to town working elaborate con games. He also alluded to living off a succession of wealthy widows. Why these confessions should have endeared him to his followers baffled me, for even as a child I believed they were closer to the bone of his character than the charade he put on as a saint.

The religion's primary textbook was penned by Markham: Dreams of the Afterlife with the Lord Jesus Christ Dreams of the Afterlife with the Lord Jesus Christ. Even as an old man, long after the church's demise, my father could, and frequently did, quote long pa.s.sages verbatim from this tome.

Members of the Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ were encouraged to be model citizens. We talked about the devil, but the evil in people's hearts was implied more than spelled out, as was the end product of that evil, which of course included punishment after death, punishment that we as adherents of the real truth real truth would not suffer. would not suffer.

Just as we were destined for a heaven beyond comprehension if we conscientiously followed William P. Markham's interpretation of the Bible and obeyed his tenets, everybody else on earth everybody else on earth was headed for h.e.l.l, of which there were, according to Markham, twenty-seven degrees. My father harped on the twenty-seven degrees endlessly and believed Catholics and Democrats would occupy the lowest rungs in Hades. was headed for h.e.l.l, of which there were, according to Markham, twenty-seven degrees. My father harped on the twenty-seven degrees endlessly and believed Catholics and Democrats would occupy the lowest rungs in Hades.

In many ways, ours had been the most comfortable view of the universe possible. We were G.o.d's chosen. The elite of the elite. We were going to embrace everlasting life and grace. n.o.body else was. Imagine a world of billions where only a few hundred are destined to escape the fires of h.e.l.l. Later I realized virtually no religion was immune from the conceit that they had The Truth and no one else did.

My father often announced his belief that only a few dozen true believers would end up in heaven with us. I never could figure out why he wanted heaven to be so exclusive. Sounded boring as h.e.l.l.

Typically, we spent two or three hours a day in prayer meetings, although at times of church or world crisis a decree from Markham might double or treble that. One hour before breakfast; Bible lessons after school; a prayer meeting each evening. Sat.u.r.days and Wednesdays were relegated to recruitment. Until I was twelve, I followed either my father or my mother as they went door-to-door or positioned themselves in some public place where they could proselytize. Virtually n.o.body but the dimwits, the mentally ill, or people trying to convert us to their their religion stopped to listen. religion stopped to listen.

Even though they were almost 100 percent ineffectual, our annual hours on the streets were pie-charted and color-coded on a wall near the front door and were a source of great pride and discussion among the members.

This ritual, done without complaint or question by all the followers of Markham, annoyed and humiliated me more than anything else. What particularly galled me were the jeers, whispered criticisms, sour looks, and outright squabbles with other street Bible scholars, of which there seemed a limitless supply. My father loved debate, and the arguments pitched him into his element.

My mother's good looks were a net for the weak and profligate, the l.u.s.tful and fallen, the needy and the spiritually barren-usually geeky males who would attend one or two of our services and then, when my mother no longer showed any interest in them, would vanish forever. Shy by nature, I never got used to parading my faith before strangers, though from my earliest years I was expected to be a partic.i.p.ant, and even though it cut across the basic grain of my personality, as a youngster I'd been fairly effective. As I grew older I became sullen and rebellious and manufactured a hundred small tricks to sabotage recruitment efforts or to be elsewhere when my father debated Scripture in public.

The most embarra.s.sing moment of my life up until the day Lorie left me was when Marcie Birkenheimer and her mother walked past us on a corner of Tenth Avenue East as my father regaled indifferent pa.s.sersby with quotations from the Scriptures and from Dreams of the Afterlife Dreams of the Afterlife. I was in eighth grade and had nursed a crush on Marcie all term. The look of abject pity she bestowed on me humbled me down to the fillings in my teeth.

The Saints' children went to public schools and were expected to be at the top of the cla.s.s in all academic subjects, a goal I never achieved. Because of my faltering grades I was perpetually in hot water with Markham and was tutored by one aspiring Saint after another. During my early teens my tutor was a woman named Constance Desmond, sweet-natured and unaffected, a body to kill for, with a complete absence of pretense. She had a way of leaning against my arm as we looked over one of my papers so that the heat of her breast sent a fever straight to my brain. Under the table I would invariably achieve an erection. Except for the b.o.n.e.rs, Constance's tutelage served no purpose, and my grades grew worse. We were both punished for this, she by being repeatedly rea.s.signed as my tutor, me with additional hours on the street.

I was in love with Constance, and since by then virtually all of my a.s.signed proselytizing time was secretly spent at the downtown public library, where I habitually broke Markham's injunction against reading literature about other religions, I took the punishment stoically.

Several times during this period, one of the elders ordered me to wear a cardboard sign around my neck: IF I TRIED HARDER, I'D BE SMARTER, IF I TRIED HARDER, I'D BE SMARTER, or, or, MY GRADES ARE BAD, I AM SAD. MY GRADES ARE BAD, I AM SAD. There was a synagogue down the street that had dozens of my signs hidden behind it. There was a synagogue down the street that had dozens of my signs hidden behind it.

These were long miserable months laced with exhilarating minutes with Constance, whose beautiful brown eyes flooded with tears whenever she saw a cardboard sign around my neck. In later years, I realized Constance had been struggling with her own demons, that the accidental pressure of her breast against my arm might not have been so accidental after all. Her husband, a huge, greasy, balding man, would have done almost anything to reach Sainthood, including, I often speculated, cutting off his own p.e.c.k.e.r, though Markham did not have a basketful of p.e.c.k.e.rs in the back room.

That I knew of.

In later years, I came to the realization that Constance had been as lonely as I was.

And perhaps almost as h.o.r.n.y.

Nothing ever happened between us. The emotional fallout from such a liaison would have destroyed Constance and certainly would have paralyzed me.

My affiliation with Six Points left me feeling like an oddball, as if there were constant parties and friendships going on around me to which I not only wasn't invited, but which I didn't even know about. It wasn't until I'd been in the fire department in North Bend for a good ten years and had two daughters that I truly overcame the sense of being an outsider.

My father, a natural-born lackey and former engineer, quickly became an indispensable cog of the inner circle. Mother was a tad too candid in recounting her wilding years during our weekly Confessions, a recounting that probably kept her from attaining the inner circle with my father. Their disparity of status as Saints was a source of much friction between them, as were the misspent years of my mother's youth.

Then, abruptly and without warning, when I was eight, my mother disappeared from Six Points and from my life.

My father was not normally a cruel man, but one night he told me my mother had left because I wasn't following the tenets of the Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ to her standards, that my malfeasance had sparked her desertion. Even at eight, I found the story unlikely and barely credible, but after he repeated it enough, part of me believed him. It might have been that I was a symbol of her s.e.xual congress with other men. It might have been that he was trying to shift the blame for her departure onto someone else. Or maybe he was merely trying to make me a better Saint.

Whatever the reason for his cruelty, for years I strove to be a better Saint in the hopes it would bring my mother back. I even tried to walk on water. Can you imagine a more pathetic kid?

Four years later, almost to the week, my mother reappeared as suddenly and as inexplicably as she'd vanished, taking up the s.p.a.ce in our lives she'd filled previously as if she'd never been gone. n.o.body talked about it except Constance, who once intimated that while my mother was physically a strong woman, there was some moral weakness she needed to overcome. I never learned where my mother spent those four years, or what she'd done, or who she'd done it with. I don't believe my father ever found out, either. Were I to hazard a guess, I would say she ran off with a man-a practice that became a habit later in life-perhaps someone she'd met on the street while hawking religion.

My first sixteen years we lived in rooms on the third floor at Six Points, sharing a bath down the hall and eating downstairs with the others in a communal dining hall. Three weeks after my sixteenth birthday, I ran away and spoke to an army recruiter in San Diego. I hadn't done well in school, but I must have learned something in the public library, because after they tested me, they decided I was army material. A forged parental signature and a fake ID with a backdated birth date completed my induction. I spent four years in the army, during which my only contact with my past was an infrequent exchange of letters with Constance Desmond. Years after she left Six Points and remarried, she sent me a photo of herself with three small children, all of them looking happier than crooked politicians. It made me feel good to know she'd finally found her place in the world.

My mother left my father again, this time for good. The church eventually disintegrated, and my father moved to the Southwest. When his third wife died in a car accident, he moved from Arizona to North Bend. Later, I failed to tell Allyson and Britney he'd had a stroke. It was only one of my bad decisions in the past few years.

I couldn't help wondering who might visit if I I were in 111. My girls, of course. But children grew bored easily, and were I in the same state as Joel McCain or Holly, they wouldn't come back often. The guys from work might show up, but their stopovers would be perfunctory and less frequent as time wore on. Karrie would visit once or twice, no doubt thinking about the Christmas party at McCain's, when we'd had too many drinks and ended up on the sofa in the bas.e.m.e.nt. were in 111. My girls, of course. But children grew bored easily, and were I in the same state as Joel McCain or Holly, they wouldn't come back often. The guys from work might show up, but their stopovers would be perfunctory and less frequent as time wore on. Karrie would visit once or twice, no doubt thinking about the Christmas party at McCain's, when we'd had too many drinks and ended up on the sofa in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Aside from my girls, there was really no one who cared.

My friends in the department were mostly gone. And as far as women went . . . I'd buzzed from one to another like a wasp moving from plate to plate at a picnic. Newcastle said I was searching for the mother I never had. "Men with abandonment issues," he said, "like to dump women before the women dump them." At the time, I'd thought his p.r.o.nouncement ridiculous.

Until she ran out on me, Lorie had been the only woman in my life, but this year alone there'd been Karrie, Suzanne, Holly, Heather, Mary Kay, the other Suzanne, Tricia, and Tina, still friends all. Except for Karrie, I'd made love with all of them and then dumped them. Karrie and I had not consummated the relationship, though we'd come as close as you could without actually having intercourse.

At the time I'd had my reasons for dumping all those women, but right now I couldn't think what they were.

20. FIELD & STREAM, LADIES' HOME JOURNAL, ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST.

It was tougher finding a parking spot near Tacoma General during the day. On the third floor I asked about Holly. A practical nurse with dark eyes looked at me and said, "Your name Swope?"

"That's right."

"We have instructions. You're not to visit any patient on this floor."

"Dr. Riggs in the hospital? I'd like to speak to her."

The nurse turned abruptly and went through a door behind the counter, where I could hear her speaking to someone. When she returned, she said, "Dr. Riggs is not available."

"Tell her I drove an hour to see her."

After a moment a second nurse emerged from the back room, closing the door behind her. The first nurse began shuffling paperwork on the desk. The other one turned her back to me. When an Asian man with the look of a lifelong menial worker came down the hallway and stepped behind the counter, I said, "Excuse me. Can you please go back there and tell Dr. Riggs I'm going to wait out here until h.e.l.l freezes over?"

He glanced at the two nurses quizzically.

That was when I began singing. At the top of my lungs. "Peggy Sue. Peggy Sue. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue. Oh, Pegggggy, my Peggy Sue-ue-ue-ue-ue . . ." Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I was a credible singer, but today my screeching was horribly off-key.

Stephanie Riggs popped out of the door like a cork out of a bottle, face compressed in anger, strawberry-blond hair down around her shoulders. Several more nurses and aides showed up behind her at the counter.

"You're making a scene," Riggs said.

"I can make a bigger one."

"Call Security."

"I know what's wrong with your sister."

"Bulls.h.i.t. Call Security."

I thrust out my hands. "She have this?"

"Hold up," Stephanie said to the nurse who was dialing Security. Stephanie stepped around the counter, took one of my hands in hers, turned it over, then walked brusquely down the corridor in the direction of Holly's room.

When I followed, the nurse with the phone said, "You still want me to call?" Stephanie didn't hear her.

As soon as we got to the room, I lost all my zip. Holly was in a wheelchair, head sagging at an angle that looked painful. Nothing else in the room had changed. Her eyes were open and unfocused. Her sister leaned over and kissed Holly's brow, a move that provoked no reaction from my former girlfriend.

Stephanie Riggs reached under the blankets and brought her sister's right hand out.

It was pale and waxy-looking, just like mine.

"Was it like that from the beginning?" I asked.

"From a few days before she went down. At least according to this." Stephanie produced a small black journal from the pocket of her lab coat. I found it touching that she carried her sister's diary on her person. G.o.d only knew what was written about me in there.

I handed her the card I'd been carrying.

She sat down, the three-by-five card in one hand, her sister's diary in the other, comparing the itinerary of Stan Beebe's last few days with that of her sister's. Brahms played in the background.

"Where'd you get this?" Stephanie asked, looking up with a new openness and sincerity in her dusty-blue eyes. In a heartbeat we'd gone from squabbling like archenemies to whispering like lovers. "These symptoms are almost exactly what my sister reported. Where'd you get it?"

It took ten minutes to explain about Stan Beebe, Joel McCain, Chief Newcastle, and Jackie Feldbaum.

When I finished, Stephanie caressed her sister's hair and pocketed the journal, my list of symptoms tucked into the pages. She took both my hands in hers. "They weren't like this yesterday, were they? Your hands didn't have this crust yesterday."

"No. But Stan Beebe's did."

"Why didn't you tell me about your friends?"

"I did."

"Do you know what this means?"

"It means my life is over."

"Yes. That. And I'm sorry. But it means my sister didn't try to kill herself. That probably doesn't seem important to you, but our father killed himself. I thought . . ."

"It might be a family thing?"

"Yes. You have any other symptoms?"

"Yesterday I had the shakes."

"Bad?"

I held out one hand and demonstrated.

"And today?"

"A headache. My legs feel weak."

"You're describing the symptoms my sister doc.u.mented in her diary. You mind if we run some blood tests? I'd like a dermatologist to take a look at your hands. He said he'd never encountered anything like Holly's before. If yours are the same . . ."

"Back in late May we found a methamphetamine lab in the woods. Most of those meth cooks don't live past their midforties. We tried to be careful-even had a private company come in and do the cleanup-but most of the people who've had this thing were there. Maybe all of them. I'd have to go back and check the daybook."

"Did you see Holly around that time?"

"No. We were only speaking on the phone by then. What we're looking for, I guess, is some event that connects Joel McCain; our chief, who went down like Holly; and Jackie Feldbaum. And of course, Stan."

"Jackie? What happened to him?"

"Her. Slammed into the rear of an eighteen-wheeler in her sports car."

"She was a firefighter?"

"A volunteer. I just can't believe we didn't all incur this together. We had to have. Don't you think?"

"I do think. Is there any place where you all were at the same time?"

"Only that truck accident in February, where Holly and I met."

"All of you?"