Lucky's Girl (29 page)

Ellen was a godsend.

And Ellen looked…
good
. She still wore lumpy church-lady duds and old lady hair and makeup, but beneath that prematurely gray exterior, something had sparked to life. Maybe it was just her bearing, but really, she looked younger, leaner, hungrier.

She smiled, laughing with his kids. Not the stiff smile of a tired middle-aged woman, but a loose and lively one.
Sunny
. His kids smiled and laughed with her. She had Christian coloring books and in between bites of hillbilly heaven they colored Noah’s Ark purple and King Herod orange. They smiled and laughed some more.

And somehow this was worrying him too. They could become attached, enough to want to go to church and see
Jesus
again.

The one thing his daughter had said to him earlier that morning was, “Why didn’t you tell us about this place, Daddy?”

He’d given her a blank and stupid look. That was all he’d been good for lately. She had rolled her eyes, shaken her head, and had gone back to her iPad.

He was sitting on the couch while they were at the little folding breakfast table where he’d eaten generic oatmeal every morning of his childhood. He got up, started to ask if she’d mind watching the kids while he ran some errands, but she dismissed him with a wave and an easy smile.
Of course, that’s why I’m here dummy, now go away and let your children breathe.

He couldn’t argue with this unspoken logic.

He was the problem here. Not them. Not their circumstances.

It was him.

Him and his stale energy. And he needed to get his head out of his ass and get off his dumbass cross. As he walked out the door she told him, “Our God is bigger than this. You’re home when you’re done running.”

She’d broken him with her pitying smile, and he’d had to pull off to the side of the road to bawl like an infant behind the wheel of his truck.

A blunt thumping interrupted his grief. He was stunned by the face at the window. So many years had gone by, a lifetime begun and ended, and now Uncle Frank’s old friend Jerry Kaminsky was looking back at him. Kenny had seen him at the church, but had bugged out before speaking with him. It had seemed more important to evacuate. He’d looked terrible then, but now he looked as if he was at death’s door. No man wearing a police uniform should look like they’re the one in need of rescue, but here he was.

Kenny smelled the alcohol on Jerry’s breath before he had the window rolled completely down. “Officer Kaminsky.”

Jerry nodded, his breathing labored. “Kenny McCord, long time. I’d say you look terrible but that would be a case of pot and kettle. You okay?”

Kenny nodded weakly. “Yeah… no. You?”

Jerry slumped against the side of the truck, shaking his head. “I was headed to the station to meet with Errol and Frankie.
Town fathers
. Jesus. I’m thinking you should join us.”

Right now, a confab like this was the last thing Kenny wanted to do but he needed somewhere to be. He needed friends or some approximation of them, even if it was a drunk, a mailman, and a bartender he hadn’t spoken with in twenty something years.

***

“You put a gun in his face and beat him up?” Frankie the Bartender was having trouble believing anything about everything going on around him. He was a practical man. He’d kept Frankie’s Bar open for thirty years in the worst economy in America. That mainly was due to his stake in Errol’s Weed operation, but still it spoke volumes about his responsibility.

“I never knew any of that, I had no idea. My uncle, he never told me anything.”

Kenny was sitting in a folding metal chair, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

Jerry nodded grimly. “He never asked and we never told. He clearly didn’t want to know.”

Kenny shook his head still, having trouble with the whole conversation. “You told him you were gonna kill him if he came back. Well… he’s back.
Are
you gonna kill him?”

They all looked at the floor, silent and powerless. Wheezy old men, save for Kenny.

Kenny grimaced. “I was there, I saw how Christie changed. I saw how he bent Mary and Christie to his will. I saw how Christie looked when she lost it.”

He paused, looking down and squeezing his eyes shut. This part
hurt
to think about. “But none of us saw him force Christie to kill her folks and Mary.”

A surprised look crossed his face as he said that name;
Mary
. He hadn’t allowed her face to come into his mind, hadn’t spoken her name in so many years.

Mary
.

He exhaled hard. His head hurt. “You can’t magically make somebody do what you want them to do. You can’t. How do we even know that Lucky’s up to no good? Maybe he just wants to be the preacher man. Maybe that’s all.”

All of a sudden Kenny felt like he could breathe again, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The turnaround was so sudden he couldn’t help noticing it.

Jerry looked at him with a kind of sad and amused recognition. “I’ll bet you feel better now, don’t you, Kenny?”

Kenny looked back at him, surprised and confused.

Jerry’s smile dropped. “Your uncle never told you. He wasn’t much good at telling, but we finally figured it all out.”

Kenny put his hands to his temples. The memory was coming back, but so was the pain. “Uncle Frank said something about him shooting animals and taking them out to Grove Island…”

Jerry pulled out a bottle of Canadian Mist and set out four Styrofoam cups. “There are things that only me and Frank McCord knew. And eventually the poor old Rev. Things which are hard to understand,
things that fight against being understood
. It’s time I told you the whole story.”

***

All across Elton, phones rang and doorbells buzzed, names were shouted and people stopped; The Great News had come to Elton. Our God is Here, Our God is Now, put aside your fear and open your heart. Tonight. Come to Our Church Tonight. And Miracles will follow.

When nightfall finally came, four men staggered from the tiny police station drunk, confused and scared. Jerry had told a long-forgotten story of a time when he’d become suspicious of a boy named Lucky.

He’d talked to his friend Frank McCord and they’d agreed, despite the fact that it had made little sense, on one thing: Lucky could influence the human mind far beyond what even the most charismatic could achieve. People thought he walked on water, and it wasn’t just because he was good looking and a great speaker.

He had a real power, and it had come from something he’d been doing on Grove Island for most of his life. Frank had spotted Lucky in the past shooting animals with a pellet gun then taking them to Grove Island. He had watched and waited, and when he’d seen him doing it again he had called Sheriff Jerry. Neither had any idea what they were about to witness. Lucky had disemboweled the animals alive. Then he’d appeared to examine the organs. It was sick, it was evil and so they’d arrested him.

It was only then that they’d gotten a real taste of his ability to control people’s actions with his voice alone. They’d had to put on headphones so they wouldn’t be able to hear him speak otherwise he’d just have told them to release him, and they’d known they would have. When he’d been in custody, one of the girls Lucky had brainwashed had gone berserk, killing another girl then murdering her parents.

Jerry had shot her just as she was about to kill Kenny.

Kenny then told his part of the tale, how Lucky had been his best friend, albeit a jealous and manipulative one. But towards the end he’d gotten callous and mean. He’d forced Mary to fuck Kenny while he was watching. He’d used Kenny’s own teenage inadequacy, and he’d done it because he could, because he got off on seeing people dance to his tune. Then he’d taken the rich man’s daughter and had willed them all into a sexual tryst. He’d even videotaped it and had directed it like a movie.

Kenny tried to explain his shame for doing these things, not because he hadn’t liked doing them, but because these girls had been used, bent to Lucky’s will.

It was a kind of rape, just one that could never be prosecuted.

But then Lucky had gotten arrested while Christie had snapped like a caged animal.

The next day Lucky had left, and Kenny had only stayed a few days more himself.
He had to leave
. He’d left for a new life in Texas, and Elton, Lucky, Uncle Frank, and everything else had become a thing shut far away. He’d never examined those days, whether because he couldn’t or wouldn’t he wasn’t sure, but when his life had disintegrated in Houston, he hadn’t been able to get back to Elton quick enough.

And now they were here, very drunk, and the questions had turned to
why
and
how.

But all around Elton the conversation about Lucky was taking on a different complexion. He was on everyone’s minds, had been on everyone’s lips for days now. Whether they knew it or not, people had changed. Women wearing perfume and dressing up, without even knowing why was just one example.

Something was in the air, something was more than
just
in the air.

An enormous sense of anticipation could be felt. Something big, something much bigger than any of them, or Elton, was about to happen.

And now they knew when; this very night.

The previous evening only a few had gone to see, and they’d seen, and they’d heard, and now they
knew
.

Lucky had healed them.

Lucky had shown them.

Just what they’d seen or heard hadn’t been specific, but see and hear they had.

The first to arrive in the church parking lot were the crowd from the night before. The men were dressed in suits and the women in dresses and heels, dressed in their poor fashion for a night on the town.

And the women’s clothing wasn’t the only difference. They looked younger, more vibrant, less grey, much more alive. And no one had thought to question why the women had dressed this way, many of whom had never done so even once in their lives, and would certainly never dress that way being that they were the most devout, the most involved in the church.

Among them were the AA people with a new and vibrant look. They claimed loudly that they were cured, that they were literally no longer alcoholics. They said this despite knowing that there was no cure for alcoholism. They now flatly rejected that. After a single sermon from Lucky, they declared that everything they’d known was now firmly in the past.

Their God was Here, Their God was Now.

They talked amongst themselves, walking through the crowd, witnessing that Lucky had borne the Great News, that soon they would be liberated from the System and would be one Tribe, and when that happened they would begin their worldwide Mission.

As the sun went down they began trekking as one across the empty expanse of Lake Elton to hear the Great News. As before, Lucky was standing on the pier, but tonight he was wearing his robes again. He stood there, eyes closed in deep prayer, chanting softly, speaking in tongues with the same pattern and cadence as the night before, but ending on a separate refrain.

Ket-mat-na-roz, keh-pi-uh, ja-quey, tae-lae, bas-nef-tek.

Wen-ta-cho! Wen-ta-cho! Wen-ta-cho!

The crowd stood before him, silent and expectant. They’d seen people speak in tongues before. Some had believed it was divinely inspired, others were not so convinced, just chalking it up to superstition or emotional outburst. But to a man, none no longer doubted that Lucky was the real deal. Lucky was no phony, no snake oil guru or tent revival huckster. Somehow, in this most unlikely of places, a real modern day prophet had arisen.

And he was able to work miracles.

He stood, looking tired, as if what he’d done had taken a lot out of him. He raised his hands, then lowered them to signal that everyone should sit. Last night’s crowd was in front, eagerly taking their seats. The ones behind, still a little hesitant, took a few moments.
He wants us to sit in the dirt in a dry lakebed?

He looked out at the crowd, weariness plainly written on his face. He spoke just loud enough to be heard. “
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”

The sky was darkening, showing a full palette of bright silver stars. The last remnants of sunset lit Grove Island from the far side, enough for the crowd to see, and a vast whispering susurrated in the leaves of the Big Tree, creaking and groaning filling the air.

The Big Tree was being blown on winds that no one could feel or hear.

“This is our House. This is our Church. Our God is
Here
. Our God is
Now
.”

The initiates from the night before stared up in unrestrained joy. Some shifted to their knees and held their hands in reverential prayer.

Lucky looked over them to the newer faces at the rear of the assembly.

“Do you want to hear the Great News? You’re here, you must have come for something, and in your hearts you know there’s something waiting for you here, something is happening that could take you out of your
comfort zone
… Something could happen which could make you into new creatures. Nothing will ever be the same. Do you want your old life? Do you want to hang on to what you have in
Elton Township
?”

He stayed silent for a moment, waiting for his words to sink in.

“Do you
want
what you have?”

The crowd looked around at each other, looked at themselves, but didn’t like what they were seeing. There really wasn’t much to admire. Some had been saved, and saved, and saved. Some had gotten sober more times than they could count. And that was just for starters. When they looked in that mirror they didn’t want to be themselves.

“It’s easy to see the damage the System has done to you. It’s written on your faces, it’s visible behind your eyes. You don’t think it can get better because it never has. You’ve tried and tried but have never made it out of the maze. But the System tells you to cling to the past, to fear your own possibility. You’ve got to put the System to the side. Just try it on for one night.
Be
your possibility!”