Rich Friends (40 page)

And he sat on the highest step.

Awed by his reappearance, filled with apostate guilt, aware of reverting to their old contentiousness, they understood how those Israelites had felt when Moses tromped back from Sinai. Meek, they sat where they were. On dew-slick tiles. Genesis gazed down at them. He could sit for hours like this, erect as if a yardstick were against his spine.

His voice came from deep in his barrel chest. First he spoke of the unique gift of the moment, then he shifted to former lives. Throw off your past, he said. “There isn't a thing that ties any of us to our old, evil selves, not if we don't choose to be bound.”

He gazed at each one. When it was Cricket's turn, her breath caught. The hypnotic brown eyes seemed to pull her from herself.

“What is the greatest fear a little child can have?” Pause. “That he's not loved. Each time his father hits him, each time he sees someone getting an extra cookie, he's thrown into that lack of love. Rejection. He wants to hit out. The child grows up. He forgets the reason for his terror, but he keeps hitting. I've seen men killing over nothing, but it wasn't nothing. It was that lack of love. We each have it. It moves us all.” Long pause. “I am going to tell you about Giles Cooke.” Third person. This man has no connection with me.

Orion straightened a leg. Genesis stared at him. Orion was still.

“Giles Cooke was born in Oklahoma, on a dirt farm. His folks were poor, and a great Depression had fallen on the land. And there was a drought. No rain. Dust, dust, always that crumbling, dried-out earth which wouldn't grow corn or any green, living thing. The house was kept shut tight, but dust filtered in little lines under doors and windows. Dust was Giles's first memory. Dust and going to bed hungry. A brother was born. Giles's mama fed it a bottle and cuddled it, gave it love. Love. One day it got a fever. The next night it was dead. Remorse burned in Giles. So often had he wished his little brother dead, he was sure he had killed him. His mama cried all the time. And his daddy ran off. His mama took Giles to San Diego—she came from there. No work anyplace, and she took up with sailors. She'd leave Giles at his aunt's, teetering off in her high heels with some sailor. She'd be gone days. At ten Giles joined a gang. They were older, but he was tough and quick and he had a switchblade knife. If they wanted money, the gang found some drunk sailor on Main Street to roll. Giles saw these sailors not as human beings but as something on which to avenge himself. Jumping them, he felt like God's punishment. The war came. Giles stood in line to enlist in the Army.” Genesis wet his lips. His red mouth shone in his graying beard. “He was a commando. He could knife a man with no more feelings than a butcher slaughtering a steer. He was a fine soldier. He killed nine Germans. He earned medals and citations and the war ended.”

“Amen,” said Orion.

“In 'forty-seven he got into a fight with a man who beat him at poker. Not because the man had cheated him. No. Because the man was rich. Giles envied him his Caddie and wad of bills. The man had a knife, too.” Genesis pulled his robe to show his right shoulder. A long, pale scar ridged from the heavy neck to the base of the arm.

Shocked whispers.

“The man died. A coroner's jury said Giles, the war hero, was acting in self-defense, and let him go. In 'fifty-nine he cut a fat little shopkeeper because he coveted the man's wife. The man died. This time Giles was convicted of manslaughter. He did time. This isn't seeking pity for him. But all his life he'd been lost, lonely, and the cancer of envy had eaten him. In Chino, for the first time, he looked into his soul. A pockmarked, ugly soul.”

Magnificat gave a long sigh.

“When he got out, he went into the desert. He lived alone in a shack outside Indio. Thinking, always thinking. He came to realize his soul was ugly because he'd been living in pain. Because of his own pain, he'd inflicted pain on others.” Genesis stopped and took a minute before going on. “One day there was a sandstorm, a bad one that scoured paint from cars. Giles took off his clothes and stood in that gritty gale until he was bleeding. He submitted to physical pain until he was rubbed down to his own damaging pain.” Genesis gazed at them, his heavy gray brows pulled together, a stern look, a reminder that each of us has committed a treachery so great that we fear to pull it from the darkness of our own mind. “Afterward, he washed his blood away, he drank cool water. And he laughed. Trees are torn to nakedness in the fall. They are reborn each Easter.”

Magnificat sobbed aloud.

“And I was reborn to a world of love. We can each have our share of that love. Love is possible for everyone.” His gravelly voice choked.

Now they were all weeping. He descended the shallow steps. Everyone hugged him, hugged one another, then, linking hands to form a chain, they wound into the great hall, reading the commandments in unison, a vaguely theatrical ceremony that caught in the throat. They didn't go outside until the setting sun had touched flat clouds with red.

Orion followed Cricket. “Been thinking about the doctor?”

“What?”

“We were talking the other day. When it comes, there's gotta be a doctor.”

“Why?”

“All I know is in movies women have complications.”

Cricket, also, had learned obstetrics from problematic onscreen birthings. But she knew, too, that throughout time women have borne healthy infants without the benefit of the AMA. And Cricket was Cricket. Never having suffered a queasy morning, how could she imagine any difficulty? Indian squaws had gone into a bush alone, emerging with neatly wrapped papooses. She and her baby, they would be naturals.

“You're so little,” Orion fretted.

“I'm pure Sioux.”

And she went back to brooding about Genesis.

5

Her doubts about Genesis lingered through the next day, Sunday. In the afternoon she went out alone, climbing the same hill that she and Orion had climbed last spring. A north wind pushed cobbled clouds and molded her loose gray poncho to her abdomen. Seen like this, her pregnancy was very apparent—for any who chose to see.

She was afraid. Why? Why? All yesterday and this gloomy morning the Select had repeated how beautiful was Genesis, a truly beautiful man, he had risen through many hells to rebirth, a fancy, Dantean phrase which Genesis himself had originated. Cricket's wide-set gray eyes saw with a stubbornly innocent vision. The child might love her emperor, but always she would note that he didn't wear snappy new clothes—or any clothes at all. She couldn't forget the dead. A poker-playing Cadillac owner, a fat little husband. Nine anonymous Germans. (In war, though, it's kill or be killed: should soldiers count?) Genesis was reborn. Fine. Yet Cricket saw, too, that eleven men no longer brushed their teeth or tasted fresh bread. They were dead.

She climbed faster. Her thighs spread as if she were on skis.

All at once light drained from the hills. There was no bird sound. The eternal insects were silent. A lizard darted into chinquapin. She halted. Gazing around at motionless, empty hills, she thought of autumn, a season of death and dying, autumn, time of repentance.

Killing, she thought. Killing.

Lightning zigzagged. The electric smell of ozone, then thunder rolling. Cricket's heart hit the sides of her rib cage. Usually storms didn't frighten her. Now, though, she was terrified. And oddly, this fear had nothing to do with Genesis or killing. This fear was irrational—Monster X chasing her, the Unknown breathing down her neck.

She raced pell-mell down the hill. Lines of rain hit her, immediately gluing her hair to her head, reaching under her poncho. Her sandles were deep in mud.

Another lightning bolt strafed the hills. The thunder's nearness panicked her. She saw the oak. She didn't watch for roots.

As she fell, instinctively she protected her stomach with her hands. Her head slammed against the exposed root.

Stars.

She really did see stars.

She lifted her head. Pain shot through her right eye. She touched the orbital bone. A lump already was rising. With difficulty, she pushed to her feet.

“Jesus Christ!” Orion forgot the rule against blasphemy. A yellow slicker held over his head, he'd come about fifty feet from the peak-roofed entry gate to search for her. “What happened?”

“I tripped.”

“You sure did. You're covered with mud.”

“Do I have a black eye?”

“I can't tell—yes. Your forehead's grazed.”

And taking her hand, he led her to Genesis' room, where necessary bandaging was done. Rain drummed on roof tiles, rain rushed in gutters. Genesis examined her and turned on the tub. The faucet was barely audible in the rain.

Cricket's wrists ached. The wet poncho gave her trouble.

“Here, daughter,” said Genesis. “Let me.”

Asexual and kind, he helped with her mud-sopping clothes. Cricket wasn't physically modest. Still, she was pretty glad Orion had been dismissed.

“Hey.” Startled, she looked at Genesis.

“What is it?”

“My stomach. Everything's all weird.”

“How?”

“Tight, sort of.”

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice concerned as he helped her into the high, claw-footed tub.

“No, not exactly. Genesis, nothing should be happening for two months.”

“You're fine,” he said. His deep voice resonated with certainty.

The tautness ended. He went into his room, leaving the door ajar. She moved her grazed hand, rippling warm water, distorting her small, round body.

Clean, dry, she stretched on his mat. The blankets smelled of him. He plastered adhesive and gauze to her forehead. “There,” he said.

This time her veins and arteries froze. Orion, bringing her a glass of milk, stared at her, his face whitening.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“My stomach.”

“Shouldn't she, you know, be in a hospital?” he stammered apologetically.

Genesis straightened the wick of a fat candle, holding it to a coal. “I've birthed plenty of babies,” he said.

They looked at him.

“In the desert,” Genesis said. “One a breech.”

“But this is early,” Orion said.

“About that,” Genesis smiled in his beard, “there isn't anything anybody can do. Son, in this rain we're stuck. You question too much. Have faith in the now.”

Cricket closed her eyes, breathing deep. Lamaze and yoga, she'd heard, are alike.

“Again?” Genesis asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Next time, let me know.”

She did. He went back in the bathroom, soaping his hands and arms.

Orion watched in the doorway. “Maybe …” He hesitated. “If we go real slow, maybe we could make it to Monterey.”

Genesis blotted his arms. His face rocklike, he gazed at Orion. Commandment No. 2:
Incline your heart to the teachings of your Spiritual Father and obey him in all matters
. “Son, we need your help.”

She let herself go with the pain, she followed the pain like an old-fashioned waltz partner, dipping and bowing and whirling with the pain when it was with her, relaxing when it wasn't, pain and she moved together in the dance of birth. “There's a good girl,” Genesis said, wiping her forehead, avoiding the bandaged square. Candles flickered and she and pain were away, arching and prancing across every dimension, including time. Rain beat windows. Orion disappeared and returned. The smell of olives. Genesis poured oil on his hands, deliberate yet charged with energy like an actor just before the curtain rises.

“Push,” he said.

“Push!”

PUSH.

KEEP PUSHING.

NOW
!

Her body was being torn in two, her partner, pain, dragging at her from either side. Ripping, tearing her right up to the rectum.

“Good girl.”

And an infant mewed as he was laid on her stomach to expel the afterbirth.

“Never had one come this quick.” Genesis chuckled. Scissors glinted on thick purple cord.

“Isn't he awful small?” Orion asked.

“He's a fine boy.”

“What about eyedrops?”

Genesis didn't reply. He was sponging the baby, wrapping him in two clean, handwoven napkins, laying his bird weight in Cricket's arms.

This was no fantasy infant. This was a person. Her son. His eyes opened with bewildered, unfocusing acceptance. They were very dark blue. Pale hair, thin and flat to the throbbing skull, formed a perfect widow's peak. The tip of his nose had a miniature Van Vliet knob. His mouth opened in a pink yawn that wasn't even. He looks like Vliet, she thought, Vliet and a baby duck.

She held her forefinger to his palm, and his fingers curled, they were like tiny pink worms. How could such threads of flesh grasp so tight? However bad things get, she thought, whatever goes wrong in the world, these fingers make it okay by me. An expression of awe came into her face. She looked up at Genesis. He nodded.

“It's always a miracle,” he said. His eyes were wet.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Genesis blew out most of the candles. The room was filled with wax odors and something salty, ripe, that Cricket thought of as
human
.

“Have a name?” Genesis asked.

She touched a finger to incredibly soft, white hair. “Van Vliet,” she said.

“Like the markets?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking that tomorrow she'd explain.

“There's a name he won't keep.” Genesis bundled the towels he'd put under her. “In the morning we'll show him off.”

“What's the time?”

Genesis peered at his old Benrus. “Eleven thirty,” he said. “October twelve. Van Vliet's a Libra.”

The three of them smiled.

“Tomorrow,” Genesis said, “we'll have us a Libra party.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. And thinking of the joy her baby would bring to the Select after their time of doubt …
for unto us a son is given …
Cricket fell asleep, a smile on her dry lips.