turn his back and go outside to smash up his LEGO astronauts with a hammer. The tiny figures sprang apart violently, littering my flower beds with minuscule body parts. When they were all destroyed, he peed on the wreckage.
In July, to my relief, the letters had stopped. But now I had received a new message, from Peter Wyoming. Tell the cartoonist yourself. You’re related to her. How did he know? Tabitha must have told him. And why would she tell him? Because she wanted Luke.
The spectral buzz saw revved.
One hundred eighty-two hours, just over a week, until I delivered Luke to Brian at his new posting. I did not like the timing.
‘‘Luke,’’ I said, ‘‘why don’t you go play basketball with the kids at Nikki’s house.’’
When he had run out the door I played a hunch. I phoned Directory Assistance and asked whether they had a listing for Tabitha Delaney. I had done this before, certain that she would eventually slide back to Santa Barbara. But the phone company had never had a listing for her.
Until now. The operator gave me a phone number, along with an address on West Camino Cielo. I felt cold. It was the house Tabitha had inherited when her mother died, a shambling home in the chaparral high up the mountains behind Santa Barbara. It was the place where SueJudi Roebuck used to interrupt dinner to speak in tongues and had egged Tabitha’s school friends to undergo baptism in the hot tub. It was the house nobody visited a second time, the place Tabitha fled when she jettisoned her mother’s fundamentalism. She had left it sitting empty for years.
I caught the babysitter halfway down the block and asked her to come back. I changed into jeans, boots, and a green corduroy shirt of Jesse’s, and I grabbed my car keys.
The sun was flaring red in the west when I drove my white Explorer up a gully toward Tabitha’s house, past sandstone boulders and gray-green brush. The air smelled thick with mustard and eucalyptus. The view of the city, two thousand feet below, was spectacular. Santa Barbara lay like a velvet sash between the mountains and the Pacific, smooth and glimmering.
The house itself looked neglected. Faded gray paint curled from the wood siding, and weeds spread across the lawn, humped and matted, like an overgrown beard. When no one answered my knock, I looked in the front window. The living room held some thrift-shop chairs and a worktable covered with pens, pencils, and drawings. In the dingy kitchen, shopping bags bulged with cans of creamed corn and SPAM. Was that what she had cooked for Brian? No wonder he had requested sea duty.
Stuck to the fridge was a drawing, held up by crown-of -thorns magnets. The Shrine, take two. It was a picture of Peter Wyoming. I leaned my head against the window. Tabitha had apparently come home in more ways than one.
I returned to my car and reread the Remnant’s flyer. As I suspected, the hate rally at Claudine’s funeral hadn’t sated Peter Wyoming. He invited all right-thinking Christians to a ‘‘Postprotest Testimony’’ that evening. I checked my watch. Wyoming should be just warming up. I put the car in gear. And I started down the long road, the one to hell.
2
Peter Wyoming’s church sat close to traffic on a downtown street, beneath a slice of moon in a sky gone indigo. The building had originally housed a furniture store, and through showroom windows I saw a hundred people seated on folding chairs, packed into a bare commercial space under fluorescent lighting. Music pulsed through the glass, a heavy beat pounded out on piano and electric bass, ripe with unsettling energy.
When I pushed open the door, sound and heat enveloped me. The room was thick with sweat and fervor. Perspiration sheened on thick male necks, and women fanned themselves with colorful Bible tracts. On a makeshift stage, the choir stood erect and fierce in scarlet robes, shouting about power in the blood of the lamb. Before them danced a trio of baton twirlers, teenage
In July, to my relief, the letters had stopped. But now I had received a new message, from Peter Wyoming. Tell the cartoonist yourself. You’re related to her. How did he know? Tabitha must have told him. And why would she tell him? Because she wanted Luke.
The spectral buzz saw revved.
One hundred eighty-two hours, just over a week, until I delivered Luke to Brian at his new posting. I did not like the timing.
‘‘Luke,’’ I said, ‘‘why don’t you go play basketball with the kids at Nikki’s house.’’
When he had run out the door I played a hunch. I phoned Directory Assistance and asked whether they had a listing for Tabitha Delaney. I had done this before, certain that she would eventually slide back to Santa Barbara. But the phone company had never had a listing for her.
Until now. The operator gave me a phone number, along with an address on West Camino Cielo. I felt cold. It was the house Tabitha had inherited when her mother died, a shambling home in the chaparral high up the mountains behind Santa Barbara. It was the place where SueJudi Roebuck used to interrupt dinner to speak in tongues and had egged Tabitha’s school friends to undergo baptism in the hot tub. It was the house nobody visited a second time, the place Tabitha fled when she jettisoned her mother’s fundamentalism. She had left it sitting empty for years.
I caught the babysitter halfway down the block and asked her to come back. I changed into jeans, boots, and a green corduroy shirt of Jesse’s, and I grabbed my car keys.
The sun was flaring red in the west when I drove my white Explorer up a gully toward Tabitha’s house, past sandstone boulders and gray-green brush. The air smelled thick with mustard and eucalyptus. The view of the city, two thousand feet below, was spectacular. Santa Barbara lay like a velvet sash between the mountains and the Pacific, smooth and glimmering.
The house itself looked neglected. Faded gray paint curled from the wood siding, and weeds spread across the lawn, humped and matted, like an overgrown beard. When no one answered my knock, I looked in the front window. The living room held some thrift-shop chairs and a worktable covered with pens, pencils, and drawings. In the dingy kitchen, shopping bags bulged with cans of creamed corn and SPAM. Was that what she had cooked for Brian? No wonder he had requested sea duty.
Stuck to the fridge was a drawing, held up by crown-of -thorns magnets. The Shrine, take two. It was a picture of Peter Wyoming. I leaned my head against the window. Tabitha had apparently come home in more ways than one.
I returned to my car and reread the Remnant’s flyer. As I suspected, the hate rally at Claudine’s funeral hadn’t sated Peter Wyoming. He invited all right-thinking Christians to a ‘‘Postprotest Testimony’’ that evening. I checked my watch. Wyoming should be just warming up. I put the car in gear. And I started down the long road, the one to hell.
2
Peter Wyoming’s church sat close to traffic on a downtown street, beneath a slice of moon in a sky gone indigo. The building had originally housed a furniture store, and through showroom windows I saw a hundred people seated on folding chairs, packed into a bare commercial space under fluorescent lighting. Music pulsed through the glass, a heavy beat pounded out on piano and electric bass, ripe with unsettling energy.
When I pushed open the door, sound and heat enveloped me. The room was thick with sweat and fervor. Perspiration sheened on thick male necks, and women fanned themselves with colorful Bible tracts. On a makeshift stage, the choir stood erect and fierce in scarlet robes, shouting about power in the blood of the lamb. Before them danced a trio of baton twirlers, teenage
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