Slow Fall Read online

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  “. . . So Amy decided not to go off to Gainesville. She wanted to be near Mark. Stay in Belle Haven, you know.”

  “Who's Mark?”

  “Amy's boyfriend. They've been close for the last year or so. Were close, anyway. Mark Ayers. You know, Ed Ayers' kid?”

  Roger looked at Pickett, waiting for a response. Pickett gave none.

  “Everything was fine. You know kids. They were happy—seemed happy anyway. Until Amy became… started going out to that Temple place.”

  “Temple?”

  “Yeah. You know, Ed's church?”

  Pickett placed both hands behind his head; it lolled towards Roger. A trace of a smile played on Pickett's lips.

  “The new one. The Temple of Glory. That's what he calls the place. The New Temple. Something like that.”

  Roger shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Amy and Mark had been seeing a lot of each other. They talked like they were engaged.” Roger frowned, but gestured with equanimity. “They never talked to me about it, but that's the impression I got. Then Amy started going with him out to that—that Temple place. Ed had just started the tee-vee show, and Mark was supposed to be on it—`The Hour of Witness' or some such. Anyway, Mark had always seemed half embarrassed by Ed's holy-roller bit, so one Wednesday—that's when the show's on. Well, not really: that's when it's taped. Anyway, he—Mark, that is—took Amy out there and—”

  Pickett wrinkled up his face. Roger stopped.

  “You've heard about Ed's ministry, and all that, right?”

  Pickett shook his head.

  “Jeez, you have been gone for a while, haven't you?” Roger settled back into his chair, stuck his legs out in front of him and took a deep breath. “You remember Edmund Ayers. Well, you know Ed—he'd always had too much money and too few brains.”

  Pickett's smile broadened. He looked at the floor, shaking his head. Roger didn't seem to notice, and continued.

  “Ed never could understand why everyone wasn't spending their summers on the river like he was, and riding around in thirty thousand dollar sports cars their parents gave them for Christmas. Jeez…” Roger shook his head. “I don't think he ever realized that the only reason we all wanted to bring him along everywhere was because of his car.”

  Roger chuckled. Pickett, still smiling, bit his lower lip.

  “Well, the beginning of Ed's junior year at Princeton—all the Ayers men go to Princeton, you know. Well, the beginning of that year, October or November or something, there was an accident.”

  Roger straightened his face self-consciously, and looked soberly at the other.

  “Ed's mother and father—both of them—they died out on I-four. The driver of a tank truck fell asleep at the wheel or something. Pretty horrible. According to the reports I got, there wasn't much left to bury.”

  Roger paused for a respectable moment, his mouth an inverted U. Pickett closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Come on, Roger. Is there a point to this?”

  “Yes, of course there is. It's just, well, both parents killed like that… Ed couldn't handle it.” The thought of Edmund Ayers not handling it seemed to cheer Roger Mooring. “Ed dropped out of school and came home for a while. Then he dropped out of sight—up and disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yeah, he just—” Roger's hands went “poof!” “-- disappeared. Ran away. Nobody knew where he was.”

  He paused with some satisfaction.

  “Must've been five or six months. Least when I came home for spring break, everyone was still worried about him. He reappeared again that summer. Never told anyone where he'd been or what he'd been up to. Looked a bit frayed around the edges when he came back, if you know what I mean.”

  Roger raised his eyebrows at Pickett. Pickett emitted a short burst of air through his nose. He opened his mouth to speak, but, before he could, Roger did.

  “Ed was a changed man after that, though, let me tell you. He went back to school. They let him back in because of his money, I suppose. Anyway, he found religion up there. Funny, huh? Told everybody he'd been born again—out of the flames of his parent's funeral pyre, or some such nonsense. They'd burned, you see. He'd quite a reputation. President of two or three student evangelical groups… Even ran a daily prayer breakfast or something. Anyway…”

  Roger exhaled sharply; he was beginning to look tired.

  “Ed came back here after he graduated, gathered together all the cash he could lay his hands on and bought himself a church.”

  “A church?”

  “Honest to god, Ed bought himself a church to preach in.” Roger looked at the other man, half smiling, eyebrows raised.

  Pickett sighed: “And… ?”

  “And,” mimicked Roger, “Ed attracted a following. A combination of the family name, which everybody in these parts knew, of course, and the Temple—the place itself. He just finished this new one. Jeez. Must've set Ed back a bundle. Only seen it from the outside but it's quite… Well, impressive.”

  “Roger… “

  “Okay—but it's a ritzy looking place. Anyway, Ed married some local girl from out near Sanford somewhere, and built an organization.” Roger laughed. “Organization, hell, it's a frigging empire. He gets thousands out there twice each Sunday. Does a weekly tee-vee and radio show. Jeez, they must be raking it in.”

  Roger looked down at his feet and shook his head—either in amazement or disgust.

  “And,” said Pickett, “your daughter's been going out there with Ed's son. Is that it?”

  “Right.” Roger kept his eyes on the floor. “Every Sunday. A-a-and Wednesday. For the tee-vee show.”

  Pickett placed his elbows on his knees and the palms of his hands to his face. He grimaced while his palms massaged his eyes. After a moment of this, he dropped his hands to his side, and straightened.

  “Look, I'm sorry, Roger, but I must be missing something. What's the problem? Young people are ripe for this crap. They outgrow it—most of the time anyway. And it doesn't sound like the sort of outfit that's going to brainwash her and change her name to Ananda-Banana and ship her off to some soybean farm in California. Just sounds like that good ol' time religion—God, Country, and pass the collection plate.”

  Roger's mouth opened and closed nervously, but no words came out. Pickett sighed.

  “Look, Rog, this is all real interesting; but what do you want from me?”

  “What troubles me—” Roger was talking to himself now. “-- is she doesn't seem to have time for Mark anymore. And he's upset about it too, in fact. I talked to him figuring that, well, maybe she'd talked to him.”

  He looked embarrassed, and added quickly, “You know teenagers, they don't always tell their folks everything.”

  “Look, it's too bad. But it doesn't sound like anything to get upset about.”

  Roger scowled. Pickett laughed and flicked the back of his hand toward the door.

  “It's not like there's anything you can do about it anyway. You just have to wait for her to outgrow it. That's all you can do. If she's got half a mind of her own, she will.”

  Roger rested his forearms on his knees and looked at the floor. He shook his head stubbornly.

  “She's—” He pursed his lips. “Something's the matter, something serious. I know it.” It's that simple, his hands said. Pickett bridled.

  “For Chrissake, what is it? What's she been doing that's so terrible?” Roger sat up straight, brow furrowed in thought. Then he exploded: “She's been staying away nights, whole weekends even. I thought it was Mark but he denies it. Got pretty angry. He must've talked to Amy about it because she started refusing to see him, too—except at the Temple. Brothers and sisters under God or something. Jeez—”

  Roger kneaded his brow with one hand and clasped the arm of his chair with the other.

  “Why don't you just talk to her, Rog?”

  “I did, day before yesterday. She starts crying and tells me to mind my own busine
ss. Tells me that I couldn't help her, that”—Roger looked down—”that she hated me. That she'd always wished I weren't her father, that… That God is punishing her.”

  “What?” Pickett's eyebrows came together. He looked up sharply.

  “She said that God was punishing her. And that no one could help but—but Jesus.”

  “Christ,” said Pickett under his breath.

  “Exactly,” said Roger deadpan. His eyes clouded over, but he continued as if unable to stop himself.

  “I even called the Temple. That's what Ed calls that place out there, The Temple of Glory. Yeah, right, I-I told you that already. I tried to talk to Ed but they wouldn't even put me through. Said Edmund was too busy. I-I…”

  Roger paused, looking down into his lap. “I think maybe she's seeing someone. She can't be spending all that time at the Temple—I mean, she's got to be sleeping someplace.”

  But Roger didn't like the way that sounded. He put a hand to his forehead and looked up at the other, his cheeks wet.

  “I-I-I just don't know. I mean, Amy's upset every time I see her. She's—she's in trouble, I know it. And I can't even help her. I love her so much and I can't even help.”

  Pickett exhaled, shaking his head. He looked through the office door. It was too dark to see the stain now. His eyes moved back to Roger, then past him to the window opposite the hall door. He stared down into the twilit park across the street. A bandstand stood there, shaded by water oaks whose billowing masses were silhouettes against the darkening sky. Pickett closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with the first three fingers of his right hand.

  “What does Amy's mother think of all this?”

  Roger looked up, his eyes dull and hard.

  “Amy doesn't know her mother. She has no mother.”

  Pickett nodded quickly, his face blank. He waited a moment with the same expression on his face, then, relaxing, looked up at Roger. “What do you want from me, Roger?”

  “You could follow her.”

  “Come on—”

  “Look, you'll be in town for the next couple of days anyway, right? You have friends to visit, everybody wants to see you.…”

  Pickett smiled at this.

  “Can't you just—sightsee for a day or two? You know, the Old Home Town and all that. You could sort of… Well, be where she was.” Roger seemed pleased with this formulation. He gestured expansively. “You know, just casually be around. You must do this sort of thing all the time in your… profession.”

  Pickett laughed out loud, then as suddenly pulled a straight face.

  “Tailing her might be exactly what you don't want. It might drive her away completely. Anyway, I just can't go following her all over town. She's what, seventeen?” Roger nodded impatiently and began to say something. Pickett cut in. “I got twenty years on her—and then some. I'd probably get myself arrested.”

  “I wouldn't want that.” Roger looked crestfallen.

  Pickett covered his eyes with his left hand. After a moment, he looked up and, wearily, smiled.

  “Look, Rog, I do this for a living. If you can call it living. It's not much but it's what I know. Frankly, I can't spare the time right now. I've got a few skips I've traced as far as Opa-Laka, and… Well, I'm a little hard up at the moment. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure, sure—and I'll pay you. I mean, I wouldn't expect you to do it for free. I mean, I know you got to make a living, and I—uh…” He stopped. “How much are we talking about here?”

  “I'm talking three hundred front. That buys you satisfaction or three days work—whichever comes first.”

  “After that?”

  “Hundred a day after that.”

  Roger wrinkled his brow and thought for a moment. “And expenses?”

  “Within reason, comes with the per diem. Otherwise, I check with the client first.”

  For a moment, Roger stared into the space between them, his eyelids fluttering under the pressure of some inner effort. Finally, his eyes refocused, and he rose to his feet.

  “You'll take a personal check?”

  “Oh, for chrissake, Rog… It's a waste of good money—”

  “Will you?”

  “Okay—sure, it's your money. Christ, I'll look into it. But remember I told you it was going to be a waste of time.”

  Roger's cheeks flushed like a child's.

  “Oh, thanks, Bo, I mean it. I'd do it myself but… Well…”

  Roger rifled his pockets. While he found, opened, and began scribbling in a check book, Pickett frowned down at the floor. He stood, stretching as Roger tore out the check and handed it to him.

  Pickett studied it for a moment—more in disbelief than suspicion. “I'll take the three days, but no more. Agreed?”

  “Sure, what ever you say, Bo.”

  “Now, I mean it. Don't expect much—anything.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  Pickett smiled at Roger, shaking his head. “Where will Amy be tomorrow, do you know?”

  “I don't. She's not at home—hasn't been for the last two nights.”

  “What's your guess?”

  Roger looked away and let his shoulders fall.

  “Let's see, tomorrow's Wednesday…” He sighed and looked back at the other. “She'll be at the Temple. On Wednesday she's at the Temple.”

  “Okay, I'll start there. Where will you be tomorrow?”

  “Home.”

  Pickett looked a question.

  Roger's eyes avoided his. “I'm… taking a few days off.”

  Pickett nodded and guided Roger toward the hall door.

  “You know,” Roger said, stopping as he gazed wistfully down the dusty passageway, “all these years and I don't think I've ever been up here before. I guess the building's yours now, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Pickett smiled with half his mouth. “The building, the boat house, some bad debts and a worse name.”

  Roger turned, smiled himself, then shook Pickett's hand. He shuffled down the hall.

  “All these years…” he repeated to himself. He disappeared down the stairs.

  Pickett looked after him for a long while, a trace of that smile still on his face, fatigue in his eyes. He leaned his long back against the wall and drew a flat tin box from the side pocket of his seersucker jacket. He removed a thin black cigar from the tin box, and then a wooden match. He paused, staring at the grimed floor. His smile broadened, causing the cigar to hang almost vertically from his lower lip. He struck the match against the box and set the black tobacco aglow. Pickett drew deeply. He pushed off the wall.

  Back into the waiting room and on into the inner office, he went directly to the desk, switching on a green-shaded lamp there. He picked up the telephone, dialed seven numbers, and draped himself over the chair behind the desk. He waited with the phone to his ear. Smoke curled into the high shadowed ceiling.

  “Yeah, this is Bodie Pickett.… Uh-huh, this morning.… Yes.… No, that won't be necessary; no service.… I know.… Of course, but no service.… Do with them?… Oh, of course. No, I don't think so—”

  Pickett started. He began to laugh but cleared his throat instead. He composed his face and said:

  “At sea would be fine.… Yes.… That sounds very reasonable.… Uh-huh, I'm sure you are. We all are.… Yes, thank you.… To you, too.… Uh-huh. Goodbye.… Yes, of course. Goodbye.”

  Pickett leaned back in the swivel chair with the phone in his lap. He looked at the tip of his cigar, frowned, then leaned forward and reached for the dial. He dialed two numbers, made a sound like a growl, and hung up.

  He put his hands to the desk as if to rise, but instead sat back and reached for a dog-eared manila envelope that lay to the side of the desk lamp. He pulled it under the light. A spray of brown speckled it. On it was a white label bordered in red. It said: AYERS, CLAYTON (MARJORIE). Pickett bent over the contained papers.

  The fluorescent desk light cast his shadow sharply on the wall behind the desk. It cut diagonally across the brown stain a
lready there.

  3

  Old man Otley bobbed his pink pate to Willie Nelson's guitar. Stringy grey hair swung back and forth across the back like the fringe on a movie musical's surrey. His elbows danced to the sizzling griddle as he worried raw materials into a breakfast.

  Bodie Pickett hefted a white china mug. He squeezed his eyelids together and swallowed, hard. He'd set the cup back on the saucer and pushed them both away from him when a piece of heavy white china clattered to a stop in front of him.

  Otley hadn't even turned around.

  In the center of the steaming platter a rubbery orange splotch in a milky pool bled yellow. Two blackened strips of rawhide intertwined to the right, and a two inch pile of small brown and grey cubes glistened with grease on the left. Pickett looked up.

  “Still ninety-nine cent, boy.”

  Pickett looked down. The yellow liquid was beginning to clot. He stood, threw back the sludge at the bottom of his cup, measured three quarters, two dimes, and four pennies into the saucer, and headed for the door.

  “Tax,” said the back of Otley's head.

  Pickett went back and dropped a dime onto the counter. He didn't look at the platter.

  “Thanks. See y'around.”

  The back of Otley's head grunted. “That boy never did eat right.”

  “This boy'll never eat again,” said Pickett under his breath.

  He stood in front of Otley's Rexall and breathed deeply. The air was clear and bright. It had rained during the night, and the pavement was cool. The oaks in the park across the street cast long shadows.

  The fresh air turned stale with burnt grease. Otley's arm pushed through the door behind Pickett and thrust a nickel into his hand.

  “Change, boy.”

  Pickett stood without moving, closed his eyes, and took another deep breath, then turned left down Main. When he reached Palmetto, he turned left again. In front of Dumphrie's Sporting Goods, a tall kid in Levy’s, running shoes, and a pink T-shirt that said PEACHTREE ROAD RACE was cranking down the striped awning that hung above the display window. The kid admitted that he'd heard of Edmund Ayers and the Temple of Glory but didn't have the faintest idea where Pickett could find either of them.

  “I'm a vegetarian,” the kid explained.

  Pickett had better luck with the kid's mother inside. She not only knew where the Temple was and told him quite clearly how to get there, she tried to sell him a piece of the place.

  A “partnership” in the New Temple of Glory is what the woman called it. For 500 bucks Pickett could have his name engraved on the “Partners in Heaven” wall of the New Temple. For 25 he could receive daily “petitions in prayer” offered up in his behalf by brother Ed (or, the fine print read, one of Brother Ed's “Family in God”), and his name printed in the “Partners in Heaven” memorial booklet that was forthcoming. For a sawbuck Pickett would receive her undying gratitude.

  Pickett looked down at Otley's nickel, still in his hand, and smiled; but before he could say anything, three boys shucked in, each about four feet high. One carried a Zebco rod and reel, and a peanut butter jar full of nickels and dimes. He wanted to buy a fishing license. One. For the three of them. Pickett thanked the woman and left her lecturing the fishermen three on the laws of the great State of Florida.

  He walked across the street to a once white '65 Nova. After two tries, it started. He drove the Nova back to Main, and then onto Fairview, passing half a dozen fast-food bunkers and two Spee-Dee muffler shops. Pickett turned off Fairview onto I-4 West, toward Orlando.

  The traffic was heavy, every other car filled with two or more hysterical kids and two or less morose parents. A large green sign above the highway read: DISNEYWORLD 18/TEMPLE OF GLORY 1.”

  “Not much of a contest,” Pickett muttered.

  He took the next exit onto a stretch of county highway flanked by vast seas of asphalt that ran to a horizon of pastel colored boxes of glass and cinder block boasting everything from “Religious Equipment/WHOLESALE” to “TOTALLY NAKED GIRLS!” Above and to the left loomed a high white spire. Pickett drew abreast of it, and hung a left on a divided four-lane road marked “Gateway-To-Heaven Drive.”

  He faced a steep concrete pyramid flung high above a low, cast concrete dome painted a white that dazzled in the now high sun and in contrast to the flood of newly lined asphalt that spread from it in all directions. It rose from its blacktop bed on a band of tinted plate glass. It seemed suspended in air. Curved beams trimmed in gold rose from the asphalt, crisscrossing the dome like the spokes of a wheel. The structure hung above the blackened earth like a spaceship from another universe—one that knew nothing of humility or grace.

  Pickett passed a white sign bordered and lettered in gold that announced in gothic script, “The Temple of Glory Awaits You.” Below this it directed: “General Parking—Next Three Lefts/Reserved Parking (Partners in Heaven)—Fourth Left.”

  He took the fourth lane to the left. It ended at the base of the spire amidst an assortment of large American cars. He went right at a sign that said, “Media Annex,” around the dome, and to the front of a flat building attached at one end to the rotunda. A satellite dish and sundry antennae decorated the flat gravel roof. At the end of the parking lane, two tinted, plate glass windows framed a door made out of the same. Pickett squinted at it. He parked next to a white Chevy van hung with ladders and aerials of various sorts.

  Gold lettering on the door read, “Media Annex/Home of `The Hour of Witness',” and announced tours at three every afternoon. But Wednesday. The letters gave way into the coolness of a white modern lobby.

  An overly made-up blonde behind a sleek marble counter beamed a smile in his direction and chimed:

  “Can I help you?”

  “Could you direct me to the Sound Studio, please?”

  Her smile was still lit, but her eyes narrowed and moved quickly from the tall man's face, over his crumpled seersucker suit to his canvas shoes, and back again.

  “Might you be with the Millennium Club party?” she crooned.

  Without a pause, Pickett admitted that he might.

  The blonde directed him through an oak door to the left. She watched him go through it as if she didn't believe for a minute he was with the Millennium Club party but that she did believe, with faith, that anything was possible.

  Pickett closed the door behind him without looking back.

  The hall was well lit. Double doors opened onto two small sound studios packed with electronic equipment. He paused before each. At the last, he pursed his lips and blew a silent whistle. At the end of the hall he turned right.

  Right into a clot of middle aged men dressed in everything from Brooks Brothers' pin stripes to double-knit leisure suits and cowboy hats. They gathered around a plump young woman dressed in the navy blue pants-suit of an usherette. She stood before a double fire door that blocked the hall and underneath a blinking red light patting her neatly teased and enameled hair.

  The door said, SOUND STUDIO 3.

  The woman's left breast said, WELCOME! MY NAME IS KIMBERLY!

  The woman said: “… so everyone can see. And I must remind you not to take pictures.”

  She looked up at the blinking light.

  “Also, please refrain from talking and smoking.”

  She looked up at the light again. It was still blinking.

  “Thank you.”

  The light went out.

  Pickett frowned and nodded appreciatively. Kimberly leaned into the two doors and the group filed past her into the dark.

  “None too soon neither,” said a tall man standing next to Pickett. A paper tag on his lapel said, “Hi! I'm… ,” with something illegible scrawled beneath in felt tip marker.

  “Carrithers…” The man extended a thick sunburnt hand. “Fenton Carrithers.”

  Pickett took Fenton Carrithers' hand.

  “Pollock. Jackson Pollock.”

  The group filed into a bank of theatre seats, like a jury box, to the right of
a dark set. Pickett sat down between Fenton Carrithers and a fat man who sported white patent leather shoes and a belt to match. He smelled of cigars and unearned sweat. The breast pocket of his rayon sports shirt proclaimed, “Hi! I'm… SEYMOUR PLOTZ”—the name printed in rough block letters like a ransom note. Seymour Plotz cocked a head of orange hair at Pickett.

  “How much you in for?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How much you in for?”

  Fenton Carrithers tilted his grizzled head at Seymour Plotz. “Ten grand.”

  Pickett pulled his head back out of the line of fire.

  “Hargh!” said Seymour. “They hit me for ten grand twice this year already. You'd thought these smart ass college boys they got round here could've put it together by now. Shit.” He said it in two syllables. “Those fuckers want another fifty grand.”

  Fenton snorted.

  “If they think a buggy ride round this place is gone spring me for fifty grand, then they're figrin bout as poorly as this here dump looks.”

  “Shit,” said Seymour.

  “Now I'm a God-fearin man, as Christian a gentleman as you're lakly to meet, and I don grudge ten. Hell,” said Fenton, “that's near on the ten points the Lord axes for. I do my tithin.”

  “Shit.”

  “I aint no shirker. But hell, boy, they aint bout to sell me no poodle-piss bout vestin in paradise.”

  “Shit, no.”

  “Y'know what I mean?” said Fenton.

  “You bet,” said Seymour.

  “Know what I mean?” said Fenton again, stabbing an elbow into Pickett's ribs.

  “Damn straight,” said Pickett.

  They both looked at him.

  “You say you was from where, Pollop?”

  4

  “Whomp!” said a bank of flood lights.

  “Please, we must not talk,” said Kimberly. A black, back-lit figure standing before the brightly lit box, she shook a finger in Bodie Pickett's direction. “If we're not quiet,” she chirped, “we may have to leave.”

  Fenton Carrithers rubbed his eyes. Seymour Plotz pulled at a pair of large sunglasses caught in the hem of his breast pocket. Kimberly cleared her throat—and her smile.

  She tried to look serious.

  “In a moment we will tape the last segment of tonight's `Hour of Witness.' As members—” Kimberly smiled indulgently. “-- and prospective members of the Millennium Club, you are well acquainted with the great ministry of our Brother Edmund and the Temple of Glory.”

  “Amen,” said a voice to Pickett's left.

  Lights began to thump on around the studio. A half dozen technicians prowled through a jungle of cables, booms, and TV cameras.

  “And, of course, his Lovely Family.” Kimberly paused for a short burst of Amen's and Praise the Lord's. “But, before the taping begins, I would like to invite all members and”—she smiled—”prospective members to a special get-together this evening.”

  Only the scrabbling of technicians broke the expectant silence.

  “Brother Edmund has invited you—all of you—to his home.” Kimberly smiled through the ooh's and ah's, and leaned forward, beaming. “Brother Edmund would like to meet each and every one of you individually.”

  Seymour Plotz grunted to Pickett's amusement. Kimberly ignored it.

  The set below exploded into a blaze of light, revealing what appeared to be a Victorian parlor. On a rectangular flat, two walls papered in a wine-colored brocade met at right angles. Against each stood a massive mahogany bookcase containing all manner of bric-a-brac as well as large volumes of what could only have been the World's Great Literature in some late night TV edition. Plush oriental carpets covered the floor. Several wingback chairs sat round a large lion-footed sofa, in front of which stood a squat teak coffee table. A girl in Levy’s and a headset placed a large and ornate silver coffee service on it and withdrew.

  As Pickett smiled, massaging his forehead with the first two fingers of his right hand, Kimberly looked hurriedly over her shoulder.

  “The bus will leave the Media Annex at six pee-em. You will have the rest of the day to complete your tour of the Temple. If you are traveling by private car, however, please see me for directions before you leave.”

  Pickett's eyes moved to the side of the set, where several figures wound their way through the dark studio toward the light. Kimberly looked over her shoulder again: someone was signaling for silence.

  “And thank you for being a part of our historic ministry.”

  A loudspeaker said, “Fifteen seconds.”

  The same imagination that designed the set must have designed the small family that now filed onto it. The Father, who settled on the sofa next to The Mother, counterpointed the broad pink face of a cherub with the sloped, pin stripe shoulders of an investment banker. The Mother, who flourished a head of Dolly-Parton-blonde hair and a green gown heavily sequined and padded at the bodice, nestled her narrow hips into the sofa as if laying an egg. The Son lit stiffly on a wingback chair to her right as if sitting on several.

  It was the boy—nearly a man, lean and handsome in a well tailored blue suit, white starched button down shirt and rep tie—that engaged Pickett's attention, however. He was true to type—save for the eyes. They seemed borrowed—quick, troubled, and perhaps a bit embarrassed.

  “Ten, nine, eight… ,” said the loudspeaker.

  It could have been the set of the Perry Como Christmas Special, but the loudspeaker said: “The Hour of Witness with the Reverend Edmund Ayers.”

  An earsplitting burst of recorded music offered proof of the loudspeaker's assertion, though the music seemed designed less to evoke reverence than to awaken the Aryan Race. The lights above the box seats went black. Pickett blinked twice before two monitors directly in front of him flashed to life, their screens filled with the cherubic face of the Reverend Edmund Ayers. Pickett smiled with half his mouth at the plump, rosy cheeks; he nodded his head in recognition, then shook it in disbelief.

  All the while, and in the dulcet drawl of a Kentucky Colonel, Brother Ed made his pitch for God, Country, and the tithes of the Faithful—”that the coffers of Heaven may be full, and that the Ministry of this Great Temple may go forth.”

  His Lovely Wife Jan glowed at his side, interjecting heartfelt pleas to those as yet untouched “by this Great Evangelical appeal” to pick up their phones right now. “There are operators waiting for your call.”

  From a glass booth to the left a director artfully cut between two cameras. He caught Ed's boy scout mug from every conceivable angle, filling the screen with images of robust good humor. Earnest down home homilies filled the air.

  Pickett no longer watched the monitors, but only the young man with the troubled eyes, Our Son Mark—which is how the Reverend Edmund Ayers referred to him. But Mark paid little attention to Reverend Ed; instead, he glanced nervously to the side and a black haired girl who sat in a folding chair immediately off camera.

  She was lit full-face by the set's reflected light. She never looked at Mark, though his brown eyes pulled at her with palpable force. Her own dark eyes focused with near fanatical intensity on Brother Edmund Ayers. Her pale brow was long and placid; black hair was pulled tightly off her face to the back of her head, and from there it fell to well below her shoulders. The mouth was large, full, and very red.

  Pickett, brow knit, gazed at her intently. His eyes narrowed, then opened, and he leaned his head slightly toward her, as if bent under the weight of his own concentration.

  For her part, the black haired girl seemed aware of nothing but the face of Brother Edmund Ayers. Her hands folded calmly before her, she sat bolt upright, taut, exuding a tensile strength that seemed to charge the air around her, and to stand clearly at odds with her youth. The maturity that she wore rang somehow false: she wore it like a protective mantle, heavy and chaste. The strain told in the rigidity of her posture. And though her face was smooth and unlined, it was also cold and translucent, like marble.

&n
bsp; As the now familiar orchestral music welled up from the racial memories of a bank of loudspeakers, Pickett started. Telephone numbers emblazoned across the breast of a sentimental portrait of Christ filled the monitors replacing the Reverend Edmund Ayers.

  On the set, Brother Ed stood, head bowed, before the sofa; My Lovely Wife Jan sat in the same manner. Mark, however, looked from camera to camera as if ready to bolt at the dousing of a red light.

  Pickett suddenly stood, his jaw slack, his face pale.

  He pushed past Fenton Carrithers and several other club members into the jungle inhabited by headsetted technicians. Relays clicked, floodlights hummed. The smell of their hot steel housings blended with that of honest sweat. Pickett inhaled sharply, pulling in a lung full of close, overworked air. This startled the boom operator, fat and red faced, who nearly took Jan Ayers' hairpiece off with a twist of his wrist. The fat man swore under his breath in syllables short, crisp, and sweet as a nut.

  Pickett smiled.

  At that instant, Mark received whatever signal he'd been waiting for. He walked off camera, one arm raised toward the black haired girl; but she moved swiftly past him without even acknowledging his presence.

  Pickett stepped around a camera in time to see the black haired girl gazing deeply into the eyes of the Reverend Edmund Ayers. A good head taller, Reverend Ed stared down at her with the indulgent smile of an insurance salesman who'd just missed a sale. The black haired girl clasped Ed's hand, and her mouth moved, apparently voicing a worshipful appreciation of his message.

  Our Lovely Wife stood to the side watching them. Her expression was noticeably blank after the exuberance she'd presented to the TV cameras.

  Mark remained where he'd been when Amy passed, his back to the odd trio on the other side of the flat. He looked down at his feet; then, without looking back, walked off the flat and out of the lights.

  Pickett turned in the same direction, but a long charcoal-grey suit blocked his way.

  The head attached was too small for the shoulders, the hair so blond and short that, from a distance, it would have looked as bald as a baby's. A mouth without lips moved.

  “You're with the Millennium Club, I take it?”

  With these words, a hairless hand dropped onto Pickett's narrow shoulder. Pickett, face blank, looked at the hairless hand, then at the charcoal grey suit. His hazel eyes glowed unnaturally.

  “You can take what ever you can get, friend.”

  He looked from the lipless mouth to the eyes. Small and milky blue, they were without eyebrows. They said nothing; but the hairless hand squeezed Pickett's shoulder. Pickett bridled.

  “And I'd be happy to tell you where to take it and where to keep it while you're getting there—”

  “Ahhh…” the lipless mouth said, tensing the hand on Pickett's shoulder, and removing the other from its pocket.

  Pickett spread his feet slightly, looked at the hairless hand on his shoulder, then to the browless eyes. He moved his lips slightly, freezing them in a thin smile. The two stared at one another, their eyes locked.

  Suddenly Pickett relaxed, shifted his weight to one foot and dropped the opposite hand into his pocket. His eyes broke from the other's. They smiled.

  “Y'know, I aint seen ol Brother Ed in a coon's age. And, well, y'know, I jus got to thinkin how, well, aint it somethin what the kid's made of hisself and all. So I says to myself I says, `Self, whyn't you go on down to that Temple there and say howdy to ol Brother Ed. And, well, shucks, wouldn't y'all like to go tell Brother Ed that his ol buddy Bo's out here jus dyin to see `im and how'd you like to have your fuckin hand cut off at the shoulder?”

  Small ears set flat against the side of the man's head turned pink, but his expression didn't change. He stared at Pickett a moment longer, then let the hand on Pickett's shoulder fall limply to his side.

  “Brother Edmund sees no one after a taping,” the man said blankly. “I would suggest that you call his secretary to arrange for an appointment.”

  He paused, then added mechanically: “May I show you the door?”

  “Thanks, but I've seen one just recently.”

  And Pickett turned away in time to see the black haired girl shake off Mark's hold on her shoulders and rush through a side door. Mark's face crumpled in anger; with obvious embarrassment he looked around him, then wiped his face with the back of his hand. His eyes caught Pickett's and held them. They flickered, then he turned and left through the same door as the black haired girl.

  Fluorescent ceiling lights suddenly buzzed on, bathing the studio in cold white light. The man in the charcoal-grey suit seemed to be having trouble adjusting his eyes, and Pickett wound past him, through the tangle of equipment, and to a set of double doors like the ones he'd entered by. He pulled one open and stepped into a vast, white domed auditorium.

  The high ceiling hung above multi-tiered rows of red plush seats arranged circularly around a central dais carpeted in the same red plush, but trimmed in gold. It supported two plexi-glass pulpits. A white and gold cross rose from the center of the rostrum and ascended halfway to the ceiling. A group of figures sculpted at its base were apparently meant to represent a coterie of the faithful, got up in angelic robes and tunics, raising the Cross above the dais like Marines on Iwo Jima. Their expressions were cow-eyed, though, and unabashedly maudlin.

  Pickett paused before it in slack-jawed amazement. He started as the fire door closed on its own behind him. He put a hand to each temple, pressed his eyes tightly closed and smiled. He relaxed with a soft laugh, and chose a pair of fire doors farther to the left. He put his shoulder to them, and stepped out onto the hot asphalt and into the midday Florida sun.

  He was fifty yards or so from the Media Annex entrance and from his car. Angry voices rose from the other side of the white Chevy van. The black haired girl pulled at the door of a beat-up sky-blue Volkswagen, trying to get in; but Mark wouldn't release her arm.

  “You're hurting me.”

  “Amy, please, just let me t-t-talk to you.”

  “I don't want to talk to you. There's nothing to talk about.”

  “Please, Amy—”

  “Let—me—go.”

  Mark and Amy glanced up simultaneously as Pickett approached.

  Mark released her arm, and Amy dropped into the seat and slammed the door. She fired up the engine and threw it into reverse. Mark jumped back.

  “Amy! P-p-please—”

  The blue Volkswagen bolted, leaving a rubber scar on the hot asphalt.

  Mark stared at Pickett for a moment, wheeled around and headed for the Annex. Pickett got going just as the blue bug turned onto the main drive.

  He took the turn too fast for the suspension on his Nova, but recovered before hitting the median. He accelerated down Gateway to Heaven Drive.

  He looked back over his shoulder, through the hot rippled air above the parking lot. The white dome of the Temple of Glory writhed like a bald head in a fun house mirror.

  5

  He had a time with Amy's blue Volkswagen. It wasn't so much its speed as its abandon. She threw herself into the line of traffic with contempt, and careened between lanes with the arrogance of an eighteen wheeler, either sure of her immortality or suicidal.

  Possibly both.

  The blue bug shot through the I-4 underpass and east on 17-92. It cut a swath through the midday bustle that left irate shoppers and puzzled retirees in its wake. Pickett followed in a jangle of horns and blunt gestures. He was pulling around a large Ford station wagon when the Volkswagen swung off to the right.

  He put his foot to the floor. The automatic transmission down-shifted to second and the Nova accelerated across the prow of the Ford and a distraught young mother of two, barely making the turn and missing the steel and plastic signboard of the motel next door. The Nova thumped over several potholes, and skidded to a stop in the gravel parking lot of a donut shop.

  The Ford shot past in a flash of children's laughter.

  The Nova stalled. Picke
tt shook, clinging to the wheel to steady himself. He took a deep breath.

  A bronze Chrysler slid to a stop behind him, letting loose a horn like a freight train's. Pickett re-ignited the engine and backed into a space next to the blue Volkswagen. The front end bumped twice as it rolled in.

  A man emerged from the Chrysler and walked past Pickett's open window.

  “Got a flat, pal,” he chuckled, and walked inside.

  Pickett got out. His left front tire looked as though it had melted into the gravel. He looked up at a green signboard next to the highway that said, KRISPY KRUNCH DONUTS. Behind him, on the other side of a plate glass window, Amy talked to a woman behind a cash register.

  The woman, dressed in white, wore a funny little cap with something written on it in hospital green. The man from the Chrysler walked past Amy, the woman in white, and pushed himself up onto a stool at the other end of the counter. He buried his head in the menu.

  Pickett rolled a fresh tire to the front of his car, popped the hubcap off the dead one, loosened the wheel nuts, and pumped the jack. He glanced back over his shoulder at the plate glass window.

  Krispy Krunch Donuts was made of plate glass—that and a shoe box shell of white cinder block. A counter fronted by fixed, round stools ran its length. Amy stood, her weight on one foot, her elbows at her side, palms upturned moving as if juggling hot potatoes. She was having trouble getting what she wanted from the woman in white. Impatiently, the woman listened, with an occasional nervous glance at the man from the Chrysler who sat four stools away.

  He studied the menu as if it were his last will and testament.

  The woman in white finally tired of whatever Amy was dishing out. She slammed her hands down on the counter and leaned into Amy loud enough that a few words made it through the plate glass.

  “Who do you think you are… Where do you get off…”

  Amy's shoulders dropped, her hands fell to her sides. She wheeled around while the woman in white still spoke, and fled through the door into the parking lot. She threw herself into the blue beetle and slammed the door.

  Pickett finished tightening the wheel nuts, and rolled the flat back to the trunk. Amy was rigid as he passed. She stared blankly through the windshield, cheeks glistening.

  Pickett slammed the trunk closed.

  Amy turned. Her eyes focused in recognition. She opened her mouth, thought better of it, fired up the engine and slammed the bug into reverse. Without looking back, she popped the transmission into first and hit the gas hard enough to machine-gun the Krispy Krunch Donut sign with gravel.

  Before he could move, a stubby elbow flattened Pickett against his Nova.

  “Outta the way, pal.”

  Pickett turned to see the man roll into the bronze Chrysler and pull out of the driveway after Amy.

  As he slid into the Nova, he glanced back over his shoulder into the donut shop. The woman in white stared down at the counter. Now, she was alone.