Between the Bridge and the River Read online

  T-Bo had given them the location of the disused olive-oil plant but none of Saul’s security guys could find it; they were all imports from Atlanta and didn’t have a clue how to get around Birmingham. Finally, Saul made him guide them to the site and T-Bo was deeply embarrassed when Fraser and the others saw him in the company of the Holy United Churchmen, who demanded that Fraser come with them.

  Pinkerton, Potter, Mickey, and Vermont had wanted to fight, as did Cherry and Salome and the rest of the girls, but Fraser had broken his silence and said that to fight would not be helping others, it would only be helping themselves, and he would not endorse it.

  He allowed himself to be taken away but before he did he spoke to Pinkerton.

  “You must not fight this Church. It doesn’t matter if demons are at its head. It doesn’t matter if it is founded on wickedness and deceit. It helps some people. All that matters is that you help others. Before yourself. Go back and repair your own church in the woods. Have Potter and Vermont and Mickey and the others help you. Leave the snakes alone. Ask Salome and the girls to sing for you, that’ll bring the people in.”

  Pinkerton cried, said that he would do as he was told, then kissed the hem of Fraser’s orange dress. As Fraser was taken out by the church security men, even though he was still as blind as a bat, he seemed to sense T-Bo. He stopped and put out his hand until he touched the young man’s face. He felt the cheeks and the eyes and the mouth to make sure, then he leaned in and kissed T-Bo lightly on the forehead.

  Leon had wanted to know why they hadn’t taken in the Reverend Pinkerton, surely he was where the real trouble was, but Saul said no.

  After his discussions with T-Bo, Saul had reached the conclusion that Fraser was the head of the monster, and that without the holyman, Pinkerton would retreat back into the shadows. Leon had assented.

  Saul was always right.

  Fraser stood sightless at the feet of the motionless fat man propped up in the hospital bed. Saul had insisted that he speak to Fraser alone, and now that he looked at this filthy, blind cripple he felt sick. Sicker than usual.

  “You smell nice,” said Fraser.

  Saul was wary. He was trying to determine if Fraser was fooling with him or was genuine. He thought back to the day he had met Potter Templeton and had told him he and Leon had been thrown out of the orphanage for being good Christians. He remembered Potter’s suspicion.

  “What do you want here?” Saul asked.

  “Nothing,” said Fraser.

  “Then why did you come?

  Fraser shrugged. “I just kind of drifted along and ended up here. I suppose God brought me.”

  Saul asked Fraser if he knew a fat man named Roscoe. Fraser said that no he didn’t but that he knew a French policeman who was a bit quick with his nightstick.

  “Can you really heal people?” asked Saul.

  “I don’t think so,” said Fraser. “They think I can heal them and that’s what does it. I think it just helps them feel better if they know there are miracles in the world.”

  “What about the woman you brought back from the dead?”

  “She wasn’t dead, she fainted.”

  “Could you heal yourself?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “You can’t see.”

  “Oh, that. That’ll clear up. Or it won’t.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Yes, probably.”

  Saul paused, moved his left hand slightly, the only motion allowed him below the neck. “Could you heal me?”

  Fraser said he didn’t know but he’d give it a shot, if Saul wanted.

  Saul whispered a tiny yes, that he would, then Fraser stepped forward hesitantly and felt the bed.

  Saul watched Fraser’s hands dance lightly along the covers, over his purple robes, until he had his dirty hands on Saul’s head. The two men were very close. Saul closed his eyes and tried not to breathe, unable to stand the sight or smell of this disgusting tramp close up.

  “I don’t think I can heal you,” mused Fraser sadly.

  Saul asked why.

  Fraser said, “Because this is who you are.”

  Saul thought for a moment. Then said, “You’re a phony.”

  Fraser agreed that, yes, he was a phony, and also asked that Saul not forget that he was also a hypocrite and a drunk and was wearing a stolen frock.

  Saul, for the first time since Candy Chambers had blown him in a stall at the Foxy nightclub, started to cry. Big, fat, helpless tears poured down his cheeks. Fraser put his hand out to touch the man’s face.

  But Saul turned his head away.

  Fraser said, “I once got so afraid that I lay in a ditch with my hands over my ears until my friend fell on me. I hated myself and I had to change, and he helped me. I had to let him but I had also to participate in my metamorphosis. Misery is a choice. I got help from a brave soldier. If you want to feel better, help others.”

  Saul whimpered, “How can I help others? Look at me!”

  “I’m blind,” Fraser reminded him.

  Saul wasn’t listening. He wept openly for a time, then he yelled for Leon and had Fraser removed.

  Before he left Fraser told Saul that it was nice to meet him and wished him luck and courage.

  Leon felt a deep melancholy as he watched Fraser be taken away. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he somehow knew that something very valuable was going with the mad blind cleric.

  He shook off the thought. Saul would take care of it. Saul would take care of him. Saul would take care of everything.

  After Fraser left, Saul fell into a deep sleep.

  He dreamed he was young and fit and free. The dream terrified him.

  Over the next few weeks and months he began to have terrible dreams. Dreams of health and well-being that only compounded his misery when he was awake. He could not throw himself into the relief of his unconsciousness, he had to stay in the temporal world, or what felt like the temporal world, at all costs. He was afraid that in another dimension he would be held accountable for who he had become, not for a moment considering that accountability was already upon him.

  He began taking amphetamines in order to avoid sleep, and that is how he lived out the rest of his long, long life at the head of the giant, profitable organized religion he had created.

  Motionless, terrified, completely awake, and dreamless.

  THE RIVER

  AS HE FELL, George’s life did not flash in front of his eyes. He supposed that was because it had been slowly unfurling since the diagnosis.

  He felt the fun-fair thrill of the quickening as gravity grabbed him, and then he thought about Father Kenny. Father Kenny was a young hippie-type Jesuit priest who had taught religious instruction when he was in high school.

  His first name was Kenny. Kenny McCann. Older churchgoers insisted on calling him Father McCann even though he said he preferred the use of his Christian name. He was, after all, a Christian. This was his wee joke.

  Father Kenny was one of a new breed of Catholic clergy who had started to appear around that time, just after the Second Vatican Council. Priests who wanted to be friendly with the kids. Not in a disgusting, altar-boy-abuse sort of way, but in a genuine and earnest fashion.

  Father Kenny had talked to the teenagers in his class about all manner of things. Love, sex, death, the weather, drugs, contraception— anything. He had always declared that no subject was off limits, and he would be happy to discuss and defend the Church on whatever topic his pupils desired.

  At first the kids were wary, they had a long history of teachers lulling them into a false sense of security, but Father Kenny kept his word. He never admonished a student for a belief or a stance, even in the case of Maxine Harrison, who at the time claimed to be a practicing Satanist. She wasn’t really, of course, but sometimes she listened to Black Sabbath with the lights out.

  During one of his class discussions, George had asked Father Kenny if it was true that all suicides went to hell.


  Father Kenny hemmed and hawed a little bit. Finally he said that probably most suicides were in hell before they even attempted the act. The earnest teens would not let him get away with that, so Kenny was forced to admit that given that suicide was a mortal sin with no chance of repentance, yes, he supposed it would be inevitable that they would go to hell. But he added a codicil.

  If, for example, a person had jumped off of a bridge to take his own life and genuinely repented before he hit the river, then he would enter the kingdom of the Lord.

  The children had asked what constituted repentance in this case.

  Father Kenny told them a true regret for having committed the act in the first place.

  George figured this must mean he was going to hell because he remained certain that this course of action was the only right one for him.

  Father Kenny would have had no trouble explaining what happened next but it puzzled George, Claudette, Alain Pantelic, Yves Bunuel, and a few others for many years to come.

  Father Kenny would have said that, because the last thing that George had done before stepping into the void was to offer a prayer for someone else, he brought upon himself an act of divine intervention.

  Alain Pantelic said that the results were inconclusive.

  Claudette said that Love is stronger than death.

  Yves Bunuel said Parisians were getting crazier.

  M. Bunuel had been running a coal barge from Calais down to Paris for over thirty years and things had changed a great deal in that time. The river was busier but not with commercial traffic, with pleasure boats and speedboats and Jet Skis and all manner of nonsense. The city of Paris was by far the worst part of the journey. The place was crawling with Bateaux Mouches, the huge sightseeing boats that ferried Japanese and American tourists past all the sights, and then there were the restaurant boats. Yves could never understand why anyone would eat in a restaurant that you couldn’t leave if you didn’t like the food or the service.

  Also, he hardly carried coal anymore. There was too much competition from road and rail haulage. It seemed that the world was burning fewer fossils. He took any cargo the agency could get for him.

  On this day, he was carrying a huge consignment of new, extra-comfortable mattresses to a luxury spa that was being built on the coast. Most times, they would be carried by road, but thankfully, the truck drivers were on strike again and the trains were overstretched.

  The resort was set to open in three weeks and they still had no beds. The mattresses were in the open hold but were hermetically sealed in plastic sheeting to avoid picking up any moisture.

  George hit them at approximately fifty miles per hour, and no matter how comfortable the mattresses were, the thump was pretty bone jarring. But not as jarring as the surprise he felt. He looked up just in time to see Claudette smiling down at him.

  “It’s not time yet,” she yelled.

  Something else had happened.

  The pain in his back was gone.

  The following day, after Yves had pulled into the quay and angrily thrown George off his boat, and Claudette had immediately ran to him, and after they had gone home and made love, George went to see Alain Pantelic, who reluctantly agreed to retest him.

  The French doctor found that George was cancer free. He could not explain it.

  This is what happened.

  There were two large tumors on George’s lungs and an additional smaller malignant growth attached to his lymph nodes when he hit the extra-comfortable mattresses. The violence of the impact had knocked all three aliens into George’s bloodstream, where they had floated, confused and angry, until they found themselves in his liver, being hit with all manner of poisons.

  They tried splitting, multiplying, diversifying, all the tricks of their loathsome breed, but they were thwarted at every turn. George’s immune system had become as tough and fearless as a combat-trained Glaswegian soldier. Everywhere they tried to go there was another wall of fierce white corpuscles herding them like sheep. From his liver they were transported and shunted roughly back along his intestinal tract and at about two o’clock that morning, when George left Claudette sleeping in the big warm bed, padded across the wooden floor, and sat down sleepily on the toilet, they were thrown rudely into a white porcelain hell with a partially digested lobster thermidore and what was left of some very expensive Chablis.

  Hallelujah.

  This, of course, is impossible.

  Just like when Fraser’s invitation was delivered on a Sunday, or when the moon shines underground, or when an ugly woman turns into a cat, or when an all-powerful ancient regime topples, or when a holyman is brutalized and horribly murdered by a mob of thugs but comes back from the dead three days later to tell everyone they should be nice to each other. Or when a bumblebee flies.

  OMEGA MEN

  THE SECURITY GUARDS from the Holy United Church of America had driven Fraser out of town in the back of Leon’s town car. They hadn’t been rough with him; they were big, good-natured American white boys, they didn’t really want to be mean to anybody except leftists, atheists, and al-Qaeda.

  They left Fraser by the roadside in the middle of some farmland miles from anywhere. They gave him a bottle of water and some Oreo cookies and wished him luck. He thanked them for their kindness and waved in what he hoped was the direction of the departing car.

  Fraser thought that walking would be a bit dangerous, given that he had no idea where he was. His feet were still bare, so he moved a little till he felt grass rather than tarmac under his feet and then he sat down. He drank some water, ate some cookies, and lay back to have a little think.

  A week earlier he had been a (somewhat) respected famous TV preacher in his home country. Now he was an outcast and a bum in a foreign land, he had nothing—no woman to fuss over him and have sex with, no money, no stuff, no job, no clothes, no shoes, no sight.

  What a relief, he thought.

  He drifted off and Carl appeared next to him. No one is blind in their dreams.

  “I thought I wasn’t going to see you again,” said Fraser.

  Carl smiled. “Well, I thought about it and I surmised that perhaps I am just a figment of your imagination, and if I am, then it’s not really up to me, is it?”

  Fraser laughed. “You’re a weird guy, Carl,” he said.

  “Takes one to know one,” chuckled the great, dead psychologist.

  THANKS TO

  John Naismith, Philip McGrade, and Alan Darby for patience and hilarity and friendship and valued counsel.

  Brinsley Sheridan for the laughs and the lesson about time.

  Andi O’Reilly for faith and encouragement.

  Andrea Brandt, Sascha Ferguson, Lisa Gallant, Melanie Greene, David Harte,

  Judy Johnson, Peter and Alice Lassally, Cheryl Maisel, Peter Morris, Richard Murphy, Michael Naidus, Catherine Olim, Mimi Rogers, Sarah Stitt, Megan Wallace-Cunningham, Amy Yasbeck, and everyone else who read early unedited drafts and made the right noises.

  Heather Taekman for pushing me uphill.

  BJ Robbins for commitment and belief.

  Jay Schaefer and Micaela Heekin for being so damn smart.

  David Leventhal and Haydee Campos for making sure I didn’t blow everything on candy.

  The waiters in Les Deux Magots for the time to think.

  The Fergusons and Ingrams of Glasgow for love and childhood.

  Bill Wilson and Robert Smith and all of their friends.

  Adam McLachlan for the past.

  Milo Ferguson for the present and the future.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ALPHA WOLVES

  HOLY FOOLS

  PREPARATION

  DEPARTURE

  IN DREAMS

  SATORI

  THE ROAD TO GOD: ONE

  ALTITUDE ATTITUDE

  PETIT MORT

  ARRIVAL

  FEMME FATALE

 
THE ROAD TO GOD: TWO

  MIAMI VICE

  BAD BOYS

  C’EST LA VIE

  THE ROAD TO GOD: THREE

  THE COLLECTIVE

  L’A MOUR

  INFERNO

  THE MIDWIFE

  THE OTHER SIDE

  THE ROAD TO GOD: FOUR

  LA VIE NOUVELLE

  THE TOWER

  POPPY SEEDS

  THE ROAD TO GOD: FIVE

  WAR

  JERKS

  BEACHED

  RECOLLECTION

  THE ROAD TO GOD: SIX

  LE JARDIN

  L’HORLOGER

  MARAT

  A NEW TESTAMENT

  THE ROAD TO GOD: SEVEN

  MIRACLES

  THE ROA D TO GOD: EIGHT

  CLAUDETTE AND LEON

  TURNPIKE

  SCOTLAND

  THE ROAD TO GOD: NINE

  THE SAINT

  THE ROAD TO GOD: TEN

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  THE ROAD TO GOD: ELEVEN

  CHEZ NOUS

  LAMB OF GOD

  THE ROAD TO GOD: TWELVE

  IN THE GARDEN

  THIRTEEN

  THE BRIDGE

  LIFE ON EARTH

  THE RIVER

  OMEGA MEN