Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet: Chapters 24–33

My father was pretty frantic, but he’d always been a bit of a tightwad, and I told him again and again I was fine.

Low, muffled music leaked across the lawn. My heart thudded in time. My board swung like a metronome in my hand.

There was no way some waif of a girl could survive months on her own in this brutal world.

She turned the DJ down immediately, but still, between my directions to Delaney’s she had time for only a few curt questions.

When my father took over, the conversation was all long, stilted pauses and pathetic small talk, until my mom whispered over my dad’s shoulder that she had to get some gum so their ears wouldn’t pop on the plane and blew a kiss into the phone.

There was really no musical relief for our motley sales crew, either.

He was welcoming the crowds with folksy numbers he played on the instruments—washboard, harmonica, drums, cymbals—lashed to various parts of his body.

The only other entertainment available was Pastor Ted and his throng of religious fanatics, who were wedged into sandwich boards and parked just outside the entrance.

I’d thought the wormhole connecting my subconscious to the deadly nether regions was shutting down.

It came out all slippery Southern drawl.

It took about ten or fifteen real, decent jumps for one to make it to the other shoulder, where they disappeared into the thicket of tall grass edging the road.

No, Pastor Ted was thinking mega-overhaul—mind, body, soul—deliverance, repentance, immersion.

No, Pastor Ted was thinking mega-overhaul—mind, body, soul—deliverance, repentance, immersion.

He settled us into the front pew and I think he was probably following standard preacher guidelines for dealing with breakdowns here, because he left an optimal amount of space between us—a comfortable but compassionate couple of feet.

There was a mustiness in the air, a hint of damp cellar, a whiff of stale sweat left behind by a rowdy congregation.

Pretty much right away I started feeling sick and confused and disoriented, and the armrest was cutting into my neck, and I was trying not to think, but it was hard, harder than it had been in the church.

As I bent to take my shoes off, my stomach lurched, my vision tunneled.

Somewhere above me, the Pastor boomed robust greetings and explanations, leaving little room for the doctor’s understated replies.

didn’t want them to know about the fight, about what had happened, which was stupid really, because I think religious zealots are usually pretty happy if their converts have taken a good...kicking prior to conversion, because hey, it just makes their job that much easier.

But then the smell became the choke of flowers at Stan's funeral, my face buried in a girl's long dark hair, a field of grass swaying around two terrified boys, and my stomach tightened and I had to fight back the sting of bile that climbed my throat.

It kind of worked, too, because her eyes got all big and impressed and she gushed about how she’d always dreamed of going to Europe.

Despite my jumping the gun on the big soup blessing, the mood in the kitchen was fairly relaxed as we ate, the chitchat mundane—no, I wasn’t really a Red Wings fan and yeah, the folks were in Paris, and school? it was okay.

I thought about telling him I hadn’t come looking for anything, that it was a total fluke I’d crashed right in front of New Life in Christ.

I mean, the only reason I’d even been in the vicinity was to drop a “present” off for a “friend.”

“Laura’s talent is for discerning spirits, as opposed to your gift of prophecy. Which is the reason we’re here, isn’t it? You have a gift, Luke. A powerful spiritual gift.”

The whole time Ted was spewing, I could feel the anger flickering, churning, growing bigger, getting hotter, turning my hands to fists under the table.

Even though I was pretty sure that drugs and concussions weren’t a kosher combo, Cramp hadn’t seemed worried and my head had been pounding.

Whatever you tagged it—a roll call of evil or a litany of character flaws—Laura’s list had pressed into all my dark places.

Cramp leaned over and started rooting through his bag. The clink of surgical steel, the crackle of sterile paper and then, dangling in front of me, a freezer-sized Ziploc.

Ted rolled down his window and trolled along beside me. “Hold up,” he ordered, and “Calm down,” and “Would you stop for a minute.”

Even in the dull yellow glow of a streetlamp I could see the bags under his eyes, the push of paunch distorting the front of his tacky hockey sweater, the loose droop of skin along his jaw.

I gagged up a big, hateful laugh for that lame biblical cliche.

I stared at her for what felt like a very long time, waiting for some sign of life—the rise and fall of her chest, a rasp of breath—but I didn’t find one.

Sweet, neat handwriting filled the right margin. “No big Magnolia mystery after all. Just another homegrown calamity claiming a thousand small green lives. Faith.”

Seeing how she was obviously as unfamiliar with the concept of minimum wage as she was with that of the legal drinking age, I decided to forgo the college fund in favor of more booze.

I wasn’t shaking, wasn’t really bothered at all by the impending fallout.

Maybe I was just being naive, but I figured we were going to be okay, me, my mom, my dad—although I had my doubts about Erie.

McCreary Park marked the end of the somber storeowners.

As for my premonitions, they seem to be in remission, for the moment anyway.

We both reveled in the afterglow.