Multiplex Fandango (36 page)

Rev Bosco
e
saw this and toggled the window nearest him closed, shutting the biker off from the conversation.
Then the Burned Man scooted across the leather seat until he was next to Gibb.
"You don't want to do this."

"I'm not afraid," Gibb said, forcing himself to stare at the place on the man's face where a nose should have been.
"I am not afraid," he said again.

Rev Bosco
e
shook his head.
"You should be."

"You said before that I am of a type.
What type am I?"

"You are a practical man."

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

"When you see a problem you fix it," Rev Bosco
e
said.

"That's right.
What's wrong with that?"

"You place responsibility as the most important character trait and strive to be responsible at all times and in all places," Rev Bosco
e
said.

"Of course.
Doesn't everyone?"

"No.
Everyone doesn't."
Rev Bosco
e
stared pointedly at Gibb.
"In fact, some see it as a weakness."

"That's just crazy.
Responsibility is a good thing.
It's a strength, not a weakness."

"Corinthians 12:9 says My grace is sufficient for you, for my
 
power is made perfect in weakness," Rev Bosco
e
said, his hands clasped beneath his chin.
"You see your responsibility as a strength, but this very essence of your practical nature is your weakness."

"What?
What?" Gibb sputtered.
"But that makes no sense."

"There is a pattern to things.
There is a holy promise that was made from the moment time began.
The verse I quoted speaks to Christ and how he, as a humble man, ascended into Heaven and gave us grace."

"What does humility have to do with responsibility?"

"Do you know the limits of your responsibility?
Do you understand where you must stop?"

"What limits?
This is just responsibility we're talking about.
How do limits apply?"

Instead of answering, Rev Bosco
e
steepled his hands beneath his chin and closed his eyes.
He shook his head twice.
"No," he mumbled.
"We shouldn't
—
" he began but was cut-off by some internal dialogue.
"Yes.
Okay," he finally whispered.
Without opening his eyes he said, "She will honor your request."

"My request?" Gibb sputtered.

"You were going to petition the Long Cool Woman, yes?" Rev Bosco
e
asked, his tone that of a patient professor.

"Well, yes.
I mean, I was going to, but how did she know?
How did you know?"

Rev Bosco
e
smiled, the sight utterly lacking in humor.
"You're willing to accept that the dead can speak through a comatose woman but have a problem with the fact that I can communicate with her?"

Gibb processed the question and saw the reason within the unreasonable.
"So she'll do it?"

"Yes," Rev Bosco
e
said.
"She'll do it."

"Then it's back the way we came.
You'll follow me, right?"

"Right."
Rev Bosco
e
toggled closed the window signaling the end to the conversation.

Gibb rushed back to his police cruiser.
He hadn't missed the tired resolve on Rev Bosco
e
's face.
He'd just decided to ignore it.
After all, his most private wish was about to be fulfilled.
What was he to do?
Trade his dream for the nightmare of a burned preacher?

A break in traffic found them accelerating until the next exit, where they were able to regroup before heading West towards mile marker 43.
And with each mile they drew closer, the more excited Gibb became.

Excitement not like when he chased down a perp or during a high
-
speed chase.
Gibb had never intended on being a policeman.
No, not the adrenaline surges of the physical, more like the endorphin highs of higher learning.

Like when he'd received his scholarship to Princeton.
No one in his family had even gone to college, much less received a scholarship.
But after four years of perfect grades and an inspired letter from his guidance counselor, Princeton had tendered him the Soren Kierkegaard Scholarship in Philosophy.

Or when he'd graduated Phi Beta Kappa and slid into graduate school.

Or when he'd been offered a teaching position at Arizona State University, charged with shaping the thoughts, ethics and futures of a hopeful generation.

After passing mile marker 44, Gibb did something he'd never done before.
He didn't call in.
He didn't text a message.
Instead, he turned everything off.
The computer, the portable radio, the console radio
—
all turned off.
He didn't need their interruption.
He didn't need for something to spoil the moment.

Usually, the interior of the cruiser was alight with police technology.
But as he pulled to a stop beside mile marker 43, the interior was as black as the universe Gibb saw from behind his closed eyes.
He waited several moments, remembering the words he'd said on that night his life had changed, words he'd borrowed from Kierkegaard himself.
The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.
An imperative of understanding must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.
That is what my soul longs after, as the African desert thirsts for water.
What is truth but to live for an idea?

And that idea had been responsibility.

Gibb's eyes shot open as knuckles wrapped at his window.
More time had passed than he'd realized.
The interior windows had begun to fog.
He turned and toggled his window down.
He watched as a gloved hand gripped his door and a face hove into view.

"You gonna do this?" the biker with the Fu Manchu mustache asked.
"The reverend's waiting and wants to know if you’re ready."

Gibb rubbed his face.
His hand came away wet with sweat.
Where had he gone?
Where had the time gone?
He stepped from the cruiser, leaving his hat on the seat.
He glanced once at the baton resting in its door sleeve, but decided to leave that alone as well.
Where he was going, he didn't expect to need either.

The other two bikers were lowering the Long Cool Woman to the ground as he approached the shrine.
The Burned Man stood nearby, hands clasped in front of him, head down as if in prayer.
Gibb glanced towards the bus where the mourners sat facing forward in their seats, ignoring his episode.
Clearly they were not his mourners.

Gibb grinned nervously.
To be able to finally speak to the man he'd killed was something very significant to him
—
something he'd never thought he'd be able to do from this side of the shroud.
He understood that his need was selfish.
Redemption was a private thing.

What had changed his mind and made him seek out the Long Cool Woman was the constant wondering about Stephen Jones and whether or not the man's soul had passed to the other side.
The accident had been horrifically violent.
Superimposed upon the desert, Gibb watched as a phantom car careened out of control.
The car twisting through the air.
A head slammed against the driver-side window as geometry and torque merged.
Blood plumed.
Then an explosion of earth, plastic, glass and metal as what was left of the car hit, tumbled and split asunder.

They say that the soul remains at the scene of violent deaths.
Gibb remembered the crash as if it were yesterday and there was no death as violent as the one that had taken the life from Stephen Jones.
If the soul remained, the Long Cool Woman would help it across.
If the soul remained, perhaps Gibb would be able to tell it all the things he'd done to make up for the untimely death.

The bikers finished arranging the Long Cool Woman, then backed away.
As they passed Gibb on the way back to their bikes, he noticed that they seemed afraid to make eye contact.

Rev Bosco
e
walked to the body and gently grasped the Long Cool Woman's left hand and placed it against the shrine.
He knelt beside the body and held the right hand in an embrace.
Slowly, he petted it.

"Come, Mr. Gibb," Rev Bosco
e
said.

Gibb gulped and stepped forward.

"Allow me to tell you a few things, before we begin," Rev Bosco
e
said.

Gibb nodded, suddenly very nervous as the moment of his confrontation neared.
He didn't mind postponing it a moment or two longer.

"You never asked me how I became this way?"

Gibb had thought about asking, but knew it would have been presumptuous and rude.
What must have happened must have been truly horrible.

Rev Bosco
e
smiled and, without moving his head, glanced up at Gibb.
"It was truly horrible; more so because of the betrayal.
It was my mother who did this, you see."

Gibb felt his breath hitch.

"You don't have children, but let me promise you, there is nothing more terrible than a mother who hurts her own child.
The shattering of the trust alone..." Rev Bosco
e
's voice trailed off.

Gibb didn't have children.
He'd wanted to, but since he'd taken away Stephen Jones' chance to be a father, it hadn't seemed fair.

"We were always poor.
She was always high.
When she couldn't get hold of morphine or heroin, she'd have to settle.
My father painted houses, you see, so there were always a lot of paint cans lying around.
He'd collect them until he'd have enough for a full can, then charge the client as if he'd purchased the paint special for them.
Not really cheating, just frugal."

Gibb watched Rev Bosco
e
petting the hand of the comatose medium and tried to imagine the Burned Man as a child.
Try as he might, he couldn't.

"Yes.
Would you believe I don't even know what I looked like back then either?
I was so young, I just don't remember."
The Reverend shrugged.
"No matter.
Like all of us, I am what I've become."
He glanced up suddenly, confusion in his eyes.
"Where was I?"

"Your father was frugal," Gibb murmured.

"That's right, ever the frugal man.
What he didn't know, is how my mother would go into the paint shed when he was gone during the day.
She'd take a plastic drop cloth and drape it over her head.
That day she hurt me, I watched her through the window as she opened up cans of blue and red and white.
I remembered thinking of the flag and wondering if she was going to paint something patriotic."
He glanced up and smiled weakly.
"Of course, I didn't know the word patriotic until much later."

Gibb matched the smile and nodded.

"Then she began to sing and sway like we were back in church."

"What'd she sing?" Gibb surprised himself by asking.

"Showtunes.
She sang showtunes.
We had these old records that she'd play.
She had all the words memorized.
I broke one of the records once and was soundly trounced.
I deserved that one."
Rev Bosco
e
stopped petting the hand, and placed the Long Cool Woman's hand over his eyes as he continued.

"Then later after the red, white and blue paint, when I was playing with my trucks in the kitchen, she came inside with a hammer and two ten penny nails.
She called me over, and like a good boy, I came.
I was so surprised when she nailed my left foot to the floor, I didn't even cry out until she started pounding the other nail home in my right foot."