Pierced by a Sword (44 page)

Chapter Eighteen

1

From
Dark Years History
(New Rome Press, 31 R.E.)
by Rebecca Macadam Jackson

...and so the Schism came gradually while the economic turmoil came in a flash. The whole world seemed to change overnight...

2

Tuesday Morning
11 June
County Galway, Ireland

Pope Patrick rested peacefully in his coma. Every day Sister Elizabeth came in to bathe him, and to do passive physical therapy.
She often sang or hummed hymns while caring for him; she always spoke to him as if he were awake. There is a theory that these activities help bring the patient back to consciousness. Sister Elizabeth did such things out of love.

Once a week Doc Soames came by to check on his patient.

This morning while Sister Elizabeth was singing a traditional Irish song–one of many that featured a forlorn fisherman's
wife begging the sea to return her long lost husband–something happened to Angus. Sister Elizabeth did not know that it was a song Angus's mother had sung to him in his youth. Deep in the recesses of Angus's mind a tiny electrical current sparked, beginning the first tenuous synaptic voyage toward consciousness. It would take a long time, but the fisher of men was returning to shore.

3

Saturday
Morning
15 June
Mishawaka, Indiana

Saturday sunlight streamed through the window of the kitchen. Joanie had been surprised when Nathan took a strong but limited role in decorating the modest home they purchased after the wedding. The ranch house was in a development less than a mile from Immaculate Conception Church. He had bought the house with cash. He had insisted on light colors and big windows–everything
else he left up to his bride except for the window decorations. Nathan forbid her to buy thick draperies. Short tasteful valences adorned most of the windows in the house and Nathan always kept the blinds open during daylight hours. He was a light freak.

Joanie enjoyed her coffee and the silence of domestic tranquillity. Her days during childhood had been happy but filled with the noise of energetic
brothers–until Tom Wheat came home. Her mother had insisted on quiet time so the professor could relax in peace and study his history books. Evenings in the Wheat household were therefore notable for their lack of television; the boys and Joanie sat around reading books. She took a sip of coffee and turned to her battered copy of Hilaire Belloc's
The Crisis of Civilization.

Nathan took a sip of
Snapple as he read
Investor's Business Daily.
He looked up to make a note in his unreadable handwriting on a yellow pad.

"How do you do it?" she asked, still reading.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Make money without trying. Half this town is struggling to make ends meet. You've paid for this house three times over by taking a few notes every Saturday from that paper and making a few phone calls every
Monday."

It was true. He had done quite well as a part-time investor, leaving himself plenty of time to run the bulk of the operations at the Kolbe Foundation for Joe Jackson. He also gave over ten percent of all his earnings to the foundation and other charities. Joanie, off for the summer from teaching, was his assistant.

"Oh, that. I'm not sure I can explain it. I read things, see the numbers,
and play the percentages that come into my mind. I've been investing since I was a freshman in college. Despite our great returns lately, I'm quite conservative. I don't gamble. I invest–there's a difference. I've been doing a lot of contrarian stuff lately that's come up pretty good."

"Contrarian?" Joanie asked, thinking of Hilaire Belloc–the contrarian Catholic historian she was reading.

"Yeah,
the economy has gone down so steadily for so long that most analysts are predicting a cyclical upturn. Taking a page from Dad, I've bet that it's going to get worse, and have invested in a range of things that go up when most things go down."

She was still not used to her husband calling her father "Dad."

"For example," Nathan explained, "I've got stock in a growing chain of car repair shops that
make house calls. People hang on to their cars longer in tough times. I've got junk bonds in a little company in Indiana that's invented an electrical generator that runs on wood as fuel. That kind of thing might be a big seller in a depressed economy where utility services are not available everywhere.

"In another area, I have over forty percent of our stuff in Krugerrands, gold futures, gold
stocks, and mutual funds that invest predominantly in precious metals. They've gone through the roof lately, especially with the war in Russia and the depression in Europe. But you've got to be willing to risk losing your money or waiting out a storm. I held on to pharmaceuticals that hit rock bottom several years ago when they tried to nationalize healthcare. With the new, weird diseases that keep
popping up–again, stuff predicted on Dad's talk–certain pharmaceuticals are hot again. I cashed them in for a respectable gain two months ago when I thought they became overvalued. Patience. Guts. Numbers. Guesses. Common Sense. Experience. It's a combo."

"Combo, eh? What happens if the European depression comes to the United States?" she asked, getting up to pour another cup of coffee.

"Buy land.
Deflation. That's a tough nut to crack for the cash poor. People with hard money assets picked up some steals during the Great Depression. It's simple."

"Simple. A depression is simple? You're a cool one in a crisis, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he said, unperturbed. He couldn't bring himself to worry about money after his accident, the memories of which were finally starting to fade. Except for the images
of his five unborn children. These never faded. Looking at her lithe figure from behind as she poured the coffee, he thought of more current events. "When will you start to show the baby?"

"In a couple of months, lover," she said, smiling sweetly.

"How do you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Make me love you without trying," he said romantically, if not a bit sheepishly. She turned to face him.

"Oh that? I'm a contrarian, darling. It's simple. But I'm not sure I could explain it," she answered cheerfully, raising an eyebrow in a now-familiar expression–an expression familiar only to Nathan.

"But you could show me?" he asked in a certain tone of voice and with a certain gleam in his eye.

"Yes," she replied, nodding.

He put his paper down and finished his Snapple in a gulp. Joanie had already
left the kitchen.

4

Early Saturday Afternoon
15 June
Mishawaka, Indiana

When Becky Jackson walked into the kitchen of the Wheat's house, it was with a pronounced wobble. She was already two weeks past due. Her natural beauty was only slightly marred by the significant weight she had gained over the months. Becky had cut down on her cigarettes but had not quit by any stretch of the imagination.
Joe followed her into the big kitchen carrying a pineapple upside down cake.

Nathan, Joanie, and Joanie's parents greeted the couple with smiles and hugs.

"What does the doctor say, Mrs. Jackson?" Wheat asked. He made a habit of calling brides by their formal names for a year after the wedding.

"The doc says Amy is due any minute–same thing he told me three weeks ago..." Becky replied lightly.
Ultrasound had revealed the sex of the unborn child. Joe had insisted on pre-naming her Amy–after Mary, Mother Most Amiable. He explained that Amy means
lovable.
"Oh great, you want me to name my baby the Love Child. That's rich," Becky had said at the time. Joe hadn't "gotten" the implications of her remark until three days later when it struck him out of the blue. Still, for months he had everyone
at the Kolbe Foundation addressing the unborn baby as Amy. Becky found it confusing at first that he was completely oblivious to the fact that his wife was pregnant by another man. All the workers followed Joe's lead and she had not heard another unkind word at work (Kelly Jones had quit a month after the wedding, giving no explanation). At Father Chet's suggestion, Becky began meditating in
front of the Blessed Sacrament on Saint Joseph's role in the Gospels. It dawned on her that perhaps her husband was a saint, too.

"Hi Birthday Boy!" Joe called softly to Denny, who was watching a small television on the kitchen counter. It was a CNI Special Report on the big experimental aircraft show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Most years Denny flew up to the show, but he had decided to skip it this
year. He had been laid off from his cargo pilot job. The deepening recession was the culprit. Denny needed to be ready to pick up odd cargo and crop dusting jobs.

"Hi Joe! Hi Beck!" Denny called back, rising to shake Joe's hand. "Thanks for coming. I should've guessed Mom would make a big deal out of this. Upside down cake–my favorite."

"...after your favorite flying position, no doubt, Lindy,"
Becky said in a friendly way. She had dubbed him Lindy after Charles Lindbergh, but it hadn't stuck with anyone else yet. The nickname didn't bother Denny in the least.

"You bet. Nathan and Joanie brought me a bottle of Scotch. I bet you can think of some kind of flying pun for Scotch, Becky..."

Becky scrunched her eyebrows together and looked up, trying to think of something. She came up empty.

"Scotch gets you high without leaving the ground," Chet said behind them. Everyone turned to the doorway where Father Chet was standing. "Happy Birthday, Denny! How are you–"

"Oh my God!
Greg and Mindy! The children!" Anne shouted in horror, cutting off Father Chet. She was referring to her son Greg, who lived in a New Jersey suburb, not far from New York.

+  +  +

Everyone turned to Anne Wheat,
who was watching the television screen. Nathan quickly leaned forward to turn up the volume on the set.

The image on the screen was apparently from a camera in a helicopter. The graphic on the screen was "Eyewitness News 11 Shadow Traffic." A female voice described the carnage:

"...pictures come to us from WPIX in New York. Our satellite feed is not picking up sound. Details are sketchy, but a
massive earthquake has just struck the city minutes ago. CNI is having trouble contacting our local affiliate. Preliminary reports from the United States Seismic Research Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania, estimate the quake at 9.1 on the Richter Scale. That would make this the largest earthquake east of the Mississippi in recorded history. Wait."

There was a pause in the voice-over. The shocked
families watched the herky jerky video of the Queensboro Bridge, which was no longer standing. The bridge's enormous steel supports had collapsed into the East River and onto Roosevelt Island. A crumpled, burning bus could be seen in the wreckage. The cameraman lifted the camera from the East River and an amazing science fiction view of Manhattan opened up on the television. Buildings were collapsed
everywhere. People were running in First Avenue around overturned and crashed cars. It looked more like a huge bomb had gone off. Becky remembered photographs she had seen years before of the earthquake in Kobe, Japan. As the camera panned toward midtown, it was clear that another bridge had been destroyed. Nathan recognized it. It was the Williamsburg Bridge.

"We have a cellular phone connection
to a correspondent in Times Square. We're patching in to Ricky Hodges now..."

A map of New York City appeared on the screen with a star on Times Square and an inset, candid photograph of the reporter.

The voice on the line was hysterical: "...can't get out of my car! People are running everywhere, screaming, covered with blood, crying. A mounted police officer just galloped by my car screaming
'Forty Second Street is gone! It's under water!' over and over again and...Oh my God! I just heard gunshots! Gunshots very close! Gunshots!..."

The voice on the line stopped, then began again: "Huh. Huh! The shots are fading. Oh. All the signs on Times Square are out. The building with the ball on New Years Eve with that young-looking old guy that Bandstand music guy that Publisher's Clearinghouse
guy is, is...rubble! Oh, no..."

The line went dead.

A talking head came on from the CNI newsroom in Atlanta. The female announcer's voice trembled. She was clearly shaken, fumbling papers on her desk. Her husband worked in New York and commuted by plane to Atlanta on weekends. "Uh, we've been cut off from Ricky Hodges. Phone lines are out all over the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. Officials
from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, have called our studio to ask us to urge viewers with friends and relatives in New York to please refrain from using cellular phone lines, which will be needed by rescue workers–"

Nathan switched channels. Reports of the quake were on every network.

+  +  +

No one noticed Denny leave the kitchen. He came back just as Nathan began to flip
channels. He had donned his leather flight jacket and was carrying the keys to the Cessna in his hand.

Anne was on the phone, hitting the redial button. "I can't get through! Tommy! What about Greg and the kids! I keep getting a message! What about Greg and Mindy? The children? They're only twenty miles away from New York!"

"Settle down, Annie!" Tom shouted with more than a little bit of fear
in his voice. He grabbed his wife's shoulders and held her. "Settle down. Losing control won't help Greg. I need you...to...settle...down...
now!"

Anne stopped yelling and began to cry. Joanie came over and held her mother. "Give me the phone, Mom. I'll keep calling. I'll try some other number." She gently took the phone from her mother, who was weeping and shaking.

Nathan lit one of Becky's cigarettes–his
first since before his Warning–and talked quietly with Denny, Chet, and Joe in the corner near the door.

"No!" Nathan said with eerie calm. "You can't go. Look at your wife." When Nathan said the final word, Becky turned from the television across the room and looked at the men.

"You can't stop me! And don't look at me with that look, Nathan, buddy," Joe fired back, raising his deep tenor voice.
With the exception of Becky, no one in the room had ever heard Joe Jackson shout before. The room quieted down.