Under the Beetle's Cellar (6 page)

It was Stephanie in the front office. “There’s a Thelma Bassett here to see you, Molly.”

It took several seconds for the name to register. Oh, God. The mother, from the radio this morning. Molly’s first impulse was to run. What did she want? Whatever it was, it was sure to be painful. She could say she was busy or just leaving. She really didn’t have time or energy for this woman.

On the other hand, this was part of her story; sooner or later she’d want to talk to some parents. And from what she’d seen and heard, Mrs. Bassett was the best of the lot. “Okay. Send her back,” Molly said.

She stood in the office doorway to wait for her. The woman appeared in the hall. She was nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders and hips. She wore clogs and a blue denim shirtwaist dress with a silver concha belt. Her pinkish hair swayed with every move she made. Over one shoulder hung a huge canvas tote bag that looked so heavy Molly was sure she must be carrying all her files around with her—a mark of obsession. People who carry their files with them are either truly obsessed or truly terrified, or both. She knew this because there had been times in her life when she carried files around herself.

“Mrs. Bassett, hello. I’m Molly Cates.” She held out her hand.

The woman clasped it in both of hers. Her eyes were a light khaki color that matched her freckles. “Thanks for seeing me without an appointment and all. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Sure. Come on in.” Molly led the way and gestured to the chair in front of the desk. Thelma Bassett dropped her bag with a thump. As she lowered herself into the chair, she let her eyes close for a moment. The woman was terminally exhausted, Molly thought.

“I heard you on NPR this morning,” Molly told her. “I have a daughter, too, and I can’t imagine anything worse than what you are going through. I’m so sorry.”

The tan-colored eyes pooled with tears, but the woman looked determined not to let them fall.

“Did you get any response from the FBI?” Molly asked.

“No. Not yet. But I’m real hopeful. That’s why I came to see you, actually. To ask you a favor.”

Molly sat in the chair across from her. “Well, go ahead.”

“I believe Pat Lattimore and Andrew Stein are at the end of their rope—tired and discouraged.”

“They sure have been looking that way on the news every night.”

“I don’t fault them. They have tried everything and consulted everyone who claims to know anything about how to do this. Have you been out there to the command post?”

Molly shook her head.

“Well, you can’t imagine what it’s like until you see it. They’ve got people coming in from all over the world—psychologists and psycholinguists and Bible experts and ministers and policemen and people who have been hostages and some men who teach about rescuing hostages at that FBI school up in Virginia. They’ve even got this psychic woman who wears a turban. But nothing works. Nothing. He just sermonizes and recites Scripture in response to anything they propose. I believe they are desperate enough to try something different.” She leaned forward. “I think they’re fixing to let me talk to him.”

Molly must have looked skeptical, because Thelma became defensive. “Really. I have good reason to think that. Patrick has asked me what I would say if they let me talk to him on the phone. And they look at me like they’re sizing me up. I can see them thinking: Will she break down or can she carry it off?”

Molly nodded.

“I just read your article,” Thelma said, “the one you wrote last year—‘Texas Cult Culture.’ I stayed up late last night reading it.”

Molly didn’t like to think about this woman sitting up in bed reading about the crazy zealotry of a man who was now in control of her daughter’s fate. No wonder she looked so tired.

“What interested me most,” Thelma continued, “was you mentioning that he seemed to have this … ah, contempt, I think was the word you used, for women that went back to problems with his mother.”

Molly nodded. Where was this going?

“My friend says she heard you talk one time, and you said you do lots more interviewing than you use in writing, and that you tape-record everything.”

“Yes.” Molly felt increasingly uneasy at the direction this was taking.

“Did you do that when you interviewed Samuel Mordecai—tape-record everything?”

“Yes.”

Thelma Bassett leaned forward. “Here’s the thing. I want to prepare
myself for when I talk to him. You must think this is a pipe dream, but I know it’s going to happen. I want to make the most of it when my chance comes because it may be the only chance.” A red flush darkened her cheeks. “I need to know what to say to him, how to sway him, how to get him to let those kids come home. I know that what the negotiators are doing doesn’t work. I’m afraid they’re fixing to attack the compound. I have a feeling about this. If I hear his voice and get to know him some ahead of time, it might help me to say the right thing.” Her eyes demanded a response from Molly.

“Mrs. Bassett, I would love to help you, but if you’re thinking about my tapes, that’s impossible.”

Thelma Bassett sat back as if stung. “Why?”

“Because they don’t belong to me; they belong to the magazine.” Molly wasn’t actually sure that was true. She must have read the contract when she signed it, but she couldn’t remember what the deal was. “Anyway, there’s nothing in those tapes that will help you.” She didn’t say that there was another reason: she couldn’t bear to have anyone else listen to them. Her interview with Samuel Mordecai had been a low point in her career, an embarrassment—definitely not something she wanted to share with anyone. And what she heard in those tapes would just scare this poor mother out of her wits. No, this was a bad idea. “It would be a waste of your time.”

“You’re afraid it will upset me,” Thelma said, reading Molly’s mind. “I appreciate that, but I already know he’s a madman. Even madmen have some areas where you can get through to them. See, I have this feeling … Oh, it sounds crazy and big-talking, but I think I’m the one who can do this. I really do.” Her eyes locked on to Molly’s. “Please help me.”

Molly felt the appeal down to her toes. The woman was in the grip of a cause and it was catching. Shit. “Well, I …”

“Does he talk about his mother on this tape?”

Molly tried to remember. “Some, but not much, I think. His mother didn’t raise him. His grandmother did.”

“I know. Molly, I’ve got this feeling. I taped that talk he did on the radio the first day and I’ve listened to it again and again. One of the things he keeps coming back to is how bad mothers are today, how no one should have children because the corruption of society has made mothering impossible. I want to hear what he said to you about those things: I think this is what I should talk to him about.”

“This really isn’t my decision,” Molly said, hoping Thelma Bassett would just go away. “The tapes are not my property. I could talk to my boss tomorrow and—”

“There’s no time. I need to be ready. Please. Please do this for me, for the kids. Listen with me so you can tell me what he looked like, what he was doing when he said certain things. I wouldn’t pester you like this, except I can’t find anyone else who’s talked to him.”

Molly found herself desperately searching for a way out of this. It would be like letting someone go through your garbage.

Thelma continued: “If you absolutely need to check with your boss, call him now. It’s an emergency situation—we’ve only got five more days. Tell him there might just be some little thing that could help, could make a difference for our children. Please.”

She was relentless, and shameless—exactly the way Molly would be in her circumstances. Molly sat looking at the tapes. She stood up. “I’ll see if I can get him. But I don’t know …” She walked to her desk phone, punched 21 for Richard’s office, and hoped he wasn’t there. But he picked up the phone himself on the first ring.

“Richard, Thelma Bassett is here in my office. She feels she may get a chance to talk with Mordecai and she wants to listen to the tapes of the interview I did with him. I told her the tapes belong to the magazine and that—”

“My God, Molly, I saw her on television. She’s wonderful. Get to know her. Give her anything she wants.”

“But what about the confidentiality of—”

“Molly, if she wants to hear them, let her.”

“Right,” Molly said, putting the phone down. “Okay,” she said to Thelma, who was literally sitting on the edge of her chair. “I think there’s about an hour and a half of tape here. Do you have time now?”

“I’ll make time. Thank you.” Thelma’s hands were pressed together as if in prayer.

Molly slipped the first tape into the player. But she didn’t start it. “I want to explain something, Thelma. This is the worst interview I ever did. It’s not really an interview. He just talks on and on, and for some reason I was unable to stop him and get it back on track.… Well, you’ll see.”

She pushed the “play” button. The tape started with the usual static and thumps of setting up. Her own voice came on, too loud. She adjusted the volume, grimacing, as she did every time she heard her recorded voice.

On the tape she was asking about talking to some of the other cult members, especially some of the women. Before she had gotten the question out, however, Samuel Mordecai’s twangy drawl took over: “Our women keep very busy here at Jezreel, you can probably see that walking through the grounds. Time spent in idle conversation is time not given over to praising the Lord or getting His work done. This is not—”

“Just a few minutes is all it would take. Maybe your wife would—”

“I told you,” he said in a louder voice, “they are busy. You said you wanted to interview me. Here I am.”

“What are they busy doing, Mr. Mordecai?”

“The life-affirming jobs, Miz Cates, what women are best at. They provide our food and they clean our home and they work in the garden and they also work on our construction project you saw coming in. And they train for defense, just like the men. And they study the Bible with me many hours every day—that is the most important thing we all do here at Jezreel—studying the word of God and preparing ourselves.”

“Defense? How do they—”

“That is something we won’t discuss today. Let me just say we are armed and able to defend ourselves fully against any attack from outside forces.”

“Outside forces? Who would want to—”

“Don’t be naive, Miz Cates. You know very well that agents and forces of our corrupt monster central government have been spying on us for years, looking for any excuse to attack us, just like they did to those folks in Waco. All I’m going to say about defense is that we are ready for anything. We are more ready than they were in Waco. And, like I said, even our women do their fair share. They are occupied and I speak for them.”

“What about the children?” Molly’s voice persisted. “You didn’t mention—”

“There are no children here.”

“But many of the women here are young, of—”

“Abstinence! Haven’t you ever heard of abstinence, Miz Cates? Chastity. Why bring children into the world when the world is about to end?
‘And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days.’
Matthew 24:19, Miz Cates.” Mordecai laughed, and hearing it now, Molly cringed. “A child born today would not even learn to walk and talk before the end. Earth’s probation is being terminated, and we will witness it all. Our period of troubles and tribulation is ending.

“Time is rushing to its end. Just listen and you can hear it. It don’t sound like the flapping of angel wings, oh no. You can hear it in the squawky sounds of television and movies and rock videos, in the whir of monster computers running the world’s business. You can hear it every time a credit card goes through one of them charge machines—ka-chunk—every time a bar code gets read by one of them machines they got in grocery stores—zit, zit. It’s all around us, zooming around our heads, through our heads—radio waves and microwaves, Fuzzbusters and cellular phones, modems, satellite transmissions bouncing around, electrical
wires everywhere, making foreign masses grow in our bodies, electronic spying devices, telephone bugs. Can’t you hear it in the air? All that speed and so-called progress is the sound of time rushing to its final conclusion. I call it ‘rapidation,’ Miz Cates, rapidation. Just like Daniel prophesied twenty-five hundred years ago,
‘Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.’
He was talking about our day. Have you noticed how everything gets faster every year? New computer chips calculate faster than the eye can see, airplanes break the sound barrier. It’s the speeding up of time, and it was prophesied as a signpost to the end.”

His voice had been building in volume and now it rose to a fierce crescendo: “All this rapidation, this running to and fro, is revving up the Apocalypse.”

Underneath the relentless flow of words on the tape were the faint, yippy sounds of Molly trying to get a question in, but his mad words boiled over hers.

“And now we know it’s really at hand, real soon, next year, in the spring. Next spring is when it will all finish, all the rushing madness, Miz Cates. It is coming to pass, just as it was prophesied by Ezekiel and Daniel and John. It’s all written in Scripture, predicted over two thousand years ago—the earthquakes, the lawlessness and violence in the streets, the eruptions, the famines, the wars and rumors of wars, the reign of the Beast, who lives here among us. The great battle of Armageddon is coming, the Millennium, and the Judgment Day. Just read the newspaper, Miz Cates. It’s all coming and we here at Jezreel are the key. It cannot happen without us. That is why I let you come in here. That is why I am talking to you. I want you to write that in your magazine. It is your job to tell it to the world. We here at Jezreel are the human agents who will spark it off.”

At last Molly’s voice broke through, almost yelling. “My job is to tell the truth as I see it and I need to talk with some of your members, a few women, some children, and—”

“Miz Cates, open your ears and hear. I told you our women are occupied and we don’t have children here. Even if we didn’t know about the end approaching, we wouldn’t have children here because there are no mothers left. You must see that. They are just women, not mothers. They give birth to children and, without a thought for that child, that baby boy, they leave him, desert him, abandon him in deep waters, leave him for the hungry beast to devour. They don’t care. They leave to go whoring at bars. They leave to work checking groceries at the supermarket. They leave to program computers, to service the Beast whose mark is bar codes and computer chips. You see this as well as me.”