Salvation City Read online

  Addy told the story of her own bout with the flu. It had struck while she was away from home on a business trip. She had ended up in a hospital in Geneva. Almost the last thing she remembered before getting sick was that Cole’s father had died. “It was one of the last things your mother and I ever talked about. I knew that you were getting sick, too, and that she was going between your bedside and the clinic at the college where she was helping out. But she never said anything about being sick herself.”

  When she was well enough, Addy had tried but was unable to reach her sister by any means. “I thought the worst, of course. I knew that the flu had hit its peak then in the Midwest.”

  The first official information she was able to obtain about the Vinings in Little Leap was partly wrong. “They told me that all three of you had died.” It had not occurred to her that this might be a mistake. “Everyone said you couldn’t trust anything you were told. There was way too much confusion everywhere, accurate records couldn’t possibly be kept, and lots of mistakes were being made. In your case, things were even more complicated, I guess, because the hospital where you were treated had shut down. But since I hadn’t heard anything from you or from anyone else about you, I didn’t even think to question it. It’s like everything played right into these damn liars’ hands.” (Think of all the things that had to happen in order for you to end up here with us.)

  It gave Cole a funny feeling to learn that the hospital that had helped him survive had not itself survived the pandemic. He thought about Dr. Hassan and Nurse Asparagus. What had happened to them?

  “As soon as the doctor said I could travel, I got myself back to Berlin. It took quite a while, though, before I could function again. I knew I had a responsibility to take care of your mom’s affairs, but I didn’t know where to begin. By then I knew your house had been looted—the computers and the other valuable stuff were taken first, and over time the place had been pretty much picked clean. Your parents were never the most practical people in the world, and they hadn’t exactly done the best planning. I had a copy of your mom’s will but no power of attorney. I didn’t have access to her accounts, let alone to your father’s. I didn’t have any of her passwords. It was all extremely complicated. I had to hire a lawyer, of course, and he said to begin with, we should try to get hold of the death certificates. He was the one who discovered that you’d actually survived. He told me all the financial business was going to take a long time, and I’d have to be patient. But it turned out there was a database with photographs of missing children, state by state, and Cole Vining of Little Leap, Indiana, was on it.”

  When Cole saw the photo himself, he would barely recognize that pinched, mournful-looking child, unmistakably about to start crying. He remembered the day it had been taken, by the kindly chubby lady who’d reminded him of his bear, Tickle, and who’d asked him all those questions about religion.

  Addy did not believe PW’s story about the mysteriously missing cardboard box. No one she’d talked to at the orphanage had remembered anything about Cole’s things being lost. “And if you believe that box just disappeared,” she said, “you might as well believe in the rapture.”

  She took out a cigarette. “I’m sure this is a smoke-free house, but I don’t give a damn.”

  Had she always been a smoker? Cole tried to remember but found he could not.

  Next to the computer on PW’s desk was a canister filled with pens and pencils. Addy dumped them out so that she could use the canister as an ashtray. At the same time, she noticed the screensaver: an image of the cross against an ocean sunrise, a changing selection of quotes from the New Testament written across the rosy sky. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved—you and your family (Acts 16:31). Cole watched her recoil again as she had at the rifles.

  “Okay,” she said, lighting up. “This whole nightmare is finally over. Here’s the plan.”

  The smell of the smoke made his heart race. Ages ago he had stood on the freezing porch of the house in Little Leap, high as a kite off a few puffs of a Marlboro. The memory was so distracting Cole didn’t hear what Addy said next. Then he caught the word passport.

  “I’m not sure how long that will take. We’ll stay in Chicago with my friend Lara. You’ll like Lara. We met a few years ago at a translation conference. Lara Trachtman. She translates English and German into Russian.” Addy leaned toward him with an avid expression. “You’re going to love Berlin, Cole. Where, let me just say, what happened to you here would never have been allowed to happen. But compared to Germany, the U.S. might as well be in the Third World, especially if we’re talking about health care. Why did every other advanced country get through the pandemic better than the U.S.? Maybe you don’t feel it so much here in the sticks, but out there people are still really suffering. I guess you know what’s been going on in the big cities.”

  He shook his head. No one in Salvation City ever talked about what was going on in the big cities.

  “Oh. Well, maybe you don’t want to know. But trust me, it’s a horror show.”

  Cole remembered his mother and Addy arguing about New York, Addy insisting New York was finished, his mother insisting it was still the greatest city in the world. He remembered something PW had said, the one time they’d ever talked about Addy. “Seems funny to me, a Jewish person deciding to go live in Germany.” But Addy herself used to say Germany was probably the safest place in the world today for a Jewish person to be.

  “And it’s so weird to see everyone here still shaking hands,” she said. “That is so primitive!” Cole figured this meant everyone in Germany did the elbow bump, but it turned out they preferred the Hindu gesture of namaste.

  His silence was making her nervous. She paused to look at the collection of framed photographs arranged on PW’s desk. “I’ll say this for him: he’s incredibly good-looking. Here” (pointing to a wedding photo) “he actually looks a lot like Brando.”

  Cole wasn’t sure he knew who Brando was.

  “And who’s the cute girl whose photos are all over the house?”

  “Tracy’s niece.”

  “And her name is—?”

  He stammered when he said it, and Addy gave him an alert, knowing look. “Do I detect a smidgen of romantic interest, my blushing young man?”

  He tried to shrug it off, but, to his confusion, what began as embarrassment flared into rage.

  Addy saw her mistake and pretended to ask her next question idly. “What do you suppose those two are doing right now?”

  He knew exactly what they were doing. They were praying. But he said nothing, and after a while Addy sighed and said, “Cole, I can see that you’re upset. I think—I guess I didn’t think about all the aspects of the situation. But I see now. You have a life here. These people are your friends.” And when he still did not respond, she snapped her fingers in his face as if to wake him out of hypnosis. “Oh, enough now, Cole. Please. Say something, damn you.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  “What?”

  “Hey, no worries. I was just asking.”

  “Very funny. But no. Of course not.”

  What a relief it was to laugh. But immediately they both fell somber again. Cole took a deep breath and said, “You don’t have to do this, Addy. Like, really. I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me and all, but you don’t have to take me in.”

  “‘Take you in’? Don’t be absurd, Cole. I would’ve turned the world upside down to find you.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?”

  “It’s just that, it’s not the right thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “What doesn’t feel right?”

  “Going away.”

  “You mean, you think you belong here? With those two? I can’t believe that.”

  “Look, it’s not like you think, Addy. They’re not monsters. They just want to bring everyone to Jesus, and they want Jesus to b
e part of everything they do. And they don’t think you’re the enemy, either. Only the devil is the enemy. They want everyone to be saved. Not just Christians, but Jewish people, and Muslim people, too. They pray for everyone. I’ll bet they’re praying for you right now.”

  “Oh my god.” For the third time that morning, Cole saw Addy recoil. “They’ve brainwashed you.”

  Cole said nothing. He did not know how to explain. It wasn’t that he knew exactly what he wanted or what he believed or where he belonged—he was as confused and torn about these things as he had ever been. But he knew he wasn’t ready to pack up and leave today and go live with his aunt. He knew he didn’t want to be adopted by her. (He didn’t want to be adopted by anyone, was the conclusion he’d come to last night.) And he didn’t believe she really wanted him, either. He hadn’t forgotten what he’d been told.

  “You don’t want me tying you down, Addy. I know you never wanted kids.”

  He felt guilty, seeing her struggle. When she was able to speak again, she said, “Whether I wanted to have kids or not has nothing to do with this, Cole. Of course I want you! And what about your parents? We both know they’d be very, very unhappy about your being here, don’t we? It’s not just that” (gesturing at the screensaver) “or that” (the gun cabinet). “I sat with that woman—”

  “Tracy.”

  “—for a couple of hours yesterday, and I almost fell off my chair when she told me she’s been homeschooling you. A person like that could never pass herself off as a teacher in any other civilized country. In fact, homeschooling is illegal in Germany. And let me tell you something, Cole. There are Christians everywhere, but it’s only here that you have this craze for keeping kids out of school and trying to ban whatever’s not in the Bible. I know you’re too smart to believe there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, but what kind of education can you be getting from people who do believe that?”

  She kept trying to look him in the eye, but he kept his head down. He wondered if PW had unpacked the van all by himself that morning. He wondered if PW’s shins ached as much as his own did today.

  Addy’s voice softened. “If you tell me they’re not monsters, okay, I accept that. You wouldn’t care about them if they hadn’t been good to you. But I don’t trust them. I don’t trust a preacher who lies when it’s convenient for him. Besides, I’ve checked this guy out. It’s not like he’s a real ordained minister or has a degree in divinity or anything like that.” (Cole didn’t see how, if you didn’t believe in religion at all, these things could make any difference.) “As for those two praying for me, well, if they are, I know what they’re praying for. They’re praying the scales will fall from my eyes and I’ll start believing the same incredibly dumb things they do. But it’s not going to happen, Cole, not any more than this rapture thing is going to happen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Please don’t get upset.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. It’s not that I’m upset with you, Cole. I know none of this is your fault. It’s just that, whenever I thought about this moment, I never pictured it happening like this. I guess I wouldn’t let myself think you might not want to come with me.”

  Had he ever seen Addy cry before? He didn’t think so. But nothing she could have done at that moment could have evoked his mother more powerfully. (Why did we come here? We never should have come!) He sat there as he had done so often with his mother, anguished with guilt but unable to comfort her. And it struck him what it would be like living with Addy, seeing his mother and hearing her voice every day. They had the same smile, the same laugh, the same way of crying.

  He would have cried himself then if Addy hadn’t quickly pulled herself together.

  “You know what I think?” she said, sitting up very straight. “I think we need to talk about something else. I think you should talk for a while.”

  “Me? About what?”

  “About you. About your life, your friends—whatever you want.”

  She had to keep prodding him, and though his heart wasn’t in it, he tried. She asked a lot of questions, listened intently to every word he said, asked more questions, and after half an hour announced that she wanted to see his room. Cole balked. It was a pigsty, he said. But that was an exaggeration (Tracy tidied his room often), and when Addy insisted, he gave in and led her upstairs.

  He both wanted and didn’t want to show her his drawings. He felt her stiffen at the biblical ones, but he could tell she was being truthful when she said she admired them.

  “I had no idea you were such a gifted draftsman.”

  “It’s fun,” he said. “Someday I want to publish a book.”

  She was more interested, though, in the many drawings of Starlyn. “I don’t suppose your wanting to stay here could have anything to do with her?”

  It was like a light slap. “No. Who said that?” But even as he denied it he saw how it might be true. At which his face burned, and a drowning sensation engulfed him.

  Back downstairs, they found Tracy alone in the kitchen. PW was at the church, she said, and she was going outside to do some gardening. They’d find the ham salad sandwiches she’d made them for lunch in the fridge.

  “But if that won’t do, Miss Abrams, please just help yourself. Let’s see. Chips in the bread box, fig bars in the cookie jar. And that coffee in the pot is fresh.”

  Tracy was smiling, but her eyes and nose were red, and her voice was the voice of a small child trying not to be scared.

  Just a few months ago it had felt very strange to Cole to pray before a meal; now it felt strange not to pray.

  They were both too hungry not to eat, but they did so slowly, tentatively, like convalescents, or people breaking a fast. Addy finished her sandwich first and, ignoring the fresh coffee, made herself tea.

  “It really is very peaceful and sheltered here,” she said as she carried her cup to the table. Cole wasn’t sure whether she meant the town or the house or maybe just the kitchen. He didn’t think he had to respond, though. He was feeling calmer now, partly because Addy herself was calmer but also because he knew she’d soon be gone.

  He expected her to light another cigarette after lunch, but she didn’t. He wondered if the ashes in the desk canister had been discovered yet, and wished he’d thought to dump them.

  Cole was right, Addy was leaving, but she still had some things to say. It was as if she had done a lot of thinking in the short time since her outburst.

  “Before I got here yesterday, the picture I had of you was very different. In my mind, you were still just this little boy. But in fact you’ve changed more than I could’ve imagined. You’ve grown up so much, Cole, you’re like a young man now—so handsome and so serious!—and I know I can’t just pick you up and carry you off in my arms. And I understand that maybe I was in too big a rush. I didn’t handle this whole situation very delicately, and I’m sorry about that. But we need to move on.

  “I’ve decided the best thing for me to do is to leave you here for now, go back to Lara’s, and give you some time to think. But that means really think for yourself, not just accept what everyone around here believes or tries to tell you. And I want you to remember that my leaving doesn’t mean I’m giving up. I still want you to come away with me, but I need you to want it, too, and right now I can see that you don’t.

  “I’m going, but before I go, you and I have to agree on some things. First, you have to promise me we’ll be in touch. I need to know that, no matter what happens, you won’t disappear, you won’t go anywhere without letting me know, you won’t let anyone talk you into breaking off contact with me. Second, I want you to promise to think about your education. I want you to think about whether the way you’re being taught here is any preparation for getting into a good college, and what this could mean for your future. You should know that, once your parents’ affairs are straightened out, you’ll have some money coming to you, certainly enough to pay for college.

  “Another thing I need you to promise�
�and this is the absolutely most important thing—is that you won’t let anyone turn you against your parents. Don’t let anyone try to tell you they didn’t love you, because they always loved you very, very much. Don’t believe anyone who tries to tell you that because they didn’t believe in God, they’re now in hell. Because that’s a lie, Cole, a sick and terrible lie. And if there really is a God and some kind of afterworld, a place we’ll all meet again, trust me, your mom and dad are there and deserve to be there as much as anyone else. And I don’t want you ever, ever to forget how brave your mother was. The last thing she did in her life was to help other people. I’m very proud of her for that, and you should be proud of her, too.”

  He thought it would be such a relief when she was gone, and that he’d be glad. But after she drove away he went to his room and he cried for a good long time.

  HE SAT ON THE STAIRS, listening to Tracy. She was in the kitchen, cooking dinner and talking on the phone to her sister.

  “Don’t that beat all? And I tell you, Taffy, you could train every tot in Indiana on that potty-mouth of hers. And right in front of the boy, too. But I could tell he was used to it. Can you imagine having to send him back to live with folks like that? Well, yes, yes, it could! That’s why I say, you got to start praying, we got to get everyone praying right away. You know, Wyatt himself spent a good four hours on his knees today. He’s upset now Cole will think he’s a liar. But I talked to the boy myself a little while ago, and I explained. We prayed night and day on this matter, we prayed and we fasted, and the Lord’s message was clear. And Cole was doing just peachy before that witch flew in on her broom. Now Wy’s afraid she’s gonna make some kind of scandal, you know, with her wild accusations and such. Says she’s probably got a whole mess of lawyers and self-called child experts on the case. I always knew this day might come, but I just about throw up if I even think about Cole leaving this house. Far as Wyatt’s concerned, that’s his son. And you know Cole being here has been such a help in keeping him steady, too. Full moon don’t affect him like it sometimes can. Drink don’t tempt him. I have talked to Cole, and I think he gets it. I told him Wyatt loves him more than he loves hisself. I told him how sometimes a person can seem like a he-man on the outside but inside they’re really like a child, and he looked at me like he knew what I was talking about. That boy is sharp.