Читать книгу Now Silence - Tori Warner Shepard - Страница 14

“Señora Ballard hates the president and he hates her,” Anissa informed Nicasia that morning.

“Claro que si,” she replied. Many people hated him. Republicans, isolationists, and the followers of Edna Ballard. They were given to shouting how vile the president was to anyone who would listen. The rest of the country loved him enough to re-elect him four times.

“I’m going down to the Plaza today. Ven conmigo?” Anissa asked, and received a willing nod.

Edna dubbed Santa Fe, the small town with its dirt streets, “the Golden Temple of the Sun” when she exhorted all her devotees to leave Chicago and move there with her. If Santa Fe was not golden, at least the sun in its pure blue sky played its part and the influx of devotees paid higher rents than anyone else for small charming mud houses. It was, as well, out of the reach of Japanese bombers on the Pacific and the Germans on the Atlantic, and it was so poor that no one would have marked it for plundering or pillaging.

Four hundred years earlier, the Conquistadors reported it to be one of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, the cities of pure gold, but taking a closer look, all they saw was mud and mountains. No wheels, no steel, no written language. A subsistence economy, natives happy to trade for shells and feathers.

Edna, claiming her husband was an Ascended Master, overlooked the dust and the burros bearing stacks of faggots on their backs and assured her followers that the little town was solidly under Saint Germain’s Protection. And it appeared to be so.

Further, it was the perfect place to honor Saint Germain, beseeching him to cleanse the world of evil with His Purple Flame. The 7,000-foot altitude alone seemed to elevate Edna and Guy’s proximity close enough to hand-deliver the prayers asking to purge America of the Infidel and to allow the coming Golden Age to unfold. Santa Fe became the wartime sanctuary for their ten-foot-tall Saint with His purple robes and His upraised Blazing Sword. He was proclaimed more effective than reluctant Jesus and his shy mother with His Might and Purple Power. So billows of prayers rose to his feet.

This Marvelous Saint was worthy of prayers; He looked the part.

And too, His consort, The Goddess of Liberty on her island in the center of New York Harbor: She shared the desires of their Cosmic Master, and it was known that She loved Edna Ballard as well, and hated Roosevelt.

While the blanketed Indians bent over their turquoise and silver displays on the other side of the square, reconsidering the promises of their own gods, Anissa proclaimed her Saint and gave out His pictures hand-to-hand in front of La Fonda Hotel. This was a war where the promises of your Deity mattered, that and the size of His Weapon.

Any day on the Plaza, Anissa’s voice rang out clear, calling for recruits.”Saint Germain says President Roosevelt is an agent of discord and depravity and as a sign, he has been struck lame. The president is in agonizing pain and yet he will not step down. Four terms now.” The end of suffering only required a few more signatures. A dollar in the basket.

“Roosevelt killed my husband and my son Franque, Roosevelt.” Nicasia, a beans-and-rice Catholic, echoed. She’d seen the light. The truth was that any other Saint was paltry compared to Saint Germain, and now she pressed printed sheets of I AM literature on passersby from her corner of the Plaza. But in her heart of hearts, she never shook her old church ways. She rang carillons of bells, sent prayers throughout the cosmos, and quietly kissed the hems of any passing saint who could bring Melo home.

Through the legal system, Roosevelt had cut the I AMers off from the postal system saying that they knowingly published untruths. Fury was unleashed against him for this as Edna’s followers fought back.

Anissa called out, “Edna Ballard says Roosevelt will go to hell.”

“Oh Lady, cut it out!” a man wearing a business suit remarked in passing, but when Anissa turned pursue him, he was swallowed by the crowd.

She continued to preach. “But now Roosevelt has killed more people—including the Japanese—than the Nazis have. He continues to bomb POWs, and the bastard thirsts for more.” She waved a fist in the air. Then she started in on alcohol, war, meat and popular music, and worked back to her usual pitch against Roosevelt and his mannish wife.

The daily paper printed articles reporting their own abhorrence of the I AMers—and by natural extension, Anissa and Nicasia. The locals joined the fracas calling Edna a meddler and urging her to move her flock to the station platform for the overnight train back to Chicago. Wars within a greater war. Fires inside clouds.

Anissa, defending Edna Ballard, redoubled her efforts. And in a fit of moral superiority, she even called her late husband’s house to notify Phyllis that she might as well keep the blasted shotgun. Guns, in fact, were a worse offense in the I AM lexicon than both meat and liquor. But probably not sex.

The phone rang and rang deep into the Florida night. But too late.

Phyllis herself had had a change of heart. If she’d apologize, Anissa might be guaranteed the return of her gun. And Phyllis, when she came to a decision, rarely wavered. Russell had always said that she was a girl who stuck to her guns.

With only four gallons of rationed gas per week, and not a prayer of ever being able to purchase a rail ticket, she had already set out from West Palm Beach on her bicycle, a Schwinn. Santa Fe was over 1,500 miles away and Phyllis saw no reason the trip to deliver the hand-chased Churchill side-by-side should take more than seven weeks. Thirty miles a day seemed perfectly reasonable, more when she could coast downhill.

Anissa’s phone call would have made no difference to her. She had made up her mind.