Simon looks out the window. The sun has set, but the horizon is still aglow. They are thirty miles from Fort Stockton. Scrubland and asphalt, pump jacks nodding in the gathering darkness. Three pills in the morning. Two at night. Day after day, year after year? Does he miss them? Is he the same person without them? And if he isn’t, which Simon is the real Simon? The medicated one or the raw boy?
“People talk about freedom,” says the Prophet, “but how can we be free when we are sicker and poorer and more afraid than we’ve ever been? Free to do what? What about freedom from poverty, freedom from health care debt, freedom from the drugs we have to take to numb the pain of all the freedom we don’t have?”
They come around a curve and the buttes become a silhouette. Simon closes his eyes.
“Who is Javier?” he asks.
The Prophet offers him a Twizzler, but Simon shakes his head.
“Did you know that two-thirds of Americans believe that angels and demons are active in the world?” asks the Prophet.
Simon yawns. “That seems high,” he says.
“Meanwhile,” the Prophet says, “only one-third of us are certain that global warming is real and caused by CO2 emissions. One-third is also the number of human beings who believe that our earliest ancestors were not apes, but other humans. So much for the theory of evolution.”
He smiles. “Not the same third, I’d imagine.”
“What about you?” Simon asks. “Do you believe that angels and demons are real?”
“I believe that suffering makes us long for meaning but it also pisses people off. They feel wronged. Never have so many claimed to be victim to so much. And what does the Bible tell us? In times of strife, we can be saints or we can become martyrs. Turn the other cheek or pick up the sword. Which—you tell me—does this feel like, the Age of the Saint or the Age of the Martyr?”
“What’s the, you know, difference?”
“Martyrs believe their suffering makes them holy. That sacrifices made in this life will gain them reward in the afterlife. They get romantic when they talk about dying for a cause. His name was Duncan. Her name was Ashli. His name was Timothy McVeigh. This is the difference between the martyr and the saint. Sainthood requires selflessness. One cannot aspire to sainthood, because the very desire to be a saint is in and of itself unsaintly. But people are angry. They feel abused. And so we go back to a God of wrath, a God who smites his enemies, who pulls down walls and kills the unbeliever.”
He returns his glasses to his face. “As it is written—Saint Oswald of Worcester died on his knees washing the feet of twelve poor men. Saint Ida of Toggenburg was accused of adultery and thrown from the castle window by her husband, but angels saved her and she became a nun.”
“He threw her out the window?” asks Simon.
“A martyr dies for a cause, in other words, thus the phrase to martyr oneself. There is no similar phrase for saints.”
Simon thinks about this.
In heaven all the angels are named Claire. They smile at you with kind eyes, wiping the tears from your cheeks, and say with music in their mouths, What took you so long?
“You ask if I believe,” says the Prophet, returning to his original text. “What I believe is irrelevant. In the last year, belief in Bigfoot rose from eleven percent to twenty-five percent. Here’s another figure: thirty percent of Americans believe that aliens have visited Earth in the not-too-distant past.”
“I don’t care about that,” says Simon. “I want to know what you think.”
The Prophet nods. He turns to look out the window and is silent for some time.
“I believe the world lives on the edge between magic and science,” he says finally. “And that it tips back and forth, depending on what we believe.”
“So because more people believe in Bigfoot, then Bigfoot is more—real?”
The Prophet finishes his Twizzler, takes out the flip phone. “In the original Greek, the term apocalypse is translated as an unveiling. It describes a moment in time when something long hidden is finally revealed.”
Simon thinks about that, how it’s interesting and all, but also a diversion.
The Prophet studies his face. “Javier,” he says, “is the key to the Wizard’s castle. Our way in. To rescue the dragon and start our exodus.”
“Rescue the dragon,” Simon says.
The Prophet nods.
“And exodus to where?” says Simon, feeling like he’s taking a quiz. “Utopia?”
“Yes. First we find the boy who is not lost.”
The Prophet slips the phone from the ziplock bag. He presses number one on the speed dial. Seven musical notes chirp from the speaker as it connects. Hearing them, Duane asks, “Is this it?” turning his head. “Are we doing it?”
Next to him Louise is still asleep, her feet up on the dash.
On the radio Black Sabbath sings.
Close the city and tell the people that something’s coming to call
Death and darkness are rushing forward to take a bite from the wall, oh
As the phone rings, Simon leans forward, staring into the worn fabric of Duane’s bucket seat back.
Then a click.
“You’ve reached the Fort Stockton Walmart,” says a voice. “We are currently closed. We will be open again at nine a.m. tomorrow. Please visit us then.”
There is a beep, as if inviting them to leave a message, but no directory is offered—no for Javier press one. The Prophet hangs up, lost in thought. In the front seat, Louise stirs, sits up. She can feel the tension in the van.
“What?” she says. “Did something happen?”
Duane checks the rearview, changes lanes. “The Prophet dialed the number.”
“And?”
“And it’s a Walmart,” says Simon.
“And?”
“And it’s closed,” says Duane.
Louise squints into the headlights of an oncoming semi. “Wait. What’s the number supposed to do?”
“Javier,” says Duane. “It’s supposed to be his number.”
“So he works at Walmart. Duh. What’s the issue?”
“They’re closed.”
“Not, like, forever,” she says. “So we go in the morning.”
The Prophet stirs, shakes his head. He snaps the phone in half, throws the pieces out the window one at a time.
“No,” he says, “Randall said once we call, we won’t have much time.”
Simon looks out the back window. He sees Cyclops riding his dirt bike, lit red by the taillights.
“Time before what?” he asks.
“Before they find us. Before they find Javier.”
“Wait,” says Louise. “Who’s they?”