Heaven Should Fall

Chapter 6

Jill




The baby didn’t like the casserole. In the middle of the night I awoke with a raging case of heartburn—not the first of my pregnancy, but by far the worst. I tossed and turned for a while but eventually gave up and ventured down the stairs, hoping the Olmsteads kept antacids somewhere in their Armageddon pantry.

As I entered the addition I heard the television in the den turned down low and saw a column of cigarette smoke rising from the easy chair. I knew it had to be Elias, and when he caught my eye I offered him a polite wave. Other than the television, the kitchen’s only illumination came from Candy’s incubator on the back porch, a glass-and-wire box holding twenty parchment-colored eggs under the warmth of a sixty-watt bulb. It threw a shadowed light across the kitchen, and as I opened a cabinet and began poking around, Elias asked, “Whatcha looking for?”

“Tums or something.”

“I’ve got ’em over here.”

I padded over to the easy chair, and he pulled open the side-table drawer. “I’ve got a whole little field hospital over here. Tums, Tylenol, nail clippers, allergy pills, you name it. Keeps everything handy.”

“Is that a gun in there?”

He handed me the Tums and slid the drawer shut. “Hey, if I’m gonna be up at night, at least I can provide a little security.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed your family’s pretty big on emergency preparedness.”

He chuckled. “Yep, we’re ready for World War Three over here. You see that cabinet there?” He pointed to one above the refrigerator. “It’s got potassium iodide pills in it, in the event of a nuclear explosion. If anybody drops a dirty bomb on Lake Winnipesaukee, your thyroid is safe and sound.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Did you get a good look around the cellar? They’ve got enough water stored up to float the house to Canada.”

I chewed two of the antacid tablets, then asked, “What do you think of all that?”

“I think it’s not a bad idea.” He dragged on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment and exhaled out his nose. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that when the shit goes down, you’re on your own. And that goes for normal stuff, too. Out here, if it snows real bad, good luck getting out of the house for a week. If somebody breaks into your house, by the time the cops get here, all your stuff’ll be in a truck en route to Canada.”

“You guys ever get break-ins all the way out here?”

“It’s not unheard of. And there’s a lot of people still got grudges against my dad, even now. Pissed-off renters especially. Dodge usually deals with them these days.”

I replied with a rude little laugh. “Yeah, that must calm them down.”

“Seriously, right? He’s got a special kind of charm. So what’d you think of that dinner party?” He flicked ash from his cigarette into the beer can beside him. “Dodge is lucky one of us didn’t come across the table and choke him.”

“Seemed like most of the family agreed with him about your uncle Randy.”

“They do. People around here need a hobby. Scrap with somebody one time and then you can milk ten years of conversation out of it. God forbid you just let it go.”

I handed him the Tums bottle and he dropped it back into the drawer. The three empty beer cans lined up on the side table rattled as he pushed it shut. I asked, “What happened ten years ago?”

Elias leaned forward a little and, with his cigarette still wedged between his fingers, cupped his hands as if to explain that this story was a whole little world. “You have two extremists. One wants to create a citizen militia with five hundred guns and a whole army of trained-up guys ready to turn Maine into its own republic if they get pissed enough. The other one wants to drink beer, shoot guns, grill burgers and f*ck your daughter. There’s only room for one of them at the supper table.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So which one is Dodge?”

“The second one, obviously. He couldn’t organize a sock drawer, let alone a militia. You haven’t done the math on him and Candy?”

I shook my head.

“He’s forty-one. She’s twenty-six. Their oldest kid is nine.”

I thought about that for a moment, then wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”

“Dad had to sign off on the marriage license, she was so young.”

“I’m surprised he agreed to that. If some creep wanted to marry my teenage daughter, I sure wouldn’t.”

“If the creep is one of your friends, you would. But it’s a stupid squabble if you ask me. Randy’s not so bad. He just had a different goal for the group. It’s nothing to start a blood feud over, but people have to go and take things personally. You gotta let stuff like that go or you’ll drive yourself over the edge.”

I sat on the arm of the chair beside his. “Cade’s like that about this guy named Drew who’s been competing with him for the same job. At some point he stopped being a rival and turned into the enemy. Except that guy really is a jerk, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt, too. Over Christmas, when I was stuck at school, I got take-out Chinese with him and he tried to get in my pants.”

Elias stopped in mid-drag and, laughing silently, coughed out smoke. “Weren’t you already pregnant then?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it yet. Don’t say anything to Cade about that. He’d kill the guy.”

“Scout’s honor. Pretty funny that anyone would try to cock-block Cade, though.” In an ominous voice he quoted, “‘Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station.’”

I laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Kudos to that guy for thinking he stood a chance. With my brother—just make the son of a bitch work for it, that’s all. Make him buy you a big honkin’ diamond, at least. You look like you’ve earned it.”

I laughed and stood up. “Thanks, Elias.”

“My pleasure.”

I reached in to hug him, and at the first touch of my hands against his upper arms he stiffened so violently that I nearly jumped back. But I hugged him anyway, my hands light and the pressure soft, and patted him on the shoulder.

He nodded and scratched above his ear, and I trudged back up the stairs to bed.

* * *

By the following Sunday Cade had found a job as a shift manager at a hotel seventeen miles down the road, in Liberty Gorge, the first real town south of us. The pay was menial and the job a joke compared to what he was capable of, but work was scarce in the area and it was the best he could do. On Monday, after his morning chores, he donned the cheerful blue-green uniform shirt and headed off to field complaints about broken showerheads, unpalatable food and groups of noisy teenagers.

I wished for an escape as pleasantly menial. It hadn’t taken long for me to realize that “the Powell house”—the peach-painted cinder-block cottage tucked in the side yard of the main house—was little more than a formality, a place Dodge and Candy could claim as their own without ever spending any waking time there. Candy homeschooled her sons from the dining-room table of the main house, beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at 8:00 a.m., followed by prayer, followed by unqualified chaos. It amazed me that Elias managed to spend every day around her and remain so preternaturally calm all the time. Seven days and I felt ready to snap.

Late one morning, when I couldn’t handle listening to one more minute of Candy’s creationist science lesson, I gathered up the heap of garden peas from the kitchen island and took them out to the front porch. As soon as the screen door slammed, two deer bolted away from the vegetable garden on the house’s eastern side. I clucked my tongue in annoyance and sat down to shell the enormous pile, already feeling better just to be out in the fresh spring air, away from the cloud of smoke that blanketed the house’s interior. Out front, the Olmsteads’ rooster, Ben Franklin, strutted in a slow circle around the yard like a one-bird security detail. He was a strikingly beautiful creature. His comb and wattles were bright fuchsia, and from the top of his head down to his saddle feathers his coloring shifted from orange to pale yellow to deep red. The luxuriant tail was peacock-green and shimmered in the light. I admired him from a distance, knowing he was probably territorial. I’d spent the whole previous summer as Dave’s chicken-class teacher, teaching others how to feed and raise such birds, castrate the males so they could be raised for meat, and at the end of it all, slaughter them humanely. I knew how to manage birds like Ben, but I wasn’t foolhardy enough to walk into his space right away.

A green Jeep slowed in front of the house and abruptly pulled into the driveway, driving all the way up to where Cade normally parked. The door opened with a metal-on-metal screech. The kid who stepped out of it looked to be about eighteen, with spiky auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses. I knew right away—based on his resemblance to a certain Muppets character—that this must be Scooter. I’d heard Elias mention the guy who rented a room from the Vogel family one farm over and helped out Dodge with the self-storage place. He nodded a greeting and smiled at me.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he called. “Is Elias awake?”

“I don’t think so. He usually sleeps till about one.”

The guy nodded again. His earnestly good-natured face looked comical above the rest of his body, clad as it was in baggy woodland camo pants, a white crew-neck undershirt and black combat boots crusted with mud. He held out his car keys and, a little bewildered, I accepted them. “Just tell him his stuff’s on the front seat, along with his change.”

“Okay. Don’t you need your keys?”

“They’re his. It’s his Jeep.”

He raised a hand to say goodbye and began hiking back up the road toward the Vogel farm. I started to walk back into the house to put away the keys, but then considered that I should probably bring his loose change inside, too. It hadn’t taken long for me to determine I didn’t trust Candy’s Matthew. Among the end-of-the-world rations in the Olmsteads’ basement were cans of something called “carbohydrate supplement,” which appeared no different from cellophane-wrapped hard candy. It seemed as if every time I sat down those cellophane wrappers crinkled between the sofa cushions, and I was 90 percent sure Matthew was the one doing the sneaking. Any kid who would brave the basement bunker for a piece of hard candy would have no problem palming someone else’s car keys to intercept their spare change.

I opened the side door of the Jeep and retrieved the coins and bills, grabbing the plastic shopping bag while I was at it. Inside was a crisp white pharmacy bag. Curiosity got the better of me, and I peeked at the label. Beneath Elias’s name was the word Prozac.

I turned and looked up at Elias’s bedroom window, almost guiltily, as if I’d been nosing around on purpose. It was dark, the shades drawn, but it always looked that way. For a few moments I debated with myself whether to leave or take it, but in the end I tied together the handles of the plastic bag and carried it inside. Quietly I hung it on his bedroom doorknob. And an hour or so later when he awoke, the bag disappeared without a word. For the rest of the day he stayed in his chair in front of the TV, watching Rachael Ray and smoking cigarettes one after the other, as if they were a natural part of breathing.

* * *

That evening I walked into our bedroom with a basket full of laundry and found Cade sitting on the side of the bed with his laptop open on the quilt. “Done and done,” he announced. “Registered for my fall classes. Now the countdown begins.”

“How’s that going to work, exactly? I mean, the baby’s due at the same time the semester starts. I could go into labor anytime, and then neither of us is going to be getting any sleep.”

“We’ll make it work. The alternative is being stuck in this dump for three more months, so trust me, I’ll find a way.” He shut the laptop and smiled. “Ahhh. Feels good just to set up the escape plan. Always chart your course, and you’ll win every time.”

He still didn’t have an escape plan, just a fall schedule, but I didn’t care to point that out to him. “I wouldn’t mind getting away from Dodge, that’s for sure. He won’t shut up about that stupid dishwasher and what he’d like to do to Randy. It kind of freaks me out.”

“He makes noise. Him and Candy both. You can’t take them seriously. I didn’t even realize just how crazy-assed their ideas are until I got away from here.”

“No kidding. She keeps trying to talk to me about how we should leave our family planning up to God.”

He snickered. “Thought it was obvious we already had.”

“She means from here on out.”

He pulled off his uniform shirt and nodded. “Yeah. My idea is to use six forms of birth control from here on out.”

“Well, you know I’m not on board with her plan, either. She calls it ‘quiver-full’ or something, though I’d like to know why she’s only got three kids if she’s leaving the whole thing to the Lord.”

He cast a bemused glance on me. “They’ve probably only had sex three times. Or else Dodge can’t get it up. He sure acts like he’s compensating for something.”

I leaned back against the bed, and Cade gave my belly an affectionate pat as he walked around the room collecting chore clothes. “I need to figure out a way to get prenatal care for this one. There’s got to be some program through the state.”

“No way, we don’t want to mess with any of that. Just find a doctor and we’ll figure it out. Ask Candy. She’s pumped out enough kids to know.”

“Maybe. Hey, speaking of doctors—am I supposed to know that Elias is taking Prozac? Or should I keep pretending I have no idea?”

He popped his head out of the top of a paint-splattered T-shirt. “He’s on what?”

“Guess I should keep pretending, then.”

Cade squinted in confusion. “Why would he be on that? He’s not depressed about anything. He’s fine.”

“Cade…he loads a gun every night and keeps watch.”

“Well, I can’t throw stones at anybody who takes work home with him. But see, that’s what I hate about those military doctors. It was the same shit when he got that leg injury. They pumped him full of pain pills and put him back on active duty. What he needs is some physical therapy for that leg and someone to make him get up off his ass. And I bet you he’d sleep better at night if he did something to make himself tired during the day. Watching the Food Network doesn’t tire you out. It just makes you hungry, and we can all see that’s the last thing he needs.”

“Maybe it’s all of those things together,” I suggested. “Maybe you’re right, but he’s depressed, too, and just not talking to you about it.”

He balled up his hotel shirt like a basketball and tossed it into the hamper. “You know what the cure for depression is?” he asked. He began ticking off items with his fingers. “Running. Spending time with people. And getting laid. That’s my therapy plan for Elias. I’ll write him a scrip for it.”

“I miss running. I can try to get him to come walking with me during the day, though. Maybe you can get some old friends together over here so he can socialize a little.”

“I can try, yeah. We’ll see what goes. He needs to make an effort, too. He’s got everybody’s phone numbers, same as me.”

“It’s a start. Guess he’s out of luck on the ‘getting laid’ part, though.”

Cade snickered and pulled open the bedroom door. “Story of the poor guy’s life.”