“You should have had it replaced; you know the law.”
“Yes, I’ll do that right away.”
Adam starts crying, clutching the doll and staring out the window at the officer, head to toe dressed in black.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take your little girl—security issues, you know?”
Kim doesn’t correct her, just peers in the rearview at her curly-headed son, who does resemble a girl. “I’ll be more careful, officer. Next time...”
Her eyes go hard, glowering. “It’s the law. I have to take her in and let the Board of Neglected Children review the case.”
“Neglected!” Kim can’t help storming at the woman. “He’s not going anywhere without me.”
When Kim looks again she is transfixed by what looks like a black plastic pistol.
“Step out of the car, ma’am.”
“Adam, come to Mommy,” Kim says and twists round in the seat to catch his arm and pull him to her. He starts screaming and climbing onto the console between the two front seats.
Meanwhile, the officer has opened the car door on Kim’s side. Roughly, she lays hold of Kim’s elbow to guide her from the car. Kim jerks away. Gathering Adam in her arms, she steps out, pressing his head to her shoulder and patting his warm bare back.
“I’m going to have to take you in if you don’t release the child.” The officer is speaking meaner, bolder, not even trying to be professional.
“No! You can’t take my baby.”
“You can follow me to the station and speak with the Child Neglect officer on duty. Or I can call for help and force you to let him go.”
Adam’s arms tighten around her neck; he is fully aware of what’s going on.
Kim starts to cry, crying low to keep Adam from getting more upset. “This has to be a mistake...I mean, just because I didn’t have my child buckled up.”
The officer seems suddenly to soften. “A child is not allowed to live in a household in which either parent violates security precautions.”
“You mean the microchip...So that’s what this is about.”
A semi behind the two cars slows and then veers left, hot wheels hissing on the gravel. The wind from the semi smells oily and peppers them with grit. Kim covers Adam’s teary face with her own.
“A child in the household...”
Kim speaks low into Adam’s ear against her cheek. “Adam, sweetie, I’m going to let the nice lady hold you.” She levels her voice. “You get to ride in her pretty car while I follow. I won’t leave you; I’ll be right behind you.”
He holds tighter, almost strangling Kim. “Please, for Mommy. Go with the lady. I’ve never left you before, and I won’t leave you now.”
He sniffles, looks at the officer, rubbing his eyes with a dimpled fist.
She reaches for him and again he clings to Kim but this time says, “Desus.”
“Yes, your Baby Jesus can go with you.” Then to the officer, “That’s his doll. Will you reach in the back seat and get it for him?”
The officer only stares for a few seconds, then holsters her pistol and opens the back door and pulls out the doll, holding it by one arm the way Adam has been doing.
Kim takes it and presses it between her and Adam. “There. See Baby Jesus wants to ride with you and the lady. Okay?”
The woman speaks in a kind voice, totally different now. “You should know, if you don’t already, that making religious references are forbidden.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a matter of whether you are sorry. The World Government system forbids Christian references of any kind. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“Are you a Christian? I’m just going over all this with you before we get to the station. If you say yes, I can promise you your child will be placed in an institution to be deprogrammed.”
“No,” Kim says, swaying and burying her face in Adam’s baby-smelling neck. Her breasts are leaking; she needs to nurse him.
He shudders and goes still, though his arms circling her don’t relax.
“No what?”
“No, I’m not a Christian. I don’t believe in such superstitious nonsense.” The last two words came from the Land Rover’s radio news, she seems to recall. “The name Jesus for the doll was making fun. We didn’t mean...I didn’t mean it to be taken serious.” She can feel Adam’s heartbeat through the cloth body of the doll tucked between them.
“Okay.” The officer takes a deep breath, pausing for an old pickup to rattle past. “I’m breaking some serious laws here, but I’m going to allow you to fill out a form to that effect, along with a signed agreement to implant a new microchip. And while you’re at it, you might want to go ahead and get the tattoo, for good measure. It’s not mandatory yet, but it soon will be. And then I’m going to let you go. But you will be under close scrutiny, and anything you do to the contrary will be a straight pass to prison, and your little girl will be in government custody. Understood?”
“Yes, I understand. Thank you.” Kim feels empty inside but her arms are full and for the time being that seems enough.
Chapter 18
When she gets home she is a nervous wreck but she has reclaimed her natural calm, on the outside anyway. After napping all the way home, Adam seems to have forgotten the scary episode. She helps him forget by babbling excitedly about them leaving that evening, and, she tells him, soon he will go with his daddy to lead the goats to the settlement and see Sis’ Shirley’s Christmas tree again.
He had left his wind-up dog there yesterday and remembers it now and wants his “woof woof.”
“Woof woof!” she says over and over with him woofing back at her and dancing around the kitchen with Baby Jesus.
She feels silly but it’s better than the shame inside trying to burst free. Why should she feel shame for doing what she had to do to keep Adam with her?
By the time Shelton gets home, an hour later, she has at some point decided not to tell him what happened. Or maybe not decided, because she simply isn’t going to tell about any of it. The forms she signed with the name of Anna Selph, mother of three-year-old Amanda Selph. She’s not too worried about being found out since they’ll be leaving soon anyway. Besides, who can prove that Kimberly Meeks didn’t disappear along with Dan and Buck Meeks, three and one-half years ago? Her address for the record is the house in Valdosta where she used to live. She tells herself that her reason for not telling Shelton is to keep from worrying him. But she knows that’s not it. What she’s done, what she’s said, what she’s signed narrows down to a simple denial of Jesus Christ and she is ashamed. And the worst part of it is, she would do it all over again. Her heart can’t lie and who but God knows the heart?
***The day is wearing down when at four o’clock that evening Shelton and Adam lead the goats across the road and through the woods to the settlement. Dixie follows, barking and circling the black nannie and her baby.
Kim is loading up boxes of bed sheets and blankets in back of the Land Rover, packed to the roof, while alternately checking for the black police car to appear, when she sees them coming back. Shelton is holding Adam’s hand and carrying an old brown-striped suitcase when they step from the woods, down into the ditch, then up to the road.
Sis’ Shirley, dressed in a straight yellow cotton dress, one of her church dresses from long ago, appears on the edge of the woods, down the ditch and up again with teetering close steps in her worn brown flats. The rhinestone frames of her large round glasses cover half her small sharp face. This is what she always wears when she leaves the settlement, which is seldom. Sometimes it seems to Kim that what keeps her going, her delight even, is her neighbors yakking back and to about her missing out on the trip to heaven.
Kim claps her hands, shouting, “All right!”
She is genuinely glad Sis’ Shirley is going, partly for selfish reasons. If something happens to Kim and Shelton, she’ll be sure to take care of Adam. I
t’s a bit like cheating on her Christian beliefs again, because Sis’ Shirley is loyal to the other side and will hopefully fall under their protection, if for no other reason than the color of her skin.
Kim cannot decide whether she simply fell under the spell of Abdul Selah, like just about everybody else in the world, when he happened onto the political scene, or whether she believes he is the antiChrist, like most Christians believe, and has switched sides out of spite because she didn’t make the Rapture. Or maybe she’s afraid of the local branch of the World Government system if she doesn’t act the part of loyal follower. To Kim and Shelton, she claims to be proud of him because like her he is African-American and, for the first time in history, his people come first.
Regardless, as proof of her loyalty, she is wearing an old United States presidential campaign button on her chest with the tipped-up face, humble eyes and cocked ears of Abdul Selah when he was younger—VOTE FOR LIBERTY-SELAH!
***Kim drives first, Shelton on the other side reading his bible like a map—and it is one. With every mile that passes she feels easier, not so afraid of being followed.
They’ve decided to drive dirt roads east to the Okefenokee Swamp: tinder-dry woods and dust like smoke flowing over, under and behind the car, but at least no traffic, nobody in sight. Sis’ Shirley is in the backseat behind Kim, and Adam is on the other side, clutching the Cabbage-Patch Jesus and watching the trees soldiering past outside the window.
Kim wonders what he’s thinking. Is he remembering this morning and the witch in black trying to take him away from his mother? To keep from dwelling on Adam, and also to hear if Anna and Amanda Selph have made the news, Kim toggles the switch on the radio and turns the volume down low.
Locally and globally horror stories of the biblical “wearing-down” of God’s people have been passed on to Kim and Shelton by way of the Land Rover’s radio: keep away from churches other than mosques; keep away from Christians with their propaganda talk; anyone found in possession of Christian material will be prosecuted as an example to others of like-minded superstitious nonsense. The scriptural “wearing down of God’s people,” Shelton and Kim agree, is in part brought about by the media’s coverage of every despicable, disgusting act they can scrounge up from any source. Though Sis’ Shirley is their main server of bad news, they have been unable to resist slipping out to the Land Rover on occasion to feed their fears.
Before leaving, Shelton had had a talk with Sis’ Shirley in the front yard about calming down and not grabbing Adam all the time. At first, she fussed about his “judging” her, saying she’d be just as well off to stay in the settlement where she is always being judged and accused and made fun of. But when she realized that Shelton would let her go back, she climbed into the backseat and pulled the door to behind her. Pouting a bit but silent for a change.
On the car radio: “The case of the missing millions, three and a half years ago, has now been officially declared the fault of violent global weather upheavals and is no longer under investigation by the World Government...”
Shelton makes a cutting motion with his hand for Kim to switch off the radio and nods toward the back seat. Sallow in the greenish glare of the car’s window tinting, he looks tired and sad, but his brown eyes are just as piercing as ever.
Adam is sucking his thumb and staring out his window, then quickly checking in with his family, just in case. Yeah, Kim thinks, he’s remembering what happened this morning. Or maybe he’s heard about the Rapture and is afraid of everybody being gone next time he looks. Or maybe he’s made some kind of association between the two.
She fixes Sis’ Shirley in the rearview, filing her square dark nails with an old metal file, and screwing her mouth because she’s dying to interpret the news in relation to some Scripture rolling around in her head.
“Sis’ Shirley, have you ever mentioned the R-a-p-t-u-r-e in front of him.” Kim nods toward Adam.
She always gets loud when feeling accused. “Me? Huh uh! I hear a bunch talking bout it and him in hearing though.” She waves the nail file like a baton. “But I ain’t. I ain’t say word one about the R-a-p-t-u-r-e.”
“The Rapture,” Shelton says, looking up from his black leather bible, then twisting round in his seat. “Adam, nobody’s leaving you, ever. Right, Sis’ Shirley? Right, Kim?”
They have no idea, Kim thinks, how close Adam came to being separated from them all this morning. Yes, she did what she had to do. Then why is she hiding it from Shelton?
“Listen up,” Shelton adds. “There are no ends, only beginnings now. Get it, Sis’ Shirley?”
Kim knows that at some point Shelton will get around to pointing out to Sis’ Shirley the difference in believing in God, going to church and good works, versus developing a personal relationship with Him. She dreads it, but she knows it’s important. Sis’ Shirley was raised in the church by a believing mother, and apparently thinks that her salvation was inherited. Talk about a flare-up! Or maybe not, since the man on her campaign button has obviously won her over.
Adam slowly closes his big blue eyes and nods, sucking his thumb and clutching Baby Jesus. In the back of the Land Rover, in a dog-sized spot between boxes and cans of gas, Dixie stares out at the dust streaming behind the car.
“Would be something if it’d come up a rain,” Sis’ Shirley hums, brushing powdery nail filings from the black purse on her lap.
In other words, if it starts raining now, only ten or so miles from home, she can go back and not have to worry about fire breaking out and rushing through the settlement. It’s a threat. She’s simply missing being quarrelsome and the center of attention and trying to start a fight with Shelton. Kim imagines there was a real celebration in the settlement when they found out Sis’ Shirley was leaving—peace in the camp at last! And if she really wants to go back, that’s part of the reason—to show them she can.
But Kim herself has told Shelton that she’s not going into the Swamp if it looks the least bit dry. Now, since her encounter with the police woman, she looks forward to the isolation of the Okefenokee, dry or not.
Almost every summer since she moved to South Georgia from Tennessee, after marrying Dan, fire has broken out in the peat bogs and woods of the great Swamp. Festering smoke would carry as far away as Atlanta and Miami, sometimes farther. Thousands of acres burned.
Kim’s private idea is to go on east to the Atlantic Ocean. She loves the seaside there—all that water after being out of water for so long. Sun in the rearview mirror, moon-like through the dust, she imagines Fernandina Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, being just as peaceful and pure as it had been six years ago when she and Dan had gone there. She knows it won’t be that way now—if the news is right, there is danger and disaster everywhere—but it’s nice to imagine. She’s glad she has this built-in picture album in her head.
Chapter 19
Their first night is spent in the Land Rover, after supper out in the straw-dry woods.
Sis’ Shirley had brought sweet potatoes from her garden the year before, which she had baked over coals, along with what she calls “a pone of cornbread.” So good!
Kim and Shelton know for a fact that she hadn’t had a garden. Nobody had. It was to dry to grow sandspurs, much less sweet potatoes. Somebody’s sweet potatoes have gone missing.
They drink sparingly of John’s cleansed and relabeled aged water, as usual, but so far they haven’t gotten sick.
“So far, so good.” Shelton crosses his legs on the dried grass and pine straw and props back on his hands, staring up at the dust and smoke-dimmed sky.
Aircraft overhead and traffic from State Highway 94 remind them that they are never alone, and they don’t dare feel safe yet, if ever, for the coming three years, give or take a month or two.
Sis’ Shirley is still on her best behavior. Sitting on the straw across from Shelton. She looks almost young, slim in her sunny yellow dress, but the expression on her face shows she is itchy and cross and in fact growing old.
Kim suspects that it’s just a matter of time before the good behavior begins to shed and wonders if they should have brought her along.
She keeps looking back through the russet woods toward the dirt road leading home, and Kim won’t be surprised if she suddenly commands them to take her back. Even the bad, once gotten used to, trumps the good. But no, she seems to trust Kim and Shelton to know best and to take care of her. She’s an “old maid,” as she often refers to herself, and old maids aren’t welcome in the settlement, and old maids have to at some point accept that they have to be taken care of. Before, she had the church, now she has nobody.
Her bottom lip puffs up as she looks down and centers her Selah campaign button.
The young Selah, beloved by everybody, though less and less of late because he keeps breaking promises; his humble look has morphed into proud, and his eloquent speech has morphed into merely loud.
Kim congratulates herself on coming up with a good, fitting slogan for the World Ruler. She wonders if Sis’ Shirley might be coming around soon to Jesus as Savior with her trust in Abdul Selah slipping away.
Adam toddles past Sis’ Shirley and she reaches out for him. He steps away, holding one hand with the other, to keep her from grabbing him. “Be like that,” she says and sits back propping with her hands.
Shelton and she exchange looks. “It’s not so far that we can’t take you back.”
“Shelton,” Kim says. She really needs Sis’ Shirley. If something happens... She just needs her.
Earlier, just before leaving home, Kim had washed-up Adam for the trip and dressed him in one of her Buck’s outfits—a blue checked gingham sun-suit sent by her mother for later use. She always bought his clothes too big, for him to grow into, never imagining that he would have quit growing before he wore the clothes. Often, Kim feels her mind stick, unable to move, when thinking about Buck being stuck at the age he was when he disappeared; time and age moving on for her, and her son stuck at the age of two. She can’t lose this son, she simply can’t.
Adam’s sun-suit is filthy now and he keeps shrugging one shoulder like she used to do to keep from answering, but his shrugging is to drop a bothersome shoulder strap of the sun-suit.