“Hey,” a man said as Gerry stepped past his table.

The man was hunched over, his head on the table, his arm flopped on the table as well.

“Hey,” the man said and Gerry stepped over to him.

“Food?” the man said. “Dave is dead. We need food. Dave is dead.”

Gerry stepped away and continued his tour of the place. Others reacted, raising their heads and regarding him. Some of them smiled. Others still half-asleep. But there was no crying here at least.

There was no red t-shirt.

He looked behind the bar. A young woman lay dead. All the shelves were empty.

Gerry turned and walked past the tables to the door.

“Hey,” the man near the door said.

Gerry turned but did not stop.

“I’m a doctor.”

Gerry stopped then. His long frame doubled over, his head dropping towards the man, staring at that near dead face, the yellow eyes and grey skin. This was the man Travis had worked with, all those weeks ago. This was that handsome, strong, assured man.

“Yes,” Gerry said. His hand went on Dr. Conrad’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Awesome,” Conrad said.

Gerry was frozen there, staring at that zombie face. Then he backed away with his feet, so that his hand fell off Conrad’s shoulder. He turned and left and did not slow his pace until the stench was behind him.

The anger was still an engine within him, but he had many stairs to climb to the solarium, so his pace did slow. He saw the back of her head again in the dark.

“He was young. He had a baby face. Big eyes, big lips. He had a red t-shirt and he smelled awful, like vomit.”

He walked through dark hallways, all his muscles tense, expecting anything. As he had as a boy out too late, trying to make his bedroom without disturbing his mother, passed out on the couch in front of empty wine bottles and a lipstick smeared glass. As he had as a teenager, robbing the corner grocery store with the cheap lock on the rear door. As he had as a young teacher, carrying on an in-school affair with Deirdre, the girl with the off-the-shoulder sweaters. As he had just two years ago, staying over in Corrina’s apartment and sneaking past Darren’s bedroom before dawn, and four weeks ago, exploring the halls of the Festival of the Waves after the pirates had smashed their engines and killed the millionaire.

When at last he arrived at the solarium, his eyes had to adjust to the light, even the grey light of this day. He saw a room covered and walled in filth. He vomited. He kept his hands to his knees, holding himself from falling into the mess. As he recovered, he heard voices.

He followed a clean path across the floor to the restaurant, where sick individuals sat haphazardly and clutched at their stomachs. They looked dirty and messed up. Many were in bathrobes or underwear.

Some of them turned and saw him. Some smiled. He knew they knew he was not one of them, but he felt welcomed. Then he saw a red striped t-shirt.

The young man was about fifty feet away, across a tangle of others and several restaurant tables. Gerry walked a wide path.

The boy was with an older woman. Gerry could see the two, see it was his mother. He had a baby face. Big eyes, big lips.

These two weren’t wet or in underwear or bathrobes. They were new. The more he saw the boy, the more he hated him and wanted to kill him.

A moment behind everyone else, Gerry looked to the far side of the room. Even behind the group, Gerry had no problem seeing Adam Melville, nearly a head above everyone else. Adam Melville spoke and everyone listened.

“Things are going to start happening,” Adam Melville said. “We need to talk about these things.”

“Those we left have taken the food from others. Hundreds of people are starving to death in one place, while another hundred are starving more slowly in the other. One side has a gun, the other side has desperation. The conflict is inevitable, and it will be complete.

“Things are going to get very bad on this ship. And you have to ask yourself, why would God put us here in a lose-lose situation? Now, we’re sick and pained, and all I can think of is a dog with an electric collar that shocks to get him to stop doing something. I think God is telling us what he wants us to do.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ Jeremiah. God does not want his servants to die in this furnace. My God is for the strong, strong enough to face the truth, not run and hide from it like rats with bloody claws. We have to see, and face, that all those things that we see and touch are unreal and temporal, and that what is invisible is all that is real and eternal.”

There was an energy in the air. Gerry felt this. This giant’s voice was like an electromagnetic field, attracting all it touched. Gerry wanted to dismiss him as nuts, but he couldn’t deny. There was something about Adam Melville that made him seem special: touched. A conduit to something. Gerry’s cynicism softened. Just enough to want Adam Melville to be special, to have a message for them. But it was a daydream ended again with the sight of the boy, and no voice outside could still the one inside that demanded life’s blood.

“We had to suffer to be saved. But God doesn’t want us to keep suffering. God wants us to come home,” Adam Melville said.

The boy and the woman clasped hands. All he had to do was lift the gun and press it against the boy’s back and shoot. His hand tensed on the gun, and he felt his whole body as a weapon. His mind was burning. The woman leaned her head on the boy’s shoulder.

A great struggle took place within Gerry. In an instant, the fight was over, the gun replaced in the waist of his pants. He wiped his eyes, tensed his body one more time to rid himself of the fighting spirits, and regained his calm. He wouldn’t shoot the boy now. He had him. He’d have the chance again. He didn’t have to kill him in front of his mother. The rage listened to reason within him. He would have him alone soon.

Yes, God wants you to come home, Gerry thought. I can help.

53

 

Blue skies

Smiling at me

Nothing but blue skies

Do I see

Blue birds

Singing a song

Nothing but blue birds

All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright

Never saw things going so right

Noticing the days, hurrying by

When you’re in love, my how they fly

 

Travis had Darren in his lap. Corrina sat in the chair to Travis’s right. Claude Bettman played piano and sang. Travis didn’t know if Claude knew what had happened to Corrina. Actually, he knew Claude knew, but he didn’t know if he’d been told. He once again felt warm towards Claude, as a healer, as a safe place. The song could have been sung to make it an insult. It could have been bright and happy and made Corrina quite mad. But Claude played it so that the piano was a meditation, walking above the line between happy and sad.

He sang it with the anguish in his voice of someone who had been on this cruise ship. It was a lament of the Israelites in Babylon, a picture of beautiful Zion sung in an honest voice that told how away Zion was. To Travis, it was an embrace of Corrina that he couldn’t give her. He didn’t know if Professor Claude knew she loved Irving Berlin music. But he knew enough.