Baptism in Blood(36)
“Is Rose one of the people I’m supposed to meet?”
“You’ll have to meet everybody,” David said. “Small towns are like that. And this small town is an absolute hotbed. It makes Peyton Place read like children’s literature.”
“You didn’t put any of that in your letters.”
“I didn’t want to. Christ, Gregor—and I use the word ‘Christ’ advisedly—you wouldn’t believe the kind of thing that goes on. Even I didn’t know about most of it until all this happened and people started talking to me.”
“I would believe it,” Gregor said. “But what kind of thing are you talking about? Sex?”
“Of course I’m not talking about sex. Sex would be normal.”
“Sex isn’t always normal.”
“In Bellerton, sex isn’t always sex,” David said. “But it isn’t sex I’m talking about. It’s religion.”
“Do you mean cult religion? Like these devil worshippers the Raleigh paper is always talking about?”
“I mean religion, Gregor. Plain old ordinary religion. Christianity, just like we all grew up with, except people who are lucky, like Zhondra Meyer, who grew up as Jews.”
“I think there are several hundred thousand Moslems in the country now,” Gregor said, straight-faced.
David Sandler stopped dead in his tracks. “Gregor, listen. I have spent my life campaigning against religion. I don’t believe in God. I do believe that most of the worst things that have happened to the human race have been the result of believing in a God who isn’t there, because there isn’t any God anywhere and we all know it if we’re honest with ourselves. I’ve written articles full of scare stories about the religious right and felt I was doing the right thing. But do you know what, Gregor? I thought I was exaggerating. I thought I was exaggerating.”
“And?”
“And I wasn’t. Hell, I was understating the case. I’m telling you. You absolutely won’t believe what’s going on down here. You couldn’t have the faintest idea. This is the car,” David said.
David put his hand down on the hood of a purple Ford pickup truck. Gregor felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. The bed at the back of the truck was filled with lumber and fertilizer. Gregor didn’t think he had ever ridden in a pickup truck before.
“Where’s your car?” he asked David, trying not to sound panicked. “You don’t drive this thing in New York.”
“I don’t drive anything in New York. I can’t get insurance I can afford. I’ve got a regular car down in Bellerton, Gregor, but I had some things I had to pick up. You’re not worried about riding in a truck, are you?”
Gregor was silent.
David got his keys out of his chinos. “I’ve got one of those Darwin magnets for the back of this thing, but I took it off to come up and get you. They’re always telling you how suffocating and intolerant small towns are, Gregor, but I tell you, I’d much rather be driving around with that thing on my car in Bellerton than here. No Christian Nazis in Bellerton.”
Gregor didn’t think David should call anybody a “Christian Nazi” while he was standing in the middle of a parking lot in the Bible Belt. Gregor put his foot up on the silver steel footboard and tried to haul himself up. It didn’t quite work. David took the luggage.
“You’ve got to grab on with your hands and pull,” David said. Then, instead of helping Gregor in, he went around the front of the truck and got in himself.
Gregor grabbed onto the sides of the doorway and pulled. He tried to remember what it had been like to climb into a tank when he was in the army, but he had only done that once, and the experience wouldn’t come back to him.
“You all right?” David asked him.
Gregor knew David didn’t really want an answer. The truck’s engine was already humming. Gregor leaned halfway out of the cab and slammed his door shut, and as soon as he did the truck began to back out of its parking space. Gregor fumbled frantically for his seat belt. The sides were tangled up in each other.
“It’s a nice ride down to Bellerton.” David spoke over the roar of what Gregor thought must be a defective muffler. “You wait and see. I’m going to move down here permanently when I’m ready to retire.”
Like talking about “Christian Nazis” in the parking lot, Gregor thought this was probably a bad idea. City boys did not move easily into the country. Gregor knew that from his own experience. David was something more exotic than a simple city boy, too. He was a true intellectual, one of the last in existence. Heresy was a necessary ingredient in the very air he breathed.