Living Witness(16)

Of course, Franklin didn’t believe for a minute that those things proved what Annie-Vic said they proved—who’d ever heard of the Founding Fathers wanting to keep religion out of government? That was Communists and liberals, that’s what that was—but he had come to the reluctant realization that even good intellectuals were more intellectual than they were good. He could just imagine what they were thinking, back then. They were thinking that everybody knew what they meant and why they were doing what they were doing. They were thinking they didn’t want to keep the Quakers out of government because they wouldn’t take oaths, or something like that. What they weren’t thinking was what the Enemy would do when He got ahold of the kind of thing they’d actually done.

Annie-Vic was right in front of him, as a matter of fact. She was taking her walk. Franklin could see her pumping around the end of Main Street and saying something to Nick Frapp. Franklin didn’t like Nick Frapp much more than he liked Annie-Vic, even though Nick was a Christian. In Franklin’s view, Christians should stick together. If they didn’t stick together, the secular humanists were going to force that evolution crap right down their children’s throats, and then what would happen? The kids would all be out taking drugs and screwing like rabbits. They did that even when they had a good Christian upbringing. Franklin knew, because that was what his life in high school had been like. He’d been captain of the varsity football squad and captain of the varsity baseball squad, and he’d spent every weekend night of his life anesthetized from the neck up and not nearly anesthetized enough from the waist down. God, but that was a long time ago. Franklin had turned fifty-four at his last birthday. He’d have gone back to all that tomorrow if he could have, and he wouldn’t have given a damn if his mother complained about the vomit on his shoes.

Annie-Vic didn’t actually stop to talk to Nick. She pumped away in place, her knees going up and down like pistons. Most women that age were dead. It wasn’t fair that that woman was healthier than Franklin’s own wife and likely to last another decade. The real problem was that they had not been entirely clear in their campaign literature when they decided to unseat the old school board. They’d had to base their arguments on incompetence, and God only knew there was incompetence to spare. That damned junior high school building, or middle school building, or whatever it was had been hanging out there on the edge of town for a couple of years, and there was still no sign of it getting done. It was crap that construction was being held up for lack of money. The town taxed the Hell out of everybody. There had to be enough money. Old Henry Wackford was always bitching and moaning about money. He liked to get his hands on it. That was the thing. Henry Wackford and all the members of the old board just liked to control all the money and do everything their own way.

If they’d been able to run the campaign straight, though, Franklin thought, they would never have gotten themselves saddled with Annie-Vic. The voters would have understood. There had been talk around town for years now. Those people from the development were like invading aliens, that’s what they were. They came here bringing all their secular humanist crap and then they tried to take over the public schools, and people like Catherine Marbledale helped them. The voters would have understood the need to put a Godly board in place to bring God back into the schools and to keep out the evil rot that was ruining everything, but they hadn’t been able to say anything about that. Those lawyers they’d talked to had been adamant. Once they got into court, everything they said would be used to prove that they were trying to inject religion into the public schools, and if it looked as if they were trying to do that, then there would be a lawsuit.

Well, Franklin thought, they hadn’t done any of that, they hadn’t said a word about God or religion throughout the whole campaign for school board, and now they were in court anyway.

Annie-Vic was laughing at something Nick Frapp had said. Now she was moving on up Main Street on her rebound round. Franklin wanted to just go out there and ring her neck. It was what she deserved. It was what all those people deserved. All of them. Everywhere.

There was a slight cough behind him, and Franklin stepped back from the window, almost instinctively. He didn’t want to be where Annie-Vic could see him when she passed. Not that she’d pay any attention to him. She never paid any attention to him except to argue with him, and he hated it when she argued with him. She always got people to laugh at him. Well, she wouldn’t be laughing for long. Someday soon, she’d be confined to that great lake of fire and he’d be able to sit up in heaven and look down on every scream she let out—for all eternity. Franklin liked to contemplate eternity. His eternity had nothing at all to do with sitting on clouds and playing harps.