Living Witness(37)

He went over to his desk and sat down. He was so tall and thin he found it difficult to sit behind a desk like a normal person. He seemed to explode in a profusion of knees. “Send her in, Susie,” he said. “She won’t bite you.”

“I’d like to bite her,” Susie said. “You should see the way she’s behaving. She keeps looking behind the furniture.”

Which meant she was looking for snakes, Nick thought. Susie was out the door. He sat back a little and waited. This room was full of books, and they were not just window dressing. Nick liked to read. He especially liked to read history. He did not restrict himself to what came out of the Christian publishing houses.

The door swung in yet again and Susie came back, followed by a small, very young woman in jeans and a parka. Susie had been right about the sloppiness. The woman looked like she had slept all night in those clothes, then rolled out of bed this morning and pretended she hadn’t.

“Ms. Charlene Holder,” Susie said. She was very stiff. “Ms. Holder, this is Reverend Frapp.”

Then Susie got out, fast, as if shooting were about to start.

Nick had gotten to his feet. This was one of the first acts of politeness he had ever learned and he wasn’t interested in giving it up. He held out his hand to the woman and waited until she shook it. Then he waited until she sat down. She was really very, very small. Nick towered over most people. Beside her he was like a tree next to a daisy.

He sat down again and stretched his legs out under his desk. “Well,” he said. “You’re from CNN. What can I do for you?”

“Ah,” Ms. Holder said. She looked at her hands. “Your secretary took my tape recorder. I’d kind of like to get something of our conversation on tape.”

“I’m not really ready for tape,” Nick said. “What was it you wanted to have a conversation about?”

“Well,” Ms. Holder said. She was looking carefully around the room, in all the corners, at the floor. Nick watched her. She did not seem to be aware that she was leaving long stretches of dead air.

“You’re not going to see anything,” he said mildly. “We don’t handle snakes in the church.”

“What?”

“We don’t handle snakes in the church,” he said patiently. There was no point in being rude to these people. They could hurt you. Even so, he wished he could hit her over the head with something right this minute. “There’s no point in looking around as if a rattlesnake is going to jump out and bite you. There are no rattlesnakes here. We don’t handle snakes in church.”

“Ah,” Ms. Holder said.

“Most of us don’t handle snakes in church at all anymore,” Nick said. “It’s an old-fashioned practice. We move with the times like everybody else. And nobody’s drunk poison around here for a good thirty years.”

“Ah,” Ms. Holder said again.

“So if that’s what you were looking for,” Nick said. He tilted his head. “If that’s what you were looking for,” he said again, “as you can see, I can’t help you.”

This got Ms. Holder’s attention. Nick had no idea why. Maybe she was just paranoid about rejection. She forced herself to look directly at him. Her eyes stayed on his face for a good ten seconds before they began to scan the room again.

“It’s not about snakes,” she said. “It’s about the lawsuit. We’re here to cover the lawsuit. We thought we’d get a few, ah, you know, we’d talk to a few people. Creationists. You’re a Creationist, aren’t you?”

“If you mean do I believe that the world was created as the Bible says it was, then yes, I’m a Creationist.”

“Yes. Well. That’s it, you see. We want to get a few on camera interviews with Creationists.”

“You want me to talk about the biblical account of creation?”

“Um, yeah,” Ms. Holder said. “That would be good. Also, you know, why you think it should be taught in the public schools.”

“I don’t think it should be taught in the public schools,” Nick said.

“What?”

“I don’t think it should be taught in the public schools,” Nick said. He wondered if he was going to have to repeat everything for this woman. She just wasn’t listening. “We have a Christian school here, run by this church. It’s enough for me that Creation is taught in the Christian school.”

“Oh.” Ms. Holder looked stumped.

Nick closed his eyes. He wondered if this woman knew something about the coming of Gregor Demarkian. He wondered if she knew something about anything. Had he sprouted horns and a tail? Did he have an eye growing out of his forehead? For God’s sake.