Chapter 27
I wish we could say that Eveningside appeared wreathed in a malevolent fog, or in a dampening mist on a distant, skull littered hill. It did not. To Dr. Sloan, it looked more like a half-completed nursing home where the developer had run out of money and all the grannies had been parked outside on the sidewalk. In the most charitable view, it resembled nothing so much as a derelict, bankrupt ski resort parked on the side of a depleted, snowless molybdenum mine.
If you possessed a jar of candy hearts and those hearts have gotten wet and the dyes have all run together and clumped in a sticky wad you know then what Eveningside looks like. It was a Precious Moments diorama, but one that had been dropped on the floor and severely discounted by a discontented retailer. It lacked the tacky grandeur of Elvis on velvet but was otherwise well centered in the Land of Kitsch.
The repossessed doublewide that is eveningside disappointed Dr. Sloan. On the short drive from Highway 86 to the parking lot of the Compound she had subconsciously prepared herself for battle. She was hepped up for a moat guarded by Visigoths or, more precisely, Appalachian American Visigoths slapping billy clubs into slap reddened palms. In her imagination these AAVs had small dark holes for eyes; they were all high on a methamphetamine-like substance administered in ever increasing doses each morning in the communion grape juice by a Capo di tutti sort of person. We won’t begin to describe how unattractive Mr. Capo di tutti is in Dr. Sloan’s mind, but he is one ugly Mother Tucker.
What she saw instead of Visigoths was a twenty-five year old security sedan with a single revolving jelly bean on its bowed-in lid. There was no moat, no billy clubs.
There were a few abandoned aluminum walkers though.
As Dr. Sloan peered through the windshield of Mrs. Heartbreak’s van she felt a thick stab of disappointment at the utter banality of the place. Truth be told, she had been day dreaming, just a moment ago, that she wearing a golden breastplate and bearing sharp Fandangoing dirks in either hand, her face radiant with the Power of the Holy Spirit. Rather like—no, precisely like—Jean Auguste Ingres’s 1854 painting of Jeanne de Arc, she was girded for holy, bloody war.
“Cruise the parking lot, John,” she commanded in a dispirited voice. “Reconnaissance is probably not necessary, but it is always prudent.”
John immediately complied (duh. Of course he did) and slowly wended his way through the sparsely occupied parking area. Middle-aged automobiles of largely American make straddled white lines marking the designated allotment of space per vehicle. Eveningside’s visitors were obviously careless or impaired or rebellious of rules and rule making. But it made sense in a way: why bother with details when the world was ending PDQ?
John failed to pick up on Dr. Sloan’s dispirit. He hadn’t known what to expect from Eveningside, but he was far more familiar with the world of Television Evangelists than was Dr. Sloan. What he saw more or less confirmed his experience. After all, Televangelists lived in make-believe worlds, had graduated from make-believe colleges, had make-believe doctorates, and performed mostly as hosts of variety shows. Eveningside would certainly look different on television than it did to the naked, untelevised eye.
“Michigan,” John said. “Michigan again. Oklahoma. Texas. Texas times two…three…four. Ohio. Kansas. Arkansas. Arkansas. Arkansas again. Ohio again.”
John inched through the parking lot, reading the plates of cars in a monotone. Dr. Sloan had to resist the urge to flick a quick forefinger against the geezer hair on his right ear. How obtuse he is to my feelings, she thought.
“I can read, John,” she said, rather loudly. “Are you at all aware of how crummy this place looks? It’s like a mobile home park for retired K-Mart employees. Frankly, I was hoping for something more, well…
“…something out of Harry Potter? Lord Voldemort’s castle, perhaps?”
“Yes! Exactly. This is so…so anticlimactic.”
“That’s the beauty of,” John said. “Remember Hannah Arendt?”
“Ah. ‘The banality of evil,’” she exclaimed, then recited: “’The great crimes of history are not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accept the ideas of their leaders and therefore participate as though their actions are normal.’”
Dr. Sloan paused for a moment and squinted at the cheaply constructed façade surrounding the entrance to Eveningside’s lobby.
“You’ve nailed it!” she yelled, excitedly. “This place looks exactly like a tarted up grandmother thinking about drowning her grand children in the family bathtub!”
John nodded.
“OMG. This place is really spooky!”
John nodded.
“You knoooooowwwwwwwwww,” Dr. Sloan said, slowly, feeling her very real hand tighten on her very metaphysical dirk, “Eveningside is kind of like a Stephen King clown. Kind of…TERRIFYING!”
John jumped at Dr. Sloan’s sudden exuberance. A moment ago she was slumped in an existential End Zone; now, mere seconds later, she was bouncing in her seat with what John judged to be a level of excitement unseemly in a person of her age, gender, and country of origin. She looked uncannily like a Jack Russell Terrier on the heels of a snack cat.
“Calm yourself, my dear,” he said. “We go incognito from here.”
“Park the car, Heartbreak,” she snapped. “If you use that condescending tone with me again, I’ll twist your nose off.”
John parked the car. He reddened. He held his hands up in a placating gesture. He gave her a questioning look. And said:
“I accept your apology. I appreciate your desire to quickly confront Pastor Cooker, to ascertain the whereabouts of your $6,000,000, and to inform him that his chickens have come home to roost. But I suggest that we engage the enemy is a nuanced and thoughtful manner.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the roofline of the Compound. “See the cameras? We’re under surveillance as we speak.”
Dr. Sloan raked her eyes across the front of the Compound. John was right. Even though no Visigoths were immediately visible, every square inch of the parking lot and adjacent grounds were covered by security cameras. She saw them swinging right and left, up and down, as routinized and intent as birds of prey drawing a bead on scampering mice. There was, obviously, a highly sophisticated force watching their every move even if they weren’t visibly on the ground around them.
She nodded, and calmed herself. They would need to blend in with the elderly pilgrims gathering for the Jake Cooker Show, and move in Cooker’s direction slowly and methodically, with apparent good humor and smiles of admiration. Serpentine was the word that best describes the strategy emerging in her thoughts.
“We’ll need to move in a serpentine manner,” John said, jolting her. “Try and appear devout.”
What does devout look like, she wondered? She had seen Marie Osmond prayer over lunch one time at a Dallas restaurant, but it had just given her the willies and made her nervous. She wasn’t sure if it had been the praying, or Osmond herself, but the feelings were sharp in her memory. She made a very serious face and looked off into the far distance.
“How’s this?” she asked, modeling.
John jumped back. “Holy smokes. Stop it!”
“What?”
“They’ll check us for weapons for sure.”
“I’m doing the best I can!”
“Well, try and think beautiful thoughts.”
“That’s a little hard, boyo. You got me all whipped up with the whole Hannah Arendt thingy. I’ve got clowns on the brain.”
“Alright,” he said, nodding. “Just make a blank face and purse your lips like a Baptist lady. Think about Karen Carpenter singing Rainy Days and Mondays. That’ll take your mind of Bakker.”
“I’ll have a stroke.”
“Sharon!”
“Alright, alright. Baptist lady. Karen Carpenter. Blank face. I think I can do it.”
“Good.”
John opened the van door and stepped out onto the mottled pavement. He faced the Eveningside entrance and took a step toward it. Now would be a good time for the Holy Ghost to show up, he thought.
Dr. Sloan thumped her chest with her forearm and heard the satisfying thunk! of muscle against metal. A small smile played on her lips. Then, her face went blank.
