He'd been drawing ever since, putting Onto paper every thought that occurred to him, designing doorways and naves, chapels and chambers, altars and pews.
Living quarters for Jesus Christ.
All of which could be constructed within forty days. He wondered what Jesus was going to do when He established His kingdom on earth. Was He going to abolish war and hunger? Was he going to make the world a paradise Was He going to reunite families with their dear departed loved ones? Covey put down his drafting pen. Was He going to resurrect Judith?
No, he thought. Jesus wouldn't do that to him. Not when he was designing His church.
Would He?
Just to be on the safe side, maybe he would try to talk to Jesus when all this was over. Maybe he could ask for a favor. Maybe he could get Jesus to make sure that Judith burned in hell for eternity.
Covey had not yet seen the Savior, but he already knew, that Jesus was nothing like he had imagined. He had bought the Hollywood conception of Christ, had always, seen Him as kind and loving, tolerant and forgiving. But he knew now that Jesus was judgmental and unforgiving: that He was ruthless in His dispensation of power, and although this was not what Covey had expected, it seemed right to him. This was the way it was supposed to be.
Which was why he knew Jesus would understand about Judith.
Covey finished the last of his cold coffee and looke over what he'd drawn. It was a sacrificial altar, a carve and decorated block of stone not unlike those he'd see in Bible movies, where offerings could be made to Jestu Jesus liked sacrifices.
Covey rubbed his tired eyes, looked at the clock, an decided to call it quits for the night. Next to the clock] on top of the television set, was the pickle jar in which he, planned to keep his lizards. He'd caught the first one thi morning in the backyard. It, and another he had caught at noon, were now caged in the jar. He would offer these and the others he intended to catch, to Jesus as a sacrifice Maybe, if he had time, he would even capture some bigg animal.
Maybe that would ensure that Judith would be take care of.
Covey stood up, turned off his desk light and, feelin exhausted but happy, he headed toward his bedroom.
Ginni saw the green sign before she could read the words on it, and she prayed that the number of miles to
Rio Verde would be under twenty.
No such luck.
She sped by the sign and swore softly to herself as she saw that the town was still fifty miles away. She'd promised her sister that she'd be there before noon, and now it looked as though she wouldn't be there until after three.
She put her hand in the ice chest next to her, feeling around, but her fingers encountered only cold water and half-melted ice cubes. She'd finished the last of the Diet Cokes some miles back, and she was thirsty again. The small Hyundai had no air-conditioning, and even with the windows down the desert heat was stifling, the wind which blew against her face warm and hellish.
She also had to go to the bathroom, and she wasn't sure she would be able to wait until she reached the next gas station, the pressure on her bladder was becoming too insistent to ignore. She glanced outside the window at the barren landscape and didn't even see any bushes she could squat behind if worse came to worst. There were only tumbleweeds, cactus, and thin leafless trees. She pressed down on the gas pedal, edging the car up another five miles an hour.
Mary Beth, she knew, was going to be frantic that she was late. Ever since their father had disappeared, her sister had, understandably, been a bundle of nerves tense jumpy, always on edge. Although she had not let Mary Beth know it, Ginni too was worried sick. She had not been surprised when their father disappeared for a few days---it was not as though he hadn't done it before--but when a week had passed, and he hadn't contacted anybody in the family at all, she'd become worried.
Now she was convinced that her sister was right, that something had happened to him. Ahead, on the right, she saw a blue sign, and though it was still too far away for her to make out the words, Ginni knew from experience that the sign announced a rest area coming up. She sighed with relief.
A few miles later, she saw a trio of picnic tables covered by cheap metal awnings and, between them, a low brick building. A bathroom! She pulled into the rest area and parked next to the only other car there, a red Flat Its occupants, a young man wearing a white tennis outfit and his blond girlfriend, were eating at one of the picnic tables.
Ginni fairly ran through the doorway marked WOMEN. The smell hit her the instant she stepped inside, but she didn't care. She saw, in the second before she sat down, that the metal toilet did not have a chemical disposal system but was positioned directly over an open septic tank. Then there was relief, and she closed her eyes gratefully. She heard a loud sickening plop from the tank below. She jumped up, stared into the open hole. It was dark down there, and she could only make out a vague dark lake of human waste. She thought she saw something white swimming through the sludge.
Then her father popped up from the sewage, grinned at her, and resumed swimming in the filth.
The Flat people had been just pulling onto the highway when she ran screaming out of the bathroom. She'd run instinctively after them, but before she had even reached the parking area they were gone.
Now she sat on top of one of the picnic tables, staring at the bathroom. The small tan building looked threatening to her now.
Standing alone in the middle of the desert, the only sign of human encroachment in the flat empty wilderness, the structure seemed out of place, wrong. Ginni took a deep breath. She knew she was just being paranoid. Her perceptions had been altered by what she'd seen in the cavernous hole beneath the toilet.
She shivered. Had she really seen what she'd thought she'd seen? It was so off-the-wall crazy that it did not seem even remotely credible.
If she'd heard about it from some one else or had read of such an occurrence, she would have dismissed it as ludicrous. Even now, her rational mind was telling her that she'd imagined it, her worry and concern having overshadowed her reason. Could her father really be living in a septic tank under a woman's bathroom in the middle of the desert?
No.
But she'd seen him swimming through the shit. He'd grinned at her.
She knew she should get out of here, tell Mary Beth, tell the police, but despite what she'd seen, despite the fear within her, she was still not certain that her father was really down there. How could he be? No human being could live in such an environment. And it didn't make any sense. Why would he disappear from home to live under a toilet?
Ginni pushed herself off the plastic tabletop, pulling her shorts out of the crack of her buttocks. She started walking slowly down the winding cement walkway. She had to make sure. She had to see.
The inside of the bathroom was dark, the only light coming from the diffused rays of the sun through a battered translucent skylight and the open door. Her heart pounding crazily, Ginni approached the toilet. The smell was as bad as before, maybe worse, and she almost gagged.
She forced herself to look into the open septic tank.
'Dad?' she called hesitantly. The lake of filth remained undisturbed.
She cleared her throat. 'Dad?'
Her father's head broke through the surface of the effluence, white and grinning.
Ginni backed up, her heart feeling as though it would burst through the walls of her chest. She realized she was screaming, and she forced herself to stop. Gathering her courage, she approached the toilet again, looked down into the opening.
Her father stared up at her, waste dripping down his exposed forehead, brownish liquid running out of his grinning mouth. 'Don't come back' he hissed. His voice was cracked and wheezy.
Oinni looked around wildly. What should she do?
Should sheA middle-aged woman weng a fashionable blue business suit stepped into the bathroom. She stared at Ginni, standing over the toilet, looking down, and cleared her throat. 'Excuse me,' she said awkwardly. 'I
