of Dallas, although there the ethnic makeup had been heavily Hispanic rather than black.
Not that it made any difference. They were all trash in the eyes of the Lord.
He had come to Dallas at the tender age of twenty-two, unschooled, untried, and inexperienced, and he had learned by doing, preaching at first from the bus stop bench of a street corner, then from a portable podium of his own making. He had attracted auention as an object of curiosity, had become an object, of ridicule, and had graduated to an object of interest. People began to listen to what he had to say, and he preached to them, converting many to the teachings of the Lord, though, truth be told, he had never liked any of his followers. He had often wondered why. It was not a question that had kept him up nights--he knew his purpose was to ducate, not befriend--yet he wondered why he took no joy in the conversion of these heathens. Why did he not enjoy bringing a new soul into the fold? He truly did not care one way or the other, did not care if these people believed or disbelieved, although he would never show that in public. Indeed, he became quite adept at hiding his true emotions while in the pulpit, at masking his disgust for these dirty, ignorant savages.
He prayed on it, and he came to 'realize that these people were merely practice subjects, that the Lord had provided him with warm bodies so that he might hone his skills and develop his talents before moving on to the truly worthy.
Most of his current flock Were worthy. Oh, there were a few who would not be joining the rest of them in the kingdom of heaven. Taz Penneman, for all of his do-goo ding was an unrepentant heathen. And he didn't like Mary Gale, who always looked lustily at him with her harlot's eyes. She'd burn in hell. Marge Howe' What you looking at, motherfucker?'
Wheeler blinked, focused. A large overweight black man was staring belligerently at him from the doorway of the adjacent house, a small wooden structure painted shocking pink. He had not been aware that he'd been looking at the man, and he glanced quickly away.
'Motherfuckerl' the man yelled.
Wheeler smiled, said nothing. This entire section of the city would be destroyed when the Lord Jesus Christ established His kingdom on earth.
It would be leveled and weeded, then seeded with goodness and populated by the righteous, people who understood the ways of the Lord and had a healthy fear of God.
That was the root of the problem, he knew. Not enough people had been instilled with the fear of God. Even many so-called Christians these days seemed to see God as some sort of benevolent hippie, kindly smiling down on all of their humanistic endeavors. Those men and women had strayed far from the scriptures, had let their conceptions of the Lord be influenced by the ungodly secular interpretadons of mealymouthed liberal atheists, yet they still dared to say they believed. They'd forgotten that the Lord was a great and terrible God capable of exacting a steep toll for transgressions. They'd been raised to think like Catholics, to believe that the Lord forgave all, that they could steal, murder, whore, and blaspheme, then apologize and all would be forgotten.
He had been raised differently.
He was glad of it now, though he had not been at the time. He had been swayed as a youth by false companions and had wanted to share their simple easy rationalizations, had wanted to believe that he could confess his sins to the Lord and be forgiven, or that the Lord was not concerned with the petty misdeeds of youth at all. But his father had set him straight, and had lectured him and beaten into him the fear of God. His father had understood that the Lord would accept no losers, no sinners, no transgressors, that He had provided His son to the world as an example, to show that it was possible to live on earth as a perfect, unblemished human being, and the old man had made sure that Wheeler understood that as well.
Even if that meant using The Scourge.
His father had also made sure that Wheeler knew, from the beginning, the truth about his mother. So while he had never known his mother, he had always known of her. He had known exactly what she was. His father had told him. Many times his father had told him.
His mother was a harlot, a strumpet, a brazen wanton woman. A whore
One of the wicked. : : .... She'd always been that way, his father had explained even when he'd first met her--but he'd foolishly thought he would be able to convert her, to make her change. He'd been seduced by her striking beauty, her soft voice, her even temperament and easy ways. It had been the sole mistake of an otherwise exemplary life, and it may very well have cost him entrance to Heaven. But if it was the last thing he did, he was going to make sure that his son did not follow in his footsteps.
Wheeler had grown up knowing that his mother was damned to hell. Then again, most women were going to hell. His father made him realize that. Most women were wicked. All they wanted was sex. All they wanted was to feed that unquenchable fire between their legs. Like animals, they were, slaves to the lusts of their bodies.
Wheeler had not seen a photograph of his mother until after his father's death, and when he finally did see what she looked like, he was surprised to discover that she did not resemble the evil temptress he had imagined at all. He'd always thought she would look like a vamp, one of those pouty, slutty women who hung around outside the bars on Seventh Street, a painted lady with enormous breasts and tight dresses that outlined the curves of her slatternly body. But instead, she looked like a mousy librarian, a plain, average, slightly underweight woman of approximately middle age.
He'd burned the photograph after he'd looked at it, throwing it into the fireplace along with a rubber-banded stack of old letters he'd found in his father's dresser.
You could never tell. That was one thing his father had taught him.
You could never tell what lay beneath appearances, what hid behind people's outer masks, what they were really like inside. That was something only God could see.
But Wheeler had found out later that he could tell, that he could somehow see behind the mask and into a person's soul, that he could see through the facade to the truth beneath. It was a gift God had given him, a reward for his achievement in spreading the word of the Lord.
And now Jesus had seen fit to visit him personally. There was a new day coming.
Wheeler looked again at the church, then at Davis next to him. The restoration coordinator was one of those false Christians, all piety and obsequiousness on the outside, all bleeding heart humanist on the inside. Wheeler smiled to himself, felt warmed. The man would soon find out on which side his bread was buttered.
Davis finished making calculations in a small handheld notebook and looked up. 'The earliest we can have it moved is next Friday,' he said.
Wheeler nodded. 'That will be fine,' he said, smiling. He continued to nod. 'Next Friday will be fine.'
The restaurant was closed on Monday. Even workaholics like her parents needed a day of rest, a day to themselves, and since they couldn't very well take off on Saturday or Sunday the two busiest days of the weekD they closed the restaurant on Monday, taking their weekend a day late and a day short.
This was the day Sue allowed herself to sleep in.
She lay in bed now, curled on her side, staring at the bottom right corner of the framed Sargent print on the wall. John was already up, getting ready for school. She could hear him brushing his teeth in the bathroom. Farther off, in the kitchen, she heard the rattling of pots and the rhythmic staccato sound of her mother's attempts to sing along with a commercial on the radio.
Usually, she liked to stay in bed for a while after she awoke, enjoying that peaceful transition between sleep and wakefulness, her mind thinking clearly and without distraction while her body still enjoyed the comforts of slumber. But today she felt restless, constitutionally unable to remain inert beneath the covers. She sat up and stretched.
Sue glanced around her room, at the Impressionist prints on the walls, at the carved antique dresser, at the small nightstand covered with lace. More than anything else, her room symbolized the difference between herself and the rest of her family. She had decorated the room according to her own independently acquired aesthetic standards, with ideas obtained from books, taste molded by movies. The rest of the house was filled with gaudy throw rugs and pillows, fake jade carvings and tacky Buddha figurines, the cheap bastardizations of Chinese culture sold in curio shops and originally meant for American tourists but embraced wholeheartedly by her parents.
Her room was different.
If there was anything to reincarnation, she thought, she'd been a Victorian Englishwoman in a previous life.
Getting out of bed, she walked across the room to her closet. She did not know what she was going to do today. It seemed to her that she had had something planned--at least it felt that wayMbut she could not for the life
