Irv had met Fred Green during that visit, but sitting in the police cruiser now, in the drizzle, he can barely remember it. There had been muffins. That part he remembers.
Fred is supposed to come out and meet them in the parking lot. The church door remains closed and neither he nor Melinda is in any mood to rush the reverend or get any wetter than they need to.
Radio off, Irv watches the rain on the hood as it dints and splatters.
He’d read a book by George Smoot years ago about the cosmic background radiation—a relic radiation from the hot primeval fireball that began our observable universe some 13.7 billion years ago. He took a minor interest in cosmology to complement his religious studies. Thinking about both topics felt balancing and expansive rather than contradictory or defeating.
Even in the nearly perfect thermal equilibrium at the moment of creation, Smoot had explained, there were still primordial perturbations in the early matter and energy distributions, tiny fluctuations in matter density. As time passed and the universe grew like an expanding balloon, those irregularities grew in significance too and those dense regions attracted more mass until they became entire galaxies. And our solar system. And the earth itself.
They didn’t stop there, though. No. They kept right on going and ultimately resulted in the very imbalances now playing out beyond the raindrops dancing on the hood of the prowler in the Target parking lot, where people are probably not sharing Irv’s thoughts about the awesome improbability of being here but instead are thinking about the inevitability given the kind of forces they have to contend with on a regular basis.
There really is no unified theory. There really isn’t.
Irv looks at Melinda, who is staring outside too. In a few moments he—Irving Wylie, MA in divinity from Loyola and second-term sheriff in Jefferson County—and she—Melinda Powell, good small-town kid who wants to help people—are to reverse the course of the expanding universe and bring everyone back together so they might find some common ground.
Melinda looks worried, and she is uncharacteristically quiet in her flak vest.
“You OK?” he asks her.
Melinda doesn’t answer. She may not have heard him but he thinks she did.
“I told you to stop watching The Wire.”
“I can’t help it.”
“That show is not good for your brain.”
Reverend Fred Green emerges from the church holding an enormous umbrella with the red and blue logo of Costco. He holds it with both hands, elbows tucked in, as though it is keeping him up and not the other way around. With the rain falling hard he looks like a man trying not to drown. He wears rubbers over brogues and his face is grave, as though he’d never learned to smile. The blue lights from the cruiser flash over his watery eyes as he bends down to address Irv through Melinda’s window. As she lowers it he places a hand on the door frame and bends low. The water spills off the front of his umbrella as he leans, and the splattering rain sprays the dashboard and soaks Melinda’s pants.
“Turn off the lights, please,” Green says.
Irv does as he’s told.
“Is this really the best idea you have?” he asks Irv.
“Honestly, Fred, I only have the one.”
Reverend Green looks away and out toward a row of trees that separates the parking lot from a construction pit that fills like a quarry in the heavy rain. Irv watches his eyes but they reveal nothing to him about the criteria or calculations, politics or learned wisdom that might be helping him make a decision. Without looking back at Irv, Green closes the umbrella, shakes it, and sits himself in the back of the car. He slams the door closed behind him and the sound itself is what confirms that a choice has been made.
Irv pulls away. The rain and light on the black hood attract every glimmer from the neon store signs as they pass into the commercial zone, but all their messages are distorted and lost in the dark.
They drive a few blocks from the church before Irv turns on the blue light again.
For a long while the reverend doesn’t say a word. Irv glances at him in the rearview mirror and sees him staring silently at the wet trees.
“Thanks for helping us out here, Reverend,” Irv offers.
Hands on his lap, as though in a pew, Fred Green turns to Irv through the open slot in the bulletproof glass.
“I’ve never been in the back of a police car,” he says quietly.
“What do you think so far?” asks Irv, turning right onto Lancaster Road at the Dairy Queen. A club is having an antique car week in the parking lot. A bunch of Irocs, Corvettes, and Z28s are parked out front, glistening in the rain. They’d probably hoped for a better turnout.
“You can’t know what it feels like until you sit here yourself,” the reverend says.
The Target asphalt parking lot is teeming with life. The white lines that mark the parking spaces are faded to stripes of gray, as dull as the clouds above. The yellow lamps glow inside a ring of haze. At the edge of the lot, in front of the Inferno, is an angry crowd.
The last protest that required Irv’s attention was a peaceful demonstration that started at the university campus when Jeffrey was shot. It proceeded through the city on a five-mile walk. That was a family crowd and the message was unity and a call for social justice. There were speeches at the halfway point and demands for greater protections against police violence and greater accountability for police action, and an explicit appeal to recognize and reduce racism.
Cory was put in charge of directing traffic and did a stellar job.
After six hours, the only drama had involved one case of heat exhaustion in a sixty-four-year-old who overexerted herself and the arrests of three teenagers who’d been zipping through crowds on skateboards and stealing
