The Calvary Fellowship Church compound bell-curved the gentle edges of what was once a vast playa lake. It was a series of architectural risks, the layout dominated by an ominous half dome of serrated glass called the Worship Center and an athletic gymnasium named after a dead pro football player. Sunday morning light washed across acres of parking filled with gleaming four-wheeled luxury. Plagued by the hangover barking in his guts, Hatchet parked his truck and braved the gaseous sickly green reflection of the dome before ascending the ramp to the entrance.
Past the doors and the first line of Guardians, clots of Jesus drunk teenagers coagulated in the lower circuits of the high sunlit walls. He felt underdressed and dirty. Everyone was young. The mass of teens aside, twenty-somethings and their burrito wrapped babies, tan and bright eyed pairs of fortyish men and women mingling at the ends of the pews, smiling and prepared to help anyone in any way at anytime, there were fifty and sixty year olds dressed like college kids. A nimbus of perfume surrounded each individual like a chrysalis.
Low-end rhythms from deep within the structure vibrated the touch of handrails and the images in bathroom mirrors. He splashed his face a few times and marveled at all the facilities designed to keep his filthy digits off anything upon which might tempt deposit of his germs. Urinals, faucets, soap and towel dispensers all worked via the miracle of motion sensing as if commanded by some deity. He could hear constant chatter like the kind heard in stadiums. The entire grammar of the place reminded him of coliseum concerts but a near invisible fleet of cleaning staff had cauterized it with a sterilizing glow and precision antiseptics.
There were discreet cameras everywhere. Sets of earpiece fitted Guardians sized him as he entered the sanctuary. He perched in the highest rows among the support beams stretching out over the reach of staggered pew seating radiating from a center stage spangled in silver and blue, drenched in lasers and gel lighting. Two television screens hung from rigging like massive insectoid eyes. Soothing voices vied for volunteerism and generosity through images of the elderly, the mentally handicapped, a prison ministry, an endorsement of an anti-gay marriage amendment, stem-cell research horrors, and a dance troupe of very white nine year olds dressed like miniature runway models.
Then the house lights fell. The choir rose in a single chord. Harmless young men led cheers and songs through blinding smiles and affected laughter. The band and the choir appeared in the lenses of the screens, their stiff joker faces floating in mid-air, magnified a thousand times. They’re theme park employees, he thought to himself. Colors spun and shattered against the crowd. Musical codas raged and a sea of swaying hands rose from the purple black abyss of seating and tiny morsels of jewelry flickered like the glassy sands of a strange shoreline in the strange night of some strange far away peninsula of the globe.
Hatchet soon realized that he would not witness any Brody Lassiter brand thaumaturgy today. Instead, a languid young man whose poser attire would’ve painted him an instant hipster among the shop crowd saddled the podium. He made reference to petty politics at the church and how that mindset pressured good people to do bad things and that led to him talking about how Jesus was respectful of others beliefs and allowed love to prevail in all his teachings and then he explained that listening to Jesus was the only way to destroy those feelings of jealousy or insecurity any church members might carry through the gates of this temple, a temple built on the bedrock of faith in Jesus Christ and that’s when Hatchet noticed that not one time for the entire hour of this automaton’s sermon did he once open his precious bible. Hatchet found interest in the man’s left hand middle finger. It appeared to be a fleshy bookmark, a special flag on a page in his book that would electrify this message and drop the plunger on this growing pile of explosive spirituality and bomb these poor saps with some real Jesus talk, some heavy red-ink philosophy. Nevertheless, his finger never moved. His eyes never even feigned a glance at the gilded leather cover of the thing. It was nothing but a prop.
The lights came up in a revelatory flood of lumina. People squinted and blinked. Then the staff went to lacing the pews and the offering began. The plates were brass and heavy at the ends of fingers. They went coasting down the pews as if riding waves in a tilting cruise ship, up one side and down the other; Hatchet could actually feel the waters beneath the huge ship swell and roll. Adhered to the deepest innermost shape of them was a pad of red felt that disappeared beneath cash and coin and personal checks and little envelopes entrusting folded bits paper beprinted with squares filled with debit card info and permissions for electronic payment. Pairs of suited men carried the plates toward the stage to swinging doors crowned with Church Staff Only signs.
Hatchet eased out of his seat and back through the double doors behind him. An oppressive curtain of summer noon had landed in the upper altitudes of the dome. He bent over the rail staring down onto wands of people already swimming back into the sea of parked cars. Reconnoitering from the truck seemed safer than snooping around sensitive areas on the sanctuary floor. Maybe he could find a vantage point out there to watch an armored vehicle speed away along one of the access routes to the compound. He sat for as long as he felt he could without rousing the suspicion of the small marked patrol truck. He never saw an armored vehicle. At least none that he recognized as such.
I never saw a truck, he told Woody. I never see the trucks either. I guess one could just assume they armor it out; I mean the money has to be moved. It’s a night deposit; there’s a nine-thirty late service, see? Those trucks will roll at whatever hour that place needs them to, I suppose. You and Delilah for dinner tomorrow, I hear. Apparently. She doesn’t think you can keep up with her. She thinks I’m old or I’m dumb? She didn’t say; I doubt it’s your age. Is that a joke?
Past the doors and the first line of Guardians, clots of Jesus drunk teenagers coagulated in the lower circuits of the high sunlit walls. He felt underdressed and dirty. Everyone was young. The mass of teens aside, twenty-somethings and their burrito wrapped babies, tan and bright eyed pairs of fortyish men and women mingling at the ends of the pews, smiling and prepared to help anyone in any way at anytime, there were fifty and sixty year olds dressed like college kids. A nimbus of perfume surrounded each individual like a chrysalis.
Low-end rhythms from deep within the structure vibrated the touch of handrails and the images in bathroom mirrors. He splashed his face a few times and marveled at all the facilities designed to keep his filthy digits off anything upon which might tempt deposit of his germs. Urinals, faucets, soap and towel dispensers all worked via the miracle of motion sensing as if commanded by some deity. He could hear constant chatter like the kind heard in stadiums. The entire grammar of the place reminded him of coliseum concerts but a near invisible fleet of cleaning staff had cauterized it with a sterilizing glow and precision antiseptics.
There were discreet cameras everywhere. Sets of earpiece fitted Guardians sized him as he entered the sanctuary. He perched in the highest rows among the support beams stretching out over the reach of staggered pew seating radiating from a center stage spangled in silver and blue, drenched in lasers and gel lighting. Two television screens hung from rigging like massive insectoid eyes. Soothing voices vied for volunteerism and generosity through images of the elderly, the mentally handicapped, a prison ministry, an endorsement of an anti-gay marriage amendment, stem-cell research horrors, and a dance troupe of very white nine year olds dressed like miniature runway models.
Then the house lights fell. The choir rose in a single chord. Harmless young men led cheers and songs through blinding smiles and affected laughter. The band and the choir appeared in the lenses of the screens, their stiff joker faces floating in mid-air, magnified a thousand times. They’re theme park employees, he thought to himself. Colors spun and shattered against the crowd. Musical codas raged and a sea of swaying hands rose from the purple black abyss of seating and tiny morsels of jewelry flickered like the glassy sands of a strange shoreline in the strange night of some strange far away peninsula of the globe.
Hatchet soon realized that he would not witness any Brody Lassiter brand thaumaturgy today. Instead, a languid young man whose poser attire would’ve painted him an instant hipster among the shop crowd saddled the podium. He made reference to petty politics at the church and how that mindset pressured good people to do bad things and that led to him talking about how Jesus was respectful of others beliefs and allowed love to prevail in all his teachings and then he explained that listening to Jesus was the only way to destroy those feelings of jealousy or insecurity any church members might carry through the gates of this temple, a temple built on the bedrock of faith in Jesus Christ and that’s when Hatchet noticed that not one time for the entire hour of this automaton’s sermon did he once open his precious bible. Hatchet found interest in the man’s left hand middle finger. It appeared to be a fleshy bookmark, a special flag on a page in his book that would electrify this message and drop the plunger on this growing pile of explosive spirituality and bomb these poor saps with some real Jesus talk, some heavy red-ink philosophy. Nevertheless, his finger never moved. His eyes never even feigned a glance at the gilded leather cover of the thing. It was nothing but a prop.
The lights came up in a revelatory flood of lumina. People squinted and blinked. Then the staff went to lacing the pews and the offering began. The plates were brass and heavy at the ends of fingers. They went coasting down the pews as if riding waves in a tilting cruise ship, up one side and down the other; Hatchet could actually feel the waters beneath the huge ship swell and roll. Adhered to the deepest innermost shape of them was a pad of red felt that disappeared beneath cash and coin and personal checks and little envelopes entrusting folded bits paper beprinted with squares filled with debit card info and permissions for electronic payment. Pairs of suited men carried the plates toward the stage to swinging doors crowned with Church Staff Only signs.
Hatchet eased out of his seat and back through the double doors behind him. An oppressive curtain of summer noon had landed in the upper altitudes of the dome. He bent over the rail staring down onto wands of people already swimming back into the sea of parked cars. Reconnoitering from the truck seemed safer than snooping around sensitive areas on the sanctuary floor. Maybe he could find a vantage point out there to watch an armored vehicle speed away along one of the access routes to the compound. He sat for as long as he felt he could without rousing the suspicion of the small marked patrol truck. He never saw an armored vehicle. At least none that he recognized as such.
I never saw a truck, he told Woody. I never see the trucks either. I guess one could just assume they armor it out; I mean the money has to be moved. It’s a night deposit; there’s a nine-thirty late service, see? Those trucks will roll at whatever hour that place needs them to, I suppose. You and Delilah for dinner tomorrow, I hear. Apparently. She doesn’t think you can keep up with her. She thinks I’m old or I’m dumb? She didn’t say; I doubt it’s your age. Is that a joke?
Edit 11.7.2018