Friday Fiction: There Is A Season (Part Two)

 

Parkis was a wiry man of forty or so, just a little shorter than Blake. His hawklike nose and thin lips always reminded the young agent of the unwrapped mummy of Ramses the Second. He set down a last box he was removing from a lower shelf and plopped down into a kitchen chair.

“Thank God you’ve come,” he puffed. “I just about needed a break.” He ripped off some nearby paper towels and mopped his dripping face.

“Sorry to interrupt you when you were busy, Mr. Parkis.”

“Don’t be.” Parkis gestured to another chair. “What can I do you for, Blake?”

“Nothing really, I guess. Just feeling antsy. Beating the bounds.” He sat down. The towering boxes were now at eye level. He couldn’t help but read their labels. “I never took you to be a survivalist, Kurt. What’s with all the supplies?”

Parkis shook his head, waving the hand with the towels dismissively.

“I’m not really, though I do have enough MREs to last me to 2021. And a back-up generator, and plenty of ammunition. But that’s all for emergencies. Be prepared, that’s my motto.”

“Seems to me that you’re prepared enough for World War Three and the collapse of Western civilization. What’s the deal?”

The wiry little man was finally catching his breath.

“Tell you what, son, get us a couple of Cokes out of the fridge there and I’ll tell you what happened to this poor old dude that left him the neurosis-ridden wreck you see before you.”

Blake grinned.

“I fear thee, Ancient Mariner. I fear thy glittering eye.” He got up and tugged the avocado-colored refrigerator open, withdrawing two clanking cold bottles. Parkis twisted the bottlecap off his and took two deep swigs, before he sighed and began his tale.

“It was 1978, a year you prolly can’t even imagine now. I was nine years old, and my family had been Jehovah’s Witnesses since ‘71.  Think of a childhood without Christmases and birthday parties. I think my dad only went along with it because it was so cheap. Well, that, and to humor my Mom.

“My Mom had left her hometown to come live in my Dad’s hometown, thirty miles away from any old friends or family she had known. Dad’s family was only slowly warming up to her. Imagine her delight when a kind stranger came to her door who seemed only interested in being her friend. Mom was just the sort of lonely pigeon the JW’s were looking for. If I sound bitter, it’s because I am.

“Not that I’m blaming Serena Luft for what she did. She was a genuinely friendly lady who had been caught in the same coils as Mom was and was passing it along, as these infections tend to play out. At the time it seemed perfectly normal, even heroic in a way. But I was a little kid. I had no frame of reference. What Mom said was right.

“So our lives went on, with the embarrassment of going house to house peddling grotty little magazines and with meetings to regurgitate our ‘studies’ three times a week. But then 1978 rolled around.

“1978 was one of those years that the Organizing Body had targeted for the start of the Great Tribulation, the beginning of the end of the world. It wasn’t the first such boondoggle that they’d had, and it wouldn’t be the last. Everybody had crammed into the Kingdom Hall that night, ready for anybody who was a member of the hundred and forty-four thousand chosen ones to be wafted up to heaven. When the evening passed and nothing had happened, we were all a little disappointed.”

“Now is the time, perish the earth,” Blake intoned, quoting an old comedy sketch. He smiled. “Never mind, lads. Same time tomorrow. We must get a winner one day.”

Parkis frowned.

“It wasn’t funny to us at the time. Anybody who wasn’t a chosen one had to spend the next seven years of hell on earth, smiling faithfully through plagues, famine, and persecution until we were deemed worthy of rescue. Anyway, the point was, to be prepared for this time of trial Mom had put aside a box of canned goods – one little box to last a family of nine for seven years.

“As it was, we ended up eating the whole thing in one night during a real disaster, the flood in ’81. But by that time, we had drifted out of the JW’s, as they had not quite lived up to what Mom had expected. They have a lot of turnover that way, even without the regular apocalyptic snafus; they tend not to talk about such things. They prefer members to look forward to things that might be, unburdened by their record of things that have been.”

He took another drink and waved his hand around at the boxes.

“Anyway, the only thing I took away from all that trauma was the desirability of being ‘disaster ready.’ Every year I buy a new year’s worth of supplies and haul the oldest off to some soup kitchen or homeless center or other. You caught me in the middle of my yearly inventory.” He grinned. “Kind of like a squirrel, rotating his nuts.”

Blake was curious.

“Have you ever had to use any?”

“Oh, from time to time. Not a whole lot. But I tell you, there have been times, especially when some President has been juggling around with foreign policy, when it’s been a great comfort knowing it’s there. Say, would you like a box of …” he squinted his eyes at a label. “Dehydrated beef stroganoff?”

Blake laughed.

“No, thank you!” He drained the last of his Coke. “Donate it to a worthier cause." He got to his feet. "Well, if you don’t have anything … extranatural going on, I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

“Drop by any time.” Parkis stood up, stretching. “I suppose I got one other bit of fallout from my time in the JWs. They had no recourse when something extranatural happened to them.  Lots of other people use crosses and holy water, and sometimes it helps, depending on what’s going on. JWs got none of that. If something evil is attacking you, that’s your fault for not being pious enough, according to them. Every time I help somebody out through the Bureau, I prove ‘em wrong.” He sighed. “ You’ve got one thing right about that Ancient Mariner stuff. It does help to talk about it.”

Notes

Well, I'd hoped to be finished today, but there is at least one more part of this story planned. Though I knew what I was going to write all week, I only sat down to it this morning. It probably needs to sit a while and get some rewrites.