Ben leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. A thumb rubbed his lips back and forth.
“I saw it, you know.”
Jeremiah unconsciously scratched at the scars on his wrists. “Yeah? You never told me that.”
“I never told anyone. Not even Victoria.”
An electronic hum filled the silence. Jeremiah contemplated Ben’s expression. Ben fiddled with a pair of reading glasses.
“I can’t remember when I started needing these,” Ben said, staring at the glasses with unguarded antagonism. “Probably around the same time these started to appear.” A hand indicated the wrinkles around his chin. “Age hasn’t been kind to me.”
The air hummed.
“I wonder when I’m gonna get out of here and see Victoria.”
Jeremiah lifted his gaze and let it fall. “Soon enough, I’m sure,” he said.
Ben half-shrugged and yawned. A hand wiped tired tears from the corner of his eyes. “I could use some sleep.”
“Why don’t you get some?” Jeremiah said. “I’m sure Zed won’t mind. Find a spot and I’ll wake you if he comes looking for you.”
“Thanks, but I’ll make it a while longer. How about you?”
“Not tired.”
“Not even a little?” Ben asked.
“Not enough to fall asleep,” Jeremiah answered.
“I always admired your stamina, how much strength you had for such a little guy.”
“You mean weakling.”
Ben didn’t partake in the joking. “I don’t consider you a weakling, Jer.”
“Then, what do you consider me?”
“A friend. Probably the strongest friend I know.”
“Including Mel,” Jeremiah said, indicating the door with his chin.
Ben looked towards the door as though he could see through it. “In a manner of speaking, yes.” A deep breath entered his lungs and slowly filtered out his nose. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For knowing when to ask and when not to. You’ve always had a knack for it.”
Jeremiah let his friend collect the words rattling around his brain. When Ben was ready, he spoke up.
“I had just arrived. Probably had no more than three hours of sleep that night. I could still feel Victoria’s kiss on my lips. I stumbled off the transport at 0630. The sky was still dark. I remember that distinctly. Thinking how I should have seen the first light coming over the horizon. But there was none. I had thrown my pack off and waited on the tarmac for my unit to join me. Half of them came on a different flight.” He looked at Jeremiah as he offered the explanation then returned his gaze towards the wall to continue his story. “Some woods lined the far end of the runway. Oaks as tall as the control tower. Watching planes take off, I wondered how they didn’t scrape the tops of the trees. I sat down on my rucksack and closed my eyes to make up for the sleep I missed. It wasn’t long, a few minutes maybe, and I heard the sound of a distressed jet engine. I popped up thinking it was the transport bringing the rest of my unit, and I see this long, orange streak shooting across the sky. One of our fighters. The cockpit was on fire, flames surrounding it. The pilot still had control because the plane did a couple maneuvers as though he wanted to hit the runway. I screamed at him to eject. He got close. The jet disappeared into the woods. We could feel the heat.”
Ben stopped, unable to continue for a moment. He rubbed his chest as he composed himself.
“My radio guy was next to me. We heard the news, who it was, and we knew at that moment it was over.”
“What was?” Jeremiah asked.
“The war. Everything. The troops didn’t have the heart. The Chinese overran us less than a week later. I think we were still in shock.” Ben paused to collect his thoughts. “It didn’t help that his replacement refused to send us reinforcements. It was as if ….” He shook his head as though he couldn’t get himself to say it.
Jeremiah finished for him. “As if they didn’t want to win.”
Ben nodded. “You don’t think they planned it, do you?”
“You mean his death?”
“Yeah.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“Yeah,” Ben repeated.
Silence reigned between them. A clock with red numbers glared at them from the corner wall. Through a closed door, the muffled voice of President Zedekiah chewed out an advisor for a mistake the president didn’t want to own.
“It went downhill from there,” Jeremiah said.
“That’s an understatement, my friend.” Ben patted Jeremiah on the shoulder. “At first, we thought it would be alright, didn’t we? How the Chinese magnanimously forgave us. How they allowed us to hold our own elections. Of course, they had their man chosen all along. There was no way he won. Not legitimately, that is. He could barely string two coherent thoughts together. Turns out, the Chinese had their hooks in him for a while. Business deals going back a decade to the tune of tens of millions, maybe hundreds. And all his advisors as well. I think they were the ones really running the show.” Ben turned to Jeremiah. “You remember Pashur Immerson, don’t you?”
“Are you joking?”
“Of course. Sorry I brought him up.”
“It’s not a problem. What were you going to say about him?”
“I could never tell if he was on the take. I didn’t think so. Thought he got his money from a source other than the Chinese, but I couldn’t be sure. He certainly had his hand in the cookie jar. Whether or not he pulled the cookies out is another story.”
Jeremiah raised his eyebrows and let them fall but didn’t respond.
“I didn’t know when I started working here, you know.” Ben offered the comment as a defense. “I was young. Naïve. I wasn’t privy to the more lurid details. On the other hand, when I did find out, I stuck around. I probably should’ve left long ago.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Jeremiah said.
“Why’s that?”
“For a bunch of reasons. First and foremost, God put you here. Secondarily or somewhere way down the line, I needed you here to save my skin. Which you did a few billion times,” Jeremiah added. “Only a slight exaggeration.”
Ben released a weak smile and stared at the wall. “President Jehoiakim was a mess. Do you ever think what would have happened if Josiah hadn’t died?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Jeremiah said. “I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference. Just delayed the inevitable a while longer.”
“Do you really believe that? I mean, he had made great strides in cleaning up the nation, bringing us closer to God. We were prosperous, generous.” He hesitated. “Rain fell when it was supposed to. We had food on the table.” His words drifted off. Jeremiah again waited for him to be ready. “It was lip service, though, wasn’t it? How soon we wandered from the truth.” His eyes narrowed and his voice grew stronger. “We could’ve stopped it.”
“In what sense?”
“We saw what Jehoiakim was up to. We knew his advisors were taking money from the Chinese and doing whatever they asked. The Chinese didn’t have the strength to maintain control, not with them embroiled in the war with the Russians. If we had banded together as a nation, if we had the fortitude, we could’ve pushed them out before they had a chance to destroy us.”
“I don’t blame the Chinese,” Jeremiah said. “We got what we wanted.”
“We didn’t want this,” Ben said, flinging his hand around to indicate everything around him.
“Well, we asked for it,” Jeremiah replied.
Ben fell silent for a moment. Jeremiah put his hand on Ben’s shoulder this time.
“Still,” Ben said, “if it wasn’t for Jehoiakim, things might have turned out alright.” He lowered his eyes. “I know that’s not true. I sometimes tell myself that because it helps me make it through another day.”
“It’s a lot easier than blaming ourselves,” Jeremiah said.
“Which is the real problem,” Ben said.
“All things considered, Jehoiakim had some good qualities.”
Ben’s wide eyes expressed his shock. “Really? Coming from you, I’m not sure I believe it.”
“He surrounded himself with some terrible advisors, and he didn’t listen for God’s voice. Which goes back to the advisors. He was weak-willed, arrogant yet insecure, loved money more than people, and made terrible decisions.”
“What were his bad qualities?” Ben asked.
A laugh forced itself from Jeremiah’s throat. “But every once in a while, I saw a glimmer of hope in him.”
“You have got to be joking. You haven’t forgotten what he did, have you?”
“No. Of course not. Still ….”
Zedekiah’s tongue lashing ended. The advisor exited the back room, her face dull, accustomed to the abuse. The door shut and the advisor walked off.
“Still,” Jeremiah continued, “the people got what they wanted. For a while,” he added before Ben could retort. “I can’t blame Jehoiakim for all that happened. The rot infected everyone from the top down. It was a systemic failure. A systemic disease of the heart, I should say. I actually thought that if I could convince Jehoiakim, maybe things would turn around before it was too late. I was fooling myself. I know it now. Heck, I knew it then. But still I had to try.”
“Was there a moment when you knew?”
“That it was too late?”
Ben nodded.
Jeremiah lifted his head to the corner of the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, each one more profound than the one before it. A tired hand rubbed a tired neck. Memories flooded his mind, jockeying for position to be the most important one. A final sigh indicated he had decided to answer.
“There was. I didn’t know it consciously. Not when it occurred anyway. But deep down, I knew. I’ve gone back to it a thousand times. It was nothing overt, mind you. More an indication of where the people’s hearts really were. But when I stop and think about it, that was the moment I knew things would never be the same.”