“When did you realize I was speaking God’s words and not my own?” Jeremiah asked
Ben thought for a moment. “Hard to say. Gradually. For all my condemnation of others, I have to admit I found myself under the same delusion for the longest time. Maybe not about who God was but about the problems we faced as a nation. For many years, I thought it was a political problem, one that could be fixed at the ballot box, not a matter of the heart.” He hesitated as he contemplated whether or not he should say what crossed his mind. “Full disclosure,” he said. “I used to think you were kind of kooky.”
“What changed your opinion?”
“Who said it has?”
Jeremiah laughed in spite of himself. “Seriously, though. What brought you around?”
“After Ahab died, President Jehoiakim promoted me to chief of staff. Somewhere around then, I started to question things a little more strongly. I guess that was when the realization came over me. At first, I chalked his death up to divine retribution, probably because I couldn’t see past my own hate to do the one job Christ demands of us. Take his good news to the nations.”
“It was terrifying seeing Ahab, hearing him near the end. The screaming. His ruptured bowels leaking into his abdomen. He gave off the stench of a dumpster sitting in the sun. Jehoiakim banished him from the palace and named me as the interim. As one of my responsibilities, I had to go to the hospital to check on Ahab. Besides the odor, and the pain which constantly showed in his face, there was fear, yet at the same time defiance, resentment. The polar opposite of what I saw in Nancy a few months later.”
“So, what brought me around? One day, I was standing in line to get into the supermarket. Victoria had been feeling ill, and she insisted on a can of chicken soup, the only thing she could eat when she got that way. An hour in that line before I finally got to the door. We had to go through the checkpoint to make sure none of us had contracted the disease. That was near the beginning of the cholera outbreak. Before the skin lesions. I never contracted it, but you couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into hundreds of people with those red welts all over their bodies. The Russians came in and carted them off to detention camps across the Kentucky border. Not a single one of them returned as I recall.”
“Anyway, I got inside, and the shelves were bare. Seven-thirty in the morning and nothing but a few cans of mushrooms and a loaf or two of mashed bread remained. And a can of the soup Victoria wanted. There was a reason it never went out of stock.”
“People kept pushing inside. Fathers, mothers. Looking to feed their children. Yelling at the store managers. Saying how it took a day’s pay to buy a loaf of bread, so there should at least be a loaf of bread to buy. A guy pulled out a kitchen knife and started waving it around. The people were getting riled up, cursing the Russians, cursing Jehoiakim. Demanding their rights, whatever that meant. Blaming each other. Blacks and Hispanics and Asians swearing at Whites, who cussed them right back. This once great melting pot now a cesspool of suspicion and animosity. All acting like victims and not the perpetrators of their own ruin.”
“I knew a riot was about to start, so I hightailed it out of there. I headed down the sidewalk, cracked from the constant heat and the lack of rain. Every step kicked up dust. One tree, maybe, was still alive, although not a hint of green persisted otherwise. I was worried about how to make the soup for Victoria seeing as how the water had been rationed to the point where we barely had enough to drink, much less brush our teeth or take a shower. I was so lost in my thoughts that I ran into a person and knocked her over. I apologized and reached down to help her up. Immediately, she began to proposition me. Maybe because I still looked somewhat healthy at that point. Maybe because of the grocery bag in my hand, even though she couldn’t see what was inside.”
“I declined and walked off, but now I started paying closer attention to my surroundings. Everywhere, Jeremiah, and I mean everywhere, the streets were filled with prostitutes. Standing on the street corners. Hanging out of windows. The same people who were in the store with me, crying because they didn’t have enough to feed their children, now following these prostitutes inside their homes or to a mattress behind a dumpster. Some of them doing it right there in broad daylight. Not a single one had a look of regret, of shame. As though it was normal. As though it was natural. Everyone with a distorted expression. False pleasure buoyed by self-loathing projected onto the world and their fellow man.”
“There was no love in what they did. Only lust. But they called it love. And anyone who disagreed, who dared point out the truth, was called a hater. That was the word they used. A hater. Anyone who didn’t fall for their twisted worldview was destroyed, brought low because they couldn’t bear to see true joy when all they felt inside was hate. Yet, still they couldn’t see it for what it was. Their pride, their arrogance kept them from admitting error and repenting. It had to be someone else! The Chinese. The Russians. Jehoiakim. The white neighbor who had more than they did. The black woman who ‘took their job.’ And the government played into this hatred to keep the people from seeing what a total disaster the nation had become. The people God had placed in authority, this included the priests and ministers, didn’t lead the nation into repentance. Didn’t show them what it meant to be God’s representative on earth. Not that the nation would have followed them if they had. Josiah did. He showed them what it meant to follow God with his whole heart, but the people didn’t want it. How quickly they shed his paper yoke only to reposition one of iron around their necks. How quickly humility turned to arrogance. Thankfulness to demanding. Love to lust. Good to evil. Life to choice. A world remade in their image. But their hearts were constantly evil, fighting to outdo each other and commit greater atrocities than their neighbor, because that is what the world looks like when it’s remade in their image. A foretaste of the hellish utopia they craved.”
“Still they didn’t learn. Even as the blood flowed from the mothers’ wombs, the same blood you prophesied would flow, they didn’t repent.”
“When I got home that day, I went straight to Victoria and said, ‘It’s over.’ That’s all I said. She understood what I meant. It was also when I understood what you meant. Funny thing is, I held out hope for a while longer. I even thought Jehoiakim might listen, that God had placed me in a position of responsibility just so I could get him to listen. It didn’t turn out how I planned. All those times preaching about the evil we did as a nation. I dismissed you because I didn’t see it. But you did. You saw what was to come as if it was happening at that very moment. I never doubted you after that day, although your words often didn’t make sense until what you predicted came about.”
Ben paused to collect his thoughts. “I wonder how things would’ve been different if Zedekiah had listened to you. Do you ever think about that?”
Jeremiah shook his head.
“Not even once?”
Jeremiah stroked his chin and let the fingers slide down his neck. “He did listen to me,” he said. “For a while anyway.”
“If only Zedekiah had some sort of precedent to follow,” Ben said.
Jeremiah nodded at the irony, too tired to laugh. A yawn and a stretch slipped out. “Where were you when the Russians hit the city?”
“Which time?”
“The first time,” Jeremiah said. “When Ahab was still alive.”
“Let’s see.” Ben searched his mind, sorting out the memories from a distant past. “If I remember correctly, I was in my office. Mel came down and took me to speak with Jehoiakim. He said I was the only one who could convince him. Mel was probably right. All the other advisors – Ahab, Shemaiah, Doyle – they told him to hold off, to stick with the Chinese. Even as the Russians started to blast holes in the wall around Washington, they never came off their position. I happened to be alone with Jehoiakim when the communique demanding unconditional surrender came in from the Russians. I handed him the note you asked me to give him. For a moment, at least, he believed you. It saved our skin for a few years.”
“For a few years,” Jeremiah echoed.
“I made sure the Russians knew you played a part in convincing Jehoiakim,” Ben continued. “Although, I’m pretty sure they already knew who you were. They never came out and said it directly, but I heard them mention you in a few subsequent meetings. Jehoiakim left you alone after that. Lifted the execution order off you and Baruch as a favor to the Russians, who believed you were on their side.”
“I never was, you know,” Jeremiah said. “I never betrayed my country despite what they said.”
“I know,” Ben replied. “You were just doing what the Lord told you to do. It must’ve stung, though, what they said about you.”
“I had thick skin,” Jeremiah reminded him. “But, yeah, being called a traitor hurt.”
“The irony is you were the one looking out for the welfare of the nation.”
“Trying to convince the people that God was looking out for it,” Jeremiah corrected, “despite all the evil we had done.”
Ben raised his eyebrows in reply.
“What ever happened to Doyle?” Jeremiah asked. “I don’t think you ever told me.”
“Last I heard, Doyle was still in prison, but that was over ten years ago. The Russians would’ve shipped Ahab off to the gulags too, but he somehow managed to worm his way into their good graces. He was such a sleaze. I figured the Russians thought they could control him pretty easily. Not that it mattered. He died a few months later. Now, Shemaiah, he never stood a chance. In spite of his wealth, or maybe because of it, the Russians didn’t care for him. He tried to bargain with them, reminding them how his mining companies used to send them raw material even after the Chinese banned the shipments. In my opinion, that led directly to his imprisonment. If he would break the Chinese embargo, why wouldn’t he break the Russian one? They let him out after a year, as you know.”
“Then, there was Dan Issa. His hanging was particularly gruesome. The Russians made sure they ‘accidentally’ botched it. A pretty effective lesson, you would think. It always amazes me, though, how quickly we forget. For Jehoiakim, it took less than three years until he had to learn the lesson again.”
“He didn’t really learn it the second time, did he?” Jeremiah said.
“No,” Ben said. “And there wasn’t a third.”