Gerald - There will be no miracles here: a Memoir

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright 2018 by Casey Gerald

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ISBN 9780735214200 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780735214217 (ebook)

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals described.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

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I do not want the world to end.

Nobody asked me, though. Boy youre too young to have an opinion! They cry and cry each time I offer up a couple cents. Maybe so. Maybe. But if twelve is too young to think, it sure as hell is too young to die.

I guess it wont be death. I will simply disappear, in the twinkling of an eye, right around midnight on the last night of this world, 31 December 1999, when Jesus Christ returns to set His kingdom up for good and for good reason. Things have really gone to shit since Hes been gone. Ever since He got Himself killed for trying to help the weak and poor and scorned around Judea, and since He fled back home to lick His wounds, to spend two thousand years in exile, and since His buddies spread a story in His stead to men and women everywhere, some of whom were so inspired that they, too, wound up hung and shot and flayed for similar transgressionsand still, somehow, it seems each day, there are more poor, more weak, more scorned among the earth, myself included, which is why the Son of man is on His way to pick me up.

Just a minute!

Got to find my shoes somewhere in this house where all my space is borrowed, temporary. A little corner of somebody elses closet. Their bed. Their bathroom sink. Their dinner table. A stranger in the country of my kin, but thats all right. There are many mansions over there and plenty room for me. Here I come... out the door and down the sidewalk to the long and boxy town car where Clarice sits waiting. She will disappear as well. Must be why her head is bare, why those thick gray curls are washed and set but unadorned, ready for her crown reserved in layaway. Or does she wear no hat tonight simply because its Friday? I dont know for sure. Dont know anything for sure when it comes to her, my fathers mother, or when it comes to my own mother, wherever she isor when it comes to anybody else who played some role in making this world what it has been for these twelve years. But thats all right, too. He knows it all. Were on our way.

The gravel parking lot is nearly full, not even ten oclock yet. I see a few cars trampling the grass along the wall of naked trees that separates the neighborhood from the church grounds, as my fathers father intended. God rest his soul, wherever it resides. He left the church to his offspring. Left the town car to his widow. Left instructions that she keep her parking space up front so we dont have to search at all, just roll right in. Were here.

In the sanctuary, someone saved a seat for her. Scoot over some, I ask them with my eyes and they scoot, since Im with her and Im small. Much bigger than I was when I first entered this sanctuary as a thought of my parents. Place still looks the same, just like every other sanctuary to me, except for all the red. Woolly fabric, dried-blood red, covers every inch of the floor and the seat of each wooden pew and each armless, high-back chair in the pulpit. Theres even a strip of it stitched on the robes worn by the choir members who will sing tonight one final time. Singing now, in fact.

Behind their choir stand is the empty pool, filled once a month for baptisms. They say it takes only one dip in that water and youll be set for life, afterlife. They say a lot of things that aint the truth, so I went back a second time, right after my twelfth birthday this past January, to be sure. I also decided, a few months ago, to read the Bible on my ownthree or four pages a day. But that early stuff was boring and the clock was ticking, so to speak, so I moved on to a timely novel, Left Behind, and made it through enough of that to warn you: Never read it. Believe me. Since then, Ive tried to talk to God a lot more and to sin a lot less. Had a hard time doing either.

According to the clock nailed to the back wall above the audiovisual control room, where tonights service is being recorded for some reason, we have only an hour. Whoever is left behind to watch will probably not see me, crunched between old women, but they will see that the place is packed, hardly an empty seat. I could tell you all about the many gathered, who they are, where they come from. But none of that matters anymore. The only thing that counts tonight is where they are going, and thats none of my business, being a child and all. Besides, I have my own eternity to worry about.

Outside, beyond this sanctuary, are other worriesat least, thats what I heard on television. Some worry the computers will revolt at midnight, unable to comprehend the year 2000. Each machines rebellion will spark some small catastrophe: Planes, unable to find their way, will fling themselves down to earthdarkened earth, since streetlights will not heed commands to glow past midnight. Dams and sewers will surrender to the waters long-held wish to flow all over the place, all over the people, who will not be warned because the telephones will not connect them to each other anymore. They will have only themselves. Wont even have money, except whatever cash is on hand, since bank accounts will reset to 1900, when everybody was broke. They will be broke again tonight, and hungry, too, as many grocery shelves have been emptied. Oh, sinnerman. The worst is yet to come. Plagues. Riots. An atom bomb or two on accident, and more: a lake of fire where each sinnerman and sinnerwoman and sinnerchild (twelve years and older) will swim, ablaze, forever and ever. I might be down there with them if I have not made the right decisions these twelve years, but theres still time: ten minutes, says our pastor, whos calling us down to the altar so we can pray until midnight comes, until He comes. Lets go.

Now were crowded together in the altar space and in the aisles. Some are sweatingnerves as much as heat. The pastor is sweating most of all, as he should. Seems to me that every time hes laid his hands on some sick parishioner, theyve wound up sicker. A few have even died. That cant be a good sign for him, nor for those relying on his intercession, which Im not. I have seen enough to doubt the holy men, and so Ive memorized my own private prayer.