There Will Be No Miracles Here

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Casey Gerald

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  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 author’s alone.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part OneChapter One

  Chapter Two

  Going to School

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part TwoChapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  An Interlude for My Friend

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part ThreeChapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  An Interlude for Me

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Part FourChapter Twenty-two

  Dedication

  Gratitude

  Credits

  About the Author

  I do not want the world to end.

  Nobody asked me, though. Boy you’re 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 won’t 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 He’s 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 transgressions—and 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 else’s closet. Their bed. Their bathroom sink. Their dinner table. A stranger in the country of my kin, but that’s 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 it’s Friday? I don’t know for sure. Don’t know anything for sure when it comes to her, my father’s mother, or when it comes to my own mother, wherever she is—or when it comes to anybody else who played some role in making this world what it has been for these twelve years. But that’s all right, too. He knows it all. We’re on our way.

  The gravel parking lot is nearly full, not even ten o’clock 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 father’s 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 don’t have to search at all, just roll right in. We’re here.

  In the sanctuary, someone saved a seat for her. Scoot over some, I ask them with my eyes and they scoot, since I’m with her and I’m 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. There’s 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 you’ll be set for life, afterlife. They say a lot of things that ain’t 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 own—three 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, I’ve 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 tonight’s 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 that’s none of my business, being a child and all. Besides, I have my own eternity to worry about.

  Outside, beyond this sanctuary, are other worries—at least, that’s what I heard on television. Some worry the computers will revolt at midnight, unable to comprehend the year 2000. Each machine’s rebellion will spark some small catastrophe: Planes, unable to find their way, will fling themselves down to earth—darkened earth, since streetlights will not heed commands to glow past midnight. Dams and sewers will surrender to the water’s 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. Won’t 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 there’s still time: ten minutes, says our pastor, who’s calling us down to the altar so we can pray until midnight comes, until He comes. Let’s go.

  Now we’re crowded together in the altar spac
e and in the aisles. Some are sweating—nerves as much as heat. The pastor is sweating most of all, as he should. Seems to me that every time he’s laid his hands on some sick parishioner, they’ve wound up sicker. A few have even died. That can’t be a good sign for him, nor for those relying on his intercession, which I’m not. I have seen enough to doubt the holy men, and so I’ve memorized my own private prayer.

  Lord, please take me with You when You come.

  That is all I have to ask of God, and I will get my answer soon. It’s 11:57 (had to peek back at the clock). Close my eyes, focus on my silent incantation, Lord, please take me when You come, listen to the people shout and moan. Louder. Higher. Now the organ’s running strong—can you hear it? Feel the sweaty palms grip firm and the eyes clench tight down here at the altar, where one will be taken and one will be left, where wheat and chaff will be torn apart, and the glory will be revealed. Lord, please take me when you come in this din of end-time noise, the heat now stifling beneath low-hanging lights, and—in the precious name of Jesus . . . Amen! The pastor shouts. It’s over.

  There’s a hand still holding mine—Clarice’s, I see, when my eyes refocus. On the clock I see it’s after midnight. And around the sanctuary I see no fewer bodies. Has He come and left us all? No one seems too worried. Same Happy New Year! hugs as always, same hymn before the benediction. Outside are the same cars in the gravel parking lot and in the grass, cranking up just fine. No snow. No fire. Not a flicker from the streetlights as Clarice drives away from the church. No panic in the voices on the radio. Above our heads, the planes are flying on, carrying everyone where they hope to go tonight. I’m carried to my mother’s mother’s house.

  Inside, I see that everyone who was missing in the last millennium is still gone. Everybody else is here, awake, boiling black-eyed peas. Hey y’all . . . I just want a slice of cake, smuggle it to the room in back where I keep a mattress. On the tiny television, its bunny ears wrapped in aluminum foil, Peter Jennings is right where he is supposed to be, on channel 8, where he will stay for twenty-three hours and ten minutes, to coach the world through its demise. If I understand Mr. Jennings correctly, it has been over for a long time in other places. He speaks to Diane Sawyer in New York, where, somehow, an extra hour has already passed. Charlie Gibson is in London. Barbara Walters, Paris. I like and trust them both a good deal and it seems that they will soon witness the first morning after what was meant to be the final night. I don’t understand. Screen cuts to Connie Chung live in Las Vegas, surely high on the list of the damned. Midnight. Fireworks. Kisses. Nothing else. Peter Jennings has never lied to me, and so I have to accept that I got something wrong, that I am a fool or worse. I mean, how exactly would Jesus have kept coming back again and again, based on the different time zones? Hadn’t thought of that. Now that I do, now that it dawns on me how big a joke I am, how sick I made myself with dread and even hope—well, there’s nothing left to do but cry. It is over. I’m still here.

  * * *

  —

  I am still here, nearly twenty years later, and will let twelve-year-old me rest now. He had a rough night. Surely would have cried, sitting there at the edge of his mattress, if he had been the type of boy who cried. But he wasn’t, anymore. And he did not want the world to end. His world had already ended. He wanted to be rescued—the Rapture had seemed an elegant solution: instantaneous escape for him, damnation for his enemies, robes and slippers, plenty food to eat, and God shall wipe away all tears; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. Yes. He wanted some of that. But midnight struck and the Son of man did not appear, so in the place of Paradise, he had to find a kingdom of this world.

  Well, really all that he—all that I—hoped to find was somewhere to call home and some money, US dollars preferably, and, at some point, a spot on the varsity football squad and, soon after that, a beautiful boy to sneak off with on prom night. Nothing more or less than what was offered in the movies. Maybe a little more. I admit that, aside from those basic desires, I also longed for something to believe in. That was greedy. My mistake. I had not learned that the search for belief is very likely the most violent known to man, not infrequently ending in death or derangement, but I did learn and I now know. The search has not yet killed me, though I am a bit deranged—and that may be the best that I have been in all these years. For I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby (alleged), the spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey. I have been left once or twice. Been found, too. And every time I turned around, the world began to end again—it’s even ending right this minute, I hear. Three cheers for the end of the world, if you ask me.

  You see, it could be said that I, from my starting place in the valley of the least of these, made it to the mountaintop. Not that I set out to do so. Just was afraid and open-minded. Anyway, I’m back. I have not returned with empty hands. No. I have come with urgent news: we must find another mountain, if not another world, to call our own.

  And if they say this is an unreasonable, impossible thing to request, I will tell them of a village that I heard of not too long ago. The village, somewhere in France, sometime in the seventeenth century, became the site of frequent miracles, according to the peasants there, who were so struck by symptoms of the supernatural that they put down their plows. This, of course, pissed off the local officials. They tried to reason with the peasants, to quell the mass hysteria, to no avail. At last, the officials sought an intervention from the highest power in the land, who sent them back with a sign. An actual sign, which was erected in the village square for all to see. It read:

  THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE

  BY ORDER OF THE KING

  Mine, then, is the story of a peasant boy and the king (or a few presidents) and, with luck, God and His miracles or lack thereof.

  PART ONE

  Write the things which thou hast seen.

  The Apocalypse of John

  Revelation 1:19

  chapter ONE

  There had been much better days, I promise. At least one. Let me paint a picture—or tell you about one that I still own because I stole it.

  The family stands together in a lush Ohio field with a sprinkle of leaves at their feet, and trees, some dying, towering behind them, a small red barn with white lattice beside them. The man, the father, tall like those trees, brown like the bark, is smiling. His mustache wraps around his wide mouth, big teeth. His head is square and strong and on straight, his hair low and wavy. His white shirt and light blue jeans are starched. His hands are larger than most men’s hands, better than most men’s hands at certain things, which is why they made him famous for some years, some years ago. He clasps these hands around a little girl, eight or nine years old: the daughter. They seem to shield her heart, also covered by a thick black sweater with many colored patches. She looks like she’s got good home training: stands at attention, arms at her sides, feet together, no space between the knees. A portrait-perfect smile, cheeks shiny and plump and bronze. There is a thin white ribbon in her black hair—a ribbon likely tied and hair likely pressed by the woman in the portrait: the mother, who stands by the man. Their elbows touch. She holds her head highest of all. She has the biggest smile of all, red lipstick. She has the biggest hair of all—burnt blonde, parted on the right side, billowing out and down in curls, falling on the shoulders of her white lace blouse. She wears no rings. She rests her hands, nearly balled into fists, skin the shade of sandcastles, on the shoulders of a little boy: the son. Somebody failed to train this boy or else he did not listen. His little legs are turned to the side. His blue jeans are crooked, too. His left arm floats up, away—he may be trying to wriggle away from his mother, or he may believe his arms are airplane wings. Hard to tell. Unclear, also, why his head leans over, nearly parallel to the ground. Because it is so big or because he is so happy? Those enthused
eyebrows, the twinkles in his eyes (that might just be a glare on the photograph), a smile so intense that his dimples look like craters on a small brown moon. Maybe God was sticking His pointer fingers in the boy’s cheeks. Maybe he was just born that way. Who knows? All we know from this artifact is that this family took one pretty picture together on one fine fall day in 1991 or ’92. That they stood together and wore crisp blue jeans and clean white blouses. That they smiled, heads straight or crooked.

  See the family. Savor them. Soon, they will be destroyed. They will destroy each other. They will destroy themselves. The world or fate or mysteries untold will destroy them in a little while, for the boy needs to travel most of this journey alone—and if he does not need to (which, as the boy, would be my argument), then he will anyway.

  Not yet.

  For now, he’s got joy in his cheeks and his mother’s hands on his shoulders and his sister at his side and his father running the whole show as he was wont to do. He was Rod Gerald, after all.

  As a high school quarterback growing up in South Dallas, Rod Gerald possessed two of the fastest legs and two of the steadiest hands in America. They were traits that made him the envy of football players and the prize coveted by big-time college recruiters. Even the legendary Woody Hayes swooped down to South Oak Cliff from Columbus, Ohio, where he presided over one of the best-oiled, most proficient, and successful football factories in the nation. Hayes wanted Gerald throwing the football for Ohio State University, and he dropped a few $100 bills in the collection plate of Gerald’s preacher father to drive home his point.

  Woody got his money’s worth, I’d say: convinced that eighteen-year-old boy to leave his mother and his father and his three older brothers and three younger sisters and all the girls who had been shouting his nickname—Crow!—from the stands and reading his stage name—Rod Gerald (his name was Roderic)—in newspapers since the eighth grade and go to Columbus and cleave to Woody Hayes and become one flesh or nearly with Ohio State football. The journey would cost him at least one of his lives, but for a time, beginning in 1975, it gave him a new one, a better one. His new life made him the second black quarterback in Ohio State’s history, took his exploits from the pages of the Dallas Morning News to the Columbus Dispatch and Sports Illustrated and the Washington Post, which announced his new nickname: The Magician, because he vanishes in front of tacklers’ eyes. And on New Year’s Day 1977, by magic if not miracle, the boy became a legend. In the first quarter of the Orange Bowl, with Ohio State losing 10–0 to Colorado, Woody called Rod Gerald from the bench, where he had sat out five games with a broken back, and asked him, barely healed, to fix the mess. The boy complied: dazzled 65,537 pairs of eyes in the stands and however many more tuned in to NBC to see the 27–10 Buckeye victory. Was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. Number 8 in your programs, number 1 in your hearts. For a time.