What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [57]
He watched as the Governor tore open the bag, pulled out container after container, and arrayed them in a semi-circle on his enormous desk. The giant desk was, like the rest of the office, stained almost black. The massive structure might have made a nice house for a family in one of those third-world countries. But this was Texas. And Whitford needed something on which he could eat his meals and prop his feet. So there it sat, in the middle of his enormous wood-paneled cave, looming over and oppressing anyone stupid or unfortunate enough to come into the Governor’s office.
Whitford didn’t look up from his plate, but started right in. “Apparently, my man Parker is dead.” He grunted as he shoveled hunks of smoked meat into his face.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said Cadmon with a gentle nod and facial expression that made him look as if he were sucking on a sour candy.
“Yeah,” said Whitford, “Whatever. Anyway, you called this meeting.” He took a moment to engage in some ruminative mastication. “So get on with it.”
“I did not,” said Cadmon. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward Ms. Withers’ desk. “She said—”
“Whatever. You’ve been calling me non-stop for a week.”
“But I—”
“Don’t give me that crap,” said Whitford.
Cadmon clamped his mouth shut. He wished that, just once, he could talk to this fat bastard without feeling like a stupid schoolboy.
“So what do you want?” asked the Governor.
Cadmon opened his mouth to speak, but the governor interrupted. “Before we get into that, I need you to tell me something,” he said. “I want to know how you knew about the storm.”
“Well,” said Cadmon, “that’s actually one of the things I’m here to talk about.” His eyes bugged out, but because the Governor had already cleared his plate and was now chomping a container full of onion slices that had clearly been intended as garnish. The two men locked eyes for an instant and Cadmon quickly wiped the look of surprise off his face.
“Well?” asked Whitford.
Cadmon took a deep breath. He rubbed his hands together, then adjusted his seat. “Well, it’s—” He ran a hand through his hair. He’d thought through what he was going to say a hundred times, but now he couldn’t find the right words. So he just came right out and said it. “It was an angel, Dick. An angel told me about that storm.”
“Okay,” said Whitford, completely unfazed. “All right.”
Cadmon looked up, dropping his hand from his forehead. Whitford appeared to be nodding to himself.
“You don’t seem—” The preacher shook his head, unable to find the right words. Of all the different ways this could turn out, he would not have predicted this particular response. He wondered if Whitford had known about Ezekiel already.
The pale monster in the squeaky chair smirked. “I’ll admit that it’s pretty strange. I mean, an angel. Ha!” Cadmon jumped at the sound of Whitford attempting to laugh. “But the idea that you could predict this huge, unbelievable storm – that was absurd. And then you turned out to be right. The world’s best meteorologists couldn’t have predicted that. So, I knew it had to be some kind of weird, fantastical crap.” He gave a little nod, as if this kind of thinking were perfectly natural for all good ole boys: Got yourself an ineffable mystery? A situation inexplicable using reason and modern scientific knowledge? No problem. It was probably just an angel or something.
“And you believe me? About the angel?”
Whitford hesitated. “Well,” he said, “the storm showed up, just like you said. And it all worked out like you predicted.” He gave another one of those “that’s perfectly reasonable” nods.
A moment of awkward silence