What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [95]
“Yes. Ever heard of Passover? It celebrates the time that God killed the first born son of every Egyptian. And Noah’s flood? Sodom and Gomorrah? Or the bit in Numbers where he sets some of the Israelites on fire for complaining?”
“Shut up, asshole!” For a man who was apparently predisposed to violence, Jimmy seemed to be taking Festus’ news kind of hard.
“And then,” said Festus, “there’s my personal favorite where God threatens to spread poop on the faces of some priests.”
“What?”
“The Book of Malachi, chapter two, verse three: ‘Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.’”
“You’re just making that up,” said Jimmy.
“I’m really not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“No, really, I’m not.”
“Shut up.”
“You know, I’m just telling you what the great big book of God says. It’s not my fault that, according to God, the best way to win a wife is to hand her father 200 dongs that you stole from their presumably uncooperative Philistine owners.”
“Man, if you don’t shut up right now, I’m gonna—” Jimmy paused, apparently mulling over just exactly what really bad thing he was going to do to Festus. “I’m gonna do somethin’ real bad.”
And so, for fear of having something real bad done to him, Festus spent the rest of the ride in silence.
They drove for another twenty minutes, exited the freeway, and headed just south of downtown. The truck bumped heavily as Jimmy pulled onto the elongated drive of the old coliseum without bothering to use his brakes. Festus saw the sign that said, “Driftwood Fellowship,” and decided to give talking another try. “We going to church?” he said.
“Shut up.”
Jimmy piloted the truck up a driveway and around a bend, and nearly crashed into a couple of Humvees that some soldiers had left parked at odd angles on the drive. The soldiers hadn’t gone far, apparently, and when they heard the sound of the truck’s tires skidding to a halt, came out to look and point their guns at Wayne, Jimmy, and Festus.
“Crap,” said Jimmy. He patted each shirt pocket, and then lifted his hips to dig around in the pockets of his jeans.
“Here,” said Wayne. “Use mine.” He reached across Festus to hand a badge of some sort to Jimmy.
Jimmy rolled down the window, held out the badge, and began a kind of jaw-clenching match against the soldier. They stared at each other for a few seconds, squinting and scowling, until finally the soldier spoke.
“Go ahead.” He tossed the badge thing into the window and walked away.
“Asshole,” said Jimmy. He gunned the monster truck’s engine and drove around the Humvees, taking out some expensive-looking shrubberies as he went.
“What’s that all about?” asked Festus. He noticed that there were a lot of military trucks all over the place.
“Shut up,” said Jimmy.
“Yeah, shut up,” said Wayne.
“You shut up,” said Jimmy.
“No, you shut up, asshole.”
“You shut up.”
“You.”
Jimmy turned and pointed a wide-eyed, crazy man look at Wayne. Festus looked back and forth between his captors, moving only his eyes. It was, he thought, probably one of the tensest situations he’d ever been in – outside of the city jail anyway. The odd thing about it though, was that he felt remarkably at ease. All the tension seemed to be between the two other men.
Jimmy slammed the truck into park, causing his passengers to jerk forward as the truck tilted and swayed on its giant shocks.
“Jimmy, I gotta have words with you.”
Jimmy gave Wayne the kind of look a homophobic Marine might give a son who’s just announced he’s going to study floral arrangement and interpretive dance at some highfalutin’ college north of the Mason-Dixon line. He stewed there for a second and then turned his angry face to Festus. “You stay put,” he said, climbing out of the truck.
The men slammed their doors and immediately started yelling at each other. Jimmy waved his hands a lot, while Wayne held his out in front of him in what looked like a conciliatory gesture.
From inside the truck, Festus could hear nothing, but guessed astutely that something was amiss between the men. He watched as Jimmy’s hand waving