Before The Flood

Special Smashwords Edition

Before the Flood

by

John Sherman

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Before The Flood

Special Smashwords Edition

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Copyright © 2012 John Sherman. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Cover Designed by Brian Rule

Cover art Copyright © Brad Perks

Published by Telemachus Press, LLC at Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com

http://www.telemachuspress.com

ISBN: 978-1-938135-79-8 (eBook)

Version 2012.05.24

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Before the Flood

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage … And knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be …

… Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.

Matthew Chapter 24, Verses 36–44: King James Bible

Chapter 1

I met her for the first time at a coffee shop on Fillmore not far from her church on the outskirts of the Tenderloin. She was stylish. It was one of the first things I noticed. She wore a long black cotton skirt, a button down purple blouse and three inch brown leather boots. This surprised me. I’d never met a stylish priest before, not to mention a beautiful one. She made no attempt to downplay either. She had straight, sandy blonde hair that fell just above her shoulders, green eyes lightly ringed with mascara, and pale lips that she painted with light pink lipstick. She looked more like a businesswoman than a priest, more like someone you’d trust with your stock portfolio rather than your spiritual well-being. But I knew that she was good at her job. I knew that she was very well-respected within the religious circles of the city. And I knew that she was smart. She didn’t suffer fools, and so when we met for that first time, I was more than a little nervous. I knew that I would have to prove myself even though she had been the one to contact me.

Every reporter in the Bay Area wanted a meeting with her at that time, and yet she had chosen me. I assumed it was because of my history. I grew up a preacher’s son. I know my Bible and have written about it often. In fact, over the years I’ve dedicated almost half my columns to religious issues. I figured she liked that. I thought she felt it would help me tell her son’s story better than other reporters. At the time I was ecstatic. The city’s biggest story had fallen into my lap. I felt like I’d won the lottery. I don’t anymore. Now I just feel sad, empty. If I could give the story back I would. Soon everyone will feel the same way.

The conversation started as most do, with an introduction.

Thomas? she asked with her hand extended as she walked from the door of the coffee shop to where I stood by the counter.

Elizabeth? I responded.

She smiled. Beth, she said.

We shook hands.

Please. Call me Beth.

We chatted for a few seconds more as we stood in line at the counter. I thanked her for contacting me. She lowered her head and stared at her feet.

I’m still not really sure what I’m doing.

I didn’t respond.

She turned to the woman behind the counter and ordered a green tea. I ordered a coffee. She paid for both despite my protests and then led me to a table in the corner of the room where we could sit and look out the window. It was a typical San Francisco mid-autumn morning: 40 degrees, foggy, and wet. Throngs of people climbed up and down the sidewalks along both sides of the street, rain jackets wrapped tightly across their chests, umbrellas perched overhead. Beth watched as they passed by. A pained expression crept across her face.

These people, she said and paused as a man and woman walked down the street, the man’s arm draped across the woman’s shoulder, her fingers clutching his hand as it dangled next to her breast. All so blissfully ignorant, she continued.

She cupped her mouth with one hand and closed her eyes.

Are you all right? I asked.

She looked up at me and the corner of her eyes crinkled. She took a deep breath and exhaled.

I’m sorry. She tried to smile. She took a sip of her tea and held the cup to her mouth. She stared at me. You mind if we talk for a bit first?

Not at all, I said.

She wanted to vet me. She wanted to interview me before I interviewed her.

We started off by talking about my work. She asked me why I’d become a journalist. I told her what I thought she wanted to hear: To give a voice to the voiceless. To stand up for the little guy. To pursue justice. To illuminate the darkness. She didn’t buy it. She said I sounded like a politician falling in the polls. I grinned and nodded in agreement and then I told her the truth—I was an English major in college who didn’t want to become a lawyer or a teacher. I was good with words. And ever since I was a little boy I’ve loved stories. I love reading them and I love writing them. I love hearing about other people’s lives. I love working on other people’s problems. In a different life I should have been an actor. I enjoy inhabiting the lives of strangers. I get a thrill out of snooping.

I like that, she said, her tea cup still only inches from her face. That sounds more like it.

Like what? I asked.

The truth, she said and took another sip.

Next she wanted to know about my family, my childhood. I told her there wasn’t much to tell. I’d grown up in a small town called Big Timber in south central Montana. My father was an Episcopal priest. My mother was a librarian. I grew up fishing, reading and going to church. When I was 18 I applied to the University of San Francisco because it was as different a place as possible from where I’d grown up. Months later the school offered me a partial scholarship. I accepted it and have lived in San Francisco ever since.

She then asked about my personal life:

Was I married?

No.

Did I have a girlfriend?

No.

Did I smoke?

No.

Did I drink?

Some.

Did I do drugs?

Not in a long time.

Was I religious?

This one caused me to stop. I could quote more scripture than 99% of Christians. I knew the stories. I knew the lessons. But no, I hadn’t believed in years. Surely she knew this already from reading my columns, but still I felt as though I had to answer delicately in order to keep her sitting there.

Let’s just say I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. I tried to say it casually, but I could hear the tinge of anger in my voice as well as she could.

She didn’t respond. Instead she moved on to another topic: the reason we’d met in the first place.

To do this, I need guidelines, she started. Assurances.

Like what? I asked.

Like I get to approve anything you write before you submit it for publication.

I shrugged. No problem.

And no audio recordings.

Okay.

And no editorializing.

What do you mean? I asked.

I mean you write what I say. You write it like it’s fact because it is. If you qualify what I tell you or try to belittle it, then I’ll deny ever talking to you. I’ll call you a liar and a fraud and I’ll do so publicly while wearing my vestments. She focused her green eyes on me. They hardened as if they could look directly into me. Okay? she asked.

I nodded.

Yeah, I replied and suddenly felt like a little boy under her stern gaze. A shiver ran up my spine. She had a strength in her face and in her eyes. She could have stared down Stalin. She could have made Hitler blush with just one glance.

Good. Again she smiled and lines emanated from the corners of her eyes like tributaries branching off from the Nile.

She pulled a pocketbook up from the ground, a large brown leather bag with thin leather straps, and dropped it onto the table between us. She produced a purple wallet from the bag and opened it to a booklet of pictures encased in clear, paper-thin sleeves.

That’s him at three and a half years old. She stared at the picture lovingly. At that age, he could already speak Spanish and English. He knew the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. He could recite passages of the Bible from memory just from hearing me read them aloud once. She flipped to another picture. That’s him at eleven. In the picture a skinny young boy with deep brown skin smiled at the camera, a gap between his two front teeth, a helmet of straight black hair hanging low over his forehead. By that age, he could speak perfect Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He was studying Mandarin and Farsi. He knew the Bible better than I did. She said the words in a clipped way, as if struggling to speak and breathe at the same time.

She flipped to another picture. In this one the boy had a crew cut shaved close to his head. His black eyes stared directly into the camera. She didn’t tell his age, but I guessed he was around fourteen or fifteen. He brimmed with adolescent angst. He looked exactly as I remember feeling at that age. Angry at the world, defiant.

This is when he left me. She pushed the wallet over to let me get a better look.

You mean he ran away?

She nodded. He comes back from time to time to check in, but by this point he had moved on. She tapped her finger on the picture. This is when he became something other than the little boy I raised.

She hugged herself.

That’s when everything started. I couldn’t protect him anymore. I couldn’t hide his gifts from the world.

Immediately I felt uncomfortable. I don’t know what I’d expected coming into this meeting—a colorful story? A confused woman spinning a tall tale? I was ready for almost any potentiality, but I was having a hard time accepting what sat in front of me—a heartbroken mother scared for her little boy.

So. I paused to let her collect herself. These gifts. Describe them for me.

Tears brimmed in her eyes.

You’ve heard about them already, haven’t you? she asked.

I’ve heard rumors, I said.

And what rumors are those?

I shrugged. Water into wine. My throat felt dry. That sort of thing.

Again she stared out the window.

Water into wine, she whispered, more to herself than to me.

I could feel the skeptic raging within, the familiar anger that always crept up whenever I felt that a source was playing with me, but I buried it. I wanted this story. I wanted it almost more than I’d wanted anything else in my life. Rumors had been swirling for years about this young man. I wanted to be the one to put them all to bed.

You’re saying that’s true? I asked.

I’m saying, she exhaled, that was just the beginning.

I followed her gaze out the rain-streaked window. She stared at the side of a gray building across the street. Someone had tagged it with the words Love is Love in red spray paint. She closed her eyes and a silent tear streamed down her face.

So just to be explicit about this, I started, you would have the world believe that you’ve raised the Son of God? I chose the words carefully, trying to not sound like a cynic but not wanting to sound like a believer either.

She slowly shook her head and opened her eyes, once again fixing her gaze upon me.

No, she said in a barely audible whisper. Not the Son of God. She flexed her jaw. The Son of Man.

We locked eyes.

She regained her composure.

She sat up straight in her chair and brushed her sand-colored hair out of her face with one hand. You know the difference don’t you? she asked.

I nodded, but before I could answer she continued.

The Son of God died for our sins, she said evenly, deliberately, carefully enunciating every word, each individual syllable. The Son of Man comes to punish us for them.

I didn’t know how to respond.

I watched as she took a sip of her tea.

She rested the cup gently on the table and brought her hands together, intertwining her fingers and setting both hands in her lap.

You think I sound like a crazy woman.

I don’t know what I think, I said.

Sometimes I wish I were crazy. I wish this whole thing were just one long, bad dream.

Maybe it is of sorts.

She reached for my right hand with both of hers.

Tell me what you think after you’ve heard what I have to say.

I leaned back in my chair.

She dropped her hands to the table.

She cleared her throat and began.

Chapter 2

He arrived on the last Sunday in November, the first day of Advent, at six o’clock in the morning. Beth sat at her desk in her office, reviewing her sermon for that day’s service. Back then she always awoke early on the day of her sermons. She was twenty-seven years old. The church had ordained her six months earlier, and since that time she had worked as an associate rector at St. Mary’s, a small church on Valencia Street in the Mission. The rector of the church lived with his wife in a duplex in Pacific Heights, leaving the rectory, a small, white clapboard house with bay windows, for Beth. The rectory stood next to the church, and Beth’s office occupied the front room. Because of this she heard the baby crying before anyone rang the doorbell. She heard the whispers and the blessing and then the feet running away.

When she opened the door, her eyes confirmed what her ears had already discovered—a small, brown baby boy lying on a green Army jacket for a bed and wrapped in a Nirvana T-shirt for a sheet. She stared down at the boy for a second before picking him up. He was tiny, almost premature-looking. He kept his eyes closed and his mouth open. He wailed between breaths. Beth looked down the street in both directions, but it was empty. The storefronts were closed. Stoplights blinked on and off in yellow bursts in the distance. Not a soul in sight except for the infant at her feet. She reached down to wrap him in her arms, and as she did, his crying stopped. She pulled him to her chest and gently patted his back and whispered: Shhh … shhh … He fell asleep against her heart.

Across the street a glint caught her eye. A shimmer of light as if from a mirror shot out through the morning haze. She stared at it, watched it twinkle and fade and then reappear. Slowly a dark form took shape around the light … and then another … and then another, until Beth could see the outlines of three teenage boys against the gray wall down the alleyway across the street. All of them had on hooded sweatshirts. One wore camouflage pants. The others wore jeans. The one in the camo pants stepped forward. Dog tags hung around his neck and shimmered as the early morning sun crept up the street. He stared at Beth holding the baby. Despite the hood, she could make out the dark skin of his face and the blue of his eyes, an unnatural electric blue, the kind produced by colored contacts. A mixture of fear and confusion raced up her spine.

Is he yours? she shouted to the boy.

He took another step forward and continued to stare at her. The other two boys followed his lead. All three removed their hoods to reveal the same tattoo on the right side of their necks—the simple black outline of a cross, the sight of which made Beth shiver. She studied each of them as if trying to remember their faces for a future line-up. She thought they all looked feral—one white, two Hispanic, all thin, all dirty. Mud caked their faces. The white boy’s hair hung in matted dreads down the side of his face. One of the Latino kids, the one with the blue eyes, wore his hair shaved close to his skull.

Take care of him, he said in heavily accented English.

Beth stepped off the front porch and into the street.

This is your baby … she repeated, no longer sure if she were making a statement or asking a question.

No madre, the boy replied, he’s yours. He took another step forward, but the others pulled him back.

Beth stormed across the street towards them.

I can help you, she said, but before she reached the other side they had vanished, the sounds of their boots echoing down the dark alleyway behind them.

****

Of course I reported it to child services right away, she said to me after sitting down with her second cup of tea. They took him that afternoon.

To where?

First to a hospital and then over to a nursery nearby that was set up for unwanted children.

What? Like an orphanage?

Yes, she said. But only for very young children.

So when did you see him next?

A few days later.

Did someone ask you to come? I asked.

No, she said, I chose to go. She tilted her head slightly and furrowed her brow. You don’t just walk away from something like that, she continued. You don’t just wipe it from your mind. I wanted to see what had happened to him. I wanted to see if they had learned anything about him.

Had they?

She shook her head no.

Days later I started the adoption process.

Just like that?

Yes.

He had that big of an impact on you?

He did. Yes.

What? Like a calling or something?

No, nothing like that. She smiled. It was more basic than that, more internal. I guess you could say I had babies on the brain at that stage of my life.

And being single …

She cut me off.

Separated.

Separated, I repeated, you decided you wanted a child?

My ex-husband and I had been trying for a long time.

Without luck.

With bad luck actually. She dropped her hands to her lap and straightened out the wrinkles of her skirt. Without looking at me she continued: One miscarriage puts strain on a marriage. Three, well, any marriage would have a hard time surviving that.

The words punched me in the gut. I knew what that kind of loss felt like. I pulled my glasses from my face and rubbed my forehead. It’s something I do often when I’m not sure what to say. It’s a stall tactic, a nervous habit.

I’m sorry, I said and slipped my glasses back on my face.

She looked back up. We all face our tests.

Suddenly I could see slight wrinkles in her face that had gone unnoticed before, faint lines that ran from the edges of her nose to the corners of her mouth, slight creases in her forehead and the corners of her eyes. At the beginning of our meeting I would have pegged her to be in her mid to late thirties, but the longer we talked, the more I studied her face, I realized that she was older. Forty-three, maybe? Forty-four? I wasn’t sure exactly, but I liked what I saw. The years had sculpted stories into her expressions. I could see pain and joy in every contour. I could see a life lived. In short, she had one of the most interesting and alluring faces I had ever laid eyes on.

Yes, I said, I guess we do.

She took a sip of her tea.

So in many ways, she continued, this child came into my life when I needed him most. I used to think it must have been God’s will.

And now what do you think?

Now I know it was.

****

She named him Manny, short for Manuel. She said it was because she’d known other Latino men with the name, but of course there was another reason. He had arrived at the beginning of the Christmas season. She thought of him as a gift. To her, the name fit.

The adoption process moved quickly. Being a priest helped. The baby moved in almost immediately. Within a week she had fallen deeply in love. The boy almost never cried. A sense of serenity engulfed him entirely. Others detected this as well. On Sundays Beth hired a Honduran woman named Tita to watch after Manny. She usually brought him to the 8 am and 11 am services. The two of them would sit on the left side of the church close to a small baptismal alcove. Within weeks people began to crowd to this side of the chapel.

The church opened its doors to those who society shunned. Beth worked hard in the community to make the unwanted feel welcome. At that time AIDS ran rampant throughout San Francisco. Heroin was the drug of choice. The homeless population hovered at an all-time high. The city was filled with lonely, lost souls. Beth ministered to as many as she could. She posted flyers in the street about church events. She visited methadone clinics, homeless shelters, AIDS support groups. She wanted to make herself available. It worked. Attendance at St. Mary’s doubled in her first year.

At first the crowd dispersed throughout the rows of the church, a few people sitting up front, a few scattered to the left and the right, and a large chunk about ten rows back. As more people began to attend services, however, the pews filled up. The crowd thickened and spread evenly throughout. When Manny arrived, this changed.

Beth noticed one Sunday in the middle of her sermon that a couple of homeless men sat near Tita and the baby.