Strange Animals Read online

  “Yeah, I definitely get what you’re doing. I just don’t know if I can handle doing it with you.”

  Karen wasn’t expecting this answer from Paul. She assumed it would take him some time to analyze what was happening, but once he did, Karen felt sure that he would agree with her and be enthusiastic about helping her see it through. She said, “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, Karen. This is a big fucking deal. This isn’t like you asking me to go pick out a couch for the apartment or something. You’re going to be vilified if people find out who you are. People are going to think you’re the next coming of fucking Hitler.”

  “But you won’t think that, will you?”

  “No. Obviously not. I love you and I love you because you think of shit like this. But I’m sitting here right now thinking about all the bad that might come from this, and I’m not real sure I want to be your Eva Braun.”

  “Come on. It’s not remotely that bad.”

  “You’re putting a price on a human life. No one, no matter what their politics or religion or philosophical leanings, likes that, including me.”

  Paul walked to the door, grabbed his jacket, and said, “I have to clear my head for a while. I think I’m going to go down the street and get a beer or something. I just need to think.”

  “Okay.”

  Paul said, “I’ll be back in a while,” then left.

  Karen sat on the couch staring at her computer. She hoped he could come to some understanding of what she was attempting, but she knew that if she really was to move forward with this, she would have to accept that some things in her life would be irreparably altered, not the least of which would be her relationships with those closest to her.

  chapter

  twelve

  James woke up at 6:00 A.M. No one was meeting at Woodstone until 9:00 A.M., but he was too excited to sleep. The thought of doing what he considered to be the first real work in God’s service of his life was almost too much for him to bear.

  He got out of bed and went through his normal morning routine. As he was combing his hair, he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, running his fingers over the spot on his forehead where he had been anointed. He felt different that morning. He felt like he had purpose beyond anything he had known. Even though he knew God was always watching him, he could really feel his presence there in the bathroom, shielding him like armor.

  On his way to Woodstone, James went to the grocery store and bought several kinds of potato chips, sodas, some premade sandwiches, and some napkins. He knew that simply going on this mission for Christ was all that had been asked of him, but he wanted to do more than what was asked. He wanted to show God that he was ready to hear his voice, to receive a command directly from him, and, most important, to obey it without hesitation.

  He arrived at Woodstone a few hours early and sat in his car reading the Bible until Pastor Preston pulled up, fifteen minutes before the rest of the group was scheduled to show up. James got out of his car with the sacks of groceries he brought and greeted Pastor Preston, who was excited by James’s enthusiasm for the task at hand. Pastor Preston took a box of doughnuts from his car, unlocked to doors to the rec room at Woodstone, and held the door open for James as the two men walked inside.

  Once inside, Pastor Preston looked over the sign-up sheet to see that a few more people had committed to their mission over the days that followed their initial meeting. He said, “Well, it looks like we’ll have three or four people joining us. It might not seem like a lot, but when you’ve got Jesus Christ on your side, every soldier is an army. Sorry, what was your name again?”

  James told Pastor Preston his name and took no offense at the question. He understood the Pastor to be a busy man who was constantly under the order of God. A name slipping his mind from time to time was to be expected. The two men engaged in a brief conversation about what James did for a living, where he lived, and for how long each of those things had been the case, and then Cathy Hobart arrived. She poked her head in the door to the rec room and said, “I smell doughnuts.”

  As she entered the room, Pastor Preston shifted his attention to her and said, “Cathy. Great to have you out this morning. How’s school going?”

  She said, “Fine, thanks. We’re about to start finals, so I’m a little bogged down with studying, but I’m never too bogged down to serve Christ.”

  Pastor Preston said, “That’s the spirit. Pun intended,” and they both laughed. James forced a chuckle, although he found nothing humorous about it. It just seemed like the correct response in the given situation. Cathy got a doughnut as two more people arrived. Pastor Jacobs and Brenda Tammer entered the rec room, and Pastor Preston said, “Well, I think we’re all here. So everyone get a doughnut, or—sorry, James, right?”

  James nodded.

  Pastor Preston continued, “James here was generous enough to bring some other snacks and sodas and things. You guys have some breakfast. I’m going to go get the keys to one of our vans, and I think we should be on the road within fifteen minutes or so.”

  Pastor Jacobs said, “I’ve got the signs in my Range Rover. My wife and my little girls were working on them all week. I couldn’t be more proud.”

  Pastor Preston said, “Now, that’s what it means to be a Christian family right there.”

  Pastor Jacobs said, “Amen to that, brother. Amen to that. Should I get the signs now or wait until you pull the van around?”

  Pastor Preston said, “Oh, right. Uh, I can just pull the van around and we can load them in,” then left the rec room to get the keys to the van that would carry the Anointed on their first mission for Christ.

  In the van, James sat next to Cathy in the seat the closest to the back. He could see the top sign in the stack of signs behind him. It read, “God’s law will never legalize gay marriage.” He wondered what phrases were on the other signs, but not enough to reach over the backseat and look through them. He’d see them all soon enough.

  He knew he had more than three hours to pass, so he brought along a Bible, which he read from for the first few minutes until Cathy asked him, “So have you ever done anything like this?”

  James told her that he hadn’t. He told her that he was aware that several states had begun to legalize marriage between two homosexuals, and although he didn’t support this trend, he hadn’t yet done anything to voice his concern in public. Cathy said, “I haven’t, either. I’ve wanted to for a while now, but my parents always thought I was too young. This is my first ever protest for Christ. You mind if I Instagram us?”

  James told her that he didn’t mind at all, so Cathy took a picture of them together in the back of the bus, and as she was posting it to her Instagram account with the hashtags #anointed, #soldiersforchrist and #protectingmarriage, she asked, “Do you want me to tag you in it?” James explained to her that he didn’t have an Instagram account. He didn’t see the point.

  Cathy said, “The point is so that your friends can see what you’re doing. It’s especially good for things like this, because they can see that you’re setting a good example as a Christian. I could help you make an account right now if you want.” James explained that he didn’t have too many friends who would care about what he was doing. He cared, and that was enough for him.

  Cathy said, “Okay, cool with me,” and then she posted the picture.

  James spent the rest of the trip listening to the various conversations the other people had, answering questions about himself when he was asked, and singing a few devotional songs that Pastor Preston had brought along on his iPhone. They were in the middle of one of these songs when Pastor Preston pulled into the parking lot across the street from the city hall, where some protestors had already gathered on the steps. He said, “All right, soldiers, this is it. Game faces on. Grab a sign from the back, and let’s soldier up for God.”

  With that, everyone got out of the van and made their way to the back, where Pastor Jacobs handed out signs. James’s sign rea
d, “A marriage certificate won’t save you from hell.” Pastor Preston held a sign with a simple design of a red X over the word Faggot. James thought vulgarity and crassness were always unnecessary, and in this specific case obscured the real message they were trying to convey in their protest. It was easy, he thought, for the public to get the wrong impression of what they were doing. He wanted to raise the public awareness of just how far Satan’s influence was spreading—in this case, all the way to the heartland. Nonetheless, James followed Pastor Preston with the rest of the Anointed as they carried their signs to the steps of the city hall, where the mayor was presiding over the wedding of two women.

  James and his group found a spot behind some barricades, beyond which protestors were not allowed. Pastor Preston said, “Okay, guys, we’re not trying to get arrested or anything, so we can’t go past this point, but we can scream as loud as we want to. Let Jesus hear us up in heaven. Keep marriage between a man and a woman! Keep marriage between a man and a woman!” James, Cathy, the rest of the group from Woodstone, and a few others joined in. One man who showed up a few minutes later had a megaphone to lend to the cause.

  As they chanted, James watched the two women on the steps of city hall. As the mayor pronounced them legally married, they cried and embraced one another. They were genuinely happy. James knew that Satan’s influence was chiefly to blame, but he couldn’t help thinking how strange it was that all people had access to the same basic understanding of Christianity, or at least to the knowledge that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and yet some chose to exist outside of his rules. Some chose to live lives that were an affront to his love, knowing that they were damning themselves in the process. He just couldn’t understand how anyone would make such a choice, but he resigned himself to the idea that it wasn’t for him to understand.

  As they continued to protest and wave their signs in the air, the man with the megaphone started to get louder and louder. The next couple to be married, two men, looked in the direction of the megaphone before their ceremony began. The man with the megaphone said through the device, “I hope you enjoy your honeymoon in hell, faggot!”

  God made different races for a reason, and dating or marrying outside your race was a sin. So too was any romantic relationship beyond a single man and a single woman. Once married, a woman was to obey every command given to her by her husband, just as was outlined in the Bible. If a woman expressed any interest beyond those deemed acceptable by her husband, she was considered a sinner and should repent. Science was necessary only for necessities in the modern world, like transportation and some very basic medicine, but beyond that, God would provide anything a person might need to survive. It was a man’s duty to have as many children as possible and raise them with the same beliefs he held sacred so that the right way to live wouldn’t be forgotten. These were things that the man with the megaphone understood to be true.

  Upon hearing the man with the megaphone shouting in their direction, one of the grooms-to-be stepped down from the city hall steps, despite his fiancé’s objections, and walked over to the barricades where James and the rest of the protestors were standing. The man with the megaphone said, “What’s the matter, you got a problem with free speech, faggot?”

  The groom-to-be said, “Not at all. What I have a problem with is a redneck piece of shit screaming about the sanctity of marriage when he probably fucks his cousin and his sheep behind his wife’s back.”

  God was love. That was all anyone really needed to know about God. All religions throughout human history had been wrong, because they were products of the societies that existed in the times of their creations and as such they were subject to the influences of social stigmas, political objectives, and financial pressures of those same times. God, the Creator, loved all his or her children equally because he or she created them. Science was another one of God’s creations, which he or she loved just as much as the living creatures throughout the cosmos. Raising a child was a vital part of being human, and the ability to adopt a child was more proof that God loved his creations so much that he gave them ways to explore every aspect of being human, even if their innate biological desires would prohibit them from experiencing one of the most important aspects. These were things that the groom-to-be understood to be true.

  The man with the megaphone became enraged and said, “This is America, not San Francisco, you cocksucking faggot!”

  The groom-to-be said, “San Francisco is in America, you stupid piece of shit, and has it occurred to you that you probably have a gay cousin or brother? Or son?”

  The man with the megaphone looked at one of the police officers standing near the barricade, who had a smile on his face, and said, “Are you going to let this faggot talk to me like that?” The police officer shrugged his shoulders and the man with the megaphone said, “Well, I’m not,” then jumped over the barricade and swung his megaphone at the groom-to-be, who shoved him back into the protestors and punched him in the face. The police tried to move in, but some more of the protestors had already joined in the fight, punching and kicking the groom-to-be, as well as his fiancé and some of their supporters. It was quickly turning into a brawl.

  James quickly and silently prayed to God for some sign to let him know what to do. He wasn’t afraid of getting injured or even arrested. He knew that no wound he could incur would be sacrifice enough to match what Jesus did for him, and he knew that no law of man would ever be equal to the law of God. In that moment Pastor Preston said, “My Anointed, this is the battle we came here for. Show God that we are his soldiers.” With that, Pastor Preston started swinging his sign around wildly, and James took this to be the sign he was looking for.

  He jumped the barricade and tried to defend himself as he helped pull the man with the megaphone back toward the group of protestors. In the process, James was punched in the face and hit twice in the back with something hard, though he couldn’t tell what it was. He fell to his knees from the blows to his back, and then stood to see where his attacker might be, but within seconds of standing back up, a rock sailed through the air and struck him in the temple, knocking him unconscious.

  James woke up in the back of an ambulance. Pastor Preston and Pastor Jacobs were with him. Pastor Preston said, “You all right, son? You took a nasty shot to the dome back there, but you were a hero. You dove into the mass of those homosexual sympathizers, and you dragged one of our own, a fellow Christian, to safety.”

  Pastor Jacobs said, “It was as if God was moving you to action. I really think we might have seen a miracle here today.”

  James asked them if anyone was arrested, and Pastor Preston said, “Funny you should ask that, because there was one arrest. It was the homosexual who started the fight with the man you saved from probably being beaten to death. And it’s already on the local news that a homosexual lost his temper and started a brawl on the steps of city hall. Honestly, it couldn’t have gone any better for us. Here, look at this.”

  Pastor Preston held up his phone for James to see. He had Cathy’s Instagram account open. Her most recent photo was of James dragging the man with the megaphone back from the brawl. Under the image were the hashtags #ChristianHero and #RealManOfGod.

  James couldn’t help smiling a little bit. As he lay there in the back of an ambulance on his way to the Des Moines County Hospital, he silently spoke to God. He told God that he had learned something about himself at the protest. He understood that sacrifices would be required of him, and he had learned that he was ready for more. He could handle a larger burden. All God had to do was ask him to shoulder it, and he would.

  James asked Pastor Preston if he had a Bible with him. Pastor Preston said, “Of course I do, son. Would you like me to read something from it?”

  James requested Peter 4:12. Pastor Preston opened the Bible and read: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings
, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

  James thanked Pastor Preston, and then the Pastor said, “No, son, thank you.”

  chapter

  thirteen

  Karen still had no straight answer from Paul. Every night, when he came home from work, he would tell her that he was still thinking about it. She felt that this was a good sign, that he hadn’t passed a negative judgment outright. Every day that he claimed to still be thinking about the situation, Karen thought, could be bringing him one day closer to accepting her decision and agreeing to go on the journey with her. With or without his support, she knew there were practical steps she needed to take in the service of her plan. As she got into the elevator at the Robertson Medical Plaza, she didn’t know which of those steps she was more nervous about: her first ob-gyn visit or the conversation she had to have with her supervisor.

  Karen had been going to the same ob-gyn since she was in her late teens. Her name was Niral Prasad. From time to time, on prior visits, she would think about how strange it was that this woman, who had started out as a stranger to her, had seen her vagina more times than some of the men she had dated. Despite this fact, Karen didn’t feel like she really knew her ob-gyn on a personal level, and she didn’t think divulging her plan to her was a good idea.

  Karen waited in an examination room and looked through her texts. There was none from Paul. In the few days after she told him about her plan, he had become less communicative. She assumed he needed some space to figure things out for himself and decided not to bother him about it. She did have a text from Tanya that read, “Have you heard from Paul yet? Also, Mexican food tonight?” Karen replied, “No. Yes,” and then her doctor walked into the room.