The Rabbi’s son, Benjamin, died in a Ninawa desert five miles outside Mosul from an I.E.D. that shredded his hips, genitals, and both legs. This was on the third of May. When the Rabbi and his wife heard about their son’s death two maybe three days later, his wife, Clarice, tried to kill herself using a serrated kitchen knife. One tragedy seems to incite other tragedies. What can a person do? thought the Rabbi. She wasn’t a strong woman. Her medical history started at age eight with a concussion followed by behavioral anomalies involving religious themes. Clarice passed out before the blade had fully pierced her sternum.

His wife became conscious again during the ambulance ride through Center City Philadelphia, grabbing the lapel of the Rabbi’s navy blue Armani pinstripe. She was a petite woman, five-one and less than a hundred pounds. She had large pale green eyes and long fingers. Clarice spoke in a panicky whisper, most of it incoherent, about a dark-skinned man who wore a crimson and black scarf and carried an explosive device in a leather satchel. The part that dumbfounded the Rabbi was this: she had connected that vision to a nuclear power plant north of Dallas, Texas.

After the emergency room physician had stitched Clarice’s wound, the Rabbi told him about his son’s death and what Clarice had done and said. The Rabbi asked how he might ease his wife’s stress and help her recovery. The doctor suggested Chestnut Retreat, a private mental heath facility near their home.

Oren doesn’t care who lives next door or down the block from him; neither do his two friends of forty years, J.W. and Weaver. All three men are retired and have worked as control-room operators for Texas Electric near the little town of Spider. The plant had converted to nuclear power in 1991 and less than a year later Oren, J.W., and Weaver were N.R.C. licensed reactor operators.

They are in their sixties now, Oren and J.W. slim with thick white hair, Weaver on the balding and beaded side. The three men spend most mornings talking politics, and whatever else comes to mind, either outside or inside Sandusky’s General Store and Dry Goods along the town’s main drag. Today they are sitting on the white rockers outside the store. J.W. and Weaver have just agreed that a man who obeys the law and doesn’t get up in your face is a man worth tolerating, no matter what his belief. Weaver can’t recall any Jews ever living in Spider, at least none who wore those beanies. J.W. guesses that’s true. He can’t recall seeing one, either. J.W. is sure Jews don’t travel this far south. Then Oren says, So you boys are experts in that area, are you? The migrating habits of Jews?

Chestnut Retreat was a mix of schizophrenics, organic and affect disorders, and what her husband called the "worried well." Clarice didn’t feel comfortable around the other patients. Rich people always demanded things. Crazy rich people demanded twice as much and would rather sue you than look at you. They bossed the staff around, they complained about the color of their pills, they had relatives and friends bring them restaurant food.

Her psychiatrist, Dr. Smallwood, told her the brain’s temporal lobe probably has something to do with religious experiences and people with temporal lobe epilepsy often have visions that are either religious or prophetic or both. The right medication, Dr. Smallwood said, and you’ll wonder why you fretted over such things.

Clarice had heard this before. She also knew about anti-epileptic medications. As a child, she tripped and struck her head on the pointed end of her mother’s oak piano bench and lost consciousness. Her first temporal lobe seizure blossomed a day later. That was when the God of Abraham and Moses revealed Himself and began directing her life. Praise His name.

Good mental health isn’t that complicated, Dr. Smallwood said. He was tall and had hands that fluttered like nervous birds when he talked. The doctor said, You simply learn to ignore the visions.

You know how God works? Clarice said. She wanted to say more but she didn’t.

She wanted to say, Why can’t God work His miracles by any means He sees fit? Who are you to decide God’s rules?

We have our own kiln, Dr. Smallwood said, sitting in a chrome and black leather chair beside her bed. He had on gray gabardine pants and a blue blazer and polished brown shoes with tassels. He said, Pottery’s very therapeutic. I do it myself, you know. Since I was a boy. Believe me, nothing is more relaxing than digging your hands into wet clay.

Clarice was thinking about her son and the man in her visions. She kept Ben’s picture on the mahogany night stand by the side of her bed. This particular picture had been taken on his tenth birthday at the Philadelphia Zoo and was framed in silver. Some nights she cradled the picture in her arm and sobbed until sleep overcame her grief. The seizures were small but frequent and had become more vivid. She could see the dark skinned man, every detail. His square face and low forehead and dark bristled jaw, the drenched black of his hair and eyebrows—she could have touched him.

Why are you looking at me? the man would say to her. He’d say, Don’t you have things to do? Doesn’t your husband give you work? Women get into trouble when they don’t have work to do.

Clarice didn’t know the man in her vision. He always wore a tan linen suit and white shirt and a crimson and black cotton scarf. A nice dresser. Each time her husband visited, she had described the man to him.

He’s carrying a leather satchel, she said. I think it’s a bomb.

How do you know? the rabbi said.

I know, she said. Our Benjamin tells me.

Ben’s dead now, the Rabbi said. The war. He was captured and tortured and left in the desert. Don’t you remember? He’d been trying to get back to his unit when the I.E.D. killed him. Believe me, I’d also prefer to forget. We got that letter from his commander last week.

I’m not a fool, she said.

Oren, J.W., and Weaver are still sitting in the white rockers on the porch of Sandusky’s General Store and Dry Goods. A mild, steady wind curls and flutters the American flag next to the screen door. Gray dust washes across the wood steps and the town’s main street, a black tar road with two yellow lines down the center. Weaver has borrowed binoculars from old man Sandusky and is looking toward the double concrete domes of Texas Electric’s nuclear power plant.

What do you call the beanies? J.W. says.

Yarmulkes, Oren tells him.

Oren knows his Jews, Weaver says and adjusts the binoculars for a closer view.

What’s our Jew doing now? J.W. says.

Watching the fence, Weaver says. That’s what he does. He talks to the security guard and watches the fence. Not something I’d do. I never thought the fence was all that interesting.

Oren likes the new man, this Jew. He has an honest face and a good handshake. He looks you in the eye when he talks. He can get you comfortable with his smile and his voice. What’s not to like? Erich Gelsinger from Philadelphia, the man had told him.

Or Geltsinger, Oren has a problem remembering names. Gelsinger/Geltsinger is maybe five-six, five-seven. He’s a slim middle-aged man who wears expensive suits. Oren also likes the way the man dresses. Dapper Dan, that was probably how Oren’s father would have described him, God rest his soul. What Oren isn’t too sure about is the new man’s behavior. Who can figure people? Gelsinger/Geltsinger arrived two weeks ago and has spent most of his time around the power plant. Dapper Dan sits in a foldout beach chair three or four yards from the fence and reads a book, but always in a suit and tie.

Maybe he’s a terrorist, J.W. says.

In those clothes? Weaver says.

The Rabbi watched his wife as she slept. He was in the chrome and black leather chair beside the bed, holding her hand. The scent of boxwood and freshly mowed grass drifted through the open window. Yellow cotton drapes billowed and quivered from the warm breeze. Rooms at Chestnut Retreat were more like what you’d find in a hotel than a hospital, charcoal carpets, pastel bedcovers, mahogany furniture. The Rabbi expected to see a Godiva chocolate on the pillow.

He stared at the photograph of his son that laid beside his sleeping wife. What are you doing, Benjamin? the Rabbi thought. Are you really talking to her, getting comfort, scheming to defeat your enemies? Can we do that from the grave? Or. Or am I only listening to a little girl who fell and hit her head against a piano bench? Transmitter fluids and Neurons both shaken and stirred. A bruised temporal lobe. An undigested bit of beef, as Scrooge said to Marley.

Is that what you think? Clarice wanted to know this at the start of their marriage. She had said, You think you married a crazy woman? You think, Oh, my God, what am I doing with this escapee from an asylum? Or perhaps it’s something else. Perhaps I’m just another rabbinical task, the care and feeding of strays?

His wife had guided the Rabbi through synagogue politics by her dreams alone. She would wake him, two in the morning, three-thirty, whenever the seizure happened and the vision presented itself.

In one of her first visions, she had said: Be careful. Jesse Mandel, your treasurer on the board of directors? The short man with the mole? He thinks you’re having an affair with his wife.

Jesse Mandel is the master of chutzpah, the Rabbi said and muffled a yawn with the back of his hand. And what are you talking affairs? I don’t have affairs.

Make sure Mr. Mandel knows this, she said. If you don’t stop such talk now, the board will dismiss you from the temple.

Nothing spectacular; nothing to change the rotation of the earth or hail the coming of the messiah, her visions were quiet, unassuming things. A perceptive person who had never known a vision might have given him the same advice. But Clarice was right more often than wrong. The Rabbi looked at his wife lying in the bed. She reminded him of a sleeping child, her lips dry and parted. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall any of her visions that had been wrong. Not one, not ever. This was the moment the Rabbi decided to buy shells for the Beretta he kept inside a Cole-Haan shoebox in the hall closet.

Mama? he said.

Benjamin, is that you? Clarice said and opened her eyes. A slice of white moonlight cut the shadows from the window to the opposite wall of the hospital room. Her voice was groggy and close to inaudible. She said, I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I was always a mother. A wife, yes. But always a mother.

They hurt me, he said. She felt his breath on her ear. She inhaled the baby scent of him, that soap and talcum scent, what a mother remembers. Then he said, They tied my hands and ankles. They put a hood over my head and hung me up by my shoulders. They sprayed me with water and put wires to my feet. To my genitals, too. You can’t imagine the pain.

I don’t want to hear this, Clarice said. She pressed her hands to her ears and shut her eyes. His soft, steady breathing rose and fell with her own breath, her own rhythm. She felt a weary familiar grief swell her chest and force tears into her eyes. She didn’t know she had any more tears. Clarice said, What can I say that would bring you some peace? I don’t know what to do. I just want you at peace.

The truth of him escaped her constantly, whether his presence was real or she had wished him from the grave or, worst of all, if her experience was only a botched neuron, an off-kilter spark in her temporal lobe. Maybe Dr. Smallwood knew best. He had said, The right medication and you’ll wonder why you fretted over such things. And what had she told the doctor? You know how God works? That was what she had said and wanted to say more. She wanted to say, Why can’t God work His miracle by any means He sees fit? Who are you to decide God’s rules?

Won’t you guide me? Clarice said. She said it to whoever or whatever was in the hospital room with her.

Make daddy believe you, Benjamin said. I heard the men talking, the ones that had hurt me. They thought I was unconscious but I heard them. Then her son whispered what he had been whispering to her since she and the Rabbi read the letter from his commander. A man with dark skin and a crimson and black scarf would be traveling to Texas.

Oren is using his own binoculars, the 8X42 Nikon Monarch. He likes telling J.W. and Weaver how this baby can show you the fuzz on the belly of a fly. Oren has stripped to his sleeping attire, white boxers and a white sleeveless summer T-shirt. He’s standing at his bedroom window, which has an uninterrupted view of Texas Electric’s nuclear power plant. The plant was built on a hill outside of Spider. Sodium lights are turned on after sunset and illuminate the tall wire fence and the double concrete domes. Oren, J.W., and Weaver agree that the power plant is an imposing, ominous structure, particularly at night. They also agree there is enough plutonium in the plant to waste all of north Texas and a sizeable chuck of Oklahoma.

Why don’t you sit that cute butt right here? his wife says to him and pats the spot next to her on the bed. She is a big woman with gray-blond hair and a black Guns ‘N Roses T-shirt that reads "Appetite for Destruction."

In a sec, Oren says. He tells Roxy how his new Jewish friend likes to sit and read outside the power plant. His wife’s real name is Roxanne but she likes Roxy. Then Oren says, And here it is, ten at night. You figure he’d pack up and go home.

He’s still there? says Roxy.

I see his beach chair and his book, Oren says.

Someone is in the high weeds and brush by the cedar trees. He heard the sound before he saw the shadow, a man’s shadow. The Rabbi is crouched and hiding near a cluster of cedars himself, maybe twenty, twenty-five yards from whatever is in the brush.

Powerful sodium lights have been sweeping the periphery of the plant’s eight-foot tall chain-link fence since sunset, but the light brings only a white glare and darker shadows. A security guard patrols the fence every half hour. Tonight it’s Eddy Plichon’s turn. He’s a skinny thirty-two year old who says his goal is to grow a decent mustache. The Rabbi has told Eddy not to set his goals too high. The brush quivers. A man is hunched and running from the brush toward the shadows of the cedars. He wears a crimson and black scarf and carries a small satchel.

The Rabbi presses a hand to his pearl gray Cassini suit coat and feels the Berretta. A hard, quick pulse begins at the sides of his neck. He bought the pistol two years ago to protect his family. The Rabbi used up his one box of 9mm ammo the first month at an indoor range called The Firing Line on Front and Tasker and meant to buy another box but never got around to it. The only living thing he ever shot and killed was a brown rat that lived under the house. He spent the rest of the afternoon vomiting.

I’m not a good choice, the Rabbi said to his wife. This was on her last day at Chestnut Retreat. Clarice had just told him to go shoot the man with the crimson and black scarf.

You can’t expect me to call the police, she said, as if he were a child and couldn’t grasp the situation. The Rabbi was guiding her wheelchair down the slate walk to their Lincoln. Oak trees and pink crepe myrtles broke the morning sun into long yellow slivers. She said, What am I going to say? I have visions? Our dead son speaks to me? No, no. I’m not spending the rest of my life here. And those people aren’t going to die.

You have to do this, Erich.

The Rabbi didn’t tell his wife he had taken the pistol from the Cole-Haan shoebox last week and cleaned it and bought a new box of 9mm ammo. He wanted to keep this a secret. From her, from himself. I’ll just clean it and buy new shells, he thought. What’s the point of having a pistol if it’s empty and dirty?

A brilliant spotlight now drifts across the dusty pebbled ground, inches from where the Rabbi is hiding. He cups his hand above his brow and squints. The man with the crimson and black scarf is in the shadows of the cedars. Beside him is the satchel. It’s a small, dark case, barely visible but there, definitely there. The Rabbi unclips the Beretta from its holster. His hand is damp and he can feel a tremor in his fingertips. He questions himself, What do you believe? He is interrogator and the person being interrogated.

What do you believe?

I believe what Rabbis have always believed. In the glory of the human soul and an afterlife. In Jehovah and the miracles of Jehovah. And in the sanctity of faith. Faith tolerates the mystery. Faith waits for the miracle. What else is there?

There is the girl who fell and hit her head against her mother’s piano bench. There are transmitter fluids and Neurons both shaken and stirred. A bruised temporal lobe. An undigested bit of beef, as Scrooge said to Marley.

The man in the crimson and black scarf is moving through the shadows of the cedar trees toward the chain-link fence. The Rabbi tracks him with his Beretta.

Return to Cover | Issue | Guests
Index of Authors | Index of Titles | Archive of Issues
Submissions | Subscriptions | Staff