The man with the burned face finished his poem and sat down. One of the homeless rose from a plastic chair and hobbled toward the pond, barefoot. He was a hunchback and wore a flimsy woodland camo jacket and took slow, measured steps into the pond water until it reached his calves. He turned around, palms outstretched, and straightened his back. A long chin jutted from the man’s face, but it wasn’t until Jean-Jacques saw his eyes, cloudy and hypnotic pale, that he knew he’d found the man he’d come for.
A man in rags, Jean-Jacques thought. But of course.
Jonah Gray stood a scrap over six feet, a black watch cap folded over his forehead. Tufts of dark gray hair stuck out from the bottom of it. His face was shaved clean. He carried a body of loose angles, like a scarecrow, and moved with the affected presence of someone used to being watched. He began his sermon, turning his hands outward, toward the congregation. Thick, gnarled crosses were seared into both palms.
“Mayday, Mayday.
“Fellow believers. Fellow citizens. Welcome to rite. From the ashes, holy redemption.” He spoke like a metronome, each word, each syllable, a chant. The softest of lisps hung from his voice, measuring his diction more than it feminized it. The agents had warned about his charisma, Jean-Jacques remembered. I should just slap him out and be done with it.
He listened, instead.
“They call us revolutionaries. They call us fanatics. I posit: What is revolutionary about peace? What is fanatic about wanting the bounties of American life to come from honest work? To protect those in need rather than exploit them? What is crazy about wanting our homeland to fight fascist encroach, to stay true to the ideals it was founded upon?
“No, we are not revolutionaries. We are egalitarians. We are patriots. We don’t seek chaos. We seek reckoning.
“Everyone here is either warfighter or warfighter family. Everyone here knows what has been demanded of our caste, our tribe, for thirty years. We’ve lost friends, siblings, parents. To everyone here, words like Honor and Duty and Sacrifice are much more than hollow phrases. They have been ways of life. We did not expect reward, but we do deserve care. We deserve dignity, not humiliation. We deserve answers.
“Everyone here has arrived at this understanding: no more. As Americans, as children of God: no more. If we are to Honor the Warfighter, we must free the Warfighter. Yes—free the Warfighter! At home and abroad.
“ ‘Care for those who have borne the battle.’ America believed that, once. We’re making it believe again. Through resolve, through force. That is my charge to you today. Bring them to your days going forward, and Honor your Warfighter in the process. Through holy blood, holy redemption.”
Jean-Jacques snapped from the trance of church. Holy blood, holy redemption. Another man in rags had said that to him weeks before, the night of the riot at Xavier Station. He hadn’t looked anything like Jonah Gray. Had he? He couldn’t recall what that man looked like—just that he’d been decrepit. Dismissed in a single moment with a curt nod and brush-by.
He thought of something an old sheik in the Near East had said during a manhunt for a bomb maker. He couldn’t place which tour it’d been, or even which country, but the sheik’s words came back to him in the meadow.
“The best place to get lost isn’t somewhere. It’s everywhere.”
They never had found that fucking bomb maker. Gone and disappeared into the infinite shadows of the wars. Just one more name for the rolling list of targets across the Mediterranean. But now, Jean-Jacques thought, I’ve got this target right here. Jonah Gray may have been everywhere this whole time. But now? Now he was somewhere very specific.
Jean-Jacques tried to keep from grinning and began prepping his assault. A quick choke hold would be easy enough. Getting the man out of the park would be trickier. If he could get the keys to one of the all-terrain vehicles, though…
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword.” Jonah Gray had reached the apex of his sermon. Catholic, Protestant, vodou, Mayday, it was all the same. Jesus quotes came at the end. “Now, communion. Please bow your heads. Think of someone you love who’s departed this world for the next. Someone who gave themselves for someone else.”
Now, Jean-Jacques thought. Now’s the time to move. Everyone was looking toward the ground with eyes closed, including Jonah Gray. He wet his lips and took a slow breath, ready to go turbo and come upon the man with an open palm. He felt something biting at his chest. He reached under his hoodie and pulled out the teardrop pendant affixed to a dog-tag chain. It was glowing warm through the dawn.
Jean-Jacques was back on the sailboat, with his mother. A trace of a private smile across her mouth, her long, lean face up and defiant against the horizon. Just the two of them, together against the sky of the unknown. He’d been here before, with her, but not like this. Not exactly this alone. Not exactly this together.
“Mom?” he whispered.
Jean-Jacques’s mother turned on the boat, showing neither fear nor worry. She placed her hand on his. He felt life in it. Human touch, channeling from her hand to his.
The Chaplain’s voice came from above the sea, repeating in melody: Honor. Sacrifice. Love. Honor. Sacrifice. Love. Honor. Sacrifice. Love.
Honor. Sacrifice. Love.
Then, quick as Jean-Jacques had left, he was back. Back in the meadow, in the park, in the city. The morning smelled of wet dew. Midges hovered and buzzed through the air. He was still alive. His mother was still dead.
What in the… He couldn’t even finish the thought. He bit the inside of his mouth to feel, to ground himself through pain. What the hell had just happened? Jean-Jacques tried to focus on his bewilderment. If nothing else, that was real.
“Remember them,” Jonah Gray told the congregation. “They remember you. Holy blood. Holy redemption.”
* * *
He’d been transported somewhere else, Jean-Jacques was certain of it. He’d stood on the boat. He’d smelled fish. He’d felt ocean sun. He’d touched his mother.
But he hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t.
The ceremony ended. Jonah Gray moved through the crowd, kissing hands and cheeks. Then, suddenly, he halted, tilting his head. He spun on the balls of his feet and beelined for Emmanuel.
“My friend. You’re hurt.”
Emmanuel lifted his sleeves and showed the knife wounds he’d sustained the night before, during the Mayday hunt. They were dark red and crusting with yellow pus and Jean-Jacques thought at least one would need stiches. Still, he became angry at his cousin. The hunts were supposed to be kept from leadership. A real soldier would’ve known better.
“See Daven,” Jonah Gray said, pointing to the man with the burned face who’d read the poem. “He’ll tend your wounds.”
Emmanuel did as told. Jonah Gray shifted to Jean-Jacques, who looked up to meet the taller man’s gaze. Pale clouds peered down, seeming to both study and pity him. Jean-Jacques forced himself to not look away, despite wanting to, despite something in his mind begging to.
You’re the badass killer, he reminded himself. You’re the Volunteer.
“Good to see you again, Corporal.” It must’ve been him at Xavier Station, after all. “Come. We have much to learn from each another.”