Commies or Jesus
I awoke to
the sound of a car horn. It wasn’t beeping repetitively; it was droning
continuously.
The door to
my room in the back of our ranch house was closed. I climbed out of bed and
peered out into the hallway. While it must have been very late, or very early,
there was light enough to see. I crept toward the front of the house. As I
passed the second door on my right, it opened and Cindy, wearing a t shirt and
shorts, poked out her head. Cindy was Mom’s youngest sister, just two years
older than me. She was spending the summer with us. Cindy was 15, in high
school, and I was in Junior high.
“What’s
going on?” Cindy whispered.
“I don’t
know,” I whispered back. The horn blared continually as I answered her. We
walked cautiously toward the front of the house, pausing when rounding the
hallway corner, putting our ears to my parents’ bedroom door as we passed.
Nothing. “I don’t think they’re awake.” Cindy and I were alert. How could they
sleep to the noise?
Barefoot we
stepped off the carpet onto the cooler tile of the foyer. I always said foyer
with the “r,” while Cindy said it with the “r” silent and a cheer at the end.
She’s a little Miss Priss. Straight ahead, across the foyer was the family room
and then the kitchen beyond.
There was a
glow coming from the front of the house, the living room, which was off the
foyer next to the front door. Cindy looked at me frightened.
“What’s
that glow?” she asked.
For the
second time, I responded, “I don’t know.”
Dozens of
possibilities went through my head. I never missed a single episode of Night Gallery. It had just finished its
three-year run falling a couple years short of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. I did not share all
the possibilities with Cindy. It could be an alien invasion. It could be the
communists invading America. While President Nixon was tough on the commie
bastards according to Grandpa Annis, I wasn’t so sure. I was kind of with
Gramps, who was Cindy’s father, and a union electrician, Gramps didn’t think
much of President Nixon.
It could
have been a crash. A military plane had crashed only blocks from where we lived
in Jacksonville when Dad was stationed at Mayport a few years before. The crash
had brought out cops, MP’s and helicopters. Was it a plane crash?
Perhaps it
was the rapture. I had just heard Jack Van Impe at the Scope in Norfolk
preaching about Jesus’ coming back and the chaos it would cause when Christians
vanished. But dang, weren’t we saved? Shouldn’t Cindy and I have been raptured?
That’s when I realized we hadn’t seen Mom and Dad, just me and Cindy. “Oh my
God,” I blurted out, “we’ve been left behind?” Cindy looked at me wide eyed.
For a moment,
we stood in the living room looking at each other. Two queen Anne chairs framed
the heavy cream drapes that covered the large bay living room window. The room
was lit up by an eerie orange glow filling the room through the drapes. I
reached to pull them back.
“Don’t!”
Cindy shouted.
I looked at
her, “Why not?”
“Just
don’t,” she choked back.
Since she
supplied no reason and not knowing whether it was Commies or Jesus, I pulled
back the curtain and . . .
At the
moment I pulled the drape, the doorbell rang and there were bangs on the door
and the bay window. We both jumped and I dropped the curtain, not seeing what
was behind it.
Cindy cried
out, her words lost in confusion. “Get the door,” I told her.
She looked
at me, “No,” she whined.
“Get the
door,” I commanded and she moved hesitantly toward the door as I reached for
the drapes. She opened the door as I pulled back the drapery.
The man in
the doorway announced exactly what I saw, “Get out your car is on fire!”
Our new
Chevrolet Caprice, sitting in front of the garage on the driveway, was engulfed
in flames. From nowhere, Mom and Dad
came running into the living room and hurried us out of the house.
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