Ground Zero
God was after Grover Prue. He knew that sure as he knew his own name, though he couldn’t have explained why. He had tried to be a decent fellow always; loyal to his friends, respectful of his elders, pious and patriotic as the next lad. Or no, much more so than the next lad. He’d seen to that. Scrupulously: altar boy, Eagle Scout, Honor Society, he’d done it all. Yet the Big Guy was still out for his hide, and no mistake. Grover had never discussed this fact with anyone—not in so many words—but they all knew it too. His parents, his brother and sister, his classmates, and even the neighbors knew it. Because they’d witnessed, as he had, the Wrath in all its fury.
They’d been there, some of them, at the birthday party when Grover turned six and the oak came down. A mammoth of a thing it was: eighty feet high, old as the Colonies and solid as a mountain. Or so it had seemed. In reality, it was hollow as a gourd from generations of termites having their own party, and down it had come that day—square across the redwood table where they’d all been eating lunch. Grover’s sister Macie had just gotten up to play horseshoes, joined by cousin Clarence, brother Ralph and Grover’s buddies Philip, Seton, and Carl. Only the birthday boy remained on the bench, polishing off a second slice of cake and content as a clam. It missed him, that tree did, by about a yard, halving the table and rattling windows in the house next door. Its limbs had struck like Louisville Sluggers, annihilating plates and glasses but sparing the little towhead who popped up through the leaves, goggle-eyed and still chewing.
A couple of years went by, and the incident entered the realm of family legend, embellished with each retelling of this astonishing, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
Then the boiler blew. It was a steam explosion, the principal had explained. The principal of Toddville Elementary School, that is, who admitted to Grover’s parents that he was only repeating what the state inspector had told him. It seemed the automatic feed-water valve had stuck shut, but that the safety switch hadn’t cut off the fire like it was supposed to do when that happened. So the drum had gotten hotter and hotter until it was red-hot and glowing, like the filament in a toaster. Only this was a steel tank twelve feet long and heavy as an Eldorado. Then the valve popped open and let the water in—which flashed to steam so fast that it blew the thing apart like an overstuffed balloon.
A wall of the boys’ lavatory had been demolished, filling the air with deadly shrapnel. Fortunately, the room had been empty at the time save for a lone occupant: Grover Prue. The third-grader had been balancing a wooden bathroom pass on a finger and contemplating life from the perspective of the third stall when all heck broke loose. He was spared by a sturdy metal partition which had absorbed the impact of the flying debris but not, alas, the sound waves, which had left him deaf for nearly a week.
While inexpressibly grateful for their son’s good fortune, George and Edna Prue couldn’t help noting the peculiar coincidence of a second, ultra-close call. Sideward glances were exchanged when the events were linked in conversation. But they got over it, and Grover went back to his studies, George to his job at Q-Mart, and mother Edna to managing it all.
The following June, the family had made its annual jaunt to Happy Valley Amusement Park. It was small by modern standards—one of the nation’s oldest, in fact—and was home, therefore, to no parachute plunges, theme rides or geriatric, kibble-fed tigers like some of its competitors. What it offered instead was a wholesome, hand-tooled charm that had endeared it to generations.
On line for cotton candy, Grover spotted a teenage girl by the Fun House who seemed to be watching him. Too young to have the social wares to look away, he had simply stared back, and it was she who, with a smile and a nod, finally broke the connection. Only then did he realize how pretty she was, this fresh-faced, long-haired blonde, but when he turned around again with his treat, she was gone.
After lunch, Macie and Ralph made straight for the Dragon Coaster, while Mom and Dad escorted their little brother to his own favorite ride: Spinning Sammy Spider. Rushing ahead as he munched on a corn dog, Grover was approaching the lovable giant of a whirling red bug, his eyes wide with excitement, when it decided to come to him instead. With a horrific groan, a critical linkage let go, and one of Sammy’s legs—a twenty foot assembly with a two-seater car attached to one end—broke free and sailed through the air like the hammer of Thor. Mother Edna, was dumb struck; there was no time to reach him, to yank him from harm’s way, to do anything but give voice to the heart-wrenching cry that ripped from her lungs.
Grover didn’t hear it. The music of the calliope, the whoops and bells from the other rides, the buzz of the folks around him—all of it was gone now as he watched a slow motion, 3-D drama in rapt silence. The spider leg was coming for him. Not to the right and not to the left, but for him, Grover, star of his own disaster film. And he was rigid, ossified, as fixed to the spot as if he’d been planted there, watered and nurtured for a full nine years in preparation for this event. He watched as the thing grew huge, until he could plainly see the faces of two grownups, mouths locked in screaming O’s as they hurtled his way. Grover closed his eyes and sound returned: shrieks and shouts and then a blast of wind and a terrible, protracted crash—
His mother seized hold of him and spun him around to face her, and when he opened his eyes he was looking at the ticket booth over her shoulder. Or what was left of it. The roof had been shorn off completely, the supporting uprights probing space like an inverted stool. Beyond that, Sammy’s leg had punched through Humpty Dumpty’s papier-mâche wall, leaving an outline of itself before landing in a haymow at the Children’s Zoo. People picked their way through squawking chickens and bleating goats to reach the couple still in the car, looking as bewildered as if they’d landed on the moon. Grover’s mother clutched him to her breast. “Oh, honey, honey,” she sobbed. “I thought we’d lost you. I thought my baby was gone for sure.” She thrust him away for a better view.
“Why, it came so—” Her eyes rose to a scratch on her son’s forehead, a scratch that led to a perfect part in his hair that hadn’t been there before, coinciding, she would later find, with a six-inch bolt distending dagger-like from the belly of the two-seater car. “So close,” she finished, and George was there to catch her when she fell.
Life continued normally after that—if playing dodge ball with the Grim Reaper is what you consider normal. When he was twelve, for example, lightning struck the aluminum flagpole in front of Toddville Middle School. The freak discharge of a single scudding cloud, no one was anywhere near the thing at the time—except for Master Grover Prue, who’d been leaning against it, daydreaming. The pole itself survived intact, but Old Glory, vigorously awave beneath a brass finial, had burst into flame like it was doused with gasoline. As had Grover—or more accurately, his green flannel shirt—a nigh disaster averted by the quick-witted maintenance man, who had tackled the sprinting torch only seconds from immolation. Grover’s injuries were thus limited to the loss of a favorite garment, and the indignity of failing to outrun the janitor.
Nobody thought the boy was to blame. Anymore than they had when the Wawkatinny Creek Bridge collapsed a heartbeat after his bike had rolled over it; or a few months later when the only recorded twister in Bolton County had leveled the Captain Cone Ice-cream Hut as Grover departed with a black-and-white soft serve; or when the façade of the old Brewster Building had crumbled into Main Street, pulverizing a taxi stand and a VW Beetle, but leaving the teenager poised between them entirely unscathed.
Increasingly however, the townsfolk (and eventually even his friends and relatives) had begun to keep their distance. It seemed only logical that such a stretch of luck was bound to run out eventually, and that when it did, it would be the boy proper, rather than the surrounding acreage, who would get clobbered. Grover seemed to sense this also. Against the protest of his parents and the recommendation of his guidance counselor, he had taken, upon graduation from high school, a caretaker’s position in another town. The salary wasn’t much, but at least the bus wouldn’t empty out whenever he climbed aboard. And more significantly, it called for hours to be spent on the spacious lawn, or tending to one of the gardens, or mending fences in some far-flung corner of the estate, where dragging others along on his trip to the Pearly Gates might be avoided.
And so it was that Grover, a handsome young man of nineteen, who felt as if he had already lived far more years than the calendar would suggest, at last found a measure of peace in his life. Not the sort of peace that you or I would recognize—what with rabid skunks and copperheads slinking into your path, and the chainsaw kicking back to trim your sideburns with some regularity—but enough for Grover Prue. In the evening, when his chores were done, Grover would settle into his little cottage to enjoy a frozen dinner and an hour or two of television. He was especially fond of the history fare, where a show about the Titanic or the curse on Tut’s Tomb would strike a sympathetic chord. Later, after the screen went dark and he lay awake listening to the mockingbird flinging its rejection of circadian rhythms into a vast and lonely night, it would come again. That dreadful introspection, when he'd wonder for the umpteenth time if he had done something terrible to bring all this about. If so, he sure couldn’t put his finger on it.
And then, much as he tried to avoid the topic, to concentrate on the next day’s work, or King Tut, or anything else whatsoever, he would end up pondering how it would happen. He didn’t dread the idea as he once had, didn’t waste his time anymore on elaborate schemes of avoidance or escape. Death came to everyone eventually. For him, the scale was tilted a bit toward the sooner side, that’s all. He only hoped was that it wouldn’t be too painful, and he’d pray for that as sleep enfolded.
* * *
Grover dog-eared his paycheck as he stood in line at the bank. He was thinking about a movie he planned to watch that evening—an action-adventure yarn, full of the car chases, fist fights and shootouts that brought him so much joy. There was something about the sheer phoniness of the Hollywood mayhem that he found soothing, even if, for obvious reasons, he wouldn’t have touched a real gun with a pair of tongs. Like that one. Darned if that didn’t look just like the butt-end of a pistol in the crease of that guy’s shopping bag, the fidgety one with the salt-and-pepper beard…
“Alright! Everybody down on the floor! This is a stickup!” He waved the weapon ominously, then strode to the teller’s window and shoved his bag through the slot. “Fill it up,” he growled. “And be quick about it!” The startled woman opened her cash drawer, and began transferring sheaves of bills.
For Grover, sprawled on the tile with the rest of them, it seemed as if the entire universe were reduced to the glint of that revolver. He was so focused on it that he didn’t notice the person to his right—a ruddy-faced gentleman in a camel-hair blazer—was surreptitiously coiling himself into a crouch. When the teller unlatched her window to hand over the money, this man sprang to his feet—brandishing a sidearm of his own. “Police!” he announced, to a chorus of drawn breaths. “Drop the gun!”
Eyes on the bag in front of him, the robber froze for a moment—then spun around. He didn’t stand a chance. Already in position, the cop had only to squeeze his trigger. The resultant click was loud as a church bell in the absolute quiet: his gun had misfired. As he fought to eject the round he managed to jam the next one, panic replacing confidence in a sickening reversal.
His opponent, meanwhile, had screwed up his face in bleak anticipation, not even attempting to shoot back. Now his bravado returned with a vengeance. Seeming to enjoy himself, he made a show of taking aim.
Then Grover was up like and leaping in front of the officer. A shot rang out. Then another one, and again and again and again—each blast deafening in the marble-walled enclosure. To his left, a rack of brochures blew into pieces. To his right, a cardboard spokesman caught one and went down. Over his shoulder, a windowpane shattered and an instant later its neighbor followed suit. The policeman grunted with each report like a boxer taking a punch. Suddenly, there was silence. The thief glared down at his smoking weapon, and up again at an unharmed Grover. Seconds passed. Then he was dashing for the exit, all thought of loot abandoned.
He didn’t make it. The cop took him out with a flying tackle that carried the two of them over a divider, sailing across the manager’s desk and onto the kiddie table, which collapsed like a house of cards. On his back now and out cold, the crook had, by all appearances, nodded off while perusing The Cat In The Hat.
Grover picked his way through the patrons and exited onto the sidewalk. The ringing in his ears was reminiscent of another day, long past, except that this time he recognized the tune: it was the Song of Survival. Epiphany had come as he lay in contact with an ice-cold floor. There was no reason for it, no cause, simply an awareness that hadn’t been there before. It was a total rewriting of his entire life, anything and everything turned on its head.
God wasn’t after him at all. It was precisely the reverse: he was protected. By what or by whom he had no idea, but it was there alright—an invisible shield—and it was powerful. Powerful enough to guard him against every conceivable calamity. Which naturally begged the question of…why?
He peered across the avenue to find, arising from behind a parked car opposite, a family of three who had taken cover when the shooting began. Two of them were little girls (twins, he could tell that), long haired, cherubic blondes about eight years old. The third was their mother—a woman he had seen before. First at an amusement park all those years ago, and occasionally thereafter: among the crowd departing a theater, across the concourse at a busy mall, through the window of a train or bus. Sometimes he thought that she’d seen him too, and at others not so much, but he would always sense a connection between them, ethereal as sunshine but every bit as real. He felt that now as she returned his gaze, and in that instant—(poof!)—the final piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
“He’s alright!” he shouted, adding a thumbs-up for emphasis. She smiled back at him and returned the gesture, and he knew that she understood. They had been waiting for their daddy (and husband) in the bank—a ruddy-faced gentleman in a camel-hair blazer.
And it left him then, whatever it was, left him like a bird that had taken wing, and it felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He strolled to the end of the block in a jubilant daze and kept on going into rush-hour traffic, and everyone would agree later that he never felt a thing.
This story was originally printed in Willard & Maple magazine.
