Stealing Flowers (23 page)

“I’d prefer a cold brew,” I said and caught
his eyes.

“We don’t use alcohol or drugs,” they all
chanted in unison. “We trust the natural high in the Lord.”

It sounded like a song and I almost laughed
aloud, and I noticed Andy curled his eyes. “What’s that supposed to
mean?” I asked.

“All you need is love,” the taller blonde
answered.

I looked in Sally’s direction, but she
ignored me. She was focused on a tall pale handsome man with a
beard. I felt my cheeks flush in jealousy. “You’ve got to be
kidding,” I added.

“Oh no,” the pretty blond-haired girls
answered together with giggles. “You should come up to Ashbury Farm
for the day, then you would see. There’s only the love of God in
our home.”

“Good grief,” I said to myself. The pale
thin young man with the purple birthmark led Sally to the bus
entrance. He’d a smile which I must admit radiated happiness and
his eyes glowed almost in an ethereal, yet serious manner. His
paleness added to this effect, and he appeared to me as if he would
be reserved, but already he talked intently to Sally and waved his
hands in animated gestures.

He was out of earshot, but it seemed he
coaxed Sally near the entrance to the bus. Moreover, the bearded
striking-looking one was out of my sights and I was growing
anxious. The taller girl, leaned forward. She stood at the same
height as me, six feet high or so, a little less, and her eyes
gleamed an almost sparkling deep blue.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked. I looked
her slender figure over. Her pointed breasts were nearly touching
my body and she was inviting in a chaste sort of way, but she was
definitely braless. “Do you know Christ died on the cross for our
sins?” I shrugged. “Do you have Christ in your heart?” I shrugged
again. “It’d be a good bet for you,” she whispered, almost
snuggling into me now so that my loins stirred and my breath
quickened. “Our family will show you the way. Please come and visit
with us. Imagine a simple life in God. No more work or school or
church, just living in Christ with a life as one with the Family of
Truth.”

I put my hand quickly up under her t-shirt
to her breasts, squeezing her nipples. She stumbled back caught
totally off-guard. “What do you do up on that farm,” I asked,
laughing at her.

Andy had been watching me and also laughed,
following suit with the other blonde, who had a voluptuous body, a
Marilyn Monroe-type. She didn’t react, just let him feel her,
staring at him with contempt or condescendingly. She gathered her
long blond hair and put it gently behind her as though to thrust
out her chest. I could see her nipples as well through her
t-shirt.

“My family name is Divine Love,” the taller
one said undefeated by our laughter, “and this is Love Israel.”
They reached over and kissed us on the cheek, this stopped me from
laughing at their names and I tried to cop another feel, but this
time she was too fast and pulled away. “Please, come with us,” she
said softly, seductively, “only a life in serving God can lift up
your spirit. Your parents are of Satan and your education has cast
you down. Since we came into the Family, everything has changed for
us. We’re happy.”

I saw that Sally had gone onto the bus, and
cursed to myself, but the two girls sort of blocked our path.
“Excuse me,” I said softer than I meant to, “just let me talk to my
sister a second.”

Love Israel, the Marilyn Monroe-type one who
had let Andy cop a feel, grabbed my arm and looked straight into my
eyes without blinking. “Please, come with us,” she begged as though
starving and seized my hand as though I could seal her fate. “Don’t
you realize that Christ died for you?” she said with true
affection. “Don’t you want to serve the Lord? We will show you how
to serve the Lord 100 percent,” she said, “and you will feel the
need for nothing else but the Lord. You’ll be very happy . . .
satisfied.”

I think that’s when it struck me that she
had dilated pupils, and the others as well. Although I felt genuine
pity for the two girls, I nudged them aside and Andy and I stepped
aggressively onto the bus. I wondered if these were a version of
the toked-out Rastafarians that Una always warned us against. But I
knew the Rastafarians didn’t preach Jesus. “Let me talk to my
sister,” I said to the young bearded man with the purple birthmark
above his right eyebrow as he approached.

“They’ve come to the bus,” the two
blond-hair beauties sang together victoriously just behind us.

Inside, some of the seats had been removed
to allow a small table which had been bolted to the floorboards.
Donuts, sandwiches and soft drinks in ten ounce bottles sat on it.
Although clean, the stuffy bus gave me a feeling of poverty,
reminding me of the orphanages. A number of young people in the
seats read brochures and talked about God. Sally appeared to be
reading one of their pamphlets with the tall striking-looking young
man also with a beard. Again my jealousy rose in a fury. The pale
young man with a purple birthmark and thick beard tried to block my
way and I brushed him aside. I could see now he had rather strange
facial expression like the two blond girls. He weighed no more than
one hundred and twenty-five pounds and I guessed I could easily
take him down if I had to, even though he stood taller than me . .
. his baggy t-shirt and pants prevented him from looking thinner
than he was.

“Sally,” I whispered furiously, Andy was
directly behind me. “What are you doing?”

The tall striking-looking young man with a
beard, rose, leaned slightly forward toward me, as though he were
drunk, or as though he was going to kiss me, and smiled warmly.

“Praise Jesus,” he whispered in my ear, also
in a fashion that was like the two girls, “Did you know that the
Bible is the source of all truth? Jesus said: ‘If anyone comes to
me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and
children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple.’ Praise the Lord.”

“Praise be,” Divine Love and Love Israel
chanted softly from behind us.

I at once grew impatient, but the guy
offered me his hand, which out of politeness I took, then he pulled
me in and kissed me lightly on the mouth.

“I’m Solemn Necessity,” he said, then
pointed to the pale young man with a purple birthmark and thick
beard, “this is Silent Peace.” He stared openly without blinking
and for a moment I was hypnotized. “Let me tell you a parable from
Christ. ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering
the seed, some fell along the path, it was trampled on, and the
birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up,
the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell
among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still,
other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a
hundred times more than what was sown.’ That’s the allegory of the
four soils in Matthew 13 and Luke 8. Do you know what it
means?”

He was older than Silent Peace by about five
years. Like the rest, he smiled hypnotically, but his pallor made
him seem almost ghostly. His slender hands, which he waved while he
talked, seemed to be contradicted by his blue eyes and beard, yet
in my estimation, he was only twenty-five years old. With his open
haunted look, his face had a memorable quality.

“You quote the bible well,” Andy
interjected, “we really appreciate that, but we have to go
now.”

This statement woke me up, and I realized
something was happening to me. “I’ve memorized many biblical
verses,” Solemn Necessity said. “The parable means, if people don’t
hear the word of Christ, how can they be saved? You must find
Christ by showing Him to others.”

“Excuse me,” I said and stepped closer to
Sally. I could see at once that she appeared rather bewildered and
wasn’t herself. “Let’s go,” I said forcefully, pinching her arm
hard and receiving an angry look from her.

“Go home, Christian,” Sally said and looked
at me with defiance, “I’ll see you later.” I knew something was
wrong. She looked straight through me. “I’m staying. I want to
visit Ashbury Farms. It sounds cool.”

Her coldness struck me mercilessly. I
noticed that other young people stared at me, but not without
sympathy. I counted everybody on the bus, twenty-two. I looked at
the faces and could clearly see the difference between the Jesus
people and the newcomers, but I couldn’t have articulated what it
was at the time. I studied Solemn Necessity. He was a pale man.
Like Silent Peace, his angular bearded appearance bordered on
aesthetic, but he wore his hair shorter, and his t-shirt, rather
than being white, was tie-dyed in pink and purple shades as though
to separate him from the others. He stood at five-feet ten-inches,
not as skinny as Silent Peace, weighing one hundred and fifty
pounds or so, but I thought I could take them both; even together
if I had to.

“It’s not necessary to go,” he said in a low
friendly voice to me, “your sister has decided to come to our home
this evening, just to see the Family for herself and to hear the
word of the Lord. You should come and look after her, don’t you
think?”

I could feel my cheeks flush. “Come with
us,” Sally said in a pleading voice, changing her tact. I looked at
Andy, indicating that we’d had to have a go to get out of the
bus.

“Didn’t I tell you,” his eyes seemed to say.
I caught Sally’s attention. “What about Mom and Dad?” I said.
“They’ll kill you.”

“They aren’t home tonight. I’ll be back in
time tomorrow.”

“Senator Al Stevens’ son, Bobby,” Solemn
Necessity said, “Known now as Pilot Love, is the head administrator
for the Family at Ashbury Farms.”

“Washington State’s Senator Stevens?” I
asked in open disbelief. I knew Stan had met him a few times. He
nodded. This had an enormous impact on me and made the situation
more dangerous in my mind.

Divine Love and Love Israel began touching
Andy and I again, and quoting scripture: “‘Think not that I come to
send peace on Earth,” she whispered, “I come not to send peace but
a sword. For I have come to set a man at variance against his
father and the daughter against her mother and a man’s foes will be
those of his own households. He that love the father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me.’ Matthew 10: 34-37.”

I sucker punched Solemn Necessity and Andy
flew at Silent Peace, but to our endless surprise, this caused
Divine Love and Love Israel, and others of the bus people to fly at
us as though we had ripped their babies from them. They bit us,
punched us, and kicked us, and to my everlasting dismay, Sally
didn’t raise a finger to fight them, perhaps in her heart, for all
I know, cheered them on.

When we were thrown out of the bus, we were
hurting, bleeding, and humiliated. When I rose and tried to again
get into the bus, it sped off on to Western, and was soon out of
sight.

“What are we going to do?” I asked
panicky.

“Phone the police.”

That didn’t seem the right thing to do, and
I realized, I’d have to phone Stan in Japan; yet another screw-up
from his son in regards to his only natural daughter. I swore over
and over as we walked along the boulevard; then suddenly I hailed a
cab. “We better not make this any worse by delaying,” I said to
Andy.

“This would be a good time to have one of
those new portable phones.”

When we arrived at the mansion I called out
for Una and realized only then that of course she was in Jamaica,
remembering The First Law of Life for the unlucky.

“Phone her anyway,” Andy said. I did. She
told me to phone Isaac, who in turn, connected me with Mary in
Germany. After I had finished telling Mary the story, I could tell
she’d grown furious. “Phone the police,” she ordered, “and then you
go right up to that place and get our Sally out!” She hung up.

“You best go phone your Dad,” I said to
Andy, “and see if he can help us.”

“He’s in Maryland, but I’ll try.”

Stan phoned a minute later. After I
recounted the events once again, this time I think exaggerating the
beating we took and the persistency of our bravery to get Sally off
the bus, he rescinded Mary’s order. “Phone the police and make an
initial report,” he said in his calm assured voice. “Don’t do
anything else until we arrive; we’re both on the way!”

Talking to the police would have been a
difficult task for me, since instinctually my view of them was as
an enemy, but this job was made easier by the fact Isaac came over
to the mansion and arbitrated it; we were unfortunate enough to get
the two most incredulous cops on the New Jersey police force. They
knew who the bus people were, The Family of Truth, a Jesus Cult as
they said, and refused to believe that either we were beat upon or
that Sally was in anyway abducted.

The next morning when I awoke, Mary was home
and I served a breakfast of toast, fresh fruit and yogurt. Mary
said little and was obviously, anxiously, awaiting Stan’s arrival.
I apologized again to her, but this time her response was not
emotional. She had reconsidered her first reaction. “You did what
any brother would do for his sister,” she said. “You put yourself
in harm’s way and we’re proud of you.”

We finished our meal in silence. Before Stan
had made his arrival, to my utter surprise, Peter Burgess showed up
and asked me to recount my story, having a coffee with us. He knew,
already, a great deal of the bus people. “They use to call
themselves The Children of Moses,” he said, but for legal reasons
have changed their name to The Family of Truth. What you heard is
correct; they are a Jesus Cult, and their methods leave a lot to be
desired. Ashbury Farms is a compound of sorts. I cased the place
yesterday. It’s very secure.”

At that moment, Stan arrived. I expected him
to be tired, but he’d slept well on the thirteen hour flight and
was rather free of any jet lag. He hugged and thanked me for
putting Sally first when the incident occurred. We were in the
foyer, and Peter piped up.