Desperation Reef

43

By noon, the Breath of Life Thanksgiving Feast has drawn a hundred people to Brock’s behemoth cinderblock church in Aguanga.

The day is sullen and gray, with an unusually configured storm expected to hit late in the afternoon: an Alaskan system coming down from the northwest, set to meet an atmospheric river of warm tropical moisture streaming over the California Coast from San Francisco to Mexico. NOAA says the merging fronts are ripe for a bomb cyclone, a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that can bring extraordinary amounts of rain in a very short time. The atmospheric river will be carrying five times the flow of the Mississippi. Snow above seven thousand feet. Tornados possible along the coast and inland valleys. Very unusual this early in the year. Yet another example of climate change from greenhouse gases, they say. Man-made calamity. The new normal.

Brock’s buddies at Surfline are tracking the storm, of course, telling him that it won’t hit Aguanga until late afternoon or evening, but it’s going to be “nuclear.” They’ve nicknamed it the Pineapple Bomb Express.

Brock has flooded his media and the church web page with Thanksgiving Feast invitations to anyone who is “hungry, ready for the breath of life, ready to help those who need help.” Roughly a thousand people claimed to be coming. But the enthused “we’ll be there” messages from California, Oregon, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada haven’t panned out.

He’s planned to feed five hundred souls, but more like a fifth of that are here. The storm, he thinks. But shit, if it rains we’ll just go inside.

Where the church stoves and rented kitchen ovens are turning out pots of stews and vegan casseroles of rice, broccoli, cauliflower, and corn; ham and bean soup; chili, both spicy and mild. Go Dogs — some wearing their operational black-and-Day-Glo green T-shirts — serve with long-handled spoons onto outstretched paper plates and bowls, many of them doubled up for quantity.

Outside in the gravel churchyard, Brock, Jen, Juana, and some of the Go Dogs have set up a hundred folding chairs around ten rented tables.

A shuffling crowd of thanksgivers serve themselves from the chafing dishes — carne asada, fried chicken, a tuna casserole, vegan kabobs, and five enormous roasted turkeys carved by Mahina.

There are food trucks semicircled in the churchyard — Teddy the Greek, Taco Motion, Wok On, Curry in a Hurry, Thai Guys — but the lines are short.

Since midmorning, Brock has been watching the vehicles coming into the big dirt parking lot just beyond the churchyard, their windshields and tires caked with dust. And the three-wheelers, travel trailers, and dirt bikes. Bicyclists. And a motorcycle club of old guys on growling Harleys.

Anza Valley locals on foot.

A small multitude of people in:

Jeans and sweatshirts, athletic shoes and work boots.

Cowboy hats and western wear.

Bright sports merch: MLB, NFL, NBA, FIFA.

Dickies and flannels.

A family in faux deerskin tops, moccasins, and feathered headbands.

A family dressed as pilgrims.

My motley congregation, thinks Brock.

From his surfboard pulpit — set up on a raised stage facing the churchyard audience and food trucks — Brock looks on with minor satisfaction. Maybe closer to two hundred people, but still, his best crowd ever. He and the Dogs can take the leftovers down to the San Diego homeless shelters. It’s taken a good hunk of money to finance all this — the Random Access Foundation declining to sponsor a Thanksgiving extravaganza — citing the tech downturn and early European mistreatment of indigenous New World peoples.

But that’s what money is for, he thinks: to feed the hungry, serve the poor.

From the pulpit he waves to Mahina, shooting video from a ladder in the churchyard, surrounded by the still growing crowd. Waves to Jen and Casey and Bette Wu, standing near the ladder. It’s the closest he’s seen his mother and Bette get. Mae, at Casey’s feet, of course. And both sets of grandparents: Pastor Mike and Marilyn Stonebreaker; Don and Eve Byrne.

Brock almost feels happiness. Feels it trying to shoulder its way past his native anger and his urgent need to act. His need to take off on a huge fast wave, to fight with his fists, to kick whatever ass needs kicking. To protect and serve, in his own heavy, dutiful, crusading, Brock Stonebreaker kind of way.

He feels something like peace right now. A foreign thing. Barely recognizes it. Surprises him.

Brock briefly welcomes and addresses his possibly two-hundred-plus guests. His PA system is good but many of the people only momentarily look up from their heaping plates, nod in Brock’s direction, then resume their conversations, raising plastic forks and spoons.

“Eat and be thankful!” he concludes. “And when you’re ready, go out and help the people of this world. They need you. Breath of life, baby — breathe it in and breathe it out!”

He windmills a chord of air guitar, looking out to his flock, who clap and cheer a little.

Which is when four whining black-and-yellow dune buggies — American flags flying — slide to sudden stops at the churchyard’s edge.

Dust rises and engines sputter out, and the Breath of Life compound goes quiet.

All eyes on big Kasper Aamon and his passenger, dismounting first. Followed by six others — one man and one woman per buggy.

Brock’s heart upshifts into a higher gear, his nerves bristling as he stares at the yellow-and-black bumblebees. He’s furious at himself for allowing this to happen again. Could have posted guards. But he didn’t expect Aamon to invade a Thanksgiving celebration. Brock feels that eager, pre-engagement hyperfocus he felt in Bakhmut, Ukraine.

Aamon ambles through the churchyard, leading his Right Fighters militia — all heavily armed, all in Right Fight trucker hats and black windbreakers with “RF” in tall yellow letters on the backs.

Aamon is strapped with what looks to Brock like a homemade flamethrower: two red canisters strapped to his back and hose-linked to a dual-handled gun holstered on his side. Kasper’s shaved face is still slightly swollen from Brock’s knockout hook.

Mae greets him, tail wagging; Aamon gives her a disgusted glance.

The food truck people scramble and close down fast. Curry in a Hurry is first to crunch out of the lot and onto the road.

Kasper and his troopers fan out and wend around the tables, toward Brock. Some with their phones up, shooting video.

Brock watches from his scaffold as they approach. Feels the crackle of violence in the air. Feels his control vanishing, and a terrible fate pressing down on them from the heavy gray sky above.

Many of the celebrants drift away from the parking lot, uncertain and probably afraid, some headed for the church, others for their trailers, hidden in the arroyo nearby. Some stay where they are, staring, defiant or maybe just confused — Brock can’t figure which. He’s got a pistol fixed to the back of the pulpit surfboard, one of several just-in-case guns he once hid in his pot grows. Pulls it free and kneels behind the surfboard, jamming the gun into the waistband of his cargo pants. Then rises, pulling his bongo-drum-and-hula-girl Hawaiian shirt over it.

Casey, Jen, and Juana hustle for the church. Brock’s grandparents and three Go Dogs follow. Mahina barrels through the crowd and joins Brock on the stage, where Kasper and the Right Fighters now stop twenty feet short.

“Why bring a flamethrower to a rain storm?” Brock asks.

“Those forecasts are never right. Man-made this. Man-made that. Man-made bullshit.”

“You’re not welcome here anymore, Kasper. Leave, or I’ll call the police.”

Kasper Aamon raises his big head, sniffs the air.

“Food smells good,” he says. His voice strains through his clenched jaws.

“I have to hand it to you, Kasper. You can take a punch.”

“I’ll attack first next time, and you’ll see how it feels to get cold-cocked. I saw you put the gun in your waistband, by the way.”

Brock nods, gets a thought. More than a thought: an idea that floats in on Aamon’s air of violence, mixing with the smells of the food trucks.

“Why exactly are you here?”

“Let’s just say we’re here to shoot video for the Riverside County Sheriffs. To help them close this slum down. We’ve done our due diligence with the clerk’s office. You got no permits for those ratty homemade septic tanks. You got no current registration for half of those trailers. You got no legal camping facilities, which means these tent people can’t be living here — county rules, check ’em. Your electrical isn’t to code, the well is old and illegal, the propane tanks are rusted and dangerous. You house filthy illegals here. You got women fornicating and giving birth in unsanitary conditions. Venereal disease. A crummy clinic and not even a nurse. You’re behind on the property tax. You got no handicapped access anywhere. You don’t even have any hydrants in case of fire. Very dangerous, Brother Brock — no fire prep.”

Brock nods, looking down from the scaffold, considering the flamethrower. “That’s bullshit. Nobody’s given birth here. We have a nurse in the clinic, full-time.”

“Abortionist?”

“No. So at least get your facts straight.”

“You’re housing third-world breeders, Brock. Fleas, lice, and a free ride in America.”

Four Go Dogs march from the church, squaring off with Aamon and his crew not twenty feet away. One carries a carbine pointed at the sky, the other an AR knock-off. Four more Dogs come in from the parking lot. They draw and kneel, guns pointed at the dirt.

Brock senses the violence to come as he watches most of the last of his Thanksgiving congregants hurry past the Right Fight dune buggies, down the dirt road toward the highway, parents carrying children, a woman in a wheelchair that skids and slides as the big man pushing it tries to get up some speed.

He knows he should have prevented this. Knows his belief that Kasper Aamon would stop short of an armed invasion was wishful thinking. Born of some ancient idea that men could change, better themselves, pass on the breath of life instead of the breath of death. Born of holy men like Jesus and Pastor Mike.

Not surprisingly to Brock, he feels fully energized by his long odds here. By the notion that he can nudge Kasper and his Right Fighters off course.

Surprise and redirect them.

Show them they can change.

Even if just a little.

“Kasper, you hungry?”

Mahina gives Brock a disappointed scowl, then climbs down the stage stairs and stalks toward the church.

Brock hops offstage, sticks the landing. Hears his canvas slip-ons hit the gravel, then the metallic clicks and clacks of safeties going off and rounds being chambered. His scalp tingles and he notes the exact location of his gun, and he feels that cool surge of adrenaline that he gets taking off on a big wave, a surge that washes his vision clear and makes him feel strong enough to fly.

Aamon stares at him silently. Looks like he’s expecting Brock to leap ten feet and punch him again. He turns to his fighters on either side. Some nod, others shake their heads.

“Gentlemen,” says Brock. “Please be seated. I’ll be right back.”

He hustles into the chapel and the door clunks shut.

Two minutes later he’s back, with a heaping plate of food in each hand. He offers a plate to Kasper, who looks at him, then to his fighters, knowing he’ll have to take one hand off the flamethrower to accept it.

Which he does. Standing there with a flamethrower in one hand and a plate of turkey in the other, Kasper looks like a grizzly confounded by a bear-proof dumpster. He’s just not sure what to do. So he cautiously sets the plate on the nearest table and takes a full grip on the flamethrower handle again.

Mahina comes from the church, big plates of food on one arm, and her pistol-grip shotgun slung over one shoulder. Gives Brock a look that assures him she’s doing this for him, against her better judgment. Thus the shotgun. In her loose hibiscus-print muumuu she looks to Brock — not for the first time — like some island goddess of war.

She’s a genius, Brock thinks. A scary genius.

Next Casey comes from the chapel with two big doubled-up paper plates of chow in each hand, and two more balanced on one forearm, his years of serving food in the Barrel coming in handy here.

Holds out an offering to one of the Right Fighters, a stout woman in a Right Fight trucker’s hat and a blond ponytail coming through the back.

She rests her carbine over one shoulder, then Casey places a platter in her right hand.

“Have a seat,” says Casey.

“I’ll stand.”

“Cool, totally.”

Casey gets two refusals, then one more taker who holsters his pistol to take a plate.

Bette gets one taker, offers her second plate to another Right Fighter.

“Who’s the China girl?” Aamon asks Brock.

“A friend of my brother’s,” he says, noting the calm resentment on Bette’s face.

“Hmpf. Covid and communism.”

Casey looks Aamon’s way as he passes off another Thanksgiving plate. This time to a heavyset man with short red curls sprouting from under his trucker’s hat.

“Much obliged,” he says.

“Aloha.”

Jen and Juana come out next, each with one hand on a rope-handled plastic tub of sports drinks and sodas. Heft it onto a table with a rattle of ice cubes.

The Stonebreakers carry water.

The Byrnes bring beer.

Aamon tries to sit but the backpack flamethrower won’t let him. He straightens and shrugs off the backpack, carries it and the gun to the wall of the church, and props them under the awning.

Hefting himself into his wobbly folding chair, he gives Brock a look.

“I’ve broken bread with demons before,” he says. “Helps me measure what I’m up against.”

He glances at his plate, then looks again at Brock. “Just now getting to where I can chew regular.”