His instinct told him: Don’t reply to Pan. And then: Look up. Lorne stood in the shade of a ginkgo tree alone. He took his phone from his pocket, stared at the screen, grimaced. Or was it a grin? Max’s instinct told him: Pan’s texting him, too. A crowd descended on Lorne, surrounded him with smiles and sagging paper plates. He put his phone away and shook the hands held out to him. A swing creaked in the wind—a plank of sanded-down wood that’d been hung from two old ropes tied to a high branch. There was something unsettling about the way it moved back and forth, wildly, with no one on it. A cloud traveled across the blue. It was skinny and long and hopelessly white.
There was a good turnout of faces. The faces smiled over red-checkered tablecloths where food gleamed in plastic bowls. Davis orbited among them. The faces smiled as they smeared spoonful after spoonful of pimento cheese onto butter crackers and spread mayo over thick-cut tomatoes. Max had learned to dress exactly right for occasions like this. He chose a bright yellow button-up. Yellow as in happy. Happy as in what he hoped to be. He rolled up the sleeves so that his forearms showed. He wore shorts that cut off midthigh. He blended into the pastel.
Max overheard two men talking beside him on the porch. One was lanky with a face that made Max think of cobwebs. The other was hulking with jowls that dropped.
Listen now. It’s clear as twenty-twenty the Judge has that Midas touch, the lanky man said.
That’s the touch of God, the other man said. There’s nothing Midas about it.
Yes. The touch of God.
The longer Max watched the lanky man, the more he began to look like his own father. The protruding brow. The pointed nose. The long front teeth. What else?—there was a kind of spiritual symmetry.
The men talked about how the Judge had traveled up and down the state, made speeches, attended fund-raisers exactly like the one that afternoon. The Judge read to ladies at the retirement center, took boys on fishing trips and visited the cemeteries of steel mills, and prayed with the workers who had black lung. He’d been traveling to churches and Bible studies and NRA meetings because he cared about community. He wanted to know the people he would represent, so he could help them. You can’t help who you don’t know. Simple as that.
The Judge, the thick man said, is the new face of Alabama.
We need God-fearing individuals in office if we want to save this state. It’s not right, the secularization that’s sweeping through the South, through America. It’s downright terrifying.
The other man nodded, It’s a sign of the times.
The man acknowledged the Judge had formidable trouble on the horizon. A young liberal had been riling up a crowd of professors and intellectuals and leftists on the college campus. The liberal wanted women to marry each other, advocated for access to abortion, and claimed there should be a state tax on carbon emissions. The liberal had started a petition to outlaw bump stocks, a small device that transformed semiautomatic weapons into automatic ones.
Owning a gun does not make one a psychopathic killer, said the thick man. If one is a psychopathic killer they will kill, gun or no gun. A psychopathic killer will eat a man’s face off with a fork and knife. He doesn’t need a gun. So, my point is—why take away my gun, a gun that protects me and you and all us here, just so people who don’t know better can feel better, in theory, about being safe and protected? I’ll tell you one thing. Everyone I’m around is safer because of the gun in my holster.
The man patted his side, and Max noticed, for the first time, a handgun attached to his belt. His arms prickled. He told himself: Feel safe.
Over my cold dead body will a spine-shucked immoral step into the governor’s seat in Alabama, said the one who reminded Max of his father. Know what Sara Beth told me?
Sara Beth told him her history teacher at the university was a man who had assigned the class an article that advocated for the removal of Confederate monuments across the South.
And wouldn’t you believe that she claimed to agree with him? said the lanky man.
Am I surprised? The thick man said, pantomiming shock, bringing his hands to his cheeks. Listen. Schools aren’t even for teaching facts. They’re fantasy-making machines. You go in to get your brain good and washed. You put perfectly open kids in one way. They come out tumbled and confused. It’s moving so far away from the way God wanted things. People are so far away from God. I’m tired of people explaining to us how to live, and I’ve had enough. If God wants the planet to heat up and burn, there’s nothing recycling a plastic bottle is going to do about it.
I like this idea about everyone registering with a church, said the other man. Even if you don’t go to the church, you got to get yourself registered. Church brings people community. I don’t know what Duris would do without her church group, and many people do not know the resources a church would give them. I’m talking even outside the love of Jesus Christ. I’m talking free meals when you’re hungry. Someone to play cards with when you’re lonely. No judgment either. Just come however you want to be.
You are speaking to the converted right now. Could not agree more. The way to heal is through relationship.
The Judge was inside, but his body was visible through the sliding glass door. He was making his way to the porch. Max watched him work the room. He gripped a woman’s shoulder in a way that seemed to convey a spiritual message. Max could not hear the laughter, but it brought joy to his own mouth. The Judge was everything Max wanted to be: confident, speaker of the right words, comfortable in the body that was his.
Lorne walked across the grass, passed Max and the men on the porch, and met his father at the door. The Judge’s presence struck the small area around him with a kinetic charge. He was so close now, Max could reach out to touch his arm.
Bless the day. It is good to lay my eyes on you, the Judge said to a woman near Max.
The Judge’s voice sounded like a hero from an American movie. It was sweet yet somehow tough as a boot. Nearly everyone in Alabama sounded like that. Max sometimes felt like he’d walked onto the set of a Hollywood Western, but he had not. This was real life. People dropped their r’s when they spoke and let the vowels linger on their tongues. Max practiced speaking in this way, but he couldn’t manage. Not yet.
The Judge’s laugh was a breeze that spread his warmth around him. He wore a ring, a ruby stone, on his pinkie. No rot stained his teeth like Max had seen on people in this town. No sign that he drank too much soda. His hands were gentle and giant and strong. His black felt cowboy hat sat like a crown on his head. A large golden belt buckle showed a scene of a cowboy kneeling before a cross; a horse stood by the cowboy’s side as if he had to journey from far away on horseback just to get there.
The Judge took Max’s hand and held it.
You are a mighty fine runner, son, the Judge said. I’ve seen you practicing out there with my Lorne.
Max flushed at the compliment. It was so direct. He didn’t know how else to handle it except to stand straighter, as if by perfecting his posture he could rise to meet the Judge’s praise.
I am so not good at the catching, said Max. Only my running is good. But it’s so, how to say it, hot.
Sure, said the Judge. You are adjusting to a new place. That takes time. He kept Max’s hand between his own muscular ones. He stroked the back of Max’s fingers, almost like he could heal them. Max looked at his hand captured in the Judge’s embrace. The touch sent a tingle down the back of his head and relaxed him.