The Normals by David Gilbert

Author:David Gilbert [Gilbert, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2008-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

22

WHEREVER BILLY goes, the TV follows, and wherever a TV flickers, another bit of Chuck Savitch is revealed. ABC, NBC, w CBS, FOX, PBS, UPN, WB, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FNC, PAX, E! have devoted reporters and precious airtime to the story. News programs fly through the night with all the wonderment of Santa's reindeer—come Dateline, come Nightline, come Primetime Live and another Dateline, come 48 Hours, come 20/20, come Extra and Inside Edition—delivering the story, gift-wrapped and bowed, into every home. A&E has rushed into schedule a week of biographies concerning saints, martyrs, and miracles. Tonight, St. Catherine. The 700 Club is on the scene, Pat Robertson and the white-haired black man whose name never sticks recommending their VHS tape on the Rapture ($19-95). All the angles are being covered. Pre-millennial anxiety is mentioned by a gaggle of pundits as a possible culprit, along with OJ and Monica and the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the lowering standards of American journalism which they rail against with rouged cheeks and pancaked complexions, like Shiites flagellating themselves on whips lashed with silk.

It's all the normal crap, Billy thinks.

Flip around and you see the same portrait in different colors.

Click.

Pilgrims gather around the home of Lily Savitch, mother of Chuck. Filmed from above, the crowd sit on the lawn and sing and pray under the hot Wisconsin sun, the shadow of the helicopter in buzzardlike relief. They're keeping vigil. They're witnessing. They're waiting for a glimpse or maybe an audience. "The Lord shows up so rarely in this day and age," says Frank Vernon from Chester, New York. "You seek Him where you can. Even if it's not Him, it's Him, if you know what I mean." Though they're from all over the country, they might have shopped in the same stores. They could be related, the atmosphere family-reunion friendly. Children buddy up. Picnics are shared. Every day new friends are delivered into the crowd's loving grasp.

Click.

"Every hotel, motel, bed-and-breakfast within a twenty-mile radius is booked solid with you folks and pilgrims," Tyrone Ophuls, mayor of Menomonee Falls, tells a reporter. He wears a wide tie on a wide stomach hanging below a wide smile. "All our restaurants are packed. Business is booming well above our normal October-in-August fest traffic. I hear Milwaukee's doing well too. On average ten tour buses are arriving every day and charter flights are coming in from all over the world. Yesterday, Hungary; today, Colombia. The Chamber of Commerce is estimating fifty million dollars will be pumped into our local economy, maybe more, depending on the, well, longevity of the event." The mayor seems widely pleased with his tact. "You know most small towns only get this kind of attention when, God forbid, something awful happens, a multiple homicide, a school shooting, something like that, so we feel fortunate for the positive circumstance behind this coverage. Menomonee Falls is a lovely community."

Click.

"Hey, have you heard the latest about Chuck Savitch?" a late-night host asks his bandleader. "No? Well it seems the guy picked his nose and"— grin—"spread the word of God under the kitchen table.

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