Free The Mayan Resurrection by Steve Alten Page B

Madelina.
     
    Faced with another two years of incarceration, Virgil wholeheartedly accepted.
     
    A quick Sunday ceremony and the deed was done. As a wedding gift, Quenton gave the young couple use of a dilapidated stucco home the church owned, but could find no one to rent. Before anyone could say ‘early parole’ the newlyweds headed off to begin their lives together, blessed with all the hardships poverty and a lack of formal education could offer.
     
    For a short while things seemed fine. With Quenton’s help, Virgil landed an assistant manager’s position with one of the big sugar companies. By day, he supervised sugarcane workers, by night, he would return home from the fields to find comfort in his young bride’s loins. As for Madelina, with Quenton out of her life, the girl finally felt safe. Medication kept the ‘voices’ at bay, and she began saving money to purchase a nicer home. There was even talk of starting a family.
     
    And then Virgil’s drugging resurfaced.
     
    It started innocently enough—a few missed NA meetings here, a few hits of coke there. But drug addiction is a disease only abstinence can contain, and before Madelina realized what was happening, her husband had spent their savings on his all-night binges.
     
    Madelina was forced to dip into her medication money just to afford groceries. Depression set in, and with it, all of thegirl’s old fears. ‘Remember girl,’ Quenton always said, ‘the Devil will take your soul if you’re not strong …’
     
    To make matters worse, the college football season was upon them, the time of year that stoked Virgil’s anger to its fullest. Watching the University of Florida’s games on TV, his internal rage would build until he had to lash out at something … or somebody.
     
    Madelina told Quenton she had broken her arm while mending the roof. The punctured lung—that had come from a nasty fall on her bike. She told the intern at the clinic that she broke her nose slipping in the bathtub.
     
    The beatings subsided briefly in late January of 2013 when Virgil learned his wife was pregnant. The news seemed to calm the former football star. A son could be put to work in the fields. A son could be taught how to play football. Virgil Jr. would live the life denied his father—he would return glory to his old man by making it in the NFL. Twenty years from now, old Virgil Robinson would be able to retire in wealth, living off the fortunes of his prodigal son.
     
    Life in the Robinson home stabilized … for the moment.
     
    And then the world seemed to lose its equilibrium, and sobriety was not an option.
     
    Reverend Morehead enters the strip club, his senses immediately seized by the smell of alcohol and smoke and sex. It takes him several minutes to find his son-in-law, who is in a back room, receiving a lap dance.
     
    ‘Virgil! Get your heathen butt home, your son’s on the way!’
     
    ‘Aww shit, Quenton, give me two more minutes.’
     
    ‘Now boy!’
     
    ‘Sumbitch!’ Virgil climbs out from beneath the stripper, squeezes an exposed breast, whispers, ‘Call you later, baby,’ then follows Quenton into the parking lot.
     
Boca Raton, Florida 2:13 a.m.
     
    The parking lot is quiet, the National Guard having cleared the hospital and its grounds. Only authorized personnel are allowed entry, no one permitted on the third-floor maternity ward without President Chaney’s personal approval.
     
    Dominique sits up in bed, gazing through heavy lids at her new family. Edith beams like a proud grandmother as she coddles the dark-haired twin. Ennis Chaney sits back in an easy chair holding the fair-haired infant, the gruffness gone from the old man’s weathered face.
     
    Rabbi Steinberg sits on the edge of Dominique’s bed, taking everything in. ‘So? Have you decided on names? You know, it’s Jewish custom to use the first initial of a deceased loved one to honor the dead.’
     
    ‘I’m going to name the dark-haired twin