The Diva Wore Diamonds by Mark Schweizer Read Free Book Online

raindrops. No. Not rain. Hail. The wind picked up, and a few umbrellas went inside out with a whoosh. About half of Brother Hog’s congregation made for shelter.
    “ We ask that you, in your might, and by your power, stop this unholy act of irreverence by whatever means that you see fit. We ask that you allow your sovereign people to observe your Holy Day without the influence or temptation of alcohol and that this establishment,—” he stabbed a finger at the Bear and Brew— “be fated as Sodom and Gomorrah was fated in days of old.”
    “ That’s a little harsh,” yelled Russ, struggling to be heard above the wind. “The Bear and Brew is hardly Sodom and Gomorrah.”
    “ He’s just getting wound up,” I hollered back. “It’s the revivalist in him.”
    Another clap of thunder, nearer still, got the remaining faithful looking around worryingly.
    Brother Hog continued, now shouting above the storm that seemed about to break all around us.
    “ Grant our boon, O God, and in your power, show Your will, Your Holy and Righteous will, to the inhabitants of St. Germaine, that they might know and fear the LORD!”
    It was at that moment that the lightning struck, a sheer bolt of blinding light that illuminated the clouds and hit so near us that the explosion of sound was simultaneous, and we could feel the electricity snap in the air. Half a beat later, there was an explosion, then another, and the whole roof of the Bear and Brew burst into flames.

    •••

    We learned later that the lightning strike, in that mysterious way that lightning sometimes travels, had managed to negotiate a path from a roof vent to the storage room behind the kitchen and ignite the five-hundred gallon natural gas tank that fueled the pizza ovens. We didn’t have any municipal gas service in St. Germaine, and everyone that used gas, either for heat or for cooking, had their natural gas delivered and pumped into their storage tanks at regular intervals. Some of these tanks were buried in the backyard, marked by a silver metal dome that jutted six inches above the soil, but most sat on blocks behind people’s houses. A few businesses, like the Bear and Brew, had the tanks inside.
    The volunteer fire department was on the scene fifteen minutes after the fire started, but they were ineffective at best. The building was a total loss; the back half of the roof had fallen in moments after the trucks had driven up. Besides, the firefighters couldn’t possibly have poured more water on the fire than the storm itself was providing. It was as though God blew up the building, then decided to put out the fire, just to show that He could.
    Meg, Russ Stafford, Cynthia, and I had backed into the Appalachian Music Shoppe, a smallish store just across from the Bear and Brew, to get out of the weather. Ian Burch, the proprietor, a musicologist trying to eke out a living selling replicas of medieval and Renaissance instruments, had been in the back when the explosion happened, but came running to the front window as the sound of the blast rattled some of his shawms and recorders off their shelves.
    Brother Hog and the protesters disappeared a matter of moments after the supernatural event. The ones who had come to the prayer meeting by church van piled back in quicker than you could say “Mene, mene, tickle the parson,” and the vans were long gone by the time the fire trucks pulled up. The folks who had their own cars walked quickly away in the manner of children who realize that something they’ve been involved in has suddenly gone very wrong. It was like when you were a kid, and you and your friends would dare some other kid to throw a firecracker at Old Lady Porter’s cat, and when he did, the “pop” made Mr. Whiskers dash into the road where a moving van flattened him, and everyone walked away, stiff-legged, as fast as they could in different directions, hands in pockets, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Most of these folks went to