The Trinity Game

clothes, brushed his teeth, and made a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. He wrapped the sandwiches in tinfoil and put them in his lunchbox, along with couple cans of Dr Pepper and a fresh pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco.
    He grabbed his hardhat and headed to the refinery.

    Andrew punched in early and went to the refinery’s cafeteria for a coffee before his shift. He took his paper cup to a long table, where the foreman was just winding up a story that had the guys in stitches.
    “…so if I fall asleep on the job today, y’all can blame my mama,” said the foreman.
    “Coming in late, that sounds really bad,” said Andrew.
    The foreman laughed. “Get your mind outta the gutter, Andy. I was just telling the boys ’bout my late night telephone adventures. First, Mama calls in a tizzy, sayin’ there’s some emergency, and she gave my number to our old preacher. Then the preacher calls, goin’ on about how he’s had some kinda vision, and we gotta shut down the refinery. Guy sounded totally sauced too.”
    “Your preacher’s a drunk?”
    “Hasn’t been our preacher for a long time. Moved away after Katrina, now he’s a big shot in Hotlanta, but Mama used to drag me to his church in the city. Tim Trinity.”
    The paper coffee cup stopped halfway to Andrew’s mouth. “Reverend Tim?”
    “Yeah, you know him?”
    “Seen him on TV. What’d he say, exactly?”
    “The guy was goin’ nuts, said this place was set to explode this morning. Asked him how he knew, he started on about speaking in tongues and everything’s backwards and I don’t know what all. Didn’t make any sense.”
    But it made sense to Andrew. Last night had been a sign, after all. Reverend Tim was speaking for God. Andrew didn’t know how he knew this, but he’d never been surer of anything in his life. He dropped his hardhat on the table and headed for the exit.
    “Wait, where you goin’?”
    “I can’t stay.”
    “Boy, you as crazy as that preacher. Get back here and pick up your lid.”
    “You guys better come along,” said Andrew. “You stay, you’re gonna die.”
    “You leave, don’t plan on coming back,” the foreman shot back. Andrew turned away. “I’m serious, Andy. You walk out that door, you’re fired.”
    Andrew kept on walking.
    But as he moved through the sun-drenched parking lot toward his truck, doubt crept around the edges of his mind. He’d just walked away from the only decent job he ever had. Was Reverend Tim really talking for God? The absolute certainty he’d felt in the cafeteria now eluded him.
    He climbed into his rusty old F-150, drove off the compound, and headed down the road a couple blocks. He pulled a U-turn, parked facing the refinery. Rolled down the windows, opened hislunchbox, and filled his right cheek with chewing tobacco. Popped the top on a Dr Pepper and settled in to wait.
    Thinking:
I’m either the smartest man in Louisiana, or the dumbest.

T he foreman hated the term
productivity meeting
. To him, productivity meetings were just about the least productive thing ever devised by middle management, and that was saying plenty. Those corporate frat boys were master time-wasters. Their other major skills included ass-covering, blame-shifting, and brownnosing. But he was a deputy supervisor, which made him junior management, so he had to play along.
    At least the meetings were held in the cafeteria. It was the frat boys’ way of showing that they were
just plain folk
. Those boys loved slumming with the men who worked for a living.
    The foreman drank some coffee and tried to focus on the meeting. The IT guy was giving another general warning about sending jokes around by company e-mail. Not naming any names, but the ones who did it knew who they were, and the threat was implied, if things didn’t change soon.
    The foreman’s ears popped as if he were in an elevator.
Sudden change in air pressure
, he thought.
Something’s wrong. Something’s—
    A blast rocked the building. Windows blew out of the far wall. Men screamed. Everyone grabbed the table for support…
    The room went dark…
    The HVAC and refrigerators and vending machines shut down, and the cafeteria fell silent…
    A low rumble reverberated through the walls. Red emergency lights started flashing and the alarm began blaring, once every second. The generators kicked in, and white light strips set into the floor glowed a line to the door.
    Years of monthly fire drills also kicked in, and muscle memory took