Mister Slaughter (34 page)

Upon his arrival, the reverend had made himself comfortable in the kitchen and had told them the story of his life: how he'd grown up as a vicar's son in Manchester, and how he in his middle age had crossed the Atlantic on a vow to his father to bring salvation to the Indians. He had been among the savages for many months now, had carried the Lord's light into many heathen hearts, but oh how he missed Manchester. England was calling him home, he'd said. There to find a new place of service, and new flocks to tend. "We're pleased to have you here after you've travelled so long and far," Peter said as Aaron brought the good napkins to the table.

"Long and far, indeed. And I'm so glad to find a place to rest. I fear my feet are blistered, as these boots are just a shade small. You have some very nice boots, I see. They look comfortable."

"Yes sir, they are. Been broken in well enough by now, I'd guess."

"Hm," said the reverend, and he took a drink from his cup. The smoky-burnt smell of the ham was filling up the kitchen, as Faith always let the skin char just before she took it off the fire. Burton put his cup down and held it between both hands, and Lark could not help but take another furtive glance at the long, jagged nails. He had washed his hands and face in the kitchen bucket, and scrubbed the nails with a brush too, true enough, but the reverend smelled to Lark as if he had also gone long and far without a bath. Of course, if a man of God was out in the wilderness for months carrying Christ to the Indians then what opportunity might he have had for an encounter with soap? It was ugly for her to be thinking this way, she thought. Ugly as sin, to be throwing shadows on such a bright, sunny day as this one had dawned.

But she couldn't help it, and she thought that later—when Reverend Burton had gone—she ought to confess her sin of haughtiness or pride or suspicion or whatever it was. And it wasn't just the ragged nails that made her think of claws, either; it was the strange beard of many colors—dark brown, red, chestnut brown, silver—with a streak of charcoal black across the chin. God help her cleanse her soul of this sinful thinking, Lark thought, but it was the kind of beard that Satan might grow, the Devil wanting to be such a cock of the walk.

"Tell me, Peter," said the reverend, as Faith and Robin began to bring the plates to the table. "I passed several houses back there that looked to be deserted. There are no people nearby?"

"My brother had a farm back that way. When his wife—rest her soul—died in '99, he took the children and went to Philadelphia. Some of those houses are older; they were empty when we came here. You know, towns rise up and fall, and fall and rise up. But it
is
good land here, that's for sure. And I'm hoping, with the beneficent grace of the Lord, that we won't be alone in this valley too much longer. But the nearest people from here would be at Caulder's Crossing, sir. About eight miles. A little hilly to get there, not bad."

"And I'd presume the road connects somewhere to the Pike?"

"Yes, sir. On a few miles past the Crossing."

"I'd presume also that Philadelphia is probably twenty or so miles?"

"Near twenty-five. Aaron, go get another chair. Faith, you and Robin sit on this side here, and Aaron can sit beside Lark."

"Philadelphia is my destination. From there, I sail to England," said the reverend. Faith set the ham platter at the center of the table, and alongside it the horn-handled knife sharp enough to slice through the burnt crust. "Another thing, if you please. Your barn. Might you have a horse I could ride to Caulder's Crossing? As I said, these boots—"

"Oh, reverend! We have a wagon!" Faith said, as she put down the bowl of baked apples and sat beside Robin. "We'd be honored if you'd let us harness the team and carry you to the Crossing ourselves."

"How delightful," Burton answered. "This is truly an answer to a tired man's prayer." All the food was on the table. Aaron brought in another chair and sat to the left of Lark, who had taken a seat down by her father and was looking at Reverend Burton's black tricorn hanging on one wall hook behind him, and at the long black coat hanging on another. He'd come in with that coat, which appeared to be far too small for him, wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. His dirty, dun-colored clothing looked to have been worn day and night for God only knew how long. Still . . . months in the wilderness, with the heathen tribes.

"Reverend?" Faith looked at him, her blue eyes sparkling, the sunlight through the windowpanes shining in her hair. "Would you lead us in a blessing?"

"I certainly shall. Let us close our eyes and bow our heads. And let me get what I need, it will just take a moment."

Lark heard the reverend open his haversack. Getting his Bible, she thought. Had he seen a sinner coming?

She heard a
click
, opened her eyes and lifted her head, and she saw Reverend Burton pull the trigger of the flintlock pistol he was aiming at her father's skull.

Sparks flew, white smoke burst forth, and with a
crack!
that rattled the panes in the sun-splashed window a small black hole opened in Peter Lindsay's forehead, almost directly between his eyes as he too looked up in response, perhaps, to some internal warning of disaster that was far more urgent than waiting for a minister's blessing.

Lark heard herself scream; but it was not so much a scream as it was a bleat.

Her father went over backwards in the chair, slinging dark matter from the back of his head onto the pinewood wall. A hand reached up, the fingers clawing.

Reverend Burton laid the smoking pistol down upon the table, and picked up the horn-handled knife.

He rose to his feet, his chair falling over behind him with a crash. He grasped the nape of Aaron's neck, as the boy looked up at him with a mixture of shock and wonder. Aaron's mouth was open and his eyes were already dull and unfocused, like the eyes of a small creature that knows the predator is upon it. Reverend Burton drove the blade down into the hollow of the boy's throat until the handle could drive no deeper. Then he let the handle go, and Aaron slithered off the chair like a boneless, gurgling thing.

The reverend's gaze moved across the table. The hard, frozen-water eyes fixed upon Faith Lindsay, who made a noise as if she'd been struck in the stomach. Her own eyes were red-rimmed and dark-hollowed. She had aged twenty years in a matter of seconds. She tried to stand up, collided with the table and knocked over her son's jar of marbles, which rolled crazily among the platters, cups and bowls. Then her legs collapsed like those of a broken doll, she staggered back against the wall and slid down making a beaten whimpering noise.

"Momma!" Robin cried out. Her face had gone pasty-white. She also tried to stand, and so was on her feet when Reverend Burton's hand took hold of her head.

Whether he was trying to break the child's neck with the severe movement that followed, or whether he was just aiming her where he wanted her to fall, Lark did not know. Lark's head was throbbing with a terrible inner pressure; her eyes felt about to burst from her skull. The room, the air, the world had turned a blurred and misty crimson. She made a gutteral hitching noise—
nuh
nuh nuh
, it sounded—and watched, paralyzed with fear, as Reverend Burton flung Robin against the hearth, followed her, and picked up an iron frying pan from one of the fireplace trivets.

Robin was up on her knees, sobbing quietly, when he hit her on the head. Her sobbing ceased as she fell, her chin striking the floor. Her hair was in her face. Miraculously, she began to sit up again. The reverend stared at her with true amazement, his brows slightly lifted and his teeth parted, as if witnessing a resurrection. He hit her again with the pan, the sound like the strange commingling of a low-throated church bell and a clay pitcher breaking in two. She fell forward into the fireplace, her face disappearing into the white ashes. Then Reverend Burton let the frying pan drop, and in her state of near-madness, her mind slipping back and forth between horrors, Lark saw hot embers touch fire to her little sister's hair and crisp the locks to powder and smoke.

There was a silence. Which went on, hideously, until the breath rushed again into Faith Lindsay's lungs and she began to scream, her mouth wide open. The tears that shot from her eyes were ruddy with the blood of ruptured tissues.

Reverend Burton stood looking at the dead girl. He pulled in a long draught of air and shook his head back and forth, as if to clear his own mind and vision. Or perhaps, Lark thought, he had sprained his neck killing her sister. She tried to speak, to shout or scream or curse, but found her voice had left her and all that emerged was a hoarse rattling of enraged air.

"Hush," he said to Faith. And louder, when she did not: "
Hush
!"

When she still did not—or could not—Reverend Burton returned to the table, took up a handful of cornbread and pressed it into her mouth until she gagged and choked. Her bright blue eyes, wide to the point of explosion, stared at him without blinking as her chest slowly rose and fell.

"There. Better," he said. His head swivelled. His gaze found Lark, whose voice was reborn in a shuddering moan. With both hands she gripped hold of the chair beside her, as if its oak legs made up the walls of a mighty fortress.

He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his right hand. "Don't think ill of me," he said, and then he went to Aaron's body and, pressing down with a boot against the chest, pulled the knife out. He wiped it on one of the good napkins. Then he righted his chair, sat down at his place at the head of the table, sliced himself a piece of ham, spooned out a baked apple and a helping of beans, and began to eat.

Faith was silent, still staring but now simply at the far wall. Lark still gripped hold of the chair, her knuckles white. She did not move; she was thinking, crazily, that if she didn't move he wouldn't see her, and soon he would forget that she was even there.

He chewed down the ham and licked his fingers. "Have you ever been irritated by a fly?" he asked, as he carved the baked apple. His voice made Lark jump; she thought she had spoiled her invisibility, and she thought she was stupid and weak and she couldn't help but begin to cry, though silently. "One of those big green flies, that buzz around and around your head until you can't stand for it to live another minute. Another
second
," he amended, between bites. "So you think, I am going to kill this fly. Yes, I am. And if it doesn't go easily, I shall pull off its wings before I crush it, because I don't like to be flouted. Then . . . you watch the fly, and it may be slow or fast or
very
fast indeed, but soon you make out its pattern. Everything alive has a pattern. You see its pattern, you think one step—one little fly's buzz—
ahead
of its pattern, and there you have it." He emphasized his point by rapping his spoon against the table. "A dead fly. Not so different with people."

He reached for the cornbread, paused to take note of Lark's crying, and then continued his solitary feast. "I hate flies. They'll be in here in a while. Nothing you can do to keep them out."

"You're not . . . " Lark didn't know if she'd meant to speak, but there it was. Still, the words were sluggish, and her throat strangled. "You're not . . . you're not . . . "

"Not really a reverend, no," he admitted, with a small shrug. "But if I'd come to your door and said,
Good morning
,
I'm a killer,
where would it have gotten me?"

"You didn't . . . have . . . " Could she ever make a whole sentence again? Something in her mind was screaming, but she could barely whisper. "You didn't . . . have to do that."

"I wanted to. Lark. That's a pretty name. There used to be a nest of larks in a tree outside my house, when I was a boy."

"Did you . . . did you . . .
kill
them?"

"Absolutely not. They woke me up in the mornings, so I could get to work."

And now came the question that she had to ask, but that she dreaded. "Are . . . you going to kill us now?"

He finished the apple before he spoke again. "Lark, let me tell you about
power
. Most men will say that power is the ability to do as you please. But
I
say . . . power is the ability to do as you please, and no one is able to stop you. Oh!" He watched as Faith threw up her breakfast and in so doing blew the cornbread out of her mouth. "I think she's coming around."

Faith was trying to stand. Her face was pallid and somehow misshapen, her mouth twisted to one side and her eyes sunken inward as if a pair of vicious thumbs had forced them back into the skull. The tracks of tears glistened on her cheeks. Her mouth moved, but she made no sound.

Then Lark thought her mother's tortured eyes must have seen the bodies again, and the whole event must have whirled once more through her mind like the gunsmoke that still roiled at the ceiling. Faith slid back to the floor and began to cry like a broken-hearted child.

The Not-Reverend continued to eat. He cut another piece of ham and whittled it down between his teeth.

"We didn't . . . we didn't . . . do . . . " Lark feared she too was going to vomit, for the smell of blood and burnt hair had touched her nostrils. "We didn't . . . do anything to you."

"And that matters exactly
how
?" he asked, with a spoonful of beans at his mouth. When no reply was made, he ate them and dug in for another bite.

Lark wiped her eyes. She was trembling, the tears still running down her face. She was afraid to try to stand up, for she was sure that would bring him upon her with either the knife or some other implement. She listened to her mother crying, and thought that something in the sound reminded her of how Robin had wept when the spotted puppy—Dottie, they'd named it—had died of worms last summer.

Lark felt her lips curl. She felt the rage seize her heart and embolden her soul, and even though she knew that what she was about to say would mean her death she spoke it anyway: "God will fix you."

He finished the piece of ham he was working on, took a last drink of the cider, and then he put his elbows on the table and laced his murderous hands together. "
Really
? Well, I'd like to see that. I want you to listen. Listen beyond your mother's crying. What do you hear? Listen now, listen very carefully. Go on . . . what do you hear?"