The Bastard Hand (10 page)

I stifled a yawn. Then Mrs. Rutherford slapped her hands to her chest, apparently panic-stricken, and said, “Oh my goodness! Oh no!”

“What is it, dear?” said Mrs. Edels.

“Oh, my goodness, I don’t know what I was thinking! Did anyone bring the soda pop?”

The other ladies imitated Mrs. Rutherford, clutching their hands in front of them, taking in sharp breaths of alarm.

“Oh, no! What are we going to do?”

They all just stood there, staring at each other in abject horror.

I cleared my throat, said, “I don’t think that’s anything to worry about.”

“What do you mean, nothing to worry about? What on earth is everyone going to drink?”

Mrs. Hadley said, “We have coffee, don’t we? Folks can drink coffee, right?”

“But the children, Mrs. Hadley? What about them? Besides, it’s too hot out for—”

I said, “I mean it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll go get some soda. It won’t take more than a few minutes.”

“Oh, would you, Mr. Charlie? We’d be so grateful!”

“Certainly,” I said, nodding grimly. If they wanted to make a huge deal out of it, I was willing to play along. Besides, it was a good excuse to get the hell out of there for a while.

I started out. The Reverend winked at me, said, “Another disaster narrowly averted, eh, Charlie?”

Laughing to myself, I hurried out, rushed up the stairs and out of the church.

Dusk settled in over the town, casting dim shadows over the parking lot, but the daytime heat still clung stubbornly to the air. As I strolled around the church and headed for the store, two cars loaded with guests pulled into our lot. I hurried on, not really wanting to meet anyone else just yet.

The store was only a block away, but I took my time and managed to kill ten minutes just walking there. It meant stopping every thirty seconds or so to look at a bird or a nice car or a crack in the sidewalk, but I pulled it off. I figured I could take another fifteen minutes deciding on just the right soda for everyone, then another fifteen walking back with my arms full.

But despite my best efforts, the shopping only took a couple of minutes. You can only read the labels of so many soda bottles.

Night had come while I was inside, and a peaceful calm hung over Cuba Landing. The call of night birds drifted over from the park and whistled faintly up and down the streets. I could hear the hum of the streetlight half a block away.

All too soon I made it back to the church, and to judge by the crowded parking lot most of the visitors had arrived. Sighing, I started making my way around to the back. A sudden movement near the front steps caught my attention and I looked in time to see a slim shadow crouched down by the basement window.

He didn’t make a sound and it was only pure chance I happened to spot him. The black kid with the guitar.

He didn’t have his guitar with him now. You don’t usually take musical instruments along when you’re peering through windows. Which was what he was doing.

I stopped in my tracks, half-hidden by tree-cast shadows. He didn’t see me, but apparently he’d finished his business. Silently, he moved away from the window and started to melt back into the shadows, away from the church.

A normal person would probably have shouted then, or said something. I didn’t. I set the bag of sodas right there on the sidewalk and followed him.

The kid peeked my interest earlier that day, outside the diner and walking up Main Street with his guitar case swinging. And now . . . peeking in the church window?

The kid moved across High Park Lane and into the park. Sticking to the shadows, I trotted after him, not moving fast, staying a good length behind, not letting myself get too bent on it. He led the way across the park, through the thickening and swaying shadows, past the benches and trails. He passed the statue, headed toward the sparse woods at the far end of the park.

A moment later, I moved past the statue myself, glanced up at the stony face. It ignored me just as he’d ignored the kid, his blind gaze fixed on some vague spot over the roofs of Main Street.

Much to my surprise, the kid didn’t skirt the edge of the woods—he melted right into them. I stopped for a moment, paused in the darkness. My hands began to ache again.

A stroll through the woods. Okay. A stroll through the woods it would be.

I gave him a good lead, then plunged into the darkness after him, trusting to blind luck that I would be able to keep up. The dead leaves and branches kept him from being as stealthy as he’d been before. The snap and shuffle of his progress through the woods also covered any slight sound I may have made.

Turns out I had a knack for this sneaking around business. I smiled with stupid pride.

We walked for what seemed about a quarter of a mile through the woods, along a barely visible trail. It meandered with seeming randomness, occasionally skipping over a fallen tree trunk or outcropping of huge stones. Sometimes it disappeared entirely—to my untrained eye, anyway—and I had to suppress a sigh of relief each time I found it again. Two or three times, I actually forgot I was even following someone, I got so wrapped up in keeping my eyes on the ground.

Just as I began to question what the hell I was doing, tracking some kid through the nighttime forest for no reason, I came out at the edge of the woods.

A two-lane road, stark and lonely in the moonlight, defined the perimeter of trees. Across the road, a small white house stood beyond an unkempt expanse of yard. The kid trotted up the steps to the front door. Without a backward glance, he went inside and let the door slam shut behind him.

I glanced up and down the road. There were other houses, stretched along the other side, all quiet and spooky-serene. Like the house the kid had disappeared into, they were all pleasant-looking, though a far cry from the lavish homes downtown. Outskirts. Other side of the tracks. Like the inner-city houses in Memphis, except surrounded by woods and silence.

A light went on inside the house, and shadows moved beyond the curtain. Welcome home, Guitar Kid. Make much money today? Play Elise Garrity’s fav, did you? Peek in any church windows? Come here and give me a hug.

I suddenly felt very lonely. A strange man, standing at the edge of the road and looking at a stranger’s house.

Kyle and I grew up without a father. Normally, that thought didn’t trouble me much, but at this moment I felt a distinct loss, as if I’d never known the concept of family. Bullshit, of course. I had a family. I had Kyle, right? So what the hell was I doing? Why did I follow the kid?

“Loser,” I said to myself. I started to turn away, make my way back through the woods, when movement at the window caught my eye. The curtain pushed aside at the far end, and a small, white face looked out.

A boy. I’m not a good judge of the age of children, but I would’ve guessed about eight or ten years old. Blond hair that gleamed in the light from the room. He stared out at the night, looking directly at me.

If he could actually see me, he gave no indication. He just stared, his little face pressed against the window glass, his eyes locking with mine in what seemed like an awareness of my presence.

I stood still, staring back at him, waiting. But his expression didn’t change.

After a long moment, he let the curtain fall back, and the shadows beyond it resumed their normal activity.

Uneasily, I turned away and began walking back through the woods, ignoring the soft glow emanating from my fingers.

It had been over half an hour, but the bag of sodas still sat right where I’d left it. I snatched it up, hurried into the church, bracing myself for a barrage of questions about what had taken me so long.

As it turned out though, no one at the church missed me. The Reverend was the real star of the show. I moved through the crowd of townsfolk—Aunt Bea’s friends, rambunctious kids running up and down the stairs, dressed-up housewives, uncomfortable-looking fathers—with little more than a few nods and How-ya-doin’s.

The Reverend stood near the door to his office, the center of a large group of people, wrapped up in conversation with a stout, red-faced man. The man had both hands jammed firmly into the pockets of his tailor-cut trousers. Seeing me, the Reverend put a hand on the man’s shoulder, said, “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, here’s someone I want you to meet.” He motioned me over. “Charlie, this here’s Bishop Ishy, the mayor of Cuba Landing. Mr. Mayor, this is my assistant Charlie Wesley.”

I said hello, offered my hand.

The red-faced man looked at it, his features going suddenly slack with something I can only describe as horror. Both hands stayed in their pockets. Stammering, he said, “Excuse me for not . . . for not shaking, Mr. Wesley. I have a condition.” And he left it at that. “Glad to have you in town, though. You like Cuba Landing so far?”

I looked at the Reverend, my hand still sticking out. The Reverend’s grin got bigger until I thought his whole face would crack. His eyes said, Don’t ask, Charlie. Just don’t ask.

Slowly, I lowered my hand and said, “It’s a beautiful town.”

“We’ve always thought so.” Ishy nodded his head vigorously, and his red jowls jiggled. “We can boast of the absolute highest standard of living in this county, Mr. Wesley, and things are only getting better.”

The words came out of his mouth in a rapid practiced line, but his eyes weren’t into it. They focused on some faraway land that could almost be seen over my left shoulder. I said, “So you . . . you’re the mayor?”

“That I am, that I am. Been mayor here for nine years now. Nine years. Do you like rhubarb pie, Mr. Wesley?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yes, sir, things are only getting better in Cuba Landing. Highest standard of living in the county.”

“I’m sorry, but did you say something about rhubarb pie?”

“Oh, I love rhubarb pie,” he said. “You know, a low crime rate leads to a more stable society. And a more stable society means more opportunities for everyone.”

In his strange, lilting voice that seemed so removed from the rest of him, he proceeded to sell me the town. From the corner of my eye, I saw the Reverend sliding off, being led to the other side of the hall by a group of wives, and realized why he’d been so keen to introduce me to the mayor.

For the next twenty minutes I was Bishop Ishy’s audience. Other folks drifted in and out of our company, but the mayor’s words, if not his eyes, were always directed at me so I couldn’t get away. The entire time he spoke, his right hand stayed in its pocket; the left one only came out to add occasional flourishes to his speech, then dived immediately back into his pants.

I’d never actually met a mayor before. It seemed so fitting that the first one to come down the pike was obviously not all there. What would be next?

“Y’know,” said Ishy, “I’ve been the mayor of this lovely town for almost nine years now, and in that nine years the crime rate has dropped so dramatically, why, it’s practically non-existent. Where do you hail from, Mr. Wesley? Why, crime is practically non-existent here in Cuba Landing. I take great pride in that fact, because, as you probably know, a low crime rate means a more stable and trusting community, and a stable and trusting community means a more productive local economy, and—”

Like that, practically non-stop. He gave the impression that he never stopped singing the praises of Cuba Landing and his mayoral administration, that if you woke him up in the middle of the night he would immediately crank up the hard sell out of sheer habit. And maybe that explained it—he’d been doing it for so long that it meant nothing to him anymore.

But I listened patiently, nodding once in a while. After all, he was the mayor. It wouldn’t do to just walk away from him.

And then Elise Garrity came down the stairs.

At the serving table, Mrs. Edels gasped, but everyone else showed a bit more tact and just dropped into a sudden silence. They caught themselves quickly, resumed at least an imitation of their former conversations. But a different feeling immediately came over the hall, a feeling of quiet moral outrage.

No one greeted her right away. She wore black, an elegant blouse and skirt, no jewelry. Her hair, that beautiful blonde hair touched faintly with gold and red, pulled up in a tight bun at the back of her head, her face bare of any make-up except a pale lipstick and eyeliner.

Nerves of steel.

I didn’t realize that even the mayor had fallen into an uncomfortable silence until he started talking again. He muttered something about “Community pride” and “Common good . . .” trying weakly to pick up the thread of his oration. I didn’t focus my attention back on him, but if he noticed he didn’t care. He kept talking, almost to himself, casting his eyes about for someone nearby who seemed receptive. An older man strolled by and unwittingly became my replacement as Ishy’s audience.

Moving away from the mayor, I made my way towards the table where Mrs. Rutherford served coffee. She gave me a Styrofoam cup and told me to help myself—her eyes, like so many others, peeled on Miss Garrity. I filled my cup and gravitated into a corner of the hall.

After a few minutes, most of the townsfolk had gotten over her presence there, had moved on to other subjects. Three or four left the church in disgust—I heard one man say, “That takes some nerve, her showing up here!”—but for the most part the individuals who were displeased merely kept their distance.

I had a hard time putting it together, to tell the truth. That is, picturing this beautiful, and, let’s be honest, worldly looking woman being related to Reverend Jathed Garrity. Of course, I didn’t know Jathed—I’d never met the man—but I’d formed a pretty clearly defined image.

But what the hell did I know about it? I guess there was no law against a reverend being rich. Or having the sexiest goddamn sister ever to slink through the church doors.

By the time I finished my coffee, Officer Oldfield, whom I hadn’t noticed in the hall before then, greeted Miss Garrity and introduced her to Reverend Childe. I recognized the look on the Reverend’s face as he took her hand, and before I knew it I’d crossed the crowded hall and was at his side.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Elise Garrity said to him. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you. Did you know you were in the paper this morning?”