The Bastard Hand (2 page)

I didn’t want to think about it. My tooth, though—that was another matter.

Nervousness about it finally got me out of bed. I went to the sink, turned on the faucet, rinsed my mouth out. It stung. When I spit, the water was red.

I headed for the bathroom to take a shower.

Union Avenue bustled with Saturday morning industry. Car horns honking, exhaust smoke stinging the eyes. I headed west, back towards downtown.

Old buildings everywhere, stately looking. Ornate stonework carved with elegant taste, grand entranceways flanked by stone or metal beasts. If you could ignore the people and the vehicles, walking through the business district was like stepping back in time.

The modern world stuck its nose in just often enough to remind you that this was a new century. Almost directly across the street from the bus station on Union stood an adult movie theater, and all the sorts of people you’d expect there. Inside the bus station, with my rumpled clothes and black-and-blue face, I fit right in. Nobody looked at me once, let alone twice. I went to my locker, retrieved my traveling bag, and went to the restroom.

I changed clothes first, putting on my battered old blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a blue bowling shirt I’d picked up at a Salvation Army store in Colorado because the name Charlie was on the chest. Shaved and brushed my teeth. My mouth ached afterwards, but it was a clean ache and I felt better about it.

In the privacy of a stall, I counted the money I had stashed in a little compartment of my bag. Eighty-two dollars. I put twenty-two in my hip pocket. The rest I hid away in the bottom of my boot. Looked like I’d have to find a job again. Damn.

Outside, I asked someone where the nearest laundromat was. He told me—within walking distance, but damned if I felt like walking anymore. I stood on the corner and after a half hour a city bus showed up. I rode for a while and then got off and trudged another block north on Manassas.

The laundromat was there in a small run-down plaza, next to a lot that had been turned into a free basketball court. A group of black teenagers sat against the wall, sweating and drinking colas between games. We all nodded at each other and I went in.

The place was busy with a lot of sorry-ass folks like myself, doing their dirty clothes on a Saturday morning. I’ve heard it said that laundromats are a great place to meet potential mates, but I’ve never believed that. The only type of people I’ve ever met in laundromats are people much like myself, and who the hell wants to meet them? Not me.

I broke my twenty with the attendant, bought some laundry detergent, shoved my dirty clothes in the first empty washer I could find. A two-year-old Newsweek magazine sat on a chair by the door, so I picked it up, sat down and leafed through it, hoping no one would bother me.

Even the book reviews were stale. I gave up on the magazine after a few minutes, cast my eyes around for something more interesting.

That’s when I noticed the Bible. It had been sitting there on the chair beside me, but somehow I hadn’t noticed it until just then. I picked it up, gazed for a long while at the dark red bonded leather, the embossed gold print on its cover. Strangely, there was a hole right through the center of it—right through the O in Holy—as neat and clean as a bullet hole. On the inside cover, right under the stylized script of THIS BIBLE PRESENTED TO, the words Jathed Garrity, from Kimberly, With Love. The handwriting delicate and faintly old-fashioned, the J and the G nearly three times larger than the other letters.

I’d always meant to get around to God’s bio, but had never quite done it—tried at least twenty times, and at least twenty times I’d read Genesis almost all the way through. There was nothing to suggest that I would be able to pull it off this time, especially considering that the hole would make it difficult to determine who begat who begat who, but I thought what the hell.

So. “In the beginning . . .” Again.

Someone in front of me said, “Ah, it does my heart good to see a young man studying his Bible with such interest. You a Christian, then?”

I looked up, and laid eyes for the first time on the Right Reverend Phineas Childe. The man who would serve me up my destiny on a silver platter.

He wore black clothes and a white collar and the whole nine yards. You didn’t think freak when you looked at him. You thought preacher. Naturally. I put him at somewhere around 6’3” with long arms and legs and shoulders like two triangles on either side of his head. His pale face—one of the few white ones in the place—was all angles and crevices, made sharp by steely gray eyes and a big white smile. He smelled good, sort of a manly comfortable smell.

I didn’t answer him right away, so he said again, “You a Christian, son?”

I said, “Sure,” then stuck my nose back in the Bible.

The preacher said, “Fine. That’s just fine.” His voice dripped slow and dark. “Where do you worship, son?”

I shrugged. “Nowhere. I’m . . . just passing through town.”

He nodded. “I gotcha. Well, the church is really just a convenience anyway, ain’t it? We can worship Our Lord anywhere, I reckon. Even here in the laundromat.”

I had a horrible feeling he was going to ask me to get down on my knees right there, but he didn’t. He said, “Although the church certainly helps bring us closer to God. There’s nothing more invigorating to the Christian spirit than a good sermon, or a rousing gospel chorus.”

I nodded in agreement, smiling, then patted my Bible. “Well. Back to the ol’ Word,” I said.

In the beginning, I read to myself, trying hard to pretend the preacher wasn’t there. In the beginning, God created . . . but it was no use. He stood there in front of me, his black clothes like a car wreck that I had to look at.

I glanced back up at him, and he took that opportunity to say, “Young man, do you mind if I sit down?” He indicated the empty seat next to me, the one the Bible had occupied until a moment before.

Well what the hell, I thought. You’re stuck, Charlie old boy. I said, “Sure, Reverend. Have a seat.”

His grin took up half his face as he sat down next to me. The chair could barely contain him, and his knees jutted up like two poles stuck at odd angles. He stuck out one long-fingered hand, said, “I’m Reverend Phineas Childe.”

He shook my hand vigorously, like we were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. Something about his manner made me forget about the antagonism I’d been storing up, and suddenly I really didn’t mind his company. I said, “Nice to know you, Reverend,” and told him my name.

“A pleasure, Mr. Wesley.”

“Charlie.”

He beamed. “Charlie. You say you’re just passing through town? Where ’bouts you from?”

I thought on that for a second, decided it couldn’t hurt to tell some of the truth. “Washington State, Preacher. On my way to Florida.”

“Ah, Washington! I know it well, been there a few times. Mostly stopping through on my way up to Vancouver. You ever been there? Vancouver?”

I told him once or twice, and he laughed, “Well, ain’t that something? Who’d have thought we’d have something in common, other than being Christians! Sittin’ here in a laundromat in the middle of Memphis, Tennessee, and what do you know!”

I said, “You have a church here in the city, Reverend Childe?”

“No, no. Like you, I’m just passing through.”

A woman walked by us, pulling a toddler and pushing middle age. She looked pretty good in a ragged housewife sort of way, and I saw the Reverend glance up at her. She threw him a coy look, said, “Hello, Reverend.”

He nodded, grinning that big grin. “Ma’am,” he said. She walked on toward the Coke machine, dragging the kid, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t put an extra wiggle in it for his benefit.

Steepling his fingers together, he shined his teeth back at me. “And they say Memphis ain’t a friendly city.” Then, “No, Charlie old son, I don’t have a church here in town, or anywhere for that matter. Not yet. I’m on my way south to look into that, though.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Only another hour or so away from here by car. Little town in north Mississippi called Cuba Landing. Ever hear of it?”

I confessed that I hadn’t. “Anyhow,” he shrugged. “I’m on my way down there to see about a position at the Cuba Landing Free Will Baptist Church. Understand they may be in need of a preacher. The one they had took off on ’em.”

The buzzer on my washer went off. I said, “Well, I’d best tend to my clothes. Good luck to you, Reverend.”

He stood up with me, said, “Thankee, Charlie. I do appreciate that. You don’t have to run off straight away, do you?”

I hem-hawed for a second.

He said, “It’s just so nice to find a like-minded person in a strange and unfamiliar place. I reckon I got to talking and enjoying myself.”

His grin faltered just a little, then came back full-force and he said, “Aw, heck. I’m sorry. You probably got things to do and here I am talking your ear off.” He stuck out his hand again. “You take care of yourself now, Charlie, you hear? And God bless ya.”

He started away from me. I struggled against my better judgment, then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Hold up there, Reverend. I never said I was running off somewhere, did I? Just let me get my clothes in the dryer and we’ll have a Coke or something. Sound good?”

His eyes joined his mouth in its grinning and he stuck his big hands in his pockets like a school kid. “Very kind of you, Charlie. Very kind indeed.”

Half an hour later we were on our second Coca-Cola each. We were just about the best goddamn friends in the world.

He came from Holly Springs, Mississippi, he told me, but left that place almost twenty years ago to seek adventure across the country. A drinker, a “rounder”—as he called it—and an all-around heathen.

“Bad news travels like wild fire,” he said, “and good news travels slow. They all called me wild fire, ’cause everywhere I go—”

“You were bad news,” I said. “I know that song.”

He laughed, slapped me on the shoulder. “Yeah, that was me, I reckon. That old song coulda been my anthem. I had more women, drank more whiskey, and seen the insides of more jail cells than any man ever walked God’s green earth. I was a lost soul, drowning in the Kingdom of Satan, just floundering along and not even knowing it. And then Jesus threw me a line, praise Lord.”

Five years ago, he’d been in Chicago, drunk, broke, starving to death. After years of running wild, slowly spiraling downward, he’d finally reached the bottom. A state of being that all sinners eventually reach, he said. The stage where you know you have to give your life to Jesus, or die.

“I was lying there in the gutter, sick with booze, rolling ’round in my own filth. You understand that, Charlie? You understand just how low I’d sunk? I’d lost all my human dignity. All the grace that the Lord had bestowed upon us as the very creatures made in His divine image. I’d pissed it all away. And then I heard it, Charlie.”

“Heard what?”

“I heard the singing. The most beautiful, sweet, heartbreaking sound I’d ever heard.”

A church just up the street, and a choir singing “Shall We Gather By The River”. The sound of angels harmonizing the praises of God. Just in time to save his soul from eternal damnation. He told me about how he’d crawled up out of the gutter and stumbled into the church and the Reverend saw him and said, “Praise God that you have found us here tonight, my son. You are lost, aren’t you? You need Jesus in your life, don’t you?” And Phinneas Childe had broken into sobs and cried out, “Yes! Yes! I want to give myself to God!” and the church had exploded with joyous Hallelujahs and Praise Hims and the poor drunken wretch crawled to the altar and, tears streaming, took Christ into his heart.

“Since that night, I’ve devoted myself to spreading His word wherever I go. Over the last five years I’ve traveled this great land of ours, preaching in churches when I can, preaching on street corners if all else fails. God has given meaning to my life. My greatest joy now is serving Him.”

Not knowing what else to say, I mumbled, “That’s a story, all right.” Then, “So now you’re heading down to Cuba Landing. You plan on settling down there?”

He shrugged. “Only the Lord knows. He’s brought me this far, and it looks like I may be fixing to come full-circle. I don’t know. Maybe, Charlie. Maybe. All I can do is obey God’s will. I feel like you may be right, though. I feel like a great closure is on its way, and Cuba Landing may be where the knot gets tied.”

We were silent for a moment. The laundromat had cleared out while Reverend Childe talked. Only a handful of folks still, reading magazines or gazing hypnotized at clothes in the dryers. I stretched, lit up my first smoke of the day. The Reverend watched the flame on my lighter, then said, “Say, Charlie, you spare one of those?”

I offered him my half-empty pack. He put one between his thin lips and bent down to light it off my flame.

He inhaled deeply, leaned back in his chair. “Thankee. That’s the first smoke I’ve had in hours. Been meaning to run over the gas station and buy some but damned if I didn’t forget all about it until you lit up.”

“You’re about the oddest preacher I’ve seen, you know that?”

He cocked his head at me. “Well, I can’t say as I know what you mean.”

“I mean you’re pretty damn unconventional for a reverend. You smoke, you swear. And I saw you checking out that woman earlier. If preachers can do that stuff these days, maybe it’s about time I started looking into joining a church.”

He laughed. “Folks labor under all sorts of wrong notions, son. Nowhere in the Good Book does it say anything against strong language. It says, ‘Thou shalt not use the Lord God’s name in vain’, that’s all. That’s one thing you’ll never hear me doing. As for smoking, well . . . folks been smoking since the beginning of time. Tobacco is something God put on this earth for the enjoyment and betterment of Mankind. You may as well say that we ain’t supposed to eat rice or wheat if you’re gonna say we shouldn’t smoke tobacco.”

He emphasized the point by taking a hearty drag. I said, “Okay. But what about that woman? That wasn’t just a friendly howdy, was it?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with a healthy carnal interest in the opposite sex, is there?”