The Bastard Hand (23 page)

“Tell that to the man I killed, Elise.”

She shook her head. “No. You were right when you said you aren’t the same person anymore. I can see that. You’re willing to sacrifice everything you’ve worked for, for the sake of someone you call a friend. Even when it looks as if he’s not really the man you thought he was, you still can’t bring yourself to do it.” She leaned forward, kissed me gently on the mouth. “If there were more people like you on this planet, Charlie . . .”

I looked away from her. If she’d known more about me, she would have realized her mistake.

When I didn’t respond, she said, “You’re willing to throw your life away, for some ideal you have about Reverend Childe. Believe it or not, I respect you for that. It’s crazy and naive and foolish, but I respect it because it’s so beautifully idealistic. But, Charlie . . .” A tear appeared in the corner of her eye, and she pulled her gaze away from me, looked at my chest. “Charlie . . . I’m begging you. Don’t . . . don’t throw us away. I need you, don’t you understand that? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Burying her face in my shoulder, she started crying. I put my arms around her, stroked her hair.

I don’t know what I’d do without you.

I need you.

I need you, don’t you understand?

I didn’t. Not really.

After a few minutes, I pulled myself away and held her by the shoulders. Her beautiful green eyes were rimmed with red, tears drying on her cheeks. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, sniffed once. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“I hate that. I hate crying. I’ve done too much of it lately. It’s so damn weak.”

I said, “Everybody cries sometimes.”

She smiled half-heartedly, a lovely crooked smile. “Yeah, well. That doesn’t make it right.” Then, “Charlie, you know how I feel about you. If you didn’t know before, you do now. I just . . . I just can’t bear to lose you so soon. It’s not fair. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m happy, and I owe it all to you. If I . . . if I lost you now, I don’t know what I’d do. Please, Charlie. Please tell me I’m not going to lose you.”

I didn’t know if she was going to lose me or not, but I said, “No. You’re not.”

I took her in my arms again, and we stood there in the middle of the sitting room, holding each other for a very long time. Then, wordlessly, we went upstairs.

Three hours later, I left her sleeping in her bed and drove back to town. I suppose I’d made up my mind.

But I didn’t like it. It made no difference to me that the Reverend wasn’t a good guy—there were no good guys involved in this—and it made no difference to me what he planned on doing to this idyllic little town. The only thing that mattered to me, in this particular situation anyway, was personal commitment. Irritatingly enough, I’d developed something like a conscience over the last month or so.

But if I didn’t do it, if I didn’t act as Ishy’s personal snake in the Reverend’s yard, then it was all over for me. I would be apprehended and sent back to the Institute. And I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t. I would sooner die.

So what was I doing, driving back to town, heading for the church? Why did I feel like I had to see him, had to work something out with him? There was nothing to work out. The decision had been made for me, and there was nothing the Reverend or anyone else could do to change it.

It occurred to me as I pulled into the church parking lot that I was giving myself a chance to do the right thing. Going to see him face to face, with the vague hope that seeing him, seeing his big grin and clear eyes, would shake me enough to abandon the whole thing. Maybe, if I saw him, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to do it.

Please, I thought. Be good, Rev. Be a good guy, just for a few minutes.

• • •

It was too much to ask. Reverend Childe was Reverend Childe, and that was simply all there was to it.

I recognized the big car in the parking lot, knew what I would find upstairs. But the small bit of me that still clung to some hope refused to acknowledge it. That small bit prodded me up the stairs, forced me to call out, “Reverend?”

No answer. When I made it to the top of the landing, I heard the voices coming from behind his closed door, the Reverend’s raspy good-natured laughter, and the woman’s playful giggles.

Any other time, I would’ve turned around and left him to his own eventual destruction. Not an option this time. As I moved toward his door, I felt strangely powerful and godlike, knowing that many futures now were in my hands, not just my own, but the Reverend’s, and the woman he was with, and Elise’s and Ishy’s and even Oldfield’s and Forrey’s. Whatever happened to this town, it all came down to me. With a single flick of my wrist, a single gaze cast upon the multitudes, I decreed the fate of everybody I knew. A dark hole opened up in me. I didn’t try to stop it.

I rapped on the door, said, “Rev? It’s Charlie.”

The woman in the room gasped, and I heard the Reverend mumble something sharp to her. A weight shifted on his bed, and he said, “What is it, Charlie? I’m kinda right in the middle a’ something.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Well, damnit, can’t it wait, Charlie?”

“No, Rev, it sure can’t.”

“Come back in a couple minutes.”

“No. I need to talk to you now. As in, this instant. I don’t care about the woman in there. That doesn’t make any difference. Just tell her to get decent, and then let me in.”

The woman said something worriedly, and the tone of her voice confirmed to me who she was. I heard him say to her, “It’s alright. It’s Charlie, hold on, darling,” and then I heard him moving across the room. He opened the door and poked his head out. Grinning, he said, “I surely didn’t expect you back so soon, Charlie, ol’ son.”

“Apparently. Let me in, Rev. We need to talk.”

He said, “Okay, then,” and stepped back far enough to let me into the room.

He was bare-ass naked, his semi-erect penis slapping at his thighs. In his bed, holding the sheets up to her neck, Belinda Ishy stared at me with a kind of terrified wonder glinting in her eyes.

I said, “Howdy, Mrs. Ishy.”

Numbly, she raised a hand in greeting, then let it drop back down to the bed.

Scratching distractedly at his stomach, the Reverend said, “Now what the hell is so all-dang-important that you gotta barge right into my room when I’m in the middle of entertaining a guest?”

“Well,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb, “it’s been a good while since you and I have connected, Rev. I thought it was long overdue.”

He looked at me, as if waiting for more, then gestured at me with an open palm, like a television host presenting the next act. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for the amazingly annoying Charlie Wesley! “And?” he said.

“And I decided it couldn’t wait.”

“You decided . . .” He stared at me unbelievingly, then glanced at Mrs. Ishy. She was slowly reaching toward the floor for the dress that lay crumbled there. He pointed at her, said, “Uh-uh. Don’t even think about it, darling. I like you much better without clothes on, don’t you know that?”

She stopped, the horror on her face edging toward panic. “But, Reverend . . .”

“But, nothing. You just wait.” He turned back to me. “And this, what you say . . . connecting . . . can’t wait, huh?”

The sheet covering Mrs. Ishy had slipped, exposing one heavy breast. It was smooth and round, the dark nipple going soft. I looked away. “No. It can’t wait.”

Suddenly, he laughed. A loud, hard sound, not the carefree laugh of a good-natured Southern boy at all. He said, “Ah. Okay, I getcha. You wanna patch things up, right? Charlie, there ain’t nothing to patch up. We ain’t had much of a chance to talk lately, but that don’t mean something’s wrong, does it? We both been busy is all.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“It’s not?” he said, eyeing me keenly. “Then pray tell, Charlie. What is it exactly?”

I started, “It’s . . . it’s just . . .” But I didn’t know how to finish. The bedsprings creaked as the mayor’s wife shifted her position. Of their own volition, my eyes strayed over to her, took in the way the sheets lay across her legs. One foot stuck out from the edge of the bed. The toenails were painted red.

He looked at me, followed my gaze to Mrs. Ishy. Then he smiled at me, and I saw his penis twitch, very slightly. He said, “Okay, Charlie. You wanna patch things up? You wanna make things right between us, do you?” He took a step toward me. “Then let’s do that. Let’s get everything out in the open and kick our friendship into high gear again, what d’ya say?” He nodded his head at Mrs. Ishy, said, “You don’t have no objections, do ya, darling?”

Mrs. Ishy tilted her head at him. Nerves making her voice shaky and breathless, she said, “Wh . . . what do you mean?”

“I mean, Charlie is my friend. And friends share everything, don’t they? How’s about, as a token of my friendship, the three of us get to know each other a little better?”

Mrs. Ishy’s feelings on the subject were a mystery. I pulled my gaze away from her, looked at the Reverend. His private parts gave away how he felt about it, and I tried not to notice the fact that his penis was intimidatingly large.

To my annoyance, my own body responded in much the same way. I hadn’t thought much about Belinda Ishy in the carnal sense until then, but at that moment I was painfully aware of her more sensual features, the wide curve of her hips under the thin blanket, the arc of her white foot sticking out.

The Reverend moved back toward the bed. He pulled the sheets away from her, revealing her body in all its soft fullness. “C‘mon, Charlie. You said you wanted to make amends. Well, trust me, this is the best way to do it.”

None of this was working out the way I’d hoped. Just once, I wanted him to be good and pure. Just once, so that I could be the martyr and feel good about something, even if it did mean my own existence would be destroyed. But he wouldn’t do it.

“Rev,” I said. “Goddamnit, Rev . . .”

“Charlie. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t blaspheme.”

I stood still. Belinda Ishy looked at me frankly, a new fire burning in her eyes. Her chest and neck were flushed. Gently, she drew one hand over her breast, toyed playfully with the nipple.

I had to do something, I had to make some sort of move to break the spell. Finding my voice, I said, “So, Mrs. Ishy . . . does your husband know you’re here?”

A hypocritical, sanctimonious thing to say, I knew, but I had to say something to pull myself away from it. And it worked.

She shot up in the bed, nearly knocking the Reverend to the floor, and screamed, “You shut up! Shut your fucking mouth, you hear me?”

“Whoa!” the Reverend said. “Calm down, now! Charlie didn’t mean nothing by that, did ya, Charlie?” He looked at me intently.

I said, “No, I didn’t mean nothing. Just that I can’t stand to see so-called decent women catting around like twenty dollar whores.”

Screaming, she nearly jumped out of bed and rushed me. The Reverend grabbed her around the waist, held her back, and she spit venom and fire at me: “You hypocritical bastard! You got some nerve, calling me a whore! If you’re so goddamn pure, what the hell were you doing visiting my husband this afternoon?”

Everything stopped. The Reverend looked at me sharply, then said to her, “What? What did you just say?”

She smiled, knowing she’d gotten me good. Relaxing a bit against his arms, she said, “That’s right, Reverend. He was out to my house this very afternoon. Sitting around with Ernie and Lionel and my husband. Prob’ly drinking iced tea, plotting the way they’d fuck you over.”

“Charlie,” the Reverend said, “is that true?”

“I was out there today. That’s true. He asked to see me.”

He stared at me long and hard. I noticed his erection slowly fall to low-ebb, like the Hindenburg crash-and-burning.

“I see,” he said. “Doing what exactly, Charlie? Plotting against me?”

“Ishy has some ideas about you, Rev. Most of them are true.”

“Uh-huh. And he’s recruited you, has he?”

“It’s not—”

“Shut up, Charlie. Just shut your mouth.” He shook his head. “After everything I done for you. After pulling you up out of the gutter, showing you the Glory of God’s Light! This is what you do for me. I ask you . . . is this the action of a good, God-fearing man?”

Any shame or regret I may have had evaporated then. A good, God-fearing man? I was not a better human being than him. I was not above lying or cheating or stealing, or even, God help me, murder. But the one difference between us, the one defining characteristic feature separating us, was a big one. And I held onto it with all my might.

Quietly, I said, “Hypocrite.”

He caught his breath, his naked chest swelling like a territorial baboon. He pointed one long finger at the door, boomed, “Judas! Get out!”

Without another word, I turned around and left. Belinda Ishy laughed bitterly, an ugly predatory laugh that sounded like a vengeful hyena. The Reverend cursed and stomped his feet, babbling some Biblical bullshit about thirty pieces of silver and the tragedy of men’s souls.

I could still hear him, even from the parking lot outside.

Dimly, I was aware of the fact that I was now unemployed. Again. I would have to come back to the church at some point for my things, but I didn’t want to think about that. The Malibu—which I’d been using more than the Reverend had—was also a thing of the past. I kind of liked that Malibu.

Welcome back to the bottom, Charlie! Been a long time, where ya been? Pull up a chair and take a load off.

Back to square one. Can’t say I missed it.

There was too much anger churning around in my gut to make room for feelings of sorrow or loss. It wasn’t an anger directed at any one person, but a big and nasty emotion, mammoth enough to cover just about everyone. I was furious with the Reverend, and with Bishop Ishy and Ishy’s wife, with Forrey and Oldfield. I was even furious with Elise, for seeing and understanding the inevitability that I was blind to.

It was all screwed up. They were all screwed up. And they were screwing me up right along with them. Bastards. Fucking parasites, bleeding me dry.