The Bastard Hand (24 page)

I stalked up Main Street, away from the church, cursing and wishing they would just leave me alone, leave their slimy little hands off my life. Every single one of them deserved a little slice of hell. They deserved anything that happened to them.

I stopped walking. The hole that had opened up in me earlier was now filling up, filling up with vile ugly blackness. Hate. So much hate and anger, I was sure it would never end. I stood at the edges of that great big hole, shoveling like mad, sweating with rage, shoveling, shoveling, filling the hole. The dirt, the vile ugly black dirt, kept piling up beside me, faster than I could chuck it into the hole. I would go insane before I ever filled it, because it was bottomless.

For the first time in weeks, my hands began to ache. I looked at them and wasn’t surprised to see the deadly amber light surrounding my fingers.

I had to stop.

But they were all against me. They wanted to destroy me. They were toying with me, watching to see how much I could take. . . .

“Stop,” I said out loud. Not a scream, not like the way I felt, but softly, firmly. A middle-aged man jogged past, eyed me as if I was a big stray dog shitting right there on the sidewalk. He kept jogging, not even looking back at me.

A change was happening, somewhere deep in my head. I felt its pressure against my skull, pushing, stretching against the gray matter of my brain, demanding to be acknowledged. I couldn’t stop it from breaking out. I was scared of it, because I knew it boded bad, bad, bad. It wasn’t a fugue and it wasn’t a bout of mania and it wasn’t anything I’d ever felt before.

Then it was free and I went belly-up and collapsed on the soft grass of the park under the sad sanctity of a weeping willow and I wasn’t scared anymore.

Tears still blurred my eyes, but I was laughing. The hate was gone and I felt better, I felt strange, a kind of strange I’d never felt before, and suddenly everything was clear.

I was going to do what I had to do, and goddamn the consequences. We were all just fish, and Cuba Landing was a tank. Bishop Ishy wanted to be the big fish. So did the Reverend. Me, I didn’t give a shit. I would be the fisherman.

I walked the whole way back to Elise’s house, about a thirty-minute trip. Just like the old days, when I would walk and walk and walk for hours, pushing steadily southward, with the ugly highway stretching behind and before me without end. After I’d left the hospital—“released myself on my own recognizance” as Mayor Ishy put it—I had gotten to the point where walking incredible distances became second-nature and I wouldn’t have thought twice about an uninterrupted stroll of eight or nine hours. But the easy life of the last month had spoiled me, not to mention the beating, and by the time I made it to Elise’s, I was ready to drop.

“I assume you went to see him today. Didn’t you?”

“Yes. I did.”

She looked at my chest and said quietly, “Why?”

“To give him a chance. To see if he would do something to make me want to stick by him.”

“Did he?”

I shook my head. “No. Not even close.”

“You’ve made up your mind, then.”

Her green eyes went big and soft, like one of those porcelain figurines old ladies go crazy over. The charms, though, weren’t working on me right at that moment. It was unlikely that any appeal to my emotions would have any sort of effect at all, because my emotions had ceased to be a factor in anything. My psyche was stripped down to basic parts, an engine and four wheels. I said, “Yeah. I’ve made up my mind.”

But there was so much more to it than that, so much more than simply making up my mind. There was no heavenly reward at the end to spur me on. I wasn’t doing it for Elise, I wasn’t even doing it for myself, because I didn’t believe in the happy ending. I wasn’t doing it out of revenge against Reverend Childe—after all, what was there to revenge?

No, none of that mattered.

If Elise could read any of my thoughts, she didn’t show it. She snaked her arms around my neck and kissed me.

“Charlie . . .” she said, her breath warm on my cheek, “Charlie . . . I know I shouldn’t say this. We haven’t been together long, but I feel it. Charlie, I—”

Before she could say it, I took her chin in my hand and kissed her. She struggled half-heartedly against my lips, trying to speak, but I wouldn’t let her. She gave up, moved my hands up over her breasts, began working at the buttons of her blouse.

“How, Charlie?” she said later.

“How what?” Half asleep, and the words jarred me.

“How are you going to do it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Silence for a moment, her head nestled on my chest, her hair tickling my chin.

Then, “It would have to be something big, Charlie. Something the town would never forgive him for.”

“Yeah.”

“Something a preacher isn’t supposed to do.”

“Long list. And the Reverend does them all.”

Her head moved against my shoulder, nodding. “We could never trick him into showing up drunk in public, could we?”

“No. Not a chance. He’s too bright for that.”

“Sex?”

“In public?”

“No, Charlie. On film, maybe. Pictures.”

I thought that idea over, then said, “Hard to pull off. I don’t see how we could get a camera in his room without him knowing about it.”

She eased up on her elbow, looked at me. “No, Charlie. Not in his room.”

“Well, where, then?”

Her eyes blinked fast. She said, “I think I have an idea, Charlie. I don’t know if you’re going to like it, but I think it might work.”

By the time night came, I was on my feet again, walking around the property outside the house and thinking about the things Elise said. Some sparse woods spread out behind the Garrity home, and as darkness settled over them I found it harder and harder to resist their lure. I finally gave in and stepped into the darkness.

The temperature dropped at least ten degrees as soon as the trees surrounded me. I walked along a makeshift trail, knotted with roots, littered with fallen branches and leaves dead and disintegrating into the earth. Night birds called to each other mysteriously, plotting their little bird schemes over my head. On all sides, there were sounds, faint, unobtrusive, stealthy, the rustling of leaves and the creaking of branches, as snakes and possums and mice stalked each other, escaped each other, died in each other’s jaws.

I walked.

I’m the one, she had said. The town tramp. The whore of Cuba Landing.

And I’d said something stupid, something about the state of her reputation.

What reputation? It’s already gone. And it doesn’t matter. When it’s all over, we’ll leave this ugly place, we’ll go somewhere better. Just you and me.

No, no, no. Can’t do that.

Don’t you see it doesn’t matter? Charlie, none of it matters.

And that was true. None of it mattered.

It was sex. Reverend Childe’s greatest weakness. A woman’s supple form, raw, naked, writhing in the pure abandon of ecstasy and pain. And it meant nothing.

Nothing except the downfall of Cuba Landing.

An amazing thing happened. After analyzing it from every angle I could think of, a sudden realization came to me.

I didn’t really care anymore.

And that made it so much easier.

So early Friday morning I drove to town in her “other car”—a well-worn Land Rover—with an untroubled mind and an unburdened heart. Really, I almost felt good. The Reverend would be expecting me to pick up my things, of course, but that was only a pretense for a more serious task. Somehow, I had to get back in his good graces—even if it meant lying my ass off.

I found him in the small front yard of the church. He labored in the dirt, planting little yellow flowers along the shrubs and distractedly humming a gospel tune under his breath.

I parked at the curb and watched him for a moment. It was the first time I’d ever seen him doing anything even resembling manual labor, but he looked natural doing it. Jeans and a black t-shirt had replaced his usual dark suit and white collar, and it only took me a second to recognize the clothes as my own. Dirt streaked his lean face, partially obscured by the locks of black hair hanging over his forehead, and the rays of the blistering June sun had already reddened the back of his neck.

He noticed me when I climbed out of the Rover and began making my way up the walk. Craning his neck, he peered at me through squinted eyes. “Well,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“Wonder no more. Here I am.”

“Mm.” He stabbed his tiny spade into the dirt, stood up brushing the soil off his knees. “Come for your stuff, I reckon.”

“Yes.”

“Well. You know where it is.”

For long seconds, we stood there in silence, the tension between us stealing my breath and pushing on my chest, and for a moment—just for a moment—I felt some of the old affection for him and hated everything that had happened. We were like two flies encased in the same amber block, visible to each other but denied touch.

But then that feeling left me, and I got down to business. “We need to talk.”

“Ain’t nothing to talk about.”

“But there is.”

“Well, then, let me put it this way—nothing I wanna talk about. Is that clearer?”

I sighed. “You’re not even giving me a chance to explain things.”

“Explain things? Explain things, Charlie?” He laughed, and anyone who might’ve been passing us on the sidewalk would’ve sworn we were still best pals. “How can you possibly explain? I think the facts speak for themselves. Unless Mrs. Ishy was lying. Is that it? Was the whore lying, Charlie?”

“No, not exactly. I did see the mayor. Forrey and Oldfield came and picked me up and took me out to Ishy’s house. You worry him. You’ve humiliated him publicly, you’ve seduced his mistress. And he doesn’t even know the worst part—you’ve even bedded his wife.”

He couldn’t resist a grin. “He doesn’t know that, eh? You mean you didn’t run right off and tell him?”

“No,” I said. Then, “What is it all about? Why are you here? What do you plan on doing to this town?”

“I’m supposed to spill my guts to you, Charlie?”

“I want to know. Something brought you here, and it wasn’t mere chance. I know that much. I know that you’ve lied.”

His look was a studied mix of surprise and amusement. “Now, Charlie, what a thing to say. What in God’s name makes you think that?”

“When we went through Holly Springs, you were as lost as I was. But here, you know your way around like it was your own backyard. You found your way to the Aarons cabin with only a few words from Oldfield.”

“Now, Charlie—”

“No more lies. Tell me. What’s going on here?”

He fixed me with a withering stare, and I felt the amber that separated us shift and crack. Perhaps contact was not so impossible between us after all—but it would be a violent contact, not a friendly touch.

He said, “Any information you might’ve been privy to, Charlie, is now null and void. You betrayed me. I just hope you got everything you wanted for it.”

“I didn’t betray anyone. Ishy wants me to, but I haven’t done anything.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I’ve come here to make amends. That’s what this is all about. That’s why I came to see you yesterday. And you’re hardly in a position to talk about betrayal, after all the lies you told me.”

His voice rose a notch: “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, boy? You got some kinda nerve, coming to my church and calling me a liar.”

“Now’s the time. Now’s the time to come clean.”

His fists clenched. “Get your things and get out of my sight.”

“I can’t leave until we have this settled. We were friends, you and I. All the things you’ve done for me . . . I can’t just forget them. Look, whatever secrets you may have, it’s not important. If you don’t want to tell me about it, you don’t have to. The only thing that matters is that we’re friends.”

I was surprised by the realization that I almost meant it. Almost. If he suddenly changed his position and agreed to patch up our relationship, I would’ve been at a loss to know what to do.

No danger of that, though. He laughed again, this time not doing a good job of disguising the bitterness. “Friends! That’s a good one there, Charlie. You’re standing there, talking about secrets, talking about secret motives and whatnot. And you had the nerve yesterday to call me a hypocrite!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I just mean,” he said, teeth clenched, “that all of us have our little secrets. You should know that better than anyone.”

I started, my mind leaping for meaning in his words. He knew something.

I said, “Look, we’re not getting anywhere with this. I was thinking about yesterday, about how you offered to make amends with . . . with Mrs. Ishy’s help. You offered me your hand, and I slapped it down. Now, I want to be the one with his hand out.”

“Mm. And if I slap it down?”

“I’ll offer my other one.”

He shook his head. “Somehow, Charlie, I don’t think Mrs. Ishy would be quite as receptive about that as she was yesterday.”

“That’s not what I mean. I—”

“Just shut up. I’ve had enough. Go upstairs, get your stuff, and get out.”

With that, he turned away from me, getting down on his hands and knees and going back to work on his flowers.

I stood there watching him for a full minute, not sure how to proceed. Then, silently, I went into the church.

It had only been a few days since I’d slept there, but in light of the current situation I felt strangely nostalgic about the tiny bed, the clothes hanging self-consciously in the small open closet, the modest row of books on the windowsill. Not much, but it was clean and warm and friendly, and it was the only place in recent memory that I actually felt was mine. I would miss it.

I pushed all silly, sentimental thoughts out of my head and began packing.

The few articles of clothing I’d acquired over the last month went into a cheap cardboard suitcase I’d picked up at the general store on the other side of town. In the bathroom, I found that the Reverend had already gathered up my razor and toothbrush and comb and piled them neatly on the sink counter. I scooped them up, went back to my room, dropped them into the case.