This Side of Jordan (26 page)

A voice echoed across the morning air. “You two there! Come over here!”

Alvin saw the preacher standing down by the corner of the church. The homely girl stood behind him, grinning ear to ear. She pointed a finger at Alvin and raised her voice. “See? That's the skinny one there that don't accept Jesus as fact!”

“How come you two been waiting out here?” the preacher called up to Alvin.

“He's ascared of Jesus, that's why,” said the girl, “I believe that's how come he don't want to hear nothing good for him.”

“Is that so?” said the preacher, slinging his arm around the girl's shoulder.

“I ain't ascared of Jesus,” Alvin called back to the preacher, “and anyone says so's a liar.” He glared at the girl. “I just rather be out of doors, is all. I was sick once. That ain't no crime.”

Chester came around the corner of the church now, smoking a cigarette. He stopped beside the preacher. “I told them both to wait outside so as not to disturb your service. Truth is, I was afraid the sight of the midget might upset some of the smaller children.”

The preacher studied the dwarf, then asked Chester, “You three been traveling together?”

“No, sir, I just happened upon these two young fellows on my way out of Harlan yesterday evening. They were walking alongside the road after sundown, looking all worn out and hungry, so I asked them if they'd like to share a ride. Feeling charitable, I bought them supper. It was clear they hadn't eaten in days. When I asked them where they were headed, they said ‘Topeka' where the midget had them hired to a job in a shoe factory. Recalling our Lord's admonition about forsaking our brothers in time of need, I volunteered to drive them. All I asked was that they stay to themselves and be on good Christian behavior when I made my appointments. I'm sorry if this boy here has upset your girl.” Chester gestured toward Alvin. “Frankly, he's grown up ignorant his entire life. Ignorant of other people, and ignorant of the Lord. He may even be a trifle slow, if you get my meaning.”

The preacher nodded, his face still grim. A gust of wind ruffled his black coat.

Chester added, “I'd be pleased to complete my presentation to you indoors if you'd be so generous as to allow me five more minutes of your time, sir.” He pulled out his pocketwatch and checked the hour. “I need to be running along by noontime, anyhow.”

“They comin' in?” asked the girl, sneering at Alvin once more. “I could teach this one how to thank Jesus, proper and all.”

The dwarf grabbed his suitcase. Alvin decided that if Chester hadn't been there just then, he would have given the girl a good choking.

“Bring them in with you,” the preacher told the girl, then walked back around to the rear door, Chester on his heels. The girl stuck her tongue out at Alvin before chasing after the preacher.

The shadowy interior of the church basement served as a rectory, and smelled like rats to Alvin. Rats and mildew and wet rot. He guessed they'd had a little water leakage from the storm last night. There were three sets of shelves on either side of the door with boxes filled with Bibles stacked up on them, and small cartons with what looked to be bookmarks cut to resemble the Savior. Alvin took one and stuffed it into his back pants pocket, then followed the others into an office with a small pine desk, a leatherback swivel chair, and three other caned chairs along one wall. A painting of Jesus suffering on the bitter road to Calvary hung behind the desk.

The preacher was holding a brass candleholder in one hand and a pewter one in the other, rolling them over, examining both with deliberation and care.

“It's a matter of devotion, I'm told,” Chester said, matter-of-factly, a salesboard held against his side. “A question of esteem that reflects how you and your congregation feel about the Lord, what He means to you, what place He holds in your hearts.”

“Ten dollars is a lot of money,” said the preacher. “I could buy a stack of hymnals for that and a new collection plate.”

“Sure,” Chester replied, “but you've already got songbooks and a fine collection plate that everybody who's sat in here for the last two hundred and fifty Sundays has seen and admired. What I'm offering is something different, something uplifting and beautiful to dress up the altar of the Lord and give your congregation a feeling of wonder and delight.”

The preacher cracked half a grin, barely perceptible. “I got to hand it to you, Mr. Harris. You make an awful good pitch.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Alvin looked over at the dwarf, seated beside the young girl in the caned chairs, suitcase at his feet, sharing a read in one of the hymnals. Alvin caught sight of the safe in one corner behind a painting of Jesus, exposed slightly by the tilt of the gilded picture frame. Probably Chester intended to rob the collection plate, after all.

“Trouble is,” said the preacher, “I just can't see how we could possibly afford those candleholders of yours, as much as I'd like to say we can.”

“Well, I understand your dilemma,” Chester said, affecting a slight drawl. “Times are hard all over these days. Why, just last week I was passing through a town in the Panhandle where the only bank they'd ever had there, only one that'd come to their town, just shut its doors for keeps. Broke my heart to see what it did to those good Christian people. It seems these days, nobody but bankers and bootleggers can afford much of anything at all, doesn't it?”

“We're just a small church and—”

“But it's times like these I find people are most in need of something to help them forget how terrible life can be,” Chester persisted, “something to make them feel good inside, something bigger than themselves.”

“How's that, Mr. Harris?”

“If you could afford it, you and your congregation would build the biggest, most beautiful church in the state of Iowa, wouldn't you?”

“We think we have ourselves a pretty nice little church, right now.”

“Sure you do,” said Chester. “It's swell. All I meant to say is that what I'm offering you are some items worthy of what you've already got here, something to point it up a little.”

Chester smiled.

The preacher shook his head. “No, sir, I have to tell you I don't believe in dolling up a house of the Lord. And I have to say, sir, that'll need to be my last word. But I do thank you for stopping by.”

Chester's smile broadened. “Well, we all make mistakes, don't we?”

The preacher frowned. “Beg your pardon?”

Chester quit smiling and gave Alvin that look he'd been expecting all morning long. “I'm just sorry we couldn't do business, pal. I hate getting up early just to be disappointed.”

The preacher walked to the door. “Well, there's nothing to be done about it, but I'm obliged to you for coming to see us, just the same. Let me show you out.”

“Why, that'd be swell of you.”

As the preacher turned to go, Chester drew his revolver and shot him in the spine.

The preacher struck his head on the doorframe and fell face first to the cement.

Deafened by the revolver's discharge, Alvin couldn't hear what Chester yelled as he grabbed the girl by the collar and shoved her forward into the hall. The dwarf had escaped unseen. Ears ringing, Alvin bolted over the body of the preacher and headed for the back door. Somewhere in the church above, Chester was shouting at the girl who responded with a horrid wail. Alvin looked outside, expecting to see the dwarf running off down the road. Instead, the yard was empty. Filled with confusion, Alvin looked back down the hall toward the preacher where a pool of blood was spreading out from under his black coat. Upstairs, the girl had quit screaming. Alvin wanted to go hide out somewhere. He didn't give a hang about his split or becoming a big shot, nor was he afraid of going back on Chester, because he knew that sooner or later, the cops would get them both, dead sure.

But instead of beating it out of the church, he climbed a narrow paneled oak stairway that brought him up behind the stage backing the empty pulpit where the small church choir had stood during morning service. Only a stack of hymnals remained, and the silence within the building brought a quiver to Alvin's soul. He walked over to the pulpit and gazed out on the quiet rows of pews, and saw the dwarf kneeling in supplication to God, murmuring prayers in a hoarse and worried voice. Somewhere within a room high in the church, a mean thump echoed through the walls.

“How come you run off like that?” Alvin asked, gripping the sides of the pulpit like the preacher himself. His trembling hands rattled the wood. He felt woozy with shock and fear.

“Murder,” replied the dwarf, rising to his feet once again. “Despicable and low. Villainous!” He contorted his face to reinforce the words.

“Ain't many killings you can call good,” the farm boy said, his legs quivering, too.

“In a house of the Lord!”

“Ain't many good places to get killed, neither.” He was becoming sick to his stomach.

“It's so discouraging,” the dwarf said, shaking his head. “I'm thoroughly ashamed.”

“On what account?”

“I'm sure we oughtn't to have let him do it. His vileness bears witness upon us as well.”

“I'd be quiet, if I was you. If we can hear him up there,” Alvin said, nodding at the ceiling, “he sure can hear us down here.”

“I witnessed the life pass out of a man of God as I stood by in silence.”

“You shut your mouth now,” said Alvin, fear rising in his gut. Footsteps creaked in the wood overhead as someone crossed from end of the room to the other. Alvin tiptoed away from the pulpit back to a small door behind the choir box. He opened the door as quietly as he could manage and slipped inside another narrow oak staircase, this one leading high into an attic beneath the belltower. Alvin crept up to a landing illuminated by a stained glass window of the Apostles at Galilee. Five steps higher still was another door. Alvin pressed an ear to the wood. When he heard nothing, he nudged the door open a crack and peeked into a small room. Flat on her back in bed, dress hiked up to her chin and naked underneath, lay the young girl. Her eyes were shut tight, face smeared with tears, lips pursed, her arms held rigidly to her sides, legs bent apart and bowed at the knees. Blood from her middle parts stained the sheets. Chester stood at the far window, fastening the buttons of his vest. He was whistling one of those jazz tunes Alvin heard on the radio from Chicago at night. The farm boy eased the door shut and hurried back downstairs where he saw the front door flung open to the sunlight. He went outside and looked around and found the dwarf hurrying away with his suitcase, a quarter of a mile down the road. Was he trying to make a bust for it? Alvin took off after him, yelling for Rascal to stop. Scared of getting left behind, he snatched his own suitcase from the weeds across the road and ran like a bandit to catch up.

It didn't take long. Seeing the farm boy coming, the dwarf quit walking and stared back at the church steeple and the flock of sparrows circling its faded belltower. Still horrified by the shooting, Rascal's eyes were fixed upward, his spirit destitute. As Alvin caught up to him, the dwarf said, “My behavior shames me. I can never go home now.”

“Huh?”

“Were my pockets to hold thirty pieces of silver, I could be no less guilty of betrayal.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“A double-faced Judas is what I am. I ought to have warned the preacher of imminent danger. Because I did not, his death is on my record before the Lord.”

Alvin kicked a clod of dirt into the fenceline. “That killing wasn't nobody's fault but his who pulled the trigger. There ain't nothing we could've done.” Yet he felt his own eyes filling with tears.

The dwarf began walking again down the road to the south.

“Where the hell do you think you're going?” Alvin called after him. The dwarf walked on. Alvin hurried forward and circled ahead of him and blocked his path. His voice trembling, he said, “I asked you a question. Where the hell you going?”

The dwarf stopped and put his suitcase down in the dust. “I'm not sure.”

“You can't run off and leave me out here by myself.”

“Of course I can.”

“It ain't right!”

“By that I assume you to mean it would be unfair for me to let our collective guilt pass on to you alone. Have no fear. I plan on confessing my own part in this tawdry affair to the proper authorities in due course. And, in any event, I can hardly hide my guilt from the Lord, and it's His judgment, and His alone, we ought properly to fear.”

“I don't know no one 'round here, except you and Chester,” said Alvin, looking nervously about. He felt scared and cold in the pit of his stomach. “If you run off, what the hell am I going to do? I never been this far from home before, and I don't know if I like it so much.”

The dwarf wiped his brow with the back of a sleeve and stared out across the fields to the prairie horizon where the late morning sky was blue and clear. Nearby, in the wildrye beyond the fence, insects buzzed. A warm breeze was on the rise. The dwarf folded his hands together at his waist. In a reverent voice, he said, “Forgiveness is the Lord's, but redemption abides keenly within the guilty and the brave.”

Alvin told him, “We got to beat it out of here.”

“Would you help me save us both?”

“Huh?”

Hearing the familiar exhaust note of the Packard Six, both the farm boy and the dwarf turned to watch Chester wheel the automobile out of the churchyard and begin driving down the road toward them.

“Yes or no,” said the dwarf, picking up his suitcase. “Indecision is itself an act of cowardice.”

The motorcar drew near and Chester slowed to pick up his two companions. He wore the identical grin on his face he'd shown just before shooting the preacher in the back. Not a hint of worry at finding his two companions down the road. Before the Packard pulled even with the farm boy and the dwarf, Alvin said, “Just tell me what you want me to do.”