A Book Of Tongues (16 page)

Rook did.

He turned to face Mesach Love head on, both hands rising to
assume an arcane, unlearned posture — entirely intuited, each
individual finger snake-crooked to spit, or strike. Only to realize
Love was already doing something similar, in reply — hands first
tented to bless, then canted forelong so he could sight at Rook over
his own linked thumbs, a two-fisted shooting stance with no bullets
behind it but those faith alone might supply.

Rook felt a tweak of sympathy himself, at the sight:
I’m somewhat
going to hate having to kill this up-stood fool, if he makes me . . .

“Ready, ‘Reverend’?”

“On your mark.”

They squared their shoulders as one, two stags in rut, and laid
straight on into it.

The sand was a moving wall all around them now, and Rook felt
the Word come up through him in a wave, not even consciously
summoned. It spilled silver-black and wickedly sharp-edged from
his open mouth, a flood of sickness fit only to burn and scald.

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind,
and dumb: and he healed him . . .

. . . But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow
doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the
devils.

And Jesus . . . said unto them . . .

. . . if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself.
How shall then his kingdom stand?

(
Matthew
twelve, twenty-two to twenty-six.)

He’d pictured it hitting Love in a swarm, eating that holier-than-thou snarl off his face. But Love stood firm. Spitting back, from the
very same chapter: “
O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak
good things?
For
an evil man out of . . . evil . . . bringeth forth evil things.
”

Obviously,
Rook thought.

Love raised his “gun” hands higher, declaiming: “Get out, Satan!
Oh, I am strong in the Lord. I cast you out, you sneakin’ Serpent!
I am full in His power, filled up brim-full with His infinite and
unforgivin’ might — ”

Rook regarded him with curiosity. “You’re fulla something, that’s
for sure,” he replied.

Chess, from behind him: “Can I shoot him
now
, Ash?”

To which Rook just shook his head, firmly —
Not while I’m still
enjoying myself.

Since this first engagement had proved such an obvious
stalemate, however (his power just
jumping away
from Love, like
hands off a lard-slick hog), he must need to up stakes a tad. So, with
full awareness of the irony, Rook reached down deep into the anti-Sodomitical grab-bag he’d once used on Chess and began to quote it
back at Love, wholesale.

“Nice little town you’ve built here, Sheriff — shame to see it fall
on your sin alone, don’t you think? For —
Behold, THIS was the
iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and
abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither
did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

And they were haughty, and committed abomination before
me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.
”

Beyond the swirling barrier, Rook heard the creak and crack of
timbers, the shudder of opening earth, as Love’s church-to-be folded
in on itself, a house of cards.

Further on, Love’s wife was crying out thinly into the wind’s
heart, her terror all for
his
life, rather than her own: “Meeeeeesach!
Where are you? Fear nothing — God will help you, husband, in this
your hour of need! God will — ”

Rook forced himself a pace or so forward, catching long, tall
Mesach Love by both wrists and pulling him close. Saw those God-drunk eyes of his widen prettily, their pupils suddenly aflutter in
the wind-tunnel’s ever-changing grey light.

“Scared yet, Sheriff?” He asked.

Love bared his teeth. “Not of
you
, I ain’t.”

“’Cause you got the
Lord
on your side.”

“Miracles go both ways, ‘Reverend.’ Long as I’m doing his work, I
trust in His good will.”

“‘His work,’ huh?” Rook threw a glance back at Chess’s wrecked
face, and felt his rage whip up higher than the wind itself. “Well, all
right, then: Try
this
on for size.”

The verse was from
Psalms
— 139, to be specific. This close, it
rained down on Love in molten silver-black, a cursed shower of
wriggling worm-words blind-seeking for every entrance-point they
could essay, to the very pores of Love’s straining skin. A blood-beat
soul choir run anticlockwise, screaming out.

Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me
therefore, ye bloody men.

For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies
take thy name in vain.

Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? And am not
I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

Love took it full to the face, but Rook had to give him credit; all it
seemed to do was make him madder.

“How
dare
you?” He demanded, bitter-thick, through near-clogged lips. “How
dare
you take the Lord’s Word in vain, when you
stand already on the edge of damnation — ”

“Oh, it ain’t in
vain
, believe you me. Still, if this ain’t proof enough
of that, already . . .”

Rook clapped one hand against Love’s forehead, knocking the
preacher-hat groundward, and forced himself inside: a healing in
reverse, opening that invisible third eye in Love’s skull up like a glory
hole with one violent thrust forward into darkness, sure to his back
teeth he could fuck anything he found inside ’til it screamed. And
fully expecting that what lay beyond would be nothing more (or less)
than the contents of his
own
brain-pan — a hollow core of ignorance
and doubt, wrapped in memorized words. Good intentions, masked
in a bag of wind.

He’d
never seen any angels, after all. Never heard any still, small
voice . . . not ’til after he was hung. And even then — only
hers
.

Instead, Rook gasped out loud, staggered and went down hard,
all a-tremble. Around them, the sand stuttered, thinning far enough
in places to show the crowd outside what was happening, and Love’s
champions literally leapt to his defence — Tree-trunk at the fore and
grabbing for Chess yet again, only to take a bullet straight in his
growling mouth. Meanwhile, more shots rang out from a handful of
very different positions, as Hosteen and the rest weighed in at last.

Love’s woman hit the dirt, baby tucked against her with both
arms. And Love — nose bleeding, but otherwise unscathed — yelled
back at her over Rook’s head, which had begun to flail back and
forth as the contents of Love’s soul coursed through him: “Sophy,
take the boy and run, ’fore our Lord’s vengeance busts its banks!
He’ll keep you too, girl! Run run
run
— ”

Sophy,
Rook knew, wishing he didn’t.
Sophronia. And the boy, the
boy is — Gabriel. Like the angel.

Chess grabbed hold of Rook’s shoulder and shoved, hard. “Ash!
What the shit — ”

“That’s right,” Love told Rook, drawing himself to full height,
while the tunnel around them shook and spat. “Now you
see
the true
power of God Almighty at work, at long last.”

Was that more sympathy he heard, just a touch of it, in Love’s
clarion voice? Rook almost hoped so. He lay caught between two
equal-matched forces, prey to Hell’s undertow.

“Goddamnit, Ash, you Bible-drunk king prick — we’re under
fire
,
soldier! Get your big ass
up
and do your damn
duty
!”

The central mistake — the
hubris
, for which Rook was now
paying — had been trying to take hold of Love’s soul in the first place,
seeing how that obviously belonged to one far more equipped to
fight for it. Christ knew, if Rook’d just picked up a damn mountain
and dropped it on him, faith alone could never’ve kept the son of a
bitch uncrushed.

“That’s right, Serpent,” Love said, sadly. “On thy
belly
shalt thou
go. Of the
dust
shalt thou eat — ”

Not
just another opportunist — the Lieut wouldn’t’ve been fit to shine
this one’s shoes. He loves this shit-flat place, these stupid, quarrelling
people. Wants to do right by them, no matter the cost. Sophy over there’s
his wife, or will be — and little Gabe’s fruit of their sin, ’til they get that
reward money, and raise the church he’ll marry her in. Sinners or no,
though, they’re firm in their commitment, their hope in redemption not
so much a lie as telling the truth in advance.

He knows it’ll happen.
God
told him so.

Mesach Love’s done bad things in his time, like all men, but he’s certain
in ways you never were, about anything. Except . . . Chess.

Chess, even now grabbing fast hold of Rook’s hand and
pulling
at him like he was a skinful of water on the Devil’s griddle, without
knowing he was doing it at all. Sucking power from him in waves, his
face re-ordering itself, nose straightening with a visible ripple, eyes
re-emerging from their bruisy nests, as mean and bright as ever.
Bound and determined to pound Sheriff Love into the dry ground,
on both of their behalves.

And Love don’t stand a tinker’s dam of a chance against him, poor
bastard — God or no.

Rook’s head swam as he tried to form the words, but his dazed
mouth wouldn’t obey. Thinking, instead —
Oh, let me
go
, sweetheart,
let me
go
. This fight’s one I don’t
deserve
to win.

To which he somehow “heard” Chess reply, over their mutual
nerve-strung telegraph-wire:
Yeah? Well, too bad, Rev. Fuck
that
bullshit, right in the Goddamn ass.

Chess drew careful aim on Love, right between the eyes. “Eat
this,” he said.

While, at the same time, Rook reached desperately up —
stop
Chess shit
stop —

His hand spanning Chess’s, fingers and thumb overlapping, so
Chess wore them like a huge flesh glove — Chess’s index tightening
sure and vicious on the trigger, Rook’s slippy-sliding in cold sweat.
About as restraining as a wedding ring.

It was like the doubled force of both of them came rocketing right
out through the barrel, along with the bullet. Hitting Love not quite
square-on, but with enough force to spin him ’round, one spurt of blood
arching up to break apart on the sandstorm’s churning maelstrom.

Only winged him, thank God . . . guess
he’ll
thank Him himself, after.

Chess, rightly amazed by his point-blank miss, swore ably.

“You shut your mouth,” Love ordered. To Rook: “And as for
you
,
you hypocrite antidinomian . . .” Here he stopped short, however.

Because
something
was already licking out from the wound in his
shoulder, all white and icy-sparkling: salt, blanching him the way
flame blackens paper. His long body froze, all bones and glass, eyes
wild in a calcinate mask. Rook saw Love’s flesh bloom pinkly through
here and there, a breathed-on coal, before stiffening forever into an
almost-featureless pillar. His saint’s gaze forever lidded over, in a
single terrible blink.

So
fast
, Jesus! Like judgement.

At the same time, the sand-wall blew away, allowing young
Missus Love-to-be to catch sight of her man’s fate. She screamed,
while others fought to pull her to safety — the baby already having
begun to wail too, mimicking his Mama’s grief, if all unknowing of
its cause.

Chess laughed out loud, to hear it. “
Yeah
,” he snarled. “Go on
ahead and
cry
, little boy — your Daddy ain’t comin’ home anytime
soon, not now, not ever — ”

Rook retched a sour lick of spit, genuinely sickened by Chess’s
cruelty, the anger that had spawned it, his own complicity in both.
Then cringed back a half-stride when he saw bits of verse glinting
in the spew-up, silver-black and stomach-mucky — verse he didn’t
even recall thinking up. Genesis again, Lot in Sodom. Abraham the
Patriarch, begging:
Give me but one honest man, my Lord, and stay Your
hand against the city —

And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place
where he stood before the LORD:

And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all
the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the
country went up as the smoke of a furnace . . .

The words came torn straight from Rook’s head, unbidden. And
in that same puking breath, he felt the tide turn — swigged deep,
sucking all the power Chess’d taken from him back again, and
more. The sheer jolt of it lit him up, then backwashed, and sent the
same salt that had snared Love quick-dripping down the Sheriff’s
legs, curdling the earth beneath into a floodplain mire. Each of his
congregationalists sunk to the ankle, the knee, the waist, salinified
from their extremities up, so they crumbled and broke apart even as
they struggled to flee.

“Don’t
look!”
Rook
could
hear
Hosteen
screaming
from
somewhere behind, to the rest of the gang. “Cover your face! For
Christ’s sake, shut your God damn eyes!”

The salt skirted both him and Chess, though, avoiding them like
they
were the plague at hand. Like he’d suspected it might, so long
as they only kept fast hold of each other.

And Sophy No-Last-Name curled in on her child, praying, ’til the
rising wave of white choked her. ’Til only Mesach Love’s name was
left on her bitter lips.

Hours after, as the sun rose, Bewelcome gave it back from every
angle, a bleak wilderness of mirrors. In the end,
everything
had
turned to salt — no exceptions. Oh, there’d be wind-wear and
erosion to come, ’til the town’s edges lost their clarity, and travellers
struggled to identify the place as made by human hands. For now,
however, it was pristine, so clean it cut.