A Choir of Ill Children (18 page)

“Does Burke have any suspects?”

Abbot Earl suddenly seems embarrassed. “I’m afraid that in my grief—”

“You mentioned me and my brothers. It’s all right.”

He lets go of me and the iron is back in his voice. “Sebastian. She spoke the name Sebastian. I heard her clearly.” He uses his robes to wipe the blood and sweat from his face but he only tears it up some more. A cut at the corner of his mouth opens wider and the salt in his sweat must sting him horribly. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I never should have said anything at all.”

“Don’t worry. Burke hates me enough to put me at the top of any of his lists of suspects.”

“He doesn’t hate you, Thomas, he admires you. And we’re often frightened and jealous of what we admire.”

I think he’s giving me and Burke a little more credit than we deserve, but I let it go. “Could they tell how far along she was?”

“The doctor said ten weeks. They only know for certain because the fetus was still intact. Can you believe such a horrific thing?
That’s
how incompetent this . . . this person was.”

The funeral is over and folks are beginning to leave. They drop their flowers and say a few last words over Lucretia Murteen’s coffin, fold up their aluminum lawn furniture, and head home again. The pets need to be fed. The tiny ringing bells stop and the incense fades away on the breeze.

Watching, Abbot Earl grimaces. The grave appears very small and lonely now and it pains him to see it that way. “I don’t have much confidence that the sheriff will ever find anyone to hold responsible for this tragedy.”

“I doubt it too.”

“I’m going to ask that private detective to look into these matters. I hope you don’t mind.”

It strikes me then that Nick Stiel hasn’t been in attendance. Neither has Lily or the girl Eve. “I understand that you’ve become friendly with him.”

“He’s a good man with a great burden of sorrow. I only hope he’s able to come to grips with it.”

“I do too.”

I’m about to ask him how much he knows about Stiel’s relationship with Lily and the girl from the flat rock when he says, “I heard about what happened with Drabs Bibbler. I’m very sorry.”

It stops me. “How did you . . . ?”

His gaze is downcast and he does something that I haven’t seen anybody else do in years: he blushes. I realize then that one or more of the men in the lynching party must have gone to Abbot Earl for some sort of absolution.

In a heartbeat the consuming rage is on me like a wild animal tearing at my back. My field of vision fills with white spots and a pleasant light-headedness comes over me. I want to hang on to it for a minute but almost immediately it’s gone. I lunge as if to shake the names out of him but I stop myself before I grab his throat.

A breeze wafts his awful breath at me again. I choke on it and force my fists deep into my coat pockets to prevent me from choking the identities of those bastards out of him. My tie flaps over my shoulder like a whip beating at me. A snarl stays low in my throat. I never let it out but it’s there all the same.

He knows the murder in me and it doesn’t alarm him. He’s seen it many times before—in himself, in my father, maybe in every man. His tongue juts and I want to tear it out by the root.

He says, “No, Thomas, nobody confessed to me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I met with the reverend in his church. He needs solace as well. That poor man. That poor sad boy of his.”

I’m not sure if I buy it. It’s the end of sixth hour and a calmness descends upon Abbot Earl along with his silence. He turns and walks away, followed by the rest of the order.

I stand alone. My hands remain still in my pockets, and I still want to strangle somebody.

O
NE OF THE NAKED ACIDHEADS IN THE BACKSEAT OF
the cruiser is on a trip that’s begun to go bad. He shrieks and fights against the shackles, smashing his nose open on the window. Burke starts to approach me but stops, looking back and making little jittery motions like he has to go pee. He isn’t sure if the deputies can handle somebody like that, and he keeps yelling at them to take the crazy bastard to Doc Jenkins, who also won’t know what to do with him.

Sheriff Burke holds his hand up in a “stop” gesture at me even though I’m not going anywhere. The deputies start to drive off but they’ve got to hit the brakes and stop short when sixty-eight-year-old Maybelle Shiner rushes in front of the car and begins doing an impromptu striptease on the cemetery lawn.

Somebody’s spiked her lemonade. She’s sprightly for a geriatric and sprints for the front gate, tossing off her black shawl and pediatric pumps as she zips along. She charges past me in a blur and Burke screams, “Stop her!”

She flashes her flaccid breasts at me as she flies by and says, “Freedom! Happy day!”

“Nice tits, Maybelle,” I tell her.

What the hell.

Burke gives me a glare of unbridled loathing and goes after her as the deputies trundle up the meadow hill. Maybelle’s got them by at least twenty yards now and is stretching her lead. It’s fascinating to watch. Burke can hardly run at all in those oversize boots and he’s got one hand on top of his head trying to hold his hat on. I look around to see if anybody else is catching this but everybody’s gone.

The crazed naked guy in the cruiser smears his bloody nose against the glass and keeps nodding me over. I walk to the patrol car and stand there staring at him.

He’s pretty furry. Overgrown beard and a wild mustache with thick thatches of hair on his chest and shoulders. I’m grateful I can’t see his back. His nose gushes. He’s maybe thirty but already there are spots of gray showing through and he’s got cigarette burns all over. A sure sign that he falls asleep smoking and will go out of this world in a fireball. His eyes blaze with a raw eagerness to get something accomplished. Straining at the cuffs, his bony clavicles stand out harshly beneath the fuzz. If he keeps going like this his shoulder blades will crack.

“I think you better calm down a little,” I say. “You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

“I know you! I know you! Brother Thomas! You’re—”

His face is a crimson splash with flaring nostrils. He bashes the window some more and I can see that his nose will have a permanent tilt down and to the left from now on. The two other naked guys back there are in the happy zone, mellow and sort of swooning. They’re having a quiet but intense discussion about butterflies and cyanotic children suffocating because of their umbilical cords.

Maybelle has made a buttonhook move that would put Jerry Rice to shame, completely outmaneuvering Burke and both deputies, zigging and zagging among the tombstones.

I feel like clapping but I don’t want to take my fists out of my pockets just yet. I’m not sure what’ll happen and don’t feel like finding out. She’s tossed all her clothes by now and I wonder what the hell is in the LSD that makes everybody around here suddenly want to strip and streak.

Fuzzy is getting even more excited and now he’s torn a gash above one eyebrow that has him blinking madly. “Brother Thomas!”

“Listen, you need to relax and ride it out. Don’t fight. In a few hours you’ll be okay.”

“You are Brother Thomas, the breadmaker, aren’t you?”

He’s a fan of my baking. Twenty minutes of kneading the dough does the job. Plus the raisins, they all like the raisins. “Yes.”

He has to spit blood out before he can say anything more. “The lights, all these lights—”

I admit, it perks me up. I lean in closer. “Carnival lights?”

He frowns and looks at me like I’m nuts. “The hell you talking about, man, you stoned? These are God’s lights!”

“Oh.”

“God’s here and he’s got a message for us all.”

“Of course he does.”

He catches sight of Maybelle rounding a sumac. “Damn, look at that old lady’s tits flopping around! I hope they catch her soon, that sort of thing offends me. I mean, it’s just rude to crank up an old lady like that! One of these assholes here must’ve turned her lemonade on.”

He’s still struggling wildly against the high-tensile steel bracelets but there’s absolutely no exertion in his voice. The tiny bones in his wrists, elbows, and shoulders are cracking and popping loose. He’s going to need an entire upper body cast when they finally get him to a hospital.

“Goddamn, Brother Thomas, there’s a Ferris wheel. It is a carnival! The carousel is whipsawing around and all the horses are black, their eyes crazy, ruby red, vicious. They’ve got horns too, not unicorn horns but more like goats’. Like the devil’s! How did you know?” He snaps his head around and more blood splashes against the glass. “Hey, man, before I forget to mention it, I love your bread. The raisins, man. Most monks can’t bake for shit but you’ve got the touch.”

“Thank you.”

He shuts his eyes, looking at something deeper inside himself and not liking it. His temples tighten and throb, even his eyelids are quivering as he grits his teeth and flops back in the seat. “Ah, hell. Some skanky dude here wants a drink.”

“What?”

“Oh fuck! What’s he doin’ with that snake? Jesus, that’s twisted! I’m gonna be sick.”

There’s a loud snap and for an instant I think he’s actually managed to twist the cuffs off. But that isn’t it at all. His left arm has given out and a jagged stake of bone is poking through. He glances at it, gives a manic titter, falls back against the seat, and passes out.

The other two guys continue their heated discussion, which has moved on to Victorian literature, namely the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the pages of verse he buried with his wife, only to dig her up again years later. Fuzzy slumps sideways and bleeds all over the dude. They don’t seem to notice much.

Maybelle makes a bad turn and falls headlong into Lucretia Murteen’s open grave. She lies on top of the coffin laughing wildly and, from the sounds of it, thumping her head. Burke doesn’t want to go down there and get her and the deputies appear very uncomfortable about the entire afternoon’s events.

I collect her clothes, walk down the hill, jump into the grave, and ease Maybelle up until Burke can haul her out. Burke takes her home and the deputies drive off with the three naked guys in the backseat. Nobody’s left in the cemetery except me and the gravedigger, who fills Sister Lucretia’s grave the old-fashioned way, using only a shovel and the muscles in his back.

I look around for Maggie, scanning the distant cottonwoods. I don’t see her but I know she’s here someplace, along with many of my ghosts. I can feel her nearby and I want to ask her to protect me again, to guard me through these dark hours, but I can’t even manage to call her name.

T
HAT NIGHT WHEN
I
SAW MY FATHER SITTING ON THE
edge of my bed, snapping photos from out of the depths of hell, was the last time I slept in my—my brothers’—bedroom. After that they shut the door to me and I’ve seen no reason to force my way in.

The tension can be felt throughout the whole house, and my side hurts constantly now. But the time is approaching when we’ll have to face each other again. We are all very patient men. Dodi continues to care for them during the day, but she spends most nights with me. She’s usually asleep when I come to bed and she’s gone by the time I awaken.

Tonight, though, she’s waiting for me.

Another storm is brewing. I can feel the heavy pulse inside my bones and far in back of my eyes. Thunder groans in the roiling silver-laced clouds, and lightning occasionally dips over and hits the swamp like a striking viper. The rain comes softly at first, and the sweet scent of mimosa and loblolly pine drifts on the wind. My mother’s curtains rustle and sweep across my bare shoulder.

“It’s back,” Dodi says.

The restrained terror in her voice works against me in all the wrong ways. Her heavy breath is tinged with good scotch. She’s never taken a drink in front of me yet, but she can hold her liquor well. Now come the chants and the invocations and all that shit about my vinegar again. “You can’t expect to go through the rest of your life and never see rain again, Dodi.”

“This is different. It’s gonna get bad, just like before.”

“No, now listen to me—”

“The river’s gonna flood, people will be drowning facedown in the parking lots and gutters. Bog town gonna fall into the swamp. You jest watch. The dead get up, the past comes around again. Mama says—”

“I don’t care what your mother says.”

“Yes, you do, Thomas, though you don’t want to confess it. I done told you once. This is a storm of souls. That’s what she calls it, and I see no reason to argue with that a’tall. Neither should you.”

“I’m not arguing. I’ll handle things in my own way.”

“How?”

“Shh.”

“But how?”

Dodi is afraid of listening to all the gurgling, sluicing water pounding at the roof. That thumping at the walls is too much like the knocking of the dead and doomed just waiting to come inside. It seems like such a long time since she’s run across the yard in her cotton summer dress and swung on the old tire hanging in the yard while the rain darkened her hair and splashed down her legs.

She smooths herself against the mattress, sheets twining tightly around her body, her breasts damp and shining white in the dim light.

“The ghosts, they coming back.”

I say something to her that I know I shouldn’t, but it’s like a whisper that’s been forced out from inside. “They’ve never left.”

“More fool you then to deny what’s happenin’. It wants us. It’s always wanted us. Everybody, the whole town.”

There’s no point in continuing this way, we’re not getting anywhere fast. “You want me to go see your mother again?”

“I’m not sure. I thought maybe she’d know what to do, but now I ain’t so certain. Mama’s strong in her ways but . . .”

“But what?”

“Well, the truth is she can’t fight this too good no more. She’s down to only six fingers.”

“Jesus Christ!” I blurt out.

She nods, shrewdly, cannily, aware of more than she should be. She rubs her feet together like a little girl. “I’m just talking because I need to, that’s the only reason. I don’t mean to unsettle you none.”