Feast for Thieves (17 page)

Well, and Bobbie Barker plumb gave me a hug.

Those next few weeks in Cut Eye, Texas, were some of the happiest of my life. I reckoned they were happy days for all the townsfolk, mostly. Some talked about a new spirit in the air. Others called it “revival,” but I didn’t know nothing about that. I kept meeting with the deacon board and with Mert, kept learning things from Bobbie and eating her picnic snacks, kept preparing sermons and delivering them, kept visiting folks at their homes and in jail, kept chopping firewood every chance I got.

I got paid in cash and paid off my bill at the mercantile. Emma Hackathorn decided to buy the place from the estate of Woburn Jones. She wasn’t bringing in any money since her husband died in the traffic accident, so times were tough for the family, and she reckoned she’d go forward even grieving as she was. Her youngest child was able to play in the store while the three oldest children were at school. Emma looked genuinely happy most days, and even happier once Gummer Lopez from the filling station started courting her. I didn’t see them right off as a couple, but he had a gentle way with her. In time, I could see him becoming a husband to her, a father to her fatherless children. The sheriff spoke to me about it once, asked what I thought of the matter, and all I said was, “Well, it’s worth a wait and see.”

Four times over the next two months I traveled up the highway in the DUKW to visit Sunny at the Chicorys’ house of evil. I still hadn’t told anyone in Cut Eye about my daughter, nor did I plan to unless necessary. She still wasn’t talking yet, which concerned me plenty, but she began to warm to me, to understand I had a substance of history with her, and that I was at least one trusted grown-up in her life. I paid Rance seventy-five dollars I made from cutting wood, and he seemed both surprised and pleased to see that amount of cash. I promised Rance I’d return as soon as I could with more. Sunny looked to be at peace for the time being, although it was still mighty risky every moment of her living with the Chicorys.

With Mert’s help, the church began a building program, and the fella from the lumber store drew up plans telling us how to proceed. Each Saturday I gathered a group of fellas—most of the same who’d fought me at the tavern—and we hiked into the tree stand to work. We chopped and sawed all morning, broke off for lunch and a short men’s Bible study, then got back to work for the rest of the afternoon. Just like the sheriff said, the fellas seemed to enjoy a sense of purpose to what they was doing. They understood that a church was only a building, but it was a building worth having in a thriving community.

We began to discuss how what we were doing at the church involved more than creating a new building, which sounded funny at first to many folks. Bobbie pointed this out to me first. A man’s faith could spring forth at church, but a man’s faith wasn’t the same thing as the church. The building was related to the faith, but the faith was separate. It could exist outside the church building too.

What mattered most was that a man understood his position before a holy God, Bobbie explained. There was redemption to be had, provided a man asked God for it. This redemption could be gleaned in a manner of receiving, much the same way Cain received from God even after Cain had done all his wrong. Bobbie called this grand idea grace—it was all about giving a man a favor he didn’t deserve. That sounded strange to me, although I liked how it sounded too. Grace meant a man could truly change with God’s help, no matter what the fella had done. He might need to suffer some consequences for the wrong he’d done as a matter of the natural course of things, but grace meant that his overall debt was paid and the slate was clean. With grace, there was nothing that came between him and God. It didn’t matter if the fella had a rough background. It didn’t matter, even, if he’d once committed a crime.

It was the first week in September 1946, I reckoned, because Sunny just turned five and her birthday’s on the first. It was stifling
hot on a Friday morning, and I showed up as always for breakfast at the Pine Oak Café. Cisco had agreed to come on the deacon board, I forgot to mention, although he still had a lot of grieving to do, he insisted. He wasn’t there this morning, but Augusta was. She served me up a grilled T-bone steak with a side of scrambled eggs, a platter of flapjacks with salted butter and hot maple syrup, and I sat back with a big smile on my face and ate until I was stuffed. For the first time I was feeling hopeful about surviving my year as the preacher of the Cut Eye Community Church. I rightly was. In seven more months, after that year was over, well, no saying what I might do then. It wouldn’t be preaching, but with some solid job history behind me, there’s no saying what I couldn’t do.

That’s when a memory flashed at me. It was a returning voice, one I’d heard before. I swear I did. It sounded like the voice was coming from outside the Pine Oak Café, and I couldn’t rightly say the voice was speaking to me out loud, but the voice was clear in my ears.

“Hey fella!” said the voice. “You want to live?”

How that man’s voice was reaching me so far through those walls, I couldn’t rightly fathom. But there, eating until my stomach was bursting with Augusta Wayman’s good breakfast cooking, I nodded my head.

“Then find the good meal and eat your fill,” it said. “Swear you’ll do that?”

I nodded again, and that’s when I understood what that voice was getting at.

Once I was so hungry, so scared, and so desperate, and a tree broke loose like a strong hand moved it. A tangle of branches passed over my head, and I shot to the surface from the river of destruction. A moment later my knees scraped gravel on a shallow section of riverbed, and I stumbled forward out of the river, that river that seemed so far away now.

Well, I walked three steps onto dry ground, and started searching for that good meal. After much searching I found that meal. Or perhaps it found me.

’Twas what I was eating today.

I wish that feeling of near pure bliss would’ve lasted longer than it did. But if there’s one thing I’ve ever found in this life, it’s that the ups and downs have a way of evening things out. As soon as something powerfully good happens, something’s prone to be right around the corner, something mighty wicked. And sure enough, my hunch wasn’t wrong, although time would show it would happen in stages. A twinge of sorrow would arrive first. And then a bit of dread. And then would come an avalanche of pure terror.

But all that would come only after I finished eating.

SIXTEEN

I
t was a still a glad day that late September Sunday when we took a special offering for our building campaign, and Mert, who’d been keeping track of the cash, informed me that folks dug deep.

We’d gathered money for weeks before. The fellas and I had chopped a heap of wood and raised a pile of loot on our own. Plus, some of those single fellas had money tucked away in their mattresses and were hot to the idea of giving to a worthy cause, so that added to the mix. Plus, with attendance at an all-time high of nearly a hundred and ten folks on Sunday mornings, the special offering had been powerful generous.

That glorious total was written carefully in a lined ledger. Mert held out the page to me that showed the amount: well over ten thousand dollars, plus change. The church folks had all gone home by the time the offering was counted, and Mert wore a mysterious smile as she showed me the books, the strangest smile I ever saw in that woman. Maybe it was strange only because she wasn’t prone to smiling, but she looked to be reaching a decision in her own mind. I didn’t know what the decision might be, so I opted not to press the matter further and chose to be happy in the moment. We’d reached our goal, and that was worth much.

In fact—Mert pointed to another line underneath the sub-total—we’d actually raised close to twelve thousand dollars, enough to send Bobbie out to the mission field, thus fulfilling the
girl’s dream of helping folks live well in other countries. We raised all that cash three months ahead of schedule, and right away from the church telephone I called the sheriff at his house and told him the good news. He said, “All right then.” And just like that we were set to begin work repairing and making new the building and grounds the following Saturday.

I drove to the café and ate lunch—it was braised beef shanks in butter sauce—then drove back to the church in the DUKW. Later that same Sunday afternoon, Bobbie Barker drove her jeep over to the parsonage where I was studying for the evening service and knocked on my front door.

I’d mentioned to the sheriff that we had some good news for her. I was thinking of the extra two thousand dollars, of course. But after I opened the door and before I could get a word in edgewise she said her daddy already told her about the cash and she had something else to tell me. She looked happy about the news. Mostly, anyway. The girl was wearing a T-shirt with a men’s oxford shirt layered over it, its tail hanging baggy and the arms rolled at the sleeves, a pair of tan shorts, and sneakers. She’d been shooting baskets outside her house when I’d phoned her daddy about the building campaign and extra money. She sat down on the parsonage steps and patted the seat next to her, the way we often sat together outside when she helped me study for my sermons.

“Rowdy—” she rolled one of her sleeves down to her wrist then rolled it back up to her elbow, as if she was killing time. “Before I say what I need to tell you, can I ask you a personal question?”

I sat on the steps and stared across the roadway at her jeep, at its black seats, green army paint, and familiar grill with the bars running up and down. “Sure,” I said.

“It’s … um … do you have a philosophy of love?”

“Hmm.” I pondered the girl’s question. “Not sure what you’re getting at.”

She looked at the field across the road. It was blooming with mescal bean, least that’s what I’ve always called it—the shrub that flowers blue every autumn, and the field was filled with color.

“Well,” she said, “the great classic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley talked about fountains mingling with rivers, rivers with oceans, and winds of heaven mixing forever with a divine law. You know what a ‘law divine’ is, Reverend Slater?”

Now, that was strange. She seldom called me “Reverend” anymore and hadn’t used the title in weeks. I’d reckoned it sounded too formal for her to address me anymore.

“Well, I’m getting to understand an idea of divine law, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

“No.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “It’s not about you learning how to preach. When I talk about a ‘law divine’ it’s … oh … hard to describe. It’s from a poem.
Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle—Why not I with thine?
See what I mean now? That last line of the poem is key. It’s important to me that you understand what I’m asking you here. Do you?”

I nodded like I understood. But I didn’t. Not really.

She snapped her gaze away from the field like someone had given her a pinch, exhaled through her nose, and said—almost like she was annoyed—“Let me see if I can ask this another way. You got any PT gear in that parsonage of yours?”

“Sure.”

She stood. “Let’s go for a run then.”

“A run?”

“Don’t question my ways, Rowdy. Just see if you can keep up.”

There she was being ornery again. I decided not to rile up her aggravations further, went into the house, changed into some old PT gear of Danny Wayman’s that Augusta had given me, and came back outside. Bobbie untied the oxford shirt and tossed it on the steps, stretched once and touched her toes, and I noticed
for the first time she was wearing a small pistol strapped tight against her T-shirt at the small of her back. It was a Stevens Old Model Pocket .22, a nice little handful for a lady’s purse, single shot and easy to reload. I’ve always admired a gal who packs a concealed weapon, although this wasn’t much of a gun. It was further wrapped in plastic, which made me curious. Bobbie noticed me looking at it.

“Snake gun,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Snake gun?”

“Yeah, back when I was thirteen, Daddy and I were out hiking one day. I jumped over a pile of brush and scared up a rattlesnake inside. It caught the tip of my heel as I passed. Daddy threw me over his shoulder and rushed me to the doc. Fortunately I lived, but I was mighty sick for a spell. I think we all were. Sick with worry. Sick with death. Ever since then, Daddy made me carry this.”