Feast for Thieves (8 page)

“You’re the church secretary?”

“You expecting somebody else? Name’s Myrtle Cahoon, but everybody calls me Mert. I’ve been administrating this office now for eighteen years, but you’ll only find me in this place an hour each day. Time’s wasting and I also sell eggs and put up fruit and deliver mail to a rural route and drive the school bus mornings and afternoons. My husband, Clay, is a kindhearted dirt farmer, the purest man you’ll ever meet. He’s ailing with fevers, can’t work anymore, and needs medication, and medicine ain’t cheap. You got any more smart questions?”

I shrugged. “I suppose you could show me around.”

“Nothing to see. This here’s the church building. Out back are the privies, a bar of soap, and a faucet for washing hands. There’s a toolshed with a ladder in it, and next door is the parsonage where you’ll stay. To the west lies a hundred and eighty acres of slash pine forest deeded by the church board, and you’ll need to start now to put in a winter’s stock of firewood if you want to stay warm next cold spell. You’re also welcome to chop and sell all you want for your personal savings, and if you ask me, a strong fella such as yourself would be a fool not to spend every waking minute doing
exactly that. I left two keys for you on my desk—one for the parsonage, one for the church. Reverend Bobby will be dropping by in an hour to explain more of the job. Have I left anything out?”

“Reverend Bobby?”

“The missionary who’s been holding the church together during the war. Didn’t the sheriff explain anything?”

“Not much, no.”

“Well, the expectations are straightforward. No smoking, drinking, drunkenness, chaw, gambling, movie going, dancing, loud music, novel reading, gum chewing, card playing of any sort, or unchaperoned visits with ladies in the parsonage. You’ll work more than a full day and receive lower than normal wages, but since it’s a preaching job that’s to be expected. Consider yourself lucky to have a job. The church will need to know your whereabouts at all times, so leave a note on my desk each morning with your schedule as you know it. The phone rings in my office and it’s rigged to a bell in the parsonage, so you’ll know it when you hear it. May sound obvious, but be sure to answer the phone whenever it rings. The car you drive must be nice enough to look presentable, but not so nice as to put on airs. Same goes with your clothes. Wear a shirt with a collar at all times and a suit jacket with a tie when making pastoral calls. Make sure your shirt is well ironed. Have I forgotten anything?”

I stood silent, letting it sink in. I had no idea the scope of expectations placed on preachers.

Mert pointed to her car. “I best be off. The cleaning supplies are in the furnace room. You’ll want to get started on the sanctuary—this being Friday, Sunday’s coming quick. Where’s your books and things—they still being shipped?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Well, we should get along fine, Reverend Slater. I’m firm but I’m fair, and as long as you preach the gospel, keep your sermons short, and don’t cross me, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Worry about? What do you mean?”

She held out her hand and we shook. “I sign your checks.”

It was only eight o’clock in the morning yet the sun was already hot. I wandered behind the church, scoped out the fuller layout of the property, then ambled over to the parsonage front door and peeked inside. It wasn’t locked neither, and inside was a living area with a stone fireplace, an old couch, and one hard-backed chair. A kitchen lay beyond it with a table and the other three chairs along with a sink, stove, and fridge. To the right lay a bedroom with a bare closet and a double bed. To the front of the house lay a second bedroom with a baby crib and two cots nearby, about the right size for children.

The water was on when I tried it from the kitchen faucet and it ran cold and clear, but there was no indoor bathroom and no shower. A washtub lay to one side on the kitchen floor, and I reckoned that’s what a fella and his family bathed in, respectively, if he so had one. The entire parsonage was maybe five hundred square feet. It was budget-built and not maintained well. The floorboards were warped. The outside walls had been tar papered for insulation, but the paper was ripped and worn. In places I could see straight through the walls to the outside. This ceiling, too, was brown from water damage, and the entire place stunk of not being used. I wondered what sort of a man this Reverend Bobby might be if he didn’t care for his living quarters. Maybe he stayed someplace else.

I walked outside, saw the firewood area to the right side of the building under a wood awning, and noticed the wood was down to almost nothing. An axe sat near one pole with a whetstone nearby for sharpening. I decided to make good use of my time while waiting for my predecessor to come and show me the ropes.

First things first. I tested the corner of the firewood cover, saw it was strong enough, and cranked out a few sets of overhand pull-ups
from a dead hang. A man’s got to stay in shape every chance he gets, and I liked to do a hundred each morning whenever I got the chance. Next I grabbed the axe, chopped kindling, lit a fire in the kitchen stove with my flint piece, and got it blazing. Underneath the sink lay a large pot, and I heated water on the stove and ladled it into the wash tub until full. The bar of soap from the church outhouses was weighty, thick, and a good sort of brown. It plopped nicely into my tub. My filthy clothes I shucked off in a jiffy and I climbed in and settled down for a good scrub. I hadn’t bathed since being baptized, and that was just a scant dunk in the river.

My, but the morning was warm. A hint of breeze flitted through the open kitchen window. My eyes closed and it got downright dreamy. Outside, a vehicle pulled up. I’d recognize that familiar rumble anywhere—the unmistakable chug of an army jeep. At least Reverend Bobby had good taste in vehicles, I thought, to locate such a find on surplus.

“In here!” I called. “Be with you in a minute.”

The front door to the parsonage opened. I heard a gasp. “Reverend Slater!”

My eyes flew open.

It was the sheriff’s willowy secretary. Never did catch her name. With a rush I sat forward in the waters to cover my unmentionables.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Really I am. I thought you were Reverend Bobby.”

The secretary stood by the front door, not moving. She glanced away and then glanced back, not in a salacious way but only curious, like she hadn’t any brothers to grow up with. She glanced away again and this time I stared at her then glanced away myself, noticing in a flash her curves through her dress—all set in place by the good Lord in all the right places—and I wondered if she was going to be so ornery to me this time.

She cleared her throat. “But I am Reverend Bobbie.”

EIGHT

T
exas wildflowers were beginning to bloom across the road. I sat next to her on the steps outside the parsonage and ran my hand through my wet hair.

“Well,” I said, “I expected Reverend Bobby to have broader shoulders.”

“From what?” retorted the girl. “Gripping the pulpit?” She wrinkled her nose my direction and took a sniff. “You might throw your clothes in that wash basin along with you next time.”

“Relax,” I said. “It’s not the first time you’ve seen me dunked. I don’t know why you’re so worked up now.”

“I am not worked up. You’re the one who called me inside while you were taking a bath.”

“I didn’t call you inside. I only let you know of my presence as to not alarm you. Besides, I didn’t think a girl would be driving a jeep.”

“It’s my daddy’s jeep, and I’ve got no problem with the human form. None of the world’s greatest artists are upset by nakedness as long as nakedness is kept in its proper place.
O to bathe in the swimming-bath. To splash the water! To walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore
.” She looked straight ahead. “Walt Whitman—‘A Song of Joys.’”

“Oh, you got an answer for everything.”

“And you, sir, stink like the earth.” She pursed her lips and
stood up in a huff. “Let’s take a walk. I can recount what I need to more easily if I don’t smell you.”

I harrumphed but stood anyway and followed her. She led the way behind the church to a trailhead between the trees and followed it southeast back toward the dirt road that traversed south from Lost Truck Road to the river. The sunshine was bright for the morning, and the asters and goldenrods were already out. I spotted some buffalo clover and wolf flower and redbud with its brilliant pink of early spring.

“Your name is Bobby? Spelled b-o-b-b-y?”

“No, spelled with an ‘i-e’—short for Roberta. Bobbie Barker. I’m surprised nobody told you my full name before now.”

“So you’re Halligan Barker’s daughter—the sheriff’s?!”

Bobbie smiled, then her lips quivered. She quickly pushed away her family’s grief. “Emma Hackathorn is my older sister—she’s the woman who came to the accident last night. Our mama’s been gone for five years now, so it’s just Daddy and us and Emma’s four children. That’s our whole family. You?”

I sidestepped the question and asked instead, “I thought you worked the front desk at the jail. How come you’re the minister?”

Bobbie nodded. “I fill in at the jail from time to time. That’s what I was doing that morning you showed up. As for my job in the ministry, you ever heard of Rosie the Riveter? That happened in churches, too. All the men were away at war. The ones left in Cut Eye weren’t fit to run a church, except maybe my daddy, and he already had a job.”

“You trained formally to do this then? You can’t be more than eighteen.”

“I’m twenty-one. After I graduated high school I took three years of free correspondence courses from the university in Dallas. Their programs were subsidized through the government throughout the war effort. I’ve already got my associates degree. I’m heading for the mission field just as soon as I can gather the money.”

There came that upturned nose again, at the mention of a college degree, but I said nothing in return. We pushed out of the trees, navigated through tall grasses, and hit a secondary trail and followed it. I recognized this trail. The flowers on the catclaw weren’t out yet, though the bees were already getting interested in the huajillo, the flower of origins that furnishes honey for most of the state.

“Ah,” she said. “Here again at last.”

In front of us lay the swath of land that flattened out halfway across the flowing water, the one where a pool had formed in the eddy on the other side. It was the place of my baptism, and the area today, I admitted, looked downright scenic—particularly since I had less threat of getting shot. We stopped by the water’s edge. Pine trees and high grasses ringed most of the pool.

“
He carried her toward the Atlantic ocean, cradling her like a shepherd would embrace a newborn lamb. The cool nocturnal air mixed with the salty sprays of the sea, and the sand shifted under the clams.”
The girl looked downright triumphant.

“I ain’t so sure
lamb
fits that well with
clams
,” I said. “Seems a sense of elegance that’s missing.”

“Elegance?” Now it was her turn to harrumph. “What do you know about elegance? Why do I bother quoting my poems if they’re not appreciated? It’s like casting pearls before swine.”

“Who you calling swine?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Well, if the shoe fits …”

“That’s another cliché. You might want to study up on your literature some more if you’re so intent of writing poetry all the time.”

“Literature. What do you know about literature? I bet all you ever read are Dick Tracy comic books and the
National Police Gazette
.”

“I read … I read plenty.” The end of my words trailed up and off.

“Yeah? Exactly what do you read? Name some titles. What was the last book you ever read?”

I kept my mouth shut on purpose. We had a guy in my squad who went to university before enlisting. He kept a library of sorts, paperbacks stuffed into his musette bag that he’d loan out to the fellas. The last book of his I read was
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
.

“Just like I thought,” Bobbie said. “This was such a mistake. Here I was trying to be kind, but I declare I’ve never met a man as unwashed and as barbaric as you. We’re heading back to the church.”