Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06 (13 page)

“Arly?” Durmond said from behind me. “Are you okay?”

I stood up and tried to think of something clever to explain my porcine imitation. In that nothing came to mind, I was relieved when he said, “There’s something on the news that … well, did you say the name of your town is Maggody?” He pronounced it “mu-GOH-dee,” but I forgave him since he’d saved me the necessity of a lie.

“Maggody,” I said, stressing the first syllable. “It rhymes with ‘raggedy.’ But I can’t believe it’s on the news. Stoplight go dead? Fish kill downstream from the sewage plant? Pedigreed sow on the rampage?”

He hurried me into my room and turned up the volume on the television set in time for the tail end of the story. When the flat-faced anchorwoman moved on to footage of sump holes in Florida, I found myself numbly staring at the now dark message button on the telephone. “Not Ellen,” I heard myself croak. “Eilene.”

Her white gloves clutched in one hand, Mrs. Jim Bob rapped on the rectory door, determined to go on doing it until she received a response. “I know you’re in there,” she called sternly. “When I came out of the Assembly Hall, one of those licentious hippie women across the road said you hadn’t been out all day. She also said she was thinking about bringing you some carob cookies and a pot of herbal tea, but I put a stop to that.” She increased the fury of her fist. “Brother Verber, you are trying my patience. Open up this minute!”

The door opened, and Brother Verber blinked down at her with the unfocused gaze of someone who has been knocked up the side of the head with a two-by-four. “Why, Sister Barbara,” he said, swallowing several times between each word, “how nice of you to come visitin’ like this.”

She took in his bathrobe, pale puffy face, and eyes zigzagged with red lines. “Are you sick?”

“I’ve had a touch of a stomach virus,” he said as he held open the door for her and tried not to wince as her high heels clattered like a machine gun across the living room floor.

“We missed you at the organizational meeting last night,” she said, twisting her gloves and tapping her foot, clearly not in the mood to proffer sympathy for the invalid’s woeful condition. “I was disappointed, Brother Verber. You and I must join forces to lead the community away from the wickedness. No one else has the kind of dedication to decency, the commitment to righteous and oldfashioned Christian morality.” She eyed him narrowly, and her lips all but disappeared. “The meeting ended at ten, and I drove by here afterward. The lights were off, and I could only assume you’d found something more entertaining elsewhere.” Brother Verber pulled the bathrobe around him more tightly and searched his maladroit mind for an explanation that might gain him temporary parole (a full pardon was most likely out of the question). He took his handkerchief from a pocket and began to mop his forehead, doing his best not to squirm as her eyes bored into him like skewers. “You and I surely are the generals in the Almighty’s army,” he said, wishing his mouth wasn’t drier than a wad of cotton. “That’s right—the brigadier generals leading on the Christian footsoldiers, marching against the forces of evil.”

“I believe we were discussing your absence from the Christians Against Whiskey meeting, Brother Verber.”

“So we were.” He realized the handkerchief was so wet he was gonna have to wring it out in the sink before too long. “By the way, that’s a most fetching dress, Sister Barbara. It must be new, ‘cause I’m sure I would have noticed it if you’d worn it to church or Wednesday evening prayer meeting.”

“You would have seen it last night—if you’d been at the police department.” She sat down and made sure her skirt was pulled down to cover her knees. Her gloves placed squarely in her lap and her hands folded beside them, she once again made it plain she was waiting for an explanation and was willing to do so until she was completely satisfied.

“Would you like a glass of iced tea?” Brother Verber whimpered. She shook her head, and after a painful minute of silence, he came up with something. “I was on a mission last night,” he began tentatively, watching her from the corner of his eye, “a mission assigned to me by our Commander-in-Chief. Praise the Lord!” She failed to react, so he blotted his neck and moved along. “I went to Raz’s like you said to do, forced my way into his den of degradation and decay, and offered to go down on my knees with him on his area rug to beg for divine forgiveness. He resisted, so I grabbed his bony shoulders and said to him, ‘Woe unto them that draws iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as if it were with a cart rope.’ “

“You did?” said Mrs. Jim Bob, mystified.

“I did, indeed. Isaiah, chapter five, verse eighteen. While he was mulling this over, I dug my fingers into those same bony shoulders, shook ‘em so hard his eyes liked to pop, and said, ‘Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.’ ” He smiled modestly. “From the Gospel of Luke, chapter fifteen, verse seven. Well, that stopped Raz cold in his tracks, if I say so myself. A strange look came over his face and he began to cry like a newborn baby. It was something to behold, this miserly old wreck of a man, blubbering and mewling and begging me to put my hand on his head and grant him forgiveness.”

“He did?” Mrs. Jim Bob usually wasn’t the terse type, but she was having a hard time grappling with the scene. “We’re talking about Raz Buchanon, right?”

Wiping away the hint of a tear, Brother Verber sat down next to her on the sofa and put his hand over hers. “It was the most intense moment of my entire ministry, Sister Barbara. I was so moved by this unexpected triumph over Satan hisself that my throat seized up and I could barely speak. Sweat blinded me. My heart pounded like a big bass drum. The only reason I didn’t crumple to the floor was the angels on either side of me like celestial bookends, holding me steady so I could save the soul of the wretched sinner. Praise the Lord!”

“Praise the Lord,” she echoed weakly.

His hand, guided by an equally omnipotent force, abandoned her hands and began to squeeze her knee. Unlike Raz’s purportedly bony shoulders, it was soft and supple. “So that’s where I was last night,” he concluded with a moist smile, a little confused about where he was in the narrative. He shifted so his thigh was against hers, and he could drink in her redolence that was as pure as spring water.

He was about to suggest they fall to their knees when she said, “Then Raz repented his wicked ways and promised to destroy his still and whatever whiskey he has?

Every story needs a happy ending. “Of course he did,” Brother Verber said, emphasizing the words with a tighter grip on her knee. “Soon as he has a chance, he’s going right up on Cotter’s Ridge with an axe. He’s gonna smash the still until it ain’t nothing but a heap of rubble, and pray for the Almighty to guide his arm as he throws those jars of evil moonshine onto the rocks. The youth of Maggody can go back to their innocent ways, playing ball and doin’ schoolwork and attending Sunday school.”

Mrs. Jim Bob was doing her best to ignore his hand, which drifted from her knee and was massaging her thigh—and heading in a direction she found most unsettling. She’d been married nearly twenty years, and since the very night of the honeymoon, had resigned herself to her marital obligations (carried out once a month, in total darkness). But Jim Bob had grown perfunctory over the years, and disinclined to dally about his business. But, she thought, as an unfamiliar sensation began to seep into her body, her dedication to the preservation of Christian standards had not made her less of a woman.

Their thoughts were running in a somewhat similar direction. However, she yanked hers to a halt well short of anything less than respectable, hastily stood up, and said, “We’ll have to go along with Raz when he destroys the still, Brother Verber. Without us to help him maintain his resolve, he might change his mind. It’s our duty, and we have to see it through.”

With a gurgle, Brother Verber clasped his hands together and lowered his head as if in prayer. Actually, he was praying, and as hard as he’d ever prayed since he’d mailed back his final exams to the seminary in Las Vegas, although he wasn’t silently exalting in the glories of the Almighty. “Our duty,” he repeated in a reverent tone, “and we have to see it through.” Now all he had to do was figure out how in tarnation they were gonna do it.

“In Lebanon?” I said between Eilene’s hiccupy sobs. “They’re being held hostage in Lebanon, Kentucky—right?” I waited out another one. “But they haven’t been hurt?”

“Not yet,” she wailed, “but the policemen haven’t seen them in over an hour, so they could be bleeding to death right this minute …”

I grimaced at Durmond, who was listening to the conversation from the other bed, then persevered. “But, Eilene, they’ve been held hostage for more than six hours by now. There’s no reason to think this … person will do something violent after all that time. Do you know how it happened in the first place?”

“How could I? They’re halfway across the country in some town nobody’s heard of … I knew something terrible was gonna happen to them, Arly. It’s all my fault for letting them go off like this. Wait, Earl wants to talk.”

“Arly,” Earl said, clearly having lost patience with his wife’s failure to communicate, “the trooper what ran down the license plate and called us said Kevin and Dahlia went in some dumpy little café with a black guy. The waitress recognized him from something she’d seen on the news, called the cops, and then skedaddled out the backdoor with two of her regulars. When the police parked out front and yelled at the guy to come out, he came to the door with a gun and said he had hostages. It don’t take a college degree to figure out who they are.”

“What about the black guy with the gun?”

Earl snorted. “The police know all about him. He’s got some fancy name, but they call him Marvel. Said he’s been committing armed robberies all the way across Illinois and part of Kentucky. How he got hitched up with those fool kids is a mystery, and probably to them, too. Everything else is.” He snorted again. “Hold on a minute. I cain’t hardly hear myself think.” He covered the receiver and began a muffled conversation with Eilene, who’d wailed steadily throughout this last exchange.

“Shiite rednecks? ” Durmond asked, offering me the potato chip bag.

“Not exactly.” I took a chip, frowned at it, and dropped it back in the bag. “You know, this has been a helluva week.”

“And it’s not over yet,” Durmond said with a sad smile.

At five o’clock we drifted out of our rooms for the press conference. I was still concerned about Kevin and Dahlia, but there wasn’t a blessed thing I could do beyond calling Earl and Eilene for updates. I admitted only to myself that I was as worried about the physical and emotional well-being of the hostage taker as I was about that of the hostages. He couldn’t have known what he was getting himself into, but I figured he was regretting it by now. Red Chief was only a kid, after all.

Durmond joined me at the elevator. “You look nice,” he murmured murmured, “and not at all like a bumpkin cop. You should wear your hair like that more often.”

Okay, so I’d let my hair down, but only in the tangible sense. And run hot water in the shower in hopes the steam would undo the wrinkles in my unspectacular dress. And put on some makeup. None of it meant anything whatsoever. After all, I wasn’t wandering down to Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill for a beer; I was attending a catered affair in midtown Manhattan. I wasn’t a rube at heart. I was hip enough to don the appropriate camouflage for the big city.

“Well, yeah, maybe so,” I responded cleverly.

Ruby Bee and Estelle came down the hall, both gussied to the hilt. Eyebrows may have risen, but they merely exchanged told-you-so looks. We discussed the situation in Lebanon, but without any keen insights, or even dull ones.

Before the elevator arrived, other doors opened and the crowd swelled. Frannie kept tugging at Catherine’s sleeve and brushing at the faint creases. Her face pale, Catherine gazed at a reality of her own making. Gaylene Feather tottered along in spike heels and yet another leather skirt that barely covered the top of her thighs.

We jammed into the elevator and creaked down to the big event. The doors to the dining room were open. Geri stood just inside, her ubiquitous clipboard in hand, and a determinedly bright smile on her face. Her simple black dress and single strand of pearls gave her an elegance I couldn’t have achieved with a fat checkbook and a week in Paris. It wasn’t challenging to imagine her as the sentinel of a sorority house on the first day of rush. “Don’t you all look charming!” she said to us. “Brenda and Jerome are already here, and now we’re all accounted for. Let’s come right in and have a drink, shall we?”

We obeyed. The dining room was of moderate size, with seating for sixty or so customers. Each round table had a linen cloth, pristine ashtrays, and a vase of flowers. At the far end of the room was a long table covered with platters and trays, overseen by a pimply young man in a white jacket. A bartender waited behind a smaller table in the corner. Pedestrians on the far side of the windows glanced incuriously at us as if we were mundane freshwater fauna (i.e., guppies) in an aquarium.

Brenda and Jerome sat at a table near the window. She had a multicolored drink in front of her, he a more lethal martini. His eyes flickered at us over the rim of the glass as he downed his drink, shoved back his chair, and wound his way through the tables toward the makeshift bar. He moved carefully, which led me to suspect it was not his first martini—or second.

“Isn’t this fun?” Brenda said, fluttering her fingers. “Jerome, dear, I’d love another of these wonderfully fizzy drinks. Frannie, that color is just marvelous on you. Catherine, you look absolutely darling! When Vernie and Deb were your age, they wore nothing but sloppy Tshirts and jeans with holes in them. I can’t count the number of times I told them that they looked worse than ragamuffins off the street.”

Gaylene clucked sympathetically. “These darn kids today—they lack class, if you know what I mean.” She took off for the bar, her skirt creeping up her rump with each step. By the time she reached it, there was no doubt as to the color of her panties.