Raphael lifted a piece of paper from the kitchen counter. “Looks like she left me a note.”
She’d gone to visit Eddington last night. Ellsworth crumbled the note and left the house.
They hadn’t been in Anna Belle’s house long, no more than five minutes, but in that short time the town had come unglued. A crowd of about two dozen had gathered in the town hall parking lot. Sheriff Lecroy stormed from the jailhouse, parting the onlookers like a man on the run. The crowd shouted at one another and jeered at Sheriff Lecroy. Gabriel was in the middle of it all, keeping the enraged people at bay with her long arms.
Ellsworth caught the sheriff before he jumped into his old blue Model T, where he’d hand-painted the word Sheriff on the back. “What’s going on?”
“I quit, is what’s going on.” The man’s face was pale, his eyes strained red. “I left a note on my desk, right next to the badge I won’t be wearing any longer.”
“You can’t just walk off the job. What happened?”
“Where do I start? The town went to hell in a handcart overnight. You heard about John Stone and Beverly Adams, right?” Ellsworth nodded. “Well, last night Reverend Cane thought it a good idea to break into Father Timothy’s church and hang a homemade Pope Benedict doll from the giant Jesus cross above the altar. Then he knocked the Mary statue on the floor, and her head snapped clean off at the neck.”
“Reverend Cane?” Ellsworth asked, half-chuckling in disbelief.
“You see me laughing, Ellsworth?” Sheriff Lecroy pulled a bottle of Old Sam from the deep well of his pants pocket and downed a gulp. “Well, Father Timothy retaliated.”
“Wait. Where’d you get that?”
“Get what?” Sheriff Lecroy looked to the bottle. “Oh, from your shed out back.”
“You knew but didn’t confiscate?”
The sheriff nodded, wiped his mouth, shrugged. “Well, you’re different.”
“How so?”
“You know, you’re . . . you.”
Ellsworth massaged his brow, annoyed at Lecroy and even more so at the growing crowd behind them. “Go on. Father Timothy retaliated?”
“As if he had a bucket of paint at the ready.” Sheriff Lecroy unabashedly took another swig of Old Sam. “He kicked in the backdoor of Bellhaven First Baptist, walked in with a brush and a bucket of red. Painted each of the seven sacraments on the walls. And get this—he spells the words ‘child baptism’ and ‘original sin’ in letters as big as a man up the center aisle.”
“You don’t say.”
“Just said, Ellsworth. Ain’t you listening? And then that new Pentecostal preacher, the one with the copperhead snakes that’s a little goofy in the noodle.”
“Bannerman?”
“The same. Well, you know how he’s purchased that narrow corncob patch of land between the Moslem meeting house and the Jewish synagogue? Well he decided to welcome his new neighbors with a little gift. Puts a dead pig inside each of their doors and sticks a knife and fork in it. You get the angle here? The Jews and the Moslems don’t eat pork ’cause the pig has cloven hooves or some nonsense. Or chews its cud. Or doesn’t chew its cud. I don’t completely get it myself. But anyway . . .”
Sheriff Lecroy paused, his attention stolen by the sight of Rabbi Blumenthal entering Brother Bannerman’s side yard, where a clothesline stretched between two trees. One by one the rabbi plucked articles from the line—Bannerman’s undershorts, trousers, shirts, and socks. Methodically he placed them all into a laundry basket he carried.
“What is this?” mumbled the sheriff.
Ellsworth watched the rabbi with curiosity. “The old gooseberry lay.”
“That’s how he’s gonna retaliate for the pig?” The sheriff said it as if the rabbi had disappointed him. “By stealing Brother Bannerman’s skivvies?”
But then the rabbi poured gasoline into the basket and lit it on fire. The whooshing flame stole the attention of the arguing crowd.
“See,” said Sheriff Lecroy. “Hell in a handcart.” He opened his car door and paused before getting in. “Who knows what your masked friend’s gonna do when he sees the pig inside his mosque.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t much care at this point. I’m done.”
Ellsworth caught the door before it closed and nodded toward the rabbi, who stood watching the basket of burning clothes. “Shouldn’t you go handcuff him or something?”
In Fox Bannerman’s yard, Rabbi Blumenthal was shouting something in Yiddish.
“If I had enough nippers I would,” said Sheriff Lecroy. “Reverend Beaver broke into Moses Yarney’s African church and hung old slave shackles and iron masks from the pulpit. But Moses was too busy taking a ball-peen hammer to the new pipe organ at Reverend Hofhamm’s First Lutheran to stop him.” Sheriff Lecroy took another swig of Old Sam and didn’t wipe the dribble on his chin as he nodded toward the jailhouse. “They’re all in there, Ellsworth, hopefully not killing each other. Or maybe that’d be a good thing. I ain’t even told you the half of it.”
“You’re really leaving?”
Sheriff Lecroy got into his car, cranked it up, and drove about ten feet before stopping abruptly, tires skidding on gravel dust. He got out and left his car door open.
Ellsworth said, “Second thoughts?”
Sheriff Lecroy walked toward the woods with his bottle. “No. Just need to visit that chapel one last time before I go.”
The jailhouse sounded like a chicken coop and was about as crowded.
Sheriff Lecroy hadn’t told him about every arrest. Ellsworth counted eleven people inside the three cells. Leroy had managed to separate the ones who’d committed hate crimes against each other. But almost every one of the offenses had been church on church, religion on religion.
Reverend Cane gripped the bars and shouted two cells down at his former friend, Father Timothy. He called the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon, then went into a tirade about the new Catholic parochial schools popping up across the country, to which Father Timothy responded that something needed to be done to protect the Catholic youth from Protestant teachers—especially Baptist ones.
Gabriel had followed Ellsworth inside and was now attempting to quiet the jailhouse—not only the prisoners, but also the dozen or so visitors outside the cells, who weren’t so much visiting as adding fuel to the fire. Ellsworth pushed his way through the crowd and found Sheriff Lecroy’s keys on the desk. He’d left them right next to his badge and resignation note.
When he returned to the cells, Reverend Cane spat in between the bars, hitting Ellsworth in the chest. “Communist! Catholic harlot!”
Ellsworth hadn’t been to mass in two years and wondered if his Catholicism still counted. He reached his arm through the bars quick as a snakebite and grabbed Reverend Cane’s shirt, but he let go when he noticed the dazed, lost look in Cane’s eyes.
In the middle cell, Reverend Hofhamm pointed at Moses Yarney through the bars and said to Ellsworth, “He ruin my new pipe organ.”
Moses Yarney yelled, “Spaetzle spattzle. He won’t stop talking that German, Ellsworth. I say we send him to Camp Oglethorpe with the rest of them Kraut aliens.”
“War’s over, Moses,” Ellsworth said.
“Who says the war’s over? Huh? I say the war’s just startin’. Them Lutherans try to drown out our singin’ with their singin’ every chance they get. That pipe organ had it comin’.” Moses sat back down and hooted, “Never asked what he done back to me, Ellsworth.” Louder. “Never asked what he done back to me.”
“I did nothing,” claimed Josef Hofhamm with his heavy German accent.
“Came over on the wrong boat,” shouted Reverend Beaver. “That’s what he done.”
Moses turned on Reverend Beaver in the next cell. “Well if I’d gone with my first notion, I would’ve strangled your Klan neck, Beaver-Dam.”
Reverend Beaver grunted like a monkey, and Moses nearly came through the bars.
Outside
the cell, Gabriel pinned an enraged Dooby Klinsmatter to the far wall with a forearm. The short, fat man had been trying to get at Father Timothy through the bars. Dooby was in charge of keeping the Baptist church clean. He had gout in his right foot, and now would have to repaint all the walls and scrape letters from the tiled floor.
Father Timothy knelt in his cell and cried into his hands, mumbling what sounded like his own confession to himself, playing the role of both sinner and saint simultaneously.
Reverend Hofhamm repeated himself loudly. “He ruin my pipe organ, Ellsworth. Ruin it good. So you know what I do? I had five pounds of sauerbraten marinating. So I open lid on piano they have in that African church and dump it all in. Now it sounds like duck soup when you play. Ain’t that a hoot?” Hofhamm then went into some tirade in German, and his face turned red.
Brother Fox Bannerman was in the middle cell pleading for the company of his two copperhead snakes, which he’d evidently named Adam and Eve. He spoke in tongues, put his hands atop Beverly Adams’s hair as if to suddenly heal her, and she pasted him in the stomach.
Reverend Cane yelled something about how dead cricket pie didn’t taste so good, and Beverly Adams started crying.
John Stone was still in there from blowing up Ned Gleeson’s birdhouse work shed. And there, two cells down, was Ned Gleeson, who must have retaliated overnight.
John Stone called out, “Ned ruined my rosary collection, Ellsworth. Sheriff Lecroy got him for breaking and entering, but when he come in here, he had all my rosaries in his pockets. He started ripping off the beads one by one, and I couldn’t do nothin’ to stop it. Then, once he had my attention he started stripping them off by the dozen, like he was plucking dry corn from a cob.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of rosary beads had been strewn across the jailhouse floor. John Stone said, “I begged for him to stop, Ellsworth. Told him I was sorry for blowing up his birdhouses. But he had a look in his eyes, and I got those rosaries from my grammy.”
Reverend Beaver mockingly shouted, “John Stone got rosary beads from his grammy.”
John Stone ran at the neighboring cell and stuck his arm between the bars, reaching for the Methodist minister. Reverend Beaver bit the outstretched fingers, and John Stone screamed.
Ellsworth had to get outside and find some fresh air before he steamed over. His gun was holstered but loaded, and he was afraid he’d be too willing to use it.
Before he reached the jailhouse door, Raphael entered.
“What is it?”
The boy gulped, pointed outside. “There’s a man here to see you.”
“Who is he?”
“Don’t know. Just come here from down the road, asking for Ellsworth Newberry.”
Ellsworth pushed the door open and limped into the sunlight. The crowd outside had grown. Alfred was still up in the tree with his radio, but crying now. “Alfred, what is it?”
Alfred fumbled with the knobs. “Linda May’s up there with him, Ellsworth. She got invited to dance, and she never came home last night.”
“What are you talking about, Alfred? Up where?”
“Eddington’s place.”
Ellsworth looked up the hill. Vultures circled the trees around the yellow house. Lou Eddington stood outside it, gazing down the hill.
“Ellsworth Newberry.”
Ellsworth looked toward the new voice, the newly arrived man with the worn brown suit and bowler hat. “I’ve seen you before.”
The man stepped forward. “I’ve been here before, Mr. Newberry.”
“Don’t come any closer.” Ellsworth pulled his pistol.
“I come in peace this time.” The man dropped to both knees. “I come for forgiveness. I’ve got death on my conscience. I was lost, but I’ve been found. I know my place now.”
“Start making sense before my finger gets heavy, ’cause this trigger sure don’t care.”
The man looked around at the treetops where dozens of redbirds circled. “I felt the pull to come here even back then, but I was confused as to why.”
And then Ellsworth saw it—the bald eagle tattoo on the left side of the young man’s neck. He’d glimpsed something like that on the neck of a man the night Eliza died in the town hall fire, except then the tattoo had been half-concealed by a white Klan hood. Ellsworth staggered toward the man, knocked him to the ground, and planted the gun barrel against his temple.
The man folded his hands as if praying, tears streaming from his eyes.
Ellsworth cocked the hammer.
“No.” Raphael put his hands on Ellsworth’s arm. “Don’t. Please. Don’t let the bad stuff back in, Mr. Newberry. He knows things we don’t.”
Just then Omar shouted in the distance. “Fox Bannerman, you come out, take yer med’cine.” He must have found the pig in his mosque. He walked down the middle of the road with his rifle against his shoulder, a lit pipe smoking from the mask slit. “Fox Bannerman, you come on out of dat der hidey-hole.”
Rabbi Blumenthal looked up and stepped away from his smoldering clothes basket.
Omar had Bannerman’s copperhead snakes draped over his shoulders like two leather belts. Adam and Eve were dead.
Ellsworth looked back to the man he’d pinned to the ground.
Raphael said, “Mr. Newberry, let him live.”
After a beat, Ellsworth removed the gun from the man’s head and stood. He yanked the man from the ground and escorted him toward the jailhouse.
“I’m here for forgiveness, Mr.—”
“Close your head or I’ll put a bullet in it.”
The man quieted, followed obediently.
Gabriel stood at the door, held it open. She and the new arrival locked eyes. Ellsworth noticed the exchange of familiarity and yanked the man toward the door.
Ellsworth nodded toward Omar, steadily approaching with Bannerman’s dead snakes. “Go handle him,” he told Gabriel.
Gabriel went right away.
Inside the jailhouse the crowd parted and went quiet as Ellsworth unlocked the first cell, where Father Timothy had just finished his confession and was now reciting the rosary, plucking a loose bead from the ground as he recited each Hail Mary. He stopped when the new man entered and then motioned the sign of the cross.
Ellsworth slammed the cell closed and locked it. The crowd resumed talking, shouting, pushing, and shoving. The noise escalated. Ellsworth sidestepped and brushed people aside until he made it to the desk in the corner. He took Leroy’s old gold-star badge, pinned it to his shirt, and battled back through the throng. He removed his revolver and fired it up into the ceiling. Plaster dust rained down, and the jailhouse went silent once more.
Ellsworth said, “Go back to your homes, or I’ll pack these cells tighter than a log jam in a crooked river. There’s a new sheriff in town.”
One by one the citizens of Bellhaven began to disperse, but Ellsworth didn’t lower his gun until the last one exited the jailhouse. He followed them out the door and fired another shot to move the crowd in the parking lot. The shot echoed. Birds scattered from trees, even some of the vultures at the Eddington place.
Eddington was still watching from atop the hillside. He tipped his hat, but Ellsworth didn’t return the gesture. Anna Belle and Linda May were both still inside that yellow house.
Dancing.
Gabriel had subdued Omar, although he still wore the dead snakes like suspenders over his shoulder. He’d always preached about the peaceful nature of his Moslem religion and was doing so now, explaining to Gabriel that his urge to retaliate was over now that he’d lopped the heads off of both Adam and Eve. Now he seemed more concerned about his good friend Alfred crying up in the tree.
Ellsworth found Old Man Tanner next and told him not to go far, or he’d track him down and throw him back in a cell with the Pentecostal.
Gabriel approached Ellsworth. He surprised her by pinning a silver-star badge to the right pocket of her overalls.
“What’s this?”
“Every sheriff needs a good d
eputy.”
She grinned, eyes misty.
As Omar secured the ladder on the tree for Alfred to get down, a voice burst through the radio static, the voice of a woman from the past rather than some broadcasted studio in the present day.
“This here’s good ol’ America Ma comin’ to the town of Bellhaven from the land of no-way-no-how. A town founded on that foundation of evil. Tha’s right, massa Bellhaven. No mo’ pickin’ that cotton. Now we gettin’ down to cleanin’ some slave blood off them walls. Slave blood from yo’ hands, massa. You don’ never know what you walked in and saw. You don’ never know and never will now. It was us try and stop’m. Us tryin’ to protect these here woods. But now they be gettin’ through ’cause of you, massa. Now they gettin’ through . . .”
The radio fell from Alfred’s grasp and crashed on the ground. Dials spun loose and wires popped free. Alfred cried silent tears, and Omar escorted him down the ladder.
Those that remained outside stood speechless, staring at the busted radio. From their expressions and the whispers that followed, it soon became apparent that many in the crowd had recognized the voice of America Ma.
Ellsworth sidled next to his new deputy. “I saw the look you shared with that new man earlier. You know him?”
Gabriel’s silver star glistened in the sunlight. “I don’t.”
“Then why were your lookers peeled?”
“You saw it the same as I did, Ellsworth.”
“Saw what?”
“His color.”
Ellsworth chewed the inside of his jaw. He’d seen it, all right. That thin glow shimmering redder than any cardinal bird he’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 18
Alfred may have been blind, but he had enough spatial sense to know where the window was.
All Things Bright and Strange Page 18