All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  Ellsworth said, “No need. We’re just here to see Anna Belle and Linda May back home.”

  Eddington laughed—a broad smile, teeth too white. “They’re welcome to leave whenever they want. I hold no hostages here.”

  “Then why the two boobs out front?”

  “Can never be too careful. Not in these times. Were you not just stabbed recently at your own home?” He gave Tanner the hinky eye. “By the very man now standing beside you?”

  “We made amends,” said Tanner. “Where are the ladies?”

  Eddington stepped aside, opened the door wider. Linda May was asleep on a plush couch in the middle of the room, dressed in stockings and a garter and red undergarments, her head resting on the crook of her elbow.

  Ellsworth hurried to the couch and shook her gently, then more violently when she didn’t wake. “Linda May.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Ellsworth?”

  “You’re drugged, Linda May. What did he do to you? Where’s Anna Belle?” He looked over his shoulder at Eddington. “What did you do to her?”

  “We danced all night, Mr. Newberry. She’s exhausted.”

  The room was dimly lit by wall sconces. Red drapes covered the windows. The floors and furniture were polished to a museum-like sheen. More couches were scattered about the room in no particular arrangement, each occupied by a man or woman who was fully clothed but either drugged or asleep. Ellsworth recognized most of them. Miss Ribidoe from the bowling alley. Nancy Tankersly from Father Timothy’s choir. Berny the mail carrier. Brenda Baker from the food market stood with her back against the far wall, holding a rifle and smoking a butt. Janie Janks, Berny’s assistant at the post office, leaned against the stone hearth with a bolt-action British machine gun. Four men in top hats and suits stood in the shadowed corners, all heeled with rifles. Another suited man faced the wall, marching in place, knees kicking high. Three half-clothed women lay pell-mell atop a square plush floor carpet, all passed out or asleep.

  “Opium,” said Tanner, sniffing.

  Ellsworth stepped toward Eddington and gripped the lapels of his jacket. “Where is she?”

  Eddington grinned.

  “She done did the dance, Ellsworth,” said Janie Janks from her place against the fireplace.

  “Where is she?” Ellsworth screamed into Eddington’s face.

  Eddington brushed his mustache and motioned toward the middle of the room, where a small rounded table held a chess set. “Let’s sit for a moment and work out our differences over a game of strategy.” He put his arm around Ellsworth’s shoulders, and for four steps Ellsworth went with him willingly—no, not willingly, but obediently. Eddington had that seductive charm, and Ellsworth quivered at how easily he’d done his bidding.

  Ellsworth broke away from Eddington’s embrace and eyed the chess set. The pieces were not historical. They weren’t from any famous battle he’d ever seen. They were expertly carved, as usual, but they looked like regular people, the women in dresses and skirts and blouses, the men in suits and top hats, overalls, trousers, and button-downs.

  Ellsworth bent down and overturned the board, scattering the pieces across the floor.

  Lou remained calm. “You’ve no idea what you’ve just done.”

  Ellsworth turned, gripped the strange man’s throat, and squeezed. “Tell me where she is. Or so help me, I’ll put you down.”

  Every conscious man and woman in the room cocked their guns and aimed at Ellsworth. Even the man marching the wall turned around with his barrel poised.

  Tanner hunkered down, covered his ears, awaited the flurry of bullets.

  Eddington gave no hint of pain or discomfort from Ellsworth’s grip. Eying the chess pieces on the floor, he raised his right hand high, a gesture that immediately eased the tension. The firearms lowered. Lou kept his eyes on the chess pieces but spoke evenly to Ellsworth. “Sometimes they slip through. Sometimes the flies tap so hard against the glass, it makes me want to jump with glee.”

  Ellsworth’s grip tightened on the man’s throat and then eased. “Slip through what?”

  “The cracks, Ellsworth. Sometimes they slip through.”

  “Who? What are you talking about? Where is Anna Belle?”

  “I’m right here.”

  Ellsworth let go of Eddington’s neck and spun toward Anna Belle’s voice. She stood three feet away, barefoot, in a wrinkled blue-and-white polka-dot dress he’d seen her in days ago. Her eyes were distant and glossy, her hair disheveled, her face pale. But most unnerving was the pistol she held in her right hand.

  Ellsworth stepped forward, reached out for her, but she slapped his hand away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Anna Belle?”

  “I know what you did.”

  “What? Anna Belle, put the gun down.”

  “I want to hear it from you, Ellsworth.”

  “Hear what?”

  “You know what.” Eddington straightened his lapels. “The reason you put the gun in your mouth and nearly pulled the trigger.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “America Ma sees all.”

  Anna Belle pounded Ellsworth’s chest with a closed fist and screamed, “I want to hear it from you! Don’t lie to me!”

  Ellsworth clenched his jaw, blinked his lashes like bird wings, and then said what he had one day hoped to confess, but not like this. He grabbed Anna Belle’s flailing hands and secured her wrists tight so she couldn’t hit him anymore. Her pistol dropped to the floor, and he kicked it away. All the rifles and guns around the room were on him again.

  He looked Anna Belle in the eyes. Somewhere behind those distorted pupils was the woman he knew and not the one she’d suddenly become.

  Maybe the truth would bring her back.

  “I shot Calvin, Anna Belle.” He gulped, filled his chest with a deep breath, not surprised with how quickly the tears filled his eyes. “At Cantigny. There was fog. It was an accident, but I shot him. And he died in my arms.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Ellsworth limped down the hillside, his right cheek stinging from Anna Belle’s open palm.

  He’d seen the hint of forgiveness in her eyes and thought maybe she’d return with him now that the truth was out. But instead she’d slapped him twice in quick succession and insisted he leave. That sting had been worse than the slaps. On their way out, Ellsworth had called across the room toward Linda May, told her Alfred was worried about her and wanted her to come back home. “Alfred?” She’d acted like she didn’t know who Alfred was.

  “Slow down.” Tanner struggled to keep up on the grassy decline. “You’re gonna fall.”

  Ellsworth didn’t slow. If anything he gained momentum down the hill, getting more used to the prosthesis and the odd, clunky cadence. Anna Belle with a gun? She was the last person he’d ever thought he’d see with a weapon—the last person next to Eliza.

  Eliza. He could get to her now. Hear her voice. Feel her breath on his neck. All he needed to do was go into the woods, open that door, and kneel on the floor. If ever he had needed to hear her voice, it was now.

  “Fool’s gold,” Gabriel had warned him. She was right. The voices weren’t what they seemed.

  Even so, Ellsworth veered off toward the woods.

  Tanner clutched his elbow and straightened his path back toward the avenue of oaks, where a line of six cars—five puttering Model Ts and a Morgan Runabout—spit dust on their way into town. The lead car stopped at the bottom of the hill, and the rest of the cars halted. Doors opened and closed. The new arrivals—men and women, husbands and wives, a few children—stood with suitcases, staring up toward the yellow house.

  “They can’t park there,” said Tanner.

  “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  In the distance, more cars arrived in a cloud of dust down the avenue of oaks.

  Players on a chess set. Two sides facing off.

  “Ellsworth, did you hear what I just said? Did you see the wooden crates again
st the wall? Inside the house back there, next to the fireplace?”

  “No, no . . .”

  “They were filled with guns. All of them. Pistols, rifles, parts that could have been disassembled machine guns. Hundreds of guns.”

  Ellsworth’s pace quickened. He hadn’t noticed the crates or the guns. He’d been too preoccupied by the chess pieces he’d scattered across the floor. “I saw you in there, Tanner.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “On the floor. One of the chess pieces. It was you.”

  Tanner went silent until the bottom of the hill. “What do you think it means?”

  “You were a pawn, Tanner. A piece moved across a checkered board.”

  Tanner chuckled.

  “What could you possibly find amusing?”

  “You called me a pawn, Ellsworth.”

  “So?”

  “It’s just that as a kid, I always dreamed of being a knight.”

  They turned toward the town hall and jailhouse. A family of four from Bellhaven First Baptist passed them, carrying suitcases and hurrying toward the hillside and Eddington’s house. Suzie Cohen, a regular at Rabbi Blumenthal’s synagogue, jogged toward the hillside, avoiding eye contact but rambling about the evil congregants at Bellhaven Lutheran.

  “Miss Cohen?” Ellsworth called out.

  She didn’t look his way.

  More people from Bellhaven followed with suitcases, bindles, blankets, and bedrolls. Among them, and pointing the way as a leader of sorts, was Mayor Bellhaven, who walked with the Bible held out before him like one would carry a cross into church. He glared at Ellsworth as he passed and then spat at his feet.

  Ellsworth stepped away even though the wad fell yards short of the target.

  They walked in silence for a minute as more people passed and then noticed smoke in the distance, coiling around the white steeple of Bellhaven Methodist. Ellsworth got as close as he could to running, ignoring the pain around his stump, the jolt in his hip every time the prosthesis touched the ground.

  A man stood outside the Methodist church with a lit torch.

  Tanner said, “It’s one of those new Latter-day Saints.”

  A crowd had formed around the torchbearer, hands in the air, chanting. Another man shattered a window with a brick, and the woman beside him hurled a lit torch through the hole in the glass.

  Ellsworth fired his gun in the air.

  The Saint faced them, then dropped to his knees in prayer.

  Ellsworth and Tanner turned toward the jailhouse and saw Rabbi Blumenthal hunkered in the shadows. At first he appeared to be tying his shoes, but there was something bulky at his feet. He lit something and hurried away from the jailhouse toward the woods. Ten seconds later a bomb exploded. Dust and bricks flew from the back of the jailhouse and bounced like dice across the parking lot.

  The blast knocked Ellsworth and Tanner to the ground. They sat up to find there was a gaping hole in the back of the jailhouse. The prisoners, dust-covered but alive, hurried out into the brick-speckled sunlight. The rabbi had set them loose.

  Reverend Cane shielded his eyes as he stumbled through the rubble, looking around in confusion. John Stone, who’d blown up his neighbor’s shed and the hundreds of birdhouses inside it, walked out behind him, then headed straight toward the woods. Ned Gleeson limped across the town hall lot, dragging an injured right leg but still in a hurry to get to the yellow house on the hill. Reverend Hofhamm emerged, coughing, and then dropped to his knees.

  Gabriel hurried from the main doors, carrying Raphael in her arms. She placed him on the ground, and the boy rolled onto his side, choking and spitting in the grass. Gabriel looked up, her face smeared by brick dust, then scrambled to help others from the building.

  Omar stumbled out next from the back. He straightened his mask, the glasses still attached to it, and seemed to be looking around for something. “Omar,” Ellsworth called from the ground, but his friend didn’t hear.

  Gabriel emerged again from the smoking building with Miss Dead Cricket Pie, Beverly Adams, and walked her toward the town hall to rest on the rubble. Reverend Beaver passed her as he stumbled away from the jailhouse next, squinting against the sunlight. Then he noticed his church burning and broke into a run. The Latter-day Saint stood from his kneeling position in front of the burning church and ran toward Beaver. The two men crashed and rolled in a flurry of punches and eye-gouging.

  Ellsworth was on his feet now, turning in a slow circle of agitated gravel and brick dust and screams. He found his gaze drawn to the house on the hill, where Lou Eddington stood silently watching.

  Did I cause all this by overturning that chess set?

  Three houses down, Dooby Klinsmatter had a shovel in his hands. Cletus Merryweather held a rake. The two men battled in Dooby’s front yard as if the garden tools were swords.

  Father Timothy stepped from the jailhouse, hacking and coughing, so he didn’t see Reverend Cane coming at him. Didn’t see Cane’s bent knee and loaded weight, and had no way to brace himself against the kick to the face that splattered blood from Father Timothy’s nose.

  Father Timothy rolled upright and kicked Reverend Cane in the groin, doubling him over.

  Omar grabbed Father Timothy by the clerical collar. He nudged him aside and then kept Reverend Cane at an arm’s distance so the preacher and priest wouldn’t kill each other.

  Raphael moved toward Reverend Hofhamm, who was coughing so hard his eyes bulged. He placed his hands on Hofhamm’s chest, and the man calmed. Moses Yarney, who, seconds before had been threatening to strangle the German preacher, stood still as he watched the little boy’s hands on Hofhamm’s chest. He whispered something about a miracle, about Moses parting the Red Sea, and then he dropped to his knees and begged Hofhamm’s forgiveness for destroying his pipe organ with the ball-peen hammer.

  Down the street, Gabriel ripped both the shovel and rake from Klinsmatter’s and Merryweather’s hands. After defusing that scuffle, she headed next to where the Latter-day Saint leader was still engaged in fisticuffs with Reverend Beaver in the middle of the road. In the background, neighbors and members of First Methodist Church filled buckets from the nearby hydrant and futilely tossed them at the burning church, while some of the Saints and a handful of Moses Yarney’s AME church did their best to stop them. Some of them kept chanting “Let it burn.”

  The lone Bellhaven fire truck approached from the opposite direction, siren churning. Someone had had the sense to signal the box. The truck stopped, and Max Lehane pulled a long hose from the back of it. He stood for a minute watching the blaze, before finally hooking the hose to the hydrant. But instead of aiming the water at the burning church, Max, a devout Baptist, sprayed the Saints and the Methodists and the African Episcopals, one after the next, until he’d knocked every last one of them to the ground. Only then did he aim the water toward the fire.

  Old Man Tanner brushed dust from his shirt, stared toward the hole in the back of the jailhouse and counted. “Not everyone escaped.”

  “He’s still in there,” said Ellsworth. “The man with the neck tattoo.”

  Tanner looked up. The hair on his arm stood on end. “Brace yourself.”

  Ellsworth took a step toward the hole in the jailhouse wall, and the earth moved under his feet. A three-second bowling-ball rumble, and then the quake was over, but it was long enough to stun everyone back to rationality. The fighting stopped. All eyes were on the ground. Hundreds of birds circled above the woods, squawking.

  “The first foreshock.” Tanner nodded toward the jailhouse. “After you, sheriff.”

  Ellsworth navigated the brick rubble and ducked into the opening Rabbi Blumenthal had blown in the jailhouse. The floor was covered with plaster and brick dust. The second and third cells had clear openings from the blast, but the first cell did not. Even so, someone had found the keys on the desk and opened it, which was how Father Timothy had gotten out. But the man with the neck tattoo was still there.

  H
e sat on a chair in the cell, looking at the floor as if contemplating something. He gave off the faintest glow, that thin sliver of red contouring his body.

  “You see it?” Ellsworth asked Tanner.

  “See what?”

  “His color.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

  He can’t see it. Only a few can.

  “It’s red.”

  “What’s red?”

  The man with the neck tattoo finally looked up from his seat inside the cell, his face smeared by sweat and dust. Yesterday Ellsworth had nearly killed him, and part of him still wanted to. Wanted him dead for having anything to do with Eliza’s death.

  The man said, “I saw it that night. You’re blue.”

  Ellsworth nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

  Tanner watched both men. “What’s going on here?”

  The tattooed man said to Ellsworth, “Michael.”

  Tanner stepped closer, right off Ellsworth’s shoulder. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Michael is my first name.” The front door of the jailhouse opened, and in with the sunlight walked Gabriel and Raphael, their colors as clear to Ellsworth now as the white plaster dust on the floor. “Green and Copper.”

  Ellsworth looked back toward the tattooed man. “So what’s your real name, red?”

  “Been called Tony-Too-Tall ever since I was six,” said the tattooed man. “But my parents claimed to hear a voice when I was born. Said to name me Uriel. So they did.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The town grew quiet after nightfall.

  The three-second quake had subdued the afternoon tensions, and most of the town returned home to clean up broken dishes shaken from cabinets.

  Alfred, Tanner, Raphael, Gabriel, and the new arrival Uriel gathered in Ellsworth’s kitchen. Not long afterward, Father Timothy arrived with Reverend Cane. The two men weren’t cordial, but they had set their differences aside and come with their arms full—Father Timothy with a heavy, cloth-covered basket and Reverend Cane with a plate of pastries leftover from a weekday prayer service. Minutes later Rabbi Blumenthal knocked on the door with a basket of corn bread.