Pecos Valley Revival

by Alice Duncan

  “Hmm,” I said. A lousy son of a bitch was probably worse than a snake, which was what Armando had called Kenny in the fight I’d witnessed.

  “I don’t know what to think,” said Myrtle. “What about you, Annabelle?”

  “Me? I don’t have a clue.”

  “Nuts. You’re always solving mysteries.”

  “I am?” I was truly surprised by these words.

  “Well, sure, you are. Remember last summer?”

  How could I forget? A stranger had managed to get himself killed next to my aunt Minnie’s chicken coop, and I’d fingered approximately six people in town, alternately, and had been totally taken by surprise when the real villains presented themselves and almost succeeded in killing Phil and me. In other words, I hadn’t exactly comported myself with detectival brilliance last summer.

  However, having been wrong before didn’t stop me from mulling over, there in Fellowship Hall, the matter of Kenny’s death. I decided Hazel’s theory was silly. “I think you’re wrong about Mando, Hazel. Sure, he has a hot temper, but I don’t think he’d poison anybody.” Not that I hadn’t thought of him as a suspect myself. “He’s more apt to pop someone in the jaw, I should think. And if he did that to Kenny, he’d probably be the one who got hurt.”

  “That’s a good point, Annabelle!” Myrtle sounded as if she was proud of me. Turning to Hazel, she said, “What do you say to that, Hazel Fish?”

  Hazel didn’t get to say anything, because my mother and father showed up at that point. “Let’s get going, Annabelle,” said Pa. “Your mother says the roast will burn if we don’t get home soon.”

  With a sigh—of relief, actually, since except for Myrtle, I wasn’t enjoying the company—I said, “Okay. Where’s Jack?”

  “I’ve got him,” said Pa.

  And, by gum, he did. By the collar of his shirt. Jack didn’t look happy, so I guess Pa had found him out in some kind of mischief. How typical of him. He didn’t even give it a rest in church. I told you Jack was obnoxious.

  Myrtle spoke up then. “Are you going to go to the revival this evening, Mrs. Blue? I’ve been trying to get Annabelle to go with me, but she keeps not going.”

  Ma eyed me critically. “I think that would be a very good idea, Myrtle. I think Annabelle and Jack should both go. It will do them good.”

  Oh, brother. Every now and then my best friend could be a real snake in the grass—which wasn’t as bad as a lousy son of a bitch, but hit mighty close. With a soul-deep sigh, I said, “All right. I’ll go.”

  “I’ll be there, too, Annabelle,” said Hazel, as if she thought I’d be delighted to know it. “We can sit together.”

  Oh, goody. What an inducement.

  “I’ve gone to two meetings, Annabelle. They’re quite uplifting,” said Mae.

  Ruby, as usual, said nothing. But she smiled, as if adding her endorsement to the Stricklands’ brand of ministry (I almost wrote “misery”).

  “You’ll be glad you did,” Myrtle told me, sounding so sincere, I wanted to smack her one. “Reverend Strickland is truly a wonderful preacher. And Miss Strickland has such a pretty voice.” She clasped her hands to her bosom.

  A voice wasn’t all Esther Strickland had that was pretty. Since I didn’t dare say so, I just said, “Right,” and went home with my family.

  Phil, curse him, didn’t show himself all morning long, at church or anywhere else where I was. I couldn’t help but envision him dallying with Miss Esther Strickland and made myself miserable thinking about the two of them together, which made me hate myself, naturally.

  At least Sunday dinner (which we took at noon, after church) was good. Other than that, my Sunday was pretty darned stupid. Except for The Case of Jennie Brice, which was very good.

  Kenny’s funeral was held that afternoon, at a graveside service. I know it sounds like they were rushing things, but you have to remember that back then bodies didn’t keep very well, even in the autumn, which this was. Even though Kenny worked at the Texico Ranch, he was originally from Rosedale, so the South Park Cemetery got the privilege of accommodating him for all eternity.

  I felt truly sorry for his mother, who was a well-off widow lady, and his sisters, who were in their twenties. While it’s true they’d probably spoiled him rotten when he was a kid and were, therefore, primarily responsible for Kenny’s swollen head, I’m sure they’d only pampered him because they loved him, he being the only boy in the family. And I suspect Kenny had been their rock and mainstay after his father died. In actual fact, I also suspected Kenny had taken work at the Texico Ranch, which was a long way away from Rosedale, in order to get away from his mother’s smothering influence.

  Whatever the circumstances of Kenny’s life, his death was considered a tragedy by all, including me. His funeral turned out to be a truly dismal affair. The weather was blustery and cold, and fall leaves swirled everywhere. Mrs. Sawyer and Sarah, both wearing dull black dresses that had obviously been dyed especially for the funeral, sat together in folding chairs provided by Mr. Ballard, the undertaker. Kenny’s two sisters were similarly garbed in black. They flanked the two chief mourners. The group of women together reminded me of a murder of crows, and I wish I’d never read the article about what-to-call-collective-nouns.

  Most of the citizens of Rosedale were at the graveyard, as were most of the cowboys who’d worked with or competed against Kenny in the rodeo. The cowpokes all wore expressions of surprise and uneasiness, as if they couldn’t understand how something like this could have happened to one of their own—even one who was generally regarded as an arrogant so-and-so. The rest of us probably appeared similarly befuddled. People just didn’t poison each other in Rosedale, New Mexico. The fact that Kenny Sawyer had been a young, healthy, robust man in his prime also, I imagine, had something to do with the long faces of the funeral attendees. I mean, you aren’t really surprised when, say, a ninety-year-old passes on, but a twenty-one-year-old? Such a passing seemed wrong, even when murder wasn’t suspected.

  Reverend Stone, the minister at the Bethel Baptist Church spoke the funereal words over the gaping hole where Kenny’s coffin would soon be placed. I noticed that Ma and Pa were holding hands, which they didn’t often do in public. But I imagine the notion of a child dying had made them think about their own family, and about how lucky they were that all of their five children had grown up to adulthood—except for Jack, who might yet be the exception, given his proclivities.

  I spotted Myrtle in the crowd. She nodded soberly at me, and I nodded gravely back. Everybody was solemn that day. We were not only burying one of our own, but also one who had been foully dispatched by an unknown villain.

  Phil wasn’t there, and nobody else in his family showed up, either. I didn’t consider this an unusual circumstance or one that displayed any kind of disrespect, given the fact that the Gundersons were probably preparing for the last day of the rodeo on Monday. The last day was mainly just for fun, with demonstrations of different events and lots of food and singing and so forth. I thought it was pretty mean of the murderer to cast such a dismal mood over this year’s event, and not merely because everybody looked forward to the rodeo, but because I was especially fond of the Gundersons—and not just Phil, either.

  The Stricklands showed up at the graveside service, too, and both of them appeared as gloomy as the weather. However (and I really hate to admit this) Esther looked perfectly lovely in her black suit and black hat, with her black stockings and black shoes. I’d never seen so fashionable a funeral costume. Because I didn’t want to become so totally immersed in Esther-envy that I lost sight of the realities of life, I reminded myself that, in her capacity as sister to a minister, she probably had to attend lots of funerals, so it might pay to have an outfit specifically designated as one to wear to funerals.

  Unfortunately, my attempt at kindliness didn’t alter my perspective regarding Esther Strickland. I still couldn’t stand the woman. This was especially true when she sang “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is
Calling” in her clear, perfect soprano voice, thereby reducing to tears everybody who was standing around that hole in the ground—including me. I wondered what Sarah thought of this addition to the service, but she had a veil on her hat, so I couldn’t see her face. I sure could tell that both she and Mrs. Sawyer were in tears, though, because they were embracing each other and their shoulders heaved with their sobs.

  Whoever had done Kenny in had a lot to answer for. And I hoped to goodness he—or she, since I couldn’t get rid of the notion that poison was a woman’s weapon—would be caught soon. The notion of a mad murderer running around Rosedale didn’t appeal one teensy bit.

  Usually after a funeral, people gathered at the home of the deceased for refreshments. Things had happened so fast after Kenny’s demise that this custom wasn’t honored. Mrs. Sawyer told people she’d have what she called a “wake” later in her son’s honor, but that today wasn’t the day. Nobody blamed her. I think we were all too stunned by the event itself even to think much about the lack of a get-together.

  Poison. In Rosedale, New Mexico. Granted, this part of New Mexico has never been exactly what you’d call peaceful, having been home to innumerable Indian raids, cattle wars, outlaw incursions (remember Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett?) and so forth. But poison? Whatever next?

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have long to wait for the answer to that question.

  Chapter Six

  Myrtle stopped by the house a little after five that evening, and we walked together to the revival tent, which was set up a few hundred yards west of the last house on Second Street. Rosedale wasn’t much of an urban metropolis, being small and dull. Not that our size had anything to do with the revivalists, except that I always got the feeling folks like the Stricklands preferred hanging out in smaller towns rather than larger, more sophisticated ones. Not that we were inherently more gullible or stupid than any other population group, but, as demonstrated by Miss Strickland’s comments about Blue’s Dry Goods, folks thought we were. I resented their attitude.

  Anyhow, you can probably tell that I wasn’t looking forward to the revival meeting one little bit, and not only because I wasn’t fond of Esther Strickland and her brother, the velvet-voiced Milo Strickland. I still felt sick about Kenny Sawyer.

  That funeral had been truly awful. The deep and honest grief of Mrs. Sawyer and Sarah Molina had affected me strangely, making me feel as if the least little thing would set me off on a crying jag. That would be very embarrassing, mainly because people would probably think I was crying over Phil. And part of any crying jag in which I might wallow would have been that, but most of it would have been because thinking about life and its inevitable consequence—death—was really uncomfortable. Heck, I was only nineteen years old. I should live for years and years.

  Yet Kenny had been in his early twenties, and he was as dead as the proverbial doornail. The notion made my tummy hurt. Or maybe it was my heart. Whatever it was, I wished it would stop.

  “I love going to these meetings,” Myrtle said, as we watched my obnoxious brother Jack and a couple of his friends from school racing on ahead of us toward the big tent. He was swinging his stupid baseball bat, and I wondered what in the name of Glory he aimed to do with a baseball bat at a tent revival meeting. I’d bet money that Ma and Pa didn’t know he’d brought his bat along.

  “Hmm,” I said, thinking maybe Jack would be saved and behave like a human being for a couple of weeks. That would be nice, even if I wasn’t anticipating much along those lines, Jack thus far in his life having proved himself impervious to most forms of discipline and spiritual enlightenment.

  Besides, I had a sneaking suspicion that Jack and his pals had devious plans for the evening and that this plan didn’t include religion. It wouldn’t have surprised me any if they aimed to duck out of the revival, have a little game of baseball outside the tent, and let the rest of the town get themselves saved while they played ball—if they could see to play. It was pretty dark by then, and nobody had strung electrical wires around the tent as they had around the Gundersons’ pasture.

  Anyhow, as I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t care for revivalists in general because they always seemed to get carried away and condemn people out of hand. I for one—and I wouldn’t want the minister of my church to hear this—don’t believe that everyone in the world who doesn’t believe exactly as I do is going to hell. What about all those Buddhists out there? Or Moslems? Just because they haven’t heard of God as I know Him doesn’t mean they don’t believe in God, does it? Didn’t Saint John say something about that in the Book of Revelation? Since I couldn’t remember the exact passage, I probably ought to have asked Myrtle, who seemed to have been boning up on her Bible lately, but I didn’t.

  I was pretty sure Reverend Strickland didn’t share my sentiments, and I didn’t much like him because of it, although I acknowledged as we walked to the tent that I might have been jumping the gun. I hadn’t heard him preach yet. For all I knew at that point, he was a very fair-minded, openhearted individual who would swing wide the gates of his notion of heaven to good people of all faiths.

  As I’d feared, though, it turned out that he was every bit as narrow-minded as I’d expected, although you couldn’t prove it by Myrtle, who was absolutely smitten with the man. The more fool she, in my humble opinion.

  He sure was a powerful speaker, though. I appreciated the resonance of his voice and his delivery, even if I didn’t much care for his message.

  By the way, I was right about Jack. I didn’t see hide or hair of my rotten brother during the entire time I spent in that stupid tent, which was, by the way, lit with kerosene lamps and smelled accordingly. I knew Jack was outdoors playing ball, the wretched fiend, and wondered what he was using for light so that the little sinners could see the game they were playing.

  “Sinners!” Reverend Strickland cried, meaning us, I guess. “Come to Jesus! Jesus is the only way to eternal life! Come to the Lord! Come to the Lord!”

  And more along those lines. I was immune, probably because I had so many hard feelings about the man’s sister. Nevertheless, I had to give him credit for believing in what he spoke. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more impassioned sermon, especially when he begged the congregation to “come forth and be saved into eternal life.”

  A whole bunch of my fellow citizens took him at his word and surged to the front of the tent, where he blessed them and embraced them. There was a lot of hugging and crying and a few wailed amens and stuff like that. I don’t appreciate such displays. Maybe that’s a sign of a sinful nature, but I think it’s only my natural dignity—Jack would laugh at that, and maybe my mother and father would, too, but I think it’s true—coming to the fore.

  There were lots of songs, too, and several people who belonged to the Stricklands’ entourage (including Edward and Charles, which surprised me) sang “Do Lord” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” better than I’d heard them sung before or since. Fancy that: Edward and Charles (or Charles and Edward; I still couldn’t figure out who was which) singing. Amazing. Then there was Esther, who sang a couple of solos and made me wish I’d been born with a soprano voice. In truth, everything about her made me feel puny and small and not worth much.

  Therefore, since watching Esther made me miserable, I amused myself by watching the rest of the people who’d decided to attend the revival that evening. I didn’t stay amused for very long. When one of the quartets was singing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” I glanced at a clump of folks who were standing beside the riser where the preaching and singing went on, and I saw Phil and Esther, looking quite comfortable together and chatting. Phil had that lazy grin of his on his face, and Esther was simpering. Doggone it, Phil hadn’t been to town all day long, not even for Kenny’s funeral—and he certainly hadn’t bothered to see me—but he’d come to town for the revival meeting.

  I was about to look at something else, that particular sight making me feel sick to my stomach, when I noticed something intere
sting. Reverend Strickland came up behind Esther, took her arm, and said something into her ear. He had a frown on his face. She turned around, looked as if she wanted to tell him a thing or two, but didn’t, and walked away with him, leaving Phil with a smile and a wave.

  Hmm. Interesting, although not so interesting that I aimed to watch Phil anymore, mainly because I didn’t want to see Esther come back and fawn over him again. Nuts.

  So I allowed my gaze to wander elsewhere. That didn’t make me feel a whole lot better, since the first couple it landed on was Josephine Contreras and my brother-in-law Richard huddled together at the back of the tent. They looked as if they were making plans, and I couldn’t think of a single plan they might come up with that would be good for my family. In a tent revival, too! I couldn’t decide if I was more shocked than worried or the other way around, but I sure hoped I was wrong about those two. The little bit of conversation I’d overheard in the library came crawling back into my head, as insidious as ants at a picnic, and I swatted it away. Any conjectures I could come up with were too ugly to be borne. Yet I couldn’t figure out what benign purpose would have Josephine and Richard chatting together like a couple of base conspirators. Over and over again, too, what’s more.

  My mood wasn’t enhanced when Hazel Fish spotted Myrtle and me in the congregation and scuttled over to sit with us. I darned near let out a groan. “Oh, Annabelle, I’m so glad you came this evening.”

  “Thanks, Hazel,” I said without much enthusiasm.

  Myrtle was more generous than I. “Isn’t Reverend Strickland a wonderful speaker?”

  Her eyes sparkled and she looked as if she fancied herself in love with Strickland. I wondered what had happened to her enchantment with Sonny Clyde, who was ever so much better looking—not to mention a whole lot more entertaining—than the preacher, but I didn’t ask. Anyhow, she was talking to Hazel.