by Cameron Judd
Eli began to ponder that having Melinda alone with him in an abandoned building or two some upcoming Saturday might be a pleasant situation indeed.
The insurance man didn’t go back in his office, so Eli returned to his sandwich, and Melinda to hers. They passed the rest of the mealtime in warm, comfortable silence, hardly able to chew for smiling at one another. Gone for the moment were worries about fictional aunts killed in invented traffic accidents, Melinda’s seeeming lack of candor about personal history, and all such. Just then it simply didn’t seem important.
Part II
Rising Angel
Chapter Fifteen
THE REV. Kyle ‘TOUCHY’ Feely received the call at 5 a.m., but the hour didn’t matter; he’d been awake since 4, studying toward the coming Sunday’s sermon. His best inspirations always came early. He darted into the kitchen and grabbed the phone fast, unwilling to let it disturb his wife, still sound asleep in their bedroom down the hall.
On the line was Karen Corbin, one of his parishioners, and he winced as he heard her emotion-strained voice. Karen’s husband, Jonas, was a very ill man, suffering, in only his forties, the final stages of a mostly untreatable brain tumor. It was likely he would depart the world at any time. Feely expected that he was about to hear in this call that Jonas Corbin’s passing had finally come.
But not so, not yet. Karen Corbin struggled hard, got her emotions under control, and said, “Preacher, Jonas is asking to see you.”
“How is he?” He was alive, at least, and that alone was cause for momentary relief.
Her voice lowered in volume. “He’s getting worse, Preacher. Fast. I don’t think he’ll be here much longer, and I think he knows it.” She made a small, weepy, choked noise through the earpiece.
“I’m so sorry to hear it. Is his pain bad?”
“Worse all the time. He has a headache now that never stops. He’s trying hard to put up a brave front, but he’s crumbling. He says he needs to talk to his pastor. He’s getting ready for the end, I think.”
“When do you want me there?”
“Can you come today?”
“I’ll be there. Is 2 o’clock this afternoon good?”
“Nothing in this life is good anymore, Reverend. But 2 o’clock will work.”
HE LOOKED BAD INDEED, LYING back in his big reclining chair, his previously broad and ruddy face now gaunt, his eyes carrying that particular glare that comes from battling chronic pain. Rev. Feely sat down in a chair beside Jonas Corbin and laid his hand on the ailing man’s thinning wrist. “Jonas, I’m sorry to see you like this,” he said. In situations like this one, Feely usually let his instincts guide him in what to say and what demeanor to put forward. Instinct at this moment told him it would be not only pointless, but in its way insulting, to try to pretend Jonas Corbin was looking good and turning a corner. Life’s last corner had already been turned, and both of them knew it.
“Preacher, I want you to know I’m not afraid,” Corbin said. “My bags are packed and I ready to climb on the train and travel when my name is called.”
“I can’t tell you how good it is to hear that,” Feely said. “I hope when my own time draws near, I’ll face it with the grace you’re showing.”
“I don’t know that I’ve got ‘grace,’ Preacher. Except for the grace of the Good Lord, which is what I’m clinging to get through this. If hitting the end of the line counts as ‘getting through.’”
“You and I both know, Jonas, that there is no real ‘end of the line.’ We go on.”
“I know. But it’s the end of the line as I’ve so far known it. What I’ll find beyond the end is something I can’t see yet.”
“Jonas, Karen told me on the phone you were asking to see me. Is there something in particular you had in mind you want to talk about?”
Jonas Corbin’s jaw tightened and his chin and lip trembled. His rheumy eyes flooded and he moved his wrist out from beneath Feely’s hand, then laid his hand atop Feely’s. He was too weak to grip hard, but he tried, and Feely felt his own eyes growing damp.
“Preacher, Karen’s out of the house, right?”
“She went to the grocery store. She said with me here she felt like she could leave a few minutes. But I had the feeling she maybe mostly wanted to be away so you could talk more freely, in case there was anything you might want to say to me you wouldn’t want her to listen in on.”
The frail man nodded. “She’s wise that way. She can tell what I’m thinking every time.”
“There’s a reason folks talk about ‘woman’s intuition,’ Jonas. I’ve been at this pastoral business of mine long enough to believe there’s something to it. It comes, I think, from their instincts as mothers.”
“Can I ask you something, Preacher?”
“Anything.”
“Is what I say to you private, just between you and me?”
“Absolutely. Just like when you talk to a lawyer or doctor. Whatever I hear from you I assume to be private and privileged, unless you specifically tell me you want something shared.”
“What I want to tell you about is something that can’t go any farther, not even to your own wife. And most of all, never, ever to mine, even after I’m gone.” Jonas lowered his voice. “Are you sure Karen’s left the house?”
“I am. But I’ll check anyway.” Wondering with some trepidation just what he was about to hear from his dying friend and parishioner, Feely rose and moved quickly through the house, then glanced into the driveway to confirm Karen Corbin’s car was gone.
“She’s not here,” he said as he sat back down. “You can talk freely.”
“HAVE YOU EVER DONE SOMETHING, Preacher, that you look back on and wonder how you could have even considered doing something like that?”
“Who hasn’t, Jonas? We are all sinners.”
“Don’t talk preacher-talk right now, Kyle. Just talk to me like a friend. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“No offense?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. Good.” Then silence.
“What’s on your mind, Jonas?”
“I’m working up to it, Preacher. Give me a minute.”
Feely was getting scared. What was he about to be told? Corbin’s manner hinted at something significant and serious.
“Preacher, I’m going to ask you again, just to make sure you hear it, to keep this secret. Just me and you.”
“I’ve already told you, it’s confidential. Now, if you tell me you’ve been slowly poisoning Kathy or the people next door, or have put a bomb in the local elementary school, or something like that, something involving ongoing danger to someone, that would throw a different light on the matter.”
“Do I look like a poisoner or a bomber to you, Preacher?”
“Not at all. But you’re building this up to where you look like you’re about to confess to being the grassy knoll gunman.”
Jonas Corbin actually chuckled, though it made him wince to do it.
“No, not that,” he said. “It’s about something that happened right here in Kincheloe back in my days as a new, young fireman. It’s been a burden to me since.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s a secret in my life going back to those days. One Kathy has no idea of, and I pray to God never will. But it’s a secret that isn’t mine alone. There’s quite a few local men who were around this town in the ‘60s who carry the same burden. Mine’s worse, though, because of something I did that nobody else has, except for one who was involved with it along with me.”
“I’m getting confused here, Jonas, because I don’t have any idea at all of what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Just listen, Preacher. I won’t want to repeat this. It shames me to tell it even once.”
“I’ll just shut up, then. If I don’t follow you on something I’ll wait until you’re through to ask you to clarify.”
“Fair enough. Preacher, you ever heard the name Millard Tate?�
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Feely thought hard a couple of moments. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Millard Tate was an old lump of a fellow who lived in a rough little place out on the Sadler two-lane. Had him a wife, who died, name of Maude, and a couple of sons, Roger and Roy. Roger got killed in a car crash back in the 1950s, along with a woman who was, I guess you’d say, his common-law wife, or at least his live-in girlfriend. Roy was a little younger than Roger. Roy’s still around, working as a mechanic in the Ford dealership Jimmy Sadler owns. He’s about my age, maybe a year or two younger.”
“I know him,” Feely said. “He replaced a radiator for me once, when I had that old Fairmont.”
“Roy’s a capable mechanic. But he comes from rough stock. A checkered past, as they say. But that comes natural, considering who his daddy was.”
“Millard Tate. That was the name you said, right?”
“That’s right. Not a good man, that one.”
“How so?”
Jonas Corbin closed his eyes a few moments, fighting his endless headache. “Here’s where the story gets harder for me to tell, because we’re coming up on the part I’ve held in secret for a couple of decades now. The part I can’t be proud of.”
Feely had nothing to say to that, and so merely gave what he hoped was an encouraging brief smile.
“Millard Tate’s oldest boy, the one who died in the crash, had him a woman named Sadie and she had a little girl shortly before the time she and Roger got killed. They called her Junie, if my memory is right. After Roger and Sadie’s deaths, Tate and Maudie raised the girl. When Maudie died, Tate took over care of the girl on his own.”
“Well, good for him on that, anyway,” Feely said.
“No sirree. Not with the way he went about it. He kept that poor young gal like a prisoner, hiding her away, not putting her in school or getting her vaccinated or doing any of the other things folks are supposed to do for kids.”
“Well … she couldn’t have been a total secret. You know about her, after all.”
“That’s where the shame of it comes in. Millard Tate didn’t hide Junie from everybody. He sold the girl, you know … to men, right there in his own home. Pimped her out. You know what I mean when I say that?”
“I’m a minister, not a recluse from society. You’re saying he prostituted her. Acted as a procurer for his own granddaughter.”
“That’s right. Though he had a habit of telling folks she wasn’t actually his granddaughter, that his son’s woman, Sadie, was already carrying her when she got together with Roger. I don’t know if he was telling the truth or just making that up, but that’s what he’d say to the men who came around because of Junie.”
“How do you know all these details?”
At that question, Corbin’s composure crumbled. His chin quivered as his eyes grew wet. Feely wished he’d been a little less straightforward in how he’d asked the question, because he’d already guessed the indelicate answer.
“I was a younger man back in those days, and not yet married. Made no profession toward any religion beyond whatever you get from having the minister sprinkle water on your little baby forehead. Had no use for rule-following or worrying about the wages of sin. I don’t make excuses for how I was then. I knew right from wrong but just didn’t much care.” He paused and wiped his hand over his teary eyes. “I spent a lot of time over my more recent years trying not to think back on how I’ve been at times past. I got good at forgetting … then I got sick and things changed. Maybe that tumor crowding my brain is squeezing up old memories I would have thought were dried up and gone. Or maybe when a man faces the end he gets an urge to clean out the dirtiest old closets inside of him. Whatever it is, that’s why I called you here today, Preacher. To let you help me clean out the dirtiest of those old closets.”
“Can I say one thing to you, Jonas?” Feely asked.
“’Course.”
“While you tell me whatever you tell me, do me the favor of not playing the ‘gotta impress the preacher’ game. You know, the game where people who cuss like sailors sanitize their language because a preacher just walked into the room, or the merchant with a dancing girl tattoo on his forearm suddenly rolls down his sleeve when the neighborhood parson darkens his shop door. What I’m saying is, it’s obvious that you called me here because you have some things you want to get off your chest, and there’s no doing that unless you just lay it out there just like it is. Or was, as the case may be.”
“I understand, Preacher. But it’s hard to pull the covers off things you’ve spent most of your life trying not to look at. I do want you to know that anything I tell you has been laid out before the Lord a long time ago, and forgiveness asked. And received, I believe.”
“You know, Jonas, one thing a minister learns over the years is that it’s a lot easier for people to settle their minds regarding the forgiveness of heaven than the forgiveness they need to give themselves. I’ve got old sins of my own, Jonas, like anybody. Some of them might surprise you, especially the ones involving the kinds of chemicals I used to put into my system in youthful times.”
“No kidding! You?” Jonas found the strength for another light chuckle.
“You probably figured I spent my young days memorizing Bible verses and preaching on the school playground, huh?”
“I never thought about it, really … but yeah. That would be closer than thinking of you as a drug-shooting hippy.”
“Let’s get back on track, Jonas.”
“All right, Preacher, full disclosure time. Back in the days when old Millard Tate was pimping out that poor little straw-haired gal, I was one of his customers. Or hers, depending on how you want to look at it. Three different times, I went there and did … what you do. But not me alone. There was a whole crop of us new young firefighters at that time. And not one was more than a kid in a grownup body. Not a lick of common sense or restraint among the lot of us. Several of us gave Millard Tate and young Junie our business. I’m ashamed of it today, but at the time it was just what the guys around me were doing, you know. And old Millard Tate was always assuring us that we were safe, that the general public never knew Junie was even there. He said she was a secret and as long as we kept out mouths shut, we’d be safe. But he was always letting it slip out to us that he had his son making pictures of what went on with Junie and her customers, at least some of them. The plan was, if he ever found out anybody had talked, told on him, he’d use those pictures to ruin them.”
“So is that what you wanted to unload, Jonas? That at one time in your life you patronized a homegrown prostitute-and-blackmail operation? Yeah, that was wrong, and I can see you’d not want your wife knowing that part of your history … but that wasn’t the sin of the century. There’s no telling how many of the men I see looking back at me from the pews every Sunday morning have similar dark spots on their personal histories.”
“The fornicating was just part of it, though. There’s more that I did.”
Feely experienced a chill. Was his friend about to confess to a serious crime of some sort? Maybe a murder? He tried to maintain a poker face, so as to not deter Jonas from saying what he had to say. Apparently his poker face effort wasn’t successful, given what Jonas said next.
“I can read your thoughts in your face. No, Preacher, I didn’t kill anyone. But I did hide a corpse.”
“What?”
“There was a fire. At Millard Tate’s house. I was among the responders to the alarm, and several others there among the fire crew had been with Junie at one time or another. It was about two in the morning when the fire broke out, and by the time we could get there, there was nothing to be done except keep it from spreading to the woods and the barn that stood on the same property. There was a detached garage nearby, too, where Millard’s son worked on cars, but sparks had hit the roof and ignited it and we couldn’t save much of it. What was left of that garage was so damaged it had to be demolished anyway.”
“Forget the gar
age. Tell me about the corpse.”
Jonas drew in a slow breath and rubbed his head again. “Head’s hurting,” he whispered. “And it isn’t much fun, reliving this stuff.”
“You don’t really have to, you know. I’m not a priest, just a plain old Protestant minister, product of the Reformation. You don’t owe me a confession.”
“I owe it to myself, though. I have to get this out, to tell it to somebody else. Not just God, but somebody with ears and toes and skin and fingernails. You know.”
“Yeah. And I’m still listening.”
“Well, that fire was a fatal one. Old Millard himself. Smoke got to him, and then the flames. He was a big man, fat fellow, and the fire just devoured him like baking soda in vinegar. They found what was little was left of his body in the area where his bedroom had been. It appeared he’d tried to get out but the smoke put him down before he could make it.”
“Is that the corpse you hid?”
“No.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been Roy because I know he’s still living. The girl, then? Junie?”
Jonas closed his eyes. “I was one of the ones who found her, me and Dawson Lang. Dawson – we call him Daws for short – he was another new fireman, and was one who had been with the girl a few times. Daws is actually the one who came across her remains, what little there was left to come across. She was burned up worse even than Millard was, but some of her had been covered up and partly protected from the direct flame when part of the structure fell in on her. We could tell that she was a she, and that was all. Beyond that she was just ash and scorched bone. Me and Daws just looked at each other. We already knew that both of us had, y’know, been with her before, and we knew about the pictures Roy Tate took and the way Millard Tate used them to make sure nobody talked about what he was up to.
“Finally Daws says to me, ‘What are we going to do, Jonas?’ And I told him, ‘I guess we’re duty-bound to tell that we’ve found another body.’ Daws was dead-set against that, though. He reminded me that even though it was Millard who made threats to show the pictures, and Millard was dead, it was Roy who took the pictures to begin with and probably was the keeper of them. And since that made him an accomplice to the prostitution business, Roy still stood to face charges if anything should go public. And Roy didn’t appear to have been in the house that night. Daws’s point was that Roy had just as much reason as his daddy did to use those pictures as a threat to keep us quiet. Daws told me that since Junie had been a secret, no official records of her existence and all, we shouldn’t reveal we’d found a girl’s body because it would raise questions about why a girl turned up in the remains of a house where only Millard and Roy supposedly were living. And that would make Roy Tate nervous, and a nervous man is dangerous. Not to mention that a police investigation might cause those photographs to be discovered by accident, ’cause Roy had to be hiding them somewhere. Daws at that time had just gotten married to a fine young woman, and he swore that if his wife ever knew he’d done such a thing, she’d leave him on the spot. He broke down and cried over it right there in the smoky rubble, he was so worried. Begged me to help him keep the secret. And me, being scared and young and stupid, I agreed. The other firemen were still on the scene, mopping up and all, and nobody but Daws and me knew about the girl’s body. We managed to sneak her corpse out of there without being noticed. Her remains just blended in with all the other burned material and we hid her in some burned wood and moved it aside, pretending we were just shifting things around. We hid her underneath a big doghouse out in the back that hadn’t caught fire. Generally, in a situation like that, they assign a man or two to watch the place for several hours to make sure nothing reignites. Daws and me volunteered for that duty that night, so we had good opportunity to finish what we’d started. Daws had a big metal toolbox on his pickup truck, just behind the cab window. We hid the remains on the truck bed, up underneath the toolbox, and covered the space with some random stuff he had in the truck. At sunup we rode out to a place Daws said we could put her and she’d never be found in a thousand years. I was just in going-along mode by that point, and I sure liked the idea of her never being found and hard questions never coming up. It had already been detected that the fire started in a fusebox, just a straight-out accident from the wiring, so there wasn’t likely to much poking around by the fire marshal. If Junie’s body was gone for good, the chances of our old sins coming back to bite us seemed way lessened. We were running on panic, remember. Not thinking clear or worrying about right and wrong. So we hauled that poor little girl’s burnt husk of a corpse up to them old caves in the hills above Flea Plank, the ones not far from the old Harvestman Lodge. Daws had explored those caves when he was a kid, and knew where there was a deep natural pit back at the rear of one of them. That’s where we tossed her down. It felt strange, and kind of sickening, to hear her falling and thumping on down in the darkness, then everything going dead silent. Daws had a strong flashlight with him and we shined it down. No sign of anything. That corpse was gone into the black, too far for the light even to reach. Swallowed up by the earth. Gone for good.”