Chapel of Ease

by Alex Bledsoe

  Two of the biggest Durants I’d seen so far stood right in front of me, and before I could react, each grabbed one of my arms in hands as big as Wreck-It Ralph’s. They twisted my arms behind me, which pushed me forward, just as Billy Durant strode out of the darkness, carrying a baseball bat.

  “Billy!” Mandalay shouted.

  My adrenaline really kicked in then, shifting everything into slow motion. As I watched, Billy Durant changed. In the same way I’d seen C.C. and Thorn bearing those lovely butterfly wings, Billy suddenly sported immense, leathery appendages, with tattered edges and ragged tips. More, his face transformed into something with enormous insectlike eyes and an open mouth that foamed at the corners and revealed long, pointed teeth.

  I had no time to plot a strategy, so I used the strength of the men holding me as a pivot and did a backflip. I turned at the waist so that my shins took the blow from the bat early in its swing; if nothing else, years of muay Thai gave me shinbones of fucking iron. It stung, but not so much as a fractured skull would have, and the impact knocked the weapon from Billy’s hands. The flip caught the men holding me off guard as well, and I slipped my arms free. When I landed, I immediately grabbed the bat and raised it, ready to fight.

  The two big men scurried back to the safety of the trucks. But Billy reached back and yanked a gun from his belt. He leveled it right at me.

  We were at most six feet apart. Even in the darkness I could see his face was red with rage. The gun shook in his hand.

  I held the bat ready and looked him right in the eye. “Put the gun down, Billy.”

  He didn’t move, except his hand shook more.

  “Put it down!” I roared.

  He dropped it from his hand. I jumped forward and faked a swing, and he tripped over his own feet, trying to scurry away. He lay there on the grass beside the flatfooting board and looked up at me, small and terrified.

  I dropped the bat and picked up the gun. He whimpered and covered his head. “Y’all come help me!” he called to his brothers, his voice high and desperate.

  I held the revolver up and said, loud enough for everyone else to hear, “Next time, Billy, it might be easier if you just mail me your gun.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then a sound like a long, sustained wheeze rose up, and finally broke into a guttural belly laugh. And it came from the direction of the rest of the Durants.

  Soon they all joined in, and the laughter spread around the circle. As Billy got to his feet and realized they were laughing at him, his face grew tight and dark.

  “Shut up!” he yelled as he got to his feet. “Shut the fuck up!”

  He glared at me, but it had none of his original malice, just the petulant anger of a humiliated child. He ran back into the dark toward his family, and in a moment, their truck engines started. They drove away, pursued by the mocking laughter of everyone else.

  Mandalay, with Bliss Overbay behind her, came up beside me. “You planning to keep that?” the girl asked, indicating the pistol.

  I extended it butt-first, the way I’d seen on TV. “Would you believe I’ve never fired a real one in my life?”

  “It didn’t look like you needed to,” Bliss observed.

  “Well, you won, fair and square,” Mandalay said. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I could use a drink,” I said honestly.

  “I can fix you up,” C.C. said, with a hand on my shoulder.

  “You’re still leaving tomorrow, right?” Mandalay asked.

  “I am,” I assured her yet again.

  “Good. I think the sooner you’re gone, the better for everyone.”

  The observers were slipping back into the darkness. I thought, but couldn’t swear, that I saw shadowy human shapes lifting up into the sky, momentarily blotting out the stars. But it was all over in an instant, and even though I knew exactly what I was seeing, I let the reality of it float away as well.

  Another truck came roaring down the driveway and slammed to a halt. Doyle Collins hopped out and said, “Did I just pass a Durant convoy coming outta here?”

  “You did,” C.C. said.

  “Is anybody dead?”

  “Nope.”

  It took him a moment to calm down. “Wow. I guess I didn’t do too good a job as the Bandit, huh?”

  “You did fine. Everything’s taken care of.”

  He looked at me now. “Did you find it?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Nothing was there.”

  I felt C.C.’s eyes burning holes in the side of my head. Doyle said, “No shit. All for nothing, huh?”

  “All for nothing,” I agreed.

  29

  I followed the Parrishes inside after the crowd left, including C.C. and Doyle. C.C. kissed me in front of everyone, so if he wasn’t out before, he sure was now. And just as he’d said, no one seemed either surprised or bothered by it.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered. “I’ll drive you to the airport.”

  Ladonna and Gerald excused themselves and went back to bed. They took the whole thing in stride, as if life-or-death dance contests happened around here all the time. Considering what I’d seen in just four days, maybe Needsville wasn’t as boring as I’d originally thought.

  I, however, was way too keyed up to sleep. First, I picked the splinters from my face, which stung as much as you’d think. C.C. had left his jar of moonshine, so I sat at the table and sipped it against the pain. I kept glancing at the back door, but there was no sign that the king of the forest or his retinue had returned. I had no idea why they would, but it was just that kind of night.

  “So,” Thorn said. “You didn’t look in the box, huh?”

  “No.” I told her about Ray’s ghost, and the coyote girl.

  “Dang,” she said when I was done. “But that still doesn’t tell me why you didn’t look when you had the chance. Ain’t that what this whole trip was about?”

  I started to protest, to repeat my standard line that it had been about bringing Ray home, but I was too tired. “Yeah, a big part of it,” I admitted.

  “So? Why didn’t you look?”

  “Because I saw the ghosts reenact what happened in the chapel back in the day.” Although as I thought about it, I realized I knew nothing, really, about what had happened, or what had really motivated them. But I was sure of at least one thing. “They were just kids, Thorn. If they lived today, they’d be sending selfies and playing Minecraft.”

  “It was a different time. Kids had to grow up early.”

  “Two of them were gay.”

  “It happened back then, too,” she said with all the compassion in the world.

  I nodded. I realized that the thought of Thorn in my life in New York might not be so bad, at least for a while. Then my thoughts turned to C.C. I looked at the front door wistfully and sipped from the moonshine jar.

  “He really likes you,” Thorn said.

  “It’s mutual,” I assured her.

  “It’s gonna tear him up to see you leave tomorrow.”

  “We’ve only known each other three days.”

  She gave me her sly little one-sided smile. “Romeo and Juliet knew at first sight.”

  “That was a play.”

  “You’re an actor.”

  I rubbed my weary eyes. “I think I’m too tired for sparkling wordplay. Good night, Thorn.”

  “Good night, Matt. Sleep well.”

  And I did. I slept with no dreams, no visits from haints, and no sense of unfinished business. I slept the sleep of the justified dead.

  * * *

  I woke late the next morning, and had to rush to get my shower, pack, and be ready on time. When I came into the living room carrying my backpack, C.C. was already there. He looked so handsome, so beautiful, that it was all I could do not to run to him.

  “Good grief, kiss that boy,” Ladonna said, as if it were the most common thing in the world. So I did.

  “Shame you have to go,” Gerald said. “Would’ve loved to hear more s
tories about Rayford.”

  “I imagine you’ll be hearing plenty, once the show opens,” I said. “Reporters will probably be calling at all hours. They might even just show up unannounced.”

  “Yeah, that won’t happen,” Gerald said with certainty. “Ain’t nobody can find us if we don’t want ’em to.”

  After all I’d seen, I wasn’t about to doubt him on this.

  Gerald firmly shook my hand and said, “Safe travels to you, young man. I appreciate everything you did for Ray, and for us. You’ll be watching out for Thorn, right?”

  “I will.” I winked at Thorn, who rolled her eyes.

  Ladonna took my face in her hands and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for bringing Rayford back to us,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “He’s where he always wanted to be, I suspect. He’s part of the chapel’s song now.”

  “I’m glad I was able to do it, Mrs. Parrish.”

  “Are you ready?” C.C. asked. “I wanted to show you one last thing before you leave town.”

  “Sure.”

  I dispensed hugs, Thorn made sure she had my address, and I let Tom and Ace slobber on me one last time. Then I followed C.C. out to his truck. It was a glorious summer morning, still and clear, except for the tissue-thin mist that clung to the tops of the trees.

  * * *

  We stopped at the closed motel right at the edge of Needsville. The sign called it the CATAMOUNT CORNER. I was surprised to see that none of the windows had been broken. We walked up onto the porch and I cupped my hands around my eyes to peer inside.

  “Looks like there is a café in there,” I said.

  “I told you. It only seats about twenty.” He paused. “I think I’m going to buy it, if I can track down Miss Peggy and talk her into selling it to me.”

  I looked around. “Why?”

  “I need something solid, something that’s mine. I’m too old to just keep working for everybody else around here.”

  I looked back at the dying little town. “No offense meant to Needsville, but is there enough business to justify opening this place? I mean … who comes here?”

  “You did. You would’ve stayed here if it had been open.”

  “Yeah, but I’m guessing that the niche market of ‘people who are bringing a friend’s ashes back home’ is pretty small.”

  He smiled. I could watch him smile forever. “There’s lots of people all over the country, maybe all over the world, who have a little Tufa in them. And a lot of them get the call to come here and visit. They check out the graveyards, wander up into the mountains and look for old abandoned family homes, and so forth.”

  “‘Next year in Jerusalem,’” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What some of my Jewish neighbors always say at the end of their seder.”

  “What’s a ‘seder’?”

  “It’s a special dinner they have on Passover. You do know what that is, right?”

  “They show The Ten Commandments every year,” he said wryly. “Anyway, Miss Peggy always did just fine with the place. I’m sure I can do at least as well.”

  “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

  “Not exactly.” He produced a key and unlocked the door. He gestured for me to precede him inside.

  The little lobby was decorated in heavy country-home decor. The café, its chairs stacked neatly on the tables, was in pretty good shape.

  I indicated the key. “And how did you get that?”

  “Miss Peggy asked me to keep an eye on the place for her. Make sure nothing got torn up. Place sits empty through too many winters, it falls apart if you don’t fix things as they break.” Then he locked the door behind us and said, “Come with me.”

  I followed him into the stairwell and up one flight. He went straight to a particular room and opened the unlocked door. Inside, candles burned and soft music played.

  I was still smiling when he closed the door and pulled me into a kiss.

  After our lips parted, I said, “Do we have time for this?”

  “We have all the time in the world,” he said. “You’re in Cloud County. Time doesn’t work the same for everybody here. And,” he added with a delightfully knowing grin, “you did promise to make it worth my while to help you.”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

  No wings appeared this time, no supernatural transformations into magical beings. But that didn’t mean there was no magic. Later, as we lay in bed while the few still-burning candles sputtered around us, I thought back on the last few minutes … or had it been hours? I was pretty sure that in the heat of the moment, I had blurted out the dreaded L-word. I was also pretty sure I meant it. C.C. had said it back to me, and I decided not to pick the moment apart and look for hidden meanings. Sometimes things just were what they were.

  Eventually we got up and took a long shower together. As he was soaping my back, he said, “Where did you get that? Is that a birthmark?”

  I looked. On my upper arm was the print of a hand encircling my biceps. It didn’t hurt, but when I rubbed at it, it didn’t come off.

  I remembered the ghost holding me, turning me invisible up on the Durant mountain. “I think it’s a keepsake,” I said, and told him about it.

  We finished, eventually, then dressed and prepared to go. He gave me a gift: a coffee cup with the words, TAKEN BY MISTAKE FROM THE CATAMOUNT CORNER printed on the side. “So you won’t forget me,” he said.

  “Not much chance of that. ‘Taken by mistake’? Doesn’t it usually say, ‘Stolen from’?”

  “Well, Miss Peggy didn’t want to imply anyone was a thief. That’d be bad manners.”

  We left the motel and locked it behind us. C.C. paused at the bottom of the porch steps, looked up at the building, and said, “Will you come back and stay here sometime if I’m running it?”

  “I’ll surely try. You can come to New York, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said sadly.

  “I’m serious. You’d love New York, especially Manhattan. There’s so many things I’d want to show you. You might even like it enough to stay … for a while, anyway.”

  What the hell had I just offered? First a Tufa roommate, and now this.

  “I could make the same offer about here,” C.C. said. “What you’ve seen so far is only the slightest tip of what the Tufa are like. The songs here are—” He paused to look for the right word. “—unimaginable.”

  I thought of his arms around me as we soared into the night sky. “I have to get back and do the show, at least. People are counting on me. Ray is counting on me, and I can’t let him down.”

  “Yeah,” he said, even more sadly.

  “Look, don’t make this the end. We have lives and responsibilities, and neither of us would want to be with someone who abandons that sort of thing. Would we? I wouldn’t.”

  “I guess you’ve got a point.”

  “I do. And we’ll stay in touch, right? We can e-mail, Skype, talk on the phone … and seriously, I want you to come up and see the play.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Then we stood there awkwardly. I wanted to kiss him, but we were out in the open, and I had no idea what repercussions there might be for him if I did so.

  He solved that dilemma by sweeping me into his arms and kissing me the way I’d always wanted to be kissed. We got back in the truck and headed to the airport, arriving in plenty of time for my flight. He kissed me good-bye again, in full view of everyone. A few people applauded.

  30

  And so the opening night of Chapel of Ease, delayed but not forsaken, finally arrived.

  Our last rehearsals went like a dream. Everyone loved the pictures of the chapel, and took it fairly well when I said I’d found nothing buried there. I suspect many of them thought Ray had made the whole thing up anyway, so it just confirmed their suspicions. You could feel the relief in the air afterwards, as if a great shroud had been lifted and bright sun now poured in on us.

  “I knew it,” Mark said.
“I knew it all along.”

  * * *

  One morning a couple of days after I got back, I went by Emily’s building and stared up at her apartment window. I could see an X of yellow tape across it on the inside. The fall would’ve definitely done the job, and I suddenly realized I might be standing exactly where she landed. There were no blood splatters on the concrete beneath my feet, but I still moved aside just in case.

  I wondered if Ray, in his capacity as a Tufa haint, had been waiting for her when she crossed over, or if her entirely human and mundane spirit had to make its own way into the light. I hoped that, whatever waited for her on the other side, it had eased the pain that drove her to jump.

  And what would happen to all of Ray’s work she had so diligently salvaged? Would her family even recognize it for what it was? Given all I’d learned about the Tufa, though, I couldn’t help thinking that it was somehow protected, watched over perhaps by its own sub-haint that would alert Ray if it was about to be used in some way he wouldn’t like.

  There was a small impromptu shrine on the steps, with a picture of a smiling Emily surrounded by little folded notes from her friends. I put down the rose that I’d brought, and said aloud, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, Em.”

  When I turned, the dreadlocked spy stood on the sidewalk, a single white lily in her hand. She was frozen in her tracks, evidently not expecting to see me.

  For just an instant, I remembered the dreadlocked courtesans of the king of the forest. But this girl was clearly from, and of, the city. I scowled at her. “And what are you doing here?”

  “I was going to pay my respects,” she said in a small voice. “I’ll leave if you want.”

  “Did you know her?”

  She shook her head. “Just that she was Ray Parrish’s girlfriend.”

  I wondered if she felt responsible, not just for Ray’s death, but for Emily’s as well. I wasn’t about to ask her, though, because deep down, I really didn’t want to know. I said, “Are you coming to the show?”

  “Are you kidding? I can’t afford that. Besides, the tickets are sold out for the whole run.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jamie. Jamie Byford.”