Enoch rose and glanced around.
“I’ll expect your answer by noon tomorrow.”
“But what do we have to do for you?” Linda Trevino asked. “What do they—”
Enoch had started to move toward the door, but he paused and turned toward her. Zeke thought he caught a glimpse of the real pain inside the man, the loss and ruin.
“Does it matter?” Enoch asked.
When no one seemed to have an answer, he continued to the exit, people moving aside to let him out.
In his absence, the mourners could only stare at the resurrected Martha Vickers and her strange, lost smile, until her husband collected her and led her back out through the diner’s kitchen.
3
Lester drove Zeke home in stony silence. The radio whispered, volume turned down so far that the music was barely audible. The sun had moved almost directly overhead and it felt too warm for February, even in South Texas. Zeke sat in the passenger seat and watched the fields rolling by, his heart numb and growing more so by the moment. He felt sick and hollow at the same time. Empty, as if he were the one who had died—and wasn’t that the truth, in a way? Savannah had died just once, and he had spent the past four months doing the same, a little bit every day.
The thought made him cringe with self-loathing. Fuck, listen to yourself. You get to watch the wind move the trees and the sun rise over the ranch. You get to breathe.
If a small cry came from his throat in that moment, as he turned fully away so that his friend could not see his face, Lester had the decency not to remark upon it. His own son, Josh, had been thirty years old, married and with his first child—Lester’s first grandchild—on the way. Grief had become like a secret they shared.
“Son of a bitch,” Zeke whispered, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, as if he could drive the image of dead Martha Vickers from his memory.
He couldn’t, and neither could he stop himself from imagining Savannah standing there in the diner in Martha’s place, alive but not quite alive, the bullet wounds she’d sustained beginning to heal.
How is it possible? he asked himself. How in the name of God . . .
An icy knot formed in his gut. Maybe it wasn’t in the name of God at all.
The big question was whether or not that even mattered. If Enoch had only been able to raise the dead, had them shuffling around looking the same way they had when they’d been buried, or worse, decaying . . . that would have been easier. Zeke would never have wanted Savannah to live that way, no matter how much the pain of her death gnawed at his insides. But if she could be fully alive again—really alive, restored to her true self—what then?
He’d never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
Lester turned in through the gates of the Riverbend, which was the name Zeke’s grandfather had given the Prater ranch in 1927, and drove back out to the pasture where they had left Zeke’s truck ninety minutes and a lifetime before. When he skidded to a stop, clouds of dust rose up from the dirt road and swirled around them.
“What are we gonna do, Zeke?” Lester asked in a strangled voice. He looked pale and drawn, as if he’d aged twenty years in the past hour.
Zeke opened his door and put one boot on the running board. “What do you think we’re gonna do? If there’s even a chance, what else can we do? Go home and call Vickers, Lester, and tell him we’re both on board.”
Lester gripped the steering wheel, staring out the windshield as if the dusty ranch beyond the glass was the starry nighttime sky and he sought the answers to every question he had ever been afraid to ask.
“It’s unholy, Zeke. It must be. One of these days, we’re gonna come face-to-face with the Lord. What do I say to Him on that day if we do this now?”
Zeke turned to stare at him, unable to keep the snarl from his voice. “You say, ‘Where the fuck were you on October the twelfth, you son of a bitch?’ How does that sound?”
* * *
The main house was so quiet at night that Zeke felt like a ghost haunting his own home, but if he sat on the porch with a beer and listened to the wind, it brought him the sounds of laughter and camaraderie from the bunkhouse. Sometimes he welcomed those noises, but more often they pained him.
After Savannah’s murder, the ranch hands had quieted down for a time out of respect. Most of them had been in Lansdale the night of the festival and somehow they had all come home unharmed, just as Zeke had. They had loved Savannah and doted on her like extended family, and her death left a wound in all of them, but in the end they weren’t her family. Not really. They could move on and heal and Zeke could not, though he never blamed them for it.
When he heard a car door slam out in front of the house, he imagined it must be one of the hands getting up the nerve to approach the house to ask for an advance on his pay. Zeke tried to be as flexible as he could, as long as he didn’t think the money was going to drugs or gambling and none of the hands borrowed too much up front. A couple of times it had bitten him in the ass, with guys who’d taken off for greener pastures still owing him days or weeks of work, but for the most part, he had found honest men for the ranch.
Zeke didn’t answer the knock at the door. He didn’t feel capable of holding a conversation tonight. How could he pretend there was anything else that mattered to him beyond what he had seen at the Magic Wagon that morning? He remained in the easy chair in his living room, an ancient Cary Grant movie flickering on the television. He had barely paid attention to a moment of the film, but it was a balm to his soul, allowing him to travel back to a simpler, gentler time.
The knocking ceased for only a moment before his visitor began to rap again, harder this time. Zeke stayed in his chair, admiring the stern lines of Myrna Loy’s pretty face. As a boy, he had found a genuine comfort in classic cinema, inheriting the love of old films from his parents. Savannah had never understood his interest and had teased him about his boring taste in movies, but she had been sucked in the night he’d watched Rear Window while she did her homework on the living room floor, and Zeke had hoped to introduce her to other Hitchcock films, and then to Bogart, who’d always been his favorite. He had hoped to share so many things with her, to watch her grow and learn and turn into a young woman and maybe a mother someday.
Despite the terrifying, monstrous miracle he’d seen today, he dared not allow himself to hope for those things again.
His cell phone buzzed once, a text coming in. Exhaling, he shifted in the chair and tugged the phone from his pocket to discover that the message was from Skyler.
Open the damn door.
Zeke almost didn’t get up. He had never wanted to hurt Skyler, but since Savannah’s murder the idea of loving anyone made him want to lock himself in the cellar and never come out. Love meant pain and loss; better to be alone.
But he had known Skyler a long time before they had begun dating, and he knew she would not go away just because he ignored her—seeing her earlier today at the Magic Wagon confirmed that. She had come out here with some purpose in mind and as long as she believed he was at home—and his car out in the driveway had already given him away—she would see it through.
“Shit,” he muttered, rising from his chair.
When he opened the door, Skyler barged in without an invitation. She had made no effort to pretty herself up for the visit; her hair was in a ponytail and the only makeup he could see was mascara. Her hooded burgundy sweater fit her tightly enough to show off her curves, but it was frayed at the cuffs and the laces of her boots were untied, as if she’d made the decision to come abruptly and hadn’t paused even to tie them.
“Come in, I guess,” he said, letting the irony into his voice.
Skyler spun on him, there in the foyer, stammering nonsense for several seconds, the words crowding each other to get out. She paused and took a breath, so furious with him . . . and she was so beautiful that it made him want to shove her back out the door. He loved the fire in her, the passion, but he did not want
to love her.
“You guess . . . ? That’s the greeting I get after you ignore me?” She looked as if she didn’t know whether to cry or slug him. “I’ve given you all the space you could ever have asked for, Ezekiel. I’ve respected your desire to be alone even though I think it’s the opposite of what you need. But I come and bang on your door and you ignore me—”
“I didn’t know it was you banging, Skyler.”
“—hush, now, I’m yelling at you!” she said, waving a finger, blue eyes alight with righteous fury.
Zeke couldn’t help smiling. “I can see that.”
Skyler faltered, the corners of her mouth turning upward, tempting a grin. Instead she punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow!”
“Don’t try to make light,” she said grimly, searching his eyes. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I figure you know why I’m here.”
Zeke glanced out the still-open door, then slid it slowly shut.
“I’m guessing it’s to do with the meeting at the Magic Wagon today.”
“You know it is.”
He narrowed his eyes, turning to look at her. “That doesn’t concern you, Skyler. You didn’t lose anyone that night—”
“I lost you,” she said softly. Angrily. “If you think I’m overstepping, well, I don’t know why I should care. You’ve already put me out of your life. But I care for you, Zeke, and that’s not going to change. You’re a good man. Don’t let yourself be talked into this.”
“Too late.”
Zeke walked into the living room with Skyler trailing behind him.
“It’s not too late,” she said insistently. “Nobody’s done anything yet that they can’t take back except for Alan Vickers and his little hoodoo conjuror, or whatever the hell that Enoch fellow is.”
He sat on the edge of the sofa with his arms crossed, staring at the knots in his pine floorboards.
“This about God?” he asked, not looking up.
“Partly, I guess. But it’s more just about what’s right. Up until today, I never gave a second thought to the rules I always thought the world worked by. Dead was dead. Maybe that’s not so. Unless it’s some kind of trick—”
“It wasn’t a trick. It was Martha Vickers in there, I’d swear to it.”
“Trick or not, it isn’t natural, Zeke. You know that. Even if you can bring Savannah back, you’ll never erase the truth from your mind.”
“If she can come back, the truth’ll be that she’s alive,” he said.
“The truth will be that you saw her get shot and you held her while her body went cold and she was dead, and the dead are not supposed to come back to us. You look inside your heart and you won’t be able to run away from the fact that you’re doing this for yourself, not for Savannah. You have no way of knowing what it means to come back from the dead, what she’ll remember, or if she’ll even be whole. All you have is this creepy little fella’s word. Don’t do this, Zeke. It’s abominable. And if you bring her back, she’ll be an abomination.”
For a moment he could not breathe. He closed his eyes and ran a thumb over a spot on his temple that had begun to throb. Skyler only wanted the best for him; he knew that. And, in quiet moments, he had allowed himself to imagine a future with her. But how could she not understand?
She has no children, he thought. She can’t feel what you feel. Skyler would never know the silent screaming that went on inside his heart, day and night. His wife, Anarosa, had been a God-fearing woman, but he had no doubt what she would have done if she were still alive. Hell, he figured if he gave up this chance, Anarosa would find some way to come back and haunt him, but Skyler would never understand.
To have lost his daughter, seen her die in front of him, and now to have a chance at restoring not only her life, but her lifetime—all the days the future still held in store for her—he would do anything. No matter how noble her intentions, Skyler wanted to rob him of that. For a moment, Zeke hated her for that.
He looked up at her. “You need to leave.”
Skyler flinched. “Please, Zeke—”
“You announced that you’d be overstepping, and by God, you kept your word. Now you need to go, Sky.”
“Ezekiel—”
“I don’t want you here!” he roared, pushing away from the sofa, crowding her backward into the hallway. “Get out of my damn house!”
Skyler’s hands were shaking and her chest rose and fell in short little breaths as she glared at him.
“You don’t get to . . . ,” she began, tears welling in her eyes. “I only wanted to—”
His face a mask, Zeke stared at her. “Go. Now.”
Skyler nodded slowly, wiping at her tears, and then turned and left, slamming the door behind her. Zeke went to the door and laid his hand on the wood, listening to the growl of her engine starting up. The ice in his gut—in his heart—was the only thing protecting him, and he invited it deeper inside him, wanting to be cold. To be frozen.
He could hear her tires on the driveway as she turned the car around and he wanted to go after her, to kiss her and let her cry with him. But if he went after her, then he would have to admit that she was right, and then where would he be?
4
The following night, Enoch passed out the pipes.
Each of the bereaved who had gathered in the Magic Wagon—one mourner for each of the twenty-three people murdered on October the twelfth—received one; none had declined Enoch’s offer. They gathered in a haphazardly formed circle on a gravel path that ran through what was called the New Field, the modern part of the cemetery where the recently dead had been buried. Enoch moved wordlessly amongst them, reaching into a burlap sack and producing yellowed bone pipes similar to the one that Vickers had played in the diner the day before.
Vickers stood at the edge of the road, not far from the crypt where his wife had been buried, but she wasn’t inside that marble tomb any longer. Martha now stood with her husband, clad in a flowery dress and a light green sweater and wearing a wide-brimmed hat that hid much of her face from view. Somewhere between dead and alive, it was as if she were ashamed of herself, but she held her husband’s hand, and though Zeke knew it might have been the moonlight, he thought that her skin looked less pale than it had the day before, as if some of the pink health had returned to it.
Enoch paused in front of Zeke and rooted in the burlap sack, which made a rasping noise as he drew out the next pipe. Zeke hesitated before accepting the instrument, but Enoch narrowed his eyes in suspicion until he took it. The pipe might have been human bone, but it had been carved and shaped so that it was difficult to know for certain, and Zeke chose not to examine it too closely. It had three holes in the top and otherwise had no markings.
Clutching the pipe in his hand, nursing the icy numbness inside him for his own sake, Zeke glanced around at the others—friends and neighbors and near strangers—and found that most of them wore expressions as blank as his own to mask their grief and hope and doubt.
Several yards away, Aaron Monteforte leaned against the trunk of a massive, dying oak tree with his arms crossed and an almost petulant air about him, as if he thought no one could understand his grief. With twenty-three dead in a small town, everyone in Lansdale had lost a friend or family member in that massacre. There was nothing special about Aaron’s grief and, Zeke knew, nothing special about his own . . . except that it was his. His pain. His rage. His loss. His daughter, goddamn it.
Aaron tended bar at the Blue Moon but looked more like he ought to have been the bouncer, with a weight lifter’s build and reaper and angel tattoos on his thick biceps, brown hair to his shoulders and a perpetual scruff that couldn’t rightly be called a beard. Several years before, Aaron had spent the summer as a hand on the ranch and Zeke knew he ought to go over and say something. But what could he say that he hadn’t already said four months ago to Aaron and everyone else who’d lost someone that night? That he was sorry? They were all fucking sorry.
Still, he ma
naged to catch Aaron’s eye for a moment and gave a solemn nod, just to say, Hey, man, you’re not alone. After a second of recognition, Aaron returned the gesture. The kid had lost his sister, Trish, who’d been twenty-five and unmarried, and he had chosen to be her proxy. That was how Vickers had referred to them all, “proxies,” just folks stepping in to do a deed on behalf of those who couldn’t do it themselves.
When Enoch reached Aaron, the big man with the tattoos and the muscles took the pipe and knelt to pray with it clasped in his hands. When Enoch held a pipe out to Linda Trevino, she backed away, shaking her head.
“I can’t,” she said. “No, Jesus, I can’t.”
Lester strode over to her, took her firmly by the arm, and brought her to Enoch. “You will,” he said. “You already agreed. It’s all of us or none of us. Are you going to take this chance away from everyone because you’re afraid?”
She spun on him, stared into his weathered face. “Aren’t you?”
Only the wind spoke. Otherwise the cemetery was silent.
“We all are,” Zeke said at last, quietly but clearly.
Linda stared at him with wild eyes. “But he won’t even tell us—”
“Take it, damn you!” Mrs. Hawkins snapped. “Just take it or you might as well be killing them all again!”
Linda sucked in a breath as if she’d been punched in the gut. Shaking, she took the carved length of bone from Enoch, who moved on to young Tommy Jessup and then Arturo Sanchez and to a man Zeke knew only as Mooney, a salesman from the medical supplies company who had brought his new bride to the music festival and then lost her to a bullet only a week and a half after they’d been wed.
The last two pipes in the sack went to Lester and to Harry Boyd, the owner of the oldest of the five ranches that surrounded Lansdale. His boy, Charlie, had been twenty-one and the spitting image of his father, with ginger hair and a freckled face and a lanky, awkward build. Harry looked as if he might be sick when Enoch offered him the pipe, and the gathered mourners held their collective breath until he accepted it.
Four Summoner’s Tales Page 11