Devil's Dance

by Daniel Depp

  ‘Okay, Joey. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, kid. And watch your ass. Not just from the guineas, either, if you know what I mean.’

  Araz nodded. Joey leaned back and closed his eyes and Oracio shoved a small electric trimmer up his nose.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Spandau caught a flight from Burbank to Sacramento, had hoped to rent something nice and roomy but ended up with a smaller Nissan and driving north toward Redding with his knees up around his ears. He’d spent time rodeoing up here and it always felt good to be back. He liked this part of the state and couldn’t think why he didn’t come more often. But this was the sort of thing everybody says, as if people actually ran their own lives.

  As he drove there were long stretches where it was still possible to imagine a time when genuine cowboys worked ranches that extended farther than the eye could see. What agribusiness hadn’t ruined the real-estate developers had, and neither of them had much use for a breed of men who wouldn’t or couldn’t conform. The irony is that you couldn’t drive three miles without seeing an ad for some cowboy-themed restaurant, motel, or tourist spot. They’d taken the American West and shrunk it too small for the real people.

  Spandau stopped in Redding and had a steak and a beer in a restaurant decorated with posters of Crazy Horse and Geronimo. You could get a Cochise Burger with avocado and jalapeño Jack cheese, keeping with the natural progression of everything in America to become Disneyland in the end. We do the same thing to culture that Jivaro tribesmen do to heads. He found a country-western station on the car radio but switched it off when he realized once again that C&W nowadays is nothing but pop songs rendered through the nose.

  Cheney was fifty miles east of Redding, wedged in a valley between two national forests at the feet of the Sierra Madres. Before leaving LA he called a friend who often fished in the area, asked him if he knew anything about Cheney. He said yes, it’s the gateway to Burney. There were less than fifteen hundred inhabitants and one main street. Spandau didn’t think it would take long to find the Catholic church. He stopped at a mom and pop diner, got a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee. The waitress was a friendly woman in her forties who wore a uniform three sizes too small for her expansive cleavage. She scratched a mosquito bite on her freckled left boob and pointed out the window and down the street. Spandau grossly overtipped her. She reminded him of the older woman, a friend of his mother’s, who took his virginity all those years ago in Flagstaff. He thought he could still smell the Woolworth’s perfume.

  The Cheney Catholic church was a small redwood frame building at the end of the main street. There was no steeple or tower but there was a cross on the outside wall and a statue of St Francis of Assisi preaching to a small patch of winter-sleeping roses. Spandau walked up the steps and went into the church. It was dark and cool and smelled vaguely of cedar and was as stark as anything you’d find in a Bergman film. Spandau half expected to see Gunnar Björnstand but instead found a blond priest of about thirty squatting near the altar and ineptly trying to fix a broken electrical outlet. He’d not turned off the power, got zapped when he touched the hot wire and yelped and said, ‘Shit!’ before he realized he’d done it. When Spandau came up the priest looked up at him with a look of utter despair. He had short hair and a cowlick that made him look like Opie Taylor had been called to the cloth.

  The priest apologized for swearing, then said,

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know how to change one of these things, would you? Somebody broke it and it’s the outlet we use for the electric organ. The electrician wanted to charge me sixty dollars just to come and look at it. He’s a Methodist, wouldn’t you know. If he’d been a Catholic I might have had some leverage.’

  ‘You have the new outlet?’

  The priest held up the box.

  ‘You know where the fuse box is?’ Spandau asked.

  ‘I think so. Why?’

  ‘First you have to turn off the electricity. Otherwise you get shocked.’

  ‘Why didn’t I know that? God has given me a few talents but a mechanical sense isn’t one of them. I excel at the less strenuous sports, like book-keeping.’

  The priest went through a side door into a small kitchen. He opened a closet.

  ‘Is this it?’

  Spandau nodded and opened the circuit box. He found the breaker and shut it off. Most of the lights around the altar went off as well.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said the priest, ‘what have you done?’

  ‘Everything on that circuit gets shut off too. They’ll all be back on in a minute.’

  ‘You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘More or less. But if I happen to burst into flames, don’t try to put me out with water, okay?’

  He nodded, not realizing it was a joke. Spandau took the screwdriver from the priest and set about changing the outlet.

  ‘You’re not Father Michael,’ Spandau said.

  ‘Oh heavens no. I’m Father Paul. Father Michael looks like John Wayne and is probably the one who installed all this wiring in the first place. He’s retiring this year and I’m taking over for him.’

  ‘Is he around?’

  ‘I’d say right about now he’s on the river catching the evening rise or whatever they call it. He’s quite the fly-fisherman. It’s a wonder he doesn’t step on a rattlesnake. The things are all over the place up here.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t grow up here.’

  ‘I’m from Columbus, Ohio. The ’burbs, where the most you had to worry about was an angry raccoon. People see bears here. Bears, I ask you. What do I do if I run into a bear? Ask him if he wants to confess?’

  ‘It’s hard if you don’t grow up in these places.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Some place like it. I grew up on my uncle’s ranch just outside of Flagstaff. There’s not a lot to do.’

  ‘I suppose it’s easier now with the internet and all. I’d go crazy without email and blogging and Netflix. Do you do Facebook?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve got contacts all over the world. It’s amazing. I’ve put this church online. We have a website and a blog and everything. Our parishioners are scattered all over the place. It’s a wonderful way of keeping the parish informed, keeping everyone together. You ought to check it out.’

  ‘I will, thanks.’

  Spandau connected the wires to the new outlet and screwed it into place, then the wall plate. He handed the screwdriver back to Father Paul and went into the kitchen and flipped on the breaker. The lights came back on. The priest looked greatly relieved.

  ‘It should work now,’ Spandau said. ‘If you could point me in the direction of Father Michael.’

  ‘I can tell you where he is, but he can be rather ill-tempered when he’s fishing.’

  ‘I’ll have to risk it.’

  ‘Maybe I could be of help.’

  ‘I’m a researcher for HBO. We’re planning a bio of Jerry Margashack and they’ve sent me up to look around. I understand he grew up around here. Did you know him?’

  ‘A little before my time, I’m afraid. I’ve only been here a year. Father Michael is definitely your man, then. He and Jerry have always been close.’

  ‘Jerry was a good Catholic?’

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly my understanding. They’ve been friends a long time. I don’t think it’s so much a priestly thing as a kind of father–son relationship. I knew Jerry didn’t get along with his father, didn’t really get along with anybody in his family. It was Father Michael who used to bail him out of things.’

  ‘So they still see each other?’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve actually seen each other in years. Certainly not since I’ve been here. Mainly emails and letters.’

  ‘Snail mail? Don’t you think that’s odd? I mean, why write letters when you have email?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re letters exactly.’

  ‘A check maybe? A contribution to the parish?’

>   ‘I wouldn’t know. You’d have to take that up with Father Michael.’

  ‘How can I find him?’

  ‘I’ll draw you a map. He’s got a small trailer about five miles out of town, right across the road from the creek. It looks like a bait shop inside. He’s moving the whole thing up to Oregon in a few months when he retires. He goes up there all the time. People joke he’s got a woman up there, but, oh Lord, you can’t say that around him, can you, he’ll tear your head off. Apparently he has friends up near Ashland where they’re going to let him put his trailer. Near the river again. I know Our Lord liked fishermen but frankly I can’t see the point.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Father Paul didn’t have much of a talent for cartography either, but Spandau found the place, tucked away in some trees across the road from the river. He knocked on the door of the trailer and got no answer. He crossed the road and picked his way through the rocks down to the water, making more than enough noise to warn any rattlers. There was a path along the bank and Spandau followed it round a bend and saw Father Michael up ahead and a few yards out in the water. He was an odd sight in waders and a dog collar but he knew what he was doing and Spandau stood for a bit and watched the old man cast the line upstream over and over in an effortless gentle roll. The line stretched itself out on the water without ripple and floated almost invisible down the current until he swept it from the water and into the air to cast again.

  ‘Having any luck?’ Spandau said as he approached.

  ‘Not if you’re going to stomp around in those rocks like a damned Clydesdale,’ said the old man. ‘These trout are catch and release and are probably better educated at this point than either of us. Regardless of what people think, they’re not entirely stupid. If all you did all day long, day in and day out your entire life, was look for the right bugs to eat, you’d get pretty good at it, wouldn’t you? What do you want with me?’

  ‘You knew I was coming?’

  ‘I’m old but I can still read the text on my cell phone. Paul knows better than to let you sneak up on me. I’d’ve had his head in a basket. I don’t like surprises.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Jerry Margashack.’

  ‘So I understand,’ said the priest. He looked around. The light was fading. ‘If you can just hold your water I’ve got time for a couple of more casts.’

  Spandau watched the old priest make his casts until neither of them could see the fly and the priest reeled in his line.

  ‘A Parachute Adams,’ said the priest, dangling the tiny fly so Spandau could see it. ‘See the little white tuft of hair on top? That’s why they call it a parachute. You tie them with that part sticking up so that old farts like me can see them. It seems like cheating but that’s what happens when you get old. You have to cheat. It’s the only way we can even the game with you youngsters.’

  He clipped off the tie and hooked it to the wool pad on his vest.

  ‘You tie them yourself?’ Spandau asked.

  ‘Something to do winter evenings while I watch TV.’

  ‘It is my understanding that trout season up here doesn’t start until May.’

  ‘Really?’ said the priest. He cranked the line onto the reel and broke down the fly rod. ‘I’ll have to ask the warden when he comes to mass on Sunday.’

  The priest turned and headed up the bank still in his waders. ‘You better follow me unless you want to break an ankle,’ he said to Spandau over his shoulder.

  Spandau followed him up to the road. He was a tall man, still taller than Spandau’s six-two, and walked with a determined stride. He didn’t wait for Spandau or look back to see if he followed. Spandau shuffled along just behind him, dogging him back down the road to the trailer. The old priest pulled off his waders outside the door and hung them from a clothesline to dry. He went into the trailer and let the screen door nearly take Spandau’s nose off. Spandau pulled it open again and went in.

  It didn’t actually look like a bait shop but it didn’t leave any doubt what the old man’s enthusiasms were. Rods in one corner, the better ones on a rack on the wall. A makeshift fly-tying table beneath a window. Lots of photos, mainly fish-related, Father Michael holding up a prize catch.

  ‘There’s whisky on the shelf over there,’ said the priest, and went into the bathroom.

  Spandau went over and poured two glasses of Macallan’s. Directly he could hear the old man grunting behind the door. Spandau took a sip of the scotch and sat the old man’s glass on a beat-up coffee table. There weren’t many photos of people, a few obviously long-dead relatives. Several photos of a tired-looking but smiling woman maybe in her late thirties or early forties. She had been pretty once but now the smile looked as if it took some work. There were a couple more of her and a boy with Down’s syndrome, taken a few years apart. There was one photo of the three of them together, and one of Father Michael and the boy, taken maybe five years ago, with the boy smiling brightly and holding up his own rainbow.

  Father Michael came out of the bathroom, saw Spandau looking at the photos. ‘Now you want to tell me who the hell you are and what you want?’

  He sat down on the sofa and picked up his glass, stared at Spandau.

  ‘I do research for HBO. We’re thinking of doing a documentary on Jerry Margashack and I’m interviewing people who knew him.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘I understand you used to be his priest.’

  ‘You understand wrongly. I was a friend of his but I was never his priest. If you knew anything about Jerry Margashack you’d know he’s never had much truck with such things.’

  ‘But you knew him well?’

  ‘Do they give you some sort of card, these HBO people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what you’re telling me is that you might just be anybody, maybe even somebody Jerry owes money to, maybe somebody looking to hurt him?’

  ‘I’m not looking to hurt him.’

  ‘But you are a liar. You don’t listen to confessions for thirty years and not learn to spot a bold-faced lie from half a mile away. You’re not too good at it either. Anybody ever tell you that?’

  ‘What was it? My innocent-looking face?’

  ‘It’s your ego. You don’t want it bad enough. You’re embarrassed at having to lie and there’s this hitch in your attitude that can’t help telling me you don’t give a damn if I believe you or not. Would that be about right?’

  ‘I should introduce you to my boss. The two of you would get along.’

  ‘This is not to say I appreciate being lied to. I never did get used to it. You still don’t care, do you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well,’ said the priest, ‘finish your drink and then I’m going to throw you out of here on your head.’

  ‘Jerry’s in trouble and I’ve been hired to help him out.’

  ‘Then you got your hands full, son, because I’ve never known Jerry Margashack when he wasn’t in trouble of some sort.’

  ‘You ever see any of his films?’

  ‘I think I saw one of them once. A lot of sex and foul language and violence. I’m not prudish but I didn’t see the point. You could imagine Jerry making it though. He always did like to shock people. Most of us grow out of that sort of thing.’

  ‘You keep up with him. I imagine you know the shape his career’s been in the last few years.’

  ‘His career is none of my business.’

  ‘I thought you were friends?’

  ‘I can tell you don’t know much about human relations. Not everything is so conveniently defined, and I gave up worrying about it a long time ago. I just do what God calls me to do and leave the worrying to Him.’

  ‘Jerry’s broke and struggling. This new movie he’s done has a shot at the Oscars, which would turn his life around, but somebody is trying to ruin it for him. Somebody who knows him, knows his private life, is releasing information about his indiscretions.’

  ‘And you’ve been hired to stop them?’

>   ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Are they lies, this information they’re putting out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well that puts you in a kind of morally ambiguous area, doesn’t it? What if they’re true?’

  ‘That’s not for me to decide.’

  ‘Aha,’ said the priest. ‘I could rummage around in my head for about a dozen biblical quotes that say you’re wrong, but they’d be wasted on you. You’ve already got everything figured out.’

  ‘What about “judge not lest ye be judged” and all that.’

  ‘“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”. That would be Matthew 7,’ the priest quoted automatically. ‘People are always half-assing this verse. Are you really stupid enough to argue scripture with a Catholic priest?’

  Father Michael took another sip of scotch and leaned forward and looked Spandau in the eyes.

  ‘If you look at it – and I assure you that once or twice I have – it is not the moral loophole that everybody seems to think it is. What it is actually is the Golden Rule all over again. Treat others as you’d like to be treated. It doesn’t say a thing about not judging people. It just says that when you do pass verdict on somebody, use the same standards you’d want them to use on you. Try to be fair, in other words.’

  The priest released a discreet belch, shook his head incredulously, and went on.

  ‘You want the easy way. You want not to be judged at all, you want a get out of jail free card,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t exist. Like it or not it’s a moral universe. Some points can be debated but most not. Not the big ones. We all know the difference between right and wrong, most of us are just too damned lazy to apply it. Like everybody else, you’re just scared shitless somebody is going to call you on your choices. And you know what? They will. You’re going to be judged no matter what you do. Some will seem fair, some won’t, but you’re going to have to learn to live with it and that’s what kills you, doesn’t it? You have to have the balls to live with your choices. In the end, buddy, it’s just you and God and my advice is try to shut up and listen.’