by Gemma Files
And thought — prayed, though he no longer quite knew who to — Oh, give me strength. Strength enough. Give me . . .
But nothing answered save himself, or maybe the wind. And then, at last —
— her.
Save him, little king. As you know you can.
Kicking, turning. No voice now to scream.
And the blue sky, shrinking. The clouds, rushing in. Fat grey drops of rain falling, to slick his fevered face. As she spoke on, that impossible voice, only underlined by the thin, gnawing whine issuing from his own throat, endless and terrible and raw.
Saying, gently: Save him, save them. Punish your enemies, reward your friends. Do as your God does. Become as your God is.
Save yourself.
No breath left to speak with, not even to beg. Yet the words flew up anyhow, spilled from his mouth and swam in front of his eyes like sparks from cinder, molten-silver hot, and burned whatever they touched, until the whole world howled out in unison —
Therefore saith the Lord GOD. Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations.
And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.
Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.
The funnel, that moving finger, swept in on a slather of whipped dust, a froth of stones and swirling brick-bats. To either side, the sky remained clear — grey-blue with a messy touch of pink to it, frostbit flesh turned inside-out. But inside the twister was only rain and darkness, so cold it tore skin wherever it touched. And yet the wavering path of its eye swept over Rook’s fellow prisoners entirely, while pivoting to tweeze the rest of Captain Coulson’s company out of Heaven’s reach. They scatter-shot in all directions, spread so far that the only sign that the camp had ever been inhabited was a single torn grey sleeve full of shattered bone and red muck poking up through the debris, its buttons still a-glint, intact.
Then the rope finally snapped, and Rook dropped to his hands and knees as the scaffold broke apart around him, watching through blood-dimmed eyes as the pieces flew up and away, into the whirling sky. Blood and spirits forced themselves into their former channels, a flash flood through a needle’s eye, nerves pin-pricking so intolerably he spent a breathless moment cursing himself, paralyzed with pain — wishing himself hanged again, a thousand times over, for the unforgivable crime of cutting himself down too soon.
The twister spent itself in an outward rush and dissipated, slung clouds and rain across the horizon, leaving only wet dusk behind.
All around, nothing still stood except the things he’d allowed to survive. The rest was laid waste, sure as Gideon left Jezreel. Like Chorazin and Bethsaida, whose smoke goes up forever.
Which made him . . . one of them.
Exodus, 22:18. Fit only to be weeded out, burned and buried, their graves sown with salt. Just like that poor boy with the one goat’s eye, trembling in fear with his sidelong pupil opening squarish, as he stared headfirst down into the flames.
Back in Missouri, in Rook’s first parish, “good” people had tied a sick child to a ladder and cooked him over a flaming stack of hay, for the grand crime of being born a witch’s get — while Rook had done nothing but watch and pray, because they were his, and he theirs. Which was why he’d left under cover of night soon after, fled as far as the stage-ticket bought with his flock’s money would take him, then got roaring drunk enough to join up. Fleeing from what he’d seen, and done, by not arguing other parts of the Good Book, for fear of suffering similar excision and execution. Matthew, 7:3 to 7:5, for example. 1 Corinthians 13.
Born different, that boy — and through nobody’s fault, not even his own. Same as Chess, always flaunting his slick little occasion-for-sin self around, with what he refused to pretend not to be writ large on every inch of him. Or Rook, too, with his doubts and deficiencies, the Bible leaping in his breast-pocket every time he heard something he felt he couldn’t speak out against for himself, without using Jesus’, Moses’ or Ezekiel’s words as back-up. Rook, washed white as snow with God’s word, then damned black as night with the discovery of his own power.
“Whah . . . happen . . . ?” Rook rasped at last, shaking his head to flick wet hair from his eyes, down on his hands and knees in the wet black muck. Then looked up to meet Hosteen’s horrified eyes — for between them lay Chess, his crumpled face pallid, wounded arm crooked behind him in a very unnatural fashion.
You could save him, that voice in Rook’s head suggested.
At almost the same time, like he’d somehow heard her, Hosteen grabbed Chess up and dropped him almost in Rook’s lap, intent plain, if impossible: Here, you fix this! Rook looked down, one palm cupping each side of Chess’s slack skull — and God damn, but his hands were either far bigger than he’d ever thought, or Chess’s face was far smaller. Or maybe it was just that he’d so rarely seen Chess Pargeter this still or silent, before.
I don’t know what comes next, he thought — and knew he must be lying, because . . . well, shit, take a look around.
Rook shut his own eyes, squinched them hard and cleared his mind, swiping an elbow ’cross a spectral blackboard. Then leaned down, kissed Chess for the first time, on his own hook — deep and probing and tender — and whispered a Bible verse into his mouth, as he did it: “Psalms, 51-7 to 51-10. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice . . . .”
The rain fell, a booming drum. Rook sat surrounded by his own words, glittering letters turning in the air, a slow cascade of evil stars.
While the colour came seeping back into Chess’s face by degrees, Rook moved his broken shoulder back into place, as gently as he could, and felt the bone pop together once more, whole as though never split. Felt the sinews blossom beneath his fingers.
Eventually, Chess opened his eyes anew, pupils tiny, as though contracted against a bright, wild light. He grinned back up at Rook, happily, teeth sharp as some snapping dog’s in the storm’s half-darkness.
“It was you,” he said. “I knew it. Oh, I knew it. Goddamn! You killed them all, them sons of bitches, didn’t you? But good.”
A sliver of ice pierced Rook’s chest, then, encircling his heart so quick he wondered whether it would ever melt away again. Or whether he ever wanted it to.
“Yes,” he agreed, unable to deny it. “Yes. I did.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nine months before the twister. That was when Rook had first heard the Lieutenant say —
“And this’d be Private Pargeter.”
A grey day, that first camp even greyer, all their uniforms dirt-stiffened and indistinguishable. But Chess still stood out, hair and beard bright as a brand. He’d been butchering livestock yanked as tribute from a local farm, and his hands were bloody to the wrists.
Looked up mildly from cleaning his knife, to answer — “Lieutenant. Reverend.”
“Pargeter’s our very best man for close work, ’specially during nighttime incursions,” the Lieutenant told Rook, an odd note in his voice blurring what seemed like praise with something else. “He rode after us when we passed through California, rarin’ to volunteer. Fair scout, excellent killer.”
Eyes like sweet poison, too, Rook thought, and blushed.
Chess caught him at it, and grinned. “You’re thinkin’ how I’m small-made, to merit that kind of reputation,” he said.
“Oh, no, I . . . hadn’t thought about it, really,” Rook replied, reddening further. “I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Accuracy hardly counts as insult,” the Lieut said.
Chess nodded. “Oh, I ain’t insulted. But then again, that’s the glory of the army, ain’t it? For folks like me.”
“Me
aning?”
Those green eyes narrowed, as one hand sought out his most convenient gun-butt, caressing it the way most men might a pretty girl’s dropped handkerchief. “Meaning, Lincoln may aim to free the slaves, Rev, but it was Colonel Colt really made all men equal — my size, your size. And everything else, to boot.”
That night, Rook gave a homily from Jeremiah, 7-26 to 7-34, as martial a passage as any he could think of. The Lieut sat there nodding, his transplanted Bushwhacker hair groomed like Custer’s, while the other men mainly got about their business, not ignoring Rook, exactly, but not exactly cheering him on, either.
All but Chess, that was, who watched him with a quirked gold brow and an odd little smile playing about his mouth — those deft hands of his cleaning and reassembling his guns by rote, without any need of close attention, while his gaze travelled the length and breadth of Rook’s long body . . . complimentary and predatory, at once.
The next two weeks brought three separate engagements, fast and hard as anything Megiddo’s plains might eventually deal out. Almost every day, the Lieut received fresh intelligence by bird, inevitably coded — and since only he had the cipher, they were forced to take his word for each subsequent target. Their primary duty, he often told them, was self-sacrifice. To rush any given breach, paving the way for more potentially damage-inflicting crews like Captain Coulson’s, who moved far more slowly, on account of the cannon they still dragged along behind them.
The cost was dear, both in men and morale. Rook buried three in shallow graves that fourteen-day span alone, and one sewn in a sack, far too crushed for any sort of memorializing. The Lieut told Rook to cheer them up, or at least on, and he did what little he could — thumbed the Bible for inspiration, looking out on a narrowing clutch of faces whose eyes slid from his, increasingly emptied of anything but fear and doubt.
And there in the background, Chess, always whistling at his work, untouched by any of the above. Chess, for whom war seemed a form of recreation — something he revelled in excelling at, with no hint of regret that such victory always came at someone else’s loss.
They were fighting hard over some sand-bar, one day, with mortar-fire felling trees in the distance. Rook found himself trapped by the coattail behind an overturned stagecoach that Kees Hosteen had set flame to, in order to create a brake and cover their retreat. As the older man tugged at his sleeve, a pair of Northerners managed to spill overtop and came down thrashing, blind, out to do whatever damage they could. One spitted himself on Hosteen’s buck knife, knocking him to the ground, where they scrabbled around in gruesome play — Hosteen carving out loops of gut, as the man tried hopelessly to stuff them back in.
Meanwhile, Rook wrestled with Bluebelly Number Two, the both of them too entangled to do each other much damage, yet unable to quite break free. As Rook laid the man up against the stage’s undercarriage, he saw him glance up, and followed the eye-line to see a new gun barrel pointing downwards, right at his head, wielded by yet another suicidal Abolitionist.
“Die, you secesh fucker!” this one spat out, then slumped face-forward, his eye a red mess of ruin. Rook’s dance partner eked a garbled name, but fell silent when Rook cross-punched him in the throat, freeing himself up to look back — and catch Chess Pargeter maybe forty paces behind, gun still a-smoke, smiling at the damage he’d done.
“Best keep alert, Rev,” he called. “Odds are, there’s more where that one come from.” A thin, hungry grin: “Sure hope so, anyhow.”
And turned away once more, with a rakish tip of his blood-spattered hat-brim and both guns up, already discharging fatally in two entirely new directions.
At his feet, Rook could hear Hosteen breathing ragged, almost like he was sobbing. “C’mon,” he said, scooping him up, kicking the disembowelled soldier aside, “your boy’s right, and so were you. Better fall on back.”
Hosteen nodded, shoulders heaving. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Why’n the hell did I ever come here — why’d I even join up? To kill them, or get myself killed?”
“Little of both, I expect,” Rook replied, dragging him along.
Much later, when the fire and drunken joshing had both died down, Rook heard whispers, and opened his eyes to see Chess deep in negotiations with the old Hollander. They muttered together a while about the varying utility of knives and such, from what little Rook could make out, ’til Chess finally said: “Okay, fine, that’s settled — now take them down, and be done with it. I ain’t got all night.”
Hosteen cleared his throat, and looked down. “That . . . ain’t what I want, this time.”
“Oh no?” Chess’s voice hardened. “Well, best be careful, old man — sure hope you ain’t forgot so soon about Chilicothe and his pals, for your own sake.”
“Chew coal and shit-fire, Chess, don’t take on — we all of us remember Chilicothe, the Lieut included. God damn, but you can be a mean little bastard!”
“Got that right.” A pause. “What do you want, then?”
Hosteen bent to Chess’s ear, voice dipping too low to follow. Chess listened, then snorted — half a hiss, half a snicker. “You’re an ill old buzzard,” was all he said.
Hosteen’s face fell, comically swift. “Just ’cause some of us got human feelin’s. . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river, grampaw. I want that knife first thing tomorrow, handed over in front of God and everybody, the Lieut included — like we bet for it at whist, all legal.”
“It’s yours.”
Chess huffed, lips twisting. “Oh, men really are fools, like my Ma always says,” he announced, to no one in particular. “Dogs, too. Do any damn thing they take a mind to, long as they think they’ll get what leaves them feelin’ happiest, after.”
Here he pushed Hosteen backwards, without warning, ’til he had no option but to let Chess sit down on him — one hard shove, far too quick for Rook to quite take it in. And straddling Hosteen’s lap just a shade primly, almost side-saddle, he admitted, with a further smirk, “And as for me . . . I’m certainly no exception.”
Then he twined his fingers in Hosteen’s shaggy grey hair, letting the man draw him close enough to kiss and met him open-mouthed, without restraint, tongue-first.
Oh, Rook thought, numbly. So that was it.
He didn’t stay to watch much longer, merely turned away, as quietly as possible. It seemed more than a bit uncouth — almost impolite — to treat their revelry as a sideshow. Particularly since it struck him as not so much revelry as maybe . . . necessity, on Hosteen’s part. Maybe even kindness, on Chess’s.
It did startle Rook a bit, however — as a Christian — to realize that he hadn’t previously thought Chess might have any real kindness in him.
Later, in his journal — just notes scribbled down in an aidememoire, leather binding sewn ’round a tablet of block-paper — Rook wrote:
His fine looks and indubitable skill aside, Pvt. Pargeter lives most securely in a state of nature, which is, as we know, also a state of sin. Yet does the prospect of damnation really hold any terror for one so utterly unrepentant? He seems almost soulless, and happy to be so, like an animal; guiltless in his actions, and thus (perhaps) blameless of their consequences.
Much later still that same night, Rook woke suddenly, so stiff in the trousers it made him sore — thinking on Private Chess Pargeter’s green eyes, his freckled shoulders, that smooth dip where his belly met his belt. And thought: Ah, so my sin — my liking for the Other, in any form — has come upon me, even here. . . .
He lay there quite some time with both eyes open, searching the sky for stars, and finding none.
“Oh, Pargeter’s a harlot in trousers, to be sure,” the Lieutenant said, dismissively. “The very worst sort of Sodom-apple. Rumour has it his dam’s some ’Frisco lily-belle — and she certainly must know her business, too, for that son of hers has managed to sully more than half my men, distributing his favours without qualm. That a thing like that should seem so outright made for war, meanwhile. . . .”
He trailed off, shaking his head, before concluding: “Well, it’s a conundrum I simply cannot fathom. But there’s no sentiment in the creature, thank God, sparing us all the usual fluttery Grecian nonsense inherent in such attachments. So while we have need, we’ll gladly pay the fee to use him . . . as is traditional, no doubt, in his family.”
“No doubt,” Rook said.
“Private,” he spoke up, around noon-time, as Chess passed him by, toting a pair of looted shotguns, “might I speak with you a moment, perhaps, tonight?”
“Well, that depends. What on?”
“A matter of Scripture?”
Chess turned back at this. “Really,” he said, and narrowed his eyes, then broke out into a wide smile.
“Well hell, Rev, why not? You may’ve grilled the Lieut on all my bad habits, but you never peached on old Hosteen — that’s worth somethin’.”
“So . . . you knew I was there, the whole time.”
“You’re a damn man-mountain, Reverend Rook. Whenever you walk, it’s like a tree movin’ ’round, no matter how quiet you may dream you’re bein’.”
“You don’t seem too upset I asked the Lieut about you, though.”
Chess stretched the smile into an outright laugh. “Oh, you’ve probably already figured out just how much of a damn I give what people think of me.”
Predictably, however, there was no single part of that evening’s personal sermon which went anywhere near the way Rook’d hoped it might, when he’d first issued Chess that fateful invitation. He came prepared, with all the relevant sections of his Bible premarked; preached mightily on Lot’s visitors and the destruction of Gomorrah, on it being better to marry than burn, on trouser-wearing women and other such unnatural oddities. But Chess just sat there while he gesticulated — interested but unimpressed, with the same tiny smile playing about his lips that’d annoyed Rook since the day they’d met.