by David Hill
It took her half an hour to get it straightened up again.
Then she flooded the truck—which wasn’t hard to do. So there she was, under the hood, turning the carburetor screw and spattering her blouse with oil and grease. Now she stood in the shower, scrubbing the petroleum gunk off her hands and arms like an idiot hick version of Lady Macbeth trying to rub off her eternal stains.
Brother, she was cracked now. What difference did it make about the blouse? Why was she sitting here while it ran through a second wash cycle in heavy bleach and detergent? Anyone could turn up here. God knew how many times anyone had. The more she commanded herself to run away, the heavier she sat in the kitchen chair. Now the blouse was in the dryer. She was sipping a cup of tea. At this moment Averill’s body was turning stiff and cold on the floor of his study behind the church sanctuary. Any dog, nut or bum looking for a handout could find him there any second. She had to haul him into the swamp.
She stood on the porch, her knees going weak. There were three vehicles one behind the other on the driveway. She’d move his truck and then his precious Cutlass. She’d take her Blazer. She put the truck on the grass next to the Cutlass. Wait, she thought, I can’t take the Blazer. If she wanted it to look as if she and Averill were away, then she’d have to take the Oldsmobile. She still hadn’t found that christening gown. But wouldn’t people wonder why she’d taken the christening gown if, as she hoped it would appear, she and Averill had left with every intention of returning? Now that was stupid. No one except Averill Sayres had ever seen or heard tell of the christening dress. Now she remembered. She’d wrapped it in tissue and laid it inside of a heavy cardboard dress box that was stored under a pile of wool blankets in the cedar chest.
Or so her deluded mind had convinced her. She had removed the entire contents of the chest by now, and there was no dress box to be seen. Nuts, she was nuts. God alone knew what she’d done with that gown. Some of it, probably most of it, was due to the fact that she hadn’t had a real night’s sleep or a proper meal in God alone knew how long. Some was a result of having lived so long knowing she was bound by fate to murder him. However, the strain that had worked her mind loose was the daily erosion caused by living with what Averill had done.
Well, sir, he might be dead, but his crime continued encroaching on her sanity. She had to think about that too. Suppose she really did manage to dispose of his body and dissolve into thin air? Suppose she even landed on her feet in some ideal situation? What if she was lucky enough to marry a good man and raise his children?
Wouldn’t the past keep eroding her good intentions? Wouldn’t the terrible scenes replay in grim detail? You couldn’t run away from what you’d seen and knew and experienced any more than you could kill it. No, it would all overcome her in the end. She might even snap like one of those maniacs who heard voices and shot people in churches and shopping centers. Though, if that were to become her fate, Leona was pretty sure it would take place in a church.
She had never driven the Cutlass, never ridden in it, for that matter. It still smelled new. Averill had left the paper coverings on the floor mats. The thin, torn plastic still covered the plush fake velvet seats. It gave her an undesired thrill, a cheesy, slick tingle that recalled the inappropriate and unexpected gestures of needy young men. Now it passed. Now she turned the key and a hot tornado stung her face and legs and a deafening chorus of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones began to play. Everything in the goddamned car was automatic. It was button city. Her trembling fingers found the volume control, then the climate, and the already cooler current diminished into a light breeze. It lifted and crackled the film of plastic, stirring a faint, familiar odor from the back of the passenger seat. It was White Shoulders. The Rolling Stones became schmaltzy piano. She adjusted the mirrors until she could see the tallest stones in the cemetery across the road behind her.
Then she turned around and looked, as she always did, just before she backed out of the driveway, fixing her eyes on one small stone by a newer grave. She never knew what awful thing her mind would put there. Sometimes it was the outline of the infant herself, wrapped in a blanket. Sometimes it was her own silhouette, bent and digging at the new grass with her hands. This time it was the stone, sitting there like the ignoble, hard fact of the loss it represented. This was different. This might be better. This might mean the vengeance had resulted in some kind of deep, universal ballast. For a moment her mind and heart drifted hopefully toward the meager possibility of some meaning.
No such kindness, no such hovering angel in the surrounding woods. For it came to her in a flash that Averill had buried Tess in the christening gown. What kind of wonder was that? Averill had twisted her newborn neck until it was lifeless, and then dressed her in all that meticulous cotton and lace. Having nothing else handy, he had used the dress box for her casket. Whether or not Averill had bothered to line it with tissue paper was a question that had held her hostage many sleepless nights.
She shook her mind loose from all that. She raised the shining plastic lever to reverse and slowly pressed the gas pedal. Her gaze took in the dry clay road that sloped down through the woods for a quarter of a mile before it cut back sharply to the left and disappeared. A thin haze of yellow dust told her a car was approaching.
She bolted up the driveway on foot and through the back garden into the sheltering undergrowth at the edge of the woods. She stopped to catch her breath, listening to the air rushing in and out of her heaving chest until it died away. Gradually it was replaced by the hollow echo of tires spitting gravel and the whir of the engine as it made the last, steep grade.
Looking up through the trees, it came to her. The thing was done. There was nowhere to run where the swaying limbs of trees overhead wouldn’t remind her of an empty cradle. There was no gravel road through any remote forest on this earth where she wouldn’t hear her infant girl cry for vengeance like a banshee in the night. There was no reason to draw another breath or take another step or let her tired frame drop down to rest one more night if she didn’t stand beside Averill’s corpse and tell the world about Tess.
That was that, wasn’t it? Then, why did she huddle here, trembling like a hunted doe in the brush? Life was a luxury her soul couldn’t afford if she had any character, if she had any good intention left inside of her, if she had ever been a mother. Fear was an indulgence for people who still had lives to lead. She moved across the garden and beside the house. She headed down the front driveway, intending to stand at the very end when the police car turned into the driveway.
She could see it clearly now, making its approach on the road. It wasn’t the police. It didn’t turn into the driveway. Instead it roared past, disappearing into the dusty cloud in its wake. In another minute, she heard it slow down and veer left into the clay clearing beside the little church. Now a car door slammed, and light, fast feet scrambled over gravel and up three wooden steps. She heard the double doors screech open. She waited, expecting to hear them close. Instead she heard the unmistakable click of high heels on the wood floor of the sanctuary. Now they paused, as if the woman was getting her bearings, maybe adjusting her eyesight to the shadowy interior. Then they resumed, fading until she heard the door at the far end of the sanctuary moan. Then she heard a familiar voice call, “Averill?”
She waited and waited for the scream, but the woman didn’t cry out. After what felt like three forevers, Leona heard a thud, as if a heavy book had fallen off a shelf back in Averill’s study.
2
EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2000
3:48 P.M.
The voice belonged to her close friend Soames. She was an extremely rich Memphis widow who had come down here to restore her late husband’s family home. Soames had put flowers on the altar for the Easter service this morning—a pair of Chinese ceramic vases filled with red buds—apparently she had returned to the church to collect them.
Leona had never seen anything as exquisite in her life as that pair of enameled vases bursting w
ith delicate blossoms. Their perfection had moved her to tears.
Though it wouldn’t have taken much, not this morning. Averill was late. The crowd was burning up in that stuffy little sanctuary. The last place on earth she’d wanted to be that morning was sitting in the choir loft, roasting in a heavy burgundy robe. That wasn’t the reason, though. She had fed Averill a collectively lethal dose of arsenic in his meals over the last four days. As of an hour earlier, he’d shown no outward symptom that he was fatally poisoned. Nor had he given her the faintest indication he suspected any such thing.
Arsenic was supposed to take its time. It sort of waited and gathered up its potency. Then it worked pretty quickly. Maybe he was doubled over on the bedroom floor. She’d calculated it every way she could. The dose with breakfast should have put him over the line. Her best estimates indicated he ought to feel bad by now. He wouldn’t draw another breath after four o’clock this afternoon at the latest. There was absolutely no telling.
The church had been packed. Averill had made himself quite an attraction. Leona would never figure it out. Did people believe what they saw? Or did they only let themselves see what they believed?
The congregation had waited a full ten minutes past the eleven o’clock start-up time. She’d glanced out the window and up the road in the direction of the parsonage. She’d half expected to see him staggering and holding his chest. Though sometimes Averill started late, for the drama. One way or another Averill always had to open his services with arias and elephants.
One time he had leaned off the pulpit and asked a new widow if she wanted to burn in hell with her deceased husband. Another time he hit a little bell with a toy drumstick and announced the end of the world. So, this being Easter Sunday, Leona figured he’d try to pull something bigger than Broadway. Maybe he’d burst in wall-eyed and foaming at the mouth and then drop stone dead in front of the stupefied congregation. That was fine with her. They’d all think he’d had a heart attack.
At thirteen past the hour, old Nina Trace had started a series of treble piano rolls and flourishes, vamping as Averill came down the aisle in loose, billowing sleeves and tight black trousers tucked into pointed black boots. His shirt was open to the third button to display a thick silver cross on a chain against his burnt red chest. He’d fallen asleep while sunbathing on the well house roof yesterday afternoon. He’d let his thick brown hair grow out since Christmas and put some kind of dark rinse on it that looked purple when he stepped under an overhead light.
He approached the pulpit with a strange, muted goose step. He gave each sleeve a prophetic tug. Then he threw his arms out and closed his eyes, tensing his leg muscles while he rocked in silent prayer. He moved his lips, praying fervently, then he moaned and grimaced before he opened his eyes with a beatific smile. Blue Hudson had once commented that whenever Averill prayed you’d swear he was copulating with an invisible angel. Now his whispers were becoming more audible, more fervent. “Yes, Lord, thank you, oh, yes, Lordy …”
It was obvious the holy idiot was getting himself more and more aroused, very obvious as Averill had been generously endowed and Leona had admonished him against wearing those tight black pants a dozen times. A decent man would have taken the message to heart the first time. Averill’s religion was a noxious blend of Old Testament condemnation, honky-tonk piano and born-again striptease. Leona skimmed the crowd for a pair of offended or incredulous eyes.
None. All looked beatific, easy as sheep.
“Amen.”
Next came his Garden of Olives pout. He turned almost in profile and looked up with a meek and pained expression. That was to divert any lingering impression of lewd overtones. Did they really not see through him? Or did they not want to? Had Leona lost touch with reality? Or was she finally in touch? Averill’s gaze shifted from heaven to the congregation. He loved these pauses. He used them to sink his needful gaze into as many pairs of eyes as he could. Finally, he threw both arms into the air and tossed them his big opener. As always, it was a question devised to make everyone sit forward in wonder. Except this morning it came out all wrong.
“Why did Jean Suds goo goo Jerooson?”
He had choked on a self-righteous frog in his throat. In three seconds flat, his pageant was a turkey. It reassured her to notice that the teenagers on the back row were shaking with laughter. However, the rest of the congregation, the adult portion, merely waited in trusting stillness.
Not couldn’t. No. They just wouldn’t see.
So Averill plodded on with his introduction. He wasn’t making a lot of sense. Self-importance made people nervous. Why couldn’t the fool know that? His only hope of salvaging his sermon was to abandon it, take five while they sang a hymn, and then start over. Of course, that was asking him to admit a mistake.
Not the sprayed-down, high, holy Reverend Goody Gumptorious. His show always went on. This was only his warm-up. Now he and luscious, lovely Leelinda Spakes stood side by side for their duet of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Averill loved to show off his tenor voice. All Leelinda could add to the song was volume. Of course, it wasn’t her voice she wanted to display. It was her recent breast enlargement surgery. Soames leaned into Leona’s ear and whispered, “Happy Easter. She is risen!”
He was back in the saddle now. His entire being inflated. They finished the song and Averill thanked Leelinda, who responded with a little hug, driving her jiggling torpedoes into Averill’s chest. Wasn’t he a dragon slayer? A real Johnny Honeymoon.
Finally, Averill swallowed a barrel of air and dove into his sermon.
“Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem?”
Bull’s-eye.
His question struck a nerve inside every chest in the room. People leaned forward. They let bulletins and funeral home fans fall into their laps. They laid governing hands on the shoulders of squirming children. Meanwhile Averill’s right hand rose and he let it drop forward in a commanding gesture that Nina Trace couldn’t mistake. The piano faded.
“Why?” Averill repeated with self-assurance. “Why did Jesus go so willingly to Jerusalem where he knew he would face the gravest danger?” He had them now. And he would roll them around like a Slinky in the palms of his hands. He would knead their guilty consciences and tickle their egos and make Jesus into some holy Romeo and a garden of earthly delights. He had seduced them. Now he would pommel them with their worst fears until they were shouting, “Hallelujah!” Then he’d kiss them good-bye with a promise of more love and bigger thrills next week.
“Why did Jesus go to …”
Why did Leona marry the rat and come here to this squalid backwater church with him? What did that matter now? She had done her time on this forsaken hill. He didn’t have a clue, of course, but the sun was setting on his lounge act. Near as she could figure, it would kick in between three and five this afternoon. Brother Joy Boy had ridden into his Jerusalem this time.
Averill had the room halfway up Calvary when the rear doors of the little sanctuary screeched. Leona watched incredulous as his sister, Audena, and her husband, Winky, strolled in like they owned the place. They lived seventy-five miles away. Audena and Averill weren’t particularly close. She had only seen Audena once in their four years of marriage. She had never even met Winky.
Well, this was a sign from God, or Noah’s Ark and the rainbow and all the rest of it were bedtime stories. An ominous sign at that. If she hadn’t been up there in the choir loft where the entire world and the stars could see her, Leona would have brayed from sheer irony. It had to be a sign. It was a warning that she would pay eternally for what she was about to do. All the good in the universe was lining up to tell her not to go through with it.
Fat chance. The wheels were already turning. The train was rolling downhill, gathering speed, and its destination was inevitable now. She could spare herself the torment of any more internal debates over the ethical and the practical aspects. She had set her bargain with eternity. Hell was the fee she had negotiated. Yes, it was all very strange, s
urreal even. This morning as she put on her lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror she studied her reflection hard, trying to see it.
“You’re a criminal, a killer, a cold-blooded murderer,” she informed her indifferent features. The only thing her reflection confirmed was the fact that she hadn’t slept much all week. Well, what of it? Hell was no more than any mother would give for her child.
She couldn’t fathom Audena. She had to stifle a gasp, pretending it was an allergic reaction to an arrangement of ivy and lilies along the railing in front of her. No sense to any of it. Life had its hideous little coincidences, that’s all.
When the sermon was over, the congregation rose up to sing “Amazing Grace.” He possessed them now. They trusted him. He wooed them back into his clutches every Sunday. They would never believe her. They’d call her a heretic murderess and stand by the holy son of a bitch. He wasn’t all that talented, attractive or winning. His secret was simple. He knew they needed to believe he could lead them out of their exhausted, disappointing lives. He was their good ol’ honeyman Jesus. He kept the keys to the kingdom on a little brass ring with the ones he used for his car. He had all the answers stowed in the little tin safe in the wall behind his desk in the study. Averill Sayres was their fuzzy country boy, their anointed teddy bear and their baby brother of the Son of God.
Not that she could hold herself above the crowd. She’d played the penitent Magdalene to his bleached cotton Jesus once. She’d knelt down in front of him in a moment of desperation and panic. She had chosen him as her personal light, truth and way. She had come here with him, believing that he had given her the miraculous means to escape her troubled past.