by David Hill
She let him in on the morning of the third day. She hated him for looking so weak when he begged her forgiveness. She hated herself for loving him. That made it next to impossible to rebuke his reasons for abandoning her. It wasn’t ambition for himself. It wasn’t even ambition on his father’s part. It was desperation. His father had been a drowning man. He knew his game was almost up. If Ty was married to Gloria, he might use the connection to negotiate some solution. Public scandal would disgrace their daughter as well as hurt her husband’s future.
This was his abject apology?
He was trying to make it all work. Gloria needed a husband for the moment. She didn’t want him for the rest of her life. They’d make it work for each other. Then he was going to square it with Leona. She could even live nearby so they could be together. Of course, she didn’t believe him. He didn’t even believe himself.
He’d left her to bury her mother alone, knowing she was carrying his child, knowing she had to be devastated by his cruelty. No. He hadn’t married Gloria as a sacrifice for his father. He married that unlovable witch for her father’s money. Now Leona had uncovered the truth and his guaranteed annual income was in jeopardy. Tyler Crockett didn’t have any tears in him for his father or his unborn baby. The only grief or joy he experienced was for himself.
He had called her names and raped and beaten her unconscious. No, she wouldn’t waste umbrage on his empty proposal that she live like his backstreet tramp with his bastard. That was his pathetic attempt to convince her he felt trapped with Gloria. He had no plans to see Leona or his child. He didn’t want them within a thousand miles of his love nest. He had it all now. He had a rich wife who didn’t give a damn whom he slept with or how often. It was perfect. He and Gloria could live their debauched and separate lives in perfect harmony, coming together to perform their duet as a happy young couple from the right side of the tracks whenever it served them.
What was he doing here then? What did he want?
“Tyler, I want you to leave now.”
“I need you.”
“You need my silence.”
“You, I want you.”
“You want to control me.” That was it. He’d beaten her badly. Had anyone seen it? Had she gone for help? Did the police know about it? Or worse, the Londons?
“I love you.”
“Leave now!”
That was it. She had it figured out. Gloria was in love with danger. She’d play one crazy game after another with Tyler until she got bored with it all. Then the endgame would start. If Tyler had beaten Leona, then he’d treated Gloria the same way. Maybe that’s why she went down to Florida and got herself in trouble. Maybe she had already experienced his brutality and she was trying to force him to let go.
“You beat her, don’t you?”
“Never. What happened here was grief.”
As if she’d pressed some button, he pulled her close to him on the living room sofa. He started nibbling at her neck the way he usually got amorous. He’d made a disaster of her life. His poor widowed mother was at home receiving condolence callers. He had a wife he didn’t want who was knocked up by some other man. Leona still hurt from his beating, and he was pressing his hardness into her thigh and digging his fingers into her pants.
Yet she couldn’t let him know that he was hurting her. He’d go crazy with the thrill. She kissed him. He was all over her.
“Oh, Ty, I need you so badly.…”
“Beg me.”
“Baby,” she whispered, letting her fingers play with him lightly, “hold up a second.” She stood up. “Wait there,” she said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” Then she kissed him and squeezed him, letting him nibble her breasts through her dress. “It’s a big surprise,” she promised as she backed away from him and left the room.
He had taken his pants off by the time she came back.
“Sit down on top of me,” he commanded.
He was a hairless ape. She straddled him and he pushed himself all the way up inside of her. She watched him bucking and rolling his head from side to side with his eyes closed.
“You might better slow down or you’ll finish before we get started,” she whispered.
He ignored her, pumping harder now, moaning and sweating, his eyes glued shut.
“Baby, stop a second,” she said with more force, but he wasn’t listening. He was slamming and puffing and using her to make full-throttled love to himself.
“Stop!” she shouted.
“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” he panted.
But he suddenly discovered that he could. And he did—when the cold steel of her father’s revolver touched his forehead.
“Get your clothes on. And get out,” she said.
Later in the darkness it gave her a measure of comfort to think that this time at least she had sent him away.
8
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1997
6:15 P.M.
Averill sat on the hard sofa in Mrs. Churchill’s overly air-conditioned parlor waiting for her like a cold potato in a refrigerator drawer awaits the inevitable hand and paring knife. It was reputed to be over a hundred degrees outside. Yet here, separated from that sweltering realm by lace-covered Italian windows, it felt like it could snow any minute. If this was the difference between rich and poor, then Averill didn’t see much point in endeavor.
“I’ll be right down, honey.”
Mrs. Churchill’s voice drifted down the magnificent curving staircase like clouds from a better world. She and Mr. Churchill had seen an old pump organ on sale in an antiques store down at Oxford. She wanted Averill to look at it. If it met with Averill’s approval, she wanted to buy and donate it to his church.
Like he wouldn’t approve? Like she valued his ignorant ideas over her educated ones? “His” church was “hers.” He was her puppy dog, her hobby this month, and that was all right with him. The Churchills were regular patron saints of Averill’s fledgling church. In fact, since they owned it, they were totally responsible for its existence. It had been built by Henri Churchill’s ancestors on their enormous cotton plantation in the 1840s. Succeeding generations of Churchills had married and buried and baptized one another beneath its lavender-and-ivory stained glass windows.
It was a beautiful little church that revealed an unexpected richness of architectural detail—“mini-magnificence,” Mrs. Churchill described it in her self-deprecating banter. It had historic significance as well. In the early days of the Civil War, the Confederate army had used it as a secret arsenal. Two years later General Ulysses S. Grant, who evicted the Churchills from their home in order to ensconce his wife Julia there, stabled his horses in the little sanctuary. There was a small, elevated gallery at the back with a double row of pews. A line of iron loops set into the floor in front of them had once secured the ankle chains of Churchill slaves.
The family hadn’t used it since the early fifties. Or so the current Churchills had told him on his first interview under the swirling plaster filigree of their cavernous parlor ceiling. That was four months ago. He had come in response to their advertisement on the bulletin board outside of the dean’s office. Averill had just finished a general course of studies at Gulf Coast Theological School. GCTS was really just a run-down two-year college that offered a few extra Bible courses. Graduates who wanted to become ministers of more established Protestant denominations moved on to four-year colleges, followed by graduate seminary studies.
Averill had neither means nor inclination to endure that. He had already outperformed any known member of his family by finishing high school. His two years at GCTS were all the icing he intended to spread on that cake. The mainstream Protestant churches held no temptation for him. They were quirky and out of touch with people. The Methodists were too damned sanctimonious. You could feel it in their handshake, their self-righteous squeeze. The Presbyterians were as dry as fire, as if they could bore people onto the right path. The Baptists had it all, no question. Their sheer numbers and holdings wer
e impressive. A facile young Baptist preacher could make quite a life for himself. But you needed backing to enter those arenas.
Averill’s backing consisted of the sweat of his brow. As for the Catholics, well, their idol the Pope was driving all of them to hell in Italian sports cars. Which really only left the Episcopalians. As far as Averill was concerned, the Episcopal Church was the Pope’s bastard child, a place for divorced, egg-headed and/or sexually deviant Catholics.
A true man of God had no need for all their fancy theologies. All he required was a well-worn King James Bible and a handful of faith. The Apostle Peter had said it all when he declared, “Upon this rock I shall build my church.” Averill had determined to find his rock and start building when the Lord led him to Mr. and Mrs. Henri Churchill. The multimillionaires were restoring the old plantation that had been in Henri’s family “since the birth of Christ,” Churchill explained with a dry sneer.
“We’re restoring the entire plantation,” his wife confided while Henri was out of the room on the telephone. Henri’s enterprises had taken them all over the world. Now it was time to reattach to old family ground, to put all the old things right, to polish up traditions and values the rest of the world had forgotten, and pass them on down to their children.
“What children?” Henri asked from the doorway with a smirk. The Churchills were childless, as it turned out. Of course, they had only been married four years. She didn’t look to be much before or after thirty. Churchill was gray and there was a settled look about his face and shoulders. Averill put him around fifty. This was at least a second go-round for him.
In any case, Henri Churchill wore a very sour expression for a guy with so much to smile about. Averill included Mrs. Churchill high on that list. She was a striking red-haired beauty with a warm smile and a natural ability to put people at their ease. Churchill seemed to regard his wife’s charm as personal property. He sat there like a stone while she explained all the details. The position came with funds to restore the dilapidating church and parsonage into habitable condition. Beyond that, there would be an annual stipend of sixteen thousand dollars. Of course, Henri knew a man couldn’t do much more than subsist on that. Averill was welcome to devise any additional means of income he required.
“So this is a part-time pastorate?”
“If need be …” she answered.
Averill read the deeper meaning of that between the lines. Churchill wanted Averill to attract and build up a congregation large enough to support himself and his operation from the collection plate.
“Since you’re Presbyterian, Mr. Churchill, will I follow the Presbyterian doctrines?”
“You can practice Dionysian rites as far as I’m concerned,” Henri sneered out of the blue. Then he shook his head, chuckled with private relish and excused himself. Mrs. Churchill turned pale and took several moments to suppress whatever she was feeling.
“He carries too much on those poor shoulders of his, Reverend Sayres.”
That didn’t faze Averill one way or the other. The enormous opportunity overruled that. If he couldn’t make what he wanted of all this, then he was an idiot and a fool. He had answered their ad fully expecting some fatal catch to turn him away from their offer. Instead, Henri Churchill had made it even more tantalizing by virtually assuring him he wouldn’t be breathing down his neck.
Could a man ask God to make His Will more clear?
He took a room in town and got to work cleaning up the old church. Henri was always away on business, but Mrs. Churchill—“Soames,” as she insisted he call her—was there almost every day. At first he thought she was keeping tabs on his progress, but he soon realized that she had a great deal of expertise about restoring the old place. After all, she had just restored a twenty-four-room mansion designed and built by the same New Orleans architect. She seemed as excited by the prospect of turning it back into a real church as Averill was.
In fact, when Soames realized that Henri had given Averill a woefully inadequate budget, she provided additional funds to get the job done. She also proved herself an able, willing worker, climbing a ladder to help paint the ceiling, operating an enormous power sander to help strip a century of finish off the cypress floors.
They had chosen the first Sunday in August to rededicate the sanctuary. Knowing Averill wanted a good crowd there when he preached his first sermon, Soames had made the day a special event. She had mailed out hundreds of engraved invitations announcing that she had arranged that the restored church building would be placed on the National Historic Register during the service. Those in attendance were invited to remain afterward for a barbecue luncheon inside an enormous pink-and-white tent that a Memphis firm had set up on the church lawn.
The county’s main newspaper, The Orpheus Gazette, ran a full page of pictures and stories about the history of the church and the great event itself. Averill had preached his heart out that morning. It was a well-heeled crowd for the most part, coolheaded, educated types who looked at his raw, old-time religion as nostalgic entertainment. Still, he had taken a handful of twenty regulars from that first Sunday, and a month later he was proud to say that it had grown to forty.
Averill was deeply indebted to the Churchills, especially Soames. He was just crazy about her. She was gorgeous and vibrant and she believed in him and what he was doing. Of course, Averill wasn’t blind. Henri’s absences left her bored and lonely most of the time. Henri was always calling her at the last minute to say he’d be gone another two days. Averill didn’t see how a man could be married to such a wonderful creature and stay away from her so long. Of course, Soames never complained about it. She had never said a word—except when Henri failed to keep his promise to give a small speech at the dedication service.
His name was in the program when he had reneged the Saturday night before. Soames, whose nerves were already stretched thin from trying to get things ready for Sunday morning, was bitterly disappointed about that. Averill had sat with her in the tent after everyone else had gone, and listened while she unloaded a little. Though her disappointment never descended into criticisms or complaints and she had been all smiles for the crowd on Sunday.
“Henri’s stuck in Atlanta all weekend … as usual.…” Her voice trailed off. It was one of her rituals, holding him hostage in the parlor while she called down the stairs every few minutes. Averill didn’t want to bite the hand that had fed him so well, but it seemed like she was everywhere he turned night and day. The poor lonely lady needed some companionship. More and more she tied him up on one pretext or another. This trip to Oxford to look at a pump organ was a perfect example. He knew nothing about pump organs and he didn’t care whether or not she bought the stupid thing for the church. No one would ever play it—not while he was in the pulpit.
In fact, the whole idea for the excursion had come up at the last minute. He knew in his heart Henri Churchill wouldn’t materialize. He didn’t want to spend the next several hours in a car with Soames. She was bound to insist they stop someplace to eat. She always did. He liked her. He thought the world of her, in fact. He owed her more than he could say, but just didn’t want to play house with her while Henri Churchill was away. That’s where this was all heading—if he didn’t slam on the brakes in a hurry.
All by itself, the idea of helping her cure her loneliness had undeniable appeal. Soames was the most voluptuous and glamorous woman he had ever known this well. His duties and obligations as a clergyman aside, it was tempting in a lot of ways. The problem was discretion. Soames didn’t know what the word meant. Nor did she seem to understand the idea of moderation. They would start a waltz that would never end. Or get him shot between the eyes.
Averill knew himself a little. He knew that women could be almost like madness with him. He had longed for many with a desire so intense it scorched him. He had gone too far with the wrong girl too often and skated out of all kinds of scrapes. He had promised God the night he accepted the ministry here that he would turn away from his obsess
ion with the ladies and serve His Will.
Averill crossed to the tea table and lifted a cold bottle of French chardonnay out of a silver ice bucket and filled a glass. This was a pleasant little vice he’d picked up from Soames. He was getting hooked on those English cigarettes of hers as well. It was all part of what Soames called “urbanity,” a quality she said any ambitious young clergyman would do well to cultivate.
“Or don’t you want to be Bishop of Barchester,” she’d say in a tone so imperious and pouty he could never summon the nerve to ask her what she was talking about.
“Henri asks me to convey his apologies.”
She was dressed in white. The top of the garment barely managed to conceal her breasts. It almost looked to him like she had wrapped herself in an enormous towel. The wine always made him a little drunk right away. Averill’s conscience worked overtime and the wine relaxed it. He refilled his glass and then sat back sipping as he enjoyed the scenery.
“I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t another woman.” She laughed.
Judging by Henri’s actions, it was more a question of how many. Of course, that was between a man and his wife. Averill had his strict view of the general topic, but he was also a man. He would be loath to violate his obligation to his gender by discussing any man’s infidelities with his wife.
“Forgive the pathetic hors d’oeuvres,” she begged, pouring herself a glass of wine. She smelled like a field of lilies.
Soames sat on the edge of a small sofa trying to collect her thoughts. Henri had just walked her through his usual bullcrap litany of reasons why he wouldn’t be home this weekend. The miserable weasel wasn’t even in Atlanta. He was in Miami, waiting for Honey Bun’s plane to land. Of course, Soames had a detective on him. She knew the weekly drill. Babycakes came in from Atlanta, first class no less, at 6:35 on Delta. At 8:00 they boarded a chartered seaplane for the ninety-minute flight to his private island of joy near St. Lucia.