Father Johnstone wants to help. He wants to yank the screwdriver out of her lung so she can heal herself and finish this off, but she shakes her head.
“Why not?” he asks.
Madeline coughs up blood. She lies next to the pastor, putting mouth-to-ear, telling him, “Can’t heal…myself. Not this.” Even under the cold rain, her breath warms the side of the pastor’s face. It reverberates into his neck, his spine.
Meanwhile, Pollux is getting his bearings. Roughly ten feet away, he’s hunched over and yanking out the metal lodged in his ocular cavity, bleeding, cursing. The metal all around them begins to tremble and slowly rise out of the ground: the saw blades and nails and wrenches. They’re coming to life. Hovering.
“Love you,” Madeline says. She cradles the pastor’s face in her hand, bringing it to her lips, pecking his cheek. She drags the tip of her nose against his face, releasing hot breath and blood spatter against his neck. Father Johnstone doesn’t need to be able to read people like she can. He knows a goodbye when he hears one.
“Don’t.” He clutches her wrists, shakes his head at her, frowning. The air tastes worse than ever now, and the earth beneath them is oil black. “Please,” he whispers.
Madeline kisses him, blood glazing the pastor’s lips. It almost tastes sweet. “Don’t leave.” She says, “They’ll need you…more than ever. You’ll…figure it out.”
She smiles, kissing him on the cheek again. Madeline pushes off the ground and begins striding towards Pollux, heavy-footed and wobbly. Her lung is giving out, and the air she can take in is bitter with poison. Bright lights are crackling her vision, almost as if she’s about to drown in the rain from lack of oxygen. Madeline runs through the floating metal, past Mason Hollis who misses in his attempt to trip her up. She jumps onto Pollux’s back and wraps her arms around his neck, hanging on for dear life. Even with a burst eyeball, he laughs at her pretension.
Through gritted teeth, he says, “Very stupid, cunt.”
Father Johnstone can do nothing but watch as Pollux begins pulls the items hovering mid-air towards Madeline. Nails pin into her back and ribs. A muck-covered saw blade slices her leg so deep the blood comes out in sheets. He can’t understand why she’s not using her ability to push them away, to defend herself. Then he feels it. He feels that warmth in his skin as another flock of sharp objects stick into Madeline’s arms and shoulders, Pollux’s attempt at getting her to relinquish her grip. She doesn’t let go and Father Johnstone feels the heat in his hands shift to a burn, more intense than anything he’s ever felt. It’s never been painful like this. Not once.
Then he remembers something Madeline said earlier, not long after she injected morphine into her system: “Now I can be on your level.”
Father Johnstone and Mason Hollis look on as hot light manifests, and boils the mud beneath Pollux’s feet. Nails and screwdrivers begin to melt mid-air, prompting the two spectators to put some distance between themselves and their Primaries. Adrenaline allows the men to forget about their wounds as the light begins to eat, destroy, break down anything within a ten-foot radius.
He watches his love, Madeline Paige, dissolving before his very eyes. So powerful. And bright. The ground dries, hardens, and cracks. Rain boils. Even the air around her begins to catch fire. “The reality here is that I’ve been holding you back,” she told him.
“The intent defines the relationship.”
Madeline destroying herself for the sake of salvaging Pratt, to save the pastor and Mary—these too would be considered ingredients. She could have run, he thinks. She could have left all this behind, and now she’s burning, screaming. Madeline holds on to Pollux until he is little more than dust and char, unable to suffer him to live a second longer.
She too falls. Dies. Ends.
The rain stops. Clouds clear.
Metal objects plummet dead into the mud, some sticking upright as if they’ve been planted. Mason and the pastor examine the remains from afar: a hard crater dusted in ash. Random bone fragments and pieces of cloth. Pollux’s body is charred, organs cooked. Steam rises off what’s left of his body, deforming the air just a little bit more. Madeline lies behind him, obscured, but Father Johnstone has no desire to see her, the damage. He doesn’t want to tarnish the memory. Not yet. Not until he has to. For one moment, he wants nothing more than pure uninhibited grief. Madeline’s funeral and all that comes with it can be dealt with in due course, but the grief, the feeling—this is all that matters on the fringe of nearly losing everything. Regarding Mason Hollis, his alliance with Pollux was everything he had, and now he’s alone again. Alone in the place that burned his body and exiled him to a life of lonely roads and secret shame.
“We’re not done, Jairy.” Mason picks himself up off the ground, stomping through the mud towards the pastor. He picks up a large wrench on his way and draws back to swing it. Father Johnstone instinctively scoots back but it’s no use. His leg prohibits him from making sufficient movement, and the wrench-head ends up making contact with the side of the pastor’s kneecap. It bursts open, making a wet popping sound like a piece of dropped fruit. Blood trickles into the mud and the pastor screams. Screams, clutching the wound where fresh pain aches wet and warm.
“I’m not crawling outta here this time.” Mason draws the wrench back again, swinging it into the top of the pastor’s hand. Bones crack. Snap. Father Johnstone rolls onto his side, curling up into a ball. He screams into the mud. Cowering. Hiding his broken hand in the muck. “You hear me, don’t you?” Mason asks. “You hear me, you fuck?” He brings the wrench down again, on the pastor’s ribcage this time. Then his hip. He’s crying. Not praying. There’s too much pain to even collect a coherent thought. A prayer is impossible at this point.
Mason says, “I’ll give you a choice. I’ll give you the thing they never gave me, Jairy. You can either be beaten to death in the street or die in the earth.” He glances to his left, the fault line. Dark and endless and cold. “How much do you want a proper burial? How much is that worth? You don’t even know, do you?” he snickers. “Little cunt never told you nothin’. She had a lot of secrets, that one. Too bad you won’t live long enough to know ’em.”
The hammer pulls back on a gun.
The barrel kisses the back of Mason’s skull.
“Shelby was hoping she’d run into you again,” Sheriff Morgan says. “Shelby never did get over Mason Hollis. ‘The one that got away,’ she called him. Never thought he’d be dumb enough to show his face around here again.”
Father Johnstone allows his eyes to slowly peel open. He lifts his face out of the mud and chances a look at the men above him. Mason is terrified. The wrench slips from his fingers, smacking against the mud.
“Does Mason remember what the sheriff told him if he ever came back?”
There’s a pause. “Kip. Please.”
“No warning. You get the bullet. Your body gets fed to the hogs,” Sheriff Morgan says. “And what about your head?” he asks. “Does Mason remember where that goes?”
“You don’t want to do this, Kip,” Mason says.
Sheriff Morgan pulls the trigger. Shelby cracks and Father Johnstone watches the bullet exit Mason’s forehead, bursting blood and little pieces of skull. He drops dead-weight to the mud with a hard slap, death rattling bubbles in a rain puddle. Executed. The sheriff stands over the body, shifting his eyes to Father Johnstone and looking him over: the busted knee and the protruding bone. Morgan looks not much better. Second-degree sunburn mars his face and arms. His feet are blistered from the hours of walking on hot asphalt and pavement, boots soaked to the sole in blood and pus. Elbows and knees are crusted in weeping scabs and dirt. He’s standing over the pastor, Shelby gripped firmly in his hand, fuming at the barrel. No spectators. No one to watch him finish the job. His eyes drift over the wounded leg, assessing the damage. Sheriff Morgan eases Shelby back into his leather holster and adjusts his belt.
“We’re even,” he says.
His hand grips Mas
on Hollis at the collar, squeezing so tight the bottom hem of his shirt hikes up. Sheriff Morgan nods at the pastor—not quite like a friend, but close—and he begins walking away. He drags Mason Hollis through the mud, ready to show Pratt a new kind of ghost story. One they’ll talk about for years to come.
On the Road with Billy Burke, Secondary
“I believe what I say, Mr. Pollux. I truly do. The Lord has a vengeful side. He’s got anger in His heart just like you and I, but He also believes in what’s fair. That’s why he let me crawl outta Pratt that night…burned up to within an inch of my life. Bleedin’…hurting like hell. He wanted me to use that pain to become Billy Burke…spread His Word in a way it had never been done. He wanted me to find my true calling. My own Divine path. It’s like you said, Mr. Pollux: the Man works in mysterious ways. Ways that seems too coincidental even. But you know what? I’m not gonna question it no more. I feel Him…feel His mighty hand guiding us back there…back to Pratt. The Lord wills us to return stronger in our pairing than we could ever be on our own. He wants us to administer our own brand of faith…bring harmony back to the town. You give me purpose, Mr. Pollux. Haven’t had a nightmare since we met. That alone I’ll be eternally grateful for. You can rest assured I’ll be returning the favor ten-fold…help you bring what’s coming to Madeline Paige and whoever else needs dealin’ with—oh, yes I will. I stake my life on it. Ain’t gonna be no runnin’ off or crawlin’ through the dirt for me this time. We’ll be patient…let the winter pass while ol’ Mason here keeps an eye on things for you. The Lord wants you strong for this and we’ve got plenty to learn from each other, you and I. Plenty to learn. When we go back to Pratt, they’re gonna see real quick that times are changin’. I’m prepared to die showing them that.”
The Relief Effort
Pratt slowly recovers.
After those few initial days of starvation and immense panic, word finally got out about the town experiencing what’s now being categorized as an ‘ecological disaster.’ This is how the local residents and various news outlets are able to explain away the fault lines in the earth, the dead plant and animal life. Even though Father Johnstone knows the true reasoning behind why the water soured and air become poisoned, words like ‘plague’ and ‘curse’ would be needlessly alarming now that stability is finally being rediscovered. Far be it from him to destroy what little peace of mind they have with the truth. Some things are best left unsaid, and he has a feeling Madeline would have wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment.
“Quite the turnout, preacher,” Miles Conley mentions. He and his wife are currently toting a couple carts of supplies, either canned goods or fresh sets of hammers and nails for the volunteer workers. People have been arriving in droves for the past three weeks: rebuilding homes and fixing telephone lines. Mr. Conley himself has led more than a few excursions to hunt wild game beyond the county lines, loaning out dozens of rifles that he’d typically sell as merchandise. His only stipulation is that they’re returned at the end of the hunt and a share of the spoils.
“Leg’s healed up real nice, I see,” he mentions. “Let me know if you wanna join in on the next hunt.” The Conleys move on, smiling, optimistic. It seems like everyone is breathing a sigh of relief now that the worst is over.
Pratt has changed.
What was once a small town of people ‘stuck in their ways’ and resistant to outsiders has shifted to something else. In the face of abrupt transition, that old adage of ‘love thy neighbor’ has spread far and wide. Father Johnstone watches them—both flock and non-flock alike—undoing the damage that nearly ended them. People from neighboring towns arrive with more bottled water and medical supplies. More rations. Pick-up trucks filled with virgin planks of cedar make their deliveries, helping the locals unload before shipping back out to fetch another round of provisions. This process typically goes on until well after dark, at which point families will fire up the grills and share a meal with the people of Aames, Barton City, and the other out-of-town guests lending a hand. They’ll swap stories and drink domestic brew out of dirty plastic coolers, chewing the fat until the midnight hours. At dawn the town wakes to do it all over again: rebuilding, repairing, kindling relationships new and old.
His prayers were answered.
He asked the Lord to send aid, to deliver Pratt from its crippled state. Father Johnstone prayed to the good Lord, and with great haste, the Lord responded. He sent them food, laborers, and medical personal to supplement Dr. Keller’s sudden increase in demand. The Lord cleansed the bitter air and bestowed regular downpours of cleansing rain. Although to the casual observer these would appear to be nothing more than the tide of misfortune turning, the pastor knows better. The Lord is in every helpful soul that turns up in Pratt; most of them don’t even know how they got there in the first place.
“I just thought I should be here,” a young man from Junction City told him the other week. “Got in my truck and the next thing I knew I was pulling into town. Kinda odd, now that I’m thinking about it. I’ve never even heard of Pratt.”
It’s just like all of those times when he too would randomly appear in certain parts of town. Spells of forgetfulness and long blank periods daunted him to a point of madness—that is, until Madeline stepped in. The pastor can’t help but wonder if he’s part of the reason these wayward travelers keep turning up, confused and a bit disoriented, but intent on helping in any way that they can. In the end, it’s the intent that matters. Father Johnstone tries to remember that every time he goes over Pratt’s recent trials and the death of Madeline Paige.
Her words continue to perplex him: ‘The Divine path is full of many detours, but should you stay the course, you’ll always find me at the end.’
Madeline Paige had a Will. Within it she left the pastor her home, all her possessions, and a personal letter sealed in a wax stamp. It was filed with the local records office on the Monday after the Pratt bake-off, within hours of the bleeding episode; Father Johnstone was in a coma at the time. It was way before he knew anything of Craft or just how close old enemies had drawn in. He was at his lowest point, and Madeline brought him back from the edge. Of course, knowing her, she would say that they saved each other. Like a marriage or any other non-standard courtship, this was always a two-person operation. Even so, certain portions of her letter don’t add up in his mind.
‘Death is the darkest interval, but like love, can be a very powerful ingredient,’ she wrote. ‘Sometimes death is necessary.’
It is the puzzle that he’s not yet ready to take on—not after all that’s happened and the fallout that will haunt Pratt for years to come. Another campfire tale looms, far more grandiose than that of Mason Hollis and his past misdeeds. ‘Ecological disaster’ is but a soft label for the event that local residents don’t understand, and in all honestly, probably wouldn’t even if Father Johnstone took them through the paces himself. It’s been weeks and he’s no closer to understanding the particulars of Pratt’s curse, not to mention the correspondence Madeline left behind—specifically, in regards to her burial. It was the first time in three decades the pastor had performed a non-Christian service. No psalms were said. Not one passage of the Good Book was recited as he stood over her body.
‘This may be the final time I ask you to do something for me you might not agree with,’ Madeline wrote to him. ‘But I wouldn’t do it unless it was important.’
Yet again, Father Johnstone found himself in a position of compromising his faith. Yet again, he let Madeline lead him down the path with his eyes shut tight, walking blind behind her and hoping she wouldn’t steer him wrong. He prayed for both their sakes that this too was part of their Divine path. Her burial was performed just as she instructed: according to the traditions of the Feri, right down to the smallest detail. Dr. Keller hand-delivered those directions the morning after she died. Madeline’s ‘insurance policy’ as she put it, was a page torn out of one of the many volumes of books that populated her home.
“May
be not tomorrow, maybe not even this year,” Dr. Keller said, “but one day after all this calms down and we’ve had some time to think on it…maybe then you and I can sit down and talk this out. Until then, I’ll keep my questions to myself.”
Dr. Keller had witnessed just enough to make him doubt everything he thought he knew about logic and scientific law: a sickness he couldn’t diagnose and blood that did the impossible. His rules were broken. Even after Madeline’s passing, his beliefs lie in shards like the splinters of dead wood that garnish Pratt’s injured streets. Father Johnstone has yet to regress to his former self; the same can’t be said for the rumor mill. It continues to churn.
“Ol’ preacher is a damn quick healer,” people are saying. “Tough nut, that Johnstone.”
Not tough. Not exactly. ‘Blessed’ would be the more appropriate term.
The pastor’s hand contained five breaks: three metacarpals and two proximal phalanges. This was in addition to the shattered kneecap and broken tibia that pierced the skin. It was conveyed to the pastor in no uncertain terms that he’d be off his feet for a while. Wheelchair-bound, for starters, then weeks—possibly months—of hobbling around on crutches.
“And you may need physical therapy, too. Men our age don’t recover as quick as we once did,” Dr. Keller said. “I’m afraid your heroics are going to set you back for a bit.”
He was fully recovered the very next day.
The death of friends and enemies alike needed to be handled. In the wake of such destruction, Pratt needed its shepherd more than ever. Lying around a hospital room waiting for his bones to heal wasn’t an option, so Father Johnstone prayed. He prayed the Lord restore his health and mend his wounds. He prayed for strength, and the following morning, he found that the Lord had granted it.
‘You’re capable of more than you realize,’ Madeline wrote. ‘To walk the Divine path is to be given Divine power.’
Good Sex, Great Prayers Page 41