by Jen Blood
Stick to the main roads, he heard his daddy say. It was so clear, the old man might as well have been right beside him. Danny fought the urge to look around for him. And wait ‘til you get where you’re goin’ before you spark up. Your mama doesn’t need you to get in a wreck now, of all things.
“I know that, old man,” he said out loud. He felt like a fool. Or like he’d gone crazy, standing here in the quiet talking to his daddy—a man he’d seen put in the ground not two hours ago.
He paused at the driver’s side door, frowning. His truck was an ’04 Toyota Tacoma—the single cab, not the double. It was big enough to haul his mower when he was doing yard work over the summers, and all his band gear the rest of the time. The truck had been beat to hell before he got it, but since then Danny’d treated that thing like it was his very own, overgrown, chrome-plated baby. He’d inventoried every scratch, every bump and dent and ding.
Which meant there was no question that what he was seeing now was brand new:
Just above the door handle, keyed deep into his cherry red paint, was an upside-down cross.
Get in the truck, his daddy said. Except he didn’t say that, because he was dead. Still, Danny got in the truck. Lock the doors. Danny did. Now go on back to the house and talk to Diggs. Show him what they done to the truck.
Danny sat there in the driver’s seat for a second, torn. He reached for the radio. Closed his eyes, his hands gripped tight around the steering wheel. His chest burned. Guns ‘n Roses’ “November Rain” came on. Danny put the truck in gear.
He pulled out, paused for a second by the long dirt road leading back to the house, and then shook his head.
He turned the music up louder, and drove away.
Chapter Eight
SOLOMON
Between watching Diggs try to hold it together at Wyatt’s funeral, the street brawl after the funeral, and then being trapped in the Durham house with two dozen Christian conservatives for several hours, I’d had it by the time Diggs finally came to save me at nine o’clock that night. I was in the middle of a debate over climate change with Buddy Holloway and three other guys whose names I hadn’t caught when Diggs appeared at my elbow. I was winning that debate, for the record.
“We should go,” Diggs said.
“Your Yankee girlfriend’s tryin’ to school the locals,” Buddy said. However flawed his opinion of global warming might be, I liked him: he had nice eyes, a strong laugh, and he had the southern gentleman thing down pat. Which, I’ll admit, I’ve always been a sucker for.
Diggs didn’t bother correcting him on our romantic status, for which I was grateful. Honestly, it was more trouble than it was worth. “Well, if anybody could set you hillbillies straight, she’d be the one,” he said. “But we need to get going.”
“Oh, listen to this boy,” Buddy said, shaking his head. “Hillbilly my eye, you dang hippie. Where y’all off to, then?”
“Just taking a ride,” Diggs said.
“Not out to Miller’s Field, I hope,” Buddy said. He was watching Diggs closely now. “Not with Reverend Barnel’s tent meetin’ set to go up at ten sharp. Seein’ as how you already had one run-in with him today, you might oughta steer clear awhile.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Diggs said.
Buddy frowned, but he didn’t say anything more until Diggs was already headed out the door. Then, he pushed his business card into my hand. He nodded toward our mutual friend, now burning a path toward the car.
“You call me if he steps in anything, you hear? He’s as much family as Wyatt was, and he can’t see straight where that preacher’s concerned. I don’t care what time it is. Just pick up the phone and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “I may take you up on that.”
“You do that, darlin’. I’ll be right here if you need me.”
<><><>
The tent meeting was held in a muddy field on the side of a long dirt road. We were flanked by cows on one side and a dank, muddy pond on the other, which Diggs told me Barnel baptized people in when the occasion arose. It didn’t look that sanitary, but I was guessing that wasn’t a priority.
I’d just assumed Barnel was one of those fringe extremists with a dozen misguided souls who’d follow him to the ends of the earth, but when we got there the place was packed. Cars lined both sides of the road all the way in, with more parked in the field. Old folks and young folks and Bible-toting babies all made their way up the hillside to Barnel’s giant white tent. I was surprised at the teen contingent: at least two dozen freshly scrubbed college guys in jackets and ties, standing off to the side with their feet planted shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind their backs like career military men instead of frat boys who couldn’t even buy their own beer.
There were a few people like Diggs and me, just there to check out the spectacle, but I got the sense we were in the minority.
Barnel’s tent was a deluxe—I didn’t even know you could get a tent that big. It was powered by a generator situated behind the stage. Speakers bigger than Barnel himself flanked the makeshift platform, and aisle upon aisle of folding metal chairs filled the space. It was a cold, damp evening, but the masses in the tent generated enough heat to more than make up for that. There was a table with refreshments: breads and cakes and cookies, soda and juice, a couple of industrial-sized tubs of potato salad. Apparently, Barnel was big on carb loading. I put a dollar in the jar of a little girl with a dress buttoned from her throat to her ankles, and helped myself to a cup of chocolate pudding and a spoon.
Diggs gave me the hairy eyeball.
“What? It’s chocolate.”
He just shook his head at me, like I was a lost cause. Which I may have been, but I didn’t care. I had chocolate.
By the time we found a seat, the reverend’s opening act had already started: a kid named Toby and his parents, playing guitar and singing hymns. I gathered from the reaction of the crowd that the family was a headliner around these parts, but they didn’t do a lot for me. Within two minutes of a countrified version of “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” I was ready to stab little Toby in the eye with my plastic spoon. All around us, hands went up in the air, people whispering prayers or shouting “Hallelujah” over the music.
Everyone got to their feet when Toby and his kin started up with a medley of country hymns I didn’t recognize from my own church-going days. I set my empty cup under my chair and stood with Diggs. A wall of bodies closed in on all sides, the smell of sweat and Avon perfume obliterating the last remnants of my chocolate high.
I fought to maintain my good humor. The music faded to white noise; my breath came harder, locked in my chest as people pushed ever-closer, their energy like a dentist’s drill tunneling into the base of my spine. I had an unexpected flashback to the Payson Church—the religious community where I spent the first ten years of my life. I was sitting in the converted hay barn that served as the Payson chapel while the preacher gave his sermon. Suddenly, I was right there, with Isaac Payson in front of me and my father’s hand tight in mine. A woman was crying.
Past and present merged. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Another image replaced the one I’d just seen—this one of my father on his knees in front of the congregation. He was shirtless, stripes of blood flowing down his back. A woman was holding me back as I fought to get to him.
“Erin!” Diggs whispered to me. I jolted back to the present, sweat rolling down my forehead. “We can sit,” he said when he had my attention. Most of the rest of the crowd were already in their chairs; Diggs and I stood alone. I nodded, shaken, trying to pull myself back to the present.
As soon as Barnel took the stage, the energy changed. The crowd fell silent. A Hellraiser chill raced up my spine when he raised his hands to the sky.
“The time has come, my friends. I know you’re here tonight for hope; you’re waitin’ on me to tell you that there’s still time for you to save your kin, to change your ways, to do all the things you
been promisin’ the Lord you’d do all these years. But tonight I don’t have a message of hope… If you ain’t with us now, friends, you gotta get with the Lord this second. Now. There’s no more waitin’ on Him to come…”
Barnel mopped his sweating brow with the back of his arm. His face was flushed. A baby cried in the back, but otherwise the tent was quiet. Barnel grabbed his mic and took a couple of steps toward the congregation, leaving his pulpit.
“Jesus Christ himself spoke to me this week, brothers and sisters. Clear as day. Clear as I’m talkin’ to you here and now. And he told me that I am the bringer of light. That’s right—you heard me. He said, ‘Jesup T. Barnel, it’s up to you now. You gotta get this ball rollin’.’”
I looked at Diggs, who just shook his head like the whole scene was beyond nuts. His composure made me feel marginally better: the rest of the crowd was freaking the crap out of me.
“The clock is tickin’, brothers and sisters. Forty-eight hours: that’s all you got. At midnight this very night—just thirty minutes from right now—a series of events will start up to bring you to your very knees, right here in Justice. I don’t know what they’ll be… but I know it’s my job to see us through as best I can. Which is why after tonight, the Lord has told me it’s time for me to leave y’all for a little while.” There was a collective gasp from the crowd. A woman started crying.
“Don’t y’all worry none, though. We’re gonna be reunited on them golden shores. And my soldiers are right here. They know their place—I’ve passed the Lord’s message on to them, and they know what they’ve gotta do. And you know what you’ve gotta do.”
Based on the way everyone seemed to be holding their breath at once, I was guessing I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t totally clear on that, actually.
“You’ve gotta repent,” Barnel finally clarified. “You’ve gotta hole up, protect your loved ones, and get down on your knees and pray to almighty God. Those standin’ with me know what’s what: they know who’s not worthy. Orders have been given from on high, and there will be those in this town—those among you this very night—who will be taken. And forty-eight hours from now, the final cleansing will be done. And those still standin’ will be taken to the Kingdom of the Lord, to live with Him for all eternity. Let me hear you say, ‘Amen.’”
A chorus of ‘amen’s rose up around us. Diggs looked at me, then back at the man behind the pulpit. Barnel raised his hands, and they fell silent once more.
“Are you on the right side, brothers and sisters? When He passes judgment, will you be found wantin’… Or will you set at his right hand?”
People were starting to freak out around us—It’s all well and good to know that Armageddon’s headed your way at some unappointed date in the near or distant future. It’s something else entirely when a crazy old preacher with a branding iron tells you the end times are kicking off at midnight, so you best be ready.
“I think we should get out of here,” Diggs whispered to me. “I’m not getting a great vibe.”
Didn’t have to tell me twice. The “amen”s and “hallelujah”s reached a crescendo as Diggs and I made for the exit, doing our best not to attract undue attention. As it was, we were almost home free when Barnel called after us.
“You run, Daniel Diggins—you know which side you done landed on. You run as far as you can, but you can’t outrun the Lord. He’s comin’ for you.”
Diggs turned back around to face the preacher. Their eyes held, and I wondered for the eighteenth time since arriving in Kentucky just exactly what in hell had happened between them. An old woman in an ankle-length green dress started singing “I’ll Fly Away.” Others joined in.
Diggs took a step toward Barnel.
Before he could get any farther, a sound like the cracking of a whip shattered the night. Someone screamed. Barnel’s eyes widened. A starburst of blood blossomed on his left shoulder as he fell to his knees. The big guy who’d been guarding him earlier—Brother Jimmy—dove in front of him just as a second shot rang out, hitting the younger man squarely in the chest.
There was more screaming, even as the old woman who’d first begun resumed her song. People fled in all directions, their screams echoing through the night. Still, the old woman sang. Another woman joined in. Diggs grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the way before we were both trampled. My heart slammed against my ribcage.
Once we were outside, I saw a red pickup that had been parked behind the tent tear across the field, spitting mud from under the tires as the driver raced for the open road. The rain was coming down in sheets. A couple of teenage girls in the requisite neck-to-ankle dresses ran past us. Diggs called after them.
“Did you see who did it?” he asked.
They were both crying, eyes wide, when they turned to answer. “No way to tell—crowd was too big, and everybody up and panicked soon as the reverend went down. The devil hisself could’ve been in there, you wouldn’t see him.”
<><><>
Within half an hour of the shooting, the cops descended—flashing lights, screaming sirens. A cold rain continued to fall, the sound of the faithful few still singing hymns clear in the distance. I could tell Diggs was torn as to whether we should stay or go, but ultimately I think curiosity won out. We walked back up to the tent as Sheriff Jennings himself arrived with Deputy Buddy on his heels.
A pudgy guy in glasses knelt by Brother Jimmy’s lifeless body—the coroner, I assumed. A paramedic tended to Barnel’s shoulder while he prayed with a slew of his followers. Buddy Holloway strung up crime scene tape and pushed everyone—including Reverend Barnel—back to the other side of the tent with the order that we were all to stay put until we’d left our names and contact numbers. Diggs and I chose a couple of folding chairs in the back, and waited.
Before the sheriff could begin questioning anyone, Barnel called him over. They had a whispered confab, and then I watched as the reverend shuffled off into the night with the rest of his entourage, without so much as a backward glance.
I thought of Barnel’s proclamation earlier about not being around for awhile. It seemed to me that, if we really were facing the end times, it might be a good idea to keep tabs on him more closely than the sheriff seemed inclined.
With Reverend Barnel now out of the way, Sheriff Jennings turned his attention to the crowd.
For some reason, when Diggs had described the sheriff the night before, I’d pictured someone... older. And smaller. Someone vaguely inept, oft around the middle, with a poorly fitted uniform and not much going on upstairs. Barney Fife with a sheriff’s star. Instead, Harvey Jennings was Diggs’ age, and he was the closest thing I’d ever seen to a real-life Marlboro Man—minus the Stetson hat. His uniform was pressed, his hat perfectly centered, his boots shined, his jaw square. He had a full-on Burt Reynolds moustache, and stood about 6’2”. If there was anything soft about him, I sure as hell wasn’t seeing it.
“Now,” Jennings began, addressing the crowd. “I want y’all to try and stay calm. A tragedy’s happened here tonight—we all know that. But y’all can rest easy knowin’ I won’t stop ‘til I find the evildoers that targeted the reverend and took Brother Jimmy from us.”
I looked at Diggs. He stayed focused on Jennings, tensed and waiting.
“I got some more deputies on their way here,” Jennings continued, “and they’re gonna ask you what you seen. I just want everybody to think good and hard on that. If there was a vehicle of any kind drivin’ away from the scene—a truck, maybe?”
He waited, leaving the question open.
“What the hell’s he doing?” I whispered to Diggs, as one of the teenage girls we’d seen earlier piped up.
“There was a red truck!” she said.
“A Tacoma,” a man shouted. At a nod from Jennings, Buddy wrote it down.
I felt Diggs tense beside me. “Why don’t you just tell us what you want to hear, Harvey?” he asked. “You give us a description, we can just smile and nod.”
Jennings st
rode toward us too fast, his eyes boring through Diggs. “You got something you wanna say to me, Diggins?”
Diggs didn’t move, gazing up at Jennings with a slow, cold smile. “I heard you found Jesus, Harvey,” he said. “I’ll be sure and tell Sarah the next time I talk to her.”
Jennings went full-on puce. Buddy grabbed his arm. “We got something,” he said quickly to the sheriff, lowering his voice—though not enough that I couldn’t make out that they’d found the murder weapon, discarded out in the field. Jennings returned to us before he and Buddy left for whatever their next move was.
“You seen your nephew here tonight?” Jennings asked.
“No,” Diggs said shortly.
“I heard tell y’all fought with the reverend today. Out to Wyatt’s funeral.”
“Danny didn’t have anything to do with that,” Diggs said. “That was all me.”
“That boy’s got a temper,” Jennings said. “Everybody in town knows it. More than one person heard him threaten the reverend today. I got a mind to go on out there myself right now and see what he’s been up to tonight.”
Diggs stood. He was a good two inches shorter than Jennings, but he was broader, and based on what I’d glimpsed when he’d taken his shirt off this afternoon, he hadn’t been idle these past six months: he had muscles on his muscles, his chest and arms more defined than I’d ever seen. It seemed I wasn’t the only one preparing for battle while we’d been apart. Bottom line? I wouldn’t bet against him if it came down to a fight between him and Jennings.
“Mae buried her husband today,” Diggs said. “Half the vehicles on the road here are red trucks—you go out there tonight without reasonable cause and I’ll make it my life’s work to pry that badge out of your cold dead hand.”
A vein throbbed in Jennings’ forehead. “A great man was gunned down like a dog tonight. I don’t care who they buried today—if Danny had somethin’ to do with this, I’m taking that boy down. You just stay out of my way and let me do my job.”