"It doesn’t take the All-Mighty to see sinners." He stretches out his long, skinny legs. "I always give them the chance to absolve their sins," he adds. "I let them confess and if it seems like they can be reformed, I let them go. More often than not, however, they’re just giving me lip service."
He’s stalling. Maybe I can stall him further. "You want to know how I really got here?" I ask, laying across the bed and propping myself up on my elbow.
"Sure," he says, turning to face me.
"Freddie Capollo didn’t kill my father. My mother killed him because Freddie, her boyfriend, told her to. My father was the only person I had, he protected me from my mother when she’d go out and get drunk and beat on us. My father would yell leave her alone, Grace, she’s just a kid! and wouldn’t fight back when she hit him. Freddie gave her the gun and she came home, sober for once, and shot him in the back of the head while he watched the news. I saw the kill from the kitchen and when she saw her husband’s blood on the couch, she dropped the gun. I picked it up and she started to laugh. Laughing at me, her precious little girl holding this pistol, like I was a kid in a cowgirl costume with a plastic six-shooter. I fired and she fell.
"The cops showed up twenty minutes later and found me hiding in the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink. The gun was registered to Freddie and his alibi was paper-thin, with all his priors he was a perfect fall guy. He got sent to jail and I came here. My mother killed my father and I killed my mother. Freddie had almost nothing to do with it."
"He had everything to do with it," Gregory snarls, standing. "He gave her the gun, he planned the crime, he deserved to rot in jail. And you were justified in killing your mother—a mother tucks her kid in at night, a mother doesn’t use her daughter as a punching bag. Both of them got what they deserved, but Freddie’s been out for two months now and I’m finally well enough to finish the job so that he doesn’t come gunning for you."
"What would he want with me?"
"I overheard him saying he was going to kill the little bitch who testified against him," he says. "Pardon the language."
The last piece falls into place. "He’s who you were after that night," I deduce. "He’s the one who stabbed you."
"Now it’s personal," he says with a smirk. His tone changes and he rests his cold hands on my bare arms. "Derringer," he begins. "I can get you out of here until all this is over, if you want."
"There’s nowhere to go." "Then can I ask you a favor?" "Anything."
"Promise me you’ll take care of the kids." His blue eyes glittered in the streetlight filtering through the curtains. "If tonight or any night I don’t return, I need to know they’ll be safe."
"Why do you have to go?" I plead, gripping his arm."We need you here. If something happens to you, the state will just send another social worker or another creep in God’s clothing. You’re the only person who’s ever brought happiness to this place."
"I’ve vowed to do justice," he insists. "I can’t stay here knowing that someone is out there hurting children and poisoning their parents. This is how I do God’s work. This is how I care for you. I can’t explain it better than that, just please understand and give me your word."
What choice do I have? If I say no, will he stay? I doubt it. "Of course," I whisper without tears. The strap of my slip falls off my shoulder, but I don’t adjust it. If he wants to be seduced, if he wants anything from me, I’m all his, just so that he won’t go out tonight. I can’t let go of this sick, awful feeling. It’s the same one I had when he stumbled in with his chest slashed open, only now, it’s a hundred times worse.
He kisses my head, looking so much older because I feel so much younger, like a baby whose mother leaves the room for one second, fearing that out of sight means gone forever. I walk him to the door and watch him until he’s out of sight. I keep hoping he’ll turn around and kiss me. It isn’t romantic, it’s not even love, something inside me is empty and the only thing I can think of that might satiate the ache is some sort of physical expression—if he kissed me, if he loved me, maybe he wouldn’t leave. It’s housewife logic, desperate and pathetic, but so am I. I just don’t want this to be the last time he walks out that door.
~
I wake up under the blankets in the Preacher Man’s bed and he’s still gone. The clock reads two twenty-five, he swore on God’s name he’d be back by two. When three rolls around and he still isn’t home, I can’t wait any longer. I put on a black sweater from his drawer and leave a note tacked to the fridge; Went out for milk, Heather is in charge.
Police sirens cut across the morning stillness like a wet blade through dead skin. I run as fast as I can, praying it isn’t what I know it is. I follow the sound for what seems like a hundred miles, cutting through alleys and over back fences, all the way to Torte Street. The police tape is already up in the parking lot behind Mickey’s bar and the body just lying there. I know that face, bloody as it is, and the only thing that keeps my legs from giving out is that I have to get close enough to prove to myself that it isn’t him. Any minute he’s going to get home and wonder where I am and tomorrow I’ll wake up and he’ll be making pancakes, just like every Saturday morning.
I try to run towards the body, but a thick cop snatches me up. Detective Waites stands up from where she’s examining the scene and advances towards me with her lycanthropic walk. I’m not scared of much, but I’m terrified of her; I ran away once when I was eleven and she brought me back, grabbing me out of my seat at the movies and hauling me before the headmistress, who starved me for four days to make her point. Waites’ car smelled like unwashed hair and stale cigarettes, it took three showers to wash her hands off me.
"Please let me see him," I beg, turning my face towards the cop who held me. I recognized
Detective Finn. "I’m one of his nuns, he’s a preacher, please, you have to let me see him."
Waites lights a cigarette. "You’re a nun, huh?" She grins and blows smoke out of the corner of her chapped lips. She doesn’t recognize me, but with her bloodshot eyes, I’d be surprised if she recognized herself in the mirror. "You look like you belong in a Nunnery, like the Ophelia over on Franyon Street. Are you good on your knees, sugar?"
I spit in her face and she cracks me one hard. "Easy, Frankie, she’s a kid!" Finn cries.
Waites snarls at me and smears her sleeve across his face. Finn lets me go and hands me a tissue to wipe the blood off my chin. "You can identify this man?" he asks.
"Yes," I answer. I know this body, but this is not the Preacher Man. He may as well be a mannequin, a wax sculpture, a life-sized doll. "His name is Gregory. He’s the headmaster at the orphanage." His medallion is gone. Someone stole his blessed medallion. This town is sick.
He sighs and nods to the guys with the sheet. They cover the Preacher Man’s face and I come all too close to crying for him. Out of the corner of my eye I see Gregory’s informant leaning against the patrol car, rubbing his temples and shaking his head. His free hand twists a chain around his neck.
"Come on, kid," Finn says. "I’ll drive you home."
~
It isn’t until we’re halfway to the orphanage that I remember my alibi. "Know any twenty- four hour gas stations?" I ask. "I told the kids I was out getting milk and if I come home empty handed, they’re going to really get suspicious."
Finn takes a series of turns and pulls up in front of a convenience store on Euclid. I realize I didn’t grab my wallet or any cash out of the petty funds. "Got a couple bucks I can borrow? I’ll pay you back when we get home."
He nods and follows me inside. I grab two gallons of milk and he gets a cup of coffee. Neither of us say a word for the rest of the ride home. When he pulls the car up in front of the orphanage, he turns to me and asks, "Are you going to be all right?"
I nod even though I don’t mean it. I spent the whole ride rehearsing what I was going to say, how I was going to explain to them that he was gone, the only man who’d ever really cared about us died because he cared to
o much. My knees go weak and I wonder if I’ll be able to make it up the walk.
"Here," he says, opening his palm. In the streetlight I see he’s holding Gregory’s medallion. "How did you get this?"
"I stole it," he replies. "I was the first cop on the scene, and I didn’t want it to get lost in an evidence locker or in the pocket of the medical examiner’s intern. I figured you kids deserved to have it."
For the first time I can remember, I start to cry. Once I let the first few tears fall, there’s no stopping the rest. I put my head down on the dashboard and bawl for my father, for my mother, for Gregory. I have to ask, "Was he dead when you found him?"
Finn shifts like he’s trying to take the weight off something in his back pocket. "Yeah," he replies. "I was a minute too late."
"Probably wouldn’t have mattered," I say. If God is as merciful as Gregory always said he was; he died quickly. I hope his last few moments weren’t spent spitting blood and final prayers, fully conscious that he was dying cold and alone in the parking lot of a dive bar.
"Probably not," he agrees.
I get myself back together and suck in a deep breath. "Thanks," I murmur. He hands me his card. "Call me if you need anything," he says.
"You want to come in for the money I owe you?"
"Nah," he says. "A couple of bucks is the least of my worries."
I nod again, thank him for the lift and walk away. It’s dawn and I start making pancakes. No sense in changing tradition. When the kids get up and ask where Gregory is, I tell them. "He left,"
I say. "He left just like all the others."
The Way of Cold Teeth
Lon Prater
Lieutenant Croaker Thomson was a decorated Union scout, a regular churchgoer (when he could make it, anyway), and—despite those upstanding details—a wanted man. He was also less than a day ahead of the damn Pinkerton, and starting to wonder if maybe he was getting to be a little too old for ducking and dodging across half the Appalachians on foot.
The detective was after the $1000 bounty. The government wanted him pretty bad. One lousy sentence in one lousy scouting report had made a fugitive of him.
The little stone pyramid featur’d inhuman faces carved onto every stone, and none of the local
Indian tribes have ever had that level of masonry.
Or maybe it was just that one word: inhuman.
A rifle shot chipped rock right by Croaker’s head, stirring him from his reverie. His assailant yelled at him from somewhere in the rustling leaves below.
"Croaker, you best come on back with me. They just want you to take ‘em to the pyramid, that’s all."
Croaker dodged around an overhang of wind-scoured rock and unslung his rifle. "I ain’t taking nobody there. The place ain’t natural, and it surer than hell don’t need any government poking around. Let me be. Let that place be." He squinted into the trees and listened for the Pinkerton’s response to that.
"Just lead them to the pyramid, and then they’ll take that bounty off your head."
Croaker couldn’t tell where the new voice had come from, too many angles of stone and con- fusing echoes. "I bet they’ll take my head off my neck, too, as part of the bargain. I ain’t coming." "Suit yourself," said a gravelly deep voice from just above him. Croaker heard the click of a
pistol cocking and looked up.
Colonel Norbert Haywood smiled down at him, one gold tooth twinkling in a nest of its tobacco stained kinfolk. The barrel of his Colt was inches from Croaker’s face. "Just tell me where to find the place. You left that little detail off of your report."
Croaker shook his head. Between Haywood’s gun in his face and the Pinkerton’s rifle on him out in the woods, they had him. He set his rifle on the ground in one slow defeated movement, then looked up. "You after gold?"
Colonel Haywood grinned. "I just want to see me some inhumanity, Lieutenant." He gave
Croaker a smug nod. "Then I want to see if it has any gold it ain’t using."
Croaker scowled. He never had liked Haywood, but he’d seen what the man was capable of, out there on the Plains. "I’ll take you, Colonel, but only as far as the little pass into the— the valley. After that you’re on your own."
Haywood stared hard at Croaker then said, "Deal. But don’t think of trying any funny stuff." He hollered for the detective to come on up.
Croaker chewed and watched the red-faced man climb the path. "You know, Colonel," Croaker finally said, feeling the gun still on him. "If you just want to see gold and inhumanity, you might try a mirror."
Haywood brought the pistol butt down on Croaker’s head, making him see stars. "Just take me to the pyramid, Lieutenant. I’ll make all the snide remarks from here on out."
~
When Croaker told the Colonel that they were about two days out from the pass, Haywood shot the Pinkerton and rolled the red-faced man down a cliff.
He treated Croaker to a conspiratorial smile. "Good riddance to bad company, eh?"
Croaker nodded silently at his captor, wondering how soon he would get similar hospitality. For the past eight nights, the Colonel had been tying him hand and foot to whatever tree was handy. Every day they rode through the hinterlands of the Appalachians, leading the horses where necessary, Croaker aching and sap-faced from a bad night’s rest, his hands bound before him.
Each minute brought them closer to that unmapped cavern with the odd stone construction squatting in it. The only Indians that would speak of the place were the occasional Blackfoot crone or Cherokee shaman. They called the entry to the cavern "The Way of Cold Teeth," but not one of them cared to venture a guess about those faces carved into the stone within it.
Croaker cleared his throat, pointing with both of his bound hands at a ribbon of cascading water in the distance."From there, we’ll have to leave the horses and climb to the pass." He brought his hands down before he became too unbalanced. "You aim to kill me, don’t you, Colonel?"
Haywood grunted, flashed Croaker a tobacco-rotten smile. "Now why would I go and do that?"
"Because I’m the only other one who knows where this pyramid is, for one thing. For another, because you’re a low-down snake who’d shoot his own mamma for a bit of gold."
Haywood swung his fist at Croaker, stopping just short of impact. Croaker didn’t flinch. The senior officer chuckled, then stepped back.
"Cain’t argue with your logic none." He looked up at a falcon in flight, then spat. "You got a reason I shouldn’t take off your head, impale you on a post and let the birds pick your bones clean?"
"I could give you my word that I don’t want to go back there. Not ever." Croaker shuddered. "Though I doubt that’d be good enough for you."
"Naw, but now you got me curious, Lieutenant. Just why exactly are you so fretful over a pile of rocks, anyway. ‘Specially one that might have gold in it..."
The falcon shrieked and dove on something in the distance. Croaker felt his bowels icing up as he thought back to the day he had first laid eyes on the crudely fashioned pyramid, on those leering stone faces.
"Colonel, when I tell you there ain’t enough gold in all of Christendom to make me want to go back in there, I’m understating the case. There’s something unnatural about it, even the air smells wrong when you get right up close to it.
"Them faces ain’t people, and they don’t look like they care much for people neither. It’d be best if we just left them alone, and pray they return the favor."
Haywood smirked, his eyes bulging theatrically. "Oh, no! Is the Headless Horseman going to come riding out of it and take my noggin for a prize?" he asked, his voice thick with falsetto horror. He snorted in disgust. "What kind of Army officer are you, anyway?"
Croaker looked across the pine and granite-swathed mountain vista. Somewhere out there, the falcon was ripping open the belly of its prey, pulling at the entrails with a blood-spattered beak. "I’m the kind that knows when he’s outgunned and in over his head, Colonel, that’s all. And maybe the kind that d
on’t use his commission for personal gain."
Haywood’s eyes flashed. He drew his pistol, leveling it at Croaker."You just shut your mouth, Lieutenant. Just shut it! Or I’ll plug you now and go find the damn gold without you."
Croaker doubted there was even any gold to be had, but kept that to himself, as he was not particularly fond of the idea of taking a gut wound from his former OIC.
The colonel’s nostrils were still flaring with rage as he bounced the gun barrel at Croaker. Haywood’s voice was thick when he finally spoke. "I am a damn good officer, Lieutenant, and don’t you forget it. In fact, I’m going to make a better Army officer out of your yellow carcass, just to show you."
A viscous brown dollop of tobacco juice rolled out of the colonel’s mouth, decorating the dirt trail beneath their horses. "I’m going to make you face your fears, Lieutenant. You’re coming in with me. You can help me lug out the gold."
Croaker felt his eyes widening and cursed himself for showing fear. Haywood nodded his head once, satisfied and maybe a bit proud of his decision. "Be just the thing for you, Lieutenant." The clear skies were already beginning to tarnish; soon they would set up camp for the night.
A cool breeze whipped up out of nowhere and Croaker tried to huddle deeper into his service jacket, feeling the ache of too many nights spent straddle-tied to pine trees.
As they rode on, Haywood whistled a merry New York City piano tune, punctuating every few bars with a hack and a spit. Croaker kept searching the sky behind them, as if expecting to find some great and silent winged predator swooping down upon them at any moment.
~
When Croaker and the Colonel reached the bottom of the waterfall, they stopped for the night. In between bites of hard biscuit and jerky, Croaker kept looking up at the rocky mountain- side above them. He smiled at his captor across a small campfire.
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