Purgatory

by K M Stross

  Cross leaned back in the creaky wooden chair, taking his time to choose his words carefully because now he was officially off-script. It scared him, caused his hands to sweat, as if telling this woman too much might cause him to break down and finally admit the truth: that he was here to kill a man.

  To kill a murderer.

  “I started working closely with the priest in our town, Father Tony. We became friends, and I started volunteering at the church. He died unexpectedly.”

  Maria nodded, looking down at the dirty table, running a finger along the edge. “I am sorry to hear that. I know what it is like to lose friends.” She stood up and opened the microwave, setting the container on the table and grabbing a clean spoon and porcelain bowl from the cupboard. She used the spoon to dump the soup with one thick chunky splash, setting the bowl in front of him and sitting back down across the table.

  Cross used his spoon to stir the thick liquid. It looked delicious—the broth was a fiery red, with chunks of chicken mixed in with celery and onions. He scooped a spoonful of the broth, blowing on it a few times and watching the steam dissipate into the musky air. “Where are your siblings?” he asked.

  Maria shrugged. “Asleep. They all work early tomorrow. We try to alternate, so someone is always home to do chores, and tomorrow is my day.”

  “Edgar doesn’t pay you much,” Cross said, intending to ask the question rather than make a statement.

  “Not too much,” she admitted. “But enough to live on.”

  Cross nodded and scooped the cooled broth into his mouth. His tongue immediately ignited upon touch, forcing him to swallow quickly. His chest began to burn. “Holy shit,” he said. “Holy fucking shit.”

  Maria pressed one hand to her mouth, laughing.

  Cross dipped his spoon again and this time took in a large chunk of chicken. It tasted amazing. The spices burned his throat on the way down, but his tongue craved to experience more. “I’m sorry. Oh my God, this is amazing!”

  “Shhhhh,” Maria said, laughing and trying her best to keep an angry face. She pointed to the open window over the sink. “The people in the café downstairs will think I’m sleeping with the visiting priest.”

  “I can’t help it,” Cross said. “This is amazing. I haven’t had a meal this good in years. Oh my God.”

  Maria laughed harder. “Well, you can thank my sister, Luone, should you ever meet her. She is the cook.”

  Cross took in each spoonful a little quicker as his tongue slowly adjusted to the hot spices. “Tell me more about your family,” he said between mouthfuls.

  Maria shrugged. “Like I said, my parents are stubborn. They will stay loyal to Mexico until the day it finally dies. We all grew up in a small village located in the south of Arizona border more or less run by the Guillermo Cartel. They ran guns from Arizona and California and sold them in Mexico to the drug lords. My father worked a small tourist shop, and my mother stayed home to take care of us. My siblings and I started working when we were fifteen, so we could feed ourselves. It was the only way to survive if you wanted to stay honest.”

  Cross set his spoon in the half-finished bowl. He looked up and centered on her, so the tunneling image coming from his left eye surrounded her in a soft dark glow. She was a beautiful woman and staring into her eyes made him desire her more. “So you all moved here.”

  “You could say that,” she said, smiling.

  “What would you call it?” he asked, glancing down and carefully grabbing another spoonful with a chunk of chicken. He looked up and saw her smile, wondering if it was evident on his face that he needed something to drink, that his pride was preventing him from asking.

  “Running,” she said simply. “Stopping once, at a drinking station an American charity set up so not as many of us would die of thirst. We fled on foot—well, we fled on booties.”

  “Booties?”

  Maria nodded. “Like for babies, only bigger. It hid our footprints so the border patrol and vigilantes could not find us as easily.”

  “Smart,” he said, scooping up the last few bits of food. His throat was burning, forcing his breaths to come out in desperate wheezes. His lips felt like they were going to fall off.

  “Would you like a glass of water, Father?” she asked with a smile.

  “Dear God yes,” Cross said. “Thank you… for the food as well as the reminder of just how wimpy I can be.”

  Maria laughed, bringing him a glass of cold tap water. “You know, if you had not introduced yourself as a priest, I never would have thought you were one.”

  “Why’s that?” Cross asked, pressing the cold cup of water to his lips and leaving it on the enflamed tissue for a moment before finally taking a long sip.

  Maria shrugged, returning to her side of the table. “You do not act as uptight as the ones that I remember. It is good, though. This town has been without a priest for far too long.”

  “You know, that surprises me.” Cross set the empty glass of water on the table. “I would have thought they’d assign a new priest to the town church. It’s not like the Vatican to abandon one of its churches for so long.”

  “There was another priest,” Maria said, grabbing the glass and refilling it at the sink.

  Cross pulled the glass from his mouth. “Another priest?”

  Maria nodded. “Father McCormack. Did they not tell you?”

  Cross felt his eyes lose focus. “No.” How had he missed it? All the newspaper accounts had mentioned was a Vatican investigation, but no new priest to take over the parish. He cleared his head and returned to her beautiful eyes, searching for a plausible lie. “They… they didn’t tell me much of anything, I’m afraid. Where would I find this Father McCormack?”

  Maria shifted uncomfortably. “I would not know. Perhaps the Church is waiting for Sheriff Taylor to complete his investigation before they appoint another priest.”

  “Maybe,” Cross said, thinking.

  Maria shrugged. “He seemed to keep to himself. I don’t think he even held one mass and I never saw him outside of the church. He did not fit into Purgatory all that well, so perhaps your presence here was meant to be. Perhaps you will feel inclined to stay after you have finished your investigation.”

  “Maybe,” Cross said. He stood and tucked in the chair, lifting it up so the rough wood wouldn’t scrape the dirty white linoleum tiles and cause noise. Maria watched. “I should get some sleep. Thank you so much for the meal. It was absolutely amazing.”

  “Please do visit again, Father,” Maria said, walking him to the door with one gentle hand on his back. He could feel it. He liked it there.

  “Only if the soup doesn’t kill me tonight,” he said with a smile.

  She laughed. “Please be safe on your walk home.”

  “I will.”

  Outside, the air had cooled significantly. Abaddon Drive was again empty, free for the handful of parked cars in front of the café and a murder of crows sitting quietly on the telephone wires high above. Cross glanced at them as he made his way down the dark street, using his pocket flashlight, so the darkness didn’t get too close. The tunnel vision was easier to deal with during the daylight hours, but in the darkness, it made him half-blind, and it scared him as if he was trapped inside a small dark room.

  “Maybe more than half-blind,” he whispered between dry breaths. Maybe the glaucoma was spreading to the other eye, which would explain the things he had been seeing out of the corner of his eyes, the half-images that nagged his memory. Shadows. Ghosts.

  He passed the café and stopped. That feeling had gotten stronger as if a pair of eyes was watching him from somewhere. He shined his flashlight across the street, where the Purgatory Historical Society owned a small square of space in one of the brick buildings next to one of the bars. In the large window, a brown shade was drawn, and on it a black photo print of Purgatory as it had been at the turn of the 20th Century, before the renovations to Abaddon Drive’s businesses. The curtains behind it looked dusty and stained, pu
lled tightly together as if they hadn’t been opened in years, as if opening them would tear them apart.

  Back at the motel, he turned on all of the lights and again went through his audiotapes, searching for any mention of a Father McCormack. There was nothing, but he had never bothered to gather any articles not related to Father Aaron.

  There was something to this. He went into the bathroom, popping a pill from each prescription bottle and downing them with lots of cool water. The tap water didn’t get ice cold. In Wisconsin, the tap water got ice cold. It was the only thing about winter that Cross liked.

  Most of his clothes were soaking in the bathtub. He drained the water and hung the clothes over the shower curtain, glad it wasn’t the kind of hotel shower with a glass door. He’d seen those over the years while he traveled. One had slipped off its tracks and shattered on the bathroom floor, nearly cutting his foot. Safe in the shower, he’d said a little prayer of thanks and then laughed at the absurdity of it: him, naked, stuck in the shower because the bathroom floor was littered with sharp glass shards.

  Back in the bedroom, he reached for the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. A female voice answered.

  “Sheriff’s department.”

  Cross switched the phone to his other ear. “Sheriff Taylor, please.”

  “Sheriff Taylor is off-duty for the next two days,” the woman said. “I’m the deputy on duty. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  Cross thought a moment. “This is Father Cross. I’m trying to get some information about Father McCormack, who visited here. Is there anyone else I could talk to who might know?”

  Silence. Then: “Probably not. Is this an emergency?”

  “Well, I really need to talk to him. I… I can only stay in town for a certain number of days. I would really appreciate if I could get in touch with him.”

  “He’s at the Spring Green Country Club tomorrow,” the woman said. Her voice lowered. “It’s southeast of Purgatory.”

  “Spring Green,” Cross repeated, closing his left eye and scribbling it town on the back of one of the article printouts in big capital letters. “Thank you.”

  He hung up the phone, trying to think back to his night in the church, the feeling of being in that empty space. Consecrated. Desecrated. Desolate. Diseased. He realized he still had his left eye closed and opened it, the combined image of both eyes creating a translucent gray tunnel that centered on one of the articles sitting on the desk. For a moment he hoped it was divine intervention, so he peered closer to read the small text, finding nothing of importance. He pushed it aside, scanning the headlines of the others. Nothing about Father McCormack. Nothing about the sheriff’s pending investigations. Nothing made sense.

  “Good,” he whispered. For the first time in years, he felt like he was a step closer to finding Gabriel Morrissey.

  CHAPTER 7

  He awoke to the alarm at nine the next morning, took his meds then dressed quickly in the same clothes as before. He could smell the soup and the fragrance of Maria’s apartment near his collar. It was the only reason he hadn’t soaked the clothes in the tub the previous night. He wanted to smell her again.

  There was only one taxi in town, and Cantrell answered after a dozen rings. The cab arrived at nine-thirty, leaving Cross just enough time to grab a cup of complimentary coffee and a stale doughnut from the motel lobby.

  Cantrell opened the passenger’s door for Cross, bowing in an exaggerated gesture of servitude.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” Cantrell said, shutting the door. “Don’t normally take customers before noon.”

  Cross waited for him to get into the driver’s seat. “You’re the only taxi in town.”

  “It’s a good racket,” Cantrell said, shutting the door. They waited in silence for the cigarette lighter to heat up. When he had a fresh smoke ready, Cantrell pulled onto Abaddon Drive, heading east out of town. At the limit, he gunned the engine, and the taxi slowly and loudly reached the new 55 mph speed limit.

  “You’ve got a hundred bucks waiting for you,” Cantrell said after a moment of silence. He turned on the digital meter attached to the dashboard.

  “For what?” Cross asked.

  “The copper wire. I sold it yesterday after we were finished.”

  “I thought the owner hired you,” Cross said.

  Cantrell pulled off the highway at the first intersection five miles out of town. He turned right, onto a black concrete road that looked freshly paved. The sunlight radiated off of the dry brown ground, ensconcing the atmosphere in a similar dirty red glow. “I owned the building. Back when it had value, that is.”

  Cross shifted uncomfortably in the hard leather seat. The cushions looked overused, probably from a number of overnight stays by their driver. “You let those squatters live there.”

  Cantrell pulled the cigarette from his mouth, letting it hang out of the open window. He exhaled, and the smoke bounced off the windshield. “Why the fuck not. The place is gonna be torn down by the bank anyway. Wish I’d have known the husband ran off. I would have bought them some food.”

  “Don’t you harbor any resentment for them?” Cross asked. “People like them came up here and took your job.”

  “Not all of them,” Cantrell said quietly. “Just two.”

  “So it doesn’t bother you?” Cross asked. “They’re coming here illegally, and they’re taking your jobs, and your employers are letting them take your jobs because they’ll work at a cheaper rate.”

  Cantrell lifted the cigarette to his lips, inhaling deeply. Calmly. “I can find more work.”

  “It just… it boggles my mind. I see the ranchers getting rich because they can hire all these aliens. I see half the town getting poorer and poorer because no one can cope with the changes. I see the other half getting richer and looking the other way at their new customers’ immigration status. The guys who used to work on the ranches are all sitting up in the mountains trying to save themselves.”

  “I’m sorry, Padre, but I don’t share your Old Testament style of justice.”

  Cross felt his skin immediately cool. Pinpricks of gooseflesh opened up on the back of his neck.

  “This town’s fond of dividing itself into two camps: the appeasers and the vigilantes,” Cantrell said. “Maybe the appeasers have their problems, but I'm sure as hell ain’t joining the vigilantes.”

  Cross nodded, closing his eyes and listening to his soft heartbeat for a moment, noting how fast it had begun to race. What was it about this struggle that he wanted Cantrell to share with him? “I apologize. It’s not my place to criticize.”

  “Forgiven.” Cantrell glanced at Cross and the loose skin on his neck folded in on itself. The entire back of his neck looked sun-dried and peeling. “Anger doesn’t suit you well.”

  Cross looked out the window, staring at the small dry shrubs passing by along the road. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’ve got a worn smile. The kind that fits you like an old pair of jeans, like it’s just a part of your natural face. Like keeping it from creeping out takes some effort.”

  “Maybe,” Cross said. He reached down and scratched at the skin underneath his boot where the knife was hidden. “A long time ago.”

  “Here it is, coming up on your right.”

  Cross looked up and watched as the country club rose from the horizon. It was as if God had taken a large clump of grass and dropped it in the middle of the desert, occasionally watering it until some unsuspecting humans could happen upon it. A slice of Eden fenced in and surrounded by an otherwise barren wasteland of sandy brown dirt and dried earth and in the distance, a handful of rusty flat ranches peppered with black steers.

  The cab drove up to the front doors of the large white clubhouse that sat between the 18-hole golf course and the highway. It looked like a monolithic Parthenon with tall pillars propping up the second-floor overhang, obstructing the view of the course from any passersby unless they traveled around the wro
ught iron fencing and ventured into the dry gully beyond the course that divided the U.S. and Mexico.

  Cross reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty, but Cantrell waved away the money. “Now I owe you eighty bucks.”

  “Great,” Cross said, stepping out of the car and walking around to the driver’s side. “You feel like waiting a little while?”

  Cantrell reached under the seat and pulled out an almost empty liter of whiskey. He shook the brown liquid around in the container. “This should give you an hour.”

  “Okay.” Cross turned and walked up the concrete steps to the front doors. They were made entirely of dark, tinted glass with silver metal trim, clean and translucent and somehow rebuffing the dust kicked up by the always-present wind.

  He opened the door and stepped into the cool, air-conditioned foyer. It was dark, with the few lights coming from fixtures hidden in the Greek half-pillars lining the walls. The room was small, more of a hallway than anything else, with dark blue carpeting that felt brand-new under the soles of Cross’s boots. To his right was a much larger empty room with a big screen LCD TV and leather chairs surrounding small circular coffee tables. To his left was another door leading to the pro shop and beyond that another hallway leading deeper into the clubhouse.

  Cross walked into the pro shop, inhaling the scent of fresh leather gloves and steamed brown rice. A man stood behind the counter watching a small TV next to the register and holding a plate of food in one hand. He looked away from the TV when he noticed Cross moving casually across the room and ignoring the golf merchandise sitting in front of the counter.

  “How ya doing,” he said. He was wearing a blue golf t-shirt and khakis. White. Young.

  Cross smiled warmly. “I’m doing well. How about you?”

  The man shrugged. His eyes were fixed on the white piece of cardboard under Cross’s collar, as if unsure what to make of it. “Nice day for golf, that’s for sure.”