The Church of Broken Pieces

by David Haynes

  Wilson grabbed his arm. “John, stop screwing about.”

  Donovan looked at him like he’d just spoken in a foreign language. He pulled his arm away. “What? What’s the matter with you?”

  “That word, you keep using that word. Baphomet. What does it mean?”

  “What the hell’s got into you? Your ears need cleaning out. I said, that guy’s epithet. E...P...I...”

  “I know how to spell, John, there’s no need to be a jerk about it.”

  Donovan shrugged. “But do you know what it means?”

  Wilson gave him a false grin, one Reverend Cavendish would be proud of. “Just look at the menu.”

  “I was just about to when you grabbed hold of me and started talking crap.”

  They both took less than ten seconds to decide, sliding their menus back inside the holder in the middle of the table. “Cheeseburger,” they announced simultaneously.

  He was hearing things. For some reason that word had become an ear-worm since the dream. It was probably no wonder, the dream had been powerful. It was good that he couldn’t remember much about it. Apart from that word.

  “She looked relieved to see us,” Wilson said, looking toward the kitchen.

  Donovan stared over too. “Something’s going on there, something... something bad.”

  “Yeah,” Wilson agreed. “I get the feeling Cavendish isn’t quite as holy as he’d like us to believe.”

  Courtney came out of the kitchen holding her notebook and pencil. They both looked away so as not to make her feel uncomfortable.

  She stood by the table. “It’s alright, I know you guys want to help, but I’m fine. Honestly.”

  In Wilson’s experience, when someone added honestly to the end of the word it usually meant the opposite.

  “Two cheeseburgers,” Donovan smiled up at her. “And when we’ve finished eating, which won’t take us very long, would you mind showing us where we can get a beer around here?”

  “I’ll point it out to you.” She looked toward Sonny’s neon sign.

  Donovan put his hand over hers. “No, I mean lock up and escort us there.”

  She looked down at his hand and then at his face. “I can’t just lock...”

  “Sure you can,” Donovan said. “I think we could all do with a beer tonight.” He turned to Wilson. “Right, Frank?”

  This wasn’t about Wilson’s sobriety, he wouldn’t have a beer and Donovan knew that. This was about Donovan trying to help again. He loved him for it.

  “He’s right, Courtney. Come with us and make sure we don’t get in any trouble.”

  She almost laughed. “The only trouble you’ll get in there will be if Phil Moody falls off his stool at the bar.” She tilted her head from side to side, weighing up the decision. “Fine, it’s been a while since I let someone buy me a beer.” She turned away and walked back to the kitchen.

  “Smooth,” Wilson smiled and winked at his friend.

  “That’s my middle name,” he replied without humor.

  *

  The burgers were excellent, just as they expected. What was a little more surprising was that Donovan didn’t finish his. He left at least two healthy bites on the plate and hardly touched his fries. Courtney looked disappointed to see the untouched food but he ensured her it was nothing to do with her cooking, more the way his head was feeling – full of cotton wool from his fever.

  She gave him some good-humored abuse about how men were hopeless when they were ill. She seemed much improved.

  Donovan offered to help her with the dishes but she filled their cups with coffee, hung the closed sign on the door and disappeared upstairs to change out of her work clothes.

  “Sure you want me hanging around?” Wilson asked. “I mean I could just as easily sip a Coke back in the room.”

  Donovan laughed. “No, man. She feels more comfortable with two of us around. It might get weird if she thinks it’s a date.”

  “And is it?”

  Donovan shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Just take it easy, okay? She seems pretty fragile.”

  Donovan held his hands up, palms out. “Of course, nice and easy, just like I was with your niece.”

  Wilson sighed. “John, just go steady with her, that’s all I meant.” In the circumstances, the comment was in bad taste. He didn’t like the way John was behaving but he didn’t know how to tackle it.

  Donovan reached over and patted his cheek. “Just relax, we’re just going for a beer. You don’t have to overthink it, Mr Drebin.”

  Wilson batted his hand away, shaking his head.

  “We ready?” Courtney appeared from the kitchen. She looked totally different in jeans and a baggy red jumper. Her hair, usually scraped back in a severe ponytail, hung in chestnut waves to her shoulders.

  “I am,” Donovan jumped up. “Don’t know about granddad here.”

  He offered his arm to her and for a moment Wilson thought there might be a scene of awkward rejection, but she took it.

  “Why thank you, kind sir.” She curtsied.

  Sonny’s was a single, square-shaped room with a row of stools at the bar and two booths in the back corner next to the pool table. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it was just the same as any of the other black-hole bars Wilson had ever been in. It suited the town.

  Sonny jumped up when they walked in, his eyes like saucers. A portable television hung above the bar at a precarious angle. A newsreader mouthed something before the image flicked to a still of Capitol Hill.

  “Hey, Sonny,” Courtney said. “Can we get three Buds, please?”

  They sat in a row at the bar. Courtney was in the middle. It was her choice.

  “Just two,” Wilson jumped in. “I’ll have a Coke, thanks.”

  “Coming up,” he said grinning. Wilson thought they might have just trebled his takings for the week.

  “Is that the real news?” Donovan asked.

  Sonny knocked the caps off two bottles of beer and put them on the bar. “The real news?” He chuckled. “I guess so, if anything you see on there is real these days.” He reached beneath the bar and pulled out a bottle of Coke. He examined the side of it.

  “Still in date,” he said, knocking the cap of that too. “Don’t think anyone’s bought a Coke in here since... well, since the mill closed down.”

  Wilson took it and held it up to the others. “Cheers,” he said clinking bottles.

  Donovan took a long drink and stifled a burp. “I’ll take the news over what we’ve been watching the last couple of days.”

  “What’s that?” Courtney asked.

  “Reverend Cavendish Channel 101,” Wilson replied.

  “You over at Jerry’s place then?” Sonny asked, nodding.

  “Yup.”

  “He sold out to the Church last year, so that’s all they show. Promised him a renovation too. I think they were hoping folks visiting the hospice would stay over, perhaps a night or two. Never took off so they left him floundering.” Sonny told the story with a smile on his face. He obviously enjoyed Jerry’s plight.

  “He was just unlucky,” Courtney added, also taking a long drink.

  “Greedy, is what he was,” Sonny responded.

  Courtney put her bottle down. “It’s not greedy to want to save your business, Sonny. Jerry had that place long before the mill shut down. Where else us he going to go now? The motel’s worthless.”

  “I was just saying, Courtney...”

  “If it weren’t for the Church, I’d have gone under last year. It’s only the staff and visitors that keep me afloat.”

  “Well, you’re lucky cos none of them come in here,” Sonny replied. “Reckon I’ve got six months left and then I’m gone.”

  Courtney winced. “God, I’m sorry, Sonny. I didn’t mean to...”

  He held his hand up. “No need to apologize. We’re all fighting for air down here.”

  Sonny went back to his stool and turned his attention to the news. The exchange had been ten
se.

  “Crap,” Courtney whispered, finishing her beer.

  “Another?” Donovan asked, finishing his own.

  She nodded. “Put a couple of chasers on there too.” She smiled at Sonny. “See if we can’t give Sonny an extra month or two.”

  Sonny laughed, standing up again. “Gonna take more than just a couple of chasers to do that.”

  “Well, by the time the night’s over we might just be able to help you out there,” Donovan said.

  Wilson watched them both throw back the Tequila and chug down half of their bottles. The night had all the hallmarks of turning into something messy. He sipped his Coke. It was warm.

  “So when do you guys think you’ll go back to... where are you from?” Courtney asked.

  “Bangor,” Donovan replied. “Depends on when our business is concluded.” He leaned around Courtney. “Right, Frank?”

  Wilson nodded. “You just never know with these things.”

  This was actually true. He had no idea what was happening in Hemlock Mill, specifically at the hospice, or what he was supposed to do, so how could he say when they would leave? The only thing he did know for sure was that the whole town felt bad, like it was simply rotting away. Richard Pace had known something was wrong too and he had come to them for help. They had turned him away and because of that, he had killed himself. Wilson knew if he just walked away now it would eat away at him, push him to a place he didn’t want to be. He needed to stay. There needed to be a resolution. As much for himself as anyone else.

  “You know,” Courtney started. “When you guys first came into the diner, I thought you were real estate agents.”

  “That explains a lot,” Donovan said.

  “What?” she replied.

  “Why you were a little less than friendly.”

  She smiled. “Hmmm, yes sorry about that. We’ve had that many sniffing about in the last year, buying up the houses and shops for pennies. I’m sick of them. But lawyers? I’d never peg you as lawyers.” She looked them both up and down. “Especially not now.”

  A car pulled up outside, its engine revving like a smoker’s cough. They all looked out and watched a mountainous man haul himself out of a battered looking Country Squire. He stopped to talk to someone for a couple of minutes, then shuffled toward the door.

  “That’ll be Phil,” Sonny said, filling a pitcher with beer. “He might be in a better mood now he’s got more than just me to talk at all night.”

  The door was swung open by a man at least a hundred pounds too heavy for his skin and closer to two hundred too much for his straining shirt. He was a big man, close to six and a half feet tall.

  Sonny put the pitcher and a glass on the bar. “Here you go, Phil. Good and frosty for you.”

  Phil barely glanced at the three of them sitting at the bar. He had eyes for the beer and the beer alone. As he levered his frame into the stool beside Wilson, the smell of whiskey drifted off him. It was on his clothes and squirming beneath his skin, along the highways and byways of his bloodstream. Wilson recognized a fellow alcoholic when he smelled one. Phil emptied the pitcher into four glasses, one after the other without saying a word. It was businesslike.

  Sonny put another one down immediately. “Thirsty, Phil?”

  He nodded and scratched his patchy beard. “Bitch of an ex-wife calls me today, says, Phil, I need some money to buy Kelsey a new coat. I says, best get off your lazy ass and get a job then cos I ain’t got a penny. Says she knows a lawyer who’ll take me to court to get the money off me. I says, go ahead, only thing they’ll squeeze out of me is blood and shit and they’re welcome to both.”

  Phil Moody was one of those men whose voice didn’t match his frame. He should have been a bass, instead he was on the soprano scale. The more wound up he became, the higher his voice climbed. He finished another glass and poured himself another.

  “Damn fucking bitch. I should’ve broken her neck instead of just her jaw.” He turned to Wilson smiling. “Shut the bitch up for a while though didn’t it.” He looked proud of himself.

  He peered around Wilson and looked at Courtney. “You, I know.” He then looked from Donovan back to Wilson. “These two I don’t.”

  “They’re lawyers from Bangor,” Courtney replied. “Working at the hospice.” She didn’t look at Phil as she replied.

  “That so?” Phil turned on the stool, as far as his size would allow anyway, staring right at Wilson. “I don’t like lawyers.”

  Wilson eyed him right back. “Some of us aren’t very likeable, I agree with you there Phil, but some of us aren’t too bad.” There was nothing to be gained by starting a fight about a profession he wasn’t actually a part of.

  Phil turned back to his beer and grunted.

  “A couple more beers and a pitcher for my friend here,” Wilson said. He turned to the other two. “Shall we take them to one of the booths?”

  Donovan was still staring at Phil even though that part of the conversation had ended.

  “Sure.” Courtney stood up and walked to the back corner. “I can kick your asses at pool while I’m at it.”

  Donovan shook his head, as if he’d been on a different planet. “You can try,” he said and followed her.

  Wilson waited for the drinks. Phil didn’t voice his thanks, he simply held his glass up toward Wilson when the new pitcher arrived in front of him.

  “No problem,” Wilson said, walking over to the other two. They were already racking up the pool balls. Another thirty minutes and he would leave them to it. There was no awkwardness between them, they just seemed to be getting along well, having fun. He didn’t want to play gooseberry.

  He played two games. One against each of them and lost both times. It had been a long time since he had been in a bar for anything other than business reasons. And before that, whenever he’d been inside a place like this he’d been in no condition to lift a pool cue, let alone focus on striking a ball with it.

  It was just after ten when he drained his second warm Coke of the night and stood up. “Right, I’m off. Look after him would you, Courtney? He doesn’t get out on his own much.”

  She looked at her watch. “Is it that time already? I better be...”

  “One more game?” Donovan pleaded. “Give me chance to get back the four dollars you hustled me out of?”

  She laughed. “One more. Double or quits.”

  Wilson smiled and walked toward the bar. “Set those two up again would you, please?” He signaled Sonny. “Just beer.” He added, sliding a bill across the bar.

  “What about me?” Phil asked. “You gonna buy me one too, Bangor?”

  Sonny cut in. “The man already bought you one, Phil. Maybe you ought to...”

  Phil looked at him like he was something on the bottom of his shoe. “Maybe you ought to shut your hole and let lawyer-man buy me a beer. How about that?”

  Sonny rolled his eyes and stepped back from the bar, shaking his head. It was a look that told Wilson everything.

  Wilson had been a good drunk, if there was such a thing. He never picked a fight, never ran his mouth off with anyone. He just got down to drinking and then he passed out. Phil was an angry drunk. He’d fight with himself if there was nobody else willing to join in.

  He looked over his shoulder at Donovan and Courtney playing pool and laughing. They were oblivious to what was happening at the bar. He could buy Phil another pitcher and just hope that would keep him level enough for the other two to finish their game. But with someone in this mood, it didn’t matter what you did to placate them, they just wanted to be angry with someone.

  “I’m not buying you another drink, Phil. And if Sonny here thinks it’s time you were on your way home, then I’d say he was about as good a judge of...”

  Phil turned on the stool, with great effort, and jabbed a meaty finger at Wilson’s chest. “You don’t get to talk to me like that, Bangor.”

  Wilson held his hands up. “Hey, I’m not talking to anyone like...” He kept his ey
es locked on Phil’s as the big man got to his feet.

  “Phil, come on, man. The guy just brought you a drink.” Sonny reached for Phil’s arm but he just shrugged it off.

  “You better sit down, Phil,” Wilson said. For the first time that day, clarity flushed into his mind like a cool stream.

  “Or what?” Phil was smiling now. He thought he was holding all the cards. Bigger by far, and stronger than some bitch of a lawyer. He was wrong.

  “We okay here?” Courtney’s voice came from over Wilson’s shoulder. “Phil?” she asked.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Phil said, not taking his eyes from Wilson’s.

  “I’m just making sure, we’re all cool,” she said. “These guys are my friends, Phil, they don’t...”

  “Just like your mommy, aren’t you? Don’t know when to keep your mouth shut. Daddy didn’t do a very good job with her. Not like me, I know how to keep...”

  Courtney’s fist came over the top of Wilson’s shoulder and caught Phil on his upper lip. It was as decent a straight jab as Wilson had seen in the professional boxing ring.

  Phil’s head moved only slightly. A very thin trickle of blood ran over his lower lip and disappeared in his beard.

  Oh crap, thought Wilson. He knew what was going to happen next but at least he was prepared.

  Phil cocked his fist, not in Wilson’s direction but over his shoulder, toward where Courtney had been.

  Wilson brought his own fist up under Phil’s chin, knocking the big man back a step. That was enough. For now.

  “That won’t happen, Phil. You don’t hit her. This can all stop right now. We just all go our separate ways. Okay?” He hoped the punch had shocked Phil enough to know he wasn’t dealing with some wet-behind-the-ears office worker who never had a fight in his life.

  “You broke my fucking tooth!” Phil spat bloody phlegm onto the wooden floor. The rage had gone, shock and surprise remained.

  “Fuck him up, Frank Bullitt,” Donovan whispered over his shoulder. There was more than just a hint of a stifled giggle in there and it made Wilson cringe. It was unpleasant to hear.

  Then the rage came again. Phil’s eyes lit up like beacons and he roared a moment before lumbering forward with his right fist cocked.