by J. D. Horn
“Sheriff,” Ava responded, the word teetering between an acknowledgment of his presence and a question as to why he had come.
“Your Elijah wouldn’t be around today, would he?”
“Why, yes, he’s in the barn with his father. This young lady here is his fiancée,” she added, not sure herself why she felt the need to explain Corinne’s presence.
“Congratulations, Miss,” the sheriff said, tipping his hat again in Corinne’s direction.
“What seems to be the trouble, Sheriff?” Corinne asked. Ava blanched. This girl was a bit too direct for her taste. She’d have to learn her place.
“Oh, no trouble at all. Nothing for you to worry about.” The right edge of the sheriff’s mustache raised up. Ava took it to be his version of a smile.
“Well, like I said,” Ava dove in before Corinne could overstep again, “my son is with his father in the barn. One of our mares is having a difficult foaling. They’ve been out attending her for quite some time. Poor thing must have finished delivering by now. I’m sure they’ll be back soon. You are more than welcome to wait inside, if you’d like, or . . .”
“Why do you want to see him?” Corinne interrupted.
Ava’s hand went up to her throat as she looked at the woman who was soon to be her daughter. “I am sure that if the sheriff wanted to share that with us, he would have done so without any prompting.” How had this girl been raised?
The sheriff chuckled and stroked his mustache. “Don’t worry, Miss. We were just wondering if he’d seen either of the Sleiger boys last night. They never came home, and their mama is worried about them. We wouldn’t make much of that,” he said, nodding toward his deputy, “other than the fact that they didn’t show up for work at the mill this morning either.”
“These are friends of Elijah?” Corinne asked, continuing to interrogate the sheriff. Ava felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment at Corinne’s forthrightness.
“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy spoke up. “Them three are as thick as thieves. Have been since they were knee-high to a grasshopper.”
“Strange that he never mentioned them . . .” Corinne began.
“Well, I am sure he wasn’t out with them last night,” Ava said. “I had him here working on the preparations for his betrothed’s arrival. He went to bed at half past nine.”
“All right, then,” the sheriff said. “We’ll leave you to it, but tell Elijah I’d like him to call me when he gets a moment. We’re gonna see if we can track down any of the Sleigers’ other buddies, but I should be back at the station around four or so.”
“I’ll let him know, Sheriff.”
“Ladies,” he responded and, with a wave of his hand, sent his deputy scurrying back to the patrol car. The deputy got into the driver’s seat and started up the car as soon as the sheriff was inside, nodding to them once before heading down the drive.
Ava looked back at Corinne. “Let’s get you settled, then.”
SEVEN
“Looks like Raylene has been filled with the spirit again,” Rigby said, pointing toward the courthouse steps as they pulled to a stop at Conroy’s only traffic signal, a flashing red light at the intersection of Main and Confederate Streets. Bell’s eyes followed in the direction of the deputy’s gesture, as Rigby stepped on the gas. “Guess that means the mayor is gonna get an earful from her again.”
“And we’re gonna get an earful from him.” Bell looked back over his shoulder and rapped his knuckles on the dashboard. “Stop the car and let me out.” Rigby flashed him a confused look, but did as he was told. “I need to talk to her about those end-of-the-world letters, and the vandalism that’s been popping up. I suspect the old girl’s behind it or knows who is. ’Sides, I want to talk to her about her boy anyway.” Bell opened the door and swung his long legs out. He stepped out, pulling down the brim of his hat to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight that had come breaking over the city hall’s polished brass dome.
“Raylene,” he called, though the woman went on preaching. “Raylene, you hear me, don’t act like you don’t.”
She turned to look at him, lowering the Bible she held in her left hand, and lifting the cigarette in her right hand to her lips. She drew a long drag, then puffed out the smoke. “‘Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.’ That’s Jeremiah 33:3, Sheriff.”
“I’m sure it is,” Bell said, crossing the sidewalk and the grass it bordered in a straight line toward the steps. “Ain’t no one knows her scripture like you do.”
She smiled at him, showing her rotten, nicotine-stained teeth, more than a few missing. Bell took in the sight of her. He knew for a fact that he was her senior by two or three years, but with her saggy jowls, deeply lined face, and her stringy, dirty gray hair that she wore long and parted down the center, she could’ve passed as his mother, or certainly the grandmother of her real son, Merle. In spite of his underage smoking and his ducktail haircut, Merle was a decent enough boy who’d begun working as a dishwasher at the diner around six months back. Only problem was even now he was about eighteen months too young to drop out legally. “School’s been asking after your boy. County truant officer’s bound to come knocking on your door soon.”
She shifted her stance over her wide hips, as if she were bracing herself to be tackled. “Let him come knockin’,” Raylene said and lifted the Good Book up to Heaven. “We gonna be with the Lord by the time he gets to the door anyhow. The angel done told me.”
When it came right down to it, Merle wasn’t causing him any grief, so what the hell. Merle had to eat, and Bell was pretty damned sure his daddy hadn’t left him any money when he drank himself to death. He’d leave it be for now, at least until and unless he got called in on it. There were still the other matters.
He placed his right leg on two concrete steps higher than the left and leaned in, pulling a small notepad from his pocket and flipping a couple of pages. “Tell me, Raylene, just what does Proverbs 23:2 say?”
She tossed her cigarette to the steps and crushed it beneath her heel, then held the cover of the Bible up to her temple, like she was preparing to perform some kind of magic act. “‘And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.’” She lowered the book and glared down at him.
He drew his leg down a step so he could stand up straight. “Seems that someone saw fit to paint the reference to that verse on the side of Bill Bledsoe’s house.” He looked back at his pad. “Exodus 20:14 showed up on the side of Dotty Turndot’s house, but she saw that it got painted over right quick. Paint was all nice and dry by the time Tom got home from his business trip.” He held up his hand. “I got that one. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’” He closed the pad and returned it to his shirt pocket. “So tell, me, Raylene, is it just a coincidence that you have these verses right on the tip of your tongue, or have you anointed yourself our local prophet?”
Raylene stuffed her Bible under one arm, then bending over, riffled through her bag, pulling out a pack of Camels and a lighter. She shook the packet until a tip of a cigarette popped out, then she took it between her teeth, and bent to drop the packet back into her purse. She flicked the wheel on her lighter until it flamed, then she cupped her hands around it and the cigarette. Bell watched as puffs of blue smoke built up a healthy cloud around her face. She lowered her hand, and flicked closed the cap of her lighter, dropping it into her bag, without bending. She clutched her Bible again, this time in her right, and with her left, she pulled the cigarette from between her lips, gesturing with its burning tip.
“Well, no, sir, I ain’t anointed myself nothing. A greater power than myself has chosen me. And it ain’t no coincidence that I have those or any other of God’s words on the tip of my tongue. ‘Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.’ No, sir, scripture is the armor of the spirit, and I wrap myself in it. ‘Therefore put on the full armor of God
, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.’”
“But you did commit these acts of vandalism . . .”
“Vandalism? The word of God is vandalism?” She shook the book at him. “‘In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.’”
“‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting,’” Bell interrupted, determined to knock her down a peg or two by showing her she wasn’t the only one who knew scripture. “Knowing what the Good Book says doesn’t necessarily qualify you to act as judge.”
She lowered the book and smiled at him as if he’d just told a joke. “No, I am happy that I am nobody’s judge.” She nodded. “Yes, Sheriff, I shared the words of God. The angel, I done told you, she comes to me.” Raylene’s eyes lost their focus. “She’s such a beautiful thing. Blue like the heavens themselves.” She dropped her cigarette, and it fell, rolling down the steps. Raylene took no notice of her loss. She turned her gaze to his face. “She knows everyone’s sins, all of them. And she’s told me to announce them all. Warn these poor weak sinners that they’re running out of time. These are the last days. The angel of death has come to Conroy, Sheriff. She’s passing through right now, and there’s only one way to make sure she’s gonna pass you by.”
“Exodus 12:22,” he said thinking of the letters that had been sent to just about every church in the county. “You saying this angel wants folk to paint their doorways with blood.”
“That’s right, Sheriff. ‘And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.’ I got down on my knees before her. I pleaded with her, just like Abraham pleaded for Sodom. She swore to me, she’d accept this as a sign of a person’s righteousness. She wouldn’t raise her hand against those who honor her by keeping this pact.”
Bell wasn’t easily frightened, but something about her intensity spooked him. He went backward down the two steps he’d climbed toward her. “All right, Raylene. I’m telling you, you need to knock it off. Stop harassing people, or I’m gonna have to lock you up. Merle ain’t gonna like seeing his mama behind bars.”
“My boy, he understands . . .”
“Well, I don’t, and I’m the law around here. This is your last warning, Raylene. Cut this nonsense out, and find somewhere else to do your preaching. The mayor, he doesn’t like having you hanging out here. Keep this nonsense up and you’ll find yourself standing before the real judge in these parts.”
“I ain’t worried about none of you,” she said, shaking her head, almost like she was trying to wake herself from a dream. “‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’”
“Go home, Raylene.” He pushed the brim of his hat back and then pointed at her. “Get yourself home, and get that boy of yours back in school, you hear me?” He turned his back on her and took the widest strides he could without looking like he was running away.
“‘But I say unto you,’” she called out after him. “‘That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.’ That day’s comin’ quicker than any of you fools around here think.”
EIGHT
Corinne could remove shrapnel, stitch up a wound, and perform a thousand and one other acts to save a life. Her future mother-in-law had not taken any of these talents into account when judging Corinne on her, at best, rudimentary cooking skills. Ava hadn’t exactly banished her from the kitchen, but she’d relegated her to performing the most basic of tasks. Luckily, her skill with a scalpel helped her make short work of peeling five pounds of potatoes, and her experience with removing stitches served her well when it came to prepping string beans. They worked in near silence; Ava’s cautious welcome seemed to have curdled as quickly as cream with lemon juice.
Corinne had expected a barrage of questions about her past, her family, and how she had come to choose a career rather than immediately settling down. But Ava didn’t ask her about any of this. In fact, Ava hadn’t shown even the slightest bit of curiosity regarding the woman her only son was soon to marry. Corinne decided to break the ice. “How did you and Elijah’s father come to meet?”
Ava stopped rolling piecrust and gave her a shocked, almost angry look—her eyes open wide, her eyebrows pinched together. Her lips parted, then zipped back together into a tight, thin line. She gripped the rolling pin with such fervor that her knuckles whitened and started to attack the pastry. “That was so long ago, I hardly see as how it matters now.” She dusted her hands once more with flour and whipped the dough off the pastry board, parachuting it into the pie tin. “I don’t know what it is like in San Francisco, but I think you will find that folk around here don’t take kindly to being asked personal questions.”
“I’m sorry.” Corrine startled in her chair. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just trying to get to know you better.” Though she knew she had put her foot in it somehow, she couldn’t begin to understand how. “I thought you might enjoy reminiscing . . .”
“Young lady,” Ava said with a tone of exasperation, “you will learn that in these parts, if someone wants you to know something, you won’t need to ask. They will share it with you when they are good and ready. And we don’t get to know people overnight either. We take our time to build relationships. You’re marrying my son. That means you will be sticking around for a while. There is no rush for us to become better acquainted.”
“Perhaps I should go unpack,” Corinne said. Ava answered her with a curt nod toward the exit.
Corinne made her way out to the sleeping porch. She retrieved her suitcases from the floor and sat them on the larger of the two beds that dominated the space. The family had stationed a battered pine chifferobe up against the wall that separated the interior of the house from the porch. She surmised that it had been moved here for her temporary use, as it effectively blocked the kitchen window behind it. Roman shades had been hung above the screened openings to offer her privacy. Or perhaps they’d been put up without her modesty in mind; they seemed to be a permanent fixture. Regardless, they were rolled up now, affording Corinne a good view of her future-in-laws’ property. The modest, white two-story frame house itself had been built on an unimpressive hill, but the surrounding countryside was pleasing to the eye. The field behind the house descended at a gentle slope to a body of water too small to be called a lake, but much larger than what Corinne would have considered a pond. Her clothes clung close to her skin in the humid air, and she longed to strip down and dive headlong beneath the surface of the crystalline water. Perhaps Elijah would take her there after he’d finished with the day’s work.
To the right, on the opposite end of the vista, Corinne spotted the barn. It had been left to weather, unpainted except for a spot where she could, when squinting, make out the words “Dunne’s Dairy.” The words themselves had faded with age and peeled in the bright sunlight that beat down on the barn, leaving them more of a memory than an extant marker.
She opened the smaller of her two cases first. At the top of the case was the two-piece white silk dress she had purchased for the wedding that was to take place tomorrow evening immediately following a special prayer service in their honor at the Dunnes’ church. The dress was sleeveless, with a simple V-cut that gave character to the scoop neck. She had intended to wear it this way for the nuptials, but another nurse, who was from Atlanta, had warned her that the sleeveless cut might be considered too daring for Mississippi. The bolero jacket that had come with the shift was her insurance policy. She unfolded both pieces and hung them in the chifferobe. Returning to the case, she removed a velve
t drawstring bag, the original contents of which had long since been forgotten. Now it served to hold her Walther PPK pistol with its well-fed magazine. She’d traveled cross-country without a man’s protection, an act that might itself be perceived as an invitation by a certain type of man. Corinne would never let herself be forced again, no matter what she had to do to protect herself. She pulled open one of the chifferobe drawers and pushed the gun to the back of it, using her neatly refolded underwear to camouflage the weapon.
Corinne pushed the drawer, but it wouldn’t close completely. She tugged it out and flattened its contents, making sure that nothing was catching, and tried again. It still refused to close all the way. She realized something must have fallen behind the drawer, so she took it in both hands and carefully slid it off its runner. She knelt down on the floor and reached into the recess, feeling blindly until her fingers encountered a piece of card stock. She grasped the paper and retrieved it. It was a photograph, creased roughly down the center from its time behind the drawer. Corinne smoothed it open. Even marred as it was by the fold in the paper, the face that stared back at her was bewitching. A young woman with black hair and large obsidian eyes, but the palest of skin. Her Gallic, heart-shaped face held a small, straight nose and beckoning cupid lips. Corinne could have stared at this face forever, but she was repulsed by the sensations she felt rising up within herself. Her hand trembled, and the photo tumbled to the floor. She reached down to snatch it up. “Love, Ruby” had been signed in a careless script on the photo’s reverse. Corinne reflected that girls who looked like this didn’t need to worry about their penmanship.