by Hank Early
I saw faces, flickering past, pale and ghostly, the congregation of forty years ago—Billy Thrash, smiling like a fool, his arm around his first wife; the Bronsons, Mr. and Mrs. and the three boys, heads thrown back in the wild fervor of a praise song I couldn’t hear; Maggie, before she started dating Lester, sitting beside her father, Hank Shaw, her head tilted to one side, an expression of sarcastic amusement on her face. She’d never bought the show, I thought.
Well, that wasn’t true. She bought it in the end.
In the end, you always buy it. One way or the other.
“You okay?”
I snapped back to reality. “Yeah,” I said. “Can you pass that bottle?”
“Incoming,” Rufus said.
We drank the rest of the afternoon and far into the evening. When I finally rose to leave, I realized two things: First, despite the initial fear I’d felt upon encountering him, I believed I’d found a kindred spirit in Rufus. The second was a little more jarring—I’d missed my flight back to North Carolina, and perhaps because of the whiskey, I wasn’t all that concerned about it. If I’d believed in such things, I might have said meeting Rufus was a clear sign. I’d stay for a while. At least a few days, just long enough to erase any doubts—however small—that my father wasn’t really dead.
12
In the days following the snakebite, I was increasingly ostracized by most of the community. Daddy made no secret of my rebellion. I’d thought he might be embarrassed to have a son in open defiance of him, but he seemed to almost revel in it, refusing to speak to me directly. Instead, he relayed what he wanted me to know through Mama or Lester, who cooperated willingly, if not enthusiastically. I didn’t blame either one of them. There was a stiff price to be paid for crossing the man known throughout the Fingers as Brother RJ, and I was experiencing it firsthand. As was always the case, his followers were quick to emulate his behavior, and soon almost everyone in our little mountain community was ignoring me.
Everyone except Lester and Mama, the same two people who would also continue to stand by me. Mama would die a few years later after a bitter battle with pneumonia. Like he’d done with me after the snakebite, Daddy forbade her to see a doctor. She died in his arms, his face turned up to heaven, praying for her. He was unshaken when she passed, telling the congregation that God had willed it and that it was a serious sin to grieve in the face of God’s will.
Daddy told me I wasn’t welcome at the church again until I let go of my anger and accepted the will of God. I told him it would never happen, but he seemed unfazed by the pronouncement, something that would trouble me in the years to follow: What if he knew something I did not? What if, after all, he was right, and God had spared me from death, saving me for some secret purpose?
I spent the hours when everyone else was in church down at Ghost Creek with a bottle of something strong and a fishing pole. Sometimes I dreamed about Maggie. If not about her precisely, about meeting a girl like her one day. She was everything I wanted: beautiful, unafraid, wild, a free spirit in the face of Daddy’s rigid proclamations. I believed she was uniquely suited among all the other people I knew to escape this place. At the time, I would have settled for a different kind of escape, the one that lasted only a few moments but was sweeter than anything else offered by this world, or at least that was the way I’d imagined it. I’d soon find out I wasn’t far wrong.
When Lester slipped into my room late one evening, I half-expected him to tell me he was going to follow Daddy’s lead and give me the silent treatment too, but instead he came in grinning, something he’d done very little of since adopting a more “adult” manner after becoming a “man of God.” When I’d mentioned his behavior change a few days before, we’d had a huge argument, culminating in trading blows on the front porch. Daddy had broken us up with one simple admonition directed at Lester: “You can’t fight with a child of the devil, son. Best to leave him be. Keep your distance. Stay in prayer.”
Now Lester seemed unaccountably filled with joy. He slapped my back so hard, it hurt. “I’m going to do it,” he said.
“Do what?”
“You’re the first person I’m telling.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can’t tell nobody else because they wouldn’t understand.”
I just shook my head. I might have gotten angry under ordinary circumstances, because even then patience was not one of my virtues, but he was so damned happy, I couldn’t help but be happy with him.
“Maggie has been ready for a while now.”
“Ready?”
He sighed, trying to be serious, trying to act like a “man of God,” but the smile just would not go away. “You know . . . sex. She was driving me crazy with it. I came close to giving in. You know? I mean, how could you not? But God has kept me from sin, and now he’s shown me another way.”
“Another way?”
“I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
I was stunned. Lester was going to graduate in a few months, and I knew he had plans to go straight to the police academy and try to get on at the sheriff’s office, but it was still a shock. He was in high school. Marriage? It didn’t make any sense.
“Aren’t you happy for me?” His grin was so big, so genuine, I couldn’t be anything but happy for him.
“Yeah. I am happy for you, Lester. I think it’s great.”
He slapped me on the back again. “Things are working out,” he said. “Don’t you see how God has blessed me? I know you can see that, Earl.”
But I couldn’t see it. All I saw, beneath the happiness, was a deep sadness. It was coming on like the undertow swirling beneath the tide. He didn’t even know it yet, but somehow I did.
It was one of the first and strongest premonitions I’d ever had. Over the years, I got used to them. They became a normal part of my existence. Most were vague, barely more than a feeling of dread creeping over me, but some seemed to be directed at someone I loved. And the first one was aimed right at Lester.
I should have said something to him. I should have done a lot of things that I didn’t do over the coming days, but instead, I remained silent, trying to pretend—for the moment, at least—that the natural order of the world was for things to work out for the best, instead of the other way around.
13
When I heard the gunfire, I was sprawled out on the same pew where I’d sat for years with my brother and mother watching Daddy stalk from the pulpit to the piano, sometimes holding up a poisonous serpent and other times wielding his leather-bound King James Bible like a weapon more dangerous than any snake.
“Goddamnit,” Rufus said.
“What is it?” I sat up and reached for my .45 before remembering I’d left it in North Carolina.
“Just some goddamned thugs,” he said. He moved past the pew and over to where the old piano used to sit. There was a sawed-off shotgun leaning against the wall. He picked it up and carried it back to his bed—two pews he’d pulled together and laid a mattress over.
Another shot went off. Somebody whooped loudly.
“They live across the creek. Remember Herschel Knott’s place?”
“Yeah.”
“One of them is his boy. After Herschel died, about a half dozen of them moved in. Raise hell every damned night.”
“They ever bother you?”
“These fuckers bother everybody. Call themselves the Angels of the Pass. Fuck if I know why. Once, I caught one of them inside here, trying to go through my things.”
“What did you do?”
“I shot the bastard.” He shrugged. “Don’t know if I hit him or not, but I sure tried. I reckon I missed ’cause I never found no body or blood.” He laughed. “That’s the part that gives me an advantage, believe it or not. Getting shot at by a blind man with a sawed-off will make you get on pretty quick. Since that night, they’ve mostly stayed on their side of the creek, but sometimes when they get drunk, they load up in their jacked-up trucks and drive
by the church, shouting shit and throwing bottles and rocks and God knows what all. Busted the stained glass, and I was pulling shards out of my neck and back for days.”
“Did you call the sheriff?”
“Well, I ain’t got a phone, so by the time I hiked down to Jessamine’s Bar, a couple hours had passed, but yeah, I called. Called the very first time those assholes drove by the church. They sent a deputy right out. He asked about a dozen questions about what I was doing here. I had to dig up the lease agreement to show him I was in my rights to be here—if he didn’t like it, he could take it up with Pastor Lester. Once I showed him that, he changed his tone a little and said he’d go over and talk to the boys. That stopped them for a week or two, but it wasn’t too long before it was happening again.”
As if to make his point, I heard a truck revving its engine. It was so loud, the walls of the church shook with the sound.
“I offered to buy them some goddamned mufflers,” Rufus said, “but they didn’t think it was very funny.”
“Jesus. I know a deputy. I’m going to talk to her about this.”
He waved the idea away. “I talked to Shaw himself about it last week. He all but said I was on my own. Said this wasn’t a priority.”
“That’s not right,” I said.
“That’s Shaw. He ain’t never liked me.” He fell silent, as if realizing that if the sheriff didn’t like him, Shaw would almost certainly despise me.
“I know the feeling,” I said awkwardly.
The engine revved again, and I heard the truck coming this way. “Fuck it,” I said. “I’m going to tell them to get the hell away.”
“I recommend just waiting them out,” Rufus said. “It’s what I do. They’ll sling mud all over the place and tear up the grounds, but they always stop short of coming in. Like I said, a blind man and a shotgun make for a scary combination.”
“What about the cemetery?” I said.
“They leave it be too. It’s where your daddy is buried. Or used to be buried, depending on who you ask. Them boys are heathens, but some of them still hold the old fears. Hell, their leader is Billy Thrash’s grandson, Ronnie. You probably remember the daddy. His name was Billy too, but he always went by John. Hell if I know why.”
I did remember John Thrash. He was a few years older than me and always seemed distinctly uncomfortable in the church. But I couldn’t focus on John Thrash. Something else Rufus said grabbed my attention.
“Go back,” I said.
“Back?”
“You said, ‘Used to be buried, depending on who you ask.’”
He winced. “It’s just silly rumors.”
Someone whooped over the din of the engine and then leaned on the horn.
I realized there was something new for them to desecrate—the rental truck. “Hold that thought,” I said. “Can I borrow your shotgun?”
He shrugged. “You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
He handed me the sawed-off, and I broke it down quickly, checking the breech to see that it was loaded. I cocked it and headed down the aisle, toward the front door.
* * *
There were two big trucks, jacked up higher than made any good sense. They were on either side of my rental. Somebody was leaned out the passenger side window with a can of spray paint, giving it a good shake.
I pointed the sawed-off at the starry sky and squeezed off a shot. The night shook around me. The sound echoed off across the valley. The man with the spray paint dropped it on the ground and slid back inside the cab.
The trucks stopped revving. Silence grew big all around, save the deep growl of the trucks, but it was a low purr compared to what it had been.
“You got buckshot on my truck,” one of the men shouted.
I lifted the shotgun, aiming at the voice, which best I could tell, came from the driver’s seat.
I loaded another shell into the breech and cocked the weapon with a satisfying crack. “More where that came from,” I said, keeping my voice perfectly calm. There were a lot of things that shook me up these days, but dealing with situations like this rarely did. Part of it was that I didn’t hold my own life in very high regard. I didn’t have a death wish or anything, but I’d just stopped giving a fuck about guys like this. If one of them wanted to shoot me, then he could shoot me, but I’d be damned if I’d let them run all over me.
The ones willing to take it to the limit existed, of course, but they were few and far between. I was counting on that being the case with this crew.
“Go on, now. There’s a blind man who lives here, and you are disturbing him. I’m going to be checking up on him from time to time. Don’t let me see you bring either one of these pieces of shit across the creek again.”
Someone chuckled. I looked around and saw a figure approaching from my left. I stepped back, surprised, and bumped into Rufus, who was now standing behind me, quiet as a damned panther.
“Apologies,” a man’s voice said in a slow drawl.
I aimed the gun at the man as he stepped out of the shadows and into the headlights of one of the trucks. “Kill that shit,” he said.
The drivers of each truck turned them off.
“And the lights,” the man said.
We stood in darkness. The man flicked on a light from his phone and held it out, illuminating himself.
“See, no weapons.”
I nodded. He was younger than his voice sounded and had long black hair, combed straight back. He wore a pair of loose sweat pants and a dark T-shirt.
“Sorry about this,” he said. “Boys were drinking, and . . .” He held out his palms and shrugged. “Be honest, this fella freaks ’em out a little. Word in the hills is he ain’t right in the head . . . and shit, look at him.” He turned to the trucks. “Get out of here.”
“Aw, shit, Ronnie,” one of the men said. “He shot my truck.”
“Well, goddamn, Beard, that’s what you get for nearly knocking the doors off a man’s home.” He winced, looking the old church over. “Though why a man would want to live in a place such as this is a mystery to me.”
“Fuck off,” Rufus said from behind me.
“He speaks,” Ronnie said.
“I do a helluva lot more than that.”
Ronnie chuckled. “I’ll bet you do.”
“This funny to you?” I said.
Ronnie turned to me, still smiling, and in the dark, his grin looked like a sharp slash. I couldn’t even see his teeth. “Sure it’s funny. The world is funny. Look the hell around you, man. You ever turn on the news? The Middle Fucking East? Heard tell there’s scientists working on robots that’ll be smarter than we are one day. Probably going to end the world. But they keep on trying to make them,” he said, pausing to glare over at the two trucks that still lingered in the yard. He shooed them with both hands and laughed again. “So, yeah, it’s funny.”
There was some grumbling from within the two trucks, but ultimately, they decided to give in when Ronnie continued to glare in their direction. I watched, still clutching the sawed-off, as the trucks drove back across the creek and disappeared into the trees.
“But again,” he said, “I apologize. And if my laughter offends . . . well, fuck the hell off.”
“Shoot his ass,” Rufus said.
I shook my head, deciding not to let him bait me with the last bit.
“Seems like if you were sorry, you’d keep it from happening,” I said.
“You know,” Ronnie said, “we’re just spinning our wheels on this topic. Why not change it? Hell, I don’t even think me and you have been properly introduced.”
“You’re Ronnie Thrash,” I said.
“Right. And you are?”
“Pissed.”
He laughed again.
“You and your sycophant thugs need to stay the hell away from my friend’s home.”
He stepped forward, edging in on my personal space. He wasn’t used to being talked to this way. That much was obvious.
“Why do you insist on being an asshole? It ain’t neighborly.”
I handed Rufus the sawed-off. “I prefer the term ‘dick.’ Assholes get fucked,” I said. “Now get the hell back across the creek.”
He stepped a little closer to me. I knew how these things went. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted me to show weakness. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have done it already. I stared at him, eye to eye.
“I come over here to call them boys off, and this is how you thank me?”
“I ain’t thanking you.”
He smiled a little. “You got a comeback for everything, don’t you?”
“Just the stupid shit.”
“Earl,” Rufus said, “if you’re going to kick his ass, do it nice and loud. I want to hear it.”
Ronnie cocked his head to one side. “Earl? You wouldn’t be the famous Earl Marcus, would you?”
I said nothing, proving I didn’t always have a comeback.
“Well, shit. I want to shake your hand.”
And he did too, grabbing and pumping hard. “My daddy—God rest his drunk soul—told me all about you. Said you were one of the greatest men he ever knew.”
“That don’t say much about your daddy.”
He laughed. “Naw, naw, I guess it doesn’t. Be that as it may, you are a legend ’round these parts. What brings you back?”