by Hank Early
When I saw him, it was just the briefest of glimpses, his face illuminated in the orange flash as Ronnie sucked on his cigarette.
For a fraction of a second, I was sure it was my father. The nose and deep-set eyes were his, as were the slope of the shoulders, the thick neck, and his posture, but then I realized this man was mostly bald, wore glasses, and was too young. Much too young.
It was Lester.
He said something to Ronnie and put a hand on his shoulder. Ronnie nodded and pointed across the creek, back toward the old church. Lester nodded, said something else, and started back for his truck.
I watched as he got in and drove away. Ronnie stood there, smoking for a few more minutes, before heading back inside.
I felt as if all my energy had been sapped. I could hardly remember why I’d come at all. Finding out about a damned toy snake would have to wait. I needed to think, to figure out why my brother would have any need to come here to talk to a man like Ronnie Thrash.
* * *
The dream came that night. I’d been turning the crank and glimpsed the side of the bucket as it neared the top of the dark, womblike mouth of the well. On the side of the bucket was a dark smudge, some kind of slick fluid that I could not fathom.
Lightning blinked behind me, and I felt others there, easing closer to the well, hoping to see, but then my arms gave way and my hands slipped, and the bucket returned to the darkness.
24
The next morning, I drove out to Granny’s before six, the dream lingering as I drifted carefully along the mountain roads. An early morning fog obscured the roads, and I had to drive at a snail’s pace. Twice along the way, I thought I saw my father standing on the side of the road, only to realize as I drew closer that it was a mailbox, a tree, and once even a homemade cross commemorating a loved one.
When I pulled up to Granny’s place, the fog was clearing, and I was surprised to see Mary sitting out front in one of the lawn chairs, sipping a cup of coffee.
She gave me what seemed like a particularly weak smile as I exited the truck. I hurried over, eager to join her and fill her in on the previous night’s events.
But something about her body language—or lack of body language—stopped me short. “Coffee inside,” she said. “Another chair too.”
“Is Granny okay?” I said.
She shook her head and looked inside her coffee cup, as if the rough dregs at the bottom might hold some primitive answers. “She’s in a bad way today. They said it would come. The pain. She’s been dealing with it. You know Granny. Nothing can stop her.”
Except that wasn’t true. And I heard it in Mary’s voice. The resignation stung me, and suddenly, I wanted to go back to North Carolina very badly. It had always been far enough away to make me forget—at least on a conscious level—the problems of home.
“Go in, give her a hug, grab your coffee, and then let’s get after it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.” She smiled at me, and I decided there was a balance in staying a little longer. Love and death were always inextricably bound when a person went home. I felt the truth of it in my blood.
I headed up to the house and had the screen door halfway opened before pausing. “What exactly did you have in mind for today?”
“Well, I’ve got a list of people from the Holy Flame. I think we owe it to the DeWalts to get to the bottom of what happened to Allison. Not to mention trying to chase down the connection between Allison and Bryant McCauley.”
“Connection?”
She gave me a sharp look. “Of course. The well? The newspaper article? The map has to lead to the well, right? The well that Allison mentioned to Granny, where she saw the lightning. Have you really not made these connections?”
Of course I had. But that was the problem. The connections were ripping me apart, in much the same way seeing Lester talking to Ronnie Thrash last night had. I saw all signs pointing toward my father’s church. I saw them, and there was one side of me that couldn’t wait to dive headfirst into the cesspool of memories and contradictions that made up my father’s life’s work, but then there was the other side of me that understood just how painful a journey like that might be.
“Earl?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “Just got a lot on my mind.”
She nodded, and it was the best kind of nod, reassuring and empathetic. I felt a longing to be closer to her, for her to understand me, but understanding me meant understanding my past, and I believed no one—not even Mary Hawkins—could truly do that.
* * *
Granny put on a good face, but it was clear how bad she hurt. When I came in, she tried to sit up, gasped, and then settled back into the bed. She looked diminished and beaten lying there, and it was all I could do to keep myself from looking away.
Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
“I don’t reckon you hold much by prayer, do you?” she said, her voice a rasp that made me think of the snakes Daddy kept in the pit.
“No, ma’am.”
She squeezed my hand. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“We screwed it all up.”
“Screwed up what?”
She gave me a weak and crooked smile. “Everything. Even prayer.”
I was taken aback. Though Granny had always seemed a deeply spiritual woman, certainly a person open to the possibility of extraordinary events, I never knew her to pray or quote scripture or to even keep a Bible in her house, which definitely explained one of the reasons I felt so comfortable staying with her.
“I think of them like kisses,” she said. “I prayed for you all the time you were here. Did you ever feel like you were being loved?” she asked.
I felt tears welling up. I set my mouth and looked away before nodding.
“Good,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m still kissing you, dear, every day.”
I was flabbergasted. I’d just assumed she’d brought up prayer because she wanted me to pray for her. Instead, she had been praying for me. Something let go inside me, and I buried my face in her belly. She patted my head and let me weep.
After what seemed like a long time, her voice came back, pained, too long for this world, weary beyond any imagining: “I’m going to keep on,” she said, “but you’ve got to promise me something.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t quit.”
“Quit?”
She ignored my question and bore her eyes straight into mine. “Promise.”
I promised.
It was only later, much later, when I remembered the promise and truly understood what I’d agreed to.
25
Mary wanted to visit Lester first.
“Start at the top,” she said as she turned into the Holy Flame parking lot. The new Holy Flame.
I barely heard her. I was in awe of how different a place it was than the old building where I’d been staying with Rufus, the old building where I’d spent every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening until I was seventeen.
The new Holy Flame was a massive, sprawling building that had more in common with a high school or conference center than it did the church many of its older members had attended.
Mary had to drive around the thing twice before she found the main entrance, a wide bank of six glass doors, flanked on either side by white brick, decorated with painted flames. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but Daddy and the people who worshiped at his church had never been accused of being low-key.
Mary parked beside a couple of expensive SUVs. I noticed they sat in marked spots. One of them read, “Senior Pastor Lester Marcus.” The other was reserved for “Associate Pastor Billy Thrash.”
“You okay?” Mary asked. I must have looked pale because she put a hand to my forehead. “You’re sweating.”
I nodded. Took a deep breath. “I had a rough night.”
She raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask me to elaborat
e, which was good; I didn’t want to tell her about Lester. I wanted to find out what he was doing over at Ronnie Thrash’s myself. If it was as bad as it looked, I’d spill the beans then. Otherwise, there was no need.
“I need to talk to Lester alone,” I said.
She nodded. “Okay. How about this: you go see your brother, and I’ll go speak to”—she glanced at the sign in front of the big black SUV—“Mr. Thrash. Any relation to that asshole living by your friend?”
I nodded. “His grandfather.”
She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “This just gets deeper and deeper.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I was supposed to be back in North Carolina two days ago.”
We exited the Tahoe and headed toward the doors. It was a Wednesday but too early for services, and other than Lester’s and Billy’s SUVs, there were only a half dozen more cars in the whole lot. If there was going to be a scene like I feared, at least there wouldn’t be too many people around to witness it.
Sensing my unease, Mary took my hand before we entered the building. She squeezed it gently. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Actually, I do.”
I was surprised to hear myself say it. Just a few short days ago, I wouldn’t have even been able to think such a thing, but the confluence of events that had knocked me for such a loop over the last few days had made one thing clear: if I was going to work through any of this shit, if I had any hope of breaking the code my father had used to lock me down for years, I’d have to face Lester.
Sooner or later.
* * *
The church secretary—a woman who seemed to recognize me, though I couldn’t say the same for her—buzzed Lester and then Thrash. She told them both they had visitors in the front.
Mary sat down in one of the chairs across from the secretary. I paced, circling the room, studying the framed photographs, all of which told the story of the old building, the original church my father had founded some sixty years earlier when he was barely twenty years old. The first photo showed him at close to that age, standing with a shovel, smiling. The placard underneath the photo read, Brother RJ did much of the initial work on the first building by himself.
The next photo showed the church taking shape and a half dozen smiling men posing for the picture. Soon, he attracted followers who wearied of the world’s sin and wanted to find a true path to God.
It went like this for some time. There was a photo of him and Mama standing outside the finished church and another one of the two of them holding Lester when he was no more than a few months old. Brother RJ was a wonderful father, who believed nothing was more important than making sure children were saved early in life, fortifying them against the sin of the world.
I skipped ahead, looking for a similar photo with me in it. I wasn’t sure why I bothered. There was nothing. It was as if I hadn’t existed at all.
I moved past Mary, toward the end, where a photo showed a packed congregation and my father holding a large rattlesnake over his head. The caption read, Brother RJ’s last sermon, in which he reminded the body how far they’d come yet told them to never forget their roots because, like God, the church should be unchanging.
The very last photo showed Daddy’s grave beside Mama’s and a headstone that read simply, Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? —Psalm 24:3.
“Well, as I live and breathe.”
The voice—at once familiar and frightening because of the memories attached to it—nearly made me jump. I turned and saw Billy Thrash standing in the doorway. He was grinning—something I remembered him doing a lot. “Earl Marcus,” he said. “Welcome home.”
I nodded at him, afraid to even speak for fear of what I’d say.
He opened his arms wide and came across the office, wrapping me tight in a huge embrace. He patted my back, laughing.
“It is so good to see you, son. My deepest condolences on the passing of your father. You are no doubt aware he and I kept very close counsel, and he spoke of you often. He was in constant prayer for you in his last few years, and I want you to be assured that it was for your return to the faith, son. He truly worried about you, as all fathers do about the fate of their children.”
“I’m not back for long, but I was hoping to speak with Lester.”
Something changed in Thrash at the mention of my brother’s name. It was nearly imperceptible, but I was attuned to Thrash’s nuances and facial expressions despite the long absence. As a boy, I’d always found his unfailing good cheer a fascinating counterpoint to my father’s dour and serious demeanor.
The change vanished nearly as soon as it had come, and Billy smiled even more broadly. “Your brother is doing a wonderful job. And of course you want to see him. This really warms my heart, Earl. It really does.”
He turned for the first time and noticed Mary standing beside him.
“Can we go somewhere to talk, Pastor Thrash?”
“Please, call me Billy,” he said. “And of course. Let’s go to my office. Can I get you some coffee? How about a sweet roll?” He turned back to me. “I do hope we’ll see you this Sunday, Earl.”
I just looked at him. What kind of fool was this man? Did he really believe the past could just be erased like that? Did he really think I could step back into this faith without it crushing me alive?
I supposed he probably did. That was the difference between someone who still spent his days and nights under the heavy yoke of my father’s religion and someone like me who had—
I cut that line of thought short. I realized there was actually very little difference between me and Billy Thrash. If there’d been so much, then why was I here? The answer was easy—because I’d experienced my father’s heavy yoke too, and like him, I still labored under its burden.
It was just after this sad realization that I saw Lester through the office windows, walking through the lobby and heading this way. I hadn’t seen him in nearly thirty-three years, but in some ways, he looked exactly the same. I think it was his expression. His mouth was closed tightly, his eyes were narrowed, and his body was tense as if trying to ward off some inevitability. He held my gaze for just a moment before looking away.
26
The rest of it felt anticlimactic. His reaction was not unlike his brief letter informing me of our father’s death. He saw me, and his face went blank. He hesitated at the office door, waiting for Mary and Thrash to exit before poking his head in. “Can we make this quick?” he said, leaving all formalities by the wayside. “I’m on my way out the door.”
He didn’t wait for my reply. Instead, he let the door swing shut and walked outside. I followed him, not sure what I wanted to say or if I’d even be able to speak at all.
He leaned against the white brick. One of the pale-orange flames hovered above his head like a strange halo. He waited for me to speak.
I couldn’t.
Finally he exhaled loudly. “What are you even doing here?”
A dozen replies ran through my head. Why wouldn’t I be? You’re my brother. We need to talk. What were you doing at Ronnie Thrash’s place? I came because something is going on with Daddy. All of these and more.
But in the end, I only said, “I’m helping Deputy Hawkins on a case.”
“Yeah, I heard from Burt you’re some kind of detective. He kept up with you for a while but said you never return his calls anymore. Sounds about right.”
I let that slide and tried to start over. “I also came back to apologize.”
He shook his head, his lower lip stuck out in an expression that reminded me so much of our father, I wanted to close my eyes.
“Nope,” he said.
“What do you mean, ‘nope’?”
“I mean I’m not interested. What you did . . . it was absolutely the worst thing somebody could do. I don’t want to be around you. You’re just a walking, breathing vessel of betrayal, Earl. I can’t be around that without getting ang
ry. Go back to North Carolina. Find a church. I ain’t like Daddy. I believe you can get saved in nearly any church. Get right with the Lord, because I don’t think you’ll ever be right with me.”
It felt like a gut punch. I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine what this moment would be like, but if I had, it would have never been like this. This was a door slammed right in my face. I felt an all too familiar resentment building inside me. How dare he call himself a preacher?
“You’re more like Daddy than you know,” I said. “You and him ain’t preachers. You’re power mongers, men who won’t let go of even an ounce of their pride to forgive a member of the family.”
That seemed to shake him a little. He pressed himself hard against the brick wall, his lip trembling.
“I’ve tried.” He nearly spat the words at me. “I’ve tried so many times.” He looked at his feet, deflated suddenly. “Please, just go back to North Carolina. There’s things happening here . . .” He trailed off. “I’ve got to go.”
“I saw you the other night,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“At Ronnie Thrash’s. Why would a preacher associate with a thug like that?”
“I’ve got a question, Earl. What makes you think I owe you an explanation? About anything?”
“You don’t. I’m sorry. I want to make this right.”
“Then stay away from me. That won’t make it right, but it’ll be the best you can do.”
I watched him as he headed toward the parking lot and his expensive SUV, resisting the urge to shout something else, something mean and insulting. In the end, I was glad I did. Lester—despite it all—still hadn’t deserved what happened to him any more than I did.
* * *
I waited outside the church at a little picnic table nestled in a grove of trees for Mary to finish up with Thrash. It was a good piece of land, and I couldn’t help but wonder how in the hell the church had paid for it. Daddy had always been big on tithing, often going so far as to shame certain members publicly if he didn’t think they were contributing enough. Yet most of his congregation was poor. I can distinctively remember him complaining about money a lot when I was a kid. Sure, there had obviously been some growth, but it still seemed like a stretch. Hell, the land alone would have cost a million dollars or more, even in the late nineties.