Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “You’re leaving me here with him?” Brody asks, appalled.

  “It’s the one good option in a dump truck full of bad ones,” I remind him. “Take it or leave it.”

  Gracie comes around the bar, flips that lock of hair out of her face and sets the mop and bucket down by the priest’s body. “Think we should burn him?” she asks, as casually as she might inquire about the weather. “Bury the ashes and salt the earth?”

  I understand her concern completely. No one wants to see that son of a bitch get back up. “If he was anything as dangerous as he led us to believe he was, he’d already have done something. And if he still plans to, then I don’t reckon cooking him or seasoning the mud’s going to do us a whole lot of good.”

  She sighs, and it’s the most human I’ve ever seen her look. There’s the urge again, to hold her, but this time I know it’s because I need it, not her. So again, I restrain myself.

  “Why didn’t we do this three years ago?”

  It’s a good question, but I leave it unanswered.

  I walk to the center of the room, Cobb and Wintry’s table to my right, Cadaver still lost in the shadows by the door to my left.

  “You okay, Cadaver?”

  “Just countin’ what’s left,” the electronic voice from the dark replies, followed by that familiar clink of pennies.

  “Let’s get this done,” Kyle says behind me, and I’m glad to hear it. It means two things to me: First, he’s still in control. The shock of shooting two men in the space of twenty minutes hasn’t yet reduced him to the wreck it makes of others, and eventually will make of him when he least expects it, and second, it represents action, movement, right when my bones are threatening to turn to jelly and leave me a quivering, sobbing mess on the floor.

  We move.

  I’m stronger than Kyle, so I slip my hands beneath the girl’s arms; he takes her feet.

  “Hurry, for God’s sake,” Brody moans. “Don’t let her die.”

  We carefully time the move, and with Flo ahead of us, we’re out the door and loading Carla into the back seat of my truck before the second hand of the clock has made a full sweep.

  We leave a trail of pinkish blood behind us.

  Chapter Five

  The rain is pelting down like machine gun fire, the wind trying its best to wrench the truck doors right off their hinges as we bundle inside. Makes me wonder if this is the Reverend’s ‘boss’ gathering his fury, preparing to blow us all to whatever the alternative hangout is for the kind of deities that would consider Hill a valued employee.

  I’m still too scared to believe this is over. It’s an ugly feeling I know well, and can only hope will abate as soon as we have Carla at the door of the good doctor, provided she lives that long. As I gun the engine into life, and look at Kyle, who’s wiping the condensation clear and peering out at the rain, it occurs to me that if this is really the end of the nightmare, I have no idea what to do with myself. There won’t be any glorious sunshine through my window in the morning, marking the equally glorious beginning of a new chapter of my life. I’m still a murderer; there’s still the guilt, and there’s my son, who thinks I’m dead and doesn’t mind. All that will really change will be the venue into which I bring my suffering. I don’t imagine next Saturday I’ll be at Eddie’s. Instead I’ll sit at home without those faces to act as mirrors for my own self-loathing.

  I guide the truck out of the parking lot, careful to avoid the other cars, and turn out onto the road that will bring us to town, and to the doctor who I know won’t take too kindly to being roused at this hour of the night, especially to tend to an injured whore with needle marks parading up her emaciated arm.

  “Faster, she’s not looking too good,” Kyle says, looking over his shoulder as if he’s been peeking in on my thoughts. “Think the baby’ll make it?”

  “Hope so.” I resist the urge to remind him what Cobb said about her chances.

  It’s damn near impossible to see anything beyond the glass, the high beams like swollen ghosts staying three steps ahead of the grille. I’m going fast, aware that at any time I might inadvertently fulfill my obligations to the dead Reverend and run somebody over, or mash the truck into some poor drunk driver’s car as he struggles to make his way home.

  “C’mon for Chrissakes, she’s bleeding bad.”

  It isn’t a long drive, but the storm buffeting the truck and Kyle’s endless needling make it seem like hours. Lightning turns the world to rainy daylight as I turn off the main road onto Abigail Lane, where the good doctor has his home.

  Hendricks’ place used to be a farmhouse, through the windows of which long gone farmers watched the world fall victim to the voracious appetite of progress. Mining companies bought out the land for the families of their employees, and people got greedy. Then the money ran out, and so did the people. Hendricks, an M.D. from Alabama who claimed he was “just passing through,” saw no reason to move on when he caught sight of the sickly state of those who’d stubbornly refused to leave Milestone in the great exodus of ’79, and when he heard the asking price for a house nobody wanted.

  As we pull into the drive that slopes upward to the block-shaped two-story house, there are no lights in the windows, which doesn’t come as a surprise. I find myself wondering, if we had kept going instead of turning into Hendricks’ drive, how long it would have taken us to come upon the twisted wreck of Eleanor Cobb’s Taurus.

  Despite the forbidding darkness of the house that looms over the car, Kyle’s already hurrying to get the girl out. Not the smartest move considering the Doc might not even be here, so I leave him to his grunting and trot to the door.

  Knock, knock. No sound from within.

  “Leave her there,” I call back to Kyle, who’s as good as invisible behind the car’s lights.

  “What?”

  “I said leave her be. If Hendricks doesn’t answer, what good will dragging her out in the rain do?”

  “What else can we do?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll deal with that if and when— ”

  “Sheriff?”

  The front door is open; the storm deafened me to the approach of the bespectacled man now standing there squinting out. “That you, Tom?”

  He’s a reed-thin man and heavily bearded. I’ve always suspected that, just like the deceased Reverend, vanity has driven the doctor to dying his hair to keep from looking his age. And though in this light he doesn’t look much healthier than the girl in the back of my truck, I’m glad as hell to see him.

  I summarize the situation as calmly as I can. It doesn’t sound calm in the least by the time it reaches my lips, but Hendricks steps back, his face a knot of concern. From upstairs, his wife calls out a demand to know what’s going on. The doctor turns on the hall light. It’s the warmest looking light I’ve seen in quite some time, and the shadows it casts are gentle. “Bring her in. I’ll see what I can do.” He reaches the stairs and yells up, “Queenie, I’m going to need your help down here.”

  And in what seems like a heartbeat, the doctor is bent over the girl where she lies prone on the couch and swaddled in comfy looking blankets. The towels wrapped around her head make it look as if she’s being prepped for a massage, nothing more. The blood running between her eyes spoils that illusion though. She’s shivering, which is good. Means she’s still breathing. “Lost a lot of blood,” Hendricks says, pressing the cup of his stethoscope to her chest. “You said an auto wreck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone else hurt?” He appraises Kyle and me. “How about you guys? You look pretty shook up.”

  “We’re fine,” Kyle says. “She going to be all right? She’s pregnant, you know.”

  Hendricks frowns.

  “She told us,” I add quickly, covering Kyle’s blunder. “Right before she passed out.”

  I can’t tell whether or not he’s buying it, but he says nothing, just presses that stethoscope to the girl’s breast and breathes thr
ough his nose. His wife stands off in the corner, arms folded over her dressing gown. She looks pissed, and I can’t blame her.

  When at last the doctor looks up, his face is grave. “I’m sorry to say I don’t think there’s a whole lot I can do for her, boys. The baby’s gone. That I can tell you right now for certain, and it’s only a matter of time before she follows. I’d have to open her up to say for sure, but my guess is she’s busted up pretty bad. Judging by that blood and the way she’s breathing, seems she’s got a punctured lung too. Pupils are dilated. Head’s cracked open almost clean through to the bone. Frankly I’m amazed she’s not dead already.” At the looks on our faces, he continues, “But you fellas did real good. Wasn’t much more you could have done for her. She’d have appreciated it, I’m sure.”

  Another life lost. For nothing. Though at least when I dream of this one I’ll know it wasn’t entirely my fault.

  “Uh…Sheriff?”

  I look back at Hendricks.

  “You just going to leave her here?”

  I’m about to argue with him, but it slowly dawns on me that he’s right, that I’d have asked the same question. Hendricks, unlike me or Kyle, still has a life, and I don’t reckon we should leave a dead whore on his couch to remind him why we’re different.

  “Sorry, Doc. We’ll take her back to Eddie’s.”

  Hendricks looks confused. “Eddie’s? Why there?”

  “Because it’s quieter than any graveyard. Most of the time. We can bury her out back right next to Eddie himself. I figure he deserves the company after all the shit we’ve done under his roof. Besides,” I move close to the girl. “We’ve got some burying to do anyway.”

  “Who else died?” Queenie asks, her first words to us since we arrived.

  “The Reverend.”

  “Oh.”

  I smile at the lack of emotion on her face. “Yeah. Ticker gave out on him while he was preaching to us about the evils of drink.”

  Hendricks shakes his head. “Man had way too much time on his hands.”

  “You got that right, Doc.”

  We stay for a while, exchanging the kind of uneasy banter unique to folks who’re waiting for one among them to die. Kyle paces, torn between refusing to accept that the girl is gone, that we couldn’t save her, and eager to be in a room larger than Hendricks’ parlor so he doesn’t have to be within touching distance of me.

  At last there comes a single hitching sigh. The girl frowns, as if in her dreams she’s stumbled upon something dangerous, then she shudders once, and that’s the end of it.

  No one says anything for a moment. We all just stand there, trying to read the story of the dead girl’s life from the lines on her face, the punctuation marks on her arm, the commas at the corners of her mouth from too much time spent grimacing in pain. I reach down and brush a strand of hair away from her face.

  “C’mon, Kyle.”

  For the second time that night, we load the girl into the truck. I imagine she feels lighter, that the soul, or whatever leaves us when we die, has weight, and hers is somewhere better now, somewhere no one can touch it, and use the stains on it against her.

  Our drive back to Eddie’s is a silent one. There’s plenty that could be said, but no need to say it.

  At least, not until we see the fire.

  “Aw Christ no…” Kyle says and is out of the truck and running before I have time to draw a breath.

  Chapter Six

  Eddie’s is in flames, a funeral pyre burning against the dark, turbulent maelstrom of the night, and though the rain is still beating down and pockmarking the mud, it’s not doing much to put out the blaze.

  My first thought is that Gracie has finally had enough, that the Reverend’s death is the catalyst she’s been waiting for, the escape she’s longed for all these years. I imagine her chasing everybody out, leaving the Reverend’s body and Brody where they are, dousing the place from top to bottom with kerosene or spirits, then standing in the doorway, flaming rag in her hand. I see the light burning away the shadows on her grim face, making her seem young and innocent again. Then she tosses the rag, and the fire races across the floor and up the walls, a raging thing, but pure, and cleansing.

  But as I watch the lithe silhouette of my son racing toward the inferno, I remember what I thought when I stood in there looking down at Hill’s body, waiting for him to suddenly resurrect himself. Cold dread grips my heart. Is this the surprise we expected from him? Did he burst into flame moments after Kyle and me left the bar? I picture his almost headless corpse erupting into bright searing flame, claiming the lives of those standing nearest him first before they’re even aware what’s happening, then spreading out and cooking the rest as they try to escape.

  And then I think of Cobb.

  I pull the truck to a halt in the parking lot. Flames rise up, licking the sky; the rain falls down. Glass shatters in the heat and I have to shield my face. Not before my eyebrows are singed away.

  Kyle is not alone, and his company is not a decapitated burning thing. I make my way over, all but blinded by the light from the fire. It isn’t until I’m right there next to Kyle that I see it’s Cadaver who’s with him. His eyes are narrowed against the glare, but still there’s an odd look on his hollow face, almost like reverence.

  “Cadaver, what happened?”

  Kyle looks like a ghost, his eyes filled with fire. “He says Cobb did it. Just after we left, he went crazy and torched the place.”

  Cadaver nods, but adds nothing. I notice his little microphone is absent, which explains his silence. Just like Brody must have thought when the old man hunkered down next to him, Cadaver looks like death. More so now than ever before, the orange-red light only adding deeper shadow beneath the sharp outcroppings of his cheekbones.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask, afraid of the answer, because I’ve surveyed the area more than once on my way up here and I’m surveying it now again, and I don’t see anybody here but us, and that feels to me like a brand new nightmare fresh from the devil’s womb, waiting to be christened by the ignorant.

  Kyle looks at me, and the flames shimmer in his eyes. “Gone,” he tells me. “Cadaver says they’re all gone. All but Brody.”

  “And where’s he?”

  Cadaver nods in the direction of the burning building, off into the shadows the fire is weaving to the side of it. I don’t see Brody, but I trust that he’s there.

  “Jesus.” I put my hands to my face to block out a reality that seems to be getting darker by the second.

  There’s a story here, I suppose. Cadaver must have seen it all from his place by the window, before he hotfooted it the hell out of the burning tavern. He might whisper to me of Wintry’s bravery, how he tried to carry as many people as he could out of the place before one of the big timber beams came down and cracked his head open like an egg, dropping him and suffocating beneath his weight those he’d carried in his arms, his beloved Flo among them. He might tell me the details of Cobb’s descent into madness, how one minute he was a sobbing wreck, the next a raving lunatic, whooping and hollering and raging, spinning like a top with spirits flying from the open bottles in his hands. Then a match, the smell of sulfur, and a small flame ready to birth an all-consuming fire. He might say that Gracie fought Cobb to the end, maybe cold-cocked him with one of those bottles, or gutted him with the sharp end of a broken mop handle before the smoke took them both, laid them down for the fire to burn them in their sleep.

  Good for Gracie.

  Cadaver might tell me these things, but I don’t want to hear that choked whisper from his cracked lips. My imagination is louder anyway.

  “Is there a chance anyone else survived?” Kyle asks the old man, who shrugs and looks at me.

  Like Wintry, there’s more truth in his eyes than could ever roll off his tongue. But I’m stubborn, and what pitiful little sleep I have these days will be robbed from me tonight if I don’t see for myself. There are no screams from Eddie’s, no sound of anyone begging to
be saved, but then we’ve all been damned for longer than we care to admit, and we’ve never cried for salvation.

  I start moving toward the bar.

  Kyle’s hand falls firmly on my shoulder.

  I start to turn, and the roof caves in. It sounds like a tree falling, a splintering crash that sends a plume of dirty smoke up before fresh fire rushes in to fill the hole, fed by the air that has tried to escape.

  “Sonofabitch,” someone cries out from the dark, and finally I see a shape rolling around in the shadows, batting at sparks that are trying to ignite his clothes. If the kid’s able to roll, then could be his injuries are no more. We’ll have to wait and see.

  Crackling, spitting flames, but still no screams. On some level I know I should be thankful for that, and for the fact that this atrocity was not the Good Reverend’s work, but I’m not. Not just now. Kyle is weeping, and as his hand slips from my shoulder, Cadaver’s hand finds his before it occurs to me to comfort him.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” I say, without knowing whether or not I’m even saying it aloud, or who I think I’m saying it to if I am. “They didn’t deserve this.”

  Another dumb, obvious statement in a night loaded with them.

  “We should call someone.” Kyle walks away and sits down, his back to the rickety wooden fence that separates the parking lot from the grassy slope down to the road. I start after him, rehearsing words of comfort that sound wooden, and useless, like pretty much everything I’ve ever said to that kid. He wants his mother back and he won’t get it; he wants his father dead, and he can’t get that either. If early life experience scars you for the rest of it, then Kyle’s nightmare hasn’t even started yet. He raises a hand as I draw near. It’s as good as a signpost saying ROAD CLOSED, and all I can do is stand there feeling helpless, which is exactly what I do until I hear a sound I never thought I’d hear again.

  The sound of pennies being counted.

  “Cadaver?”

  He’s still facing the fire, but his head is bowed, all his attention on his upturned palm. I give the kid one brief, regretful look, then head back to the old man. Back there in the shadows, Brody’s still cursing.