Lightwood

by Steph Post

  Now, standing in the dark, stifling church, with only the septic air hanging between himself and those nefarious, colorless eyes and heavy jowls and crossed arms, he realized that he had miscalculated. He watched her small mouth twitch as if she were running her tongue over her teeth and he knew that he was in the presence of someone capable of filling a man’s bed with snakes and having no remorse about it.

  Jack O’ Lantern squirmed.

  “I mean, what I meant was…”

  Sister Tulah held up a hand and silenced him. Jack glanced toward the church doors, but knew that he wasn’t going anywhere unless she let him. He bit his tongue and lowered his chin, trying to appear respectful. Sister Tulah cleared her throat.

  “Did you know that my grandmother, my mother’s mother, was fortunate enough to hear Benjamin Irwin preach?”

  Jack O’ Lantern cocked his head slightly.

  “Um, who?”

  Sister Tulah uncrossed her arms and ran her hands down the sides of her dress as if trying to smooth out unseen wrinkles in the immaculately starched and pressed fabric.

  “He was run out of the church for some trumped-up scandal back in nineteen hundred, but he was one of the original saints, spreading the message of charismatic religion. He really knew how to preach on the blood and fire of Jesus and the Holy Ghost. My grandmother said that watching him was one of the most inspiring moments of her life.”

  Jack O’ Lantern nodded cautiously.

  “Okay.”

  “Some people disagreed with his ideas. Thought they were a little too radical, a little too much.”

  Sister Tulah took another step toward him.

  “You need to understand. We don’t believe in any of that willy-nilly stuff your Baptist aunt played around with. Pouring water over folks’ heads and calling it a day. We believe in the truth: a person needs to be baptized three times to really become one with God. You get saved, you get sanctified, and then you receive the signs of the Holy Spirit. We call this being baptized by fire.”

  Jack O’ Lantern glanced around the church, trying to focus on anything but the pale eyes boring down on him. He was doing his best to stay calm.

  “Uh, huh.”

  “Irwin took it a little bit further. He said it didn’t have to stop at fire. Why limit yourself when there was more to be had? He preached that after fire, you could be baptized by dynamite, then lyddite and then oxidite. He was a sort of chemist as well as being a preacher, you see. Most other preachers didn’t see any use for baptisms beyond fire, so his ideas never really took hold.”

  “Oh.”

  Sister Tulah crossed her arms in front of her chest again. She stared at Jack O’ Lantern until he was forced to return her gaze. The space between them seemed to shrink rapidly. Jack O’ Lantern was six feet, two hundred and fifty pounds, but he felt himself cowering against the wall of vertigo assailing him. The room seemed to grow even darker and suddenly it felt as if all the air had been sucked into the corners and he was standing inside of a vacuum, struggling to breath. Sister Tulah was monstrous.

  “I always thought he had an interesting way of looking at things, though. People sometimes think there’s nothing more powerful than fire, but there is always something. And there is more than one way to baptize a man, let me tell you.”

  She took a final step toward him. They were now standing less than three feet apart and Jack O’ Lantern’s head was buzzing. He had the vague sense that he was choking, but that his throat was paralyzed and he could do nothing about it. He stared into the clear depths of her eyes, but it was like trying to elicit compassion from a stone. Her voice became very quiet.

  “Mr. Austin, I have no responsibility over your immortal soul. Only God can judge you, can save you, can decide where you’re going to end up when you leave this wretched earth. But I do have the power to baptize you. Let’s consider this moment right now your salvation. Your sanctification. Your baptism by water. If I don’t receive my money before the evening service Wednesday night, you will experience baptism by fire. And after that, well, there is always dynamite. Do you understand?”

  Jack O’ Lantern nodded furiously. He thought he was going to pass out and was beginning to see black and white splotches in front of his eyes, when he heard a scuffing sound and felt fresh air break over him like a wave. He turned to look at the sudden, blinding light and saw Sister Tulah’s nephew standing in the open church doors. Jack O’ Lantern didn’t wait to hear if Sister Tulah was finished; he bolted and stumbled out into the sunlight.

  FELTON PUT the spotless black Lincoln Navigator into reverse and braced his arm against the back of the passenger headrest so that he could back out of the church parking lot. He was used to driving his ten year old Buick, but Sister Tulah would never ride in any vehicle but her own. She bought a brand new Lincoln every year in the fall, as soon as the new models arrived on the car lot. Felton didn’t know what half of the buttons on the dash were for, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t allowed to touch them anyway. Sister Tulah didn’t have a problem driving herself around, but if Felton was with her he knew automatically that he would be behind the wheel. Driving with Tulah made him anxious, she watched him like a hawk and berated him for driving too fast, too slow or not flipping on his turn signal at the precise moment, but he never argued. He knew he didn’t have a choice.

  He eased the car into gear when he reached the road and headed east toward downtown Kentsville. He tried to look at Sister Tulah in the passenger seat out of the corner of his eye, but she was staring straight ahead, her neck stiff, and her hands folded in the trough of her wide lap. Felton knew it was coming, he just didn’t know when.

  “So, Golden Corral?”

  She didn’t answer him. There weren’t many cars on the road at this time on a Sunday afternoon and Felton kept turning his head to look at his aunt. He gripped the steering wheel firmly with both hands, however. It was sweltering inside the Lincoln, and Felton wished Tulah would turn on the air conditioner. His hands were sweating against the shiny gray leather.

  “You know, I heard Brother Graham say that this new buffet over by the senior center just opened up. He said they have real good fried chicken and you can pick whatever piece you want out of the pan. Plenty of dark meat pieces, like I know you like.”

  Her voice suddenly filled the car like a crack of thunder.

  “I’m only going to ask once more. Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Felton twisted his hands up and down the sides of the steering wheel. He stared at the rear window of the minivan that had pulled out in front of him. A Life is Good sticker beamed at him from the bottom corner of the glass.

  “No.”

  Sister Tulah rubbed her hands together.

  “Fine. Let me put this a different way. You have something you want to tell me.”

  Felton shook his head fiercely like a child refusing to eat his vegetables. He had quickly given up on trying to play dumb. He knew it wouldn’t work. Sister Tulah released her hands and laid the left one on Felton’s thigh. She began to dig her nails in, all the while continuing to stare straight ahead.

  “And if I were you, I would do so. Now.”

  Felton slammed on the brakes and swerved the Navigator into a strip mall parking lot. He slammed the gear shift into park in front of a nail salon and covered his face with his hands. His words came out muffled.

  “How did you know?”

  Tulah grunted in disgust.

  “Because I know everything.”

  “I did it for you. For the church and for you.”

  Sister Tulah removed her hand from Felton’s leg and shifted slightly in her seat so that she could look at him. Felton let go of his face and banged his palms against the steering wheel.

  “I thought, I mean, if it had worked, I would have been able to give you three times the money you lent them in the first place, and then you would have seen…”

  “Stop.”

  Felton breathed deeply, sucking in a
ir and wheezing it back out. He couldn’t look at her, though he knew she was staring at him with disgust. Tulah’s voice was calm, but biting. Her words came out weighted and measured.

  “You did not think. It did not work. The Lord has seen fit to curse me with an imbecile as my only surviving relative. But that is an issue between God and myself that one day will be sorted out.”

  Felton laid his sweating forehead against the steering wheel and rolled his head back and forth.

  “I’m sorry, Sister Tulah. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Tulah sighed.

  “Yes, you are. But we will deal with that later. Right now, I need a name.”

  Felton raised his head.

  “A name?”

  “A name.”

  JACK O’ LANTERN killed the engine and heaved his leg over the seat of his motorcycle. He stared at the shiny red gas tank of his bike, painted with flames and swirling skulls and burning from the late afternoon sun. Jack loved this motorcycle. He had custom designed it and built most of it himself from the ground up. It was only one in a long line of bikes he had owned since he was sixteen, but he was proud of it. Jack O’ Lantern studied the paint job to avoid walking inside the clubhouse. They would all be waiting to hear how his meeting with Tulah had gone. He was sure that Slim Jim had already hyped the guys up on stories of the atrocious and absurd things she had done to people who pissed her off and even if he yelled at them to shut up as soon as he walked in the door, he knew they wouldn’t leave him alone. Some were scared, some angry, and all were chomping at the bit for revenge.

  He knew that Legs, who didn’t hold stake in Slim Jim’s stories, had already been whispering to some of the others about going up to Kentsville themselves and trying to intimidate Sister Tulah into backing off. On his way up to see her, he had thought that maybe that strategy wasn’t half bad. That was before encountering her in the church, and seeing what he had seen, and feeling what he had felt. Jack O’ Lantern had never been a religious man; he thought God was for losers who couldn’t take responsibility for their own problems and actions. He believed that churchgoers were fools and preachers either deluded morons or scam artists. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He had never come up against the likes of Sister Tulah, and though he thought her whole baptism speech was bullshit, it still made him anxious.

  He heard the door of the clubhouse slam and looked up to see Slim Jim standing on the cement stoop, waiting. Jack O’ Lantern sighed and was heading across the gravel lot when his cellphone vibrated inside his jeans’ pocket. He pulled it out as he walking, but froze as soon as he saw the text message appear on the screen. It was from an unknown number and contained only two words, but Jack O’ Lantern knew what it meant. He stood at the bottom of the steps, and interrupted Slim Jim before he could start asking questions.

  “What do you know about Sherwood Cannon?”

  The opening riff to Life is a Highway blasted from the internet jukebox and Benji twisted around on his barstool and raised his Coors Lite bottle over his head.

  “Yeah, buddy!”

  Benji shouted to a swaying man in a red baseball cap leaning against the jukebox for support. The man squinted across the bar’s tiny dance floor and then gave Benji an awkward thumbs-up. Benji swiveled back around on the vinyl barstool and took another swig of his beer. He glanced over the top of the bottle at the woman sitting all the way down at the other end of the bar. It seemed like she had been eyeing him ever since she came in the door an hour ago. He winked at her and she smiled back shyly before quickly looking away at the television set above the bar. Benji took advantage of the fact that the bar stools between them had momentarily cleared and gave her a good once-over.

  The woman was older than Benji, maybe thirty-five to his twenty-five, but still had it going on. Her processed blond hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and she had dangling silver earrings that curved down the length of her face. She was wearing a low cut leopard print tank top that was barely keeping her contained and a short, black pleather skirt. Benji leaned back from the bar slightly to get a better angle and watched the skirt ride up higher as she crossed one leg over the other on the bar stool. Her black ankle boots matched the skirt and made her long legs appear even longer. Benji grinned to himself as he sat up straighter and sipped his beer. Good music, pretty girls: it was a perfect Monday night.

  Most nights at Limey’s were perfect nights for Benji. There weren’t too many bars to choose from in Silas, but still he thought that Limey’s was pretty near the best place on Earth to drink a cold beer, swap some stories with the boys and decide which girl to go home with. He had been drinking at Limey’s since he was sixteen and loved the fact that he was the only Cannon who ever spent time in the joint. Judah and Levi had always been regulars at The Ace, but Benji couldn’t understand why. The place was always filled with old timers wanting to sing along to Hank Williams on the jukebox and guys with too many kids at home looking to get smashed and beat the tar out of each other with pool cues. Every time he had ever been to The Ace in the Hole with his older brothers, he saw somebody wind up with blood on his shirt. It just didn’t make sense to him. Levi and Judah told him that Limey’s was for pussies, but at least he didn’t have to worry about being smashed over the head with a pint glass on his way to take a leak. Sherwood, too, had his own place; he almost never left the VFW for a drink, preferring to surround himself with war veterans who had grown up with him and knew what he was capable of. They figured it was better to go along with Sherwood’s wild stories and buy him drinks than question anything he said. Benji thought it was funny that a family so well known and so close knit never drank together in the same bar, but he thought it was just as well. At Limey’s, he wasn’t Benjamin Cannon, he was just good old Benji.

  And the girls loved him. Of course, they loved him everywhere, but at Limey’s, he knew he wouldn’t have to work too hard and that was part of its appeal. Benji leaned over the bar and tossed his empty beer bottle into the plastic trashcan next to the sink. Rooter, the same bartender who had served Benji his first drink on a barstool, waited until a commercial interrupted the re-run of Survivor he was watching and opened another bottle for Benji. Rooter rested his thick, hairy forearms on the sticky bar mat and surveyed the room.

  “Starting to quiet down a little, ain’t it?”

  Benji swiveled on the bar stool again and looked around. The shiny wooden dance floor was nearly empty. Two girls, both of whom Benji had gone to high school with, were dancing with each other in front of the flashing jukebox. Benji knew they weren’t sisters, but they might as well have been. Both wore cut-off jean shorts, tight white Tshirts and had tortured brown hair that hung to their shoulders in overworked curls. The only difference between them was that one was chunkier than the other and though Benji couldn’t for the life of him remember their names, he knew that the one with the belly roll of fat peeking out from the bottom of her shirt was much more fun in the sack. A few beers ago, Benji had his eye on taking her home, but she had wandered off at some point and Benji had forgotten about her. From the way she and her friend were sloppily clinging to one another as they swayed to the music, he figured they were both likely to puke in his truck before he could get either one back to his trailer. The skinnier one saw him looking and tried to raise her hand to wave at him, but her wrist fell limply across the other girl’s back. Benji mentally crossed them both off the list.

  In a corner of the bar, backlit by too many neon beer and liquor signs, a game of foosball, guys against girls, was winding down. Neither of the girls twisting the plastic handles and laughing were bad looking, but Benji had gone to school and played football with both of their boyfriends and wouldn’t make a play for them with the guys present. The tall blonde in the see-through shirt had been with his buddy Joey for the past three years and so she was pretty much off-limits anyway, though Benji had some pretty vivid memories of this one thing she could do. He knew that the other girl had been hooked up with Joey’s cousi
n for a few months, but he still considered her available when she was alone. The girl, Benji thought her name was Marissa or Melissa, something like that, had gone home with him a few weeks ago, but she must not have been that exciting because he couldn’t remember anything about her except that she liked to talk about some reality housewife show. A lot. Marissa/Melissa definitely fit into the end-of-the-night-desperate category. And with her boyfriend in tow, she was a no-go anyway. There were rules, after all.

  Benji turned all the way around on the stool. At the other end of the bar, away from the TV, the McCaulghy brothers were arguing about baseball stats in front of two empty shot glasses. He finally turned back to Rooter, who had been following Benji’s eyes and knew his thought process as if it was his own.

  “Slim pickings this late, huh?”

  Benji smiled and nodded. Rooter picked up a gray rag and started scrubbing down the bar.

  “You getting off your game or something? There were at least five honeys in here earlier who couldn’t stop making eyes at you. You been spending too much time drinking and not enough time listening to those girls prattle on. You’re gonna lose your edge.”

  Benji pushed his blond hair out of his eyes and took another sip of beer.

  “Never.”