by Jen Blood
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “It was nuts. You have any idea who would have done something like that?”
He took a long hit from his joint, held the smoke in his lungs, and then put it out and pocketed the roach before he responded. His eyes were glassy, splintered with red veins.
“Diggs made some enemies when he was here before,” Danny said. “I was just a kid then, so I didn’t pay too much attention. He was just ol’ Uncle Diggs, you know? But the stories are still around—Mama doesn’t even know we’ve heard half of ’em. How he knocked boots with the sheriff’s wife and then was out on the front lawn of the Motel Six butt naked. Plus everything that happened with Reverend Barnel...”
“What did happen with Reverend Barnel?” I asked.
Danny considered that for a minute, clearly torn between loyalty to Diggs and the high of being the one in the know.
“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want you to betray any confidences, kid.”
“I ain’t no kid,” he said. “I got a truck. I got plenty of girls for any night I choose. I got a band, even—and we’re good, too. Play out down to Nashville and Memphis, Louisville and Lexington.” He looked at me knowingly. “But good job makin’ me feel like a loser just so I’d spill Diggs’ secrets to feel like a big man.”
“I thought the weed might slow you down,” I said with a rueful smile. “Maybe you wouldn’t figure my angle.”
He shook his head with exaggerated disappointment. When he looked at me, there was a predatory gleam in his eye. He was a good looking kid, and he knew it: the kind cougars the world over would stand in line for. I’ve never been much for younger men, though.
“Don’t give me that look, Dimples,” I said. “I’ve got enough problems with your uncle. Now, what do you know? Let’s have it.”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, when he lived here before, with Aunt Ashley, I know him and the reverend got into it a couple times. Diggs was always writing articles about Barnel’s church, you know? And he went to a couple of his services, rip roarin’ drunk, and Sheriff Jennings had to haul him off.”
“Why does he hate Barnel so much, though?”
“Same reason my mama loves the guy so much, I reckon,” Danny said. For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. “Anyway, that seems more like a story Diggs should tell you himself. What happens at Barnel’s camp… that changes a body. It’s not so much a story you want other people tellin’.”
“You sound like you speak from experience.”
I might as well have suggested he was secretly into wearing his mom’s lingerie. He looked at the ground.
“Just telling you what I’ve heard,” he said. “That’s all.”
Diggs came out a minute later, freshly scrubbed and sporting jacket and tie. Being a manly man, he’d of course scorned the hospital’s recommendation of crutches—though he’d bizarrely been fine with George Durham’s old man cane.
“You moving in on my girl?” Diggs asked when he came out, eyeing Danny.
“First off, I’m not your girl,” I said. “And secondly… He was just giving me a little dirt on you, as a matter of fact.”
“Dirt? On me?” Diggs asked, wide eyed. “Pfft. None to be found.”
“Well, except for that summer you and Daddy—” Danny began with a spark in his eye.
“All right, you proved your point. I think we best be on our way.” Diggs sniffed the air knowingly. “But first, what’s that I smell? It’s vaguely familiar. Smells like…”
“Teen spirit?” Danny said. Wiseacre.
“Smells like weed, shithead,” Diggs said. “And if I catch you smoking it on your Mama’s front porch again, I’ll kick your ass six ways to Sunday.”
Danny sobered. Clearly, it wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. So much for Uncle Diggs, frat brother in arms. “Yes, sir. Won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Diggs said. He held out his hand. Danny took it, letting Diggs pull him up. “Now, come on. Put some eye drops in, and let’s do this thing.” He draped his arm across Danny’s shoulders and looked at me. “You ready, Sol?”
“Go on ahead—I just have to grab something, I’ll be right there.”
I went in, settled Einstein and the other dogs inside, and grabbed my purse. When I came out, Diggs and Danny were walking together, heads tilted toward one another. I had one of those brief, not-at-all-advisable flashes of What Might Have Been between the two of us, if things had gone differently over the years. Of course, given his background he probably still would have become an addict...and a drinker...and the kind of man who slept with anything that moved. Our friendship was strong, but I doubted it could have withstood the two of us dating in his heyday.
He was four years’ sober now. A changed man in any number of ways, from the one I’d known back then.
“Get the lead out, kid,” Diggs called back to me. “We’re not getting any younger here. You coming or what?”
Okay, not totally changed. I set my tumbling thoughts aside and made for the car. Danny got in the back despite my protests, and Diggs gave me a cryptic smile as he put the car in gear.
The sky was getting grayer, though it hadn’t started raining yet. We’d been driving maybe ten minutes when I noticed Diggs checking the rearview again. We were on a rural road, only a few cars in any direction. It made it very easy to spot the dark blue sedan with tinted windows keeping pace a couple of cars back.
I fisted my hands in my lap. Idle thoughts about Diggs and me and our storied past faded, muscled aside by the bone-deep fear that had become a constant since Black Falls.
“We’re being followed,” I said.
He nodded, not even bothering to deny it. “I know,” he said.
Chapter Six - Diggs
Justice Baptist was a little white church at the end of a short dirt drive on the outskirts of town. I knew as soon as we rounded the corner and the church was in sight that something was wrong. The parking lot was packed, the road lined with cars, and people had started parking in the field out back. I wasn’t looking at them, though, my attention caught by a crowd gathered in a clearing across the road.
A cluster of a dozen men, women, and children stood at the church property line holding signs and chanting nonsense. Danny leaned toward the front seat, straining to see through the windshield.
“What’s going on over there?” he asked.
“Go on in the church and get settled,” I told Danny and Solomon. “I’ll be right there.”
The kid wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded, his attention still fixed on the demonstrators. “Is that Reverend Barnel?” he demanded. He got out of the car before I could answer. Solomon and I tore after him as he strode toward the crowd. I caught up to him and grabbed his arm.
“Get in the church—you hear me? Now. I’ll handle this.”
“I don’t need you to handle it.” Danny tore his arm away. “I got it.”
I could hear the chanting the closer we got. At the center of it all was Reverend Jesup T. Barnel. Even now, I felt the cold, bowel-clenching fear I’d known as a boy around him.
“The Lord is gathering his flock,” he preached. “The end is upon us—judgment time is here, brothers and sisters. Wyatt Durham was found wantin’. How many more will the Lord smite before the fires consume this land of ours?”
Danny pushed through the onlookers. “What the hell are you doing here, old man?” he demanded. “You ain’t got no right being within a hundred miles of this place. My daddy was a good man.”
“Your daddy strayed,” Barnel said. He was a barrel-chested old man who hadn’t aged well, his face slack and his coloring a deep, unhealthy red. “And you know it full well, son. We’re just here to warn anybody who comes near, just what we’re facin’ right now. Somebody put your daddy in the ground for the sins he done against the Almighty.”
“Somebody oughta put you in the ground, you old bast—”
I grabbed Danny before all hell broke loose, and physically dragged him back to the church while Ba
rnel shouted after us.
For the first time since I’d set down in Louisville, I felt myself slipping.
Between the two of us, Solomon and I managed to wrangle Danny into the church. Once he was inside, I walked away for a minute—away from Barnel and his flock, away from the church, up the road toward freedom. Solomon walked alongside, eyeing me with concern.
“I could beat that guy up for you if you’d like,” she said. “The crazy old preacher, I mean. Juarez taught me some moves. I’m not saying I’d come out on top ultimately, but I’d probably give him a run for his money.”
“Maybe later.” I walked another few feet. A cold drizzle started, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. Solomon laid her hand on my arm. She gave me a solid smile. Rock steady when it really counts—that’s my Solomon.
“You can do this, Diggs.”
I nodded. My palms were damp, my suit too warm despite the chill in the air. “I know. No sweat, right?”
We turned around and headed back. The air smelled like damp earth and fresh rain. I thought of Wyatt and me, leaping streams and crashing parties as kids. Our freshman year, rooming together at Columbia, Wyatt left every party early to call Mae. I bitched him out all year long for passing up opportunities to sleep with the hot coeds throwing themselves at him.
I don’t want whatever those girls are sellin’. I pictured him, always a head taller than anyone else in the room. Broad shouldered and powerful, with a sense of empathy that ran deeper than anyone I’d ever met. Women loved Wyatt. They’re too skinny. Anybody’s that skinny, it’s bound to make ’em mean. I don’t want my girls mean. That’s the difference between you and me.
That’s the only difference? I’d asked, grinning.
Well, that and I dress better. Other than that, we might as well be livin’ in the same skin.
The pressure increased in my chest. Solomon bumped up against me as we walked. She wore a deep blue sundress that fell above her knees and made her green eyes shine. The cut showed off the new definition in her arms and calves, the physical manifestation of whatever transformation she’d been through in the six months since I’d seen her last. A transformation Juarez had been witness to; maybe was even partially responsible for.
She stumbled on the uneven terrain, and I held onto her elbow.
“Just a second,” she said. She took off her heels and held them in one hand. “I never did get the hang of walking in these things.”
“I don’t think Wyatt would mind.”
She glanced at me sadly. “No. I don’t expect he would.”
◊◊◊◊◊
I sat in the front row beside Mae and the kids during the funeral. Wyatt’s father never showed—not a surprise, really. I remembered him at his wife’s funeral and in the days that followed: not a pretty sight. George was the kind of man who preferred to grieve in privacy. Solomon told me she’d find a seat on her own, insisting that I should be with the family. When I scanned the crowd, I spotted her sitting alone in the back. There’s always been something solitary about Solomon, something strong and isolated and a little sad about her, as though she was set adrift at some point and has never quite found her way back to the world. I got that cold, unfurling pain in my chest again—like something was trying to break free, trapped by blood and muscle and bone. Ida, Wyatt’s youngest, whispered to me. I leaned down to hear her. She took my hand in hers. It was warm and damp, her freckled face blotchy from crying.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” I whispered.
“Daddy’s glad you’re here,” she whispered back. “I know he’s watchin’. He’s glad you come back home to us.”
“I’m glad I’m here, too,” I lied. In a church. To a seven-year-old kid. If I believed in hell, I would have felt the flames licking at my feet.
The service wasn’t long. There was a lot of praying, and a lot of singing, and a lot of crying. People snuck glances out the windows toward Barnel’s demonstrators and there was plenty of angry whispering from those in the congregation, but otherwise the service was wrinkle-free. Toward the end, I stood, adjusted my tie, and smoothed out the eulogy Mae had asked me to write. I passed Wyatt’s open coffin without looking inside. Somehow, I made it through the entire speech without breaking down, my gaze fixed on the double doors at the back of the church.
When I was finished, I got down from the pulpit and returned to my seat, wishing for a drink or a smoke or, more than anything, a line of white lightning to dull the pain and make everything a little brighter. Instead, I bowed my head while the congregation prayed one last time to a god I don’t believe in, and then I joined the other pallbearers as we carried my childhood best friend to the hearse waiting outside.
Solomon joined me in the parking lot once the hearse was on its way. Her mascara was running, and I saw no sign of her shoes. Historically, Solomon didn’t really do funerals; now I remembered why. I pulled her into my arms as much for myself as her, and held on tightly while she mumbled something unintelligible into my jacket. Her hair smelled of honeysuckle, and I was acutely aware of the warmth of her body and the curves pressed against me.
Eventually, she extricated herself. She rubbed her eyes and sniffled wetly. “God, I hate funerals.”
“Well, you certainly handle them well.”
“I was fine until you got up there. I’m officially booking you for my final farewell.”
“If there’s any order at all in the universe, I won’t be around for that day,” I said. She was trying to be light, I knew, but I couldn’t summon a smile at the thought.
She hesitated, studying me now. “It really was beautiful, you know. Are you okay?”
“You have to stop asking me that. I’ll let you know if I’m not—or, more likely, you’ll be able to tell before I can.” I glanced at her bare feet. “Didn’t you have shoes when this thing started?”
She swore, earning a sour glance from the few stragglers who hadn’t left for the interment, and darted back into the church to retrieve her heels.
Solomon was just out of sight when I spotted Reverend Barnel again, ambling toward me. He wore a double-breasted blazer too small for his girth, and he was surrounded by three oversized white guys in equally ill-fitting suits. Danny was already headed to the cemetery with the rest of the family, which meant there was no reason for me to play the rational adult any longer. I bridged the distance between us in a few strides, my anger flaring as soon as Barnel opened his fat mouth to speak.
I had no interest in listening.
Instead, I tried to plow through his entourage, ready to beat the sanctimonious snot out of him—regardless of his age. A guy built like a Frigidaire—Brother Jimmy, Barnel’s son—pulled me back. Before I could get away, one of his buddies delivered an uppercut that would have knocked me on my ass if Jimmy hadn’t been holding me up. My leg, still throbbing from the snake attack the night before, buckled beneath me.
“Settle down, boys,” Barnel said.
His voice was the clear, rich tenor of a lifetime orator. He squinted at me over his glasses while Jimmy continued to hold my arms.
“Daniel,” he said. “Daniel Diggins, isn’t it? I never forget one of my boys, son. I hear you had an unfortunate encounter last night with some of my babies. Them snakes do get testy ’round nonbelievers.”
I stopped struggling, and Barnel gave his son a nod. Jimmy let me go. It was all I needed. I might not be able to justify pummeling the old man himself, but there was no love lost between Jimmy and me—he was a worthy substitute. I wheeled on him and managed one solid blow to the jaw before his friend attacked. He caught me in the nose, hard, and I tasted blood and saw stars.
Buddy Holloway emerged from the church and shouted something I didn’t catch, then grabbed me and held fast to my arms, pulling me back. The world had gone red, images I was powerless to stop rushing over me in fast-moving waves:
Wyatt on that first day we’d met, smoking a cigarette out behind Barnel’s Redemption Hall; racing bikes and drinking beer and t
he sound of his laughter on hot summer nights. And then, the sight of him that same summer, strapped down while Barnel brandished a blazing hot steel cross. The sound of his screams, flesh sizzling when the reverend pressed the metal into his chest…
I fought harder, the reverend watching with a smug, holier-than-thou smile.
“Calm down, doggonit,” Buddy said “Get him out of here!” he shouted to the reverend’s men, who did their best to shepherd Barnel away.
“Now keep your shorts on,” Barnel said smoothly. He met my eye. “That rage has to burn itself out sometime, son, or you’re lookin’ at an eternity in the fire.”
“You think I don’t know who did this?” I finally managed, my voice choked. Barnel didn’t move, his eyes as hard as stones. “I don’t know why, or how, but I know this all comes back to you. Wyatt’s death; those snakes last night. And when I figure it out, you’re going down. People will see you for the monster I always knew you were.”
Barnel took a step closer to me, his yellow, cracked teeth bared in what could have been a smile or a snarl. He smelled like tobacco and sweat. “I’m havin’ a service tonight, son. We’re gonna save ourselves some souls, put the Holy Spirit back in this demon town. Your friend Wyatt strayed, and the Lord smote him—just as the Lord’s gonna do anybody who don’t see fit to cleanse themselves but quick. You watch yourself, boy, or it just might be your broken body folks are mournin’ next.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked.
He smiled more widely. “It’s no such thing, brother. That there’s just a promise. I hope to see you tonight, Daniel. I plan on savin’ your soul before the end’s upon us. And that end’s comin’ sooner than you might expect.”
“That’s enough, Reverend,” Buddy said. “Why don’t you go on now, see if you can’t find somebody else to save.”
“I reckon that’s a fine idea,” Barnel agreed. “Always a pleasure seein’ you, Deputy.”
He tipped his hat, and he and his goons made their exit.